“That’s my right!”

It is proclaimed many times in the United States, but is it really your right. Yes, the constitution lays out the Bill of Rights, but a survey done by McCormick Tribune Foundation showed that while 52 percent of Americans can name at least two characters of the Simpsons TV cartoon family, only 28 percent are able to name more than one of the five fundamental freedoms granted to them by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But our Declaration of Independence says that the pursuit of happiness should be a right that is until it infringes on the rights of others or the Law of Nature.

C.S. Lewis shares his opinion in “Have No ‘Right to Happiness.’” He says, “ A right to happiness doesn't, for me, make much more sense than a right to be six feet tall, or to have a millionaire for your father, or to get good weather whenever you want to have a picnic. I can understand a right as a freedom guaranteed me by the laws of the society I live in.” He explains that a right to happiness cannot be guaranteed, no one can assure you that you will be happy or that you will ever find happiness in your life. Lewis states, “The fatal principle, once allowed in that department, must sooner or later seep through our whole lives. We thus advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche.”  If we allow ourselves to become completely immersed in the pursuit for one thing, all else will become lost. That if we let one instinct take total control, the time will come when instinct is all we live by.

Lewis writes “Ab­solute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice.” If you were a soldier in a war and gave into your instinct to flee, you would be labeled a coward. While preserving your own life, you may have cost lives of others depending on you in the battle.  This analogy can be applied to our ability to stand for God and His teachings. If we run at the first sign of trouble in our faith whether it is life or death persecution or the mockery of colleagues, we may not be able to see the cost it has on others. The faith they had could be weakened because they looked up to you as an example.