Rights.

What are rights?

Human rights, inalienable rights, universal rights, my rights, your rights…so many rights. What are they and why do we think we have them?

One of the many definitions of the word in Oxford is as follows:

“a moral or legal entitlement to have or do something:[with infinitive]:she had every right to be angry you’re quite within your rights to ask for your money back”

This is unsatisfactory because it offers no basis…no source.

The atrocities of World War II led to the creation in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (one of the authors of which, John Peter Humphrey, was Canadian) which can (and should) be read here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights.

The declaration consists of 30 articles, the first two of which state:

Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

The declaration was ratified and accepted by the United Nations and is considered international law although if you have read the document it seems hardly worth the paper it is written on because virtually every aspect of it is contravened everyday by practically every country in one way or another.

This begs the question – what is the basis of a right? Why do we believe we have rights? The document lacks the one thing it begs for – a power to enforce it and give it the authority of truth.

After all one does not simply have a right because one says one has one correct? If enough people say we have the right to a banana cream pie every second Thursday of the month does that make it a right? What good is a right that cannot be enforced and can be arbitrarily taken away on the whim of an authority?

I ask these questions because people are always harping about rights. I am proud of the fact that the first national museum to be built outside of Canada’s national capital region will be the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg which is scheduled to open in 2014. I am pleased by the accountability such an institution will hold the nation which erected it to.

I ask these questions because among certain circles in my dear community of Christ some grumble about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and its impact on society having given freedoms to people in ways some find offensive.

What is a right? Quid est quaedam recta? I ask it in Latin because it reminds me of my favorite Latin question – Veritas. Quid est veritas? The question was asked in a moment of deep irony by Pontius Pilate of Christ as he, the living embodiment of veritas, of truth, stood before him, moments before his crucifixion.

So what is a right?

I think some of my friends of faith are wrong to be offended by the notion of human rights. I think their anger with the charter is wrong and short-sighted because they are missing the point.

The recognition of a human right is a vestige of truth, of veritas, still written on the hearts of humanity. The idea of human rights cannot exist without there being an absolute source of that right. A right that stems from anything that is not absolute is not a right because humans are not absolute, we know this. Humans are not and cannot create human rights…we can uncover them however. We can in our bones recognize their philosophical existence…by speaking of, and enshrining human rights, we recognize that we, humanity, are the ontological extension of a universal, absolute will…the will of God.

The discussion and enshrinement of human rights is a conscious or unconscious recognition that there is an absolute will from which emanates such rights – a will which desires these rights and in so desiring creates them.

We may deny this, in fact we do on a regular basis, but there is no alternative…a right, such as it is, cannot exist without God and so I applaud the discussion of human rights and their enshrinement while recognizing that we, as fallible beings that are not absolute, will never get them ‘right’ so to speak.

Human rights, like truth itself, are as shards of broken glass cobbled together by us into a mirror that shows us a fragmented version of what we could be, of what we should be, and what, ultimately, I believe we will be.