The Culture of Rights. . .

One of the most profound signs of sin's presence in the heart of a child is how quickly the child learns that word mine.  It is probably not learned but always there, waiting to reveal itself as soon as the first occasion comes along when something the child wants and has claimed is taken by another.  On the other hand, the whole idea of sharing and especially of sacrificing your wants for the sake of another must be taught.  It is not natural at all.

I have often said that adults are extra large sized children.  It is not far off from the truth.  We have not outgrown our childish desires nor have we erased the want from our hearts that still says mine to the things we want.  One extension of that childish selfishness is all the talk of rights -- rights that predominate every discussion of politics, society, commerce, and even religion.  In fact, the whole conversation of rights has stifled so many other conversations so much more profound, necessary, and beneficial to us as a people and a nation.  Sadly, it does not seem to be diminishing at all.

The perspective of my right automatically sets the individual against the wider community as competitors and even enemies.  The privilege of individualism has become radical and the nature of personal autonomy has become victimhood in search of someone to blame and someone from whom to extract damages.  How tragic that we seem paralyzed by this insistence of rights that belong to or are owe to or damages deserved by those who rights were infringed upon!  I am not at all saying we should be immune from the infringement of abuse upon the powerless or justify oppression.  What I am saying is that this has become the only way we talk about our life together and even our faith.  No society and no religion can be sustained when the conversation is premised upon what is my right.  It is the poison that divides and distorts and will destroy that society and that church.

The order of God's redemption is characterized by the sacrifice of right.  Jesus who has the authority of God lays aside what is His right to become the servant of all.  The fruits of His redemptive work are displayed in a people who take up not their right but the cross, denying themselves and following Him in love, service, and sacrifice.  They do this not because it adds to or accomplishes their own salvation and therefore benefits them personally but solely because Christ did this for them.  Love one another as I have loved you. The whole nature of religion is not to demand but to rejoice in what is given to us as the unworthy and undeserving who nonetheless have received grace upon grace.  Yet the Church has learned the bad example of this childish selfishness and now we automatically think of rights in nearly every decision.  Rights predominate the rationale for who should be ordained, who should be married, who should have or not have children, and even the most sacred character of life itself.  Jesus is remarkably silent upon the idea of rights and yet we in the Church seem powerless to listen to Him instead of the culture around us.

Our national government and even more local expressions of governing authority are increasingly being used to act as the arbiters of what should belong to whom, not simply redistributing wealth but assigning privilege based not on merit or common good but the claim of the individual.  The government spends more of its income in wealth redistribution than almost any other developed nation and yet the lie of the privileged class that pays no taxes and receives all the benefits continues simply because fact cannot undo the idea of a right that is owed.  Again, I am not at all saying that the poor should be overlooked or the cause of those oppressed ignored but that the politics of and a government based upon class distinction or warfare cannot be sustained and will destroy itself.

I suspect that the culture of violence in our land is fueled more by this idea of what is owed to the individual than even by the plethora of guns around us.  It is the idea of right that makes us suspicious of one another and has turned our lives into the pursuit of safety behind the fortress of what is owed to us.  As soon as “rights” replace responsibility in the conversation of a culture and society, we are left with a competition to the death over who gets what.  The fight for survival is always brutal and this is what our lives have become -- hard, unwavering, and unrelenting in their pursuit of what we think is our right -- based on sex, gender, ethnicity, and immigration status.  This is not the republic that was founded in America but a chaos of moral uncertainty and the surrender of reason to desire.  Liberty is what generations died for and not the freedom to do as we please no matter how we couch our present state of affairs into the eloquent language of our founding documents.   Liberty means to be free from oppressive restrictions or control imposed by [especially governmental] authority upon our way of life, behavior, or political views.  Freedom is the right and therefore power to think, speak, and do what I want no matter how others think, speak, or act.  The only constraint on freedom used to be how it affected others (can't yell fire in a crowded theater).  Now the direction of our culture and therefore our government has also placed restrictions on those who oppose that direction -- a selective freedom.

Sadly, the Church has learned this kind of vocabulary and has begun to apply it in ways that will ultimately overshadow the very Gospel itself.  Just as the culture of rights will be our undoing as a nation and society, so it will be the end of the Church.  What Satan cannot do to us, we will ultimately do to ourselves.