Eyah asher Eyah

Moses then said to God, `Look, if I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The god of your ancestors has sent me to you,” and they say to me, “What is his name?” what am I to tell them?

God said to Moses, `I am who I am’.
-Exodus 3:13-14

Is a human rights framework an inherently religious creation, or can it be conceived absent Christianity? This question does not, I believe, evoke a need for an intense discussion of complicated cosmologies. Instead, it simply leads us backwards, watching a flower bloom in reverse to the original question of life on earth [and everywhere else]: is God the beginning and end of all? Is Yahweh the Alpha and the Omega?
The Psalmists tell us that God is known by His justice. And we are given the responsibility as humans, to live a life of stewardship, as it says in Genesis 1:28: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’”
When the Queen of Sheba hears of the fame of King Solomon and comes to see him with her own eyes she says to him: “Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in your and placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king, to maintain justice and righteousness.” I Kings 10:9. And what might this justice - the Lord’s justice - look like? In Psalm 72, the writer asks God to “Endow the king with your justice, O God,...He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.” Psalm 72:1,4.
What is it exactly that God is rescuing his children from? The terror from who’s hands God will snatch his children is not unlike modern Human Rights litigation. Job 5:4 says “His children are far from safety, crushed in court without defenders.” Ecclesiastes chapter 1 notes that nothing is happening now that has not been happening, or has not happened before. And the Old Testament would seem to confirm that such horrors have been plaguing man for quite some time. Psalms 10:2 says “[i]n his arrogance, the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises.” Ezekiel 22:29 observes “[t]he people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.” Joel 3:3 says “[t]hey cast lots for my people and traded boys for prostitutes; they sold girls for wine that they might drink.” Isaiah tells of worker abuse, and slavery, Amos tells of merchants cheating the poor, and Psalms further tells us about trafficking of persons - weaving tales of the wicked who lay in wait and capture the innocent and drag them from the village.
These cries, much like those from the abandoned villages in Northern Uganda or Burma or Guatemla that we hear today magnified through the megaphone of Human Rights NGOs like Restore International or the International Justice Mission, are lonely and loud, but do not escape God’s ears:
“Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,” says the Lord. “I will protect them from those who malign them.” Psalm 12:5
Interestingly enough, God is not adding to the pool of rights or entitlements of the poor or the down-trodden. Rather, he is in the business of restoration - he is restoring them to the state they were in, a state of human dignity. God is in the business of returning the dignity of human beings, made and crafted in His image, to its condition before oppression. He is making right the wrong done in their name, “For he who avenges blood remembers; he does not ignore the cry of the afflicted.” Pslam 9:12.
But what is the justice he is bestowing upon them? Where does the inherent dignity come from? The answer to that question, I believe, lays squarely within the debate on the existence of God himself. When Moses asked God “Whom shall I say sent me?” God responded “Eyah asher Eyah,” a biblical play on words if you will. God responded I Am he who is called I Am. For the Christian who truly believes God is El Shaddai, the Lord must be the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. If the justice and dignity the Lord were restoring to his people was not originally derivative of His being, than justice would be a concept existing outside of God. It would be a value or value cosmology if you will, which exists outside God that God may and ought to be judged against.
The explanation for the Christian cannot be that God can be judged against a standard of justice which man has created. It is God who is the justifier. At the end of the book of Job, after God has heard Job complain for what will be the last time, it is written:
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm: “Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer me. Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Do you have an arm like God’s and can your voice thunder like his? Then...unleash the fury of your wrath,...crush the wicked where they stand. Bury them all in the dust together; shroud their faces in the grave. Then I myself will admit to you that your own right hand can save you.” Job 40:6-14
Either the Lord is right all the time, or we are. Either we can save ourselves, or we cannot. And if we can, then we are the justifiers and the dignity of all human beings comes from what we award ourselves. If not, then he is the Justifier, the King, El Shaddai and the source of justice forever, amen.