Where do our rights come from?
“Our Creator endowed each one of us with certain rights at birth, among which are the rights to life, liberty, speech, and conscience, to name a few. These are not just human rights; they are divine rights.” Those are the words of Ezra Taft Benson. Thomas Jefferson said “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time”.
Our rights are given to us by God as part of His divine plan for His children. That plan requires each of us to make choices. By making choices we learn and progress. Our God given rights give us the freedom to make choices. If our rights are limited then we are limited in the choices we can make and we cannot progress.
Our rights do not come from government. The government is to guarantee that we are able to exercise our rights, but it cannot decide which rights we can exercise or how we can exercise them. Government can only restrict our rights if it is necessary to protect the rights of others.
The Founders of our nation knew that our rights are from God. They also knew that governments nearly always try to take away the rights of the people. Therefore, they placed limits on the federal government to prevent it from doing so.
If we are able to exercise all of our God given rights then we will be able to have the freedom necessary to be happy and successful and to fulfill our God given mission.
Published August 27, 2017
