Human Rights - Part 4

In the last installment, we looked at what we should use our rights for. In this post, we’ll look at what we should do when someone violates our rights. There are several main options, I think, and they’re not necessarily exclusive of one another: Ruminate We can contemplate the wrong done, rehearsing it mentally and verbally. There may be several reasons someone might ruminate over injustice, including self-doubt (“Am I really sure of what happened? Might I have misunderstood?”) and anger (“I’m just furious that they would do that! How dare they [rumination commences here]!”). The danger in rumination is that people have a tendency to be shaped by what they think about. To paraphrase Dallas Willard in Renovation of the Heart, there are people who would not know who they were if they weren’t holding onto and ruminating over an injustice. The tendency to find our identity in how we’ve been hurt increases with time. Rumination is not a permanent solution; eventually, permanent rumination will starve out the life of Jesus. He is characterized by love, joy, peace, et. al. (Gal. 5:22; Rom. 8:9), and those cannot live alongside unforgiveness. Rectify We can use all available means to correct the injustice, whether legal proceedings, church discipline, verbal confrontation, or even violence. There is a danger with this option, too: we might place our hope in the injustice being corrected. In the best case scenario, when the predator is brought to justice, when the thief makes restitution, their actions will still have consequences in other people’s lives. There are cases when attempting to bring justice is the most loving thing you can do for someone, both for their victims and for them. It is often God’s mercy that allows people to run into the consequences of their actions; He blesses bankrupt people (Matt 5:3), and bankruptcy is usually painful. A believer must allow the life of Jesus in them to determine how they go about rectifying injustice. Release This is the baseline for responding to the violation of rights. Living the life God has given us involves releasing malice and hatred (Tit. 3:3), or rather, releasing ourselves from the prison they form. What exactly do we release when we forgive someone? We release our right to see justice done with our own eyes. Here’s a slew of double-negatives that hopefully clarify.

• It doesn’t mean justice doesn’t matter -- it does.
• It’s not a denial that wrong has been done -- it has.
• It doesn’t require you to resume the relationship as if the injustice had never occurred.
• It’s not opposed to attempting to rectify injustice.
• It doesn’t even mean releasing your desire for justice to be done.

It just means letting go of the results. However we may choose to combat injustice, we surrender the right to control the outcome. The bad debt is signed over to the collections agency -- that is, the Almighty God.

Dallas Willard talks about the dependence of love, joy and peace on faith and hope. Faith is reasonable confident belief on God’s Word. Faith is reasonable and confident because it is based on the word of One who rose from the dead, proving that He is God and that He is authoritative. One indicator of faith’s confidence will be obedience (Heb. 11:8). Hope is closely related to faith. In Willard’s words, it is “anticipation of good not yet here,” which includes vindication (Rev. 6:9-11). Because we have reason to believe (1) that what God says is true and that (2) there is good that will certainly come to us, we are people of

• Love -- after all, if we cannot be irredeemably harmed in this life (Rom. 8:28-29), we have no reason not to love. We have abundant resources in Christ with which to love!
• Joy -- after all, if God is our Shepherd, we have no reason not to be utterly satisfied (Psalm 23). The Judge of all the earth will assuredly do right (Psa. 58:11; Deut. 32:4).
• Peace -- after all, in light of God’s promised vindication, there’s no need to strive to control outcomes.