Rights

In the film Jurassic Park, after all the wheels have come off and everything has gone wrong, the character Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum, utters the film’s most famous line:

“You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should.”

That is the principle that Paul cites long before that film was ever made: just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. This is the Jurassic Park principle of Christian freedom and Paul unpacks what it means for the Christian life.

Love over rights.

Paul is pro-freedom. He agrees with the Corinthians when they say: “Everything is permissible.” But then he challenges them:

• "Not everything is beneficial."
• "Not everything builds up."
• "No one is to seek his own good, but the good of the other person."

In other words, just because you’re free to do something doesn’t always mean you should. There’s that governing Jurassic Park Principle.

That doesn’t mean you never express your freedom. Paul isn’t saying the Christian life is all restriction and abstinence. He’s saying that love trumps freedom. Our love for others is more important than the full expression of our freedom. Freedom may say we can but love may say we shouldn’t.

Possible Preaching Angle:
Paul’s guiding principle is this: love trumps freedom. That means sometimes we choose not to use our freedom because it could harm someone else, particularly in the faith.

The hottest travel amenity is getting your time back—because we all hate to wait!

In November 2024, Walt Disney World began piloting a new paid service that allows visitors to the Florida resort’s four theme parks to bypass regular lines for popular attractions. Vail Resorts introduced a gear membership program meant to let skiers skip rental lines. More hotels are charging for perks like early check-in.

About half of the more than 650 theme parks, zoos, aquariums, monuments and observation decks surveyed by the travel-research firm Arival offered skip-the-line or VIP access tickets in 2024. Of those not offering these options, 18% said they would introduce similar access in 2025.

The trend highlights how cost and comfort are becoming more intermingled for travelers, especially those hitting crowded destinations. And how those with tighter budgets risk ending up worse off.

These offers are often aimed at families. Rochelle Marcus, a stay-at-home mom in Oxford, N.C., says parents have extra incentive to pay up for a pass during school breaks, when crowds are larger. “That way everyone’s not tired, cranky, and grumpy at the end of the day,” she says. And as someone else in the article concluded: “Life is too short to be spent waiting in line all the time.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Impatience; Waiting – This shows the negative side of human nature that is impatient and wants favorable status. This status is gained by payment. 2) Advocate; Invitation; Rights - The positive side is that we have an advocate who gifted us with priority access to the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace. You cannot buy your way into access with God.

Bonnie Crawford was in danger of missing a connecting flight for a board meeting last week when a United Airlines customer-service rep saved the day. She got rebooked on a pricey nonstop flight in business class. For free.

You’re probably thinking, “No airline ever does that for me.” Crawford isn’t just any frequent flier. She has United’s invitation-only Global Services status.

It’s a semi-secret, status-on-steroids level that big spenders strive for every year. American and Delta have souped-up statuses, too, with similarly haughty names: ConciergeKey and Delta 360°. The airlines don’t like to talk about what it takes to snag an invite, how many people have such status, or even the perks. Even the high rollers themselves don’t know for sure.

Get into these exclusive clubs and you get customer service on speed dial, flight rebooking before you even know there’s trouble, lounge access, and priority for upgrades. Not to mention bragging rights and swag. People even post unboxing videos of their invites on YouTube.

Anyone with this super status needn’t fret about the value of airline loyalty or the devaluation of frequent-flier points.

Crawford was invited to Global Services for 2017 and was hooked. “It was the first taste of this magic, elusive, absolutely incredible status,’’ she says. She wasn’t invited again until this year and fears she won’t be invited back next year due to fewer costly international flights in her new job.

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Boasting; Pride – This shows the negative side of human nature that loves to boast about their favored position and humble-brag about their status. This status is gained by merit. 2) Advocate; Grace; Invitation; Rights - The positive angle is that we have an Advocate who gifted us a special relationship with the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace.

Sometimes the journey to Christ begins when someone encounters horrendous evil. At other times the journey to Christ starts as the nonbeliever joins with believers to promote justice.

Sek Saroeun was a Buddhist and a law student. Working as a DJ at a bar in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sek knew liquor was not the only item on the menu. Girls, often young girls, were sold for sex. Disgusted by this evil, Sek began to work as an undercover informant for the International Justice Mission, a Christian human rights group.

While spinning music and scanning the bar for suspects, Sek also skimmed the pages of a Bible someone had loaned him. The words of Scripture brought him comfort and alleviated his mounting fear of being exposed as an informant. Sek found his heart changing as he worked alongside Christians to protect these vulnerable young girls. As he later shared, his “fear led to longing; longing led to transformation that is unimaginable.” Not only did Sek eventually become a Christian, today he is the top lawyer for the International Justice Mission in Cambodia.

On the issue of legalizing same-sex marriage, even Christians who agree that it is wrong differ about whether Christians should make it a political issue. Whether legalizing same-sex marriage is an important political issue to you or not, the beliefs that are used to argue for it should matter deeply to you. No matter what our society decides on this and other issues, when an unbiblical belief works its way into the foundation of your personal morality, it can lay the groundwork for wrong living in many ways.

In September of 2008, Brad Pitt put into words the arguments that many use to justify legalizing same-sex marriage. He was explaining why he had just donated $100,000 to fight California's November ballot initiative that would overturn the state Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. On first hearing, Pitt's three reasons for legalizing same-sex marriage sound completely fair and right. Here is what he said:

Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another, and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8.

Again, we should be concerned about the laws of our society and the effect they have on everyone directly and indirectly, but we should be just as concerned about the beliefs that we may unwittingly adopt. Are Brad Pitt's beliefs true without any qualification? Is he partly right and partly wrong? And what does the Bible say about these beliefs?

Wilfredo Garza lived the life of an illegal immigrant for more than 35 years. Year after year, he eked out a living crossing the border from Mexico into the United States—some days finding work, some days not. Regardless, he was constantly looking over his shoulder. He was caught by the Border Patrol four times during that period and bused back to Mexico every time. Undeterred by each apprehension, he swam back across the Rio Grande to try again.

The cycle would likely have continued for several more years if not for an amazing discovery. One day, Wilfredo worked up the courage to walk into an immigration lawyer's office. There, incredibly, he found out that his father was born in Texas and spent time working there, which meant that Wilfredo was actually a U.S. citizen!

All these years he possessed the very papers—his father's birth certificate and work records—that proved his citizenship, and yet he lived in guilt and fear. Now he has a certificate of citizenship. Now he doesn't have to sneak across the border; he can walk through the main gate.

"Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

—G. K. Chesterton, A Short History of England, 1917

What is humility? It is that habitual quality whereby we live in the truth of things: the truth that we are creatures and not the Creator; the truth that our life is a composite of good and evil, light and darkness; the truth that in our littleness we have been given extravagant dignity…. Humility is saying a radical yes to the human condition.

We have seen a gradual change over the past several decades in our society from emphasizing individual responsibility to emphasizing, almost glorifying, individual rights.

You will find nothing more searching than what the New Testament has to say with regard to the miserable, petty line of insisting on my rights. The Holy Ghost gives me power to forgo my rights.

There is a famine of compassion and unselfish, lasting, growing, true love among human beings because of the blast of egotistic desire to have "rights" protected. In the midst of the famine, however, a true reality of living in the light of the first commandment would bring an outpouring of an endless supply of love. To love God with all one's heart is not to use up love, but to increase it continually.

The effects of virtue-free social policy have been devastating--but we don't seem quite ready to accept the alternative. Few politicians are comfortable about using words like "right" and "wrong," especially when the subject is sexual irresponsibility (which remains the surest predictor of criminality, ill health and welfare dependency among the poor). ... In fact, it isn't easy. It requires the fortitude to sometimes cast people into the outer darkness. ...

It has become near impossible for a polity as rights-conscious, and tolerant, as ours to admit that some people who behave badly, if not quite criminally, aren't worthy of our support--to kick them off welfare, or out of schools and housing projects. But it is inescapable; the system can't work without sanctions--even if they require the sort of stiff, humorless, un-American propriety that gave morality such a bad name.