Questioning God-Given Rights

I’m following Joe Carter’s new series on his particular conservative beliefs with interest. I think it’s a valuable thing to do, and blogging about it should provide some interesting reading and discussion.

My interest is in the concept of God-given rights, or rights with which we are endowed by the creator, and the value of that concept (Point 4 in Joe’s second post). Of course, any American reader should know that I’m paraphrasing there from the Declaration of Independence, and that I’m likely to get into trouble asking questions about it. This sort of thing is like machine-gunning sacred cows. But I do question the value of the claim that rights are given by God in political discourse.

We seem to think that God-given rights will be more solid and more certain than other rights, whatever those may be. Let me simply put those God-given rights up against another basis-rights that are agreed upon by the society, a sort of “social compact” style of rights. The standard objection here is that if rights are given by society, i.e. by the agreement of society, then they can be taken away by society. The corollary, of course, is that if they are given by God, they can be taken away only by God.

But how is it that we determine first that rights are given by God, and then just what rights God has given? As a Christian I believe that I am created in the image of God, and there is a certain dignity in that. I believe that God communicates through scripture, through direct interaction with human minds, and through the natural world. But many Christians would disagree with me. Some would disallow the direct communication idea, while others would put different weights on these items. For example, many would see scripture as far more important than the other two.

So we would at least have to start with some kind of consensus as to how one determines God’s will, the fact that he has granted certain rights, and just what those rights are. But that means that we’re right back to consensus again, because depending on how I interpret scripture I can come up with widely different sets of rights, and that’s only working with Christian scripture. (I’m skipping the different canons of scripture amongst major Christian groups.)

Thus we’re back to consensus. But what about enforcement? Both experience and scripture show us that God is not necessarily going to intervene to enforce the rights he has granted us. In fact, even claims that God will enforce those rights are few and far between. Scripturally, he appears far more likely to inflict some kind of calamity on the folks who deny certain rights to others.

So even if rights are granted by God–something I affirm as a Christian–my ability to benefit from those rights depends on the consensus of society to recognize that there are rights, to determine just what those rights are, and finally to make those rights effective through enforcement. We get back to the simple point that a society has to define freedom, desire freedom, and defend freedom in order to possess it.

I’m not minimizing the importance of a national myth in this case. The practically religious significance given to the idea of rights in this country is a good thing. But the bottom line is that we are responsible for preserving them as our ancestors were for creating (or implementing) them, and what we think and do is what primarily matters.

In conversation with others who share my belief in God, the phrased “endowed by their creator” is powerful, even if it is difficult or impossible to find those rights enumerated in scripture. In conversation with those of another faith, I need to appeal to something else.

Recognizing that we are in almost every way responsible for freedom also places on us the burden of defending, maintaining, and from time to time improving it.