HUMAN RIGHTS COME FROM GOD
Plain Truth Magazine
August 1978
Volume: Vol XLIII, No.7
Issue: ISSN 0032-0420
QR Code
HUMAN RIGHTS COME FROM GOD
Jeff Calkins  

What are human rights? Where do they come from? World leaders are confused because they ignore the only real source which gives the answers.

   Two words keep popping up in almost everything you read about world politics these days: human rights. Considering the way the phrase is casually tossed off in the media's interminable political analyses, reports and harangues, we would assume there was a settled definition of human rights. And since we all know what human rights are, we then all know when a right is being violated.
   But no. Journalists, commentators, and Jimmy Carter all use the words "human rights" as a magical incantation designed to elicit an emotional response, but they never get around to specifically defining human rights or explaining from whence these rights are derived. Human rights, in today's news, rate a better press than mom. God, and apple pie, but the fact remains that "mom,: "God," and "apple pie" are even less glittering generalities than "human rights."

Freedom Is Slavery

   Unless there is real substance to the words "human rights," then even the most brutal dictatorship can claim to uphold them and be correct. When language has no meaning, you can bet that the first petty Hitler who comes along will just ooze concern for the protection of your "human rights" while he deprives you of everything you ever earned and sends you off to his labor camps, telling you that in doing so he is protecting your "human rights" to be free from unemployment!
   The world already too much resembles George Orwell's nightmare vision of 1984, where Big Brother regulated the lives of everyone. But in addition to the dangers of total-intarianism, Orwell also warned of the corruption of language which inevitably accompanies it. The rulers of the 1984-state will tell you that they are protecting your basic human rights - to be their slaves. Orwell summed it up when he described the slogan of Big Brother society: "Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength."
   It calls to mind the words of the Old Testament prophet: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil" (Isa. 5:20). Indeed, Isaiah's point is essentially the same as Orwell's: Language must have consistent and specific meaning or all manner of evil will be called good. The reluctance of world leaders to say precisely what they mean by "human rights" is a serious matter.
   One current example well illustrate this point. Since late autumn 1977, a human rights conference has been going on in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Western delegates have dutifully recited any number of human rights violations, mainly centering on repression of dissidents, by the Communists. And, in true Orwellian fashion, the Communist delegates have countercharged the West with human rights violations such as "capitalist exploitation" (this simply means working for someone other than the government) and "social inequality" (which may merely mean that you like roller derbies while someone else prefers opera). Thus, given today's haphazard application of the phrase "human rights violations," there has never been a greater need to pinpoint the definition and origin of human rights.

U.N. Declaration

   The primary human rights document used today in world politics is the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is a list, drawn up by Anglo-American lawyers after World War II, which enumerates a series of rights as they might be enforced in, say, a court of law. The U.N. Declaration consists of 30 articles divided into four parts. Articles 1 and 2 are general articles stating that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" and that everyone has equal rights as specified by the rest of the Declaration.
   Articles 3 through 21 enumerate various civil and political rights. These are protection from what government can do to you: You have the right to life, liberty, and security of person; freedom from slavery and servitude; freedom from torture; the right to own property; freedom of religion; etc. The common denominator of these rights is that they exist independent of the existence of any government.
   Articles 22 to 27 cover economic and social rights. These define benefits the government should provide for you. They include the right' to social security, the right to work, the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, as well as the right to a compulsory public education. These rights require the existence of government and deal with its duty to provide its citizens with material benefits.
   Finally, the rest of the Declaration states that everyone has the right to an "international order" in which he can enjoy his other rights.
   There are two very serious flaws in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The first is that the economic and social rights of one man may necessitate the deprivation of the political and civil rights of another. For example, if you have the right to own property, does another man have the right to have the government take some of that property away so that he can have a "standard of living adequate for health and well-being"? Or take perhaps a more glaring example: If you believe in rearing your children to respect God, what happens to your, and their, freedom of conscience and religion if the government compels them to go to a school where they are taught an evolutionary world view while God is never mentioned in the classroom except in profanity? And to make matters worse, what if the government takes some of your property in order to finance teaching your children what your conscience abhors? (Indeed, it was Thomas Jefferson who said that to compel a man to pay for the promulgation of beliefs which he opposed was tyranny.)
   But the other flaw is even more serious: The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, as the noted writer Carl F. Henry has pointed out, is "silent on the theme of the source and sanctions of human rights." In fact, the implication is that the United Nations itself is the source of your human rights. But what the U.N. giveth, it may take away.

Inalienable Rights and Nature's God

   There are two other great human rights documents in the history of ideas: the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1791) and the American Declaration of Independence (1776). The French Declaration contains 17 articles, which promulgate the idea that man has certain natural and inalienable rights with which he is born - namely, liberty, private property, and the inviolability of the person - and that the sole purpose of government is to protect those rights. The Declaration of Independence also states that there are certain "inalienable rights," and that men form governments to protect those rights, but it adds one more important idea: Those inalienable rights are derived from "nature and nature's God" and are so "self-evident" that any reasonable man will recognize them.
   The idea that man is born with certain innate "natural" rights has an illustrious history going as far back as the great Roman orator Cicero and later jurists of the Roman Empire. Most of the thinking about "natural rights," however, has been done in more modern times. The concept's premier expositor was John Locke. Locke used as his starting point a conception of how men would be without government and asked what rights men would have in that situation. He concluded that if men had certain rights before, they formed governments, they retained those rights afterwards also. French philosophers who had similar ideas were Rousseau and Voltaire: More recently, the idea of natural rights has been developed by Robert Nozick in a 1975 book which won national recognition, entitled Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick starts with the same assumption as Locke: Men are born with certain natural human rights which they have before they ever form a government.

The Shifting Sands of Human Rights

   But the Lockean idea that man is born with natural human rights can be attacked at its base. Just the assertion that one is born with certain human rights does not make it so. In fact, many philosophers have rejected this notion. Jeremy Bentham, for example, said the idea of natural human rights was "nonsense upon stilts." Apparently, it just isn't something which is self-evident.
   In fact, a modern-day supporter of Locke, noted English barrister and economist Arthur Shenfield, has admitted this problem and has even gone so far as to state that "it may be that no absolutely firm philosophical basis for natural rights can ever be found."
   No absolutely firm philosophical basis! In our day of the Gulag Archipelago, political torture, the widespread confiscation of private property, the arbitrary arrest of potential political opponents, and the proverbial "knock on the door," there had better be a firm philosophical basis for human rights.
   The irony is that the basis has been there all along, acknowledged as it was by Jefferson. How ironic that in an era in which we prostrate ourselves before "human rights," we reject the only firm philosophical basis for those rights: God.

The Fountainhead of Human Rights

   The hard truth is that man is the created being of God, made in His image. While there may be better or worse ways of organizing human government, unless man has certain rights from God, he has no absolute rights at all, and everything he has is at the mercy of society.
   Only God can be said to be the original source of human rights. If they come from nature, what " nature" says is subject to arbitrary interpretation. If they come from "society," society can just as easily revoke a right as give it. Indeed, the whole idea of human rights, as the great twentieth-century political philosopher Leo Strauss has said, is that there exists a law above society. This idea has been seconded by the evangelical intellectual Francis Schaeffer, who points out that if there are no absolute standards "above" society, then society is absolute. And if society is absolute, then it can take away everything you have, including your life, liberty or property, and still be morally justified.
   Only God can put teeth into human rights. If a dictator violates the liberties of a people wholesale, what is to stop him? Only superior force. But as Nietzsche said, if God is dead, then all is permitted. Only God always has force superior to that of all dictators in every situation. Only God has the power to judge dictators after they are dead.
   Human rights come from God. And if we are to know what those rights are, we must look to God's revelation. There is no other firm source of human rights than what God has stated in the Bible.
   There are many rights delineated in the Bible, and to list them would take another article. But certain basic rights are enumerated in the Decalogue:
   1) The right to worship God, implicit in the commandment that only the true God shall be worshiped.
   2) The right to life, protected in the commandment against killing.
   3) The right to private property, protected in the commandment against stealing.
   4) The right to a fair trial, implicit in the commandment against false witness.
   This list is by no means a comprehensive description of the human liberties guaranteed by God, but it is a start. The main point is, if there are any absolute human rights, they come from God. If we want to know the real source of our absolute human rights, the clear lesson is we ought to be diligent in studying God's revelation, the Bible.
RECOMMENDED READING
Read our free booklet entitled Read the Book. This booklet gives helpful guidelines for studying God's revelation to man, the Bible. It explains how to remember scriptures and how to apply the principles of God's Word to real-life situations.

Back To Top

Plain Truth MagazineAugust 1978Vol XLIII, No.7ISSN 0032-0420