Ep. 242: Understanding Human Rights

Welcome to the indoubt podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on indoubt visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.
Isaac Dagneau:
Hey, welcome to indoubt. My name is Isaac, one of the hosts of indoubt as well as the pastor at North Valley Baptist Church in Mission, British Columbia. With me on the show today is a friend and actually someone who’s been on the show before. His name is Steve Kim. In fact, Steve was one of our indoubt live event speakers for our first indoubt live event all around sexual identity, which is not what we’ll be talking about today. But if you’re interested in that event, you can go to indoubt.ca and find old archives of that. Yeah, so Steve, after being a follower of Jesus and a husband and a father, he is the Alberta director of Apologetics Canada and I’m sure Steve will explain more in a moment. But I’ll say this from their site, Apologetics Canada seeks to equip the local church by providing seminars, conferences, and resources for people to become and stay fully devoted disciples of Jesus. Also, it seeks to inspire and challenge believers to think and thinkers to believe. So it’s great to have you on the show again today, Steve.
Steve Kim:
Thanks for inviting me on. It’s good to be back.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, it’s so good. And I mean, if you’re interested, you can go back… I’m trying to think of when it was. Probably in 2015, when we did some initial interviews with you and I was able… In one of those interviews, I explained a little bit about our first time that we met together, which was when you-
Steve Kim:
Oh, yeah. That’s right.
Isaac Dagneau:
Pretended to be a Buddhist in my world religions class. So just for listeners, our prof, who’s Andy Steiger, the president of Apologetics Canada, he had each of his students, I was one of his students, have to share the gospel to his Buddhist friend. And yeah, we go into this room just with you and you do such a great job. I mean, you totally convinced me. And it was scary. Everyone was so scared. So again, just want to thank you for that talk.
Steve Kim:
Oh, yeah. That was such a memorable thing. Andy and I did it a couple of times so I hope that we’ll have a chance to do it again, somewhere somehow.
Isaac Dagneau:
Please. It’s so good.
Steve Kim:
That’ll be a lot of fun.
Isaac Dagneau:
It’s so good. I think it’s a really important exercise. I think it’s very, very important. So it was very good. Yeah. So I guess for people though, that are a little bit unaware of who you are. Maybe let’s take a moment just hear from you a bit about just your personal life now. And yeah, what Apologetics Canada is all about.
Steve Kim:
My story isn’t all that different from many Christians, in a sense, because I grew up in a Christian home. I grew up in a very devout Roman Catholic household. And so the idea of repentance was very familiar to me. I would go to confessionals every week that sort of a thing. But at some point, I realized that this was just something I inherited from my family. And so this wasn’t really my faith. I mean, I knew the words, right? Salvation, repentance, forgiveness, all those kinds of things. But it didn’t mean anything to me. So it wasn’t until at the age of 16 after my father passed away, I realized without anyone enforcing my faith, I wasn’t really owning it. And so I was apathetic for a number of years. And then later down the road, I met some really solid Christian friends. And the way they lived out their lives really, in a sense, puzzles me because I’m like, “Here’s a Christian family.” So I went to see my friend’s family and just the way they live their lives. I’m like, “They actually take the Bible seriously. This is weird.” And this is me coming from a rather devout Catholic family, right? Even then, at some point, I lost touch with that devotion. And so when I came across people who actually lived out said they believed was actually weird to me. But at some point that was so attractive to me. I said, “I want this for myself. I see that peace. I see that harmony in the family none of which we have in our family. So how do I get there?” I realized they took their Bible seriously, Jesus was real to them. And so it had to be real for me too. And so that’s how I actually came to know… I like to say that that’s around the time when I came to know not just the religion but I came to know the person behind the religion. I came to know Jesus personally.
Isaac Dagneau:
So good.
Steve Kim:
Yeah. But then I wasn’t out of the woods yet because the faith was something that I inherited. And now I had to hash everything out intellectually. And that’s how I got into Apologetics and here I am working for a non-profit organization that does exactly that.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, that’s so good. Just out of curiosity, obviously, you do work for Apologetics Canada. What was your first encounter with maybe with an author, speaker, book in the Apologetics arena that you first read or that you came up with?
Steve Kim:
Yeah, I know exactly which one it was and who recommended the book to me. So in 2003, after a six months stay in South Korea, which is where I was actually born and raised. I was going to go teach English there but things didn’t pan out. So I returned to Canada and I started attending a friend’s church. I joined the worship team, I started attending regularly. And then one day I was talking about how I was struggling with some of these questions and the drummer friend of mine, I still remember his name, Jason Simpson, who by the way is an actor and every now and then I see him on screen. It’s weird. He actually recommended Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. He said, “It answers so many questions. I think you’ll find it really helpful.” I picked it up. Man, I plowed through that book really quickly. And then I moved on to the second volume, right? The Case for Faith by the same author. And then on it went from there. One thing really good about these two books is that Lee Strobel himself isn’t the expert. He’s interviewing the experts.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah.
Steve Kim:
Right? So that’s how I got to know a lot of these names William Lane Craig, JP Moreland, Ravi Zacharias, right? And all of these names. And so that’s how I got started.
Isaac Dagneau:
That’s so good. I love that. I think many could say that Lee Strobel was the gateway for them into the Apologetics arena because of his book and all that kind of stuff. So that’s really cool. Well, thanks, Steve. Let’s jump in here because I know time is going to go really quickly. We’re going to talk a little bit about human rights, which is a very timely topic right now. This is something that you suggested. So to start us off, Steve, what do you understand human rights to be generally speaking about? I mean, it’s thrown all over the place right now. Thrown around. But do we really get it? And also, do people have differing opinions on what exactly human rights is?
Steve Kim:
Yeah, human rights are basically norms that are there to protect people from abuse. So we talk about responsibility, we have responsibility to one another. But why do we have that responsibility? It is because of who you are. And on the basis of who you are, you have certain rights. So, for example, you have the so called negative rights, you have the rights to be free from violence, for example, right? Because you’re a human being, you may have positive rights. That means you have entitlement to certain things like education, health care, equal treatment under the law, so on and so forth. So, rights are basically duties and responsibilities, right? That we owe to each other, really, that that’s the basis for it. But in terms of whether people generally agree on it, I think they kind of quibble about, for example, some people don’t believe in positive rights. Some people don’t believe that we have rights to education, or medical care, and so on and so forth. But we do have. Even those people who believe that we do have negative rights, the right to be free from oppression, free from harm and violence, those kinds of things. So people quibble about those things but human rights right now is the predominant way of understanding human ethics today.
Isaac Dagneau:
Right. Okay. Okay. So maybe you can say that in more of a principle level, people agree but the practical implications of it and what things people have rights to, those things that people… They’ll go back and forth.
Steve Kim:
Right.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah.
Steve Kim:
So for one quick example is that in the abortion debate, pro choice, pro life, those kinds of things. The pro choice side will say, “Well, women have the right to bodily autonomy.” That is their right. The pro life side will typically say, “Yes, it is their right but your right to bodily autonomy is not an unqualified good. Your right to your bodily autonomy stops at the moment it harms another human being.”
Isaac Dagneau:
Right.
Steve Kim:
Right? So I have the right to swing my arm, I have that freedom to do with my body as I will but my right to swing my arm stops right where your nose starts, so to speak.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Right.
Steve Kim:
And so people talk about, “Is this a right? Or “How far does this right go?” Those kinds of things, yeah. But generally, people agree. “Yes, I believe in human rights.”
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. Okay. That’s good. So understanding that aspect then, what happens when there are no human rights?
Steve Kim:
Yeah, this is a really interesting question because, in a lot of ways, we’re seeing what happens, right? So after the death of George Floyd, we saw riots happening all across the country in the US and really protests breaking out all across the world because they saw the horrendous nature of what happens when somebody’s human rights are violated. Now, the 20th century is especially filled with atrocities that occurred precisely because we ignore people’s human rights. Now, when it comes to World War II, most people think Nazi Germany. I do think about Nazi Germany but I’m from South Korea. And so a very prominent part of my World War II vocabulary is Imperial Japan. And so, I often refer to Unit 731.
Isaac Dagneau:
Okay.
Steve Kim:
Now, our listeners may not be very familiar with what Unit 731 is. Unit 731 was a biochemical warfare research center. And there were a number of them but probably, the most infamous one is Unit 731 that was installed near what is today Harbin in China. And in this facility, there were PoWs that had all kinds of experiments done on them. And their humanity was completely removed. In fact, they had a word to refer to these test subjects. And these Japanese researchers called them Maruta, which literally means logs, right? So instead of one person or two persons, it was one log or two logs, right? So when they called on a prisoner, they would say Maruta number such and such. It’s not Jim Bob, or it’s not anything like that. It’s Maruta. Log number such and such. And now, the kinds of things that were done… Now, let me read just this quick excerpt from this book called Unit 731 Testimony by Hal Gold. Now, this is a bit disturbing. So our listeners, if you have little ones nearby, you might want to turn this down, listen to this yourself on your own. And then if your children are mature enough to listen to this, maybe you can play it louder later if you want to but this is how it goes. “Even with the intestines and organs exposed, a person does not die immediately. It is the same physical situation as ordinary surgery under anesthesia in which a person is operated on and restored. Witnesses at vivisections report that the victim usually lets out a horrible screen when the cut is made and that the voice stops soon after that. The researchers then conduct their examination of the organs, remove the ones that they want for study, then discard what is left of the body. Somewhere in the process, the victim dies through blood loss or removal of vital organs.” And then the book goes on to say, Ping Fang, which is where Unit 731 was constructed. “Ping Fang was equipped for disposing of its consumed human lab materials with three large incinerators, calling them crematoria would bestow undue dignity upon them. A former member who assisted in the burning commented, the bodies always burnt up fast because all the organs were gone. The bodies were empty.” So the 20th century has a lot of these kinds of things happening, right? And then in 1948, so about three years after World War II was over, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was produced and adopted. So that’s the background there.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. So what does that say then in this Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Which is interesting.
Steve Kim:
So Universal Declaration of Human Rights was produced… Again in 1948, this was in direct response to the kinds of atrocities that people saw committed during the war. So in any sort of a legal document or laws or things like that, the preamble basically tells you why these things, why they’re going to make this declaration, or why these laws are going to be made, right? So, it always starts with whereas. You might have seen that in some legal documents or laws and such. Now, in the preamble at the very beginning of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this is how it starts. “Whereas, recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.” So notice what happened there. This is the basis for this Declaration of Human Rights, recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family. That is the foundation they’re saying of freedom, justice, and peace in the world. So what’s funny is this, typically, when you talk about human rights and things like that, a lot of people who are particularly, religious will appeal to some kind of a religious foundation. But when they were putting this together, they couldn’t exactly do that. They couldn’t just do it from a particular religious point of view. After all, this is United Nations, right? And so all they could do was just make this very vague reference to the inherent dignity, equal and inalienable rights. And notice that these things are recognized. In other words, the inherent dignity, it means you have value as a human being, by virtue of you being a human being. So your dignity, which is the basis for your human rights… So you have human rights because you have human value, you have human dignity. This is inherent, nobody gave it to you. You’re born with it. In other words, the state doesn’t give it to you, the state has to recognize it in you. And then on this basis, you have equal and inalienable rights. So every other human being because they’re a human beings, because you’re a human being, should have equal rights on the basis of our common humanity. And then these rights, again, because it’s based on inherent dignity, now, it’s inalienable rights. So that’s how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights starts, which is very fascinating.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, absolutely. It is fascinating. And it makes me think about the fact that obviously, as Christians from a Christian worldview, we say amen to the fact of the inherent quality in each person and the equal, the inalienable rights. However, what’s fascinating, I think, is that here, they’re not taking from a Christian worldview because it’s the United Nations. Like you said they recognize something but you have to ask the question, “Well, where did that come from?” Right. This recognition of something that’s there. Let me ask you this. Do most, let’s say, atheists or agnostics. I mean, they would generally agree with this, I would think. At least in maybe not in theory but at least in practice, they would agree with this. But how do they conceive of the idea of human rights? To them is this something made up or is it something that they also recognize as a law of nature kind of thing?
Steve Kim:
It depends. I remember a number of years ago at Apologetics Canada, we had a chance to invite Dr. Andy Banister, and then also the executive director of the BC Humanist Association by the name of Ian Bushfield. We were able to sit down together at Westside Church to talk about the foundation of human rights. And on the one hand, it seemed that Mr. Bushfield recognized that we have human dignity and so forth. But he thought, he believed that the concept of human rights is something that we as a society, on the basis of our recognition of our human nature, common humanity, and the value that we have, then we construct this as a society. And so it’s a bit of both. And now, in a few moments time, we’re going to talk about why I don’t think that really works. But just that the idea that human rights if this is not an objective feature of reality, and if this is something that’s purely a social construct, that’s subjective, then we run into all kinds of problems. Then what happens is, for example, how can I right? Justifiably, condemn what people do in another culture? So can I in 21st century Canada condemn what Nazi Germany did in mid 20th century Germany? Our listeners might find this fascinating but all the Holocaust stuff that Nazi Germany did, it was all completely legal in Germany because they had already passed all the laws to oppress the gypsies and the Jews and the homosexuals and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, so on and so forth.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, it’s amazing. And I just finished listening to actually another conversation with an atheist and a Christian and they were talking about morality, which we’re going to jump into in just a moment here because it fits, obviously. And it was amazing that this atheist, he respectfully, he held consistently to what he believed because he basically… The Christians led him to say that if he went to a tribe, somewhere in the world today, that it’s moral and it’s good and okay to hunt down another human being, kill them, and eat them. That this atheist was able to say, “Even though, I personally would not do that, I understand that that is a moral thing.” And it was amazing. It was actually really eye opening to hear, “Okay.” So this does not apply universally in their perspective. It’s not objective. It’s not universal. It’s based on these social constructs.
Steve Kim:
So some atheists, they’re willing to bite the bullet and say, “Hey, you know what? At the end of the day, I am a relativist.” It’s a matter of what kind of a society do we want to live in? Do we want to live in the kind of a society where people can kill each other to consume one another? Or do we want to live in a kind of a world where everybody is protected from such things?
Isaac Dagneau:
Right.
Steve Kim:
Right?
Isaac Dagneau:
Right.
Steve Kim:
And I’ve spoken many times on this idea of cultural relativism. And cultural relativism has all kinds of problems because it basically, boils morality or ethics down to a law or whatever the culture decides. And if that’s the case, then we can look at any number of horrendous things that happened and yes, part of the cultural norm and say, “Well, was that wrong or not?” Or “Is it wrong just from our perspective?” So in other words, is there something objectively evil about say, slavery, right? Or is this just wrong in my culture?
Isaac Dagneau:
Right, right.
Steve Kim:
Right? So does this apply universally or is this just in my culture? Another problem, a related problem with cultural relativism is that social reformation by definition is evil. So people like Martin Luther King Jr, who fought institutionalized racism, right? By definition, he’s an evil man. And that’s crazy. Especially, in the aftermath of everything that we’re seeing, after the death of George Floyd, nobody would actually think that. But if you hold to cultural relativism, that is where it leads us. So in other words, I think people may pay lip service to the idea that these are all cultural social constructs and whatnot. But I think deep inside, we are all committed to the idea that this is actually an objective feature of reality.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yes, in the same way, that people recognize that something like what Martin Luther King Jr. did was right and good. It’s the same way what the UN put together that there. They recognize this inherent quality and people as well. So there was this objective reality. So let’s continue on here. So we’ve already dipped into this but let’s just go into a little bit more then. How does human rights relate to morality? Which we’ve already basically talked about. So maybe we can skip over that a little bit more. But you talk about that objective morality needs several things to be established. So maybe you can just explain to us what those things are for objective morality.
Steve Kim:
Yeah, just as a caveat is especially since we’re talking about atheists and agnostics too. When I talk about morality, as a theist, especially, often, my atheist friends object saying, “Hey, I don’t believe in God but I’m a good person.” That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about whether you need to believe in God to be a good person, whether you need to believe in God to believe in human rights. What I am talking about is, if God is not there, can we even have such categories as good and evil, right and wrong? Sometimes people raise this question, “Can we be good without God?” Sometimes people misunderstand that to mean, “Do I have to believe in God to be good?” That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about can we be good without God? Not just the belief in God but God Himself. If God is not there, can we even have objective ethics or morality? So, that’s what I’m talking about. Now, when we’re talking about human rights. Human rights if you think about it is a moral category. It has to do with, well, right and wrong, right? Good and evil. Those kinds of things. So if you violate human rights, that is an evil thing, that is wrong, right? And when you uphold somebody’s rights that is a good thing, that is a right thing. So this is a moral category. So that means, we have to ask the question, “Can your worldview support objective, good and evil objective right and wrong?” So the thing that I think we need to have objective morality is first objective moral values, and second, objective moral duties. So objective moral values is basically good and evil. And objective moral duty has to do with right and wrong. Now, people might think, “Aren’t they the same thing?” Actually, it’s not because what is the good thing to do often is also the right thing to do. People think while good and right are one of the same thing. But here’s a quick case where I can show you it’s not the case. So, for example, Isaac, let’s say you and me, we are soldiers. We’re in the army, we’re fighting insurgents somewhere in Afghanistan. While we’re fighting a grenade lands in between the two of us, right? And I duck out of the way. So I just leave you to your own devices, and I duck out of the way to take cover. Now, did I do something wrong? No, I have the right to preserve myself. Now, if I saved you, if I pushed you out of the way at the risk of my own life, that would be a good thing to do. But if I just duck out of the way to get away from it, and let you do your own thing, to let you take cover on your own. That’s not necessarily wrong. But what if, let’s put the scenario a bit. I jump on the grenade and I cover it with my body so that it kills me but it saves your life. Now, did I have to do that? No. So I wasn’t obligated to do it, I didn’t have any duty to do that. But was it a good thing? Yes, absolutely. It just goes above and beyond the call of duty. So here’s a good thing that I had no duty to do. And so then we can see that these two things are separate. And then third thing that I throw in there, you don’t need this for morality to be objective but I say you need moral accountability if that morality is going to be meaningful, right? So what we mean by that… An easier word for it, a simpler word for it that we’re familiar with, would be justice, right? So I think we need those things. And so then the question is, can your worldview support those things?
Isaac Dagneau:
Right, right. So okay, so then with that being said, when we think about… Because you kind of categorize worldviews in three different ways, pantheism, naturalism, so God only, nature only, and then monotheism, which is God and nature. So, obviously, everyone who’s listening will know which category best fit. Can you just show us how that fits best with the God and nature, the monotheistic understanding?
Steve Kim:
Right. And so if you look at different worldviews out there, different religions, there are lots and lots of them out there. So it’s hard to take human rights and run it through the greed of each worldview. But thankfully, if you look at the different worldviews, you can broadly categorize them into three categories, like you mentioned, so there’s only God, so that’d be like religions like, for example, Taoism, certain forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, whereas pantheistic all is God. And then there’s another worldview that says, “This world is all there is.” And that’d be your typical physicalism, naturalism, those kinds of things. And then the kind of a view that says, “There are the world and God.” Now, the reason I think it doesn’t really work in the first two, that kind of nature only view or God only view is this in the sort of nature only view all that we are boils down to particles in motion ultimately. What am I? I am a human being. But what is a human being? A very strict naturalist will have to say, “At the end of the day, you are really particles in motion.” This becomes a huge problem because there is nothing good or evil about one domino falling and striking the next one. And that’s basically, what we have on this view of the world is just dominoes just cascading, right. So, I usually, use this illustration. Let’s say we have two dominoes A and B. And we have at least two possible scenarios where a falls and knocks domino B over or the other way around domino B falls and knocks domino A over. And then I ask the question, “Well, which one is evil?”
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah.
Steve Kim:
Yeah, exactly, right?
Isaac Dagneau:
Right.
Steve Kim:
You chuckle and most people do because they realize, “That’s a ridiculous question.”
Isaac Dagneau:
It’s arbitrary.
Steve Kim:
Yeah, there’s nothing good or evil about a domino falling and striking the next domino. Exactly. And if that is the view of our world where we are, at the end of the day, at the most kind of the fundamental level of reality, we’re just nothing but particles colliding, that’s literally what we have. So there’s nothing good or evil about these particles colliding. It doesn’t matter how many more you have, you’re not going to get something new out of this. So, okay. So, I use the illustration of just two dominoes. Let’s say, we have 10 dominoes. Does anything change? No, it’s just more of the same. If we had a billion dominoes, we would just have more of the same. If we had a trillion dominoes, we would have more of the same. If we had 10 to the eightieth power of dominoes, which by the way, I am told, the scientists tell us that this is the approximate number of all of the elementary particles in our known universe. You wouldn’t get anything new out of it, right? So if that worldview holds true, then there is no starting point for good or evil. Nevermind, right and wrong. So that’s the reason why I don’t think human rights can be grounded in naturalism ultimately, except as a complete pure social construct. The reason pantheism is problematic to me is this. If you think about morality, morality is a personal quality, right? It’s something that is established between persons but it goes a little bit beyond just personal. It’s actually interpersonal. Like I said, it actually gets established between persons, right? And so if there were nobody else in the world, and I’m just all by myself, I’m the only person in the universe, what happens to morality, right? Morality starts to break down. Morality is something that gets established between persons. It’s an interpersonal kind of a quality.

Isaac Dagneau:
Right.
Steve Kim:
So in order for morality to make sense, we need that kind of individuation of persons. You are you and I am me. Now, in many pantheistic worldviews what happens is the whole reality is just really God. And this individuation is really an illusion, right? You and I are both in certain Hinduistic views, we’re all just part of the Brahma. And this is Maya, this is an illusion. You’re like this wave coming out of the ocean, I’m another wave coming out of another part of the ocean. But we’re ultimately all made of the same kind of thing. And so our individuation is an illusion. And if that’s the case, I don’t see how human rights could be grounded there because again, morality has to be an interpersonal quality, in so far as, human rights is a moral category, we need that individuation. Now, when you look at the Christian worldview, for example, right? Now, we have individuation is real, right? We have personhood. In fact, the fundamental reality, at the bottom of reality is a communion of persons in the God head, right? The trinity, right? It’s not a Unitarian view. It’s a Trinitarian view. So I think that’s why out of, not just a theistic worldview, but I think the Christian worldview makes the best sense of human rights.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, yeah. That’s so good. That’s so good. As we finish up here, Steve, there’s so much here. And I’m sure that listeners are maybe a little bit of a headache because there’s lots but this is good. It’s good because there’s lots to think about. You’ve been very helpful. As we finish up, what comes to mind when I ask the question to you, how does the gospel connect to human rights and what we’ve been talking about here?
Steve Kim:
So like I said earlier, the basis for human rights is human value. It is the recognition of inherent dignity, right? That this dignity, the value that we’re born with, that’s what gives rise to human rights. Now, when it comes to the Christian gospel, what it says is, okay, humanity is created in a special way. We are created in the image of God. So the fancy lingo for it in theological circles is imago Dei, right? The image of God. We’re created in that kind of a special way so that we carry value. Furthermore, God pays the greatest compliment that he could pay to humanity by doing what? By becoming one of us and coming to us. And that’s one of the craziest things about Christianity, that in most other religions, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to get to God or you’re trying to attain some kind of a salvation equivalent on your own effort. But then in Christianity, what you have is God coming to us and then living with us, suffering for us, dying for us, right? So, that we can be with him again. And that’s how much God cares about us is that he’s willing to become one of us and suffer with us. Now, typically, in say ancient Greek Roman mythology or whatever when a god comes down disguised as a human or something like that, that’s usually bad news. They’re here to get what it is they want. But in Christianity, what we have is God coming, humbling himself and then suffering for us, right? That’s how much he loves us. And so absolutely, we have this right. We have a great basis for affirming each other’s rights and each other’s values that give rise to those rights.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, that’s so good, Steven. As a last question here. Recognizing human rights in this more Christian perspective, understanding the image of God, how can Christian and adults best apply the recognizable and God-ordained human rights in their everyday life?
Steve Kim:
Right. I think the first thing is to see each other as human beings. And now, this might sound a little odd like, “Don’t we do that all the time?” But you would be surprised how quickly we dehumanize people that we don’t like. And the language that we use with each other to one another is very revealing. So often, cops, right? Would refer to criminals as convicts or something of that sort or garbage or something like that. Criminals would refer to police officers as pigs, right? Now, this might seem a little minor but I mean, if you look at the kind of language that was used, say by Nazi Germany or the Hutus in Rwanda, right? What you see is, whenever there’s a genocide, it is always preceded by a campaign of dehumanization. So the Nazis called the Jews rats, the Hutus called the Tutsis cockroaches, during World War II, right? Americans called the Japanese monkeys and the Japanese called the Chinese bugs and so on and so forth, right? So there was a lot of this kind of… And so the critical thing that we have to do is we need to make sure that we see each other’s humanity. And think about the kinds of people that you like to dehumanize. Now, a very simple example of it is this. We like to dehumanize politicians that we don’t agree with.
Isaac Dagneau:
Sure.
Steve Kim:
Right? If it’s Donald Trump, for example. Well, he’s a racist, he’s a bigot, he’s an idiot, that kind of a thing. And if you’re a very conservative person in Canada, you might say, “Trudeau is an idiot.” And those kinds of things. Well, you might disagree with, say Justin Trudeau’s policies but you know what? He’s got a name, he’s got a family, he’s got his wounds, his hurts, his vulnerabilities. He is a human being. And we need to start seeing people as such. And one thing that I found really helpful is just take some time to get to know the other person. I think it’s really important to take the time to get to know somebody else. And one thing that really helps me personally is I found that people are humanized in my eyes the most when I see their vulnerabilities. Because at the end of the day, that’s how you build trust, is by exchanging vulnerabilities, right? So, Isaac, when you and I met, we probably did something like… Well, maybe in our case, it’s a little different. But typically, when people meet, right? I say, “Hey, my name is Steve.” Right? Now, I made myself vulnerable before you, now, you know something about me, right? And I don’t know the same thing about you. Now, if you at that point, don’t reciprocate, trust is not built. But when you reciprocate by saying, “Hi, my name is Isaac.” And you make yourself vulnerable before me in the same way that I did. Now, there’s a modicum of trust that is built. And the more you do that, the more trust is built, the more you get to see the humanity in the other person. It’s really important, I think. If there is a particular issue that you and that person just really don’t agree with, talk about something else, talk about family, talk about, well, maybe family issues, right? Or really critical thing is if I could distill all of this into one word, listen. Listen, listen, listen. In fact, when I teach a class on how to share the gospel with somebody else who doesn’t believe in Jesus? What I tell people is, “Well, here’s an exercise for you. This week, find somebody that you don’t normally talk to, find somebody that you know, you disagree on many things with, and just sit down with that person and just listen.” And the goal is not to correct that person, the goal is not to refute that person, just listen.
Isaac Dagneau:
That’s awesome.

Steve Kim:
Right?
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah.
Steve Kim:
That would be my recommendation.
Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah. I love that. That’s good. And like you said at the beginning, it sounds funny just recognize human beings as human beings.
Steve Kim:
Yeah.
Isaac Dagneau:
But as you flesh it out, you start to see, “Oh, yikes. Maybe there’s lots of areas where we don’t really do that in practice but it’s so essential.” So I think that’s awesome, Steve. So just to overview of everything. I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to go over this. And like you mentioned, we will have you back on again, to discuss a little bit more Heaven and Hell, different things like that. So yeah, thank you so much for being on this show. And we’ll have you on again soon.
Steve Kim:
Yeah. Well, Isaac, thanks so much for inviting me back. It was great fun to be with you again.
Isaac Dagneau:
Hey, thanks for joining us today and a special thanks to Steve Kim, for coming on the show and talking with us today. You can follow Apologetics Canada, which Steve is a part of by heading to their website apologeticscanada.com. On their site, they have resources as well as a podcast of their own. So you should go and check it out and take a listen. And make sure to join us next week as Daniel talks with Julia Beazley on the serious but important topics of pornography and human trafficking. And as always remember, you can go and check out many of our other podcasts as well as articles and other resources at indoubt.ca.

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