Civil Rights vs. Human Rights

The President currently finds himself mired in yet another attempt to fulfill a campaign promise, this time over how to close the Guantanamo Bay holding facility. Amidst all the controversy of whether or not to close the prison, where to move the prisoners, and how they should be tried, there has been one phrase in particular that stands out, or should stand out, for us Christians: a mention of the prisoners’ “rights.” This naturally raises the question as to what rights are being referred to. A closer investigation demonstrates that, on many occasions, we don’t seem able to distinguish between a person’s civil rights and their human rights. In his wonderful book, Healing for a Broken World, Steve Monsma articulates the difference between civil and human rights as the following:

“Civil rights are those that are spelled out and protected by a specific government and its constitution and other laws. They are enforceable in courts of law. Human rights are God-given. They are rooted in all human beings having been created in the image of almighty God himself…No government gives us our human rights; no government can take them away.”

So when we speak of an individual’s “rights,” we must first clarify which field we are playing on. Civil rights are byproducts of a governing body, presumably with the consent of the governed (i.e. voting, due process, freedom of speech, etc.). Human rights are the result of every man, woman and child being created in the image of God, and naturally carry with them a greater sense of importance (i.e. life, freedom, personal choices, etc.). Naturally, the Bible has very little to say directly about one’s civil rights, but addresses the concept of human rights throughout. It may be a bit of a stretch, but one could argue that Christians should therefore be much more enraged over human rights violations than infringements on one’s civil rights. That is not to say that civil rights are unimportant, but rather that a jury trial pales in comparison to torture.

Let us now attempt to make this information relevant to our current situation. As human beings, created in the image of God, the human rights of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay must be protected. Torture and wrongful imprisonment are the most egregious violations, and should never be excused. However, as enemy combatants, the detainees are not endowed with the same set of civil rights that we as American citizens are. There is no constitutional basis for trying these prisoners in the American judicial system, nor is their a reason to provide jury trials instead of a military tribunal. Therefore, if Believers are going to advocate for the “rights” of these prisoners, it is much more important to advocate for their God-given human rights, not a state-granted set of civil rights.

One potential caveat to our discussion is the fact that civil rights violations can indeed become human rights violations (one thinks of the heroic civil rights struggle of the 1960s). But, for our current situation, that should be seen simply as an encouragement to engage this issue thoughtfully and biblically, not as evidence that terrorists should be tried on U.S. soil.

Devotional Thought: Evangelism's Most Destructive Quote

St Francis of Assisi is often attributed with the pithy saying, “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.” It is doubtful that St. Francis was actually the one to utter these words, but it is less doubtful that the American Church has taken this advice all too far. What started as a nice sentiment for living out the Gospel has turned into an excuse for a lack of evangelism. We couch our apathy and indifference in the inoffensive language of “lifestyle evangelism,” claiming that we are spreading the Good News by how we live. The reality, however, may be that we just don’t want to share our faith, at least not enough to take any risks. Risks like stepping out of our comfort zone, being willing to strike up a conversation, and facing the possibility of rejection. But the truly startling thing is that we are more than willing to evangelize for everything we believe in except Christ. I will try to convince you that baseball is the greatest sport, but I won’t tell you that you are a sinner. I can make a compelling case for why my Civic is a fantastic car, but I don’t want to ask what you think about God. And I can try to tell you who to vote for, but I won’t tell you about who gave His life for you. In college I even avoided taking a class because I heard the professor required you to share your faith with someone. If I am so sure that Jesus is the way, why am I unwilling to point others toward Him?

Lately the idea of evangelizing has gotten a black eye because of the methods some have employed. If you walk downtown of most large cities you are sure to find someone with a megaphone proclaiming the coming destruction of all who don’t repent. The effectiveness, or even worthiness, of this method is certainly debatable. I once visited a church that was on the complete other extreme. They would instruct their members to not even mention Jesus’ name until they had known someone for at least a year, opting instead for the method of lifestyle evangelism. The truth, as often is the case, probably lies somewhere in between megaphone evangelism and lifestyle evangelism. We shouldn’t be vocal in a way that turns people off, but we should still be willing to be vocal.

In Ephesians, Paul tells us that evangelism is a spiritual gift. We all have met those people who can convince whoever sits next to them on a plane that they need Jesus. I don’t believe that God wants us all to become like those people, if He did He would have given everyone the gift of evangelism. But what He did give us all was a command, a command to go unto all the world making disciples. We may not all have the gift of evangelism, but we all do have the Spirit within us, and that is where we get the courage to share Christ with others. May we always live the Gospel in such a way as to draw others to the Father, but may we also be willing to share Him with others as we are led.

“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let No one go there unwarned and unprayed for.” -Charles Spurgeon

(For further reading on this topic check out Mark Russell’s excellent post, “Preach the Gospel Always: When Necessary, Use Words.”)

The Maturing of the Pro-Life Movement

As a political movement, Evangelicalism is still in its infancy. While Roman Catholics have been engaged in politics for over a thousand years, it is only within the past thirty years that Evangelicals have ventured forth into the political sphere. The immaturity of the movement was at times more obvious than others. In the past, one of the clearest places that Evangelicals would show their inexperience was the abortion debate; but, as this movement has matured so has its practices. The recent “controversy” surrounding Focus on the Family’s Super Bowl commercial is one example of the maturation of Evangelicals, and the pro-life movement as a whole. The media hype before the ad aired would have led us to believe that we would be shocked by the audacity of Focus on the Family, but instead all we saw was a mom talking about how she cared for her son. What a perfect example of the new manner in which the pro-life community conveys its message.

This new maturity is revealing itself in two particular ways. The first is the focus of the movement. In the past the pro-life community was defined as being pro-baby. Anti-abortion rallies were replete with posters of aborted children and signs labeling anyone who chooses the practice a murderer. All that this conveyed was that the pro-life community was pro-fetus, while the pro-choice community was pro-mother. Not many women with crisis pregnancies are going to go to a pro-life clinic if they feel the organization’s supporters are attacking them. In recent years the pro-life community has moved away from this guilt approach and embraced a joy approach. Instead of labeling the woman a murderer, pro-life billboards will have a picture of a smiling mom holding her child, choosing to focus on the joy that each child brings. Additionally, by pointing towards the many harmful side-affects of abortion - physical, psychological, and emotional – the pro-life community is highlighting concern for both the mother and the child. These decisions by pro-life leadership are destroying the myth that being pro-mother means you have to be pro-choice. Showing love to the women with crisis pregnancies is doing something effectively a condemning sign never could: reducing the number of abortions.

The second area the pro-life movement is showing signs of maturity is in its willingness to accept incremental gains, instead of being locked in to an all-or-nothing mentality. Previously, we saw the pro-life movement target the complete abolition of abortion, and anything less was unacceptable. But all that we were left with was over thirty years of abortion on demand. Recently the pro-life community has recognized the importance of taking small steps to reduce the number of abortions, and has thus moved to encourage the passage of laws to that end. This is pragmatically effective due to the overwhelming public support for certain checks on abortion on demand. For example, according to Gallup Polling, 88% of Americans favor a law that would require the woman’s doctor to inform her of alternatives to abortion, 78% favor a mandatory twenty-four hour waiting period before having an abortion, while 69% favor parental consent for minors, and 64% favor spousal notification (see polling data here).

As the movement continues to mature it will be interesting to see what new facets develop. In the meantime, however, there is still much work to be done. Not everyone has adopted the pro-mother approach, and many still need to be convinced of the effectiveness of focusing on incremental gains. Additionally, we still need to do a better job of answering the critics that claim the pro-life movement is only pro-birth, but doesn’t care about the children after they are born. But these steps, if implemented thoroughly, will result in fewer abortions and show the love of Christ to the world, both of which are very good things.

The State of Our Unity, Part 2

Last week we discussed the importance of unity for our country. The idea we were getting at is that it is absolutely essential for America to have some semblance of unity if our government is going to function efficiently and effectively. This week we are going to continue our discussion of unity by narrowing our focus to a wholly more important subject: unity in the Church.

There are many things in the Church that we can fight over, theology, ecclesiology, eschatology, pneumatology, and even whether or not we sing the doxology. But as we are told in John 17:20-23, a unified Church is what shows the world the power of Christ. We can naturally infer that the opposite is also true. If we are not unified the world will not be as receptive to Christ’s redemptive work. Even a cursory survey of the Christian landscape shows just how fractured we are. Every day there are church-splits, people of different denominational backgrounds hold each other in animosity, and many of our leaders refuse to work together over, what seems to be, petty theological differences. Some will point to their own church or clique and say, “look how unified we are, we get along on almost everything!” But even the world gets along with people they like. For the Believer being united in Christ must mean, if it means anything at all, getting along with people we don’t like or agree with.

Let us examine for a moment what unity looks like for the Church. Unity is not about agreeing on everything. It has been said that if two people agree on everything one of them is worthless, the same is true with the Body. It is only by working with our theological differences that we can get a more robust understanding of who God is. No one denomination or theological framework has a corner on Truth, and by interacting with people that have differing views we will be able to recognize our own shortcomings. True unity comes despite our differences, not by forcing uniformity. Now, this is not to say that Truth is relative, we must always work within the bounds of Scripture. There are still right answers to our questions, answers we should be working towards, but being united means we work together for those answers, not against each other. To make true unity work we will all have to pray for humility and accept a degree of ambiguity, recognizing, as the Apostle Paul says, “we see through a glass dimly.”

As an example, consider one area in particular that brings divisiveness to the Body of Christ: politics. The Religious Right and Christian Left seem to be diametrically apposed to each other. Many of their publications spend a great deal of time demonizing the other side, coyly implying that their opponents are not true Christians, don’t read their Bible enough, and are actually hurting the Church. What does unity look like here? First of all it means recognizing that we are working towards a common goal. All Christians should agree that we need to alleviate poverty, reduce abortions, be good stewards of the planet, and promote strong families. The conflict is over how we deal with these issues, not whether or not we should deal with them. Conflicting views on the role of government are at the core of these disagreements, and most likely, we will never all agree on what the degree of governmental involvement on a particular issue will be. But we all should be able to work towards a common ground, finding areas that we can agree on, and then taking incremental steps from there. Despite our political differences, there is a lot of common ground we have simply by virtue of reading and submitting to the same Bible. If we focus on the things we do agree on we will do a much better job of presenting Christ to the world.

My grandmother and I were talking the other day about the divisiveness of our current political state. She asked if I thought that we will ever be rid or the partisanship and back bighting that is dominating our politics. My first reaction was to say no, human nature – coupled with our two-party system – will never allow our politicians to all get along. It is tempting to say the same for the Church: human nature will never let us be united. But that is the point of redemption. Christ died that He may take away our human nature, that which we inherited from Adam, and give us His nature as new creations. That is what can bring us unity, and that is why we must strive for it, because it is itself an act of redemption.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
-John 17:20-23