Last Friday and Saturday I attended the NILD Canada 25th Annual Conference. During the conference the Executive Director of Dyslexia Canada referred to the leverage parents can use, since Canada has signed on to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established by the United Nations. She referenced two different ‘rights’ of children to receiving appropriate education. The attendants were surveyed whether they agreed that education is a ‘human right.’ I was the only respondent that disagreed. What would you say?
From a Christian point of view, only an authority above humans can establish rights such as the right to be born which, in this case, the United Nations rejects. Christianity provides a high view of humans because we are made in God’s image, male and female, with innate worth and dignity thus deserving special protections. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because of the philosophy and nature of the United Nations, is merely a politically imposed declaration offering no justification that their ‘rights’ stand above all other traditions, religions, cultures and political ideologies.
Education, jobs, and vacations are not ‘Human Rights,’ even if some elites say so. Rather, parents are tasked with the responsibility and will be judged accordingly for raising their children in the paideia of the LORD. This responsibility is not to be abdicated to the State, nor demanded that society be bound to provide. Beware of elites handing out human rights. The same elites can take them away. Rather, we are tasked as servant leaders in the fear of the LORD to walk in wisdom and virtue.
