There are no Rights without Responsibility

“No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility.”  Gerald W. Johnson

  Recently, I saw a video clip of a young man arguing with a police officer that the officer didn’t have the “right” to pull him over because the law didn’t make a provision for someone being detained for speeding. In spite of his protests, the clip ended with the officer breaking the car window and pulling the young man out of the vehicle. Somehow I doubt his “right” to not be pulled over, ticketed or arrested will hold up in a court of law.

  Various rights are continually proclaimed in today’s culture. If you listed all the “rights” that are part of the current cultural conversation, you’d fill a page. Yet, it’s very noteworthy that one is hard pressed to find an example of someone demanding their rights in Scripture. While there are a few incidents, they’re rare. The consistent focus of the Bible is on a word virtually unknown today and more rarely seen in action – responsibility.

  The Bible begins with responsibility. Almost as soon as they’d taken their first breath, Adam and Eve are given responsibility: “And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:28). “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’” (Genesis 2:16-17).

  As our world becomes more secular, the emphasis has inverted so that it’s now on rights, yet rarely on responsibility. But are rights without responsibility even possible? What’s been eradicated is the fact that rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin. One can’t have one without the other. Every right has a necessary corresponding responsibility.

  A Biblical worldview begins with responsibility preceding rights, or at least on a parallel with rights. It never has rights without responsibility. While a secularized culture seeks to have rights without responsibility, it ultimately crashes against its own illogical impossibility. As a result, it continually creates more laws to somehow seek to curb that absurd mindset. Rights without responsibility is unsustainable.

  A blood drenched historical illustration of this is the French Revolution. Motivated by the atheistic philosophies of Rousseau, Voltaire and others, the French Revolution sought to emancipate people from all authority, particularly that of government and the church. It resulted in a breaking away from the church and questioning of the “Ancien Regime” which was the system France adhered to prior to the revolution and had resulted in the monarchy having absolute power. Tragically, both the church and government had abused their rights, so the prevailing sentiment was that it was better to dispense with them altogether. Their perverse view of church and state rights without responsibility were a catalyst that birthed the French Revolution. French royalty and the church in France erroneously believed that they had only rights, yet little or no responsibility.  

  But who created both government and the church? God. As the Creator, who gives government and the church authority and power? God. Yet, in France both forgot that they were responsible to God. Personally, I believe that God used the French Revolution to hold them accountable.

  Tragically, Robespierre and his revolutionaries didn’t learn from those errors. Even though one of the Revolution’s first documents was The Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Revolution unleashed a Reign of Terror, during which suspected enemies of the Revolution were guillotined by the thousands – the chaotic outcome of rights without responsibility.

  America continually repeats this same failed pattern of rights without responsibility. Rights absent of responsibility always have a tragic end. Because there are so many examples of this, we could easily be overwhelmed with illustrations, so let me touch on just one.

  Please understand, because this rights without responsibility mindset is so deeply rooted in our culture, solutions aren’t simple, nor is it easy to dismantle. The cure will be painful, costly and require great wisdom. This tragedy of irresponsibility and dependence took decades to devolve and will take time to solve. A “quick fix” approach will be disastrous.  

  The conventional wisdom is that it is inhumane to withhold food to motivate the indolent to work. What Scripture teaches then is a radical and very politically incorrect, social behavior model:  “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies” (2 Thessalonians 3:10-11). Essentially, the Bible is in total agreement with a sign often seen: “Will work for food.”

  If you refuse to work, the Bible teaches hunger is the natural outcome. An empty stomach is a cure for sloth. If you won’t be responsible and work, you don’t have the right to food, housing, medical care of a litany of other rights we dole out to the irresponsible in the “Great Society.” Dr. Thomas Sowell powerful writes that the Welfare State is more enslaving than slavery ever was. Today 1^st century indolent “busybodies” would be a blessing in our free lunch world.

  Please understand, because God is merciful and gracious, there’s provision made for those unable to work, like children, the disabled or elderly. The Bible though is the original instigator of “tough love” and the application of this one biblical truth would revolutionize our world.

  Sadly, this mindset of rights without responsibility has contaminated many Christians. Believers who are aghast at those who live on the dole in the public arena are inconsistent when it comes to their own adult children. They allow them to live at home with little or no responsibility. Many are addicts (drugs, alcohol, porn, video gaming) but the thought of putting them on the street horrifies their parents. Sometimes the lazy adult child will use grandchildren as pawns to manipulate their parents and protect their irresponsible lifestyle. If their parents threaten them with eviction, they’ll accuse their parent/s of cruelty, rather than owning up to the fact that their own choices – laziness and a lack of initiative – are the real problem. They don’t want to take any responsibility for their mess.

  Another common rights without responsibility is found in the mindset of many Christians when it comes to their church family. They see the church as a type of spiritual soup kitchen where they can get a free meal, yet never invest time or money. They’re offended if there’s any suggestion that they might have some responsibility. In their unbiblical reasoning, the church should just be thankful that they come and take up space. They’ll even complain if the soup is too hot, the line is too long, someone sat in their seat, or there’s not enough variety. It’s a Christian welfare mentality. The bottom line is that the thinking that we often abhor in the public arena frequently contaminates our marriages, families and our churches. We have many God-given rights but God places responsibility first, and so must we. 

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