When I suggest to my Christian brothers and sisters that God has given to individual people three basic human rights: life, liberty, and property, and that the only legitimate function of government is to prohibit and punish the violation of these rights, I find that they willingly support my assertion regarding the first two. Yet they are not sure about a human right to property.
Our anti-abortion stance is grounded on the God-given right to life.
American Christians almost universally oppose involuntary servitude as a violation of the human right to liberty.
I contend that the God-given human right to liberty is in fact synonymous with the right to property.
Each of us has been given a mind to think what we will, a mouth to speak what we will, and hands and feet to go and do where and what we will. These gifts are properly ours and belong to us and no one else. Our right to liberty is nothing if we have no property to exercise.
Though we are accountable to God for our use of this property He still grants liberty to use them as we will.
God alone accurately weighs our thoughts, words and actions but when we use these faculties to deprive our fellow men of their life, liberty and property God commits prohibiting and punishing power to men in the form of the civil authorities.
From these bodily faculties--our most intimate property--come all other property rights. As we trade the use of them for wages those wages become wholly ours and no one else's.
The same is true as we find, gather, and develop limited resources with our bodily property. These resources become ours.
I’m not sure you meant to go here with your post, but I found it interesting that you talked about thoughts, [words], and actions. It’s this era of mass communication, words seem to rob others of their liberty quickly, ruin reputations, wreak havoc in lives, and generally cause all manner of evil. It’s not just the civil authorities that have punishing power, although that is the legal means, but anyone with access to publication—even such as this—can do harm and rob people of their property. Is not a reputation, a good name, a property?
ReplyDeleteAs usual Mary Sue your comment calls for careful consideration. I will offer this thought off the top of my pointy head.
ReplyDeleteWhenever one person attacks another, whether verbally or physically, they run the risk of the tables being turned. If verbally, in this forum or any other, the aggressor may find themselves publicly shamed. If physically they may end up on the receiving end of a beating.
If I attack someone's reputation or body I risk my own. this risk is usually enough to prevent such aggression without law.
In the event that such aggression occurs, and it inevitably does, still the one aggressed against must be able to prove that the aggressor has deprived them of property or liberty by their action.
I guess that in the end I would say that some wrongs cannot be righted by man's law.
Once we enact legislation, because the state alone has a legal monopoly on deadly force, and because the state is a collective administered by individual sinners such ourselves, the evil done by the state whether intentional or not is very widespread and individuals lose their ability to contend as they would with another individual.
Legislation as a cure is usually worse than the disease.
My only question, Dan, is about how we understand what Jesus meant when he told his disciples to give to the government that which belongs to the government (Mark 12:17). Since his comment was made in relation to taxation, I'm just interested to hear your thoughts on it. What did he mean? What implications does it have for your argument that my property is wholly mine and no government can lay a claim to it?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the sharpening my friend. The main point of your comment will take some more closely focused thought to answer, but I do want to point out that Jesus' answer to his hostile questioners was not given as a treatise on earthly government, but rather refers to a specific people being ruled by a specific foreign occupying government.
ReplyDeletethere may well be and I believe there are some general principles applying to us now in the USA but what are they? More later.
To further clarify my Nov. 17th comment replying to my astute brother Will.
ReplyDeleteYou might have assumed that I would advocate that Christians not pay income taxes. That would be both dangerous, (the magistrate doesn't have a sword for nothing), and irresponsible, (causing the gospel of my Lord to stink).
Rather, I say that Christians should speak truth to power. That we should point out that the income tax is unrighteous, (8th commandment), and we should use our vote as well as persuasion to advocate it's repeal.
As a people under tribute Jesus' hearers didn't have our liberties.