There are at least two types of “equality.” The first refers to equality before the law. The other is to use the law to force economic and social equality. This type of equality attempts to level society to force equal outcomes for everyone’s good. Orwell’s Animal Farm explains it best as there are always those at the top who define equality who become more equal than others. In the end, the incentive to improve and advance is destroyed since all efforts are judged in the same way. A certain amount of social and economic equality is attained but at the expense of nearly everything else. Think Cuba.
But any type of ethical morality as it relates to equality one must assume the existence of the Creator. Morality is not innate in our DNA. There is no moral code written in our genes. Objective morality is non-material, and therefore cannot logically exist in a materialist world. Before Darwin, the Declaration of Independence positioned the source of rights:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
On an episode of The Last Word, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell “spent the first segment of his show marking the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa, Oklahoma race riots by claiming Republicans do not believe all Americans are created equal.” Here’s what he said:
Republicans do not believe that everyone is created equal. That is why Republican legislators believe they can restrict black Americans’ right to vote. Because Republicans do not believe that all voters are created equal. Republicans believe that Republican voters are better people than Democratic voters.
Democrats don’t have a basis to claim that anyone is equal to anyone else except to be equally animated bags of meat and bones. Murdering blacks in Tulsa 100 years ago is only a moral tragedy if black and white people are under God’s government. Given the operating assumptions of the Darwinian worldview, we are not much more than highly evolved cattle. This is hard for most people to grasp since we live in a world once shaped by the Christian worldview that is now officially denounced. “If you consider the implications of Darwinism,” atheist and evolutionist Daniel C. Dennett claims, “you are faced with a cold new world, stripped of souls and angels. Darwin’s universal acid eats up everything in its path: Human life and intelligence and free will originated from the random interactions of mindless forces. The creationists are right to fear ‘this view of life’ — it leaves nothing of God or Satan in its wake.”[1]
Confusion over human rights as they relate to judicial pronouncements arises from moral and intellectual relativism. If it is assumed that no real absolute law exists, then it follows that an individual’s rights must be equally relative. The reason there is a debate over what is right (what is ethical or moral) continues is that too often few can account for what is ultimately right — the grand “who says and by what standard?” Many maintain that to define what is “right” is to speak in absolute terms, which does not fit the evolving nature of ethics based on evolutionary assumptions. As long as moral relativism prevails, human rights always will be elusive and ever-changing.
When a nation moves away from the absolutes of God’s law we can expect an immediate substitute to fill the void. The “human rights” idea has become the alternative to biblical law; it now forms the basis and foundation for all spheres of life. The human rights theory that makes man its ultimate standard has shifting sand as its foundation, and that’s the way its proponents like it and want it. T. Robert Ingram comments:
The distortion in human rights comes from assigning lawmaking power to men as men, rather than seeing it as that by which God rules all things consummately. The difference is total. Every truly lawful right becomes twisted and its source a mysterious, unknown and impossible “state of nature” in which there was no law, and were no laws. The former implies stability, righteousness and an unchanging nature; the latter speaks of nothing but change, indetermination and fickleness.[2]
The modern doctrine of human rights answers to no one but evolved man. Man, therefore, cannot be held responsible to anyone greater than himself. Responsibility is denied because there is no one to whom responsibility must be shown. Where there is no responsibility there is no accountability. The prevailing “law” is that every person does what is right in his or her own eyes (Judges 17:6). Instead of working for justice (defined according to the specifics of God’s Law), the disgruntled demand individual or class rights based upon their distorted views of justice. The most powerful, those who speak the loudest and carry the most political clout, are the ones who gain the greatest number of rights, usually for themselves and at the expense of others. Human rights become a declaration of self-law. Responsibility and answerability are abandoned for self-declaration. Here’s how R.J. Rushdoony put it:
To be responsible means literally to be answerable. Since it is God who gives the law, it means we are answerable to Him for what we do ourselves and to our fellow men, to our neighbor. Responsibility is a religious, a theological idea. Without the God of Scripture, the idea of responsibility breaks down. When every man becomes his own god, then man is not responsible, because a god answers to no one and to nothing. All things answer to a god.[3]
To sum up, if there is no God, then there are no rights or responsibilities. Survival of the fittest prevails.
It is easy to understand why the human rights idea came into popularity in Christendom. It is simply that men living in Christendom enjoyed that “blessed liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” to such an extent and over so many centuries that they found it easy to take for granted. Liberty, instead of being recognized as the gift of Christ and the reward of Christian justice, was something that would easily be seen as an end in itself. It was easy to confuse logical origins. The common law punishes any dishonest violation of each man’s person or his goods and so it is easy to understand a condition in which each may be said to enjoy the right to life, liberty and property.[4]
Those who are working for a worldview reset have no basis on which to build their new edifice. Those who will ascend to the positions of power will cobble together a series of demands based on human autonomy. Everything will be redefined, and anyone who opposes the reset will be canceled, delegitimized, and in the worst-case scenario, eliminated. It’s happened before in the great purges of history: French Revolution, Russian Revolution, the Holocaust, and Communist China’s Great Leap Forward. It’s getting more difficult to denounce these atrocities because we’ve lost the moral center of the Christian worldview. Don’t say it can’t happen here, because most likely those in France, Russia, Germany, and China said the same thing.
God and Government
With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity.
Author: Gary DeMar
Gary—who served as President of American Vision for thirty-five years—is a graduate of Western Michigan University (1973) and earned his M.Div. at Reformed Theological Seminary in 1979. Author of countless essays, news articles, and more than 27 book titles, he has been featured by nearly every major news media outlet. Gary also has hosted The Gary DeMar Show, History Unwrapped, and the Gary DeMar’s Vantage Point Webshow and is a regular contributor to AmericanVision.org. Gary has lived in the Atlanta area since 1979 with his wife, Carol. They have two married sons and are enjoying being grandparents. Gary and Carol are members of Midway Presbyterian Church (PCA).
