Human rights is a term often used and rarely understood. On today’s Home School Heartbeat with Michael Farris, Dr. John Warwick Montgomery explains where exactly human rights come from, and why we’re equipped to understand them.
Mike Farris:
Dr. Montgomery, you mentioned that the higher dimension of human rights befuddles secularists. I’m currently enrolled in a University of London course on human rights law, and they openly confess they don’t know why we have human rights, but they insist that they exist. Why do we have human rights?
Dr. John Warwick Montgomery:
Well, in the first place, any genuine human right would have to be inalienable. That is to say, we shouldn’t be able to take such rights away from others, and we shouldn’t even be able to take them away from ourselves. Now, how could we possibly arrive at anything inalienable? The only way to do this would be to go to an inalienable source. The people that you’re talking about don't have that source, and therefore, they are at sea without a paddle.
Mike:
Where do you find a source?
Dr. Montgomery:
The source is going to have to be God. He’s the only source of the inalienable, the absolute. And, unless He has revealed himself to us, we wouldn’t know what the contents of those rights actually are. That means it’s going to be necessary to try to find a revelation from God, and that’s exactly where the Holy Scriptures come in.
Mike:
Exactly right. I look forward to continuing this discussion next time, Dr. Montgomery. Until then, I’m Mike Farris.
