How Free Is Free?

Ecclesiastes 1: 15

If you were born in the United States, you are as 'free' as a human being can be.

Considering the rest of the world and world history, the U.S. citizen has been empowered by rights clarified and written down.

A right isn't a right because it is written down, but rather because it has been invoked and acknowledged by others.

With rights come responsibility.

When responsibility wanes, rights are easily trampled or forgotten or obscured.

The effort to identify rights is the effort in either ultimately acknowledging, or denying, an Almighty God.

How so?

The very idea that a human being has a right to live or exist is based on the premise that human beings have been created / made in God's image and likeness.

The acknowledgement that the human being is not like an animal although some physical characteristics are shared with the animal.

If this premise is denied, then a human being can be argued to be no more important as a snail or a flea or a bacteria... or any animal that is today hunted, or eaten, or caged in a zoo.

Snails, fleas, and bacteria are typically exterminated and have no 'rights' granted to them.

You can purchase devices to exterminate snails, fleas, and bacteria.

Humans have largely agreed (acknowledged) that these three things are less than desirable, or that a human being has a 'right' (an allowance) to kill them if the human so desires.

Consider the relationship between the marketplace and a human's right.

If it was illegal to purchase things that kill snails, fleas, and bacteria, then the tools used for extermination would be illegal (or not allowed).

The rise of animal rights in certain countries has followed the example of human rights and how human perceptions eventually affect popular ideas and the marketplace.

There was a time in the United States when buying and selling human beings was 'legal' (allowed by law).

Slavery is an ancient practice, typically an outcome of war or the evidence that one people lost to another.

There came a time when the consciousness of such a practice overcame the profit motive.

In the aftermath of World War Two, the losing nations did not become slaves to the victorious nations.

The loss was evidenced by a debt attached to the business mechanisms in the losing nations.

One could argue that some of the places may have realized an increase in human rights where less previously existed.

Although there arguably exists a financial reality between any two individuals, the outright ownership of one person by another has been outlawed in the U.S. and in most parts of the world.

Unfortunately, this consciousness has yet to fill the entire world.

Or more clearly stated; human rights have yet to change the laws of all men found throughout the world.

One thing is the law, obedience to the law is something else.

There are other forms of slavery, yet these are more subtle and slide along a scale of human perception.

There is an argument that a slavery to depravity still exists in the world, and is largely unseen and actually embraced by many people.

This kind of slavery brings in the moral argument.

For one side of the argument, morality is subjective and undefinable.

Again, the deniability of an Almighty God; the core of humanity's concept of itself and the world.

The foundation of the laws of mankind are based upon the premise that an Almighty God exists, and both blesses obedience and condemns disobedience.

This is the historical context and reality from which all surviving peoples of the world have built their governments.

Where the idea of God has been rebuffed, a philosophy still reminiscent of God is defined.

In place is an ideal that laws are a product of man's consciousness of himself and his fellow man.

To break these laws is to violate a sacred trust between human beings and an order that is evident throughout the world.

Laws are not automatically obeyed despite their clarity, acknowledgement and adherence by most people.

It is an issue of consciousness and conscienceless.

If you are conscious (awake and aware of who you are), then you are likely to have a vibrant conscience regarding what is right and wrong, and likely have a desire to do what is right.

If you are conscienceless (at odds with who you are), then you are likely to have a conscious based on relative excuses to allow yourself certain choices in life regardless of God's law.

If the former, you may be apt to recognize where your rights end and God's law always is.

If the latter, you may be apt to deny God's law for the sake of the rights people have made up for themselves that contradict God's law.

Historically, the two oppositions have swayed back and forth.

How so?

The hypocrisy is evident in almost all governments of the world.

For example, in the United States, an individual does not have the right to take the life of another human being... unless under specific scenarios.

Contradiction.

One either has a right or does not.

A law either allows or restricts all human beings from certain actions.

However, caveats and clauses are pervasive in man's law.

In special cases, or certain scenarios, a person is 'free' (or allowed) to kill another person.

Another sign of hypocrisy is the state's right to extinguish life; capital punishment.

The sliding scale depends on popular sentiment, which is yet another relative measure that attempts to deny an Almighty God.

It has become more popular in certain places on earth to move away from God's law in favor for man's law or what men perceive as an 'evolution' of humanity.

What is argued as mankind becoming more 'free' and 'mature' is actually a retrograde into depravity and moral ignorance.

This retrograde has been argued as 'rights' while the full extent of such disobedience has yet to be fully measured and realized on a larger scale... but it will be made evidently clear soon enough.

Why?

Because God's law is intrinsically tied to nature and the 'laws of nature' that men have coined to perceive.

God created man in His own image and likeness, while the very fabric God used to create man is bound to the elements of this world.

This should explain why mankind slides in their understanding and obedience to what is obvious and to what is opined as better than God's law.

So when finding divine qualities in humanity, so also is found earthly qualities in humanity.

This is why in our very selves we find contradiction and hypocrisy... and thus why the need for laws and rights to be written down and obeyed.