Why do people believe in human rights?

Some times I'm reading, and what I'm reading is just brilliant. Just now I'm really enjoying Tim Keller's book "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism". [I've referred to his book before on this blog - Christianity Can Save The World, April 27, 2008].
Well early this morning before heading out for a Church Management Team breakfast meeting I'm reading another chapter from it - and boom ...brilliant.
So I decided I wanted to stick it on my blog for others to appreciate his insight and wisdom. So enjoy reading this small section for his book ....Chapter 9 "The Knowledge of God":

Conservative writers and speakers are constantly complaining that the young people of our culture are relativistic and amoral. As a pastor in Manhattan I have been neck-deep in sophisticated twentysomethings for almost two decades, and I have not found this to be the case. The secular, young adults I have known have a very finely honed sense of right and wrong. There are many things happening in the world that evoke their moral outrage.
There is a problem with their moral outlook, however.

In many cases I have to put on my philosophy-professor hat in order to be a good pastor to people. A young couple once came to me for some spiritual direction. They "didn't believe in much of anything" they said. How could they begin to figure out if there even was a God?
I asked them to tell me about something they felt was really, really wrong. The woman immediately spoke out against practices that marginalized woman. I said I agreed with her fully since I was a Christian who believed God made all human being, but I was curious why she thought it was wrong.
She responded, 'Women are human beings and human being have rights. It is wrong to trample on someone's rights."
I asked her how she knew that.
Puzzled, she said, "Everyone knows it is wrong to violate the rights of someone."
I said, "Most people in the world don't 'know' that. They don't have a Western view of human rights. Imagine if someone said to you 'everyone knows that women are inferior.' You'd say, 'That's not an argument, it's an assertion.' And you'd be right.
So let's start again. If there is no God as you believe and everyone has just evolved from animals, why would it be wrong to trample on someone's rights?"
Her husband responded: "Yes, it is true we are just bigger-brained animals, but I'd say animals have rights too. You shouldn't trample on their rights, either."
I asked whether he held animals guilty for violating the rights of other animals if the stronger ones ate the weaker ones.
'No, I couldn't do that."
So he only held human beings guilty if they trampled on the weak.
"Yes."
Why this double standard, I asked. Why did the couple insist that human being had to be different from animals, so that they were not allowed to act as was natural to the rest of the animal world. Why did the couple keep insisting that humans had this great, unique individual dignity and worth? Why did they believe in human rights?
"I don't know," the woman said, 'I guess they are just there, that's all."

......this conversation reveals how our culture differs from all the others that have gone before. People still have strong moral convictions, but unlike people in other times and places, they don't have any visible basis for why they find some things to be evil and other things good. It's almost like their moral intuitions are free-floating in midair - far off the ground.

[Keller begins to end this chapter by writing] ......If you believe human rights are a reality, then it makes much more sense that God exists than that he does not. If you insist on a secular view of the world and yet you continue to pronounce some things right and some things wrong, then I hope you see the deep disharmony between the world your intellect has devised and the real world (and God) that your heart knows exists.
This leads us to a crucial question. If a premise ("there is no God") leads to a conclusion you know isn't true ...then why not change the premise?

I highly recommend the entire book .....Keller writes well, he breaks down difficult philosophy into understandable examples ...and he prods deep into our logic and reasoning to help us search out truth and God.
A great summer read. Enjoy.

Are you martyring or being a martyr?

So it’s a balmy early summer evening and we’re sitting around the barbeque enjoying a Saturday evening when one of the group pop the question ‘Gilbert, what do you think of California’s recent law allowing gay marriage?’

For those who read this blog across the pond and have no idea what this is all about let me explain. In May California Supreme Court past a ruling giving the right to marry to same-sex couples, making CA the second state, after Massachusetts to legalize marriage for same-sex couple.

In light of the Supreme Courts action some Christians have started talk of a renewed drive for a U./S. constitutional amendment. Other Christians have spoken of how ‘this decision puts marriage at risk all across the nation”, others suggest churches should ‘work to overturn it.’

The question hung over our barbeque waiting a response.

Now the front door of that question requires me to talk about homosexuality and marriage. Basic issue - definition of marriage and who defines it – the state or the church?
Or – both.
Is it wrong for the state to define marriage one way and the church define it another way?
Can marriage only be a religious institution or can it be a secular institution.
Who are the guardians of marriage – and what marriage?
Are we always talking about the same thing.

The single issue driven political culture of the US is a difficult place to engage in a balanced debate. Single issues tend to lead to singular answers …and singular answers though maybe right are not always the only answers.

So take the common response of Christians – gay marriage is wrong. Of course it is in the eyes of God and the eyes of His followers. God’s sacrament of marriage is between one man and a one woman. As a Christian that’s how the Bible says it and that’s how the Christian should see it.
But what about marriage as seen through the eyes of humanists or secularists or even plain deists – what definition of marriage do they need to hold – the Christian definition or the state definition. Or to ask this another way – what definition of marriage does the state need to hold – only the Christian definition, or could it hold multiple definitions due to the pluralistic and multiplicity of our culture.

Should the church, should Christians, expect their view to be the only view.

So the front door question maybe isn’t the front door question. Maybe the real front door question is – what is the relationship of Christians in America to America?

Enter the theology of the Kingdom of God.
You do not define Christianity through American history or American policy – you define Christianity through the scripture and scripture majors on a ‘kingdom theology’.
Is this not all about why Jesus came …. “Repent for the Kingdom of God has come.”
It’s the template theology of Christianity.
The Christian prayer is a demand prayer “your Kingdom come!”
The Kingdom of God defines how Christians living in America relate to America.
The Bottom line …….the Kingdom of God is an alternative kingdom and Christians leave one kingdom (the Kingdom of this World – America) to enter the Kingdom of God – on earth but marching to the beat of another drummer. Jesus himself told Pilate (the representative of the Empire), “My Kingdom is not of this world”

Early Christians never tried to overthrow or even reform the empire, but they also weren’t going along with it. Never were the early Christians reformists offering the world a better Rome. They offered people another world altogether.

So ….bring this back to our gay marriage issue …….yes, the Christian holds to the biblical teaching on marriage –between one man and one woman - but, the Christian does not expect America to be Christian. Christians expect America to live out its own values and its own believes. And they are not Christian because America, or Britain, or anywhere is not the Kingdom of God …the Kingdom of God is always subversive, always counter cultural, always working within and away from the kingdom of the world……..the Christian holds to what the Bible says – but in holding to the same Bible the Christian does not expect the kingdom of this world to hold to such. The Christian is not trying to reform America to offer a better America – the Christian is offering something completely different, revolutionary, another kingdom – God’s.

Tony Campolo once wrote “we may live in the best Babylon in the world …but it is still Babylon, and we are called to come out of her.” This is the right outworking of a true Kingdom of God theology. This is John’s revelation being practiced, this is the Book of Revelation done today not waited for some future dispensation.

This guides how I handle the gay marriage debate.

Of course you might recognize this is another form, a cousin of this position – the separation of church of state.
Its funny how many church people strongly endorse this philosophy but on something like gay marriage that philosophy is thrown out! Wise Christians support separation of church and state for the church’s sake – not the country’s. Remember Constantine …the disaster that befell the church when it gained power in the State …never again – God forbid.
A strong kingdom theology upholds this essential separation.

But of course our barbeque engagement with this question didn’t stay at a kingdom theology level. It is my strongest argument to let the state be the State and the Church even stronger be the Church – the primary agent of the Kingdom of God.

But there are other paths to explore.

The cry of a moral argument is often used. Maybe rightly so. But watch how you outwork that cry.
Sometimes the loudest voices condemning gay marriage are Christian voices driven by a Christian morality. But where are those voices condemning the bombing of innocent lives in the multiple wars we are engaged in. Where are those voices condemning the inequality in our own nation’s health care provisions – the rich enjoy it the poor can’t get it, or our own nations education divisions. Where are those moral voices engaging with the our immigration crisis …the moral voices that see all men as created equal and equally valued. So the list could go on.

If people, Christian people want to engage with the gay marriage debate from a Christian moral position at least make sure that your moral position is not one-sided based upon some condemnatory preaching you’ve sat under. Make sure the morality is a godly morality …..a godly morality that is enraged with the injustice, the inequality, the oppression of innocents, the rejection of basic human dignity and value on the poorest, the innocents, the most vulnerable.

We could take this one a lot further – but I’m guessing you’re catching my drift.

It appears that too often our view of truth is biased.
Biased to our subjective experiences and conditioning.
That’s our reality.
Not wrong, but not always good.
We are subjective people.
We read and view life through the lens of our lives conditioning.

Today, as at all times in the advancement of the church and the Kingdom of God, Christians need to strive to surrender their conditioning to the text rather then submit the text to their conditioning. That surrendering will see Christians move from a moralist stance to a revolutionarist stance. It’s not that our morals are wrong – far from it - but it does mean our morals are not the whole story.
There is something bigger.

So the barbeque evening rolled on, the kids got restless, all the food was gone and the cool breeze guided us towards home and rest.
As for the question ……you can tell it moved. It moved from being a question on “gay marriage”, to a question on truth…and how Christians live it, preach it, share it.
One word from the early church begins to surface – μαρτυρε – martyr. It means witness. Literally, ‘one who bears witness by their death’. In the early church Christians didn’t only want to live like Christ, they wanted to die like Christ. That living and that dying didn’t revolve around reforming Rome or defending morality – it revolved around the bigger thing ….the witnessing and confessing of allegiance to a new kingdom – God’s Kingdom.
For that they didn’t gain political office nor seek to get their issues on the ballot – for that they got burned alive, eaten by the beasts, crucified upside down ….martyred.
So let’s return to the question ……….. are you martyring or willing to be a martyr?