Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth that separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes. which impelled them to the separation.
Well, thus begins the document, primarily authored by Thomas Jefferson, but also edited by a committee that included John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, that officially gave birth to the United States of America. July 4th is known as the birthday of our nation because it was the day that the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted. By the Continental Congress. The Declaration's most famous line is the next one, the first of the causes stated by Congress that, as they put it, impelled them to separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
End quote. It's a remarkable claim, and even more so when it was written, and before it became so overly familiar as it is to us today. It's an aspirational claim, an example of what made the newly formed United States an example of what the eminent sociologist Peterim Sorokin would call ideational.
Sorokin contrasted societies that were ideational or aimed at some higher metaphysical ideal from those that were sensate or oriented towards achieving immediate, often sensual gratification.
Now, certainly, when the Declaration was signed, human equality was an unachieved ideal. In fact, from our nation's original sin of slavery to the contemporary evils of abortion, recognized, much less realized, equality of persons, has remained elusive throughout our history. And yet the ideal itself has set for our nation a trajectory that brought us in many ways closer to it. But is it really self-evident that all men are created equal based on what? The next time you're in a crowded room, take a minute.
Look around at all the people that are near you. Is the first thing that comes into your mind, hey, we're all alike? If so, look again.
Now, the first thing we notice in a crowded room with other people are really the differences, and rightly so, because if human beings are, in fact, equal, it has to be grounded in some characteristic that we all share. But there is no extrinsic characteristic that all humans share. In that crowded room, you'll notice some are taller, some are older, some have disabilities, different shades of skin or slants of eyes, some are faster, some are smarter, some are nicer. If there is some characteristic that grounds human dignity and equality, it has to be something intrinsic to who we are, not extrinsic. The secular humanist philosopher Luke Ferry identified what this characteristic was in his book A Brief History of Thought.
And I quote: Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity, an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance. This idea of human equality may seem self-evident, but it was literally unheard of at the time, and it turned an entire world order upside down. Ferry then rightly notes that this notion, as he called it, emerged from the Christian doctrine that humans were created by God in his image, but differently. The only possible reason to assume that all men are created equal is if they were actually endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. In this way, the American Revolution was fundamentally different from the other revolutions, like the French Revolution.
that also claimed to be about equality, but tried to ground it in something other than the purposes of the Creator.
Now to be clear, human equality and the recognition of universal human dignity are always ideals to strive for, and they'll never be achieved this side of the new creation. But the point is important here. Without a creator, specifically the creator who made human beings in his image, then those notions are themselves meaningless. They become mere tolls of power wielded by men who never plan to recognize them and others. But for the American Revolutionaries these notions were not only aspirations, they were inspirations, which drove them to, and I quote the final line of the Declaration, mutually pledge to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
Now, of course, they did not always live out that pledge with the moral integrity that God requires. Nor do we. But thank God that the strength of the ideal itself, that God has created all people in his image and has endowed them with dignity and value from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. is that it's actually true. And that's why it changed the world.
For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And you can find a version of this commentary that you can share with others or print out by going to breakpoint.org. Do you and your spouse want to grow in your faith and make a difference in your family or church? Consider going through the Colson Fellows Program together.
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To explore the program or apply, visit colsonfellows.org today. That's colsonfellows.org. I'm going to use the same method for the first time.
