Wow.
16 hours ago · Like
Trisha Rutter Reimer So.....what *are* rights, anyway... Makes a person wonder what the rest of the world believes they have unequivocal "right" to.
16 hours ago · Like
Josh Abrey
Tobacco companies should be shut down, because they profit off of a product which is created to play off of mans weaknesses, and the end product is a slow painful death, as is the same with many hard drugs. But i'd have to agree with most of the other things here. People should have the right to live in the sins they want to. Is that not the meaning of 'free will'. If you believe in something and want people to believe it aswell, go through the actions necessary to make them choose to believe it. Making the government create rules that cater to your own morals and guide lines is kinda selfish. If you believe they will burn for their actions let God be the one to decide that, not the government.
15 hours ago via mobile · Like · 2
Cara MacGregor Hoeppner
If that were the case, all junk food, or even any food, companies should be shut down. More people die from cardiac disease and diabetes than tobacco. You can eat yourself to death as fast as you can smoke it to an early grave. Combine the two and its a guaranteed ticket to misery. How do you outlaw that?
People are finding all kinds of ways to self-medicate, the more "tolerant" our society becomes, it seems to be becoming more unhappy and unhealthy.
11 hours ago via mobile · Like · 1
Owen Abrey
The question of a right is deeper than one might comprehend at a glance. I have done a little research into the concept. A "right" is only given by God. God-given rights. They are conferred/endowed by the creator--therefore what God has given, no one can take away. Man can only recognize they exist. If they are not recognized by man, they don't cease to exist. But "rights" that are claimed to exist are often really not about rights.
Tantamount among the rights of man is the freedom of choice. It existed before any law. St. Paul recognized all that the Law can do is make us conscious of sin (the choice to turn from God) and the nature that never ceases to have an inclination to rebel; it cannot erase the freedom of choice and the accountability thereof. Freedom of choice is the right upon which all others are based. It was a right conferred to man that was not conferred to angels.
Ironically the doom of man is prefaced by the deceived choice, Eve was deceived. Her choice to sin was triggered as a result of the deceiver's provocation. Therein lies any shred of defense before the judgement of God--and that by the advocacy of the only man to live without sin. "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" has a universal application--applying to humanity over and above the men who were nailing Christ to the cross. For we all have crucified Him.
They lived in harmony with their creator without sin until the deceiver came. How long they did is not recorded but without death it could have been for a thousand years... while the impatient, fallen, angelic host watched not from the heights of heaven but from those places cast down. Contending that any being with true freedom of choice would rebel. A third of the hosts of heaven fallen to earth, invisible to the eyes of men, bore witness to these "sons of God" and their communion with God. An intimacy they never had. Not even Lucifer, who was the covering cherub, had that kind of relationship: the relationship of sons who loved their father.
And so the tapestry of this history of creation awaits the judgement of God; The contention of the accuser, that God is not fair. That there is no such thing as free will. That anyone would choose to rebel if in fact they had a choice. And we shall judge angels from the place of the redeemed, who were given the choice. The saints, who choose freely on the basis of that freedom purchased by the One who bore the Curse: The human doom and nature to choose wrongly. I suppose I am rambling. To bring it back to the question of the rights of man they all distill down to the freedom to choose. That Freedom is unique to every man. That is the core of what I shared. Not that it is good that we have the freedom to choose to sin, so much as it is good that it lies with us to choose otherwise.
The Laws did have value to guide human morals, but they have been subsumed by Freedom for they were powerless to stop sin. This reality followed an age where we lost the power to choose freedom. The law showed that all mankind had become slaves to sin. Man gave away that right to the Prince of the power of the air. But today that right alone withstands time and eternity whether we recognize it or not.
Rod Murphy owen you are a closet leftie - and like many you base it on God :)
Sandra Easton · Friends with Cara MacGregor Hoeppner
Oh Cara, I can see why u love Owen!!! I love him toooooo! That was great!
Trisha Rutter Reimer
Totally agreed with the freedom of choice thing. Absolutely no question. It is Biblical. I guess I'm referring more to the "laws" side of it, as in our country's laws. There's an understanding out there that because people don't want their rights taken away, there should be no laws (gov't/political laws) against such things. We do need the rule of law in our country. To what degree, I'm not going to say. But it is necessary.
Owen Abrey I love the idea of common law. Few people know that Canada has common law. Different scholars point to the Magna Carta as the beginning of common law: The law for the commons. I lean towards 1350, 2 years after the great plague in England. Infrastructure was decimated. The mortality among priests approached 90% because they were often at the bedside of the dying. Whatever passed for law was meted by priests for most matters and lords and kings on the larger matters. So the effect of large numbers of priest taught at the same time in an orthadoxy that gave rise to church law.
The effect on the rule of law was profound. In 1350, with great intentionality universities were established, primarily to retrain priests. But this was also an opportunity to consolidate laws, so they became more universa,l so that the application of law was the same across England. Priests turned out from these academies more or less at the same time, were educated more or less in the same way as each other. These events provided an opportunity to effect a profound legal shift in the country.
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