Know Your Rights

“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 are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Those are the words at the top of the United States Declaration of Independence. When our founding fathers penned that on July 4th, 1776, they understood that English tyranny under King George III had violated those rights.

When our rights are denied, atrocity always follows.

It happened to Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved from 1500 to 1866. In 1858, John Lewis Poindexter stated in his last will that the slaves he owned had the choice to be freed and returned to Africa or sold publicly after his death. However, the US Supreme Court determined in Bailey vs. Poindexter that slaves “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The choice was taken away from the slaves because, legally, they were considered less than human.

78 years later, the Supreme Court of Germany made a similar decision. In a 1936 court case, “the Reichsgericht refused to recognize Jews living in Germany as persons in the legal sense.” The growing discrimination against Jews now had legal justification, which ultimately manifested in some of the most horrific acts of cruelty in history. Jews inside the Nazi concentration camps were transported 200 at a time in train cars meant to hold only 50 people, fed bread made from sawdust and sausage made from sickly horses, subjected to medical experimentation and unnecessary surgery, and thousands were murdered in the gas chambers every day.

When the war was over and the Allies came out victorious, the remaining Nazi Party leaders were put on trial in what came to be known as The Nuremberg Trials. When confronted with the atrocities they committed, how did the Nazis respond? Most of them passed off responsibility to their superiors, saying they only followed orders. At the time, the highest-ranking leader still alive was Hermann Goering, Hitler’s second in command and appointed successor. During the trial, Goering stated, “The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused.” According to Goering, he was not guilty of violating his victim’s rights because the Nazis did not believe their victims had any rights. In his mind, he was only guilty of disagreeing with his judges’ opinion about human rights.

How does this happen?

How is it possible that entire nations could disregard the humanity of some people? Perhaps if we understood how it happened, we could prevent it from happening again.

In every case of crime against humanity, the guilty parties have always made the mistake of assuming we can decide for ourselves what our rights are. We let the leaders of our society decide how people ought to be treated, and in doing so, we allow our morals to be molded to our selfishness and to our ever-changing society.

But human rights are unchanging.

African Americans were not given the right to their freedom when Congress passed the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution in 1865; they always had it. The so-called “undesirables” who were tormented in the Nazi concentration camps did not regain their status as human beings after the Nazis were defeated; they were always human. Our society cannot take away human rights because they are not given to us by our society. If our rights are so flexible that they can be given and taken away at any time by other people, they are not rights at all, only privileges given to us by those with power. Unless they apply to all people and never change, the word “right” loses all meaning. The source of our rights must be eternal and unchanging.

As we examine the nature of our humanity, we discover something alarming. Along with the expectation that our rights should be respected comes the responsibility to respect everyone else’s rights. The whole system rests upon a kind of honor code we call our morals. At the deepest level of our consciousness, we can feel the laws of right and wrong tug at our hearts. It’s the twinge of guilt we feel when we look at pornography, for example. Even though we haven’t directly harmed another person, the law tells us that we have done wrong somehow. Our conscience tries to punish us.

A very shallow definition of the word: “wrong.”

Our society, however, has put a very shallow definition of what is “wrong.” According to society, “wrong” is purely what harms another person (or sometimes animals or the environment). Our own business is what we allow our wandering minds to think about. Under this definition, our example of viewing pornography is not wrong. It’s distasteful, maybe, and something you would not want to make publicly known, but how could it be wrong if no one gets harmed? Suddenly, we fight against our conscience the next time it guilts us. We argue that no wrong has been committed, so we can comfortably believe our conscience must be mistaken. It gets easier to justify looking at pornography the next time around because our conscience puts up less of a fight. As it turns out, when we blur the line between right and wrong, we become more desensitized to the difference. By accepting society’s shallow version of morality, we rob our conscience of its power to guide our moral judgments. Our example of pornography was only the beginning. If we are not accountable for our thoughts, suddenly, there is nothing wrong with hate. Whether it’s hate for an individual or an entire culture, it doesn’t matter.

All action begins as a thought.

A white supremacist who internally desires the extermination of everyone who was not born with white skin but never verbally or physically acts on his desire is blameless according to our laws. But all action starts as thought. Every evil deed started as an evil thought, and having evil thoughts is not a crime recognized by the law. This leaves us with a big problem. On the one hand, a legal system that penalizes the result of evil thoughts without punishing the thoughts directly is as effective as cutting off the heads of weeds without pulling up the roots. On the other hand, there is no law against having evil thoughts. Thus, we realize that our laws are inadequate to guarantee our rights.

Dismantle Evil Thoughts

What is the solution, then? A practical solution must dismantle evil thoughts before they can grow into actions. But indeed, that’s impossible, right? Even if someday technology allows us to know someone else’s thoughts, how could we possibly enforce “legal thought”?

There are two problems we would face. First, how would the authorities enforcing correct thought be kept accountable for doing it justly? The idea of “thought crime” being used as an excuse to squash any opposition to a corrupt government was a horror George Orwell described in his book 1984. Whoever is in charge of determining “legal thought” would certainly bend the definition for his own benefit. However, as we have already seen, the moral law inside us is not flexible.

It is eternal and unchanging and applies to everyone. The only fair judge would be someone who knows this law perfectly, inside and out. The second problem hits much closer to reality. If we are determined to raise the standard of right and wrong to include our thoughts, we will quickly realize how impossible it is to live up to this new standard. Think about it. Have you been able to go a whole day without even one evil thought? Seeing an ex-husband or wife brings up thoughts of wishing harm to another person. Seeing jewelry in a store brings up thoughts of stealing.  Seeing beautiful people dressed immodestly on magazine covers brings up thoughts of lust. If thoughts are the root of our actions, we must admit that we are rotten. If a functioning legal system that judged evil thoughts existed, we would all be guilty in a day.

There is a judge who knows our every thought.

Unfortunately for us, that system does exist. There is a perfect system that recognizes the eternal and unchanging quality of our rights and can judge evil thoughts. There is a judge who knows the moral law inside us perfectly, inside and out. Our founding fathers knew who it was.

“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 are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Our Creator is the source of our rights, and only He knows the moral law well enough to judge our evil thoughts fairly.

Why God allows evil to take place.

But how could that be true? If a God was overseeing all of humanity, how could he witness every violation of human rights ever committed and not bring immediate justice? Or why does he allow evil to take place at all? God answered that very question in the Bible.

“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9. If God were instant in his punishment of evil, you would also be guilty. If God prevented evil from occurring, you would only be a good person artificially because you would have no other choice. In other words, God withholds his judgment because he doesn’t want you to be guilty or take away your ability to choose to do right. But as we’ve already seen, we can’t live by God’s standard of goodness, including pure actions, words, and thoughts. Not only are we powerless to stop our minds from thinking evil thoughts in the future, but we’re also unable to undo the evil things we’ve done in the past. Each of us has a history of breaking God’s laws, and we add more to the list every day.

At this point, people assume that if there is a God, He would forgive the wrong they have done as long as they have made up for it by living a life of good works. They assume that a truly just God would consider the sum total of a person’s life and decide they spent more of their life doing good than bad and that everything would be ok. Most of the world believes that, but it is the biggest lie ever told. It would be ridiculous to think that a human judge would simply forgive the crimes of a serial killer because the man had spent more of his life volunteering at a homeless shelter than murdering people. His crimes carry their own penalty and cannot be undone by any good works he adds on to them. It is no different for God. “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God,” Romans 3:19. The whole world is guilty before God. If it is impossible for us to meet God’s standard, why does he delay his judgment at all? Surely he knows our predicament. Why would God give us more time if there was no way to escape judgment?

A righteous judge cannot allow a crime to go unpunished

But there is a way. Because a righteous judge cannot allow a crime to go unpunished, God knew that someone had to be punished, so 2000 years ago, God became a man named Jesus, lived a life with no sins of his own and took the punishment we deserved when he died on a cross and rose again from the dead. Jesus offered to give us his sinless perfection (meaning a blank slate for us and no punishment) if only we ask him for it. That’s right- no rituals, no commitment to a life of good works, no obligations of any kind are required to be saved. You just have to ask for it and Jesus will give it to you. Here is one way you can ask Jesus for salvation. These words are not magical and won’t save you on their own; what matters is the sincerity of your heart when you ask.

“Dear Jesus, I know I am guilty of breaking your laws. Please forgive me of my sins, come into my life and be my savior. Amen.”