It seems as though our freedom has gotten us into a lot of trouble lately. We’ve decided that simply because we live in America, we have the “right” to do many unscrupulous things. We have the “right” to report the news however we want to even if it’s an outright lie, we have the “right” to marry whomever we want to regardless of gender, and we have the “right” to partial-birth abortion because the ban violates a woman’s right to privacy.
What exactly are human rights and what source are they derived from? Are human beings simply entitled to any right we deem suitable and do we have the liberty to call them inalienable? While many of us often refer to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution to confirm our human rights, this method of verification cannot be our only source of credibility. What was the origin of our rights before these documents existed? What many fail to acknowledge is that the Declaration of Independence does, in fact, credit another source of orientation…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these rights are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Human beings existed long before any written document endowed our human rights. The source that granted us our human rights must also be able to take them away. Thus, an inalienable right must come from a Supreme source, Our Creator, not a human source. George Washington understood this when he said, “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and rights, which Heaven itself has ordained.”
How as a nation have we become such an autonomous and self-righteous group of citizens? When did we establish this unfounded sense of self-importance? Each of us is one, among many, mere grains of sand who have been given the gift of life, liberty and property by God, our Creator. Any other source would result in rights that are subjective and at the scrutiny of human judgment. If a human being has the ability to grant a right, one can logically deduce that a human being can decide to take that right away for any reason at any given time. It seems we are confusing granting rights with granting ourselves permission.
Doesn’t it seem illogical for the gay rights activists to protest a ruling that was determined by democracy? This is not a personal attack against them, rather it is an observation. At this point in time it becomes relevant to ask: what exactly are their rights, who established them and where did these rights come from? Furthermore, who are they protesting against? Since they really don’t have one man or one party to blame, it seems only logical that they need to take their issues up with their (and our) Creator, which is probably why they had no where else to protest but in front of a church. It’s as if they are asking the courts to conform to their subjective view of marriage which was, in essence, derived from the written word of God. Maybe this issue needs some re-examining. While we want to maintain a separation of church and state, in certain ethical matters it doesn’t seem feasible
How long will it take before the Supreme Court decides that every U.S. citizen has the right to receive a certain income regardless of their means of employment? We need to defer to the source of these rights and concur that they must come from something greater than ourselves.
So what written source can we refer to so we can accurately define what our rights are? There are at least two: the Bible and the Ten Commandments. After all, the majority of us still agree that we are “One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all,” don’t we?
