Who Created Human Rights?
Religious freedom is a universal human right. So is the right to free speech, the right to assemble, and the right to a fair trial. But where do these, and other fundamental human rights, come from?
This question has divided the movement for universal human rights for over 200 years. Proponents of the French Revolution appealed to human reason to justify the universality of human rights. In stark contrast to the French revolutionaries, the American founding fathers appealed to rights “endowed” by our “Creator.”
History records the logical result of the divergent approaches. The French Revolution devolved into the “Rein of Terror.” Subsequent efforts to base rights on human reason—from Stalin’s Soviet Union to Mao’s China to Pol Pot’s Cambodia—all resulted in the most shocking degradation of humanity. And the Nazi’s famously based their extermination programs on evolutionary theory—claiming they were following the course of natural selection by destroying those they deemed “inferior.”
In contrast, the American concept of human rights endowed by our Creator, has led to consistent progress. From the abolition of slavery to equal rights for women, from the great civil rights struggle to protections for workers, all our moves to recognize broader rights, understood more deeply and applied in a more equitable manner have been based on a desire to more perfectly recognize and reflect the values of our Creator.
Today, however, our rights are under assault by those who reject creation and therefore the Creator as the source of our rights. As in every case in the past, this effort to uplift humanity by the sole application of human reasoning is having precisely the opposite effect.
For example, under the rubric of “human rights,” over 42 million babies are killed around the world each year. Over a million of these children of God are killed in America, and the majority of those American babies killed are healthy babies, to healthy mothers, conceived consensually, who have perfectly formed little bodies at the time they are killed.
Around the globe, the majority of babies killed before they are born are little girls, as societies that place a lower value on women opt to kill them when their gender becomes known. Is this killing of baby girls a fundamental human right? Or is it a crime against creation and by extension, the Creator? It depends whether we anchor our human rights in a loving Creator or the cold brutality of human reasoning.
As we look on in amazement at the trajectory of our society, we must ask how sure we are of the basis for our view of the value of human life and the source of human rights. If evolutionists are correct and all life is part of a continuum of matter winding through time without intrinsic meaning or value, then our capacity to redefine human rights is only limited by our imagination. If we can justify killing innocents, as humans we have been more than capable of doing, we can kill them. If we find family structure inconvenient, we can force a redefinition on the nation. If we want to make religious freedom a second class right, why shouldn’t we? We can do all this, and much more, and perfectly reflect our version of human rights because, after all, rights are as lacking of intrinsic meaning as are our lives.
If, on the other hand, we are created beings, we must structure our concept of human rights in relation to our Creator. We measure whether it is right to kill the innocent, not by what is convenient, but by the innate value the Creator places in His creation. We measure human morality against His word. We view our rights against His will. This does not mean we become the Taliban as some would claim, any more than Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, all of whom appealed explicitly to the Creator of our human rights. But were Jefferson, Lincoln and King correct to appeal to the Creator? That depends on whether there actually is a Creator. And that is one of the reasons why creation is so central.
No Creator, no human rights endowed by our Creator.
So are we as Adventists correct in basing our rights on a Creator? Or is our idea of creation a quaint fairy tale, believed by children, the ignorant and the naive? Our world church has set aside Sabbath October 24, as Creation Sabbath to explore these very questions. If you are in the Loma Linda area, you’ll want to set aside Friday evening the 23rd and Sabbath the 24th to attend the live events at the Loma Linda University Church. For those of us who can’t attend the live events in Loma Linda, we can focus on creation in our local churches.
For more information, including sermon ideas and sample children’s stories, visit:
and
http://www.creationsabbath.net/
Make no mistake—If we give up on creation, it logically follows that we give up on the Sabbath which was founded to commemorate creation, and if we give up the Sabbath, it logically follows that we give up on the Lord of the Sabbath—our Creator God. And if we give up on our Creator God, it follows we give up our rights endowed by our Creator.
On Sabbath October 24 I hope every one of the 64,000 Adventist churches around the world will focus on creation. But I can’t control what they do. I can do my best to ensure my local church uplifts God’s masterful, wonderful, essential work of creation. I hope you use your influence as a church member, pastor, elder, deaconess, deacon, or church leader to ensure your local church does the same.
At the heart of the Adventist message is Revelation 14: “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” This Sabbath is our chance to worship the God who made our globe, and in the process, recommit ourselves to pursuing the human rights He has endowed us with.