When Jefferson borrowed the now famous American mantra, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" from Samuel Johnson for the Constitution he made an interesting leap for the, till then, largely religious country. When Johnson wrote this, it was a response to an even earlier philosophical statement put forth by John Locke who wrote, "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions". It was economist Adam Smith who retooled Locke's original notion into the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property." Yet, in replying to this chain of ideas with Johnson's phrase, Jefferson's declaration over America that the inalienable right to pursue happiness contrasted with the Biblical foundations of the country. Happiness originated, as it is used in English, with the Old English term, "hap". The original word relied on the concept of luck or chance. (For more intersting reading on the concept of happiness, from a refreshing breadth of views, read the wikipedia article.) By placing the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right, Jefferson tied the American pursuit to a non-Christian power, the concept of chance. The idea that we have the right to base our pursuits on chance implies, indirectly at least, an unpredictable outcome. For Christians, this runs against the grain of Scripture which instructs us to believe that we are to see all that befalls us as good fortune. Chance is an element of the decision made by rolling dice. Hebrews believed that rolling dice would be controlled by the all-powerful hand of God. Yet, for Deists like Jefferson and his European counterparts, I suspect that the intervention of a intimately concerned God was what tied in with the Constitutional catchphrase that later became the embodiment of the American rights. With this being said, it strikes me odd that many American hold these rights to be inalienable when, in reality, placing chance at the heart of what is most basic about life denies what Christians are instructed to hold dear by Scripture. I have much difficulty with this American doctrine and see something more akin to pursue blessing than Jefferson's happiness as being an inalienable right since blessing is not intervened and delegated by chance but rather by God himself.