The
air in the [u]nited States is soaked with the talk of rights - rights to
property, speech, privacy, etc. To some
this is proof that America
is the people that God loves more than any other (before, now, or after), that
mankind under the benign influence of individualistic, evangelical, Calvinistic
Christianity has reached its fullest maturity here and can improve no
more. But this is not the sense one gets
when looking through the Holy Scriptures and the life of the Church.
Consider
first the teachings and ensample of our Lord Jesus Christ. He did not plead His right to a fair trial
before Herod or Pilate. His Enfleshment
itself, His sufferings and tortures, His hanging on the life-giving Tree, were
all a refusal of His ‘rights’ as God (Phil. 2:5-11). And He teaches everyone to live the same
way.
And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me (Luke 9:23 KJV).
Blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and
persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my
sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your
reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you
(Matt. 5:10-12 KJV).
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but
whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take
away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go
with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that
would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt
love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That ye may be the children of your Father which is
in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward
have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye
more than others? do not even the publicans so?
(Matthew
5:38-47 KJV).
The Holy Apostles continued these commandments of
their Master’s in word and deed. In the
face of persecutions by Jewish and Roman authorities, they did not organize
political protest movements, but instead taught their spiritual children such
things as these:
I exhort therefore, that,
first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be
made for all men;
For kings, and for all that are in authority; that
we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God
our Saviour . . . (I Tim. 2:1-3 KJV).
Submit yourselves to
every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as
supreme;
Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by
him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.
For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye
may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:
As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of
maliciousness, but as the servants of God.
Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.
Honour the king.
. . .
For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ
also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:
Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his
mouth:
Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when
he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth
righteously:
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on
the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose
stripes ye were healed.
(I Peter
2:13-17, 21-24 KJV).
. . . and when they
had called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should not
speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.
And they departed from the presence of the council,
rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name (Acts
5:40-41 KJV).
. . . exhorting them to continue in the faith,
and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God
(Acts 14:22 KJV).
The
Christians of the days after the Apostles likewise did not protest their cruel
treatment before the palaces of Roman or Persian governors and emperors. Rather, if they were sentenced to torture or
to death, these holy mothers and fathers embraced their dooms as precious
riches.
We
see this in the life of St Ignatius the God-bearer of Antioch (+ 107):
In his Epistle [to the Romans], St. Ignatius asks
Christians not to try to save him from death.
«I entreat you, do not unseasonably befriend me. Suffer me to belong to
the wild beasts, through whom I may attain unto God. I am God's grain, and I am ground by the
teeth of wild beasts, that I may be found pure bread. »
In
the life of St Polycarp of Smyrna
(+ 167):
Placed on the pyre, Polycarp lifted his eyes
heavenward and gave thanks to God for finding him worthy to share with the holy
Martyrs of the cup of Christ.
(From entry for 23 Feb.)
In
St Alban’s life, the first martyr of Britain (+ 3rd hundredyear):
When the judge perceived that he was not to be overcome by tortures,
or withdrawn from the profession of the Christian religion, he sentenced him to
be beheaded. Being led to execution, he came to a river, which was divided at
the place where he was to suffer with a wall and sand, and the stream was very
rapid. Here he saw a multitude of persons of both sexes, and of all ages and
ranks, who were doubtless assembled by a divine impulse, to attend the most
blessed confessor and martyr; and had so occupied the bridge on the river, as
to render it almost impossible for him and all of them to pass over it that
evening. Almost every body flocking out of the city to see the execution, the
judge, who remained in it, was left without any attendance.
St. Alban therefore, whose mind was filled with an ardent desire to
arrive quickly at his martyrdom, approached to the stream, and, lifting up his
eyes to heaven, addressed his prayer to the Almighty; when, behold, he saw the
water immediately recede, and leave the bed of the river dry, for them to pass
over.
And in the lives of many, many more holy martyrs
and confessors.
Talk of rights is wrongheaded for Christians; the
grasping after them separates us from one another. Rights are a refinement of the heaðen
feudalism that has plagued Western European thought and life for more than a
thousand years now, which teaches that every man is at war (on some level) with
every other man for earthly dominion (Dr Vladimir Moss, An Essay in Universal History: Part I, pgs. 268-72; available HERE), that he must build a bulwark to
shut out others so that he may protect his life and what he has gathered for
himself. It is a fairly continuous line
from the armed knights in their castles to citizens in constitutional republics
armed with a vote (Ivan Kireevsky, ‘On the Nature of European Culture and on
Its Relationship to Russian Culture’, On
Spiritual Unity). The ‘other’ in any
of these ages is looked at with suspicion, as one who might take away something
from the ‘I’ who owns it.
The Orthodox Church teaches something very
different (see, e.g., Metropolitan John Zizioulas, Being as Communion). The
individual who cuts himself off from others is not a complete person. Alone in his home with his gadgets and other comforts,
he is nearly dead (and such an one may be alone despite the presence of others
in the home with him, as we see in the modern phrase ‘alone together’). A man or woman only becomes a full person,
fully alive, by emptying his life of his own will for the sake of others:
Only
by renouncing his own content, freely giving it up, ceasing to exist for
himself alone, does a person fully express himself in the single nature of
all. Renouncing his separate good, he
endlessly expands and is enriched by everything that belongs to all (Vladimir
Lossky, in Fr Dumitru Staniloae, The
Experience of God, Vol. 2, Brookline, Mass., 2000, p. 98).
Þis is precisely what we see in the life of the
Most Holy Trinity, to which we are to conform in every way. The way of love, of giving, of self-emptying,
of humility, is the way of the Christian, not the way of demanding rights from
others, the way of pride, self-love. ‘It
is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:35 KJV). ‘Bear ye one
another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ’ (Gal. 6:2 KJV). ‘It is good
neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother
stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak’ (Romans 14:21 KJV). ‘So likewise ye, when ye shall have
done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable
servants: we have done that which was our duty to do’ (Luke 17:10 KJV).
One could say soþlice (truly) that the prideful
demand for rights (the right to equality with God, the right to the knowledge
of good and evil, the right to eat of any tree in the Garden) led to the Fall
of our first parents (Gen. 3:1-6) and to the train of evils that has followed
upon it.
Granted, there are nuances to this general rule, as
we see, for ensample, in the life of the Holy Prince Lazar of Serbia who led his people into
battle against the Turks to defend their homeland. But the West’s obsession with rights shows
that its soul is sick: It is more heedsome
of the Kingdom of Man than of the Kingdom of Heaven. It has forgotten the words of the Blessed
Savior:
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but
whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save
it. For what shall it profit a man, if
he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in
exchange for his soul? (Mark 8:35-37
KJV)
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