 What are our rights and where do they come from? Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense and today we're going to talk about rights, specifically where they come from and what authorities government has over people with rights. Now, you have probably heard it said that rights come from God. This is a common thing in kind of liberty circles when we start talking about rights and this is absolutely true. So let's talk about that and what that means. So at the top you have God. Here I am going to use Yahweh who is the God of the Bible of course because that's the real God. Yahweh being the creator of all things has authority over all things because obviously he is God in the quite literal sense. He has made all things, he holds all things together by the will of his power. He is God. God in his sovereign authority created man in his own image. That is one of the founding principles of what we believe about man and by here I mean mankind in general, right? God has created man in his image. That means a lot of different things but one of the things it means is that people therefore have inherent dignity and value. When I went to college I majored in philosophy and one of the reasons I majored in philosophy one of the things I was super interested in was ethics. You know why is murder wrong? You know murder is wrong and I know murder is wrong but really why is murder wrong? Well it turns out that the answer is because God made man in his image. Murder is ultimately wrong because you are disgracing God. That is why murder is wrong. You are defaming his image on the earth. That is ultimately why murder is wrong. Now you might say hey listen Dylan you are devaluing people. You only care about God, you don't care about people. That is 100% false. In fact I am imbuing human beings with more value, more dignity and more purpose inherent in their nature than if they were not made in the image of God. Well because all men of all races across all history are made in God's image because mankind is imbued with inherent dignity and value being created by God. Therefore man has rights. Now let's talk about that. Rights only work on a man to man concept. Meaning between one human being and between another human being you have rights that flow both ways. I have inherent value and worth and dignity and rights because I am a human being created in God's image and you have inherent value, rights and dignity because you are a human being created in God's image. Now what exactly these rights are? In other words of course we can debate some right and there is a difference between legal rights like the right to a speedy trial and inherent rights like the right to self-protection. Some rights are universal across all time in human history period like the right to self-protection. Legal rights like the right to a speedy trial, we have enshrined that as a legal right within the United States Constitution and within our culture. And that's of course different because while you have the inherent human value right to self-protection you may or may not have the inherent human self-value right to a speedy trial. And we can debate about that and talk about that but just understand that there is some difference. And again there's lots of debate and discussion about it but there is some kind of difference there. Now one important thing to point out because I think this is where honestly a lot of pastors and people who believe in Christianity get off the bandwagon is they try to say well look human beings don't have rights because you don't have rights between you and God right? That does not exist like God is God of course you don't have rights God can do whatever he wants. To which I would answer yes obviously of course he's God. However that does not mean that I don't have rights between me and another person right? Rights are a thing that works on this plane of existence right here. That's where rights exist. Rights of course do not exist between you and God because again quite literally he is God. He has created all things. He has created time and space and the atoms which hold our beings together. So of course he owns all things and we don't have rights before him obviously. So the other important piece to understanding rights of course is government. Government of course is just a group of people. It's made up of men. It's not just this other entity right? It's not like God created man and God created government. God created men and men form governments. God has also established government by his sovereign will right? If you want to go further into your Bible reading you can look at Romans 13.4 and 1 Peter 2.13. However God has established government with purpose which is to punish evil and reward good. So the question of course is do those rights which exist between man as established by God still exist between man and government? And the answer of course is yes because government is only made up of men and therefore we still have rights before government. This might seem fairly basic however some people don't seem to grasp this concept. One of the principles you need to understand is that all authority is derived authority which means that nothing no one inherently has authority in and of themselves because as we again in our founding documents all men are created equal God has made all man. There is no man that was created greater than another man with more inherent authority. All authority therefore is derived authority from God. God establishes authority in certain institutions like government and like parents. Those are positions of authority that are derived authority from God and there are times when God shares some pieces of his authority with things like government. That does not mean however that any human institution of any kind has ultimate authority. For example if you abuse your children we will take your children away because you have abused your authority. If you're an abusive husband to your wife and kids again we are going to remove them from under your authority because you are abusive and you have betrayed that authority and it's the same thing with governments. When governments have abused their ends it is the right and duty of the people as the Declaration of Independence says to throw off those governments and establish new institutions which respect their rights. In case you haven't figured this out the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were steeped in a biblical world view. I'm not saying they were all Christians but what I'm saying is they assumed this about the world and they had an understanding that yes there was God they might not exactly know who he is or whatever but they assumed all of this about the way the world inherently functions otherwise they could have never landed at this idea of rights. If I haven't made a substantial amount of you mad yet allow me to try again this only works with a biblical world view. The entire idea of rights only functions when you have a biblical world view when you assume all of these things about the world because if you don't if God is out of the picture in this scenario and you don't believe in God or you don't want him in the picture you want to have rights without him or whatever then something else has to fill the power vacuum something else has to fill the place of absolute authority and there are two common answers to that one is self I'm the ultimate authority over my life period there no one else has any kind of authority over me at all period and that's where we can kind of go down the anarchism train which we're not going to get into but it's garbage the second one and the one that I think is a much more common problem in the current culture we live in is we take government and we put that in the ultimate place of authority and once government gets put in that ultimate place of authority like we talked about earlier your rights no longer transfer between you and the government and you can see this working out right you've seen this work out in the past couple years with COVID restrictions across various nations you've seen it work out where rights no longer flow between you and the government because they're in a place of ultimate authority over you their authority is no longer derived but rather it is ultimate and supreme and you have whatever they choose to give you the government has in effect become God and so I think this is probably the great danger of our time when we talk about rights is this is what's happening on a philosophical level but people may not really understand that or get that or care but this is what's happening and we've removed God and we've replaced him with government and we've said this is now our ultimate authority and that's why you've seen the rise of things like censorship and misinformation and people saying how dare you question the science and things like this because all of that has been a part of the government and the government's message and it's become their doctrine and how dare you question the ultimate authority which is now government this is why it's very important to have a biblical world view and a understanding that all authority and rights come from God God made man, government did not and government is only made up of men whose job is to again punish evil, reward good and I would argue preserve your rights I hope this is helpful and I hope this helps you understand what's happening and why people will get so upset when you question the science or the narrative or you spread your misinformation which of course misinformation has just become synonymous with disagreeing with the government because again we've replaced God with government and given government ultimate authority over our lives Do brave deeds and endure