SUNDAY DEVOTION: From Where Do Rights Come?

If they don't come from God then we're in trouble

As the left ramps up the use of “Christian nationalism” as a slur against tens of millions of conservative Christians, they are beginning to reveal how much they truly despise our country and its foundation.

Remember the motte and bailey framework of debate? Activists push a radical idea, but when criticized they retreat to a much more reasonable position. They alternate as necessary to achieve their aims.

After having convinced an unfortunate number of conservatives that “Christian nationalism” means the establishment of a national church and probably white supremacy too, leftists are now defining the phrase to encompass our Founding Fathers, enlightenment philosophers, and basically every American political figure until about ten years ago.

On MSNBC this week, Heidi Przybyla discussed the “threat” of Christian nationalists:

The one thing that unites all of them, because there’s many different groups orbiting Trump, the thing that unites them as Christian nationalists — not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalism is very different — is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority — they don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court — they come from God.

She tried to walk back her statement somewhat, trying to explain how “Christians” are good, tolerant, people, while “Christian nationalists” are nefarious enemies of democracy, but as Nate Hochman pointed out on Twitter, she still made no sense:

It always comes down to the sacrament of abortion with these folks, doesn’t it?

In any case, the idea that rights come from God, not from government, is part of the foundational bedrock of our nation. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson began with a list of truths he considered “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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

Indeed, even leftists paid lip service to this idea until very recently, as this montage put together by America 2100 shows:

John F. Kennedy stated it explicitly in his Inaugural Address:

Remember that leftists don’t worry about silly things like consistency, which gives them great flexibility to change definitions on the fly. While it’s tempting to simply point and laugh, the question about where rights come from is enormously consequential for the future of our nation.

In ancient Rome, men named the gods as witnesses to their oaths. Both sides of the agreement had to believe that bad things would happen to oathbreakers, otherwise society would cease functioning because nobody would trust each other. This tradition continues to this day, but with the God of the Bible instead of Zeus and Apollo. Elected officials put their hands on a Bible and swear to uphold the tenets of their offices, invoking the name of God to help them do so, or if they fail, to invoke divine punishment.

Without the witness of a higher power, oaths are just words, subject to the interpretation and fidelity of the people speaking them. Even that tradition is fading. A school board member in Pennsylvania recently took her oath of office not on a Bible but on a stack of controversial books. It makes you wonder how seriously she takes her oath. Does she fear divine retribution for breaking it? Or were they just meaningless words or an empty tradition, playacting for social media clout?

Without a divine moral tradition, we are reduced to the dogma of do what thou wilt. Ideals such as honesty, selflessness, charity, and humility are not virtues in and of themselves, but merely tools to accomplish political goals. What does morality even mean when everything is subjective?

If rights do not come from God, then they must come from governments, or from societal consensus. In both those cases they can just as easily be taken away by the same people who deigned to grant them. Even the smartest atheists understand that removing America’s Christian foundation leads not to a Star Trek style utopia but rather the sort of horrific slaughter that defined much of the 20th century.

We watched Russia, Germany, and China travel down the road of totalitarianism, which makes it all the more frustrating to see our own nation heading down that same path. Our government is systematically violating every right that was once considered sacrosanct in our nation. Next comes the Orwellian gaslighting to convince us that nobody ever believed that rights came from God, that freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, and the right to due process were only ever privileges and our leaders have always been authorized to curtail them for the greater good.

Only Christian nationalists would believe something as crazy as rights coming from God. You’re not one of Those People, are you?

If we are to fight this pernicious ideology we cannot give an inch with regards to the truth of our natural God-given rights. We must not accept their rewriting of history to erase America’s Christian foundation. There can be no neutral ground on this issue: either our rights come from God, and the purpose of government is to protect them, or rights are granted by consensus and governments can erase them on a whim.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1 ESV