November 8, 2019 • 36 mins
*Please excuse the sound quality on this episode. There was some interference on this recording which influenced the sound quality.
- 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
- Why Civil Resistance Works: https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw
- Gene Sharp Books: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=gene+sharp&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
- Hannah Arendt on the Banality of Evil: https://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=eichman+in+jerusalem&qid=1569004482&sr=8-1
- Milgram Experiment: https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil?language=en
- Clay Jones Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCvgl94RvR8
- Clay Jones Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsVecozRORE&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2MAYAg0bbO7cQvoEwoeP5YLjQWs-KC42yK9-EjEhx3Fq7NIJrvK1KPFPU
- Ordinary Men: https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0062303023/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ordinary+men&qid=1569003813&sr=8-1
- 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 Fourth Way Podcast. We are
continuing our discussion onrebuttals to Christian non
violence. In this episode, we'regoing to focus on the argument
that nonviolence is passive andineffective. While this will
relate a bit back to episodes 45where we were discussing,
(00:27):
positive evidence fornonviolence. We just wanna dig a
little bit deeper into that andkind of rehash some of those
things as well as expound on ita bit because it is such a
common objection.
And, generally, the objectiongoes something like this. So
people might say to a pacifist,well, so if you're not gonna
(00:47):
fight, you're telling me that ifthere was another holocaust that
you just let everybody die, youwouldn't do anything, you
wouldn't fight back. Like, howunjust is that? That's that's
passive. It means you're notdoing anything.
You're a coward, and you justsit back and let people die and
are ineffective. So how do youjustify that as a pacifist? I
(01:12):
think a great place to startwith this is Martin Luther King
Junior, and he he has lots ofawesome quotes. But he has one
in particular that I think fitsour situation here. And King
says that, quote, my study ofGandhi convinced me that true
pacifism is not nonresistance toevil, but nonviolent resistance
(01:34):
to evil.
Between the two positions,there's a world of difference.
Gandhi resisted evil with asmuch vigor and power as the
violent resistor. But true fatpacifism is not unrealistic
submission to evil power. It israther a courageous
confrontation of evil by thepower of love. So King
(01:54):
highlights for us this veryimportant moral ethic, which is
that as a pacifist, we aren'tbeing inactive, but rather our
action is love.
And it's just that the action oflove, especially to a fallen
world, and unfortunately, toChristians who've bought into
the power of a fallen world, thepower of love doesn't seem like
(02:17):
power at all, but it seems likeweakness. And that, of course,
makes sense when you read theBible, how Jesus oftentimes
seems like this meek and mild,just weak, good for nothing, do
nothing guy. But but really, heupends the powers that be
through his love. And it's whatPaul calls us to in Philippians,
(02:39):
Philippians 2 especially. Butthroughout the rest of the
epistles, the gospels, Peter, Imean, everything, they're just
calling us to lay down our livesand to have this metric of love
because without love, everythingis meaningless.
And, again, this does refer backto episodes 45, but it also
touches on some of the otherepisodes we talked about. We
(03:02):
mentioned Saint Cyril and how,you know, he said, well, if I
don't kill my enemies to save myfriends, I'm really not loving
anybody. And, Cyril was able tothrow off this metric of love
because he thought he waskeeping the metric of love. The
problem with Cyril is the sameproblem that we have with the
(03:23):
Pharisees who are talking toJesus when I ask them, who's my
neighbor? And Jesus highlightsthat we are willing to keep a
metric of love for people thatare either useful to us or
people that are in our group.
But the metric of love, we'rewilling to throw to the side
when it includes people who weconsider our enemies or those
(03:44):
who are below us. And what whatpeople are essentially saying
when they say that, oh, so youwouldn't kill Nazis if there's
another holocaust. You wouldjust sit back and love people.
What they're saying is, so, youwouldn't be willing to throw off
the metric of love for yourenemies? What kind of person are
(04:07):
you?
And that's just not what we seein the gospels. We are supposed
to maintain the metric of lovealways. And, again, especially,
Paul and Peter, and arguablyJohn, really highlight this this
notion of self sacrifice and oflaying down your life for other
people and not taking vengeance.So if there was another
(04:30):
holocaust, no. Pacifists, ifthey were acting rightly, would
not be passive.
Their metric of action mightjust look a little bit different
than being willing to killenemies. As King shows us and as
we see in a lot of otherpacifists like Gandhi, the
(04:53):
action would look likenonviolent resistance. It would
probably look like harboringJews at the risk of one's own
life as the Quakers show us in,in the abolition era. It might
look like, helping people get tosafety at the risk of one's own
life. It's it's a willingness tolove the oppressed, but in that,
(05:17):
not willing and a willingnessnot to throw off the metric of
love for your enemies.
So besides this idea thatpacifism isn't really passive
and that it's it's actually acontinued action, a sustaining,
action of love. Point number 2,I'd say here, about a new
(05:39):
holocaust is that we've seen inthe past the empirical evidence
that non resistance, or I'msorry. Nonviolent resistance, is
something that actually ends upbeing better empirically, at
least when we're talking aboutlarge scale, large scale
problems. And we we've seen thatin episode 4, specifically in in
(06:03):
the study, named Why CivilResistance Works. Jean Sharp
also has a number of books thatare helpful in seeing just how
how nonviolent resistance reallydigs into the powers that be and
how it brings a more lastingchange oftentimes than violent
(06:24):
resistance.
And to go even further than theempirical evidence, I'd point to
that anecdotal evidence thatwe've seen in Bulgaria and
Denmark. You know, a lot of peepwould say, okay. But I can
understand how nonviolentresistance might work in in some
smaller countries, but theHolocaust was large scale. And,
(06:47):
look, it took a war to stopthat. Well, not really exactly.
I mean, yes, the the war did puta an abrupt end to to Hitler's
reign, but we saw 2 anecdotal,pieces of evidence from both
Bulgaria and Denmark where thesetwo countries that were
(07:08):
characterized by nonviolentresistance were actually the
only 2 countries of which I'maware that saved 99 to a 100% of
the Jewish population. I mean,that's that's pretty amazing
when you have a war machine likeHitler's and you've got the 2
nonviolent countries that areending up saving their oppressed
(07:31):
population. And in episode 4, wealso, expressed how in Denmark
specifically, it wasn't only thethe Jews and the oppressed
people who were saved, but itwas actually Nazis who were
beginning to be converted andand have their hearts changed by
the nonviolent resistance thatthey faced. As a 4th point, I
(07:54):
would also argue and I can'tprove this one. This one isn't
isn't, you know, as cut and dryas the other pieces of evidence.
But, you know, I would arguethat if I were in a holocaust,
if I were the subject of ofpersecution in a new holocaust,
I would hope that I lived in acountry of which was filled more
(08:20):
with genuine pacifists than withthose who were willing to do
violence for what they, againstwhat they thought was evil. So
why is that the case? Well, ifyou live in a country
characterized by individuals whoare who are genuine pacifists,
not not just secular pacifists,but pacifists who are refusing
(08:42):
to dehumanize enemies, then theyare not willing to compromise on
this area of violence. What wesee in a lot of atrocities is
that, you know, Hitler was ableto kill Jews and and other
groups of people, but he wasable to kill Jews because they
were enemies, they were lessthan them, they were less than
(09:04):
the other Germans, and they wereinhuman. And when you live in a
population that is willing to doviolence to people that they
consider their enemies orsubhuman, you don't have to get
them to buy into violence.
You only have to get them to buyinto which group they need to
hate, which group they need toto kill. And that's that's
(09:27):
something that we've seenthrough history isn't really
that hard to do. You get peopledoing that all the time, and
people are blind to it. I wouldargue that we're doing that
right now in the United States.While while we commit 100 of
thousands of abortions, we'vecommitted 50,000,000 plus
abortions since Roe versus Wade.
(09:50):
Now I wouldn't say that peoplehate fetuses, but I would say
that they at least view them assubhuman or not worthy of
rights. So, yeah, I mean, we'reeven doing that now. Hitler did
it. All the countries where youhave genocides, they do it.
(10:10):
Russia, and and the tens ofmillions of people that they
killed, they did it.
China, under Mao, they did it.Cambodia, I mean, you name it.
People only have to get aviolent population to identify
an enemy. And since enemies aredeserving of violence, then we
(10:31):
can do violence. If you live ina population that's not willing
to do violence even to theirenemies, and I was being
persecuted, I wouldn't have toworry as much about my society,
being manipulated to do harm tome because they wouldn't
compromise on that violentstance.
(10:52):
But even even beyond that, youknow, if there was a new
holocaust and a minority of thepopulation is willing to kill
me, to persecute me, thatdoesn't mean that I would be
helped. Right? So it doesn'tmatter if only 10% of the
population is trying to kill me.They're probably gonna get a
hold of me and kill me withoutintervention. But the other
(11:15):
reason I would want a majorityof the population to be
nonviolent isn't only becausethey can't be manipulated as
easily, but also because, mostlikely, if if you're you adhere
to Christian nonviolence, thenthe reason that you're not
willing to kill your enemies isbecause you view all human life
(11:37):
as sacred and valuable.
And that means if you see thatI'm being persecuted, then not
only are you going to refuse tojump on the bandwagon and do
evil to me, but you are probablygoing to value my life so much
that you are willing to put yourown life at risk to help me and
save me. That's exactly what wesee in both Bulgaria and,
(12:00):
Denmark. We see people saying,I'll lay down on the railroad
tracks because it's worth it topreserve these people's lives
who are valuable. I'm not gonnado that by killing my enemies,
but I will do that by putting mylife on the line for these
people's lives who are sacred.So if you're in a culture of
(12:23):
many pacifists, many who whowere, adhered to Christian
nonviolence and the sacrednessof human life, even enemy life,
while they might not kill yourenemies, they would certainly
seek to to save all life, whichis sacred even at the expense of
their own.
Now there there's a a converseto that, of course. Right? If
(12:46):
people who are who adhere toChristian nonviolence are not
willing to compromise on thesacredness of anyone's life,
even an enemy's life, That seemsto imply that those who accept
that there are appropriate timesfor violence, they generally
tend towards pragmatism, andtherefore, moral compromise and
(13:08):
inaction are are more expectedfrom this group. And I I think
this is, this can be seen in anexample that, I and my wife
talked about a few years back.In Panama City, Florida, I I
heard a story that there was arape a number of years ago, and
(13:29):
it occurred on the beach, atnight.
So the beach wasn't fullypopulated. It wasn't completely
light. But there was a a groupof guys who were raping a girl,
and this girl called for help.And there were some people who
took some videos, well, somepeople who just walked by,
(13:51):
people who heard it and, didn'treally do anything, maybe called
the cops eventually. But,basically, this girl was allowed
to be raped, and nobody didanything.
And, there's a there's a famousstory. I can't remember it off
the top of my head now, but itwas like Genevieve or Genovese
(14:11):
or something, back in New YorkCity couple decades ago that,
they use in in psychology, whichwas just the story of this girl
who was stabbed to death in anapartment complex, screamed for
help for a long time, and nobodydid anything. And they call this
the bystander effect. You know,well, if if somebody's screaming
(14:32):
that loudly, certainly, otherpeople hear because we're in a
crowded area, and somebody elsewill do something about it. So I
understand that there's there'sa a bystander effect that goes
on, in society.
But I remember when when I wastalking with my wife about this
before I I adhered tononviolence and saying, man,
(14:52):
what would what would I do? Whatwould we do in that situation?
Because there's somebody who iscrying out for help, but there's
a group of guys around. And nowI am not, a a very big guy. I'm,
like, 5, 7a half.
I don't work out. I did, like,cross country and stuff and ran
(15:18):
so that I didn't have to workout so I could run away from
anybody who was big. Right? Somy in fight or flight, my
response has always been flightbecause I'm puny, and I'm not
gonna do any good in a fight.Nevertheless, it it seemed like
to just let this this girl aloneand and be raped was was
(15:39):
terrible.
But, you know, what good was Igonna do if I went up to the
crowd? So, you know, talkingwith my wife, we're like, well,
you know, it it doesn't seemlike you should really go up and
and try to break that up becausewhat good is one person gonna do
against 1010 probably big guysif you're at the beach? What are
(15:59):
you gonna do against them?They're probably drunk. They're
probably crazy.
Like, you're just gonna get beatup. And and in fact, you might
get killed. What's the point ofa girl getting raped and me
getting killed? Right? There'sno point in that.
And that's what I I would havesaid when I was when I adhered
to violence. Because for me, andI think for most people who
(16:23):
adhere to violence, violence isa tool to solve problems. If
it's not going to solve theproblem, you don't do it. It's a
pragmatic effort. It's it'sconsequentialist in in a sense.
The ends justify the means. Andif the means of me intervening
were likely that it would end upproducing worse ends where I'm
(16:46):
dead and the girl ends up rapedanyway, what's the point of
that? There's no point in myintervention. But now, as a as a
nonviolent adherent, I wouldhope, I think that the right
thing to do, would be for me togo there and for me to shine
(17:07):
light on that darkness and say,get out of here. Don't do that
to her.
And if I got beat up or killedtrying to intervene to value the
sacredness of this girl's life,then so be it. But but me
(17:29):
standing by and refusing tointervene is not the answer. But
it is the answer if you are, ifyou're willing to do violence to
people because violence is justa tool. It's a pragmatic tool.
And, I I find that I, myself,used violence as a pragmatic
(17:54):
tool.
And most people that I know viewviolence as a pragmatic tool.
They're pragmatists. And so ifif you can't use it effectively,
then you might as well just refrestrain yourself. And I think
that's what you see in a lot ofa lot of countries, a lot of
Nazi occupied countries, is thatpeople thought, well, what am I
(18:17):
gonna do against the Nazi warmachine? Right?
You had some people who were inthe resistance, but the
resistance was very small andand, disorganized. And you just
had a lot of people who didnothing. And that's where we get
this quote from somebody likeEdmund Burke, where he says, the
only necessary thing for evil toprevail is for good men to do
(18:39):
nothing. And that's what goodpeople generally do when they
adhere to violence, If theydon't think they're powerful
enough, if they don't think theviolence is going to work, then
they do nothing. And that's whatmost of Europe was.
Most of Europe was passive tothe Nazi Nazi machine. If you're
in an army and you've got tanksand you've got all kinds of
(19:00):
things and you can go up againstthe German army and you might do
some good, I'll do that. But ifI can't, then I'm just gonna
kind of sit back and and waitfor somebody who's got a bigger
army to come through and takecare of things. But as as the
pacifist, as somebody who'snonviolent, the goal isn't,
(19:24):
isn't that I'm gonna necessarilybeat the other person, because
it's not about beating the otherperson. The issue isn't about,
the consequence of of winning.
The issue is about thesacredness of life. And so I am
protecting the sacredness oflife by putting my body in front
(19:46):
of somebody else's. I amsacrificing, I am showing the
the value of life when I harbora Jew in my home at the risk of
my own life and the life of myown family. And I'm upholding
the sacredness of life becauseI'm showing the Jew that they're
valuable. I'm showing the Nazisthat Jews are valuable because I
(20:10):
uphold them.
I'm showing my society that lifeis valuable because I'm willing
to sacrifice my own for the lifeof somebody who's who's deemed
unworthy. And, my example and mylife and my my value are what's
to be upheld. This faithfulnessto God, not this faithfulness to
(20:31):
some perceived result that Ithink is necessary. The the
point isn't the results, though,of course, I want good results.
The point is the upholding ofintegrity, of righteousness, of
of, human sacredness, of allhuman sacredness.
It's not just showing the Jewthat they're valuable and
(20:52):
refusing to buy into that. It'salso showing the the Nazi that
I'm not willing to do violenceto you, and you're valuable too.
And as a valuable human being,you should value all these other
human beings. So in essence,when when you allow pragmatism
to determine your actions, anevil is allowed to prevail, and
(21:15):
accepting violence is is apragmatic endeavor. And I I
think that beyond just assertingthat, I think that you can even
see this inherent in in one ofthe tenants of just war theory.
Right? Just war theory says thatthe possibility of winning is
(21:35):
part of what you should use todetermine whether a battle is is
worth fighting, whether youshould stand up for right. So in
theory, right, just war theory,let's say Nazi Germany was just
insanely powerful. Well, thatmeans, and nobody else could
(21:56):
could assail them. Well, thatmeans that, well, then we
shouldn't have fought the war.
We should have just let them dowhat they were gonna do. And no,
that's ridiculous. That is notthe Christian ethic whatsoever.
The Christian ethic isn't, weonly fight battles if we think
we're strong enough to win. TheChristian ethic is we are
(22:19):
faithful in upholding god'smoral decree in our lives, this
holiness, and exuding that tothe world even at the cost of
our own lives.
And that ethic is present inChristian nonviolence, but it is
not present in in, in systemswhich accept violence. I think
(22:43):
we can kind of see the thecounter to this, again, in a a
quote from Martin Luther KingJunior. And I really like this
because he a lot of people willtry to discount King on a number
of bases. But but as far as thenonviolent area, a lot of times
they'll say, well, King filedfor a a, a gun permit. And
(23:07):
that's true, but that was earlyon in his career before
nonviolence.
So I wanna read you a quote onwhat caused King to give up his
use of violence to protect him.And I think it's it's very
insightful on this point. Quote,how could I serve as one of the
leaders of a nonviolent movementand at the same time use weapons
(23:28):
of violence for my personalprotection? Coretta and I talked
the matter over for several daysand finally agreed that arms
were no solution. We decidedthen to get rid of the one
weapon we owned.
We tried to satisfy our friendsby having floodlights mounted
around the house and hiringunarmed watchmen around the
clock. I also promised that Iwould not travel around the city
(23:49):
alone. I was much more afraid inMontgomery when I had a gun in
my house. When I decided that Icouldn't keep a gun, I came face
to face with the question ofdeath, and I dealt with it. From
that point on, I no longerneeded a gun nor have I been
afraid.
Had we become distracted by thequestion of my safety, we would
have lost the moral offensiveand sunk to the level of our
(24:10):
oppressors. So King shows usright here that, as a from a
nonviolent position, the reasonnonviolent action is so
compelling and and the the hugeforce behind it, the reason that
(24:32):
people are able to do theseseemingly unpragmatic things is
that they count their lives aslost. King said that he was more
free when he gave up his meansof violent power. When he said,
you know what? I already countmy life as lost, and if I die, I
die.
Like, that's the the point isn'tmy survival. The point is doing
(24:57):
the right thing and putting mymoney where my mouth is. And
that's what Christians arecalled to do. We are to be
living sacrifices. And if in ourfaithfulness, God calls us to be
unpragmatic and intervene when agroup of much stronger, more
numerous guys is on a beachraping a girl, then that's what
(25:18):
you do.
If your your country doesn'thave an army and there's nobody
around to save you and that youryour countrymen are dehumanizing
another group of people. Andthere's no way in the world you
can defeat your enemies bypower. It doesn't matter. You
(25:40):
defeat your enemy through love.And if you don't defeat them,
that's that's in God's hands.
But you show love to thedepressed and through your non
violence, you show love even toyour enemies. And as Denmark
shows us, as well as countlessother examples of Christian
martyrs and and things likethat, love does often win. God
(26:03):
does use love, to to overcomeand to be effective. But the
point isn't effectiveness. Thepoint is faithful obedience and
upholding human value.
Yeah. I I recognize that my lasttwo points have somewhat been
more assertions than somethingthat I've I've backed up. I
(26:26):
think you can show lots ofanecdotes of how these things
are true, but I know you canalso find find some
counterexamples to to kinda say,well, see, there are some
violent people who aren'tpragmatic and they're willing to
put their lives on the line evenif they don't think they can
win, even though that goesagainst the just war theory that
justifies violence.Nevertheless, whatever. But I I
(26:51):
do wanna throw one other thingout there to kind of help back
up my case a little bit more,objectively.
I wanna recommend a couple ofresources to you, to to show you
that those who accept violenceare more apt to be coerced. And
one of these is the famousMilgram experiment. You can
(27:14):
search this online and watchtons of videos on it. It's
extremely interesting. But,essentially, Stanley Milgram,
after World War 2, was trying tofigure out, man, how did the
Germans get all of these peopleto, to do what they did?
And around the same time, HannahArndt was making the same
(27:35):
observation. She called it thebanality of evil where she was
like, these these Nazis who didthese terrible things, they're
normal people. And Milgram didan experiment that you couldn't
do today, but that they could doback then, where he essentially
had just everyday normal peoplecome in. They were in this
(27:57):
booth, and they were told thatin in a room next door, they
couldn't see, but they theycould hear that there was
another person in there. And sothey were gonna ask that person
a series of questions, and whenthe person got a question wrong,
they would give them a shock.
Well, each subsequent shockincreased in, in its painfulness
(28:19):
and actually even went up tobeing potentially lethal. And
that this was labeled so thatthe people who are administering
the shocks could see, like,danger, severe pain, you know,
danger danger. This could causea heart attack, whatever. And,
so Milgram just wanted to see,hey, how far will these people
go? And, of course, there wasn'ta real person in the other room,
(28:42):
although this was done, youknow, back in the day, and so
you would wonder maybe theywould put a real person there,
but they didn't.
They actually just had arecording. And what Milgram
found was that most people wentreally far even when the person
in the other room was saying,oh, stop. No. No. No.
I don't like this. When theywere saying, like, terrible
(29:05):
things because a man in a labcoat, a white coat, an authority
figure told them to keep going.And so the people did. Now they
might not have liked it. Theymight have been uncomfortable,
but most people kept going.
And Milgram uncomfortably showedthe world that, you know what,
(29:25):
the types of people who commitholocaust are pretty normal
people. Another book I wouldhighly recommend is called
Ordinary Men, and it is justthis gut wrenching, gut
wrenching story of, of just howa lot of the Jews who were
(29:49):
killed were actually executed bydeath squads, and a lot of these
death squads weren't yourprofessional soldiers, like,
purse professional executioners,SS, Gestapo, whatever. Mo a a
lot of the death squads wereactually kind of like
reservists, like youraccountants, your bankers, just
(30:09):
people who were called up, likeGermany's police force. And they
just went out, and they weretold to shoot these people, and
so they did. And it's, I mean,it's it's a very well known fact
that atrocities are committed bynormal people, normal people who
(30:29):
are willing to compromisebecause they they view violence,
as a means, an appropriatemeans, to accomplish a
particular end.
And sometimes, they viewviolence as a means to
accomplish, an end in the senseof, you know, if we kill all the
Jews, our country will bebetter. And sometimes, they just
view it as an end to selfpreservation. I'm willing to
(30:53):
kill somebody else so I myselfdon't die. Unlike Martin Luther
King Junior, who said, I countedmy life as lost, people who hang
on to their lives so tightly andview violence as a legitimate
means will often be coerced orconvinced they will rationalize
(31:14):
using violence on other peopleto accomplish some pragmatic
end. If you count your life aslost and you are nonviolent,
that does not happen.
Oh, you you can compromise, ofcourse. Okay? So Bonhoeffer
would be an example. You cancompromise, but, you you are
going to have a very, difficulttime just being coerced like
(31:39):
that. It's much easier to makethat the baby steps, to be
coerced to use violence againstother people if you are, if you
adhere to violence as a means.
So before moving on, I I willthrow another resource here. One
of Catalina's professors for herapologetics degree was a man
(32:00):
named doctor Clay Jones, and hehas a a funny, awesome talk on
evil. And his life was haslargely been spent looking at
the evil of humanity. And, hehe's got this great saying that
I don't think anybody canforget, if you take his class or
or listen to his videos, but hesays that's not inhuman. It's
(32:22):
what humans do.
And his point, of course, isthat, the things the violence
that humans do to other humansis par for the course. It's what
everybody does. It's not done bythese, these crazy psychopaths,
just by crazy psychopaths. It'sdone by everyday people. It's
done by you.
It's done by me. So what is myultimate conclusion? Well, in
(32:48):
the next Holocaust, if I werepart of the persecuted group, I
would hope that my neighborswere nonviolent Christians
because the chance that theywould love me and seek my
well-being and sacrifice for meand resist cruel governments and
cruel societies is much higherthan in a society of those who
(33:13):
accept violence as a means toneutralize human threats
unworthy of life. So I wouldwant my neighbor to be a
pacifist because, like King,they would be more apt to count
their lives as lost. They wouldbe more apt to not be pragmatic
and be willing to help me evenif they didn't think that they
(33:36):
could beat beat the man, beatthe government, beat the
machine, they would be more aptto help me regardless of who I
am.
And, likewise, there would beless violent people who could
more easily be coerced to directtheir violence towards me or who
(33:59):
would probably just be sopragmatic that they would say,
if I can't if I can't beat themachine, if I can't beat, my
government's army, then, youknow, I I feel bad for for the
people who are being persecuted.But, you know, I'm just gonna do
my thing and and hope and prayand and hope somebody else comes
(34:20):
and swoops in who's morepowerful and can overcome.
Because violent people, peoplewho adhere to violence, have a
metric of power. Power is whatdetermines, whether you can beat
somebody. And if you can't beatsomebody, like just war theory
shows us, then it's not really amoral thing to pursue.
(34:41):
And that's pragmatic. That'sconsequentialist. It's not
Christian. And, of course, bysaying that, I don't mean at all
to imply that people whoperceive violence as legitimate
aren't Christians. No.
I don't I don't think that atall. There are many people who
are Christians who believe thatviolence is legitimate, but
(35:02):
they're mistaken, just as I ammistaken on some of my beliefs,
I'm sure. Well, hopefully, youhave found this, at least
thought provoking, if notconvincing. And, hopefully, you
don't ever need to put, put thisinto practice into seeing
(35:26):
whether I'm right or not. Butunfortunately, because violence
is indeed what humans do, weprobably will get that
opportunity sooner rather thanlater somewhere in the world.
That's all for now. So peacebecause I'm a pacifist. When I
say it, I mean it.
Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast. We are
continuing our discussion onrebuttals to Christian non
violence. In this episode, we'regoing to focus on the argument
that nonviolence is passive andineffective. While this will
relate a bit back to episodes 45where we were discussing,
(00:27):
positive evidence fornonviolence. We just wanna dig a
little bit deeper into that andkind of rehash some of those
things as well as expound on ita bit because it is such a
common objection.
And, generally, the objectiongoes something like this. So
people might say to a pacifist,well, so if you're not gonna
(00:47):
fight, you're telling me that ifthere was another holocaust that
you just let everybody die, youwouldn't do anything, you
wouldn't fight back. Like, howunjust is that? That's that's
passive. It means you're notdoing anything.
You're a coward, and you justsit back and let people die and
are ineffective. So how do youjustify that as a pacifist? I
(01:12):
think a great place to startwith this is Martin Luther King
Junior, and he he has lots ofawesome quotes. But he has one
in particular that I think fitsour situation here. And King
says that, quote, my study ofGandhi convinced me that true
pacifism is not nonresistance toevil, but nonviolent resistance
(01:34):
to evil.
Between the two positions,there's a world of difference.
Gandhi resisted evil with asmuch vigor and power as the
violent resistor. But true fatpacifism is not unrealistic
submission to evil power. It israther a courageous
confrontation of evil by thepower of love. So King
(01:54):
highlights for us this veryimportant moral ethic, which is
that as a pacifist, we aren'tbeing inactive, but rather our
action is love.
And it's just that the action oflove, especially to a fallen
world, and unfortunately, toChristians who've bought into
the power of a fallen world, thepower of love doesn't seem like
(02:17):
power at all, but it seems likeweakness. And that, of course,
makes sense when you read theBible, how Jesus oftentimes
seems like this meek and mild,just weak, good for nothing, do
nothing guy. But but really, heupends the powers that be
through his love. And it's whatPaul calls us to in Philippians,
(02:39):
Philippians 2 especially. Butthroughout the rest of the
epistles, the gospels, Peter, Imean, everything, they're just
calling us to lay down our livesand to have this metric of love
because without love, everythingis meaningless.
And, again, this does refer backto episodes 45, but it also
touches on some of the otherepisodes we talked about. We
(03:02):
mentioned Saint Cyril and how,you know, he said, well, if I
don't kill my enemies to save myfriends, I'm really not loving
anybody. And, Cyril was able tothrow off this metric of love
because he thought he waskeeping the metric of love. The
problem with Cyril is the sameproblem that we have with the
(03:23):
Pharisees who are talking toJesus when I ask them, who's my
neighbor? And Jesus highlightsthat we are willing to keep a
metric of love for people thatare either useful to us or
people that are in our group.
But the metric of love, we'rewilling to throw to the side
when it includes people who weconsider our enemies or those
(03:44):
who are below us. And what whatpeople are essentially saying
when they say that, oh, so youwouldn't kill Nazis if there's
another holocaust. You wouldjust sit back and love people.
What they're saying is, so, youwouldn't be willing to throw off
the metric of love for yourenemies? What kind of person are
(04:07):
you?
And that's just not what we seein the gospels. We are supposed
to maintain the metric of lovealways. And, again, especially,
Paul and Peter, and arguablyJohn, really highlight this this
notion of self sacrifice and oflaying down your life for other
people and not taking vengeance.So if there was another
(04:30):
holocaust, no. Pacifists, ifthey were acting rightly, would
not be passive.
Their metric of action mightjust look a little bit different
than being willing to killenemies. As King shows us and as
we see in a lot of otherpacifists like Gandhi, the
(04:53):
action would look likenonviolent resistance. It would
probably look like harboringJews at the risk of one's own
life as the Quakers show us in,in the abolition era. It might
look like, helping people get tosafety at the risk of one's own
life. It's it's a willingness tolove the oppressed, but in that,
(05:17):
not willing and a willingnessnot to throw off the metric of
love for your enemies.
So besides this idea thatpacifism isn't really passive
and that it's it's actually acontinued action, a sustaining,
action of love. Point number 2,I'd say here, about a new
(05:39):
holocaust is that we've seen inthe past the empirical evidence
that non resistance, or I'msorry. Nonviolent resistance, is
something that actually ends upbeing better empirically, at
least when we're talking aboutlarge scale, large scale
problems. And we we've seen thatin episode 4, specifically in in
(06:03):
the study, named Why CivilResistance Works. Jean Sharp
also has a number of books thatare helpful in seeing just how
how nonviolent resistance reallydigs into the powers that be and
how it brings a more lastingchange oftentimes than violent
(06:24):
resistance.
And to go even further than theempirical evidence, I'd point to
that anecdotal evidence thatwe've seen in Bulgaria and
Denmark. You know, a lot of peepwould say, okay. But I can
understand how nonviolentresistance might work in in some
smaller countries, but theHolocaust was large scale. And,
(06:47):
look, it took a war to stopthat. Well, not really exactly.
I mean, yes, the the war did puta an abrupt end to to Hitler's
reign, but we saw 2 anecdotal,pieces of evidence from both
Bulgaria and Denmark where thesetwo countries that were
(07:08):
characterized by nonviolentresistance were actually the
only 2 countries of which I'maware that saved 99 to a 100% of
the Jewish population. I mean,that's that's pretty amazing
when you have a war machine likeHitler's and you've got the 2
nonviolent countries that areending up saving their oppressed
(07:31):
population. And in episode 4, wealso, expressed how in Denmark
specifically, it wasn't only thethe Jews and the oppressed
people who were saved, but itwas actually Nazis who were
beginning to be converted andand have their hearts changed by
the nonviolent resistance thatthey faced. As a 4th point, I
(07:54):
would also argue and I can'tprove this one. This one isn't
isn't, you know, as cut and dryas the other pieces of evidence.
But, you know, I would arguethat if I were in a holocaust,
if I were the subject of ofpersecution in a new holocaust,
I would hope that I lived in acountry of which was filled more
(08:20):
with genuine pacifists than withthose who were willing to do
violence for what they, againstwhat they thought was evil. So
why is that the case? Well, ifyou live in a country
characterized by individuals whoare who are genuine pacifists,
not not just secular pacifists,but pacifists who are refusing
(08:42):
to dehumanize enemies, then theyare not willing to compromise on
this area of violence. What wesee in a lot of atrocities is
that, you know, Hitler was ableto kill Jews and and other
groups of people, but he wasable to kill Jews because they
were enemies, they were lessthan them, they were less than
(09:04):
the other Germans, and they wereinhuman. And when you live in a
population that is willing to doviolence to people that they
consider their enemies orsubhuman, you don't have to get
them to buy into violence.
You only have to get them to buyinto which group they need to
hate, which group they need toto kill. And that's that's
(09:27):
something that we've seenthrough history isn't really
that hard to do. You get peopledoing that all the time, and
people are blind to it. I wouldargue that we're doing that
right now in the United States.While while we commit 100 of
thousands of abortions, we'vecommitted 50,000,000 plus
abortions since Roe versus Wade.
(09:50):
Now I wouldn't say that peoplehate fetuses, but I would say
that they at least view them assubhuman or not worthy of
rights. So, yeah, I mean, we'reeven doing that now. Hitler did
it. All the countries where youhave genocides, they do it.
(10:10):
Russia, and and the tens ofmillions of people that they
killed, they did it.
China, under Mao, they did it.Cambodia, I mean, you name it.
People only have to get aviolent population to identify
an enemy. And since enemies aredeserving of violence, then we
(10:31):
can do violence. If you live ina population that's not willing
to do violence even to theirenemies, and I was being
persecuted, I wouldn't have toworry as much about my society,
being manipulated to do harm tome because they wouldn't
compromise on that violentstance.
(10:52):
But even even beyond that, youknow, if there was a new
holocaust and a minority of thepopulation is willing to kill
me, to persecute me, thatdoesn't mean that I would be
helped. Right? So it doesn'tmatter if only 10% of the
population is trying to kill me.They're probably gonna get a
hold of me and kill me withoutintervention. But the other
(11:15):
reason I would want a majorityof the population to be
nonviolent isn't only becausethey can't be manipulated as
easily, but also because, mostlikely, if if you're you adhere
to Christian nonviolence, thenthe reason that you're not
willing to kill your enemies isbecause you view all human life
(11:37):
as sacred and valuable.
And that means if you see thatI'm being persecuted, then not
only are you going to refuse tojump on the bandwagon and do
evil to me, but you are probablygoing to value my life so much
that you are willing to put yourown life at risk to help me and
save me. That's exactly what wesee in both Bulgaria and,
(12:00):
Denmark. We see people saying,I'll lay down on the railroad
tracks because it's worth it topreserve these people's lives
who are valuable. I'm not gonnado that by killing my enemies,
but I will do that by putting mylife on the line for these
people's lives who are sacred.So if you're in a culture of
(12:23):
many pacifists, many who whowere, adhered to Christian
nonviolence and the sacrednessof human life, even enemy life,
while they might not kill yourenemies, they would certainly
seek to to save all life, whichis sacred even at the expense of
their own.
Now there there's a a converseto that, of course. Right? If
(12:46):
people who are who adhere toChristian nonviolence are not
willing to compromise on thesacredness of anyone's life,
even an enemy's life, That seemsto imply that those who accept
that there are appropriate timesfor violence, they generally
tend towards pragmatism, andtherefore, moral compromise and
(13:08):
inaction are are more expectedfrom this group. And I I think
this is, this can be seen in anexample that, I and my wife
talked about a few years back.In Panama City, Florida, I I
heard a story that there was arape a number of years ago, and
(13:29):
it occurred on the beach, atnight.
So the beach wasn't fullypopulated. It wasn't completely
light. But there was a a groupof guys who were raping a girl,
and this girl called for help.And there were some people who
took some videos, well, somepeople who just walked by,
(13:51):
people who heard it and, didn'treally do anything, maybe called
the cops eventually. But,basically, this girl was allowed
to be raped, and nobody didanything.
And, there's a there's a famousstory. I can't remember it off
the top of my head now, but itwas like Genevieve or Genovese
(14:11):
or something, back in New YorkCity couple decades ago that,
they use in in psychology, whichwas just the story of this girl
who was stabbed to death in anapartment complex, screamed for
help for a long time, and nobodydid anything. And they call this
the bystander effect. You know,well, if if somebody's screaming
(14:32):
that loudly, certainly, otherpeople hear because we're in a
crowded area, and somebody elsewill do something about it. So I
understand that there's there'sa a bystander effect that goes
on, in society.
But I remember when when I wastalking with my wife about this
before I I adhered tononviolence and saying, man,
(14:52):
what would what would I do? Whatwould we do in that situation?
Because there's somebody who iscrying out for help, but there's
a group of guys around. And nowI am not, a a very big guy. I'm,
like, 5, 7a half.
I don't work out. I did, like,cross country and stuff and ran
(15:18):
so that I didn't have to workout so I could run away from
anybody who was big. Right? Somy in fight or flight, my
response has always been flightbecause I'm puny, and I'm not
gonna do any good in a fight.Nevertheless, it it seemed like
to just let this this girl aloneand and be raped was was
(15:39):
terrible.
But, you know, what good was Igonna do if I went up to the
crowd? So, you know, talkingwith my wife, we're like, well,
you know, it it doesn't seemlike you should really go up and
and try to break that up becausewhat good is one person gonna do
against 1010 probably big guysif you're at the beach? What are
(15:59):
you gonna do against them?They're probably drunk. They're
probably crazy.
Like, you're just gonna get beatup. And and in fact, you might
get killed. What's the point ofa girl getting raped and me
getting killed? Right? There'sno point in that.
And that's what I I would havesaid when I was when I adhered
to violence. Because for me, andI think for most people who
(16:23):
adhere to violence, violence isa tool to solve problems. If
it's not going to solve theproblem, you don't do it. It's a
pragmatic effort. It's it'sconsequentialist in in a sense.
The ends justify the means. Andif the means of me intervening
were likely that it would end upproducing worse ends where I'm
(16:46):
dead and the girl ends up rapedanyway, what's the point of
that? There's no point in myintervention. But now, as a as a
nonviolent adherent, I wouldhope, I think that the right
thing to do, would be for me togo there and for me to shine
(17:07):
light on that darkness and say,get out of here. Don't do that
to her.
And if I got beat up or killedtrying to intervene to value the
sacredness of this girl's life,then so be it. But but me
(17:29):
standing by and refusing tointervene is not the answer. But
it is the answer if you are, ifyou're willing to do violence to
people because violence is justa tool. It's a pragmatic tool.
And, I I find that I, myself,used violence as a pragmatic
(17:54):
tool.
And most people that I know viewviolence as a pragmatic tool.
They're pragmatists. And so ifif you can't use it effectively,
then you might as well just refrestrain yourself. And I think
that's what you see in a lot ofa lot of countries, a lot of
Nazi occupied countries, is thatpeople thought, well, what am I
(18:17):
gonna do against the Nazi warmachine? Right?
You had some people who were inthe resistance, but the
resistance was very small andand, disorganized. And you just
had a lot of people who didnothing. And that's where we get
this quote from somebody likeEdmund Burke, where he says, the
only necessary thing for evil toprevail is for good men to do
(18:39):
nothing. And that's what goodpeople generally do when they
adhere to violence, If theydon't think they're powerful
enough, if they don't think theviolence is going to work, then
they do nothing. And that's whatmost of Europe was.
Most of Europe was passive tothe Nazi Nazi machine. If you're
in an army and you've got tanksand you've got all kinds of
(19:00):
things and you can go up againstthe German army and you might do
some good, I'll do that. But ifI can't, then I'm just gonna
kind of sit back and and waitfor somebody who's got a bigger
army to come through and takecare of things. But as as the
pacifist, as somebody who'snonviolent, the goal isn't,
(19:24):
isn't that I'm gonna necessarilybeat the other person, because
it's not about beating the otherperson. The issue isn't about,
the consequence of of winning.
The issue is about thesacredness of life. And so I am
protecting the sacredness oflife by putting my body in front
(19:46):
of somebody else's. I amsacrificing, I am showing the
the value of life when I harbora Jew in my home at the risk of
my own life and the life of myown family. And I'm upholding
the sacredness of life becauseI'm showing the Jew that they're
valuable. I'm showing the Nazisthat Jews are valuable because I
(20:10):
uphold them.
I'm showing my society that lifeis valuable because I'm willing
to sacrifice my own for the lifeof somebody who's who's deemed
unworthy. And, my example and mylife and my my value are what's
to be upheld. This faithfulnessto God, not this faithfulness to
(20:31):
some perceived result that Ithink is necessary. The the
point isn't the results, though,of course, I want good results.
The point is the upholding ofintegrity, of righteousness, of
of, human sacredness, of allhuman sacredness.
It's not just showing the Jewthat they're valuable and
(20:52):
refusing to buy into that. It'salso showing the the Nazi that
I'm not willing to do violenceto you, and you're valuable too.
And as a valuable human being,you should value all these other
human beings. So in essence,when when you allow pragmatism
to determine your actions, anevil is allowed to prevail, and
(21:15):
accepting violence is is apragmatic endeavor. And I I
think that beyond just assertingthat, I think that you can even
see this inherent in in one ofthe tenants of just war theory.
Right? Just war theory says thatthe possibility of winning is
(21:35):
part of what you should use todetermine whether a battle is is
worth fighting, whether youshould stand up for right. So in
theory, right, just war theory,let's say Nazi Germany was just
insanely powerful. Well, thatmeans, and nobody else could
(21:56):
could assail them. Well, thatmeans that, well, then we
shouldn't have fought the war.
We should have just let them dowhat they were gonna do. And no,
that's ridiculous. That is notthe Christian ethic whatsoever.
The Christian ethic isn't, weonly fight battles if we think
we're strong enough to win. TheChristian ethic is we are
(22:19):
faithful in upholding god'smoral decree in our lives, this
holiness, and exuding that tothe world even at the cost of
our own lives.
And that ethic is present inChristian nonviolence, but it is
not present in in, in systemswhich accept violence. I think
(22:43):
we can kind of see the thecounter to this, again, in a a
quote from Martin Luther KingJunior. And I really like this
because he a lot of people willtry to discount King on a number
of bases. But but as far as thenonviolent area, a lot of times
they'll say, well, King filedfor a a, a gun permit. And
(23:07):
that's true, but that was earlyon in his career before
nonviolence.
So I wanna read you a quote onwhat caused King to give up his
use of violence to protect him.And I think it's it's very
insightful on this point. Quote,how could I serve as one of the
leaders of a nonviolent movementand at the same time use weapons
(23:28):
of violence for my personalprotection? Coretta and I talked
the matter over for several daysand finally agreed that arms
were no solution. We decidedthen to get rid of the one
weapon we owned.
We tried to satisfy our friendsby having floodlights mounted
around the house and hiringunarmed watchmen around the
clock. I also promised that Iwould not travel around the city
(23:49):
alone. I was much more afraid inMontgomery when I had a gun in
my house. When I decided that Icouldn't keep a gun, I came face
to face with the question ofdeath, and I dealt with it. From
that point on, I no longerneeded a gun nor have I been
afraid.
Had we become distracted by thequestion of my safety, we would
have lost the moral offensiveand sunk to the level of our
(24:10):
oppressors. So King shows usright here that, as a from a
nonviolent position, the reasonnonviolent action is so
compelling and and the the hugeforce behind it, the reason that
(24:32):
people are able to do theseseemingly unpragmatic things is
that they count their lives aslost. King said that he was more
free when he gave up his meansof violent power. When he said,
you know what? I already countmy life as lost, and if I die, I
die.
Like, that's the the point isn'tmy survival. The point is doing
(24:57):
the right thing and putting mymoney where my mouth is. And
that's what Christians arecalled to do. We are to be
living sacrifices. And if in ourfaithfulness, God calls us to be
unpragmatic and intervene when agroup of much stronger, more
numerous guys is on a beachraping a girl, then that's what
(25:18):
you do.
If your your country doesn'thave an army and there's nobody
around to save you and that youryour countrymen are dehumanizing
another group of people. Andthere's no way in the world you
can defeat your enemies bypower. It doesn't matter. You
(25:40):
defeat your enemy through love.And if you don't defeat them,
that's that's in God's hands.
But you show love to thedepressed and through your non
violence, you show love even toyour enemies. And as Denmark
shows us, as well as countlessother examples of Christian
martyrs and and things likethat, love does often win. God
(26:03):
does use love, to to overcomeand to be effective. But the
point isn't effectiveness. Thepoint is faithful obedience and
upholding human value.
Yeah. I I recognize that my lasttwo points have somewhat been
more assertions than somethingthat I've I've backed up. I
(26:26):
think you can show lots ofanecdotes of how these things
are true, but I know you canalso find find some
counterexamples to to kinda say,well, see, there are some
violent people who aren'tpragmatic and they're willing to
put their lives on the line evenif they don't think they can
win, even though that goesagainst the just war theory that
justifies violence.Nevertheless, whatever. But I I
(26:51):
do wanna throw one other thingout there to kind of help back
up my case a little bit more,objectively.
I wanna recommend a couple ofresources to you, to to show you
that those who accept violenceare more apt to be coerced. And
one of these is the famousMilgram experiment. You can
(27:14):
search this online and watchtons of videos on it. It's
extremely interesting. But,essentially, Stanley Milgram,
after World War 2, was trying tofigure out, man, how did the
Germans get all of these peopleto, to do what they did?
And around the same time, HannahArndt was making the same
(27:35):
observation. She called it thebanality of evil where she was
like, these these Nazis who didthese terrible things, they're
normal people. And Milgram didan experiment that you couldn't
do today, but that they could doback then, where he essentially
had just everyday normal peoplecome in. They were in this
(27:57):
booth, and they were told thatin in a room next door, they
couldn't see, but they theycould hear that there was
another person in there. And sothey were gonna ask that person
a series of questions, and whenthe person got a question wrong,
they would give them a shock.
Well, each subsequent shockincreased in, in its painfulness
(28:19):
and actually even went up tobeing potentially lethal. And
that this was labeled so thatthe people who are administering
the shocks could see, like,danger, severe pain, you know,
danger danger. This could causea heart attack, whatever. And,
so Milgram just wanted to see,hey, how far will these people
go? And, of course, there wasn'ta real person in the other room,
(28:42):
although this was done, youknow, back in the day, and so
you would wonder maybe theywould put a real person there,
but they didn't.
They actually just had arecording. And what Milgram
found was that most people wentreally far even when the person
in the other room was saying,oh, stop. No. No. No.
I don't like this. When theywere saying, like, terrible
(29:05):
things because a man in a labcoat, a white coat, an authority
figure told them to keep going.And so the people did. Now they
might not have liked it. Theymight have been uncomfortable,
but most people kept going.
And Milgram uncomfortably showedthe world that, you know what,
(29:25):
the types of people who commitholocaust are pretty normal
people. Another book I wouldhighly recommend is called
Ordinary Men, and it is justthis gut wrenching, gut
wrenching story of, of just howa lot of the Jews who were
(29:49):
killed were actually executed bydeath squads, and a lot of these
death squads weren't yourprofessional soldiers, like,
purse professional executioners,SS, Gestapo, whatever. Mo a a
lot of the death squads wereactually kind of like
reservists, like youraccountants, your bankers, just
(30:09):
people who were called up, likeGermany's police force. And they
just went out, and they weretold to shoot these people, and
so they did. And it's, I mean,it's it's a very well known fact
that atrocities are committed bynormal people, normal people who
(30:29):
are willing to compromisebecause they they view violence,
as a means, an appropriatemeans, to accomplish a
particular end.
And sometimes, they viewviolence as a means to
accomplish, an end in the senseof, you know, if we kill all the
Jews, our country will bebetter. And sometimes, they just
view it as an end to selfpreservation. I'm willing to
(30:53):
kill somebody else so I myselfdon't die. Unlike Martin Luther
King Junior, who said, I countedmy life as lost, people who hang
on to their lives so tightly andview violence as a legitimate
means will often be coerced orconvinced they will rationalize
(31:14):
using violence on other peopleto accomplish some pragmatic
end. If you count your life aslost and you are nonviolent,
that does not happen.
Oh, you you can compromise, ofcourse. Okay? So Bonhoeffer
would be an example. You cancompromise, but, you you are
going to have a very, difficulttime just being coerced like
(31:39):
that. It's much easier to makethat the baby steps, to be
coerced to use violence againstother people if you are, if you
adhere to violence as a means.
So before moving on, I I willthrow another resource here. One
of Catalina's professors for herapologetics degree was a man
(32:00):
named doctor Clay Jones, and hehas a a funny, awesome talk on
evil. And his life was haslargely been spent looking at
the evil of humanity. And, hehe's got this great saying that
I don't think anybody canforget, if you take his class or
or listen to his videos, but hesays that's not inhuman. It's
(32:22):
what humans do.
And his point, of course, isthat, the things the violence
that humans do to other humansis par for the course. It's what
everybody does. It's not done bythese, these crazy psychopaths,
just by crazy psychopaths. It'sdone by everyday people. It's
done by you.
It's done by me. So what is myultimate conclusion? Well, in
(32:48):
the next Holocaust, if I werepart of the persecuted group, I
would hope that my neighborswere nonviolent Christians
because the chance that theywould love me and seek my
well-being and sacrifice for meand resist cruel governments and
cruel societies is much higherthan in a society of those who
(33:13):
accept violence as a means toneutralize human threats
unworthy of life. So I wouldwant my neighbor to be a
pacifist because, like King,they would be more apt to count
their lives as lost. They wouldbe more apt to not be pragmatic
and be willing to help me evenif they didn't think that they
(33:36):
could beat beat the man, beatthe government, beat the
machine, they would be more aptto help me regardless of who I
am.
And, likewise, there would beless violent people who could
more easily be coerced to directtheir violence towards me or who
(33:59):
would probably just be sopragmatic that they would say,
if I can't if I can't beat themachine, if I can't beat, my
government's army, then, youknow, I I feel bad for for the
people who are being persecuted.But, you know, I'm just gonna do
my thing and and hope and prayand and hope somebody else comes
(34:20):
and swoops in who's morepowerful and can overcome.
Because violent people, peoplewho adhere to violence, have a
metric of power. Power is whatdetermines, whether you can beat
somebody. And if you can't beatsomebody, like just war theory
shows us, then it's not really amoral thing to pursue.
(34:41):
And that's pragmatic. That'sconsequentialist. It's not
Christian. And, of course, bysaying that, I don't mean at all
to imply that people whoperceive violence as legitimate
aren't Christians. No.
I don't I don't think that atall. There are many people who
are Christians who believe thatviolence is legitimate, but
(35:02):
they're mistaken, just as I ammistaken on some of my beliefs,
I'm sure. Well, hopefully, youhave found this, at least
thought provoking, if notconvincing. And, hopefully, you
don't ever need to put, put thisinto practice into seeing
(35:26):
whether I'm right or not. Butunfortunately, because violence
is indeed what humans do, weprobably will get that
opportunity sooner rather thanlater somewhere in the world.
That's all for now. So peacebecause I'm a pacifist. When I
say it, I mean it.
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