What No One Tells You About Your Rights (Part 2)

Rights are very American, as I noted in a previous post. Consider this a follow-up.

Part of our founding philosophy as a country is that we have a right to govern ourselves and worship and speak as we please. Yet, what I have found is that we like to talk about rights and what we deserve far more than what we owe.

Even as Christians, we tend to spend less time thinking about the people, family, church, and God we ought to serve and more time thinking about what we think we deserve. We sit down for a Thanksgiving meal and just a few hours later are off to beat the next person to the best Black Friday deals. We forget that everything we have, we have been given. We have become accustomed to a worldview rooted in entitlement—in rights—but it has led only to a poverty of gratefulness.

I propose that we instead begin thinking in terms of obligation and of duty, words our culture has all but forgotten, except when speaking of the failures of others. What is our duty? What ought we to do? The Bible isn’t silent on that. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind (Eccl. 12:13). What does the Lord require of us? Not jealousy and quarreling, which Paul identifies as indicators of worldliness (1 Cor. 3:3). Not fight for our rights, but act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Mic. 6:8).

Are there any legitimate rights? What about human rights? What about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? Perhaps we would see the situation more clearly if we disqualified such language at the outset and spoke in terms not of rights but of justice. What rights are legitimate? Well, what is just? Rather than be driven by rights, what would happen if we were compelled by justice? And injustice?

As George Washington once observed, “Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.” You can fight for what you think is yours and may well be, but will it lead to true happiness and peace? We cannot have true happiness, Washington says, without knowing and fulfilling our duty.

What is our duty as Christians? To deny. To act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. To surrender the freedoms we may indeed have for the sake of our brother and the gospel. To follow in the footsteps of the One who left and gave up everything that did rightfully belong to Him so that by all means He might save some. And to let love govern our liberty.