Dear Friends

Human Rights or Human Wrongs?

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has recently invited the public to nominate bad laws which should be abolished (www.yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk)
I have one - what about the ‘Human Rights’ Bill? I have long had problems with it. Far from protecting the vulnerable it seems to be frequently twisted by clever lawyers to protect the perpetrators of abuse and crime rather than the victims. Or else it’s just made to look plain silly; like the man who fell 4 metres out of a tree and broke his ankle because he sawed through the branch his ladder was leaning on. But he was still able to claim £1,000 compensation from the owners of the tree by claiming his human rights had been breached because a proper risk assessment had not been carried out.
Even the very the concept of such a thing as ‘humans rights’ is at loggerheads with the biblical concept of the world and our fallen human state. The wrong way to look at life is to believe that I am entitled to good things and that I somehow deserve them. We don’t deserve anything. We are not owed anything. It is akin to the victim in the story of the Good Samaritan demanding that he is entitled to be rescued, looked after and compensated. And furthermore, if all his demands are not met, or somehow don’t come up to scratch, he can claim his human rights to get them.
If a Christian asks himself, what are my rights, what do I deserve? The only appropriate answer is this: I am a sinner, and I fully deserve God’s judgement and condemnation, and this is completely right and fair and fully my due. I do not have any right whatsoever other than to declare my guilt and plead for mercy. But neither do I deserve, nor am I entitled to receive, mercy or compassion, let alone a list of rights as long as my arm enshrined in the humans rights bill. All that we receive, and have received, is only by the grace and kindness of God. And the only acceptable response from us is gratitude and thankfulness and worship. Does anyone think so highly of himself as to believe he has rights? Listen to what St Pauls says: “If any of you think you are something when you are nothing, you deceive yourselves.” (Galatians 6:3).
But maybe it’s not just a question of abolishing bad laws, it’s also about going back to some tried and trusted ones. What about the 10 commandments? It seems to me, they have been the basis of most stable and civilised societies that have existed, whether secular or Christian. And the further away we drift from them as our foundations, the further away we drift from God, and the more ‘uncivil’ the society we live in becomes. If you look at history, and at the great empires that have come and gone, the prequel to their demise is a drift away into moral decadence and, therefore (whether they would be aware of it or not), away from the plumb line of the 10 commandments.
Back in the 1960’s Joan Bakewell was a fierce opponent of the late Mary Whitehouse, whom she described as a prude and a kill-joy. However, she was recently reflecting on today’s lack of respect and standards in society and was humble enough to admit that Mary Whitehouse was probably right all along, in her efforts to curb the slip in moral standards on British TV.
In our churches, this autumn, we will be doing a 10-week preaching series taking us through the 10 commandments. It would be great to see you in church then, or at any other time.

Every blessing,
Robert