If you heard someone say a bill would “recognize the . . . inherent right to live,” you might assume the speaker was referring to the inherent, God-given right that unborn babies have to life. But you would be wrong in this case, as this statement was recently made about . . . wild rice.
Yes, you read that right: wild rice.
A tribal rights lawyer recently defended a bill introduced in Minnesota that would add wild rice as a state grain. She said: “This bill applies the legal inherent rights doctrine to a plant that has been in Minnesota since long before there was a Minnesota. That doctrine does not grant any rights to wild rice. Rather, it recognizes the plant’s inherent right to live exists because it is alive.”
But why stop there? Rice isn’t the only thing that is alive—every plant, every animal, every fungi, every bacterium is “alive,” so why shouldn’t everything have the same “right” recognized? And in the evolutionary worldview, every lifeform native to Minnesota has been there for tens of thousands of years “before there was a Minnesota,” so why does that only mean something for the rice?
Apparently, “wild rice is viewed by Native Americans as a living being and relative,” but again, in the evolutionary view, every living thing is our relative, a branch off a millions-of-years-old tree. So why stop with wild rice?
And the inconsistency gets even worse. Two years ago, the state of Minnesota voted to legalize abortion up until birth. These activists and lawmakers want rice to have an inherent right to live because it is alive but refuse to recognize the inherent right to life that an unborn child has simply because that baby is a person and he or she is alive. They refuse to apply their own logic to protect a vulnerable class of human beings, but they want to use it to protect a vulnerable wild grain. It’s a reminder that this is a spiritual issue in a spiritual war.
Now, of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to protect and preserve an endangered or declining native species. Part of being a good steward of creation (taking dominion as God gave us) is caring for ecosystems with wisdom and foresight. The problem is the misplaced priorities, the blatant inconsistency, and the paganism and animism (worship of creation) inherent in the idea of rice having a right to life and being “our relative.”
Yes, we should protect God’s creation, including important species such as wild rice, which serves as habitat and food for many migrating waterfowl and which helps stabilize shorelines and maintain water quality.
But we shouldn’t do so using language that elevates them to a humanlike stance (or that implies worship or some kind of divinity). Humans are different from all the rest of creation—we alone are made in the image of God. Rice and other plants were made for a good purpose: to serve as food and habitat, to beautify the earth, hold down the soil, and so much more. But they aren’t people, and they don’t have the same value or rights that people have because rights aren’t arbitrarily bestowed by us. Rights are given by God—and he gave rights to people, not to plants (for example, he said in Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder,” regarding human life but in Genesis 1:30 said, “I have given every green plant for food”). And plants aren’t even “alive” in the sense humans and animals are, as both humans and animals have a nephesh (life spirit) that plants don’t have. Plants were given for food in Genesis 1:29–30.
This story just highlights the inconsistency that happens when people abandon the truth of God’s Word and worship the creature, rather than the Creator.
Romans 1:21–23 reads, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”
