Rights and Responsibilities
When I was in the 3rd grade I played Dorothy in The Land of Character, a play produced by the faculty and students of Alpine Crest Elementary School for the enrichment of our education, presumably. It was the late 1990s and public schools, in southeast Tennessee at least, were pushing this curriculum centered on character building. At the end of the play, I had to click my spray-painted and hot-glued, glittery red shoes together and spout off all the elements of character that we were supposed to have learned and implemented during our journey through The Land of Character. These were, by the way, on posters throughout our school and we would focus on a different one every month, quarter, or something like that. “Respect, Responsibility, Courage….”
For the next little bit here, I’d like to take us on a journey through a different land of character. Not one ripped off from The Wizard of Oz with cowardly lions, green witches, and suspicious poppy fields, but through an internal land of character which has much higher stakes than a failure to grasp an elementary school curriculum.
The two things I’d like to focus our attention on are rights and responsibilities. I live in the good ol’ United States of America where we love to talk about our rights. We’ve had whole movements, riots, and national conversations about all sorts of rights. The first thing we did after we wrote our constitution was to add a bill of rights. Americans take their rights very seriously.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my life recently and how I got to where I am today. I’ve been thinking about my family, my childhood, my early adulthood, and, specifically, the decade that I spent in Radford, Virginia. “Spent” is generous. Some days it feels like “wasted”, but that’s another topic. As I was thinking about how my time there came to an end, this thought about rights and responsibilities occurred to me. There were many conversations in which I was fuming, because the person that I was talking with was insisting that something that happened to me was not their responsibility. There is validity to that statement, they were not the perpetrators of harm, but it did not restrict them from the responsibility of action.
I’d like to define my terms before I go any further. When I speak of “rights”, I’m not speaking of directions or the law. I’m talking about political rights. In that sense, dictionary.com defines right as:
a just claim or title, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral:
Sometimes rights. that which is due to anyone by just claim, legal guarantees, moral principles, etc.
adherence or obedience to moral and legal principles and authority.
that which is morally, legally, or ethically proper.
When most of us in the west hear “right” or “rights”, we think of laws, freedoms, and protections that allow us to live a happy, healthy, and productive life. For example, as an American citizen, it is my right to travel anywhere in my country and vote for my political representatives. I have the right to a fair trial, if I am accused of a crime. I have the right to remain silent and not incriminate myself, if I am arrested. More broadly, there are human rights. By this, we mostly mean that all people ought to have clean water and food, live in relative safety, and have access to work and housing. We mean that people should not be killed or abused merely for existing in a certain way, place, or time.
Responsibilities are related to, but slightly different than rights. Merriam-Webster defines responsible as:
liable to be called on to answer
liable to be called to account as the primary cause, motive, or agent
being the cause or explanation
A responsibility, then, is something that you have to answer for, something you’re accountable for. I have a responsibility to care for my family and, specifically, my daughter. It is my responsibility to show up to my job. If I don’t, there will be consequences.
Rights are things that are inherent to our status as human beings or citizens of a certain nation or kingdom. I didn’t do anything to earn my citizenship in the USA, I was born here. I didn’t do anything to earn my human rights, I was made with them.
Responsibilities vary from person to person and you usually earn them or do something to get them. Not everyone has the responsibility of being a parent or caring for an aging parent. These things happen as a part of the circumstances of your life, but are not guaranteed. Not everyone has a job that they get paid for. You have to search and, usually, earn a job by at least performing well in an interview if not showing your skills on a resume. Not everyone has the same responsibilities in their job or as a member of their community. Even in the same community or organization, leaders have different responsibilities from people who are just starting out.
Hopefully, you can see the difference. You have a measure of influence over your responsibilities or you can earn or work for them. Your rights are just a part of who you are, if we are speaking of political rights. Now, I know that some folks have to do things to become a citizen of another country or kingdom, but I’m talking about human rights and the rights bestowed upon you in your birth country - you don’t earn those.
The thing that is becoming more and more alarming to me is how we consistently confuse our rights and responsibilities in the Kingdom of God. Sometimes, we conflate our nationality with the Kingdom of God and think that God is on board with the rights bestowed upon us in our birth country. Sometimes, we think that it’s our right to tell someone else what to do or how to live their life because we know God and, we think, they don’t.
Sometimes, we run from our rights as a citizen in the kingdom of God because we don’t think it’s our responsibility. We think that, if we didn’t make the mess, then we don’t have to clean it up.
I have so much more to say on this point in particular, but for now, I’d love to ask you: is that what Jesus did? Did Jesus make a mess of our lives and our world? Did Jesus introduce us to sin and death? Did he listen to the snake? Did he eat the fruit?
No. He did not. We did. And yet. Who cleaned up the mess? Who is still cleaning up the mess?
Before we start claiming our rights and responsibilities as human beings and, more specifically, as citizens of the Kingdom of God, we would do well to look at the life, death, and resurrection of the son of God. We would do well to consider his rights and his responsibilities and how he lived. We might do well to redefine our terms.
I’m going to walk us through my thoughts on these topics in light of my experience in Radford and what I’ve learned on the other side. I hope to give you courage and hope as you deal with your own painful experiences in the church or faith communities. I hope to shed some light on the ways that evangelical Christianity is really invested in rights and responsibilities, but they’ve got the whole thing backwards, as usual. Finally, I hope that, with a look at Jesus, we can be empowered and encouraged to step forward into our rights as citizens of the Kingdom of heaven and put this place back together.
Ok, no more spoilers. See you in a couple weeks.