WHAT WOULD YOU SAY: Definitions Matter a Great Deal
Imagine two people are talking about “rights,” “freedom” and “justice” and, even though they are using the same words, they keep coming to dramatically conflicting conclusions about what those words actually mean and how they are actualized.
The problem very likely is that they are using the same words, but they each mean something quite different from the other person. The word “rights,” for example, means for one person the ability to do whatever a person chooses to do, but for the other it means the obligation to act within a government-mandated set of restrictions.
As Shane Morris of the Colson Center puts it in the latest iteration of the “What Would You Say” video series, definitions matter. In fact, they matter so much that one of the keys to reaching agreements among competing viewpoints is ensuring everybody means the same thing by key terms.
And if you would rather read the transcript instead of watching the video, go here.
I find these three things unpersuasive. While I probably agree with you and the author about what should or should not be rights, I don’t find the particular arguments persuasive.
The worst in my opinion is the second, that rights come from God not Government. Locke was a proponent of Natural Law, by which he meant that truth and moral behavior could be divined by reason. Locke did believe in divine law which could overlap with natural law (and be more strict) but he maintained that if divine law was found to in conflict with natural law the divine law would be in error (he didn’t attribute this to be a flaw with the divine law per se, but rather that if such a conflict were to exist it would be human understanding that was at fault, hence scripture should be interpreted via a lens of natural law.)
One obvious difference though without a recourse to natural law and basing out understanding of rights purely on divine law, such as the ten commands is that it certainly isn’t obvious that freedom of religion should be a right.
All that being somewhat beside the point though, because at the end of the day, we are talking about things we want the Government to do or not do. If be believe that abortion is contrary to the rights of the unborn we want to government to punish it. If we believe be treated as the gender we desire is a natural right we want the government to punish those who don’t do treat us the way we desire. If we believe that refusing to rent to someone because of the color of their skin is wrong we want to government to punish that behavior, and the same would be true if we decide that it is wrong for anyone to refuse to bake a wedding cake based on that sexes of those being married.
Now some of those examples I personally believe are valid rights, and some of them I don’t. I think it is a complex and difficult question and can’t and shouldn’t be answered simply by “God says” (or more particularly, “I believe that this is what God says”).