The Right to Rights

The UN has spoken. We have, since 1948, a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Don't miss the signficance. If it is a human right, no one has the right to cross it. If it is a privilege, it can be removed. It is injustice to take away someone's innate rights. So when you read through these universal human rights, you might become alarmed because most of us weren't aware that these were human rights

Take, for instance, this one.

Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

We would nod and say, "Yes, this is clearly a human right." Is it? For instance, Paul classified himself as a "servant" (Rom 1:1; Phil 1:1; Titus 1:1) (as did James, Peter, and Jude). More accurately, it is a "bond-servant", a doulos, referring to, you guessed it, a slave. That would mean that Paul and James (and the like) lost their human rights. Further, if "servitude" refers to being ruled (as the Bible indicates is the case for wives) or lacking the liberty to determine one's course of action (which is often the case of every human being on the planet) or to work imposed as punishment (as in the case of prisoners), then we have a world rife with human rights violations, much of it at the behest of God.

How about this one?

Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Really? Everyone? Really?! Because, as we all know, the unborn have no right to life. As Governor Cuomo indicated, the view itself is not welcome in New York. And, seriously, exactly what is meant by "security of person", because many of us live lives without security of person. That's a violation of a basic, universal human right?

Connected to that, I particularly like this one.

Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

I like it because the whole debate of "person" was the point of Roe-v-Wade and the non-personhood of the unborn. Apparently the UN disagrees with Roe-v-Wade, right? No??

Did you know that democracy was a right (Article 21)? Did you know that Unions are a violation of human rights (Article 23)? Did you know that paid holidays are a human right (Article 24)? (No, seriously, it's in there.) Then there's this bombshell from Article 25: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family ..." Wow! It is a right. If someone does not have a "standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family", his rights are being violated. So when Paul wrote, "If anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either" (2 Thess 3:10), he was commanding a violation of universal human rights.

Look, I'm not trying to downplay human rights. I think we do indeed have some. I'm just warning about seizing more than we actually have. When we begin to view life through the eyes of entitlement and rights, we become horribly ungrateful. Then we begin redefining things. We could redefine, for instance, "slavery" as "whatever makes you feel enslaved" and it would be a violation of rights to be stuck in a workaday world and someone would owe us an income. We already redefined "everyone" to cut out "the unborn". And our sense of anger -- anger, you see, is a product of a perceived violation of rights -- will grow proportionally to our growing sense of rights. I'm not saying we have no innate human rights. I'm warning about grabbing some we don't actually have (as, for example, demonstrated by God's treatment of humans) and about allowing them to become a problem for you. Life, you see, is a privilege. You'll be much better off if you view it that way.