(Note: Life got crazy and I missed a week last week. Will be posting twice next week to make up for it.)
The modern West is obsessed with rights, especially in the US. The right to self-determination. The right to free speech. The right to free practice of religion. The right to bear arms. The American Church in particular has made elevation and preservation of these rights (at least, for ourselves), into items of paramount importance, sometimes even to the neglect of our witness (our love for the right to inflict violence on others in self-defense isn’t exactly a historic Christian principle).
These rights we’ve enshrined here in the U.S. are certainly not bad things. In fact, I believe in them wholeheartedly. We as a society have massively progressed as we’ve increasingly recognized the common rights of man, and the very concept of human rights is intimately tied to the idea of the Imago Dei within man. We each hold inalienable rights because of the Creator whose Image we all hold in common.
However, the more I look to Scripture, the more I think we’ve gotten our wires a tad crossed, not as Americans, but as Christians.
We are not nearly enough concerned with the rights of others, while being far too concerned about the rights of our selves.
What Did Paul Think of Rights?
For Paul, the concept of rights certainly existed. But for the Christian, the task was not to defend one’s own rights, but to respect the rights of others while submitting their own freely as a gift of grace to those around them.
In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul gets into the topic of rights—of owed dues. He goes on a bit of a monologue, challenging the criticisms he’s faced as if he has demanded more than his due.
Utilizing Scripture, he defends his right to material support and more from the Corinthians, but he doesn’t make this argument for the sake of securing that right in practice. Rather, he says it all to the shame of his critics, elaborating,
“If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it too much if we reap material benefits from you? If others have this right to receive benefits from you, don’t we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right; instead, we endure everything so that we will not hinder the gospel of Christ.
“What then is my reward? To preach the gospel and offer it free of charge and not make full use of my rights in the gospel.”
If the Church of the US wishes to better represent the Kingdom of Heaven, we must spend substantially less time making demands on behalf of ourselves and far exceed selfish demands with those made on behalf of others.
I think if we truly internalized Philippians 2:3-4, American Evangelical public advocacy might look quite different.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.”
Paul often receives criticism for not adequately condemning slavery. While I think there is much to be said about the topic—such as reference to Paul’s command to Onesimus to receive his slave Philemon “no longer as a slave, but more than a slave—as a dearly loved brother”—I think one of the simplest responses to the criticism is that Paul didn’t condemn slavery because he expected a posture of servanthood and submission of one’s rights for every Christian.
To Paul, advocacy for one’s own freedoms and rights came secondarily to patient endurance of the violation of one’s rights for the sake of exercising Christ-like love.
(Note: Abolitionists of the 18th and 19th century were certainly exercising such Christ-like love, often risking life, limb, and status to advocate lovingly and sacrificially for the freedoms and rights of others. I’m speaking chiefly to the posture of self—and the Church—here, not advocating for a “rightless” society.)
The Early Church Understood the Assignment
Clement in 1 Clement 55:2 even tells us that there were Christians who literally sold themselves into slavery to purchase the freedom of others, or even to feed the hungry with the proceeds of their own enslavement.
“We know that many among ourselves have delivered themselves to bondage, that they might ransom others. Many have sold themselves to slavery, and receiving the price paid for themselves have fed others.”
While such extreme acts are not demanded of every Christian, our unchanging Christian Faith today retains the same Scripture and ethos of submission of self and one’s own rights that drove these acts.
In Letter 138 from Augustine, we see him responding to a critic who complained, “that the Christian doctrine and preaching were in no way consistent with the duties and rights of citizens.”
Augustine clarifies that there is a purpose (and even material value) to the seeming madness of the abdication of one’s rights that was commonly being practiced by Christians adhering to Matthew 5’s commands such as “turn the other cheek.”
“For these things are done only that a wicked man may be overcome by kindness, or rather that the evil which is in the wicked man may be overcome by good, and that the man may be delivered from the evil— not from any evil that is external and foreign to himself, but from that which is within and is his own…He, therefore, who is overcoming evil by good, submits patiently to the loss of temporal advantages…”
He goes on to elaborate that a society in which such relinquishing of rights was commonplace could not to be argued by any to be bad citizenship outside the interests of common society, ending this section of his letter with “…let them no longer hesitate to confess that this doctrine, if it were obeyed, would be the salvation of the commonwealth.”
Ignatius writes of the importance of such submission of one’s rightful response to opposition in his Epistle to the Ephesians,
”Be meek in response to their wrath, humble in opposition to their boasting: to their blasphemies return your prayers; in contrast to their error, be steadfast in the faith; and for their cruelty, manifest your gentleness. While we take care not to imitate their conduct, let us be found their brethren in all true kindness…”
What If the Church Abdicated Her Rights?
It’s easy to read the Bible individually, but I think we often miss messages we should be receiving corporately. What changes if we receive Paul’s challenge to “consider others as more important than yourselves,” or “look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others” not only as individual commands, but as a command of the Church as one Body?
What would change in how the American Church utilizes its platform and messaging if we prioritized the interests of others over the interests of our own as a collective?
How would our advocacy and public platform look different if we embraced our Christian freedom to submit our rights as Christ did, all in the pursuit of loving as He did, too?’
What if, rather than protesting “persecution,” we instead prioritized display of love for those you may feel are persecuting the Church?
How might things be different if we chose love over rights?
Some things to think about.
Excellent insights, I think about this often.
Paul also very much understood the leveraging of personal rights (he reminds those persecuting him of his rights as a Roman citizen several times to get out of dire situations). What I do find confounding is that, as one so well versed in history and religious law, slavery in human culture must have appeared as a violent twisting of God’s power. The people of Israel experienced brutal slavery under tyrannical human rule in Egypt, and God led them to freedom. Surely, Paul understood THAT manner slavery is evil - but he did not explicitly address it in the way that he addressed so many other sinful structures in society. It remains a strange scriptural topic worth struggling with.
Shoot, I think I "pocket-reported" a comment and it was removed. It was unintentional, dear commenter! 😬