Human rights: this is the fundamental issue for most of mankind. The United Nations wrote a document entitled “Declaration of Human Rights” to help describe the content of this fundamental issue. It is a document worth reading. The following statements are excerpted from the Declaration.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration…
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
All are equal before the law and entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal…
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. (UN Declaration of Human Rights)
Freedom! Freedom is the notion that echoes throughout the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. Humanity asserts that all human beings are born free…and equal…in dignity and rights. The only requirement necessary to be guaranteed this freedom is to be a human being. Reason tells us that if any particular group of human beings is denied this right to freedom, (except for just restrictions of freedom for those whose rights are limited by criminal restraints or loss of mental capacity), then all are subject to its loss. For if such freedoms are simply determined by those in power, they are not, practically speaking, inalienable. This means that anyone can be denied his freedom if another, more powerful, wills it. A selective protection of freedoms gives mankind an authority that no one would agree he should have.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The Declaration recognizes that each person has duties that accompany his freedom. Implied in these duties is the duty to inform one’s conscience with truth. Consider the following developmental model (Murrell 2002).
This model starts with the concept of truth and moves on through the concept of “good”, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and love. The goal is the development of a mature person. Psychological and theological overlaps in this model include the relationship of truth with intellect; the relationship of “good” with the will; the relationship of knowledge with conscience; the relationship of self-control with “act”; the relationship of perseverance with habit; the relationship of godliness with family love; the relationship of mutual affection with human love; and, the relationship of love with sacrificial love.
The issue is about informing our conscience with truth. In the above model, the intellect is conceived as the way in which we learn what is true, about ourselves and the world around us. Our intellect is made to know the truth. It expresses itself in belief–we believe certain things to be true and we will form our lives by those beliefs. What becomes very important in this development is who we look to for this truth. When we believe that something is true, it determines what we believe about what is true and about what is good. So, if we are making determinations about what is true and what is good, we want to be as sure as we can that we can trust the source of these determinations. Why? because they direct the development of our lives.
The human will moves us to try to obtain what we see as a “good”. We mobilize our resources to get something that we believe will be good for us. If we have been taught that something is good for us when in reality it isn’t, we will go after things that will not bring us happiness, but harm.
In determining what is good, we concurrently come to define what is bad–what is not good. This knowledge helps us form what we call conscience (“with knowledge”) through which we know what is good and what is bad for us. Some good and bad things are simply useful or not useful to us; others are helpful for us as human beings or harmful for us. Knowing the difference, forming a conscience that will guide our judgment and eventually our actions correctly, is very important.
As human beings, possessing bodies, we will naturally act in accord with what we believe is good for us. At least this is our hope: that we will act for our own true good and the good of others. Perseverance means that if we consistently act a certain way, that way will become a habit for us and we will, in effect, come to develop a “nature” that describes who we are, known by our actions. Any system of rational thinking would admit to the simple intuitive logic of this model.
We know that the brain itself, and thus its intellectual content, develops via neuronal interconnections and that these inter-connective pathways develop by being stimulated. And, we know that most stimulation occurs in relationship with other people. In perhaps the most formative time in our lives, these relationships consist of our family members, especially our parents. This fact is realized and acknowledged in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights statement that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and that parents are the primary educators of their children.
If we acknowledge the obvious notion of development, and that development is a growing and maturing process and that that particular information that is provided to the maturing person makes a great difference in what kind of person he will be, then we have to be careful about what we teach our young people. This imperative leads naturally to the concept of truth. Is there a reality, a truth about the person and humanity that can be known? The honest person would have to answer in the affirmative. [the Bible says that “what can be known about God is perfectly plain to (man) since God has made it plain to them; ever since the creation of the world, the invisible existence of God and his everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things. And so there is no excuse…although God is known, He is not honored as God or thanked”. His revealed truth was rejected and thus, the mind was darkened. Some even exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an imitation, for the image of a mortal human being, or of other creatures.]
There is a rich tradition of knowledge, and of truth, that civilization enjoys. It has developed over the centuries essentially unchanged. We have developed new scientific knowledge and technical abilities, but the nature of the human person, and his need for truth, has not changed.
Throughout history we have sought freedom and have come to understand that freedom is linked to truth–the truth about ourselves. We think about our lives and try to make sense of life, who we are, what is our purpose, and where are we going? We have great thinkers to look at for answers to these questions–the intellectual heritage of the Greek philosophers comes to mind. We have great spiritual figures seeking enlightenment and truth who occasionally seemed to have achieved a spiritual life and a moral life apart from an explicit acknowledgement of God (Buddha, for example). We have the history of the Jewish people who give us a story of the God who made us, teaches us, and works within the freedom he gave us in order to bring us to a love of Him and each other. And, we have Christianity, the continuing story of the Jews. Into a world that had the Greeks, the Buddha, mystery religions, and all brands of philosophy and beliefs, Jesus came and was increasingly accepted as God’s son, sent to awaken man’s soul to the deepest truth and give him the aid, or grace, to live according to that truth. The development of Jesus’ teaching, Christianity, has been an ongoing work through the centuries. It represents the deepest thought on the matter of truth as well as the life of love. Some have lived out these truths better than others, but the message has remained solid. Yes, the knowledge of God’s truth about man has not ceased to draw men’s minds and hearts to itself.
There are some challenges to these truths by unbelievers. Some exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute that then becomes the source of values. In this way, the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity, and being at peace with oneself, so much so that some adopt a radically subjective conception of moral judgment. In other words, the individual conscience decides what defines truth, rather than being informed by truth. Truth becomes relative. Those who hold such doctrines are often those who have lost the sense of the transcendent or those who are explicitly atheistic. On the other side are those who question the very existence of freedom. They believe that we are wired, like all animals, and therefore determined by this biological wiring. Therefore, there are no free acts or choices so truth is irrelevant. Others believe that human institutions decide what defines truth and morality. Human history and our own experiences and observations should teach us that the truth about human nature will show itself; and, we see that man does not just break God’s laws, he breaks himself against them.
For example, look at Pope Paul VI’s prediction as to what would happen to human life if a contraceptive mentality shaped our understanding of sexuality and sexual behavior (HV 1968). He predicted that such a mentality would lead to: 1) conjugal infidelity (look at the growth in marital infidelity and divorce); 2) a general lowering of morality (who can deny that morality, especially as it concerns sexuality and selfishness, has gotten much worse); 3) men ceasing to respect women in their totality and treating women as mere instruments of selfish enjoyment rather than as cherished partners (the liberation of women has not led to their freedom, but to being less free in being who they are made to be as women); 4) a massive imposition of contraception by unscrupulous governments ( see China and other countries, and the coercion of underdeveloped nations by western countries, often supported by the United Nations). All of these have led to a dehumanization of mankind, a loss of freedom (not more freedom), and catastrophic problems in societies as the basic unit of society weakens (the family). As marriage weakens and the family collapses, the formation of youth is taken over, in effect, by “expert” social scientists, working through schools and government programs, and by the mass influence of a culture whose minds have been darkened to the truth about the human person. We don’t have answers to these problems because we have summarily dismissed the wisdom and truth of the ages, and most especially Christianity; we have rejected the source of truth and substituted an imitation, made in our own weak and sinful image. It is amazing that there are those who refuse to believe that science and technology cannot give answers to the questions of the soul, of truth and morality.
What are undependable sources of truth? The human will is a false determinant of truth. Caesar is purported to have said that a man’s will becomes his truth. We know that if we want something badly enough we can convince ourselves that it is a good thing, even if it is not. And, we know the additional temptations of power to exercise its will. I might add here, that science and technology are sometimes used to obfuscate truth. There are often nowadays misrepresentations, misreporting, or just poor science regarding politically charged issues that result in a false truth. Interpretation of data to support one’s ideological viewpoint even if it distorts the truth is not uncommon. Some ignore certain data and promote other data in favor of a particular opinion. And, there is just plain propaganda, using any means to bring others to a particular point of view. Those who control the movement of information and its content can exercise a great control over what is presented as truth. Science has a great obligation to honesty if it to be a tool for the truth. For those who hold no truths to be sacred, any means to forward their ends seem acceptable; without an objective truth, there are no bridles on their behaviors.
Why all this bother to talk about the truth and its sources? Because our development begins with the truth. What we believe as truth will shape our definition of what is good and bad; it will form our conscience from which we judge and make choices; we will act out of these choices and form a way of thinking and behaving that determines who we are and what kind of person we will be. The truth makes all the difference in the world.
We must wake up; we are in need of much deeper self-reflection. We must know our souls by experience, not by hearsay. The problem is aggravated by so many in society whose reality is primarily based on a material view of life, who don’t have a strong spiritual foundation. Lacking this foundation, they are unable to use information in a way that recognizes the inalienable rights of mankind and strengthens their resistance to a materialist/secularist/utilitarian view of life. This lack has led to dehumanizing political ideologies, quite clear to those who have lived in the past century, ideologies ultimately rejected by humanity.
We must be conscious of a truth about mankind, about ourselves, about life, that is written in our souls. It is a fundamental understanding of right and wrong based on the transcendence of man, not simply on what best serves my desires. God shares dominion of this life with man (look at our inquisitiveness and desire for truth, for what is truly real, spiritually as well as corporally). Man lives among created things that have their own laws and values which are to be gradually discovered, utilized and ordered by man. It would be a false concept, however, of this authority of earthly realities to believe that created things are not dependent on God and that man may use them without reference to his creator. Without its creator the creature simply disappears (certainly how they are supposed to be gets forgotten, lost to man’s consciousness, buried in confusion); if God is ignored the creature itself is impoverished. Without a relationship with God man loses a true and full vision of himself and mankind. He becomes more vulnerable to selfishness, fear and all the weaknesses and vices he is capable of without the grace of God. Separation from God is separation from any hope of real freedom. Apart from God man cannot really know himself and if he cannot know himself how can he exercise real freedom on his own behalf? No real truth, no real freedom.
The role of true authority then is in conserving society in accord with the truth of man and in understanding its proper role in its work to protect the freedoms of all men. It must understand that there is a law above its earthly authority that it must submit itself to in the exercise of its authority. There is truth that can be known and that must be sought. Men know this.
Government must also respect the primacy of family in the care and moral and spiritual development of children. For agencies to declare, based on some limited expertise often separated from, if not antithetical to religious teaching, often with a particular interpretation of developmental observations, that parents must submit their children to the educational bias of the experts, is a direct usurpation of a right that is not theirs. So many of the sociological directives we have endured have not been to the good of their subjects. Humanae vitae is an obvious teaching case on where the mistaken viewpoint of social experts can lead us.
Governments and educators, as well as parents, need to govern and teach with respect for the truth about the human person. They must be sincere in their pursuit of truth and look for it everywhere it may be found. This includes scientific truth. There must be a scientific rigor that is expected. And science must admit that it lacks competence in regard to the soul, to the moral and spiritual nature of man. Science must protect itself from being used for the profit or power of any particular group; if it is not faithful to itself and its own laws it becomes a powerful weapon for propagandistic claims. We are all familiar with the quotation: “lies, damned lies, and statistics!” (attributed to Courtney via Disraeli and Twain). When people are in error, the truth suffers; when people lie, the truth is denied; when statistics are manipulated, which they can be, leading to a false or incomplete assumption, means to the truth are blocked. The more truth is lost, the more freedom is lost.
It is important to understand the differences between men and women and their complementary gifts; to understand that women’s freedom isn’t the ability to be like men, but to have the freedom to be themselves with their particular bodies and sensitivities; and, to understand that freedom comes from living according to the truth about who you are. To ignore the inner logic discoverable in nature is to decrease our chance to understand a truth about ourselves. It is important to understand the natural role of the family, with a mother, a father, children, and often other family relatives; to support the education of children in love and truth in a secure set of relationships (understanding that even the proper development of the human brain takes place best in this setting of secure and dependable relationships); and, to protect the family as the primary setting for this education and formation. This is the best classroom for learning about truth, rights and duties and needs to be supported and protected.
It is important to see that only the truth about the human person, a truth that can only safely be rooted in God and His revelation of Himself, protects the freedom of all men. It is important to understand and believe that all men are created with inalienable rights (God given, not for men to deny), which include life itself, and that if one group of men are denied these rights, then all men have lost or will lose their freedoms. It must be recognized and admitted that there are human beings who are not granted these rights and others who are not allowed to live long enough to enjoy them. I am speaking specifically of those human beings whose lives are taken from them prior to their birth. There is no reasonable, much less charitable, way to see this problem. There is no excuse for the deliberate denial of this right to life to any human being. If these rights are not understood to be God given–inalienable– it will only depend on who has the power to enforce a will that says that only some have these rights, not all, and that might makes right.
To achieve this freedom, for one and for all, there must be an experiential knowledge of one’s soul, an awakening of the memory of God already in our souls and of our relation to God; a consciousness born of self reflection and a fervent desire for truth and love; a humility before God and His creation; a knowledge of our own moral weaknesses and self love that can never lead to happiness or true freedom for ourselves or others; and an understanding that our primal fear of losing our basic rights and freedoms as a human being can only be healed by the faith, hope and love that come from God. The full development of our intellect, will and memory and their purification by the truth are sorely needed if we are to realize the desires of mankind expressed in the Declaration of Human Rights. We can know the truth and it will set us free.
Dr. Kevin Murrell
