Equal Rights
I was driving home recently behind a car with a couple of bumper stickers. I enjoy looking at bumper stickers because I assume that if a person adorns their vehicle with one, the message must be important.
The first sticker I noticed was a Biden/Harris sticker. Every time I see a presidential campaign sticker, my first thought is, “Are they/will they be embarrassed if the candidate didn’t/doesn’t win?” That, of course, didn’t apply in this case.
The second sticker on the car was a half pie chart with something along the lines of, “Giving others their rights does not mean you have less than full rights yourself.” I tried to figure out what they were implying.
From a constitutional (before the amendments) perspective, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Ok, I’m still good with the sticker. Next, I thought of the rights guaranteed in the amendments – free speech, assembly, religion, to bear arms, etc. These rights have some limitations. For example, you can yell “Fire” in a crowded theater, but you could be charged for the ensuing stampede. These rights are not absolute and must be litigated by the courts.
Then I started thinking about other concepts people attribute “rights” to, such as the right to healthcare, housing, food, etc. These are illusions because they include service and property provided by another person that would make them slaves if granted as an absolute right. We, as a society, might create social programs paid through taxes to provide some or all these concepts, but they are not rights granted.
“It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted. Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” - Proverbs 31:4-9 ESV
“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” - James 4:1-12
We, as a society, love to stand on a pedestal and demand our rights even when they don’t exist as rights. We’d be far better off if we reflected on our own behavior to make sure it matches what Jesus taught us.
“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’” - Matthew 22:37-40
