Human equality and the Bible
Vishal Mangalwadi, a Christian who was born and raised in India, says that Barack Obama was elected president because Americans hold a belief that is rare in most other countries—human equality—and Americans believe in human equality because of their Christian heritage.
Thomas Jefferson was wrong about one thing: Human equality is not “self-evident.” Inequality is self-evident.
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The Bible wrote the principle of human equality into the American soul by its insistence that all human beings, male and female, are made in God’s image. We’re all descended from one set of parents, Adam and Eve, and therefore are brothers and sisters. So no race or group is inherently superior or inferior to any other. We’re all equal because we’re all sinners, and because God loves us all equally. So we are all equally valuable in the eyes of the most important Valuer. We’re all bound by, and protected by, the same moral law that originates from the same God. No one—not even a king—is exempt. This is the basis for political equality.
The influence of the Bible goes beyond political equality: Biblical faith has also encouraged charity—self-sacrifice for the less fortunate, which reminds me of something I read recently.
If we believe that it befits a man to enter a burning building to save someone else’s child, it is because we hear the words ringing in our ears still, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40).
It may offend secularists and those prudes who think that religion ought to be kept behind closed doors, but charity and concern for the poor are integral to our culture today because of Christianity.
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Though it is not polite to say so, still it cries out for notice. Hindus do not send holy men into foreign lands to feed the hungry and house the naked; they will not do so for the pariahs in their own land. Buddhists, practicing benevolent detachment from the world, do not do so. Muslims, who conquer by force, and who reject natural law on the grounds that it “fetters” Allah, are required to take care of their own, but they ignore everyone else. All cults of ancestor worship, like Shinto, are too firmly fixed upon the local and the familial to care for people far away. The Jews and Christians would care, because of the God they worship: and they did. If the world speaks of human rights now, and the dignity of the poor, it is because the world has heard of Moses and the prophets—and, summing them up in himself, Christ. Men have come at last neither to love the world nor to despise it simply, but to love its goodness, not as a final end, but as a manifestation of the goodness that is eternal. [footnotes omitted]
That goes a long way to explaining why religious conservatives consistently donate more of their time, energy, and resources to charitable causes than do secular liberals, and why the United States is far ahead of any other country in giving to foreigners.
Source of second quote: Anthony Esolen, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, Regnery, 2008, pp. 128-29.
h/t: Alice the Camel
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