Where from Human Rights?

By Dr. George H Muedeking

Do human rights inhere or are they conferred? America's founders thought they were embedded in the scheme of creation itself. The Declaration insists, "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."

Legal reflections surrounding the Roe-Wade abortion decision and the Court's subsequent support in further test cases exhibit the belief that human rights are conferred. Pro-abortionists assert a woman has an inherent "right to choose." This is not the case. In aborting, the mother exercises the "right to choose," but not for her life. She is choosing for or against the life of her unborn child. That is, she is conferring the right of life to her baby.

This enormous shift in the basic moral principle of right to life, upon which our nation was built and all human history is conducted, had to be made more palatable. It was done, particularly by Justice Blackmun, with the argument that since the philosophers and religionists of history couldn't agree on when life started in the womb, the conscience didn't have to bother with the question of the rights of the woman in the womb, but only with the wishes of that woman's mother.
Striking advances in intrauterine photography have exploded that comforting refuge. The womb-child is enormously alive!
Likewise, the most recent controversies, and the Supreme Court's negative decision on the Nebraska statute against "partial birth abortion" have pushed the issue up front again. Since the child is already "born" (all but the head of the baby has seen the light of day), we are bound to ask, "Does killing the child in abortion deprive that child of its most basic inherent right - the right to life? Or is that right simply "conferred" by the mother, so that the baby's life has no intrinsic value, but has only such value as the mother chooses to give it by finishing the birthing process?"

Astonishingly, abortion advocates like the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League have now openly gone over the edge into infanticide. They have claimed that even fully formed infants who have survived abortion attempts can be disposed of. NARAL says that legally protecting the Now-born from a successful second death attempt conflicts with Roe-Wade, because that decision "clearly states that women have the right to choose prior to fetal viability."

The "culture of death" has so widely insinuated itself into our moral consensus - even among Christians - that we can no longer take the convictions of the Declaration of Independence for granted. A survey of nearly 10,000 abortion patients, conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute in 1994-95, revealed that Catholics were as likely as women in the general population to have an abortion, while Protestants were 69 percent, and evangelical or bornagain Christians were at 39 percent.

Perhaps it is time to revisit the human rights question? Can we do it as Christian theologians this time, instead of as political theorists? If so, we would begin with the recognition that humans have no rights. That is, existence in and of itself does not carry any guarantees or protections. An old radio can be junked; a building can be demolished; an ambitious dandelion can be excavated. Anything can be un-thinged without incurring any guilt, provided value has not been added to it, that is, conferred upon it from the outside.

Where then would that "wanted-ness, "that value, come from, particularly in the case of the biosphere? The Genesis narrative tells us: "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." Life is valued by God. Individual existences that possess life are of value to Him.

Gradations of "wanted-ness" are asserted in Genesis 1 :20. Rulership over fish, birds, wild and domestic beasts and "every moving thing," is assigned to humans. We call it "stewardship." Nothing of creation is waste-worthy. Jesus extends this to the Father's stewardship oversight of the plight of an individual bird.

The American patriarchs were correct in assigning endowed, that is, conferred rights given from the hand of the Creator, to humans as humans. They did not tell us why, however. The reason is, when we look upon each other we are looking at someone desired by the Creator. Our value lies in being of value to Him. Because only the human sector of creation is made in Elohim's image and likeness, humanity can be said to be gifted by God's protectiveness for what is His own treasure.
When Jesus names Him “Father,” we move even higher. Our rights reside in the value of family, of child privileges granted to no one outside the circle. We are in the domain of exclusivity rights.

These rights are not ours by virtue of our existence. Nor are they conferred upon us by the state, as so much of present legal theory holds when it embraces the relativity of law in general. Certainly "rights" are not ours at the whim of another human, as in the pro-choice model of abortion, or in the "post-modern" assertion that morals are but the imposition of the powerful. Rights are gifted to us, "endowed."

Can such rights be abrogated or taken back? Yes, but only by the gift giver. The value of a gift can be renounced, assigned to zero. This eventuality is what the American political theorists did not count on that God might take back His appraisal of humanity's worth to Himself. Then there would be no "inalienable rights" for us to assert over against each other.
The biblical Scriptures assert this did happen, but in a reverse dynamic. It was not that God redefined His evaluation of humanity. Humans themselves decided how much they ought to be esteemed by God. Adam and his descendants divided themselves off from the will and purpose of their Creator. "I'll do it my way," became their mantra. Humanity moved itself outside the family circle.

This daily decision the Bible calls sin, or "sinfulness." The Reformation theologians describe it as being "without fear of God, without trust in God, and full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers' wombs." (Augsburg Confession, Article II; conflating the German and Latin translations).

No better illustration of our rights-less relationship to God can be found than in Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. Brazenly the younger son put in a pseudo-claim to the rights of sonship. "Give me the share of the property that belongs to me [when you expire]." This would be a legitimate claim only if the father were dead. But because of the esteem in which he held this overbearing and impertinent child, the father granted the request as though it actually were a "right." The reality: it precisely was a gift, pure and simple, because only the father's decease could activate the inheritance.
As does the rest of humanity, the prodigal spent his gift capital. As we, he tried to do it his way, to go it alone. He depleted his spiritual capital, abusing the blessings which the Father had lavished freely. All the while, he and we divert attention from the responsibility for our diminishing circumstances by whining about the responsibility of society to restore us ("but no one gave him anything. "). Give us our rights!

When he came to himself (what a phrase - where was he before?) the prodigal said, "I'm going home; I'm going to tell my father, 'I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' Just don't let me die.''' Will the father have him back?
Incomparable love! Amazing grace! While the rebel is yet barely perceptible at the end of that long lane, the "waiting father" hurries out to welcome and embrace him. "My son, my son!! You were dead and now you are alive again; you were lost and now you are found; you are back in the family. All the rights of sonship are yours again - the ring, the best clothes, the restoration."

Christian faith knows what moved that father's heart. 8t Paul ponders in Ephesians: "The great love wherewith He loved us." That explains it? No, it only describes its happening. That divine love is not prompted by any groomed appearance of the prodigal; he is in rags.

Christian faith knows what moved that father's heart. 8t Paul ponders in Ephesians: "The great love wherewith He loved us." That explains it? No, it only describes its happening. That divine love is not prompted by any groomed appearance of the prodigal; he is in rags.

It is exercised rather, says St Paul in 2nd Corinthians, because "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. He made him to be sin for us, He who knew no sin, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."
In His topsy-turvy way of doing things, when it was God's turn, He chose the Prodigal's own Elder Brother to make possible the restoration into the family. Our Elder Brother Jesus (Hebrews 2) sold Himself into the slavery of death on the cross (Philippians 2) so His brothers might be returned to the sonship they had so thoroughly abused (Genesis 37).
The children's rights in the Father's family are restored by what Jesus did for them on the cross. This was the act of making us, self-willed defiant children, reconciled to our Father.

So human rights are gifted back to us again. In turn, because they are gifts and we do not own them in any way, they can be shared with our fellow humans. We can say of each person, "You and I have been restored to the family of God. Our rights, so shamefully despised by us when first granted to humanity, are now restored, gifted back. Therefore, count on me to respect them as they are re-conferred on you. They are not ours; they are alone granted us by God."