 The Holy Bible declares:
1. GOD is the Creator of all property. All things were made from nothing by Him and by His Word.
2. All property belongs to GOD. It is assigned and held in trust by man.
3. Each individual has title to that which he produces, it is his property.
4. Property is to be used to serve GOD and to advance His Kingdom.
5. No man has a right to employ his property to injure another; no man, group of men or even a government has the right to take another man's property without his consent.
We are not to steal or covet that which GOD has entrusted to others.
The popular tendency is to consider property to be those tangible physical items which one owns - a house, car, clothes, ... This is a lopsided, materialistic viewpoint.
James Madison, US President and Founder, defined property, "a man's land or merchandise, or money is called his property... but a man has property in his opinions, and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them... He has an equal property in the free us of his faculties, and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word as a man is said to have a right to his property he may be equally said to have a property in his rights."
So there are two basic forms of property - internal and external. Internal property includes a person's heart, his conscience, ideas, opinions, skills, and religious convictions. External property includes that which a person owns which is material tangible.
With the right of property, whether external or internal, comes the freedom for an individual to employ his property in any way he seems fit, under the umbrella of the moral rule of law given by GOD. If the government excessively taxes an individual, the government is stealing property from that individual which, the Holy Bible declares, was entrusted to him by GOD through that individual's labor. If the government forbids an individual to practice his religious convictions this not only violates his freedom of religion but also steals from that individual the ability to employ his internal property. And that which violates an individual's property violates the individual.
Enemies of private property have always been thieves, robbers, burglars, forgers, extortioners, criminals, etc. Today, added to the enemies list are those that work for Separation of Church and State which violate the right of an individual to employ his internal property and infringe upon his GOD-given freedom of religion. Also added to the enemies list are radical environmentalists, Socialists, and Communists who favor the confiscation of private property and private enterprise which violates a GOD - given right of property.
Radical environmental legislation and bureaucratic regulatory decrees, which confiscate millions of acres to the government, violate GOD's commands and eventually expand government control over every aspect of human society. As in Communist lands, it is does not long before the state becomes sovereign and not the LORD. The integrity of the state is then destroyed, because it is void of the goodness of the LORD and the people soon become government dependents without dignity.
James Madison also said, "Conscience is the most sacred of all property...the external exercise of that being a natural and unalienable right."
What is conscience, that the founders of our nation held so highly? Noah Webster, another Founder and educator, said, "Conscience is the principles within us which decide on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of our own actions ...and instantly approves or condemns them."
This lawfulness points to a law, a code of laws by which man is to govern himself. This code of laws is found in our conscience, and is inate. More than that, if we truly seek to follow GOD, the Holy Bible declare it is writ by GOD on our heart through JESUS CHR |
