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DISCUSSION BOARD
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Discussion Board Forum 1
Topic: Natural Law, Sin, Crime & Unalienable Rights
Question 1: How does sin, as defined by natural law, differ from the legal definition of crime?
The term natural law emanates from a higher entity to where God told Jeremiah that He
“established the laws of heaven and earth” (Jeremiah 33:25, NIV). These laws are not
superseded by any other laws, including those made by man, and are unchangeable. The concept
of sin is defined under natural law, but how does that definition differ from the legal definition of
crime? In a presentation on the biblical principles of justice and criminal justice it states that all
crimes are sins, but not all sins are crimes (Fisher, 2016). Natural law has a broad covering
overall crime but becomes narrower as the term crime becomes blurrier. Sin is the concept of
committing an immoral act against the eyes of God. While you may have committed a crime in
the eyes of him it doesn’t necessarily constitute that you have made an “intentional violation of
criminal law or penal code” (Bohm & Haley, 2018, p. 28). While they are similar in some sense
to each other they also very differently as one may not always mean the other. Crime will
always fall under the term of sin, but as a crime becomes less of a crime the term sin stands alone
as one person could deem it differently from another.
Question 2: What are unalienable rights? How do unalienable rights differ from legal rights?
To show how unalienable rights differ from legal rights we must first investigate one of the most
famous writings of all time; The Declaration of Independence. As stated in the document
unalienable rights are those endowed to man, which are “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness” (National Archives, n.d.). The term legal rights stem from laws and provisions
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brought to us as a form of touching up the unalienable rights defined. If you were to just have
these rights by themselves with no clarification or context to them each person would have their
own definition as to what each means in terms of what they are allowed. The Bill of Rights
furthermore gives boundaries as to what people are endowed, in the United States legally, in
order to keep government at bay and “prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers” (National
Archives, n.d.). While unalienable rights are God given and can never be taken away, legal rights
build on that context as they provide structure and clarity to prevent misconceptions.
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