Sanctity of Life and the American Founding: Why Life Comes Before Liberty
Dr. Perry Greene connects the Declaration of Independence’s language of creation and unalienable rights to a biblical view of human dignity. He explains why life stands before liberty and the pursuit of happiness, why government must protect rather than assign human worth, and how listeners can affirm people who feel overlooked or forgotten.
Dr. Perry Greene opens with the image of an art restorer working on a centuries-old painting. The canvas appears badly damaged. As the restorer cleans and repairs it, earlier sketches begin to emerge beneath the visible surface. Those marks were not meaningless. They were part of a deliberate process known to the artist before the final image could be seen by anyone else.
That picture provides the framework for Dr. Greene’s message about human life. What may look unfinished, damaged, or difficult to understand is not therefore without purpose. The original artist knows the intended work. In the same way, Dr. Greene argues that human life cannot be valued only by outward appearance, present ability, social usefulness, or the judgment of other people. Its worth begins with the One who gives it.
This conviction also shapes his reading of the American founding. The central issue is not simply whether a society supports liberty in the abstract. It is whether that society recognizes a prior truth about the people who are supposed to possess liberty. As Dr. Greene puts it, “When people forget why life is sacred, liberty soon becomes negotiable.” Freedom becomes unstable when human worth is treated as a political decision rather than a moral reality.
Dr. Greene presents the founding generation’s view of life as part of a larger moral framework shaped by Scripture, natural law, and generations of Christian teaching. Political structures did not stand alone. They rested on assumptions about creation, accountability, rights, and the purpose of government. Chief among those assumptions was the belief that human life has value because it comes from God.
He points to the Declaration of Independence as the clearest public expression of that belief. The document does not begin by declaring that rights come from a king, a legislature, or a majority vote. It says that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” In Dr. Greene’s explanation, the source of equality is creation. Human beings are not equal because they possess the same abilities, wealth, influence, health, or status. They are equal in worth because they share a common Creator.
That distinction matters. A value assigned by society can be revised by society. A right granted by government can be narrowed, withdrawn, or limited to favored groups. A right understood as God-given stands outside the government that is charged with protecting it. Government does not manufacture the dignity of the person. It encounters that dignity as a reality that places limits on political power.
Dr. Greene also emphasizes the order of the Declaration’s familiar phrase: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Life appears first. He does not treat that sequence as decorative language. Life is the necessary foundation for every other civil freedom. Without life, liberty cannot be exercised. Without life, no person can pursue happiness, fulfill responsibilities, build relationships, worship, work, speak, or participate in the life of a community.
For that reason, the right to life is not one interest among many. It is the condition that makes every other right meaningful. Dr. Greene summarizes the point plainly: “Life came first, and from it flowed rights.” His argument is that a society cannot remain committed to liberty while becoming uncertain about whether particular lives deserve protection.
The message also draws attention to the contribution of America’s founding women. Dr. Greene notes Abigail Adams’s emphasis on moral responsibility and human dignity in her letters. He also cites Mercy Otis Warren’s warning that liberty could not survive without virtue. These examples reinforce his broader claim that the founding understanding of freedom was moral as well as political. Liberty was not viewed merely as permission to act. It required character, accountability, and a recognition of obligations toward other people.
Dr. Greene finds the same concern for life in the Declaration’s grievances against King George III. The document condemns the plundering of seas, ravaging of coasts, burning of towns, and destruction of people’s lives. In his reading, the loss of life is not treated as an incidental cost of political conflict. It is presented as a moral wrong and evidence of abusive rule. Government is judged, in part, by whether it protects people or destroys them.
That principle leads to one of the message’s central contrasts. Government exists to protect the life and rights it did not create. It does not possess the authority to redefine a person’s basic worth according to usefulness, wantedness, strength, independence, or convenience. Once political power begins acting as though it gives human value, it also claims the ability to measure, rank, or remove that value.
Dr. Greene grounds this political argument in Scripture. The opening chapter of Genesis presents humanity as made in the image of God. That teaching gives human dignity a source deeper than personal achievement. Life is not sacred because every person will be powerful, productive, admired, or understood. Life is sacred because human beings bear God’s image.
Psalm 139:13–16 adds a personal dimension to that truth. Dr. Greene highlights the psalmist’s description of God forming the inward parts, knitting a person together in the womb, seeing the unformed substance, and knowing the days prepared for that life. The passage portrays human formation as intentional and known by God. Even before a life is visible to the wider world, it is not hidden from its Creator.
This biblical picture returns the message to the opening illustration. The developing work may not yet resemble the finished image, but the artist is not confused about its identity or purpose. Dr. Greene uses that connection to reject the idea that human worth depends on how complete, capable, independent, or socially recognized a person appears. The Creator’s knowledge comes before public recognition.
The founders differed in denomination and doctrine, Dr. Greene notes, but he identifies a shared conviction beneath many of their political claims: rights come from God because life comes from God. That belief restrains government. It places the state in the position of guardian rather than owner. Political leaders remain accountable to a moral order they did not invent.
The alternative is a government that treats rights as benefits distributed at its discretion. In that system, protection can become conditional. The powerful decide which lives merit care, whose suffering should be answered with support, and whose existence may be regarded as burdensome. Dr. Greene warns that this shift does not happen only through dramatic declarations. It can begin through changes in language, law, and public assumptions about what makes a life valuable.
He raises contemporary concerns involving medically assisted death, pressure on religious speech, and language that presents the ending of pregnancy as morally blessed. These examples are offered as warnings about what happens when society separates human worth from God-given dignity. His focus is the moral logic beneath the debates. When life is no longer received as sacred, it can be evaluated according to autonomy, usefulness, pain, preference, or convenience.
Dr. Greene rejects that logic. “Government exists to guard that gift, not to measure its usefulness,” he says. The sentence identifies both a duty and a boundary. Public authority has a duty to protect vulnerable people. It also has a boundary: it must not claim the power to decide that a human life lacks sufficient value.
This understanding of life also places demands on citizens. Dr. Greene does not describe freedom as moral independence. Because life is sacred, freedom must be exercised responsibly. People are accountable for the way they speak about, vote about, care for, and respond to other human beings. A commitment to life cannot remain a slogan used only during public controversy. It must shape ordinary conduct.
That is why he warns against reducing people to numbers, labels, or conveniences. A number can hide the face of a person. A label can replace attention to someone’s full humanity. Convenience can become a standard that makes dependence or need appear undesirable. Dr. Greene’s argument presses listeners to recognize inherent worth before making judgments about what another person contributes or requires.
The application he gives is deliberately personal. He encourages listeners to think of someone who may feel overlooked, forgotten, or insignificant. The response may be a handwritten note, a phone call, or a direct conversation. The purpose is to communicate something more substantial than general encouragement: that the person is created in the image of God and possesses worth that is not erased by loneliness, weakness, disappointment, or lack of recognition.
This small act reflects the larger principle. A society that protects life is formed by people who learn to see one another as lives worth protecting. Laws matter, but habits of attention also matter. Public respect for human dignity is difficult to sustain when private relationships are marked by neglect, dismissal, or indifference.
Dr. Greene also asks listeners to return to Psalm 139:13–16 and thank God for the gift of life. That gratitude includes one’s own life and the lives of people nearby. The practice moves the subject away from abstraction. Human dignity is not only a principle to defend in debate. It is a gift to recognize in a family member, neighbor, church member, coworker, stranger, and person who believes differently.
His phrase “We are blessed to bless others” captures the direction of that gratitude. Receiving life as a gift should produce care rather than pride. It should make a person more willing to notice those who feel unseen and more careful about language that diminishes another human being.
The message closes by distinguishing admiration from recovery. Dr. Greene does not ask listeners merely to praise the founders or repeat familiar quotations. He calls for the recovery of the convictions that sustained their understanding of liberty. Those convictions must become present commitments, expressed through clear defense of life, gratitude for God’s gifts, responsible use of freedom, and care for vulnerable people.
In Dr. Greene’s framework, the sanctity of life is not a narrow issue set apart from the American promise of liberty. It is the moral ground beneath that promise. Life comes from God. Rights therefore precede government. Government is accountable for protecting rather than redefining those rights. Citizens, in turn, are responsible for treating other people as bearers of God-given worth.
The light of the sanctity of life remains bright only when those beliefs are carried into law, public language, personal relationships, and daily choices. Dr. Greene’s challenge is to keep that light burning with clarity and gratitude, beginning with the person who may need to hear today that his or her life matters.
TL;DR
Dr. Greene uses the restoration of a damaged painting to illustrate that an unfinished or difficult-to-understand life is still known and intended by its Creator.
He argues that liberty becomes negotiable when society forgets why human life is sacred.
The Declaration of Independence grounds equality and unalienable rights in creation, not in wealth, ability, status, or government permission.
Life appears before liberty and the pursuit of happiness because every other right depends on a living person who can exercise it.
Dr. Greene presents government as the protector of God-given life and rights, not the source or judge of human worth.
Genesis and Psalm 139 support his view that human beings bear God’s image and are personally known by God from their formation.
He warns against public language and policy that measure life by usefulness, autonomy, wantedness, or convenience.
Citizens are called to exercise freedom with moral responsibility and to resist reducing people to numbers or labels.
A practical response is to contact someone who feels overlooked or forgotten and affirm that person’s God-given worth.
The message calls listeners to recover the convictions behind the founding vision of liberty, defend life clearly, and steward freedom with gratitude.
Discussion and Reflection
Discussion Questions
Why does Dr. Greene believe the order of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” matters?
What changes when rights are understood as gifts from God rather than permissions granted by government?
How do Genesis and Psalm 139 shape Dr. Greene’s understanding of inherent human worth?
What are some ways people can be reduced to numbers, labels, usefulness, or convenience in public and private life?
How does Dr. Greene connect everyday care for an overlooked person with the larger defense of the sanctity of life?
Apply It This Week
Identify one person who may feel overlooked, forgotten, or insignificant. Send a note, make a phone call, or begin a conversation that affirms that person’s God-given worth.
Read Psalm 139:13–16 slowly. Write down the phrases that most clearly describe God’s knowledge of and involvement in human life.
Notice language that measures people mainly by productivity, independence, social value, or convenience. Replace it with language that recognizes the person before the condition or label.
Thank God specifically for the gift of personal life and for the lives of several people nearby, including someone who is easy to overlook.
Prayer Prompt
Ask God to deepen gratitude for the gift of life, strengthen courage to protect the vulnerable, and make personal words and actions reflect the God-given worth of every person.