Let's not go overboard on individual rights
Kathy Shaidle at FiveFeetofFury pointed me in the direction of this article in the Washington Times that says:
Okay. But let's not go overboard here on individual rights. Christianity is also against rampant individualism that sees rights as only belonging to the individual at the expense of the common good. Christianity is much, much more complex and, well, comprehensive than that.
Christianity pays attention to the individual and his or her unique human dignity, but it also brings us concepts like the Body of Christ, a mystical union of human beings into a sum greater than the whole, all working together with their respective spiritual gifts. There are many other images as well, such stones forming a temple of which Jesus is the chief cornerstone.
Individualism has corrosive aspects. It is better when we can hold a complex notion of the rights of the individual and collective aspirations, whether they be of the family, of churches or of nations. We can't really very well abstract an individual from his or her setting.
A focus on mere individual rights often ends up supporting license instead of freedom, so that people are free to create and watch pornography, for example, without any thought to the impact that has on the wider good. Thus people become slaves to their sexual appetites---unfree, really--but the community is robbed of its ability to put brakes on where and when pornography is available. It used to be tolerated in red light districts where seedy men in raincoats used to have to leave polite society to go into peep shows. But, based on a wonky conception of individual rights, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that community standards can no longer prevent sex clubs from allowing orgies, and even advertising them.
I remember when my community wanted to prevent a "gentleman's club" from opening. No one wanted it here. But the city's lawyers were told that they could face a Charter challenge on the basis of freedom of speech or blah blah because the business was legal. The only thing the city could do was apply some zoning regulations. So the lap-dancing emporium opened about a ten minute walk from my house. Luckily the pox (;-) I put on the business worked and it is now a Chinese buffet house.
Individual rights have been used to explode the family as a social institution that has special privileges in society because it is the best vehicle for the rearing and raising of children by those who are biologically related to them. Individual rights and myopic and relativist interpretations of religious freedom will soon be bringing us polygamy, on the basis that consenting individual adults can do whatever they please.
But....we Christians know that, individuals are not free unless they find freedom in Christ. We are slaves of sin, slaves of our lower appetites, slaves of our own selfishness. Alas, in today's world, we glorify our slavery to these often self-destructive passions because we can't bear the truth about our miserable captivity. And interestingly, a culture that embraces individualism can quickly become a culture that rejects any voice that calls the individual to a higher morality. In other words, it will reject any talk of sin, and try to suppress the churches and individuals that speak about it. Human rights commissions are already persecuting Christians who speak up about sexual morality.
The sinful individual is not the ideal individual of the Christian faith. The ideal person, is one who has found himself in Christ and reflects His glory. So we are individual but, in order to be most fully ourselves, we must be part of His Body.
Perhaps the greatest secular gift to the world by Judeo-Christian civilization is its seminal concept of the individual, which it raises above the tribe or the collective. In Genesis, we are told that man is made in the image of God. Deuteronomy tells us that "each human by his own sin is to be judged" and "do not punish children for the sins of their fathers." And, of course, the biblical life and teachings of Jesus reflect the deep importance of the individual. Thus was planted in the soil of the West our uniquely heightened respect for the individual.
It is impossible to imagine Western civilization — and particularly America — without the existence in our culture of the instinctive respect for the individual to offset the more general human instinct to be subordinated in the tribe or the group.
Okay. But let's not go overboard here on individual rights. Christianity is also against rampant individualism that sees rights as only belonging to the individual at the expense of the common good. Christianity is much, much more complex and, well, comprehensive than that.
Christianity pays attention to the individual and his or her unique human dignity, but it also brings us concepts like the Body of Christ, a mystical union of human beings into a sum greater than the whole, all working together with their respective spiritual gifts. There are many other images as well, such stones forming a temple of which Jesus is the chief cornerstone.
Individualism has corrosive aspects. It is better when we can hold a complex notion of the rights of the individual and collective aspirations, whether they be of the family, of churches or of nations. We can't really very well abstract an individual from his or her setting.
A focus on mere individual rights often ends up supporting license instead of freedom, so that people are free to create and watch pornography, for example, without any thought to the impact that has on the wider good. Thus people become slaves to their sexual appetites---unfree, really--but the community is robbed of its ability to put brakes on where and when pornography is available. It used to be tolerated in red light districts where seedy men in raincoats used to have to leave polite society to go into peep shows. But, based on a wonky conception of individual rights, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that community standards can no longer prevent sex clubs from allowing orgies, and even advertising them.
I remember when my community wanted to prevent a "gentleman's club" from opening. No one wanted it here. But the city's lawyers were told that they could face a Charter challenge on the basis of freedom of speech or blah blah because the business was legal. The only thing the city could do was apply some zoning regulations. So the lap-dancing emporium opened about a ten minute walk from my house. Luckily the pox (;-) I put on the business worked and it is now a Chinese buffet house.
Individual rights have been used to explode the family as a social institution that has special privileges in society because it is the best vehicle for the rearing and raising of children by those who are biologically related to them. Individual rights and myopic and relativist interpretations of religious freedom will soon be bringing us polygamy, on the basis that consenting individual adults can do whatever they please.
But....we Christians know that, individuals are not free unless they find freedom in Christ. We are slaves of sin, slaves of our lower appetites, slaves of our own selfishness. Alas, in today's world, we glorify our slavery to these often self-destructive passions because we can't bear the truth about our miserable captivity. And interestingly, a culture that embraces individualism can quickly become a culture that rejects any voice that calls the individual to a higher morality. In other words, it will reject any talk of sin, and try to suppress the churches and individuals that speak about it. Human rights commissions are already persecuting Christians who speak up about sexual morality.
The sinful individual is not the ideal individual of the Christian faith. The ideal person, is one who has found himself in Christ and reflects His glory. So we are individual but, in order to be most fully ourselves, we must be part of His Body.
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