What’s wrong with rights?
Individual rights are part of everyday life. There is the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to free speech and freedom of religion, and (in some parts of the world) the right to bear arms. We may even be heard exclaiming with exasperation, “Don’t I have the right to some peace and quiet?” Rights are not only part of life, surely they are a good part of life, a very good part, because they protect individuals from being violated by others? So, to suggest that rights might be wrong sounds ludicrous.
In a useful article*, the author raises two problems: “First, individual rights do not promote social cohesion in the way we think they do … individual rights privilege the self, not the community.” They are concerned with the individual, rather than the common good. Second, the whole notion of the individual needs questioning, even if it is the basic unit of our society. The Bible gives us persons – defined not in isolation from but in relationship with other persons. God himself is three persons in relationship.
Instead of rights, the Bible gives us love. Jesus had the ‘right’ to insist on equality with God (he is, after all, divine), yet he ‘made himself nothing’ (Philippians 2:6-7). In other words, he chose the way of love… for the common good. It would be kinder, and better for everyone, if we loved people more. Individual rights is a poor substitute.
(*See http://matthiasmedia.com/briefing/2013/09/whats-wrong-with-rights/