What is the basis of human rights?

G’day everyone, Dave Deane here, and our question for the week is: What is the basis for human rights?

Many of us are familiar with the tragic death of George Floyd on May 25. He was a black American man, arrested for using counterfeit $20 bill. And while cuffed and face down on the street a white American police officer, pinned Floyd to the street with his knee on the side of his neck for a period of initially 8 minutes and 46 seconds. And in a horrific video capturing these final moments of Floyd’s life, Floyd can be heard gasping: ‘I can’t breathe’. He lost his breath and lost his life.

The reverberations of that tragedy have been felt all around the world, even here in Australia, with protests and rioting. But why do stories like this rock our world? What is the intuition that we have about things like racial discrimination that looks at things like racial discrimination and says ‘that is wrong and it has to stop?’

Well, I think underneath all of these demonstrations and protests we have seen is the assumption of human rights. We protest when human beings aren’t treated rightly: as humans, as beings with intrinsic worth and inherent dignity. We say ‘racism is wrong’ because we recognise this of every single person – regardless of their race, religion, colour, cast, creed or code.

But what is the basis for these rights?

Well, I’ve heard it described like this. Imagine a circle that represents everything in this universe, all of the genomes of every living things from ants to aardvarks to human beings. Now, when we talk about these things called ‘human rights’, what we are essentially doing is drawing a smaller circle inside the larger circle and saying: ‘If you live in this smaller circle, you have special worth and special dignity that anything outside doesn’t.’

But that’s where our question comes in: why do we draw this inner circle here, at the level of humanity? I mean, we don’t go and protest when someone steps on a cockroach and kills it, but we do when they step on a person’s neck and kills them. Why?

Well, throughout the ages many people have given many different answers.

Some just bluntly assert that human rights exist. But the problem here is, well, by that same reasoning a racist person could say their race is superior to other races and if we ask them ‘why’ they could just bluntly assert: ‘because it is!’. So that’s not a good option.

Others say human rights exists because they matter. But the problem here is, well, matter to who? I mean, Martin Luther King had a dream but not everyone shared that dream. If human rights are anything, they are universal – rights for all humans not just some humans. So not a good option.

And another popular view amongst academics today is the view that human rights exists based upon certain traits like consciousness, language, or physiology which are characteristic of human beings. But the problem here is the problem of circles; where do we draw the lines around these traits? I mean, there is no scholarly consensus as to what human consciousness is, so if I fall asleep, if I get knocked out, if I’m in a coma, does that mean I’m no longer David? Or if my rights are based upon my physicality, then if I’m in a car accident and lose both my legs, am I only 50% David? Clearly not. So, again, not a good option.

And here’s where the Christian alternative really shines above all of the others out there. The Christian view is that the circle of human rights is drawn by no human hand. The Bible says that human beings are made “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:26-27)and that’s where our values, our dignity, our rights come from!

• So we don’t need to find our value: we are have it!
• We don’t need to prove our worth: we are have it!
• We don’t need to earn our dignity: we are have it!

But here’s the thing: which God, right? I mean, it’s not just enough to just know that you’re created in the image of God – we need to know who this God is. And that’s where the good news of Jesus comes in. Jesus is God’s revelation to human, and when you want to know how much something is worth, you look at how much someone is willing to pay for it… When we look at Jesus, we see an infinite God who paid an infinite price – the cost of His own life – so that we might know Him.

So if we’re made in the image of God, and Jesus is God, then you and I need to be a people who reflect the image of Jesus. Look to Him. Follow Him. Love Him. We find ourselves, our rights, our value, when we find God. And we find God in Jesus who found us.