Is Equality a Self-evident Truth?

July 4, 2020.

Independence Day.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These words come from the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The document pronounced the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in America from rule of Great Britain. Many living in the 21^st century United States and other parts of Western Civilization find the very idea of equality being self-evident to be perplexing.

Christian intellectual Vishal Mangalwadi points out that “a postmodernist would be absolutely right in insisting that the Declaration of Independence was wrong. These ‘truths’ are not ‘self-evident.’ Human equality is not self-evident anywhere in the world — not even in America. Women and blacks were not treated as equal in America. Equality was never self-evident to Hindu sages. For them, inequality was self-evident. Their question was, why are human beings born unequal?”¹ For centuries, it had been the impersonal law of karma determined a person’s status, role, and vocation in Asian societies, whether rulers, peasants, or untouchables. Even the pagan empires of Greece and Rome institutionalized slavery and permitted various forms of misogyny. Modern secularists, likewise, utilized the theory of Darwinian Evolution to become intellectually fulfilled racists. For example, Sir Thomas Huxley wrote, “No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior of the white man. It is simply incredible to think that he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.”² Even Charles Darwin articulated the racist implications to his own theory of evolution. He noted that “the more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”³ Evolution never allows anybody to evolve as equals.

If human equality corresponds to reality it is ultimately grounded in the existence of a Creator. We are “created equal,” and the Creator endows us with “certain unalienable Rights” such as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Put it another way: “these truths appeared common sense to the American Founders because their sense was shaped by the common impact of the Bible — even if a few of them doubted that the Bible was divinely revealed.”⁴

It is the Scriptures that opens our eyes of understanding to human equality. We are taught: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28; cf. 1 Cor. 12:13; Col. 3:11).⁵ Great modern innovations such as the emancipation of slaves and the equality of women are rooted in the transformative message of the Bible.

The untimely and unsettling death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 ignited lots of conversations on inequality in the USA. Calls for reimaging another way of living have been proclaimed. What happens more often than anything else is loud cries for the disrupting, defunding and dismantling the system.

Ironically, there is very little conversation about great strides in social justice and protection of human rights that have taken place in the past two centuries than in the rest of history as we know it. Are instances of social injustice and human rights violations really just as bad or worse today than ever? What do we measure the present occurrences of racism and other human rights violations with to determine whether it is same, better or worse? “Compared to what?” is a question we need to ask diligently. Douglas Murray contends, “When people attempt to sum up our societies today as monstrous, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic patriarchies the question needs to be asked. If this hasn’t worked or isn’t working, what is the system that has worked or does work? To ask this is not to say that elements of our society cannot be improved, or that we should not address injustice and unfairness when we see them. But to talk about our societies in the hostile tone of judge, juror and executioner demands some questions to be asked of the accuser.”⁶

Are there racist today? Yes. Do we still need to fight to preserve and/or uphold the civil liberties of people? Of course, we do. There are problems with inequality in the present epoch but in comparison to what? Is our twenty-first struggle with human rights and social justice the same as those in the time of the Antebellum South? How during the Jim Crow era? How about the life prior to the 1919 passing of the XIX amendment to the United States Constitution that allowed women’s suffrage?

The racist social injustice monster is still lurking about but it has been seriously wounded. Things are still far from perfect and there is always room for improvement. Nevertheless, there are still many freedoms granted to those living in the US, like myself, which are absent elsewhere, and that is all the more reason to take this Independence Day a celebration.

—WGN

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1. Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 391
2. Thomas H. Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (New York: Appleton, 1871), 20.
3. Letter from Charles Darwin to W. Graham, 3 July 1881 in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), 343.
4. Ibid., 392.
5. All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
6. Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (New York: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019), 249