By Dr. Glenn Sunshine|Published Date: August 30, 2010

Why we work

In the last two articles,[1] we looked at creativity and reason as two aspects of the image of God that are essential tools for carrying out our mandate to create culture and to act as His stewards in this world. Before considering other aspects of human nature that reflect God’s image, this article and the next will look at ways that creativity and reason work together in fulfilling the work God gave us in Eden. We begin with a closer look at the command to tend the Garden.

In our culture, work is often seen as something we do because we have to. The Biblical attitude is that work is something we do because of who we are. Work is the fulfillment of our nature as beings made in God’s image. Genesis 2:2 tells us that God worked when He created the world. God’s command to Adam to tend the Garden thus reflects His own nature as one who works.

This same idea is seen in the fourth commandment. As Del Tackett points out in The Truth Project, we think of this as the Sabbath command, but it might be better to think of it as the labor command: “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall do no work …. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Ex. 20:9-11)

We take the Sabbath off because God did, but we also work the other six days because God did. And work is so important that God actually had to tell us to take time off!

There is another important respect in which our work is related to God’s: Adam’s responsibility to tend the Garden was actually a command to continue and complete the work that God began. Our labor, using the resources He has placed in our hands, is an act of sub-creation that is intended to bring out the potential He has placed in the world.

Work and culture
This can be seen in the overall trajectory of Biblical history. It is no accident that the Bible begins in a garden but ends in a city. God’s ultimate goal is not to return us to some sort of pristine state of nature. Rather, we are to develop culture, a word which comes from the Latin cultus, meaning labor or cultivation, and ultimately to build civilization, which comes from the Latin civitas, meaning city.

Put simply, the command to care for and tend the Garden does not mean merely to conserve what is there, but to develop it responsibly as stewards of God’s world toward the advancement of civilization and culture. The principle is articulated forcefully in Jesus’ parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30): the only servant who is punished is the one who simply conserved what he was given and did not try to use it to bring profit to the master. Why should our stewardship of the world be any different?

What this means is that our work to develop culture and civilization is a sacred act to a Christian, to be carried out as part of our mandate as the image of God in this world. All professions that are not inherently sinful can be God-given vocations, callings on our life, to carry out God’s purposes in and for the world. We need to escape from the idea that some jobs are sacred and others merely secular: all work is and should be sacred to the Christian, done in full recognition that what we do in this world matters and can be done for the glory of God. This idea, known as the cultural mandate, is critical for understanding our role as God’s stewards and for fulfilling Jesus’ call to us to be salt and light in the world (Matt. 5:13-16, cf. Matt. 13:33).

The goodness and dignity of work also means that we should apply our reason to the task, so that as good stewards we make the best and most efficient use of the resources available to us. We must always remember that the earth is the Lord’s, not ours, and though we need to develop its resources, we need to do so with care. Our reason and ingenuity are thus to be used in the task of responsibly creating culture and making the best possible long term use of what we have been given.

Economic significance of work
So our work is important for advancing God’s purposes in the world, and is an essential part of what it means to be human. But it also has economic significance. Genesis tells us that the Garden was both a source of food and a place of visual delight (Gen. 2:9). Adam was told to take care of the Garden and to eat the fruit that grew on the trees (Gen. 2:15-16). This is the very beginning of economics: as we tend the Garden, whether for the cultivation of beauty or the production of food, we are to earn our livelihood from our work.

The connection between the call to work and the provision of food points to one of the most basic of our God-given rights: the right to enjoy the fruits of our labor. This concept made its way into our culture in the traditional norm that people should be given an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. It has also been used to support the idea of collectivization, worker ownership of the means of production, and Christian-influenced versions of communism. These and related ideas, however, do not do justice to the full biblical vision of labor, ownership, and rewards.

The right to the fruits of our labor leads directly to the idea of a right to property—in fact, it is hard to have the former without the latter. The Old Testament law presupposes a right to property, or the commandment against theft and the many property laws laid out in the Torah would make no sense at all.

This can be seen in the provisions for land ownership in Israel. A family’s allotment of land was sacrosanct, so much so that when hard times hit, it could only be leased out, never sold. This meant that even the destitute in Israel would never be without hope of a fresh start for the family because their land could never be taken away from them forever. The right to property was absolute.

This law also points to the idea that property rights extend to heirs, and thus that property can be inherited.

How seriously God took this law can be seen in the life of Ahab, arguably the worst king in Israel’s history. He sponsored Baal worship and idolatry, and persecuted those trying to remain faithful to God, even murdering prophets (1 Kings 18:4). For these things he was roundly condemned by Elijah and other prophets throughout his reign.

Significantly, however, the final, most severe judgment against him came after his wife arranged for Naboth to be framed for blasphemy and executed so that Ahab could claim his vineyard (1 Kings 21:1-26).[2] God had already pronounced a death sentence against Ahab for disobeying his express commands (1 Kings 20:42), but the judgment for the crimes against Naboth and his property led to an even more severe and horrifying judgment against Ahab and everyone in his entire household. Ahab had taken not only Naboth’s life, but his family’s place in Israel, so Ahab’s family would itself be completely cut off from Israel.

The right to property continues in the New Testament. The consistent testimony of the Scriptures points in this direction, from the commands against theft to the examples of Peter’s continued ownership of his fishing boat (Jn. 21:3) or the wealthy Christians who opened their homes to the church. The one potential counter-example is Acts 2:44, which says that the believers in Jerusalem “had all things in common.” Many people argue that this means that the church operated as a community of goods without any private property.

But a careful reading of the text shows that this was not the case. The very next verse explains how “having all things in common” worked out in practice: people sold their possessions (not “all” their possessions, or they would then have themselves become among the destitute) to provide for those in need. The church continued to recognize property ownership, as is clear from Peter’s statements to Ananias in Acts 5:4, which treats the idea that Ananias had full rights to his property as obvious and beyond question. So even in a church that “had all things in common,” property rights were seen as inviolable.

In other words, people owned their own property but held it lightly, so that they freely parted with it to meet the needs of the poor in their community. Thus they simultaneously “had all things in common” and maintained private property.

A positive vision of work
Jews and Christians in the ancient world were unique in their perspective on the goodness and dignity of work, which other cultures saw only as drudgery fit for slaves and inferiors. At the same time, the recognition of property as an unalienable right, a right that preceded human government and thus as something that no king or government could arbitrarily revoke, created a stable environment for economic growth. We owe the positive vision of work, the incentives to be productive, and the security from arbitrary confiscation of our property—the hallmarks of traditional Western ideas of economics—to the long term impact of the biblical worldview on society.

For additional insight to this topic, get the book, Secular Work is Full-Time Service, by Larry Peabody. Or read the article, “Toward a Theology of Work,” by Glenn Sunshine.

[1] The articles may be found at http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/call-response/15602-the-image-of-god-and-creativity and http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/call-response/15653-the-image-of-god-and-reason.

[2] Since he was not directly responsible and humbled himself, God held off the judgment until the days of his son (1 Kings 21:27-28).

Occasionally, yes. 

God and country?
An elderly veteran of World War II caused a bit of a stir once in a Sunday School class at my hometown church by stating with great fervor, “For me, God and county are as one!”  On one hand, we understood that part of our old friend’s statement was no doubt simply an expression of his love of our nation.  This was a deeply felt passion of his, as he and his service buddies had fought and bled for us in Europe and the Pacific.   However, many of us also intuitively realized that this was idolatry and not to be imitated.  

After all, God is certainly above country and – to say the least – infinitely more holy.

But many of us have sometimes put politics, concerns about our government, or other public issues above our relationship to God, even as we claim fealty to the Triune God.   Perhaps we found the political issues or campaigns more tangible somehow at that point in our lives.  Or if we wanted a little rationalization for it, we might point to the sometimes overwhelming 24/7 news cycle we have these days, which goes into overdrive during election years.  There are plenty of temptations around for the political junky in post-modern America.

Yet there is one moment when the sacred and the profane or, put more theologically, Luther’s two kingdoms, intersect in a meaningful moment in American life.  That moment is Election Day, which, for all the hype leading up to it, remains the moment when the Christian can make a real investment in the culture surrounding us.   

Avoid politics?
Now, many Christians over the centuries have chosen to eschew political participation in the world. Perhaps they didn’t want to soil their souls with worldly affairs or simply lived under tyrants.  If you can’t really make a difference, as an individual or as a bloc, then why waste your time when you could be doing something else for the kingdom?  Think about it:  were there not good Christians in Tsarist Russia?  They never had much political pull, but they had full Christian lives otherwise. 

But we who live in the United States and other democratic republics do not have that same situation. We have the right, the duty, and more importantly, the opportunity to weigh in on political candidates and issues.  Indeed, to the degree we feel called to further political involvement for the sake of the kingdom, we have the further opportunity, through the First Amendment guarantees of speech, religion, and assembly, to advocate and persuade others to our causes.   How many millions of people over the years, even in the West, have been denied these opportunities to impact their culture with their political voices? 

Render to Caesar
Jesus famously told his listeners in Mark 12:17, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”  (NIV)  Certainly, we should always make the distinction between that which must be God’s and God’s alone in our lives.  Ultimately, as Christians, we realize that everything we have is God’s and that we must be good stewards of all His blessings given to us.  

But in well-considered, sincerely prayed over political activity, it can be said that we are serving both God and Caesar.  On behalf of the Kingdom of God, we are shining the Gospel’s love and truth by expressing our views on the issues of the day, helping others to think through moral issues, even as we also gain new perspectives from others as we engage in the political process.  For our government, we are strengthening its more legitimate aspects even while joining with other citizens to clean up corruption, advocate for basic justice in our laws, and spreading shalom whenever possible.   Who knows how many people might be surprised at our civic commitment, even if they don’t agree with every aspect of our faith?  But by our participation—and hopefully our consistent decency—they may come away with a more respectful view of the Lord we serve.  If not, at least we tried. 

With all the disappointments, fraud, and deceit present in participating in the public square, the fact that many Christians still decide to opt out of politics and civic engagement is no great surprise.  Moreover, not all of the Christians who have given up on government altogether do so to be holier than thou.  Many of them may have tried hard in the political sphere but got tired of hitting their head against the wall in an attempt to change the world or their corner of it. 

We must learn from such experiences and take the advice of a certain non-Christian who was very engaged in the politics of his day.  Aristotle gave great advice for Christians (and everyone else) when it comes to political activism.  “Moderation in all things” was his famous credo.  Yes, there may be a rare situation that we must be prepared to address, the kind of total political and spiritual commitment that drove Dietrich Bonhoeffer to give his life in the fight against the Nazis.

A course of moderation
But unless and until such a moment comes to us, the best way we can serve God and our country without putting the country in God’s place is to seek a moderate course procedurally, one rich with Gospel truth and an encompassing Christian worldview, but one that keeps us focused also on our first priorities to God, family, and other aspects of our community.

Still, when one considers how fortunate we are to participate politically in very meaningful ways that affect our laws and culture, well, what is our excuse for not picking up a newspaper and getting more informed?  Or how about reading up on the Manhattan Declaration to see what so many other Christians are concerned about in terms of religious freedom, pro-life concerns, and the defense of traditional marriage.  Unless God has something more important for us to do on a given evening at church or with our neighbors, attendance at a political meeting now and then might be very informative—and exactly what He wants us to do.  You never know with this God of ours. 

That’s different from being a political junky. That’s simply exercising good citizenship in both kingdoms. 

How involved to get in a given political matter is a question to be posed in earnest prayer.  God may only require that you vote one year, to help express His views at the ballot box.  But you never know, He may ask for more leadership of you the next election year.  Our God has a long history of tapping the unsuspecting person!  Just ask Moses, Paul, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Vaclav Havel, each of whom was given the job to lead people out of bondage.  

In Havel’s case, the imprisoned playwright turned Czech President soon discovered that he would have to use his political position to advance very practical, spiritual purposes.  From the beginning of his first term, he urged his countrymen and women to re-equip themselves with the moral muscles that had atrophied during their country’s long communist rule.  They had lost their way—and now, with God’s help, they would need to find the way back to real internal freedom again by developing character again. 

Sound familiar?  Are the Czechs of Havel’s time that much different than Americans today? 

Havel’s inspiring story of breaking the communist grip on his country is just one example of where one can serve both God and neighbor at the same time through prayerful political action.  In such moments, one can be both a faithful saint and a purposeful patriot concurrently.  

Each of us ought to consider where we might find moments like these in our times. 

For more insight to this question, get the book, God and Government, by Charles Colson, from our online store. Or read the article, “Mudslinging and Dirty Politics,” by Charles Colson.

By Robert K. Johnston and Catherine Barsotti|Published Date: August 17, 2010

A movie for your Netflix queue
 

“The men and women who are going to be most valuable to us in spiritual formation-by-resurrection are most likely going to be people at the edge of respectability: the poor, minorities, the suffering, the rejected, poets and children.” 

-          Eugene H. Peterson, Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life

Edge of respectability?
If Chuck Colson were to have written the above reflection, he might have added “prisoners.” Peterson’s point is a good one – one I suspect that initially drew many of you to The Colson Center, and one that is worthy of our continuing reflection. It brings to mind the words of Jesus in Matthew 25: “…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40) But it also radicalizes the connection. It is not just that we can be God’s agent as we show God’s love to others on the margin; it is also that such persons are also spiritually valuable to us. The benefits of such relationships, that is, are two-way.

I suspect that most readers would be hard pressed to remember much of anything that happened to them during the 2007 Advent season. But for the two of us, two events sit vividly in our memories even after almost three years, and both concern persons “on the edge of respectability.”

A Christmas pageant
One of these came at the ever-so-familiar Christmas Eve service at our church. We had many of our little ones dressed up as animals, shepherds, kings—the usual suspects in a Christmas pageant.  As many of them made their grand entry, a voice behind us seemed to be especially excited as she explained the characters to the person next to her. Could this have been a proud young mother sharing her enthusiasm with another mother?

No, in fact, it was an older woman in our congregation who has for years given her creativity and leadership to our church in the area of the arts and worship. She was like a kid again, explaining the pageant to her husband, who at one time was a key actor in all our church’s dramatic presentations. Now Gene, not so advanced in years, is living with the effects of a stroke.  Together they were thoroughly enjoying the children’s story as if it were the first time they had ever seen it come to life.

But this was not the end of the pageant dynamics surrounding us. For suddenly, right near our seats, the angels bounded into view.  They were lovely—their flowing white dresses, their feathery wings, their glittering halos. But one little angel was feeling a bit uncomfortable in her heavenly attire, so she began to disrobe right there in the midst of the angelic choir. This particular angel’s mom was sitting right in front of us. She leaned back and impishly whispered to us, “We might have our first nude angel!”  If there are any real angels, nude or otherwise, in our congregation, Molly is probably one of them. And Molly has Down’s syndrome.

That night those dear ones in our congregation made us reflect anew on an earlier experience we had had just days before.

One night after grading term papers we headed to the movies. We went to our neighborhood theater. We really hadn’t thought about what movie we wanted to see, we just showed up and went to the one that was about to begin—Lars and the Real Girl.  It is a small, low-budget Canadian film. There are no big Hollywood stars, no car chases, guns or sex. Rather, it is a quiet study of illness, treatment through caring therapy, and community.

A soul in distress
So, you are asking yourself, “Who would go see such a film?” Now, don’t stop reading, as this film is hilariously funny, while being poignantly transparent—equal parts comedy and pathos. The premise is simple: a pathologically shy-- to the point of fearing human touch--but dear young man named Lars Lindstrom (Ryan Gosling is phenomenal), whose friends and family try to encourage him to “get out more,” buys a life-size sex doll on the Internet and truly falls in love with it, or rather her. He endows the anatomically correct doll with a colorful personality—her name is Bianca and she‘s a paraplegic (Lars takes her everywhere in a wheelchair) missionary from a Brazilian-Danish family. In one scene Lars sings Nat “King” Cole’s classic song “L-O-V-E” to Bianca with all the joy of a love that is true. And of course their love is chaste--she sleeps in his brother’s home, not his.

As viewers we found ourselves moving from uncontrollable laughter (ok, we’ll go along with the gag) to gentle tears (oh, it’s not a gag). And we weren’t the only ones. Lars’ brother (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer), the town doctor (Patricia Clarkson), members of the local Lutheran church, and finally the whole of the small Minnesota town where they live end up going along with Lars too.  They too find themselves a part of what is not only raucously ludicrous, but quietly momentous. 

And as the town journeys with Lars, hoping that he will be healed of his emotional problems, they are changed. They come to realize that Lars is not a “nut-case,” but rather a soul in distress, one of God’s children. Because Bianca is real to Lars, she becomes real to others. Lar’s love humanizes Bianca and through her, a whole community. Soon Bianca is treated with the same respect and love that they hold for Lars. She is taken to the local women’s book club, invited to join the volunteers at the hospital, help out at church, etc. Soon her “dance card” is full and we see kindness in full bloom!

Miracle and morality
In the film, the local church is at the forefront of Lar’s healing. His pastor preaches a sermon on the church’s “only one law”—“love one another.” He ends by proclaiming that “love is God in action.” And this is exactly what this small congregation experiences. As they offer Lars their healing love, they in turn experience God’s love as well. In a time and space filled with cynical manipulation, Lars and the Real Girl shows us a picture of lived-religion. It is like the medieval miracle and morality plays.

These portrayals of Biblical stories and ethical tales were staples of village life in pre-literate Europe and the Middle East. Believers and non-believers alike saw Biblical parable and miraculous events reenacted before their very eyes by traveling minstrels and actors. These plays spread the teachings of the Bible and Gospels far and wide, often serving as sparks or catalysts for experiences of religious and spiritual conversion.

 Lars and the Real Girl (2007) functioned similarly for us, helping us to see ever more clearly what we as the body of Christ are called to be. For in our midst there are Lars, Gene, Molly, and others, calling us to be a community that extends the loving arms of God.

For more insight to this subject, get the book, Compassion, Justice, and Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor, by Robert D. Lupton, from our online store. Or read the article, “The Work of Ministry: Equipping for Worldview Living,” by Robert Lynn.

Scripture over and over again recognizes that God is rational. We see this first in God’s work of creation. In Genesis, we are told that God looked at what He has made and assessed it as “good” (Gen. 1:10, 12, etc.), “not good” (Gen. 2:18), or “very good” (Gen. 1:31). The Scriptures frequently extol God’s wisdom, which can be defined as the practical application of divine knowledge. Proverbs tells us that God created the world through wisdom (e.g. Prov. 3:19-20), and the Psalms celebrate God’s wisdom displayed in creation (e.g. Ps. 104:24).

The supreme example in Scripture of God’s rationality is found in John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word (Gk. logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”

By Dr. Robert K. Johnston|Published Date: August 05, 2010

What do they have in common?

Prayer and athletics?
Tanya Luhrmann, who was involved with the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Chicago, has written a provocative article with a mouthful of a title: “The Absorption Hypthesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity”[i]

A trained anthropologist now teaching at Stanford University, Luhrmann began her investigation about how we might hear God by asking the question, could it be that “hearing God speak and having other vivid, unusual spiritual experiences that seem like unambiguous evidence of divine presence might be, in some respects, like becoming a skilled athlete”?

That is, is prayer like athletics? Isn’t training, or practice, necessary for both? And what about natural giftedness, or to use her term, “proclivity”, that is “a talent for and willingness to respond to practice”? Or again, what about the understandings, or cognitions, that we bring to the experience?

Certainly it mattered in the World Cup outcome that soccer is understood as the national sport of Spain. In an analogous way, does our experience of God also depend on understandings of God that we hold (that is, our theologies)?

It turns out, not altogether surprisingly, that the answer in all three instances is “Yes.” The analogy with sports works. When reflecting on our own experience of God, it is probably the case that we can identify how our theological interpretations, our natural proclivities, and our practices all shape how we continue to experienced the God we love and who continually reveals himself to us.

Experience and imagination in prayer
Luhrmann focuses her analysis particularly on the practice of prayer, on how evangelicals speak personally to God, on what is often labeled “conversational prayer.” Most evangelical Christians have, or desire to have, intimate conversation with God. And this involves both our private and public prayers.

In Luhrmann’s context at the Vineyard Fellowship, for example, their worship services started with 30 minutes of prayerful singing and at the end of the service “prayer teams” were at the front to pray with congregants. As Luhrmann documents, some in her church were also recognized as especially gifted in prayer. It was obvious to all in that church that some members were special “prayer warriors.” (I remember as a boy in my own church, Olie Roth was known as a woman of prayer. So was my mother. Even though my father was equally committed to Christ and a spiritual leader in the church, his prayer life was not something people noted about him.)

The question Luhrmann raised in her article was this: why are some Christians particularly skilled, or comfortable with, or “effective” in their prayer?

Certainly part of the answer has to do with the fact that some had more experiential learning in conversing with God. Prayer was a skill they had developed. And though all Christians pray, some within the fellowship had a theology that emphasized the value of prayer more than others. This also proved significant. But it was in the area of giftedness that Luhrmann chose to focus her attention.

With those who experienced God most often in their prayers, there was discovered to be a high correlation with a heightened imagination, a willingness to be “absorbed.” Luhrmann gave the Vineyard participants a questionnaire with 34 items on it that tapped a person’s willingness to enter fully into imaginative experiences in nature and music (for example, have you been deeply moved by a sunset? Or, have you sometimes felt the presence of someone not physically there? Or when you listen to organ music, do you sometimes feel lifted into the air?)

Interestingly, those who said they did not experience God in a vivid way in their prayers scored low on this inventory, and the woman in the group who was identified by everyone as the “best” example of a prayer warrior responded positively on 33 of the 34 questions! Her comment after taking the inventory was, “The man who created this scale lived inside my head.” The correlation overall was high between those who had a naturally rich imaginative life and those who had a rich prayer life. The use of one’s imagination, that is, proved a crucial component in one’s ability to hear God (not to imagine “a make-believe God,” but to actually experience God). Those willing to use their imagination to encounter God, to be absorbed by God, to revel in God’s presence, were also those who had a richer conversation with God.

Hearing God’s voice in film
The same seems to be true in our movie going. Those persons with a more active and practiced imagination, those more willing to be absorbed in their moving watching, to revel in the story on the big screen – seem to have a greater proclivity to see that God might even be present to them in and through the stories that they see, hear, and feel on the screen. They are more likely to experience God at the movies. In the classes which I teach at Fuller, this group of Christians is approximately one third of the students taking my classes.

But such activity – finding film to be spiritually engaging – also takes practice. Some see so few movies that their experiential learning is meager. Viewers can develop their skill in hearing the Spirit of God speak through the images, words, and sounds at the Cineplex. Many of my students who take the theology and film class reflect that after taking the class, they will “never look at movies the same way again.” They have been provided skills for film viewing and listening that enable them to experience a movie’s spiritual power and meaning in new ways. It is a skill to know when one is “reading into” a movie something not there, and when one is “taking from” a movie what the film invites.

And lastly, how one thinks about how God reveals himself to us also matters. In Christian theology, the church has always spoken not only of special revelation, but of general revelation. But how God’s revelation outside the church is understood differs within the Christian community. Is God’s revelation through creation, conscience, and creativity but a trace, something largely unnecessary for the Christian given our relationship with Jesus Christ? Is it hopelessly clouded and compromised by sin? If so, then film-going will remain a theologically questionable activity, at least with regard to the possibility of finding God there.

Or is art, despite our sin, a continuing source of God’s gracious, revealing Presence – a Presence that can even point out our theological mistakes, affirm and strengthen our right understandings, and challenge our blind spots? Christians are increasingly recognizing the importance of God’s still small voice in all aspects of life. As they do, movie watching will continue to grow as an arena for hearing God speak.

For more insight to this topic, get Robert’s book, Reframing Theology and Film, from our online bookstore. Or read the article, “Hearing the ‘Music of the Spheres’” by Steve Beard.

[i] Co-written with Howard Nusbaum, and Ronald Thisted, American Anthropologist 112, issue 1 (2010): 66-78.

By Billy Atwell|Published Date: August 04, 2010

Success, silkworms and moral equivalency (2)

Last week Billy Atwell explained how animal rights’ activists cloud the difference between human beings and other creatures and, in the process, come dangerously close to favoring the wellbeing and flourishing of the latter over that of the former.

Where do the “rights” end?
When animals are elevated to the status of right-bearing, they become the moral equivalent of people, and if people and animals are equal, we have no rights above them.  But why do animal rights groups like PETA give such credit to animals?  What is the factor that distinguishes a non-moral being, which deserves no inherent rights, from moral ones, which do possess rights? 

Orthodoxy Today’s Ancient Faith Radio recently featured discussion of this issue. Wesley J. Smith, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and human exceptionalism advocate, argues these groups fundamentally believe the ability to feel pain and have cognitive capacity gives one rights.  As he mentions, this means that owning cattle is the moral equivalent to slavery and cattle driving is the moral equivalent of human trafficking, since animals and people alike have these capabilities.  In fact, Ingrid Newkirk, Cofounder and President of PETA, said, “The question is not, Can they [animals] reason? Nor, Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?”

This is a terrifying worldview.  Newkirk believes that because humans eat meat, own pets, and do things against the will of an animal (like bathing a collie), we are committing evil at the same level as if it were done to humans.  

Do not be fooled into thinking that cognitive capacity and the ability to feel pain are the only prerequisites for rights.  In the case of silkworms, they have no cognitive capacity and are unlikely to feel pain, and yet many still fight for their inherent rights equal to that of humans.  After they are done expressing their anti-human exceptionalism, I wonder why they would believe we have the moral capacity or duty to care for our equals (silkworms, flies, cows, etc) in the first place.  Like the lion on the television, if we are merely animals, than we act out of natural, indiscriminate instinct.  Plainly put: this worldview is self-contradictory.

Treated better than babies
One should not be surprised that the deconstruction of human value and the inflation of animal rights lead to activists speaking of animals in the same way that pro-lifers speak of children.  Newkirk told the Washingtonian magazine, “There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.” 

So what do moral beings like us do when a right-bearing agent is being mistreated?  We work for justice and praise any group that works toward that end.  Pete Letheby, associate editor for The Independent, wrote in 2004, “PETA also does something else that hardly any other group does with any regularity: It stands up for those that can’t speak for themselves.  It sticks its neck out.  It takes chances.  It displays a great deal of mettle for a cause it profoundly believes in.”

Does this sound strangely familiar?  PETA protests sericulture, which boils silkworms at virtually an embryonic stage, but where do they stand on the dismembering of a human embryo or fetus?  If a human fetus is an animal, shouldn’t PETA also decry abortion?  And yet they stay silent on the issue when it is they who claim we are nothing but animals.  Why does PETA discriminate against humans when it comes to bestowing rights?

A “Catechismlic” conclusion
Many of us find it easy to pass these radical groups off as liberal lunatics that could not hold a consistent or rational thought if they had to.  The problem with taking them so lightly is that they are helping shape the discussion that will determine the important question of “what gives something rights?”  So far they are surprisingly successful in their efforts.  They claim we should care for animals, not out of our natural compassion, but because they hold rights equal to that of humans (and sometimes higher than that of humans).  This is a dangerous debate to risk losing. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks to the issue animal dignity and worth because animals should inherently be afforded a certain amount of value and love.  The Catechism says we must have a “religious respect for the integrity of creation” and owe them kindness out of respect for God having created them.  This says that treating animals carefully and lovingly is actually part of Christian duty.  Likewise, animals should never suffer or die needlessly; but we must understand that this is a far cry from equality with humans.

Keeping our emotions and righteous respect for animals in check, the Catechism also says, “It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should be as a priority go to the relief of human misery.  One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.” 

Groups such as PETA do some good work for the wrong reason, while many of their efforts are misguided and unethical.  Rather than promote animal welfare, they promote animal rights, which is where they become disillusioned and self-contradictory.  In attributing rights to animals they devalue humans and misplace the role of animals in culture. 

When humans and animals are treated alike, we need not be surprised when more people like Terri Shiavo are “put down” like animals, or when more babies are aborted in the name of convenience or population control.  If America does not pick its head out of the sand on recognizing humans as having distinct and inalienable rights, then we will be sure to lose them.

For more insight to this question, get the book, Is God a Vegetarian? Christianity, Vegetarianism, and Animal Rights, by Richard Alan Young and Carole J. Adams, at our online store. Or read the article, “Animal Rights, Human Rights,” by Thomas S. Derr.