​TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED

 
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Our rights are self-evident, but they are not self-executing.  Rep. Steny Hoyer
 
I have long believed (and written about previously) that God did not create sin in order to prohibit it.  That is to say that stealing, murder, adultery and lying and some 500-plus more prohibitions in the Torah were more an indication of the capacity of humanity to get into trouble of all sorts than of the Creator’s sour view of human nature.  If, left to their own independent devices, people always did the right thing, the Ten Commandments would have been the Three Enhancements (I am the Lord, honor your parents, observe the sabbath) and we probably would have had the Two Books of Moses.
 
As a theistic believer, I also believe in sin.  Sin is that which separates me from God, or from godliness if you prefer.  But you do not have to believe to understand this concept of sin.  Sin is what separates you from goodness, rightness, loving-kindness.  And that’s why both religion and government have laws – to define wrongful behavior and provide a path to rightfulness.
 
Oh, Jack.  How religious of you.
 
But it’s not so farfetched, I contend, to consider the analog between religious law and secular law appropriate.  Sure, there’s the obvious comparison between Thou Shalt Not Murder and laws against homicide.  And you can draw a line from prohibitions against gossip and talebearing to slander, libel, and words you never heard in the Bible.  But it is also correct to consider that something that does not appear at all in Scripture – civil rights – is nonetheless grounded there in ways expressed and protected in our society.
 
There are human hierarchies in the Bible, to be sure.  The Children of Israel (formerly Hebrews, later Jews) enjoy a favored position.  Certain other tribes are protected, others are suspected.  And then there are slaves.  I point out, these are not “enslaved people” as far as the Bible is concerned.  And neither are they indentured servants, as Jews can become in lieu of debt repayment. They are members of certain tribes who can be bought and sold and who, though mandated to receive respectful care by their masters, are not entitled to redress if injured or worse.
 
It is telling that slavery disappeared from Jewish tradition a very long time ago.  That’s not to say no Jews since Biblical times (and into the 19th century) ever were enslavers, but within Jewish law and tradition, slavery became understood as inconsistent with the bedrock belief about the dignity of human existence. How?  I would suggest that that the moral repugnancy of slavery became self-evident.
 
(The prejudice against outsiders did not completely die with the end of slavery.  But that’s another story.)
 
Sometimes religion is ahead of society and sometimes it is the other way around, but I hope that, at least in the United States, they are about at the same place.  As Rep. Hoyer says, our rights are self-evident.  If you understand the meaning of that term, you know that they are not divinely revealed, except perhaps in the broadest possible sense of the words, but that our country was founded on the notion that every person is of equal worth and privilege by definition.  To believe otherwise, to behave otherwise separates you from goodness, rightness, loving-kindness.  It is sinful.
 
Left to our independent devices (because we are, after all, an independent people), we have exercised our capacity to get into trouble of all sorts by affirming self-serving interpretations of those rights at the expense of the same rights of others.  We even formalized the human hierarchies in the document establishing the country where all men are created equal, choosing to define “men” by race, gender, and other designated privileges.
 
But self-evident is self-evident.  So, despite the ignorance of some and the bigotry of others, we have been trying to legislate and educate our way out of sin for more than 250 years.  That’s not as long as it took the Jews to abandon the Biblical permissions of slavery, but it’s long enough.  If being self-evident were enough, the Bill of Rights, which happen to number ten, would have been the Three Suggestions (separate your recyclables, buy low/sell high, don’t buy a car in its first model year).
 
But even the self-evident needs some help.

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