(The Nationalist, 14 June 2002)
There is nothing in the Bible about human rights. That may seem strange, but it applies even to the most fundamental of all rights the right to life. Instead, the Bible says, ‘You shall not kill’. Anyone who observes that commandment will in fact respect the right to life of the other. And the Bible goes a lot further. It says, ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’. Anyone who observes that commandment respects all the human rights one can think of.
In a similar way, the Bible says nothing about a right to private property. Instead, it says, ‘You shall not steal,’ and adds, ‘You shalt not covet your neighbour’s goods’. To covet means to crave, to have an overpowering desire for, the kind of desire that could motivate a person to steal. But the Bible goes further, going so far as to call greed a form of idolatry.
Likewise, the Bible says nothing about animal rights. But it does enjoin respect for creation because God is the creator.
The Bible does, in fact have a lot to say about human rights, but without using the expression. This is because it approaches the subject from a different angle, from the viewpoint of responsibility. In the above cases, it speaks of one’s responsibility not to kill, steal or violate creation.
In recent decades there has been an increasing tendency to claim rights, and indeed to multiply new claims. But an unconsidered extension of claims to more and more rights risks trivializing the very notion of a right. If everyone has a trump card, no one has one. Who has the obligation to respond to ever more such claims to rights if not the community? But the community is made up of people with the same rights as me. If I claim a right for myself, I claim it for others also.
Maybe we should approach the subject of rights with more thought for where we are going. One fairly obvious problem area is that legislatures are being circumvented, and recourse had to the courts, to enforce or claim rights by appealing to a Constitution or to various UN statement of rights. That is an approach which has had some noticeable success, but there are potential risks there which call for consideration.
We are in a society where a cult of grievance and a denial of responsibility seem to be two sides of one coin. To redress the balance the bible offers a focus on responsibility which, as a side-effect, safeguards rights.
If we lose the balance between rights and responsibilities – and it is a difficult one – by tilting too far towards the “rights” end of the balance, then we create a situation where a sense of community begins to break down, to be replaced by the idea of the autonomous individual. That idea does not seem to correspond to the reality of human nature.