November 15, 2019 • 31 mins
- A huge thanks to Joseph McDade for his generous permission to use his music: https://josephmcdade.com/
- Discord Discussion Board: https://disboard.org/server/474580298630430751
- The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne: https://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Revolution-Updated-Expanded-Ordinary-ebook/dp/B00UF72BAK/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=irresistible+revolution&qid=1569093639&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
- What Would You Do?: https://www.amazon.com/What-Would-John-Howard-Yoder-ebook/dp/B00AAX11H8/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=john+howard+yoder&qid=1569093701&s=digital-text&sr=1-4
- Pablo Yoder's Testimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOdGENdH1fo
- Phillip Mast
- patrick H
- Laverne Miller
- Jesse Killion
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Derek (00:06):
Welcome back to the Truthway podcast. Today, we are
going to continue our discussionof rebuttals to Christian
nonviolence. And in thisepisode, we are going to discuss
what I believe is probably thegreatest hurdle for people to
accept the position ofnonviolence, or it's at least
the the strongest argument inpeople's mind to be easily
(00:29):
dismissive of Christiannonviolence. Because in in their
minds, the issue that we'retalking about today is just so
clear, that it's something thatprevents them from really
looking more deeply into all ofthe arguments for nonviolence
and against, just war and alegitimate use of violence.
(00:51):
Before we discuss the argument,it is important to note that
this is not a logical argument.
It's not a biblical argument.It's not a philosophical
argument. It is an emotionalintuitive argument. And while
that doesn't necessarilydiscredit it, and while there
are, other sorts of of, threadsthat you can pull on from the
(01:16):
logical or biblical to tosomewhat support this, really,
this this argument comes down toan emotional 1, and a very
strong emotional 1 at that, andand 1 that I can acknowledge is,
is very strong and intuitive. Soso I'll give it that.
However, it is important torecognize the basis of this
(01:38):
argument because that shouldhelp to determine the weight of
the argument as well. So what isthis this argument, this
emotional argument? It'sprobably the first thing that
you ever thought of whensomebody brought up the word
pacifism. And that is, whatwould you do if someone broke
into your home and threatenedyour family? And we don't have
(02:00):
to get more specific than that.
You can imagine, you know,somebody comes in to rob your
home. Great. Whatever. Butthere's some pretty bad things
that people can do, especiallyif you have kids. Thinking about
the extreme sorts of scenariosare are very difficult.
And to be quite honest, if I hada gun, available and somebody
(02:26):
came into my home to do my kidsharm, especially if that that
harm was sexual or torturous innature. I I'm pretty certain I
would use the gun. I don't knowthat I would have have the
wherewithal to be able to torestrain myself. Nevertheless,
(02:46):
what should we do, and and, doesthis argument really overthrow
nonviolence? So first, we needto kind of go back to this idea
that that really the nature ofthis argument is an emotional 1.
And no matter how strong youremotions are against something,
(03:07):
you have to understand thatemotions do not outweigh the
evidence. So far in the series,we have laid out the biblical
call to love enemies and toforego vengeance, and this
doesn't negate that. Thisdoesn't negate the call of
Christ to lay down our liveslike him, to be sacrificial.
(03:30):
This doesn't negate the earlychurch teachings on what we do,
to to those who assail us. Andremembering that even Augustine
himself only thought thatviolence was legitimate in, in
the use of the state, such asthe police force or the army.
So even even the early just wordherence largely thought that
(03:52):
personal defense wasillegitimate for Christians.
This also doesn't negate all ofthe logical incoherence we
looked at of of, a violentposition and how 1 just can't
maintain a consistent positionof violence with what we know to
be empirically true, what weknow to be biblically true,
(04:14):
etcetera. So for as strong asour emotions run, our emotions,
when we're able to think about,the scenario outside of, outside
of being emotion laden in themoment, we're able to see that
our emotions do not negate thecase that we've made so far.
(04:34):
Second, because this is anemotional case, I want to kind
of point out other examples ofof emotions that we have, where
we recognize that actually thesuppressing of emotions is
important. You know, the thebiggest 1 for Christians is this
(04:55):
idea of betraying Christ, ofgiving up our faith.
And people point to earlymartyrs and and especially in in
my conservative community, youknow, we talk about think about
persecution and what that wouldmean for us because it's
probably inevitable for us, as aculture eventually. Cultures ebb
(05:18):
and flow and, persecution ofreligion ebbs and flows. And 1
day, our culture, maybe even us,will face persecution. And so
what would we do if put in thatsituation? You can see there's a
a good movie about, RichardWurmbrandt who was in Romania,
(05:40):
and he tells his story and, inin a book called Tortured for
Christ, which just came out as amovie.
And in that movie, he, and inthe book especially, he talks
about the various sorts oftortures that they did on him.
But even worse than what theydid to him, some of the things
that they did to, the fellowpastors who were in prison with
(06:02):
him. For instance, one oneindividual he brought, his
family or at least his son wasbrought in and tortured and
killed in front of him. Thatwould be really hard. But
Christians recognize that theright answer we we can
sympathize with those who gothrough torture, and we can even
(06:25):
sympathize with those who denyChrist because, I mean, under
under the right circumstancesand without the assistance of
the Holy Spirit, I mean, whowouldn't give up Christ in in
some of these extremelytorturous situations or where
our families were threatened,whether that's through torture
or rape or just the the worstimaginable things possible.
(06:48):
But we recognize that ideally,the best thing we can do is to
not deny Christ under thosecircumstances. We recognize that
more than our comfort or pain orwell-being, our life, more than
those things, are important.There is something there are
(07:09):
some ideals that are above that.So So we we recognize the
emotion of the situation, but wealso recognize outside of that
situation that the emotiondoesn't negate what the truly
correct answer is. And that'sbecause we recognize that
(07:30):
there's this value infaithfulness to our lord, this
this idea of lordship, whichsupersedes life and comfort.
Now the question then is, whenit comes to nonviolence, is a
nonviolent lifestyle, is thatsomething that demonstrates
(07:52):
faithfulness? And is thatsomething that our lord wants?
Is that is submission tononviolence, even in the most
dire of circumstances, somethingthat demonstrates lordship? Even
more so than just saying, youknow, I serve Christ. Anybody
can say that.
But being nonviolent issomething that, requires actions
(08:17):
beyond words. It's a laying downof one's own life, one's own
control over the situation, andsubmitting to the means of
Christ, which is cross andsuffering. And, of course, I
would argue that even though thethis rebuttal to Christian
(08:37):
nonviolence that, you know, itit seems so obvious that if
somebody came into your home todo terrible things to you and
your family, it's ridiculousthat you wouldn't use violence.
That's just wrong. Well,clearly, we recognize that there
are scenarios as a Christianwhere, where laying down our
lives and, giving into that isappropriate.
(09:01):
And the big question is, isnonviolence one one of those
situations? And I would say,yeah, because we've made a very
strong case for it anddemonstrated that it is the
ideal of Christ. It's therepresentation of Christ. It's
what god calls us to at least inin the New Testament era. So,
yeah, I think I think thatoverwhelmingly negates this
(09:24):
argument of emotion.
To move beyond that specificexample, point number 3, I would
say, is that we recognize thatscenarios don't at all determine
morality. I've used severaltimes the example of
prostitution in order to feedone's family, and talking about
(09:45):
how no matter how much we canempathize with an individual who
feels like they're forced toprostitute themselves out in
order to to feed their family orto preserve life, we would say
that that is a a moral wrongthat they shouldn't do. Even if
(10:07):
we can understand them, showgrace and mercy to them for
choosing to do that, it'ssomething that in the ideal, we
say, no. That that isobjectively wrong no matter what
situation you're in, even if wecan sympathize with you. More
strongly, we can see in theBible, we see an example of
when, I believe it's Jerusalem,is besieged by an enemy.
(10:30):
And food is becoming so scarcethat, 1 mother goes to the king
and says, hey. I got ripped offby my neighbor. And the king
tries to figure out what's goingon. And the mother says, look.
Yesterday, we agreed that we'llkill my child and eat him.
And then tomorrow, we'll killour neighbor's child and eat him
(10:54):
so that we can we can live, sothat we can be fed. However, we
ate my kid yesterday, but todaythe neighbor's hiding the kid,
and that's unjust. Now did thosefamilies need to kill and eat
their own, children in order forpeople in their family to
(11:15):
survive. Let's just assume thatthey did. Right?
Say, yeah. They they did. Was itthen just or justified that they
murdered their own children andate them in order to preserve
their life? Or would we say, no.Look.
There are some things that aremore important than the
(11:36):
preservation of life. Andrefusing to murder and eat your
own kid, that's 1 of them. Nowuntil we're put in that
situation, we can't say for surethat, we wouldn't do that or
that we wouldn't at leastempathize with that, people who
did. But looking at it apartfrom emotion, we can say that is
(11:59):
objectively wrong, and to die isbetter than to compromise. I
don't care how dire yoursituation is.
That compromise is unwarranted.And no matter how sorry I feel
for you, what you did is wrongif you killed your kid and ate
him. And, you know, this is thisjust takes us back to this theme
(12:22):
that we've seen over and overand over again when we talk
about nonviolence or, thechoosing to do violence. It's
this idea of of consequentialismwhere people somehow think or
maybe they don't think this, butthey they're unwilling to admit
(12:42):
how consequentialism or the endsjustify the means. That concept
has crept in to their morality.
And that's what we see here withthis emotional argument. People
are saying, okay. You might havea good biblical case. You might
have a good example in Christ.God might have called us to
forego vengeance.
(13:04):
You may have the early church onyour side. You may have,
empirical evidence and logic,and you can have everything
going for nonviolence. But inthis situation, I'm gonna say it
doesn't matter because, itdoesn't make me comfortable.
Because to see terrible thingshappen to my family is
(13:27):
uncomfortable, and I can't admitthat we live in in that type of
world where I would have to makethat sacrifice. Essentially,
what that's saying is the endsjustify the means.
To make sure that my familydoesn't have to experience
terror and horror. I can I canalter morality for that
(13:50):
situation? In the end, our ourjob as Christians is to remain
faithful, not to remaincomfortable, not to remain free
from suffering, and not to keepour family behind a white picket
fence and, free from all harm.While we might attempt to do
(14:12):
that and attempts to do that aregood, compromises in order to
keep that are not good, andviolence is a compromise.
Ultimately, we can't controlcircumstances.
And when we face evil, we arecalled to be like Joseph who
(14:33):
remains faithful and recognizesGod's provision even through
difficulty. While the worldmight intend things for our
harm, we know that God bringsour good about. God's call in
our lives is not to avoid allharm, but to be faithful. I know
(14:53):
that's not an easy answer,especially to an emotional
argument. You know, it it wouldbe great if I could bring out
some emotional trump card thatmakes you feel all warm and
fuzzy inside about how awesomethis position is.
But there's nothing I can saythat that will do that from a
nonviolent position. The truthabout nonviolence is the the
(15:14):
truth that Christ faced. And,again, we come back to
Philippians 2. Jesus Christ gaveup, his his divinity in a sense,
and that he he gave up his powerto control. And so he said, god,
here's my life.
You take it. And that led himto, that led him to torture. It
(15:37):
led him to death. It led him tosuffering. It led him to, being
born in a manger.
It it just led him to all sortsof hardships. But Jesus remained
faithful, even though it was ahuge temptation for him as we
see throughout his ministry toto bow to Satan or to let Peter
defend him or to call thoseangels before the cross or to,
(16:02):
talk god into changing his mind.It was a huge temptation for
Christ, but he submitted even tothe cross. And that's what
Christians are called to do aswell. And that's not an easy
answer, and that's why Jesussaid, the way to him is narrow.
The path is narrow becausehealth and wealth are not his
(16:26):
promises, but suffering andcross are. And, of course, I'm
not at all saying that, youknow, people who fail at this
are not Christians. I thinkpeople who are dismissive of
this, and who refuse toincorporate cross and suffering
as, as an orientation that thatthey're supposed to be open to,
(16:48):
I think that's problematic forpeople who call themselves
disciples. But for people whowho fail at this ethic, I don't
think that's a problem. And I'llgive you an example here.
The guy's name is Pablo Yoder,and I'll link a video for him
below. But he he goes intodetail about some of the
(17:08):
experiences that they've hadwith gangs coming by and and
coming into their house and even1 time assaulting his wife. And,
he he just talks about hisstruggle, when he found a
baseball bat in his room. Andfor a split second, he thought
about using it. And after that,he's like, I've got to get this
(17:30):
out of my house because, youknow, it's so easy for me to
fail because I want to control.
I want to use violence. I wantto give in to my emotion. I want
to take vengeance now on thisevil. And, and he talks about
that struggle. And he's beendoing this a lot and has had a
lot more experience with it, butit's still a struggle for him.
(17:51):
Just like it was a struggle forJesus after thirty three years.
So there's no guarantee that wewon't fail, just like anything
else. To sin is to be human,and, Christians still sin.
Nevertheless, we are to strivetowards faithfulness and towards
enemy love. And if we'reunwilling to to look at our
lives and figure out how to growin that, I think that is a
(18:15):
problem for for Christiandisciples.
Now I want to end here with withsomething that I think I came to
realize is very frustrating fromthe nonviolent position. It's
understandable, but it'sfrustrating. So I carried with
me this, this rebuttal tononviolence for a long, long
(18:36):
time. It it it's the theargument that stuck with me the
most and that just poked me inmy side even after I accepted
pacifism. To think that I wouldbe nonviolent if I had the means
in front of me.
To think that I would benonviolent if somebody came in
to do terrible things to myfamily. I just I couldn't
(18:59):
imagine how that was right eventill till fairly recently. But
then then something clicked withme. And it clicked after there
was another school shooting, andI see all of the conservatives
who, you know, don't want anyguns to go away or don't want
any more background checks or orany any restrictions whatsoever,
(19:24):
they were actually arguing, andI I guess still are, that the
correct answer is to just havemore armed guards to use to use
more lethal force. And I I justI found it really interesting as
I I was going through Facebook,and and I saw this cool video
(19:47):
about, like, how these schoolswere getting, like, door
stoppers or just these differentthings that they could implement
in shooter situations that werenonlethal.
They're really simple andinexpensive. And, you know, they
they would keep people out. Andduring the same time, I I was
(20:08):
seeing, more liberals advocatingfor better health care,
universal health care, as wellas health care for the mentally
ill, while conservatives werearguing that we shouldn't
restrict guns because, most ofthe shooters are mentally ill,
(20:30):
and that's not representative ofthe normal population. But at
the same time, while they'rerecognizing mental illness as a
problem, don't want the state tospend more money on people and
people's health. And this reallygoes back to to, part 2 of our
Romans 13 as well, where I wouldsee conservatives talk about how
(20:53):
much they hated abortion.
And then in conservative states,they're willing to make punitive
laws against women so that theycan put women in jail, which
will cost taxpayers lots ofmoney to keep you know, if
you're gonna put a woman in jailfor life for murdering her
child. And that's a lot of moneythat you're gonna spend on just
(21:15):
one one inmate. That's a lot oftaxpayer money. And
conservatives are willing to dothat punitive thing towards
people. They want to implementthose sorts of laws.
Yet, we're we don't have thesame same voice or the same
agreement on, doing theproactive positive justice sorts
of things, like funding women'sshelters through the state or
(21:39):
funding universal health care sothat women, could take care of
children, especially singlemothers who might consider
abortion. We don't do thosepositive proactive things, but
we're really willing to, tospend lots of money on on more
negative things. And you seethat with with, with this gun
(22:01):
debate in The US. Conservativesare willing for for every
school, presumably, to hire atleast 1, probably more,
especially for bigger schools,to hire more armed personnel who
are salaried, who get paid abunch of money every year.
(22:23):
They're willing to do that, toput lethal force in there at a
huge, huge, huge expense.
But they're not willing toextend health care because they
don't want the government togive people freebies. They're
not willing to to buy, they'renot they're more willing to
spend money on putting lethalforce in place than on buying
(22:46):
some of these these othercontraptions that are able to
make schools safe, like thesedoor stoppers or, you know, like
I don't know. There are allsorts of devices that that,
they're offering to help keeppeople safe. It's just it
strikes me that as people whoare supposed to value life, our
(23:08):
our typical response is, asconservatives, is to implement a
costly a costly, answer thatseeks to take somebody's life.
And I I think that's my bigproblem here.
If if you really care about lifeand then, you know, if you're a
(23:35):
homeowner, what sorts ofpreparations can you make to
prevent violence from coming toyou? You can invest in alarm
systems. You can invest infloodlights or motion sensors.
You can invest in doors thathave have, really strong locks
(23:58):
or double locked or whatever.You can invest in very strong
glass, like bulletproof glass sothat nobody can break the
windows to come into your house.
You can invest in a dog or 2. Soeven if it's not a an attack
dog, a dog that makes noise andand barks to scare people away.
You can invest in securitycameras. You can choose to live
(24:22):
in a neighborhood that is welllit or gated or or whatever else
if you have enough money, tolive in a gated community. I
mean, the things that you can doto prevent violence coming to
you are are nearly limitless,these nonviolent options that
(24:44):
you can have.
Now some of those options wouldbe more expensive than than just
a gun, but they're also lessdangerous than a gun too because
your goal should be to not getin a violent confrontation
anyway. And we know that peoplewho have guns in their home are,
have a a very increased chanceof doing significant harms harm
(25:08):
not to, an intruder, but toloved ones. And we know that
having guns in the home lead toa significant increase in, in
somebody's ability to commitsuicide because, there are many
times that suicide can beprevented just by extending the
time that an individual has tothink about killing themselves.
(25:31):
And so if you don't have a gunin the home, it might take that
individual a little bit moretime to seek out a way to do
harm to themselves. And by thattime, they they might be able to
have thought through it and andget over that.
So it it just strikes me as oddthat for people who love life so
much, or say they love life somuch, that our go to means for
(25:55):
for self defense is lethal. Andand how many people who have a
lethal means at their disposalto stop an attacker have gone
through all of the steps thatthey could to prevent somebody
from from coming into their homeand doing them harm? Almost
(26:16):
nobody, I would I would suspect.Right? We don't go through all
of our nonlethal means and doeverything in our capability to
prevent harm from coming to ourenemies.
We go through maybe 1 or 2steps, and our favored response
is gonna be the lethal option,Even though the lethal option
ends up putting us in more harmas well and doesn't do as much
(26:39):
to prevent people from, fromcoming into our homes. But, you
know, ultimately, there even ifsomebody did all of the
defensive things that they coulddo that were nonlethal, there's
no guarantee because we live ina fallen world. And, there
should also be no guarantee onour safety because as
(27:01):
Christians, it strikes me as abit odd to argue that we should
be building these compounds andthat we should be, focusing on
trying to move up and live outin gated communities when I
think that Christ callsbelievers to something quite a
bit different than that. And inmy estimation, you know, you you
(27:23):
do what you can to prevent evilfrom happening to you. But the
answer when evil does come yourway is not to return evil with
evil, but to say, look.
I did what I could to preventevil from happening. I live in
an evil world, and evil hasbefallen me like it befell Job
or Joseph or or a number ofother people. And rather than
(27:48):
return evil for evil, I am goingto uphold what I believe is
moral, and that is nonviolence,nonviolent enemy love. And I'm
going to trust that even in thissuffering, God loves me and will
bring about good just as Joseph,discovered with his brothers.
And I'm gonna trust in hissovereignty, And I am going to
(28:11):
submit.
I'm going to lay down my controlat his feet. And I'm, through
his spirit, going to endure. Andthat's the Christian answer.
Taking an an enemy's life intoyour hands is not the Christian
answer. Being violent is not theChristian answer.
(28:32):
Sacrificing somebody else foryour well-being is not the
Christian answer. And for ashard as it is in our, American
culture where we are self madeand where we are able to insure
ourselves, where we are able toprotect ourselves, and, and and,
(28:53):
you know, only restricted by ourmeans, we can but we can hedge
our bets to the extreme. It isvery unpalatable for us to think
that evil could befall us and itnot be within our control. And,
I would just point you back toPhilippians 2 and say, look at
what Christ did for us, and hecalls us to do the same even for
(29:17):
our enemies. I'll leave you with2 resources, that that I think
would be good.
1, is a book by John HowardYoder, which talks about this
idea of, individuals coming inand, and assaulting you and and
how we respond in nonviolence.And another is by, Shane
(29:40):
Claiborne called TheIrresistible Revolution. And
it's really I think it's in 1 ofthe appendixes that, appendices
that he talks about, this thisquestion of what would you do
when somebody comes in. And hisresponse is somewhat like, like
the last episode where we talkedabout, you know, an ISIS convoy
and if you do violence tosomebody, and then that just
(30:05):
perpetuates violence. His answeris sort of like that.
And it it's not gonna quell youremotions on this when you think
of the most extreme scenariothat happens to your family.
But, nevertheless, it's a reallygood book overall, and I would
read the whole thing, not justthe the appendix, mentioned
here. There are a number ofother books, I'll I'll see if I
(30:27):
can recommend, that I haven'tread but I've heard are good. So
I'll put a couple of those downthere. I just can't vouch for
them.
Nevertheless, this is adifficult question. It's 1 that
still bugs me emotionally. It's1 that I still, but by the grace
of God, would probably not actin a way that I think, I should
(30:49):
act. I would probably doviolence if I had violence at my
disposal. It it is it is, ofcourse, a very difficult thing
to deal with.
Nevertheless, it's why I thinkwe have to work through this
kind of thing now, outside ofthe the heated emotions and and
(31:09):
think about that and make up ourminds now. So anyway, that's all
for now so peace because I'm apacifist and I say it, I mean
it.
Welcome back to the Truthway podcast. Today, we are
going to continue our discussionof rebuttals to Christian
nonviolence. And in thisepisode, we are going to discuss
what I believe is probably thegreatest hurdle for people to
accept the position ofnonviolence, or it's at least
the the strongest argument inpeople's mind to be easily
(00:29):
dismissive of Christiannonviolence. Because in in their
minds, the issue that we'retalking about today is just so
clear, that it's something thatprevents them from really
looking more deeply into all ofthe arguments for nonviolence
and against, just war and alegitimate use of violence.
(00:51):
Before we discuss the argument,it is important to note that
this is not a logical argument.
It's not a biblical argument.It's not a philosophical
argument. It is an emotionalintuitive argument. And while
that doesn't necessarilydiscredit it, and while there
are, other sorts of of, threadsthat you can pull on from the
(01:16):
logical or biblical to tosomewhat support this, really,
this this argument comes down toan emotional 1, and a very
strong emotional 1 at that, andand 1 that I can acknowledge is,
is very strong and intuitive. Soso I'll give it that.
However, it is important torecognize the basis of this
(01:38):
argument because that shouldhelp to determine the weight of
the argument as well. So what isthis this argument, this
emotional argument? It'sprobably the first thing that
you ever thought of whensomebody brought up the word
pacifism. And that is, whatwould you do if someone broke
into your home and threatenedyour family? And we don't have
(02:00):
to get more specific than that.
You can imagine, you know,somebody comes in to rob your
home. Great. Whatever. Butthere's some pretty bad things
that people can do, especiallyif you have kids. Thinking about
the extreme sorts of scenariosare are very difficult.
And to be quite honest, if I hada gun, available and somebody
(02:26):
came into my home to do my kidsharm, especially if that that
harm was sexual or torturous innature. I I'm pretty certain I
would use the gun. I don't knowthat I would have have the
wherewithal to be able to torestrain myself. Nevertheless,
(02:46):
what should we do, and and, doesthis argument really overthrow
nonviolence? So first, we needto kind of go back to this idea
that that really the nature ofthis argument is an emotional 1.
And no matter how strong youremotions are against something,
(03:07):
you have to understand thatemotions do not outweigh the
evidence. So far in the series,we have laid out the biblical
call to love enemies and toforego vengeance, and this
doesn't negate that. Thisdoesn't negate the call of
Christ to lay down our liveslike him, to be sacrificial.
(03:30):
This doesn't negate the earlychurch teachings on what we do,
to to those who assail us. Andremembering that even Augustine
himself only thought thatviolence was legitimate in, in
the use of the state, such asthe police force or the army.
So even even the early just wordherence largely thought that
(03:52):
personal defense wasillegitimate for Christians.
This also doesn't negate all ofthe logical incoherence we
looked at of of, a violentposition and how 1 just can't
maintain a consistent positionof violence with what we know to
be empirically true, what weknow to be biblically true,
(04:14):
etcetera. So for as strong asour emotions run, our emotions,
when we're able to think about,the scenario outside of, outside
of being emotion laden in themoment, we're able to see that
our emotions do not negate thecase that we've made so far.
(04:34):
Second, because this is anemotional case, I want to kind
of point out other examples ofof emotions that we have, where
we recognize that actually thesuppressing of emotions is
important. You know, the thebiggest 1 for Christians is this
(04:55):
idea of betraying Christ, ofgiving up our faith.
And people point to earlymartyrs and and especially in in
my conservative community, youknow, we talk about think about
persecution and what that wouldmean for us because it's
probably inevitable for us, as aculture eventually. Cultures ebb
(05:18):
and flow and, persecution ofreligion ebbs and flows. And 1
day, our culture, maybe even us,will face persecution. And so
what would we do if put in thatsituation? You can see there's a
a good movie about, RichardWurmbrandt who was in Romania,
(05:40):
and he tells his story and, inin a book called Tortured for
Christ, which just came out as amovie.
And in that movie, he, and inthe book especially, he talks
about the various sorts oftortures that they did on him.
But even worse than what theydid to him, some of the things
that they did to, the fellowpastors who were in prison with
(06:02):
him. For instance, one oneindividual he brought, his
family or at least his son wasbrought in and tortured and
killed in front of him. Thatwould be really hard. But
Christians recognize that theright answer we we can
sympathize with those who gothrough torture, and we can even
(06:25):
sympathize with those who denyChrist because, I mean, under
under the right circumstancesand without the assistance of
the Holy Spirit, I mean, whowouldn't give up Christ in in
some of these extremelytorturous situations or where
our families were threatened,whether that's through torture
or rape or just the the worstimaginable things possible.
(06:48):
But we recognize that ideally,the best thing we can do is to
not deny Christ under thosecircumstances. We recognize that
more than our comfort or pain orwell-being, our life, more than
those things, are important.There is something there are
(07:09):
some ideals that are above that.So So we we recognize the
emotion of the situation, but wealso recognize outside of that
situation that the emotiondoesn't negate what the truly
correct answer is. And that'sbecause we recognize that
(07:30):
there's this value infaithfulness to our lord, this
this idea of lordship, whichsupersedes life and comfort.
Now the question then is, whenit comes to nonviolence, is a
nonviolent lifestyle, is thatsomething that demonstrates
(07:52):
faithfulness? And is thatsomething that our lord wants?
Is that is submission tononviolence, even in the most
dire of circumstances, somethingthat demonstrates lordship? Even
more so than just saying, youknow, I serve Christ. Anybody
can say that.
But being nonviolent issomething that, requires actions
(08:17):
beyond words. It's a laying downof one's own life, one's own
control over the situation, andsubmitting to the means of
Christ, which is cross andsuffering. And, of course, I
would argue that even though thethis rebuttal to Christian
(08:37):
nonviolence that, you know, itit seems so obvious that if
somebody came into your home todo terrible things to you and
your family, it's ridiculousthat you wouldn't use violence.
That's just wrong. Well,clearly, we recognize that there
are scenarios as a Christianwhere, where laying down our
lives and, giving into that isappropriate.
(09:01):
And the big question is, isnonviolence one one of those
situations? And I would say,yeah, because we've made a very
strong case for it anddemonstrated that it is the
ideal of Christ. It's therepresentation of Christ. It's
what god calls us to at least inin the New Testament era. So,
yeah, I think I think thatoverwhelmingly negates this
(09:24):
argument of emotion.
To move beyond that specificexample, point number 3, I would
say, is that we recognize thatscenarios don't at all determine
morality. I've used severaltimes the example of
prostitution in order to feedone's family, and talking about
(09:45):
how no matter how much we canempathize with an individual who
feels like they're forced toprostitute themselves out in
order to to feed their family orto preserve life, we would say
that that is a a moral wrongthat they shouldn't do. Even if
(10:07):
we can understand them, showgrace and mercy to them for
choosing to do that, it'ssomething that in the ideal, we
say, no. That that isobjectively wrong no matter what
situation you're in, even if wecan sympathize with you. More
strongly, we can see in theBible, we see an example of
when, I believe it's Jerusalem,is besieged by an enemy.
(10:30):
And food is becoming so scarcethat, 1 mother goes to the king
and says, hey. I got ripped offby my neighbor. And the king
tries to figure out what's goingon. And the mother says, look.
Yesterday, we agreed that we'llkill my child and eat him.
And then tomorrow, we'll killour neighbor's child and eat him
(10:54):
so that we can we can live, sothat we can be fed. However, we
ate my kid yesterday, but todaythe neighbor's hiding the kid,
and that's unjust. Now did thosefamilies need to kill and eat
their own, children in order forpeople in their family to
(11:15):
survive. Let's just assume thatthey did. Right?
Say, yeah. They they did. Was itthen just or justified that they
murdered their own children andate them in order to preserve
their life? Or would we say, no.Look.
There are some things that aremore important than the
(11:36):
preservation of life. Andrefusing to murder and eat your
own kid, that's 1 of them. Nowuntil we're put in that
situation, we can't say for surethat, we wouldn't do that or
that we wouldn't at leastempathize with that, people who
did. But looking at it apartfrom emotion, we can say that is
(11:59):
objectively wrong, and to die isbetter than to compromise. I
don't care how dire yoursituation is.
That compromise is unwarranted.And no matter how sorry I feel
for you, what you did is wrongif you killed your kid and ate
him. And, you know, this is thisjust takes us back to this theme
(12:22):
that we've seen over and overand over again when we talk
about nonviolence or, thechoosing to do violence. It's
this idea of of consequentialismwhere people somehow think or
maybe they don't think this, butthey they're unwilling to admit
(12:42):
how consequentialism or the endsjustify the means. That concept
has crept in to their morality.
And that's what we see here withthis emotional argument. People
are saying, okay. You might havea good biblical case. You might
have a good example in Christ.God might have called us to
forego vengeance.
(13:04):
You may have the early church onyour side. You may have,
empirical evidence and logic,and you can have everything
going for nonviolence. But inthis situation, I'm gonna say it
doesn't matter because, itdoesn't make me comfortable.
Because to see terrible thingshappen to my family is
(13:27):
uncomfortable, and I can't admitthat we live in in that type of
world where I would have to makethat sacrifice. Essentially,
what that's saying is the endsjustify the means.
To make sure that my familydoesn't have to experience
terror and horror. I can I canalter morality for that
(13:50):
situation? In the end, our ourjob as Christians is to remain
faithful, not to remaincomfortable, not to remain free
from suffering, and not to keepour family behind a white picket
fence and, free from all harm.While we might attempt to do
(14:12):
that and attempts to do that aregood, compromises in order to
keep that are not good, andviolence is a compromise.
Ultimately, we can't controlcircumstances.
And when we face evil, we arecalled to be like Joseph who
(14:33):
remains faithful and recognizesGod's provision even through
difficulty. While the worldmight intend things for our
harm, we know that God bringsour good about. God's call in
our lives is not to avoid allharm, but to be faithful. I know
(14:53):
that's not an easy answer,especially to an emotional
argument. You know, it it wouldbe great if I could bring out
some emotional trump card thatmakes you feel all warm and
fuzzy inside about how awesomethis position is.
But there's nothing I can saythat that will do that from a
nonviolent position. The truthabout nonviolence is the the
(15:14):
truth that Christ faced. And,again, we come back to
Philippians 2. Jesus Christ gaveup, his his divinity in a sense,
and that he he gave up his powerto control. And so he said, god,
here's my life.
You take it. And that led himto, that led him to torture. It
(15:37):
led him to death. It led him tosuffering. It led him to, being
born in a manger.
It it just led him to all sortsof hardships. But Jesus remained
faithful, even though it was ahuge temptation for him as we
see throughout his ministry toto bow to Satan or to let Peter
defend him or to call thoseangels before the cross or to,
(16:02):
talk god into changing his mind.It was a huge temptation for
Christ, but he submitted even tothe cross. And that's what
Christians are called to do aswell. And that's not an easy
answer, and that's why Jesussaid, the way to him is narrow.
The path is narrow becausehealth and wealth are not his
(16:26):
promises, but suffering andcross are. And, of course, I'm
not at all saying that, youknow, people who fail at this
are not Christians. I thinkpeople who are dismissive of
this, and who refuse toincorporate cross and suffering
as, as an orientation that thatthey're supposed to be open to,
(16:48):
I think that's problematic forpeople who call themselves
disciples. But for people whowho fail at this ethic, I don't
think that's a problem. And I'llgive you an example here.
The guy's name is Pablo Yoder,and I'll link a video for him
below. But he he goes intodetail about some of the
(17:08):
experiences that they've hadwith gangs coming by and and
coming into their house and even1 time assaulting his wife. And,
he he just talks about hisstruggle, when he found a
baseball bat in his room. Andfor a split second, he thought
about using it. And after that,he's like, I've got to get this
(17:30):
out of my house because, youknow, it's so easy for me to
fail because I want to control.
I want to use violence. I wantto give in to my emotion. I want
to take vengeance now on thisevil. And, and he talks about
that struggle. And he's beendoing this a lot and has had a
lot more experience with it, butit's still a struggle for him.
(17:51):
Just like it was a struggle forJesus after thirty three years.
So there's no guarantee that wewon't fail, just like anything
else. To sin is to be human,and, Christians still sin.
Nevertheless, we are to strivetowards faithfulness and towards
enemy love. And if we'reunwilling to to look at our
lives and figure out how to growin that, I think that is a
(18:15):
problem for for Christiandisciples.
Now I want to end here with withsomething that I think I came to
realize is very frustrating fromthe nonviolent position. It's
understandable, but it'sfrustrating. So I carried with
me this, this rebuttal tononviolence for a long, long
(18:36):
time. It it it's the theargument that stuck with me the
most and that just poked me inmy side even after I accepted
pacifism. To think that I wouldbe nonviolent if I had the means
in front of me.
To think that I would benonviolent if somebody came in
to do terrible things to myfamily. I just I couldn't
(18:59):
imagine how that was right eventill till fairly recently. But
then then something clicked withme. And it clicked after there
was another school shooting, andI see all of the conservatives
who, you know, don't want anyguns to go away or don't want
any more background checks or orany any restrictions whatsoever,
(19:24):
they were actually arguing, andI I guess still are, that the
correct answer is to just havemore armed guards to use to use
more lethal force. And I I justI found it really interesting as
I I was going through Facebook,and and I saw this cool video
(19:47):
about, like, how these schoolswere getting, like, door
stoppers or just these differentthings that they could implement
in shooter situations that werenonlethal.
They're really simple andinexpensive. And, you know, they
they would keep people out. Andduring the same time, I I was
(20:08):
seeing, more liberals advocatingfor better health care,
universal health care, as wellas health care for the mentally
ill, while conservatives werearguing that we shouldn't
restrict guns because, most ofthe shooters are mentally ill,
(20:30):
and that's not representative ofthe normal population. But at
the same time, while they'rerecognizing mental illness as a
problem, don't want the state tospend more money on people and
people's health. And this reallygoes back to to, part 2 of our
Romans 13 as well, where I wouldsee conservatives talk about how
(20:53):
much they hated abortion.
And then in conservative states,they're willing to make punitive
laws against women so that theycan put women in jail, which
will cost taxpayers lots ofmoney to keep you know, if
you're gonna put a woman in jailfor life for murdering her
child. And that's a lot of moneythat you're gonna spend on just
(21:15):
one one inmate. That's a lot oftaxpayer money. And
conservatives are willing to dothat punitive thing towards
people. They want to implementthose sorts of laws.
Yet, we're we don't have thesame same voice or the same
agreement on, doing theproactive positive justice sorts
of things, like funding women'sshelters through the state or
(21:39):
funding universal health care sothat women, could take care of
children, especially singlemothers who might consider
abortion. We don't do thosepositive proactive things, but
we're really willing to, tospend lots of money on on more
negative things. And you seethat with with, with this gun
(22:01):
debate in The US. Conservativesare willing for for every
school, presumably, to hire atleast 1, probably more,
especially for bigger schools,to hire more armed personnel who
are salaried, who get paid abunch of money every year.
(22:23):
They're willing to do that, toput lethal force in there at a
huge, huge, huge expense.
But they're not willing toextend health care because they
don't want the government togive people freebies. They're
not willing to to buy, they'renot they're more willing to
spend money on putting lethalforce in place than on buying
(22:46):
some of these these othercontraptions that are able to
make schools safe, like thesedoor stoppers or, you know, like
I don't know. There are allsorts of devices that that,
they're offering to help keeppeople safe. It's just it
strikes me that as people whoare supposed to value life, our
(23:08):
our typical response is, asconservatives, is to implement a
costly a costly, answer thatseeks to take somebody's life.
And I I think that's my bigproblem here.
If if you really care about lifeand then, you know, if you're a
(23:35):
homeowner, what sorts ofpreparations can you make to
prevent violence from coming toyou? You can invest in alarm
systems. You can invest infloodlights or motion sensors.
You can invest in doors thathave have, really strong locks
(23:58):
or double locked or whatever.You can invest in very strong
glass, like bulletproof glass sothat nobody can break the
windows to come into your house.
You can invest in a dog or 2. Soeven if it's not a an attack
dog, a dog that makes noise andand barks to scare people away.
You can invest in securitycameras. You can choose to live
(24:22):
in a neighborhood that is welllit or gated or or whatever else
if you have enough money, tolive in a gated community. I
mean, the things that you can doto prevent violence coming to
you are are nearly limitless,these nonviolent options that
(24:44):
you can have.
Now some of those options wouldbe more expensive than than just
a gun, but they're also lessdangerous than a gun too because
your goal should be to not getin a violent confrontation
anyway. And we know that peoplewho have guns in their home are,
have a a very increased chanceof doing significant harms harm
(25:08):
not to, an intruder, but toloved ones. And we know that
having guns in the home lead toa significant increase in, in
somebody's ability to commitsuicide because, there are many
times that suicide can beprevented just by extending the
time that an individual has tothink about killing themselves.
(25:31):
And so if you don't have a gunin the home, it might take that
individual a little bit moretime to seek out a way to do
harm to themselves. And by thattime, they they might be able to
have thought through it and andget over that.
So it it just strikes me as oddthat for people who love life so
much, or say they love life somuch, that our go to means for
(25:55):
for self defense is lethal. Andand how many people who have a
lethal means at their disposalto stop an attacker have gone
through all of the steps thatthey could to prevent somebody
from from coming into their homeand doing them harm? Almost
(26:16):
nobody, I would I would suspect.Right? We don't go through all
of our nonlethal means and doeverything in our capability to
prevent harm from coming to ourenemies.
We go through maybe 1 or 2steps, and our favored response
is gonna be the lethal option,Even though the lethal option
ends up putting us in more harmas well and doesn't do as much
(26:39):
to prevent people from, fromcoming into our homes. But, you
know, ultimately, there even ifsomebody did all of the
defensive things that they coulddo that were nonlethal, there's
no guarantee because we live ina fallen world. And, there
should also be no guarantee onour safety because as
(27:01):
Christians, it strikes me as abit odd to argue that we should
be building these compounds andthat we should be, focusing on
trying to move up and live outin gated communities when I
think that Christ callsbelievers to something quite a
bit different than that. And inmy estimation, you know, you you
(27:23):
do what you can to prevent evilfrom happening to you. But the
answer when evil does come yourway is not to return evil with
evil, but to say, look.
I did what I could to preventevil from happening. I live in
an evil world, and evil hasbefallen me like it befell Job
or Joseph or or a number ofother people. And rather than
(27:48):
return evil for evil, I am goingto uphold what I believe is
moral, and that is nonviolence,nonviolent enemy love. And I'm
going to trust that even in thissuffering, God loves me and will
bring about good just as Joseph,discovered with his brothers.
And I'm gonna trust in hissovereignty, And I am going to
(28:11):
submit.
I'm going to lay down my controlat his feet. And I'm, through
his spirit, going to endure. Andthat's the Christian answer.
Taking an an enemy's life intoyour hands is not the Christian
answer. Being violent is not theChristian answer.
(28:32):
Sacrificing somebody else foryour well-being is not the
Christian answer. And for ashard as it is in our, American
culture where we are self madeand where we are able to insure
ourselves, where we are able toprotect ourselves, and, and and,
(28:53):
you know, only restricted by ourmeans, we can but we can hedge
our bets to the extreme. It isvery unpalatable for us to think
that evil could befall us and itnot be within our control. And,
I would just point you back toPhilippians 2 and say, look at
what Christ did for us, and hecalls us to do the same even for
(29:17):
our enemies. I'll leave you with2 resources, that that I think
would be good.
1, is a book by John HowardYoder, which talks about this
idea of, individuals coming inand, and assaulting you and and
how we respond in nonviolence.And another is by, Shane
(29:40):
Claiborne called TheIrresistible Revolution. And
it's really I think it's in 1 ofthe appendixes that, appendices
that he talks about, this thisquestion of what would you do
when somebody comes in. And hisresponse is somewhat like, like
the last episode where we talkedabout, you know, an ISIS convoy
and if you do violence tosomebody, and then that just
(30:05):
perpetuates violence. His answeris sort of like that.
And it it's not gonna quell youremotions on this when you think
of the most extreme scenariothat happens to your family.
But, nevertheless, it's a reallygood book overall, and I would
read the whole thing, not justthe the appendix, mentioned
here. There are a number ofother books, I'll I'll see if I
(30:27):
can recommend, that I haven'tread but I've heard are good. So
I'll put a couple of those downthere. I just can't vouch for
them.
Nevertheless, this is adifficult question. It's 1 that
still bugs me emotionally. It's1 that I still, but by the grace
of God, would probably not actin a way that I think, I should
(30:49):
act. I would probably doviolence if I had violence at my
disposal. It it is it is, ofcourse, a very difficult thing
to deal with.
Nevertheless, it's why I thinkwe have to work through this
kind of thing now, outside ofthe the heated emotions and and
(31:09):
think about that and make up ourminds now. So anyway, that's all
for now so peace because I'm apacifist and I say it, I mean
it.
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