Everyone in the world has an equal right to the world’s natural resources and an equal right to be respected.
We are surprised at how much Christianity has been distorted, how little of it, or even none of it, has been applied to life, but could the outcome be any different for a teaching that demands true equality of all human beings: all are sons of God, all are brothers, every life is equally sacred? True equality demands not only the destruction of castes, ranks and privileges, but also the destruction of the primary weapon of inequality: violence. Equality cannot be realized, as some people think, through civil measures, it can only be realized through one’s love for God and for other people. And what inspires the love for God and for other people is not civil measures, but true religious education.
The fact that people may have fallen into the crude delusion about the possibility of freedom, brotherhood and equality being introduced by means of executions, threats of executions and violence is not evidence that what people have been striving for is wrong, but only that the path which misguided people tried to follow to realize freedom, brotherhood and equality was wrong.
They say that equality is impossible because there will always be those who are stronger or smarter than others. But it is precisely because some people are stronger or smarter than others, says Lichtenberg, that equality of human rights is especially necessary. What makes the oppression of the weak by the strong so terrible today is that, apart from the inequality of intellect and strength, there is also the inequality of rights.
One need only take a look at the life of Christian nations, which are divided into people who spend all their lives in stupefying, killing labor that is of no use to them, and others who are sated by idleness and every kind of pleasure, to be struck by the terrifying degree of inequality that the people preaching the laws of Christ have reached, and in particular by the false preaching of equality in the face of an organization of life that is terrifying in its extreme cruelty and blatant inequality.
No one practices true equality in life like children. And how guilty the adults are of violating this sacred feeling in them by teaching them that there are emperors, kings, rich men and famous people who should be respected, and that there are servants, laborers and the poor who should be regarded with contempt! “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble…”
Christ revealed to the people what they have always known: that all people are equal, that they are equal because the same Spirit dwells within all of them. But from the earliest times people had divided themselves into kings, nobles, the rich, the laborers and the poor, so that even though they know they are all equal, they live as if they are ignorant of it, and they maintain that equality is impossible in practice. Do not believe this. Learn from little children. Do what they do, meet everyone with love and kindness and treat everyone equally. If you say “thee” to some people then say “thee” to everyone, if you say “you,” then say “you” to everyone. If people exalt themselves, do not respect them more than anyone else. If people are humiliated, then it is these humiliated people whom you should especially try to respect, so as to not follow a bad example.
