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Most of us probably
don’t think too much on a daily basis about our rights because we are so
accustomed to having them; it is as normal to us as rush hour that
we get to determine for ourselves our course in life. For this we
can thank the Founders of our nation because they had the wisdom to structure a system of government that
has protected our rights for over two centuries. Though the Founders
deserve credit for the system of government that has protected our
rights, to whom do we ultimately give credit for the rights themselves? The government? The court
system? The truth is that neither of these - or the Founders - are
the ultimate source of our rights, though they have all
played an important role in protecting them. You might think "who
cares?" when pondering this question, but it is an important one
because the answer lies in a concept absolutely foundational to our
system of government and the preservation of our rights: natural
law. It is the recognition of natural law that enabled our
Founders to first declare our nation free and it is the continued
recognition of natural law that will insure that our descendents
have the same freedoms we enjoy today.
A good place to begin to understand
natural law is our first founding document, the Declaration of
Independence. If you are not familiar with the Declaration, take a
moment to
read through it. You will find that it contains a long list of
grievances against the King of England and an explanation of why
rebellion from his authority was morally and legally justified. Not
only does the Declaration proclaim why the colonists were
rebelling, it explains why they were right to rebel – a point
critical to understanding the source and nature of our rights and
freedoms. The Declaration of Independence opens by famously
declaring the "self-evident" truth that
"all men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights". The term "self-evident" refers to the
universality of the truth that all men are equal and have been given
certain rights by our Creator. By being "self-evident", the
Declaration is indicating that this truth requires no explanation, it is
simply understood to be true. The term "unalienable" means that our
rights cannot ever be taken away. The Declaration continues by
stating that the role of government is to "secure" the rights to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness", insuring that they
are not violated by other citizens or the power of the government.
Note that government doesn't create unalienable rights, it
secures rights that already exist. The Founders believed so strongly that this is the proper role of
government that the Declaration even says that citizens have the
right to "alter or to abolish [the government]" if it ever became
abusive of their rights. So, if not government, where do these
rights come from? The answer is that they derive from a moral
standard known to the Founders as
natural law, or the law of nature. William Blackstone, a
renowned legal scholar very influential on the Founders, describes
natural law:
This law of
nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God Himself, is
of course superior in obligation to any other-It is binding over
all the globe in all countries, and at all times; no human laws
are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are
valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately
or immediately, from this original. 1
First and
foremost, note the source of natural law: God. The Founders
had a deep belief in God and understood that a core component of His
nature is justice, just as the Bible says. Natural law is
essentially God’s standards of justice and morality. As Blackstone
describes, natural law is "superior in obligation to any other" and
is "binding over all the globe in all countries". In other words,
the authority of natural law is superior to any man-made law and is
binding on all people regardless of nationality or social or
political status. No human law has any validity if contrary to
natural law and human laws that conform to natural law derive their
authority from it. It is this understanding of natural law that
provided the legal basis for America’s rebellion against the
authority of the English crown. If all people and all human laws are
subject to the laws of God, or natural law, then the king of England
and his laws are also subject to the laws of God. If the king acts
contrary to the laws of God and abuses the unalienable rights of his
citizens, they are justified in declaring themselves free of his
authority. The Declaration explains this reasoning and justifies it
with a long list of abuses against the American colonists. If not
for this understanding of and belief in natural law, it is safe to
say that the Declaration of Independence as we know it would
never have been possible. Justification for rebellion was only
possible by appealing to an authority higher than the king and
condemning his actions based on that authority.
As a side
note, let me point out an absurd assertion I have often heard from
secularists. Always looking for justification to remove any
reference to Christianity from American public life, some
secularists maintain that the Creator invoked in the Declaration was
not the God of the Bible, but a vague, universal higher power that
could have been a reference to any deity in any religion. This is
ridiculous and patently false. Our Founders were English - citizens
of a nation deeply influenced by Christianity. It would make little
sense for them to invoke a deity they didn’t believe in as
justification for what amounted to treason against their King.
Similarly, the king was the head of the Church of England, therefore
he most certainly believed in the Christian God himself. If the
Founders were to condemn the king for his actions and justify
rebellion against him by appealing to a higher authority, it
wouldn’t make sense for them to appeal to any other authority than
that in which the king himself believed. Besides, Blackstone
identifies God by name as the source for natural law and declares it
to be "found only in the holy scriptures"
2
(emphasis mine). Blackstone himself was an Englishman and a
Christian, so it makes sense that he would invoke the Christian God.
Now that we
understand that we have unalienable rights granted by God and that
no human authority is justified in infringing upon those rights, we
need to examine the relationship between the Declaration and the
Constitution. Secularists many times attempt to distance the
Declaration of Independence from the Constitution because of its
troubling mention of the "Creator". They want to cast the
Constitution as a completely secular document that can be understood
separately from the Declaration. The truth is that the Declaration
is critical to understanding the Constitution because it specifies
the purpose of government: to protect the God-given rights of
citizens. The Constitution then lays out a governmental framework
for fulfilling that purpose. Essentially, the Declaration is the
mission statement for our government and the Constitution is the
implementation of the mission. The implementation cannot be properly
understood without first understanding the mission.
So what
would be the consequences if we removed God from the equation? What
if we, as a nation, no longer acknowledged God as the ultimate
source of our rights? Secularists have campaigned very successfully
over the last few decades to achieve this - to remove all
acknowledgement of God from the public life of our nation. If we
reject that God is the source of our rights, we also reject that the
role of government is to protect the rights that God has given us
and we place government in the place of God as the highest authority
in our land. If government is the highest authority in the land,
then it also must be the authority that grants our rights. And if
government grants rights, it can also take them away. Our
rights and freedoms would no longer be an untouchable extension of
God’s law, but instead would be subject to the whims of the majority
controlling the government. Instead of our government being subject to
the unchangeable laws of God, our nation would be ruled by a
government whose moral standard could change with the whims of the
majority in power. In today’s environment of increasing hostility to
Christian faith, you can bet that a secular majority would enact
laws increasingly unfavorable to Christian faith. We are already
seeing this in many states with the passage of hate crimes laws that
could make Biblically-based criticism of homosexuality a
prosecutable
offense. It doesn’t matter that our Constitution guarantees every
individual freedom of speech and conscience. The majorities passing
such laws tend to have a secular, left-leaning worldview and their
version of "morality" dictates that opposition to homosexuality –
even religious opposition – is absolutely impermissible. Therefore,
they seek to punish it even though doing so is at odds with the
Constitution. Without the recognition of God’s transcendent natural
law, morality and rights and freedoms become whatever the majority
wants them to be. What are the consequences if our leaders no longer
acknowledge the authority of God and His laws? Political leaders are
many times notoriously corrupt because they know they can escape
accountability for crimes much more easily than an ordinary citizen.
If a leader has no fear of God, no recognition of His transcendent
standards of justice, is he not capable of just about any evil? If
he has no fear of consequences in this life or the next, what is to
restrain his actions? The recognition of God’s justice and His
inescapable judgment is a powerful restraining force on political
leaders.
Hopefully
it is apparent that the recognition of God and His natural law is
absolutely essential to our system of government and the
preservation of our rights. Our government was never intended to be
absolutely secular, and to make it so would essentially abolish it
by removing its philosophical foundation. The vision of our Founders
was that future generations of Americans would enjoy the same rights
and freedoms they did, therefore they designed a system of
government they believed best suited to fulfilling its proper role
of securing the "unalienable" rights God has given us. As we have
seen, the recognition of God’s transcendent and sovereign standard
of justice is the cornerstone of our rights. If we choose to remove
this recognition of God’s role in our rights, we risk losing our
rights altogether. |
