These days, we hear a lot about attacks on human rights, and unfortunately, we live in a world in which virtually every government infringes on human rights to some degree or another. But the word "right" is thrown around so flippantly, it has almost become meaningless.
There was a time in history when rights were seriously considered. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are some of the most obvious (one might say "self evident") rights a man might have. But these days, a "right" has become more synonymous with a desire. If we want to "marry" someone of the same sex, we have a "right" to "marry" someone of the same sex. If we want to sleep around, we have the "right" to free contraception (of course, paid for by people who don't agree we have the right to sleep around). If we're female, and that habit of sleeping around happens to get us pregnant, we have the "right" to kill that child (who, ironically, does not have the right to life). Most terrifyingly, Leftists believe they have the "right" to conform the entire world to their ideology! If you won't wear a mask, take an experimental jab, or refrain from being as vocal about your opinions as they are about theirs, you are supposedly infringing on their "right" to not see what they find offensive, or their right to force you to wear certain clothing, or their right to put things in your body that you don't want there.
With all of these imaginary rights floating around, and especially while they are contending with actual rights, our society really needs to sit down and talk about where rights actually come from. And of course, the simple fact is they can only come from God.
At this point, even though this ministry is clearly titled "Bible Brain", this is where some numpty is virtually guaranteed to pop up and ask "which God?" The answer to that, of course, is the Biblical one.
Although vehemently denied by revisionists, it is this God who actually formed the basis of the American legal system. This can even be seen in the Declaration of Independence, which clearly states "We hold these truths to be 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, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
As you can see, the founding document of the United States, known colloquially as the "land of the free and the home of the brave", attributes the existence of human rights to our Creator, stating that the government exists with the purpose of securing these rights, and even that when the government fails in this capacity, it loses its legitimacy.
Although not all the Founding Fathers were Christians, this is very Biblical reasoning. There is one error in that actually, it is God who raises and removes governments, and this does include tyrants. Not that He is pleased with their sin, and He will judge those sins, but He is the one who puts them in their positions of power. This is why Jesus is able to tell Pilate "You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin." (John 19:11).
But although God raises up the government, and uses even the greatest of its sins for our good, and His glory (as He used Pilate's sin to bring about the salvation of mankind), the fact remains that the government can sin, and we are ultimately to ensure we do not follow them in that regard. We must instead pray for them so that we may live peaceful lives in all Godliness and reverence (1 Timothy 2:1-4).
If the government can sin, that means our rights cannot logically come from them. Otherwise, every "infringement" upon our "rights" would only really be them denying us a right. It would mean the Holocaust was not actually morally wrong, just morally different. It was totally legal for the Nazis to persecute the "inferior". After all, who did Hitler answer to? There's no God for him to be accountable to, and in his eyes, Christianity was a pestilence, so why would he believe "...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..."?
So clearly, our rights can't come from the government. If they did, nothing could legitimately prevent the government from erasing them. If the government gives you your rights, the government can take your rights away, and it ultimately becomes a case of might = right.
You see, then, that only something as solid as the Christian faith, complete with its unchanging God, can give any real legitimacy to human rights. Governments change. Cultures change. Even individual people change. What a man considers a right, he may not have considered a right several years ago, and may not consider a right several years from now. But God does not change with every wind of doctrine. Rather, He sets the doctrine based on His own unchanging nature.
As a human being, you have inalienable rights precisely because you have been endowed with them by your Creator. No matter where you live in the world, no matter which government holds (or claims) jurisdiction in that area, no matter the prevailing view of the culture, you have these rights, and there are very few scenarios in which it is legitimate to take them away. The chief of these, of course, is life. There are very few exceptions in which it is ok to kill a human being, and the onus is always on the one who kills a human being to prove they were right to do so (or, in the case of manslaughter, to prove it was a genuine, unpreventable accident).
This, of course, extends to the unborn. Scientifically speaking, human life starts at conception. Even if we didn't know that fact, we still have a responsibility to be sure, just as a hunter must verify his shots before taking them. You can't just open fire and hope it was a deer rustling in those bushes. Therefore abortionists must prove they have any kind of a right to take that life. They can't just decide they have a right to abort.
The same goes for other things, like gay "marriage". People talk about gay rights a lot, but struggle to even define them, much less prove their foundation. As a Christian, I believe gay people are equal to straight people. They have the same rights, and actually, even in a world in which it is only legal to marry someone of the opposite gender (also known as just getting married), they are treated as such.
But when people talk about gay "rights", they don't mean the right to be treated equally, both under the law, and by society. They mean the right to practice openly, and to conform society itself to this. At what point did gay people gain the right to sue bakeries for thousands for refusing to cater to their wedding? In reality, the bakery not only has the right to refuse, but is right to do so. There is no such thing as a gay wedding, and to partake in such a ceremony is sin. If you're going to partake in that sin, so be it, but let it be your sin, and yours alone. You don't have the right to punish people for not following you.
At this point, people start saying "but a Theocracy is bad for everyone, even Theists". To that, I say that actually, all human governments are ultimately doomed to fail. You don't want to live in a world governed by a God you don't believe in, I don't want to live in a world governed by men I don't believe in. As it stands, the world is ruled by very evil men, none of whom fear God. Kim Jong Un, Xi Jingping, Vladimir Putin, these men have no respect for the Lord, and so they have no remorse for the abominable way in which they treat others. Even in the more civilised regions of the world, like Canada, the U.S.A., or here in the UK, actual human rights are being suppressed by Hellbound heathens who put way too much stock into their own authority. My right to write this very article is under threat by Fascists who see the First Amendment as a creative suggestion, when in reality, it is one of the highest laws in America, and should be ratified and enforced worldwide. Spitting on the idea of a Theocracy doesn't change the fact that without some degree of Theocracy, the government becomes the god, and your rights become subject to their approval. Even in a Democracy, ask yourself if you want your rights to be subject to a vote? Democracy is so flawed, you can even vote yourself out of it!
But there is some merit to the claim that a Theocracy is just as bad. There are three times in history when a Theocracy is a good thing. The first, of course, is Eden, before sin entered the world. When God created the heavens and the Earth, He placed the pinnacle of His creation, Adam and Eve, in a garden. And everything was "very good". Death itself did not exist, because God was fully sustaining creation, and sin had not yet entered the world.
But then, of course, sin did enter the world, God cursed creation, and, in as few words as possible, He established a Theocracy through Moses. However, as the New Testament tells us, this Theocracy was (quite intentionally) "weak through the flesh" (Romans 8:3). See, this Theocracy was given by revelation of God, but not carried out by God Himself. The laws were His, but the enforcers were not Him. They were men, just like you and I, and thus they were sinners, just like you and I. They therefore failed to enforce the law, and broke it quite frequently themselves, occasionally to the extreme degree of worshiping other gods, and sacrificing their very children to them.
But the point of this law, Scripture says, was to show us that we cannot be righteous by our own steam. It highlights our nature, telling us just how bad we really are. And this is why it's always ironic when unbelievers tell us "we don't need God to be good people" etc. Aside from the fact God actually speaks even to the unbeliever through their conscience, modern unbelievers are benefiting from centuries of Christian influence. We look on historical abominations as abominable (even when we repeat them) because our culture is more Christianised than their culture.
But through the law of Moses' Theocracy, God shows us the true problem. It's not that a Theocracy is bad for us, but that we are not suited for a Theocracy. Just as the world before sin was "very good", a world in which God is truly the King would be very good. But we are not very good. We are like a rusty car. The car is good, and the driver is good for the car, but rust is not a good thing, and it makes the car bad.
According to Scripture, the wages of sin is death. Every bad thing we have ever done, said, or even thought, puts us in direct enmity with our Creator, and therefore, we deserve His wrath. However, there is a third Theocracy that absolutely works. And ultimately, it's not one that can be stopped. Even persecution just makes the Church stronger. Because how is the creation supposed to overcome the Creator?
God is in full control here. Governments will rise, and they will fall, but God and His word will never be overcome. Indeed, at any moment, God could just zip this creation out of existence. However, Peter tells us "But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:8-9).
There is a final Theocracy coming that will literally last forever. There will be no revolutions. There will be no insurrections. There will be no elections. There will be no invasions. Nothing will ever dislodge the Lord from His everlasting throne. But He is prolonging this, simply because there is no room for sin in this eternal Kingdom. His enemies will suffer the second death in the place prepared for the devil and his angels. While Satan burns, so also will the impenitent. And that is a bad thing. No tyrant will be able to persecute a citizen worse than the everlasting punishment for their sin.
But God wants zero people to suffer that. There is no one in Heaven who isn't supposed to be there, and no one in Hell who is. Thus, even before the first sin, God put in place a plan of salvation. When the time came, the Son of God took on human flesh, and lived a life completely free of sin. Jesus perfectly obeyed God, not turning from the path to the right or the left for even a moment. Nevertheless, He was murdered by being beaten, and nailed to a cross. As He hung there, He suffered the full penalty for sin, eventually dying. After this, His body was laid in a tomb, but on the third day, He rose again. Thus, Scripture says "...as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12-13).
As much as we bicker about who has which rights, the fact is, none of us have a right to sin. But none of us would survive a true Theocracy, because we all sin. For this reason, the best governments are those which acknowledge God, but do not seek to usurp Him. The God who loves sinners enough to die on the cross, not even to treat them as their sins deserve (Psalm 103:10), and thus does not require the government to do likewise. Nevertheless, He expects justice to be done, and so no government can allow injustice to continue. The things that are often called "rights" are no rights at all. If we must tolerate these behaviors, it should only be in the sense of Matthew 7: Avoiding hypocrisy as much as possible. But such behaviors should never be protected, celebrated, or enshrined into law. On the flip side, Godliness should never be impeded, and woe betide even those who follow unGodly laws. As Peter says, we ought to obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29).
Human rights do not come from human beings. If you're going to claim to have a right, it is essential to build it on a solid foundation, for a right without a foundation is a whim. But the only solid foundation is the Lord God of Israel. He, and He alone, sees all people as equal, and grants them rights based on His unchanging character. But there is one right that is exclusive to His people: The right to become His children. Through faith in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are set free from our sin, and the eternal consequences thereof.