Last Epiphany Year C 2025: Exodus 34:29-35
When I was in college, I took a class called Human Rights in Theory and Practice . In that class, we had a discussion about where our rights come from. And the consensus in the class was essentially that they come from being human; they are intrinsic. I would add that they come from God. After class on the day of that discussion, I was talking about it with my stepdad, who taught civics. I posed the question to him and his response was “from the government”. When I pushed back with the answer my class had discerned, his reaction was, “well that’s nice, but who is enforcing it?” And I see his point. But I still think my class of potentially overly-idealistic undergrads was right. Just because a community is unable to act on the rights which are given by God does not mean that they don’t deserve those rights. There have been plenty of times throughout history when people’s knowledge that they should have the rights that their government is withholding from them call those whose rights ar...