Principles of Liberty, Session 4 – Discover Bedrock Truth

Principles of Liberty: Ten Biblical Truths Embedded in the Declaration of Independence
A Five-Session Bible Study

Background Information for Session 4
God Determines Rights and Gives Government the Job of Protecting Them

The Quest to Rediscover the Founders’ Perspective

This Bible study series is based on the Word Foundations post titled “Principles of Liberty.” The article highlights ten biblical principles embedded in the Declaration of Independence.

The Bible study series consists of five sessions, with each one exploring two principles.

This article provides background information for the fourth session. A teaching plan is available here.

A PDF file of the above graphic is available here.

It’s high time we rediscover the true meaning of these principles and that we contend anew for them as the Founders understood them. In our series, we’re highlighting words and phrases from the most quoted portion of the Declaration, then we’re demonstrating how they’re linked to Scripture and to biblical truth. In this session (the fourth of five), we’ll be considering the seventh and eighth principles.

A PDF file of this graphic is available here.

PRINCIPLE SEVEN

Rights are inextricably linked to God’s laws.

In the background information as well as in the teaching plan for Session 3, we affirmed that the Ten Commandments (sometimes called the Decalogue) make up both a list upholding negative rights as well as a list of moral responsibilities. Here’s what we said in the teaching plan, with a couple of minor adjustments we’ll name in a moment.

Although the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments, is a list of moral responsibilities, it also is a list upholding negative rights, such as

- - - - the right to worship God freely,
      - the right to work and accumulate wealth,
      - the right to life,
      - the right to be respected and honored in one’s family and as a member of one’s family,
      - the right to own and manage property, and
      - the right not to be defamed or maligned.

Here are the differences between this list and the one we presented last week: 1) we used bullets in this list to enhance readability; and, even more importantly, 2) we added the phrase “and accumulate wealth” to the second item, so it now reads “the right to work and accumulate wealth.” Hopefully you and your class members have been reading the articles in the series titled “The Bible and Free Enterprise,” as we have recommended that you assign your class members one article in the series to read after each session. Increasingly, Americans are buying into the lie that capitalism promotes greed and selfishness. Yet, it actually gives individuals the opportunity to take appropriate personal responsibility for their own affairs while making others’ lives better. Part 2 of the series on the free enterprise economic model affirms,

Working for profit…isn’t inherently wrong. Working to benefit oneself isn’t necessarily a manifestation of greed. It can represent, and usually does, accepting the mantle of responsibility, acting so as not to have to rely on society or other individuals for basic needs.…[Moreover, t]he beauty of a free enterprise economy is that when the worker, the supervisor, the manager, the entrepreneur, and the CEO voluntarily do their jobs well, they’re not the only ones who benefit. Others—people who use their company’s services and/or products—benefit as well. None of this activity is disruptive, nor is any of it forced. And all of it contributes to order, stability, and progress in society.

God’s Law Doesn’t Just Restrict; It Liberates!

Take note! The linchpin for all of this productivity in the context of societal order is a government’s and a society’s maintaining and protecting citizens’ negative rights. When a country and its people uphold these rights, citizens are free to pursue their dreams and achieve their potential — provided, of course, that they obey the law and don’t infringe on the rights of others.

The linchpin for productivity in the context of societal order is a government’s and a society’s maintaining and protecting citizens’ negative rights.

Lightstock — Written Hebrew reads from right to left.

Remember, we are considering how the Ten Commandments of God aren’t just about moral responsibilities, as important as that is. They’re also about negative rights. Just as it is critical that we as Christians understand the connections between obeying God’s law and fulfilling our God-given purposes in life, both individually and nationally (a theme we explored in Principle 3), it also is vital that we be able to “connect the dots” between God’s law and unalienable, or God-given, rights.

By their very nature, God-given rights are negative rights; not positive ones. You show me rights that have been bestowed by God, and I’ll show you negative rights. You show me “rights” that have to be created and propped up by government manipulation and intervention, and I’ll show you positive rights — every time!

You show me rights that have been bestowed by God, and I’ll show you negative rights. You show me “rights” that have to be created and propped up by government intervention, and I’ll show you positive rights — every time!

It is not a coincidence that the Declaration of Independence speaks forthrightly and respectfully of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and affirms negative rights. Nor is it a coincidence that the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, formulated a little more than a decade later, uphold negative rights through government limitations. Here is the wording the delegates to the Second Continental Congress approved in the Declaration:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Robert Edge Pine, the Second Continental Congress Voting on the Declaration of Independence, created between 1784 and 1801

From Liberty to Bondage

Unfortunately, in recent decades — especially since the beginning of the last half of the 20^th century, but even to some extent before that — the United States of America has been moving away from the Founders’ concept of rights and the liberties that accompany them. This nation has abandoned liberty and is heading toward bondage, and it is quite far down that well-traveled road. Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 declare, “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.”

Without a biblical worldview, the way of liberty and freedom appears to be overly restrictive, and the way of bondage looks as if it is liberating! Appearances often deceive, however; and these definitely do! These are realities we must face if, with God’s help, we can ever hope to successfully turn the tide and reverse our country’s course. First and foremost, America needs a spiritual awakening. Yet she also needs to understand a truth to which she currently is blinded. That truth is this: Liberty is impossible without a societal respect for negative rights.

Liberty is impossible without a societal respect for negative rights.

Try to comprehend how far we have departed from the Founders’ view of rights! I could name many so-called “rights” Americans have petitioned government to grant them, and in many if not most cases, government has complied—in direct violation of the Founders’ view of rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States. One prime example is the “right” to “marriage equality” or “same-sex ‘marriage.” In a case called Obergefell, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down marriage protection laws in more than thirty states. Citizens in many of these states had sacrificed and labored tirelessly to pass state constitutional amendments preserving the definition of marriage as being a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman. So much for “government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people”!

Mark it down! Same-sex “marriage” affirms homosexuality as being on par with heterosexuality and defies everything we know intuitively about what marriage is and ought to be. (See the Word Foundations articles titled “God’s Definition of Marriage is Self-Evident” and “Ten Ways Same-Sex Marriage Denies Reality.”) Recognition of a same-sex relationship as a marriage or a potential marriage was, is, and forever will be a blatant violation of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Recognition of a same-sex relationship as a marriage or a potential marriage was, is, and forever will be a blatant violation of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Because the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell is such a caustic affront to America’s founding ideals, I want to spend some time discussing it in light of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the biblical principles on which our nation was founded. Far too few are warning about this issue today, so it behooves us to address the matter. Be assured that our discussion directly relates to the two principles we are considering in Session 4: • 7) Rights are inextricably linked to God’s laws, and • 8) Government does not grant rights but has the responsibility to recognize, maintain, and protect them.

To a large extent, we’ve explored the seventh principle already, so we now will move on to the eighth.

PRINCIPLE EIGHT

Government does not grant rights but has the responsibility to recognize, maintain, and protect them.

Depending on the circumstances and on what listeners want to hear, the truth can be very difficult to accept. So difficult, in fact, that some individuals reject it altogether. Consider Marc, who was very much alive but was convinced he was dead. When his psychiatrist asked him if dead men bleed, Marc said no. The doctor promptly stuck Marc’s finger with a needle, causing blood to come forth. “Wow!” exclaimed Marc. “Dead men really do bleed, after all!”

With very few exceptions, it isn’t desirable for people to live in a world of fantasy and illusion. Mature people must grapple with reality. People need to eat! The bills have to be paid! The real world is messy, but it is the one we live in—yet it’s also the one in which we can find fulfillment and satisfaction, if we will adjust to life’s demands and cooperate with its realities.

The law of gravity provides a great example. No one can step out of a 10^th-story window and expect to go anywhere but down, and fast! Gravity prevents us from safely doing a great number of things. Yet when we cooperate with it, we benefit immensely. Why? In a great many ways, gravity, which is part of “the natural order of things,” makes ordered life on earth possible.

Marriage, as humanity has understood it for centuries, is very much like gravity in this regard. Like gravity, marriage is God-given; the state cannot change it without its action’s giving way to destructive consequences, however unintended. It is the state’s job to uphold marriage and protect it as it is, and as it has been from time immemorial. “[T]o secure [and maintain] these rights,” the Declaration says, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”

When a society respects marriage as an institution uniting one man and one woman in a committed, lifelong relationship, it’s clear that it limits that society in certain ways. Perhaps it’s not as clear that it liberates it in many more! Clear or not, this is the truth! When a nation rejects man-woman marriage, devastating consequences follow, a number of which I have highlighted in numerous Word Foundations posts, such as the two articles I cited earlier.

The Supreme Court of the United States, through its ruling on marriage, violated the concept of rights our Founders embraced and upheld in the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution, and particularly in the Bill of Rights. Ironically, this was done this in the name of granting rights to a few! Five Supreme Court justices—a bare majority—also have violated the natural order to make life worse for everyone. The court had no businesses, and it has no businesses, considering any positive right!

But wait! someone will say. You’re not being tolerant! You’re not being loving! You’re not being compassionate! This perspective alone is evidence we have moved far away from our founding principles. As Josh McDowell affirms,

The opposite of intolerance is not tolerance. It’s love. The philosophy of today is that we are to set aside truth in order to love. Jesus never did that! We are to speak the truth in love, and we are to love truthfully. Love does not set aside truth, and truth never sets aside love.

Put another way, compassion’s mandate is a command to share the truth in love.

Justice Thomas Dissents

Justice Clarence Thomas understands the realities and the implications of the Obergefell decision, and he presented them in his dissent. Here we will examine only the first paragraph of Justice Thomas’s dissent. That paragraph by itself is insightful and substantive, and it’s alarming enough to raise red flags nationwide about same-sex marriage. Moreover, in seven brief sentences, Thomas brilliantly shows us the importance of the Founders’ approach to government and to rights.

Here is the Justice Thomas’s first paragraph.

The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The Framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a “liberty” that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.

Let’s consider each of these statements individually.

Statement 1: “The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built.”

To learn just a few of the ways the Obergefell decision “is at odds…with the Constitution,” read this brief summary from Alliance Defending Freedom. Also read Bradley C. S. Watson’s National Review article “Reclaiming the rule of Law after Obergefell.” You can read some of our nation’s foundational principles here.

Statement 2: “Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits.”

Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits.
—Justice Clarence Thomas—

From May 25 to September 17, 1787, the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and its delegates drafted the US Constitution. As we discussed in an earlier Word Foundations post, resistance to ratification was strong because the proposed Constitution did not have a Bill of Rights—a list of limitations on the government that would keep it out of the way so people could live their lives freely. Even though the Constitution was drafted and proposed in 1787 without a Bill of Rights and subsequently was ratified, it was accepted only when the Bill of Rights was added. Thus, “there was, in the minds of this first generation of US citizens (not just the Founders), a direct relationship between the thriving of personal liberties (rights) and restrictions that kept the federal government out of people’s lives.” The battle to add the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution never would have been won if the principles of limited government had not been accepted and embraced in the populace in years prior.

Oh, that we could recapture their love of limitations on government! Today the prevailing perspective on rights calls, not for government limitations, but government intrusion! For a few moments, reflect on the degree to which government has had to invade marriage in order to remake it into an institution that affords same-sex couples the “right” to “marry.” While in US history, the Supreme Court has issued numerous egregious decisions to grant positive rights, only a handful have sent the Court even close to the level of meddling we’ve seen with Obergefell. More on this in a moment.

Statement 3: “The Framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty.”

The Bill of Rights, with its government-limiting provisions to ensure individual liberties, provides undeniable evidence of this truth. Yet so does the Declaration of Independence in declaring,

Statement 4: “Yet the majority [of Supreme Court justices] invokes our Constitution in the name of a ‘liberty’ that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect.”

These are allusions to a positive right and to negative rights (just as Statement 2 alludes to them). The positive right, the “‘liberty’ that the Framers would not have recognized” is, of course, same-sex marriage. Does anyone really believe the Founders had same-sex marriage in mind when they wrote the Constitution? Does anyone think for a New York minute they wouldn’t have acted to protect man-woman marriage if they knew same-sex marriage ever would be seriously proposed, much less practiced, in the United States? The point here is that we can be certain redefining marriage never even entered the the minds of the Founders, so they did not sanction it! We can say the same thing for those who drafted and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment (ratified after the US Civil War), which is cited as a basis for the Obergefell ruling. How then, can same-sex marriage be constitutional?

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, by Howard Chandler Christy (1940)

Many other strong arguments against the constitutionality of same-sex marriage exist as well, but Justice Thomas, rightly, was saying the Framers never would have recognized the practice as legitimate. The truth is that the men who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights did act to prevent the implementation of same-sex marriage, even though they didn’t know it ever would be considered. They did so by enshrining the principle of limited government in the founding documents. The Supreme Court has rejected this principle outright.

Further into his dissent, Justice Thomas discusses Obergefell’s threat to religious liberty. The freedoms associated with the principle of religious liberty are included in the term “liberty” in Thomas’s powerful clause, “to the detriment of the liberty they [the Framers] sought to protect” through provisions that limit government action. Those provisions were established to guarantee negative rights.

Statement 5: “Along the way, it [the Court] rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government.”

Here again is a reminder of what the Declaration of Independence declares.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Rights are God-given! Put another way, human dignity is innate because it comes from God! This was the conviction of our Founding Fathers. It is a principle on which they severed ties with Great Britain and on which they founded the United States of America. The Obergefell ruling, according to Thomas, “rejects this idea.” Justice Thomas is right.

Moreover, through its ruling the Supreme Court “suggests instead that it [human dignity] comes from the Government.” We must not miss the implications of Justice Thomas’s strong statement. Marriage, a God-given and God-ordained institution, could be redefined by government only through the most intrusive of bureaucratic actions. In redefining marriage, therefore, our government defied God! Yet, as frightening as this is, there’s even more here to alarm us. If human dignity comes from the government rather than God, is it really dignity at all?

If human dignity comes from the government rather than God, is it really dignity at all?

Human dignity definitely does not come from government. It was the reality of human dignity—innate and God-given—that compelled our country’s Founders to limit government in ways that preserved personal freedom and rights in the first place!

Statement 6: “This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic.”

The implications here are especially alarming. Hang in there with me, and you’ll see what I mean. In the US Constitution we see reflected a host of principles stated clearly in the Declaration of Independence. This one comes to mind: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” (emphasis added). Accordingly, the Constitution itself doesn’t begin with “The Government of the United States of America,” but with the phrase “We the People.”

The people are to be the government’s boss in America, but the US government has inverted this relationship by usurping the people’s authority. Not only that, but the Supreme Court, through its Obergefell ruling, has defied nature and, as we said in our discussion of Statement 5, defied God. In fact, it has set itself up as God! If the Supreme Court will be so bold as to change the millennia-old definition of marriage, what will it not attempt?

If the Supreme Court will be so bold as to change the millennia-old definition of marriage, what will it not attempt?

Statement 7: “I cannot agree with it.”

Justice Thomas understands. He “gets it”! Because he does, he disagrees with the marriage ruling, and so must everyone else who is truly familiar with the importance of the founding principles of the United States of America.

God Will Hold Us Acconuntable

Let’s return briefly to statement 6. In reflecting on it, we said that government, through Obergefell, had set itself up as God. Then we asked, If the Supreme Court will be so bold as to change the millennia-old definition of marriage, what will it not attempt?

We are told in Genesis that God thwarted the completion of the Tower of Babel. We’re also informed as to why. Genesis 11:1-9 declares,

11¹Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. ²And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. ³Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. ⁴And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

⁵But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. ⁶And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. ⁷Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” ⁸So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. ⁹Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

As with the worldwide flood just a few chapters earlier (see Gen. 6-9), God stepped in when humanity had stepped over a clear boundary. How long will it be before He intervenes to stop America from going any further?

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when deliberations almost had reached an impasse, Benjamin Franklin appealed to the delegates to establish regular prayers over their sessions. Here is a portion of what he said (emphasis added).

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages.

Franklin pled with the delegates to acknowledge God in the infancy of our nation. Today, over 230 years later, the US Supreme Court doesn’t just ignore God and the natural laws He established; instead, a majority of justices effectively shake their collective fist in His face! Even if a person doesn’t believe in God, he or she still could find it difficult to imagine how any person or group could more thoroughly or foolishly spurn nature’s clear teaching.

Even if a person doesn’t believe in God, he or she still could find it difficult to imagine how any person or group could more thoroughly or foolishly spurn nature’s clear teaching.

The Bible informs us that God is patient (see 2 Pet. 3:9), but His patience is not limitless. Marriage is sacred (see Gen. 1:26-28; 2:21-25), for it is God-ordained and a picture of Christ and His bride, the church (see Eph. 5:25-33). Make no mistake. The scriptural principle is clear: God will judge those who violate the institution of marriage (see Heb. 13:4).

In light of all this, we must resist the Obergefell ruling with renewed resolve. Our long-term goal needs to be to restore the definition of marriage so that public policy aligns with what marriage really is. Short-term, we need to try to help our friends and neighbors understand the liberating power of upholding negative rights, and the destructive road down which a love of positive rights is sending this nation.

We must require all branches of our government to stop meddling in marriage. Government entities must stop fashioning and creating positive rights inconsistent with marriage’s age-old definition. Unfortunately, as we learned in item #27 of our last session, the trend of government’s creating rights based on individual preferences with regard to sexuality continues. Everyone, including those for whom the “rights” are being created, will pay a heavy price. How do we know this? We know because the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” have not been repealed (see Principles 1 & 2). We have to put a stop to the abuse and tyranny in which government currently is engaged!

The “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” have not been repealed.

There are additional things we can do. In both our personal and public lives, we must uphold marriage as being what God and nature declare it to be. Furthermore, we must pass along to our children a respect for marriage and the family as God designed them.

The Founders of this nation no longer are here. Who will now represent them and what they believed? We have to! We must faithfully uphold and teach what they knew to be true about government, liberty, law, and rights. Even more importantly, we must be faithful to God and uphold these and other biblical ideals.

Why? Truth and liberty are at stake!

Founding Father Alexander Hamilton wrote, “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

Johnn Adams / Jean Leon Gerome Ferris / 1900

Founding Father John Adams declared, “Men must be ready, they must pride themselves and be happy to sacrifice their private pleasures, passions and interests, nay, their private friendships and dearest connections, when they stand in competition with the rights of society.”

Let’s Review

Here are the two principles from the Declaration of Independence we’re affirming in this session. These are the seventh and eighth tenets on our list.

- - Rights are inextricably linked to God’s laws.
  - Government does not grant right but has the responsibility to recognize, maintain, and protect them.

Session Alert! The teaching plan for the upcoming session offers an optional item. If you choose to use it, you either will review yourself, or you’ll ask a participant to review, this summary of a series of events taking place in California and the United States in late May and early June, 2020. The willing individual, whether the person is you or someone else, will summarize the details of the events with the large group. Read the teaching plan first, and consider the amount of time you will have. If you decide to use the item, begin thinking about whom you would like to invite to make the presentation or if you prefer to make it yourself. The summary also is available online here.

Thank you for facilitating and leading your group in Bible study!

A teaching plan is available here.

top image credit: Liberty Bell

image credit: Supreme Court Building