The modern era has seen the collapse of the Protestant liberal inflation of man into a divinity; now it strives against the naturalistic deflation of man into a slave of the state.
Firming up the case for human rights and responsibilities at the local level has become an imperative necessity for the vagabond West. The logic and urgency of the issues of man’s dignity and duty do not grip the man in the street.
The generation of tyranny has driven many Christian churches in the free world to a fuller accent on human worth and liberty. Christianity has long stood guard against both the romantic and the pessimistic misjudgments of man. Neither a deity nor an animal, man is a creature fashioned in the divine image, fallen into sin, bearing a unique dignity and traveling to an uncommon destiny. What is the meaning of this truth for a time of tyranny?
The theme of human freedom throbbed blood-fresh in the veins of America’s Founding Fathers. Alongside the titanic brutalities of our time, the tyranny they deplored as insufferable was perhaps only the shadow of sorrow. Nevertheless, they appealed to the one eternal Preserver of man’s responsible existence, the almighty Guardian of the dignity of man and Definer of the powers of the state. In the words of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.…”
The Christian conformity of some signers of the Declaration of Independence is definitely debatable. There is little doubt, however, that the great majority were evangelical believers theologically at home in the doctrines of the Bible. True, they disapproved religious sectarian intolerance no less than political intolerance. Devout men, like Roger Williams, an evangelical Baptist, had espoused the cause of separation of church and state, or of religious liberty, as an essential aspect of human liberty. They were determined to spare Americans all the tortures of tyranny.
The Founding Fathers were careful, however, to separate neither the individual nor the state from an obligation to God. Nor did they leave the concept of God nebulous and undefined and wholly subject to private interpretation—contrary to a tendency thriving in American life today. Not the slightest hint can be found that by God they meant anything other than a personal supernatural being, the Creator (a distinctly theistic and biblical conception) through whose specific endowment the human race has been peculiarly endowed with inalienable dignity and with inalienable rights. Even the right of religious freedom had in their outlook a religious basis. Man’s unique place in society and in the universe was guaranteed by rights supernaturally supplied and sanctioned by a sovereign Creator imposing duties which both the rulers and the ruled must everywhere respect.
Confronted by the tyrannical totalitarianism that continues to deform our world, the General Assembly of the United Nations eight years ago overwhelmingly approved the so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The world still outside the spreading Soviet sphere is appropriately constrained and compelled to study anew the important issue of human liberty, lest man’s freedom, taken for granted, and no longer cherished nor understood, be disassembled and dissolved.
The reasons are close at hand, therefore, why the U.S. National Commission for Unesco, commemorating and promoting the national and local observance of Human Rights Day annually on December 10, is disappointed and even somewhat baffled because its enthusiasm has not filtered down to the community level. Even in the District of Columbia only fragmentary participation greeted the occasion.
To overcome this national lethargy to the observance of U.N. Human Rights Day, some leaders of the U.S. National Commission for Unesco (a semi-governmental agency that serves the Department of State in an advisory capacity) have proposed a new organization, whose chairman they hope will be named by the government and functioning as a voluntary private body to solicit funds and provide guidance, a timetable of operations and materials and tools for a grass-roots nationwide observance. Under an alternate plan, the National Commission would itself seek, from the 60 voluntary organizations nominating members to that body, something beyond their present disappointing creation of interest and would secure the time of established organizations to implement the U.N. program on a local basis. By one or other of these mechanisms, it is hoped, the nation, faced by the grave world threats to human dignity and freedom, will be rallied to observance of the U.N. Day of Rights.
The effort to gain a more spontaneous dedication on the American popular level for the theme of human rights has not been limited to the U.N. thrust. The preaching of Christian churches has been increasingly alive and awake to the implications of biblical theology for the socio-political order. Confessedly, the pulpit has lacked the note of uneasy urgency essential to combat the current totalitarian devaluation of man. Why then has there not been a merging of church and civic efforts to firm up the case for human rights on the local level? At the national level, admittedly, the National Council of Churches and the National Catholic Education Association are among the movements represented on the National Commission. Yet the local churches in the hamlets and cities of America tend to show only a spotty enthusiasm for the emphasis on human rights in U.N. dimensions. Why this hesitancy?
Doubtless part of the nonparticipation in the humanrights program results from the indifference of some churches to questions of social morality. They are at home in questions of Christian personal ethics, but not of Christian social ethics, except in the barest personal dimensions. Even where the relevance of Christianity to culture is not excluded, some churches tend to suspect massive movements of any kind, both political and ecclesiastical. Often their reasons are eschatological (the totalitarian world beast of Revelation 13) or anthropological (concentration of power tends to be corruptive), if not both. Those who share this forecast must always square their consciences, of course, with the complaint that whatever a given organization may become, Christian duty today must be judged in terms of what it is.
But this is hardly the whole ground for hesitancy. Many Christian leaders think, and not without reason, that an unhappy ambiguity and obscurity run through the present Unesco handling of human rights. They fear that the American people, and that mankind as a whole, cannot be assured of real progress in the field of human rights until this equivocation is candidly exposed and confronted. Especially is this true of many evangelically minded Protestant ministers, who support an emphasis on human rights that accords with both the historic American spirit and the spirit of the Hebrew-Christian tradition, and who for that reason are less than happy with the U.N. formulation. The vagrant phantoms of totalitarianism and of anarchism, they fear, are not effectually exorcised by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. For the only adequate reply to the atheistic devaluation of man as they see it—and here they are on the side of the inherited tradition of the West—is an alternative that, in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, is frankly theistic.
The very first article of the U.N. Declaration at once reflects its differences with the Declaration of Independence in clear light. That article declares: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
The U.N. statement incorporates no references to a supernatural Creator, nor does it anywhere assert that God endows mankind with specific rights. It asserts that men are “endowed with reason and conscience,” but it does not specify the source of this endowment; it goes on to specify a list of rights, but it nowhere asserts that it is the Living God who sanctions these rights. Its repeated formula is “Everyone has the right to.…” It is remarkable that the fact sheet distributed on Human Rights Day by the U.S. National Commission for Unesco, while quoting the emphasis of the Declaration of Independence on “unalienable rights,” wholly ignores the Declaration’s associated emphasis that these rights are an endowment by the Creator.
The U.N. Declaration therefore leaves in doubt the crucial fact that human rights have an ultimate basis, that God Himself insists upon these rights, that man has been endowed with these rights in view of his unique dignity by creation. It erases, therefore, the emphasis that the Declaration of Independence vigilantly sustained, that the Living God is the source and sanction of human freedoms.
The consequence of this deletion is far-reaching. For one thing, the promulgation of the U.N. Declaration, in the present conflict of ideas, could leaven the confused popular mind with an inadequate and unprotected view of human rights. Furthermore, by disjoining the question of freedoms from God as their source and sanction, the U.N. Declaration shifts the whole discussion of responsibility one-sidedly to that of human rights, and neglects the equally important subject of human duties.
The observance of Human Rights Day in the Free World ought to confront the totalitarian threat to human liberties head-on. But the U.N. formula fails to do so; in fact, its very neutrality leaves human rights vulnerably exposed and endangered.
Since the U.N. Declaration does not assert that God is the source and sanction of these rights, an impression continues to gain ground that the United Nations is their source and sanction. “The U.N. guarantees these rights!”—this is the formula one overhears time and again. If that really be the case, then the individual is guarded from the tyranny of the totalitarian state only by the totalitarian superstate. For if the U.N. is the source and sanction of human rights, there can be no appeal to a source and sanction higher than the U.N., by reference to which even the positions of the U.N. are to be approved or disapproved. In that event, the conflict between the Soviet orbit and the United Nations reduces to a conflict between superstates; the only issue in the balances is, which of them has the power of the totalitarian determination of human life? Either there is a source and sanction of human rights superior to the United Nations, a supernatural exposition of man and his station in the universe, or the conflict over human rights reduces to an intramural struggle between two totalitarian powers. The framers of the Declaration of Independence saw this issue with clearer vision than our modern statesmen. And until this issue of the ultimate source and sanction of human rights is clearly faced within the U.N., those who see dim outlines of a totalitarian superstate need not be dismissed as suffering from eschatological oddity.
If the Free World is really to stand fast against the threat to human freedoms, it will find the first line of defense, and the only unassailable tower, where the Christian patriots who forged the American Declaration of Independence located it, in the fact that man bears by divine creation a unique dignity, and that the state and citizen alike are bound in a responsible way to the Living God.
Stated in this way, the issue of human liberty will not be discussed independently of the issue of human liability. What the nations of the world need, in this sixth decade in the century of tyranny, is the compelling rediscovery of human duties no less than of human rights. Why a human rights day, in disconnection from a human responsibilities day? The one-sided observance easily gives rise to expectations that are not properly bounded by obligations. If the Christian church is to give effective leadership to a world that has lost its way, it dare not detach the question of human liberties from the knowledge of the Living God who has placed all men and nations under divine command.
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Exchange Rate Confiscation Penalizes Korean Missions
Only one-half of every dollar given for Christian work in Korea is actually received by missions operating in that country. This is due to an arbitrary and unrealistic exchange rate set up by the Korean Government and in which the U.S. Government has concurred.
The official rate of exchange is 500 Hwan for one U.S. dollar. But on the open market (which the Korean Government calls the black market) the U.S. dollar is worth about 1000 to 1.
By maintaining this unfavorable rate, the Korean Government is penalizing all Christian mission work.
In round figures the American Government is pouring about $700,000,000 into Korea. About one half of this goes to the support of the South Korean army. Twenty divisions strong, the South Korean army is the fourth largest army in the world and is a well trained and well equipped bulwark against further aggression from the Communists in the North. For America to maintain a similar number of her own soldiers in Korea would probably cost her ten times as much.
Tire other half of the funds which America is sending into Korea, about $350,000,000, is largely for the so-called relief program. Wisdom and efficiency often are lacking in the distribution of some of this money. Some dispensers of relief might well avail themselves of the experience of Americans who have been longtime residents of Korea. Why the Government appropriates vast sums without adequate provision for effective distribution down to the levels of use is a moot question. Fifty million dollars worth of fertilizer is being distributed, with the ultimate consumer paying up to $8 a bag for this “relief” commodity.
Of far greater concern to Christians is the fact that missions in Korea today are being penalized about fifty cents on the dollar.
How much money goes into Korea today for Christian work? No one seemed prepared to give an answer. The Roman Catholics are spending a considerable sum. A consensus of many individuals, including mission treasurers and some U.S. military and civilian authorities, places the total at a minimum of three million and a maximum of four and a half million American dollars annually.
What is needed (and it will take strong and effective pressure from the U.S. Government) is an agreement with the Korean Government whereby a special category is set up for the “religious dollar.” Since other categories and special exchange rates have been set up, this would not be an innovation; in fact, up to August 1955 the “religious dollar” was in a special classification. This “religious dollar,” whether Protestant, Catholic or Buddhist, could then exchange at the currently realistic figure of about 1000 to 1.
Would this work a hardship on the Korean Government? Hardly. Since this money eventually goes into the Korean economy and is devoted to the welfare of the people, it would create no hardship, and would add to the effectiveness of the religious work in that land.
How can such a solution be reached? Missionaries, American civilians engaged in governmental activities, and American military personnel contend that the only effective means of bringing about a revision of the presently utterly unfair agreement is by arousing public opinion in America to demand a Congressional investigation of the situation with a view to a just settlement, guaranteeing that U.S. investments in Christian work in Korea shall not be penalized.
By any estimate the money going into Korea for Christian missions is less than one percent (possibly less than one-half of one percent) of all American money now being invested there for military or relief purposes. Such a concession should be accorded all bodies engaged in religious or philanthropic work in Korea and in no way would involve special consideration from the Korean Government in other areas of their work. To insist on such an agreement is not asking too much.
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Children? Yes—But God Has No Grandchildren
This startling statement may sound facetious but it expresses a truth of the deepest significance.
Despite the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man which is so popular and so widespread the fact remains that only those who are born-again are the spiritual children of God.
God is the Father of all men by creation.
But the Bible plainly teaches that only those who have been born into the household of faith by accepting Christ as Savior stand in the true relationship of sons to our Heavenly Father.
Jesus, speaking to his carping critics, said: “If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father, the devil, the lusts … ye will do.”
Yes, it is true: “God has no grandchildren.” Every man must stand by his own faith, or fall through his lack of it. We bring our children to the Lord, dedicate them in baptism and pray for them, and God hears our prayers. But, their salvation depends solely on their own faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The Spirit The Index To Powerless Or Powerful Effort
Jesus is the only way to eternal life. He has so stated, and his Word reaffirms again and again the simple fact that salvation is found in no other way than through faith in Him.
But do not we Christians who believe this often make the tragic mistake of relying on earthly resources of power for the doing of Christian work?
We stress education, and rightly so, when that education is correlated with Christian truth.
We seek to develop personality, and we send out young go-getters who can charm an audience or impress themselves on others in a most attractive way socially.
We organize meetings and campaigns with great stresson men and material resources.
We develop organizations in which all of the work is integrated and developed in a most wonderful way.
These and many other things can be used of God, when offered in humility and complete submission to His service.
But there is One without which no effective Christian work can be done. There is One who alone supplies that power which is absolutely necessary—the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you,” and subsequent events show that the same men who were powerless before became the agents through which God could evangelize the world.
We Christians need to search our own hearts and see how much we are depending on human and material means. To recognize the futility of work without the presence and power of the Holy Spirit pricks the bubble of human conceit. To completely subordinate ourselves and our work to the leadership of the Holy Spirit means a humility which God can honor. To wait for the infilling and the leading of the Spirit often demands a Christian discipline entirely foreign to our experience.
Until we are brought face to face with the sobering fact that we of ourselves can do nothing, and, replace our natural confidence in human methods and instruments with an absolute and final faith in the Holy Spirit as the only One who can energize for effective work, until then we labor in vain.
The power of an individual Christian and the power of a church can come from but one source. We either recognize this fact and seek him, or we continue to wonder why we are powerless.
It is high time that we return to the Scriptural teaching that it is “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts.”
