I’m convinced that people - including Christians - have no idea what ‘rights’ are. As a culture, we whine when others step on our rights, and to make up for it, we invent new ones. We now have abortion rights, homosexual rights, animal rights, children’s rights, ‘differently-abled’ rights.
Baloney.
As a Christian, you have one right and one right only: the right to live as God directs. That is your ‘kingdom right.’ Everything else is a right granted by government, and can be taken away at a whim. We are to work to spread the Gospel and to relieve suffering. If we’re doing that, we won’t have time to lobby for new and creative rights.
Paul could have whined about his rights:
Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast. For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!
But whatever anyone else dares to boast of—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.
Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.
And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? (
2 Cor 11:18-29, ESV
)
He was a Roman citizen and a Pharisee, so he could easily have asserted his ‘rights,’ but his concern was for the Gospel and for the young churches.
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