November 8, 2019 • 15 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
- The Kingdom Depicting Cyclical Violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-uj0vQ-c6k
- Does ISIS Prove Nonviolence Wrong?: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/nonviolence/does-isis-prove-nonviolence-wrong
- Is Nonviolence Naive (Answering Questions Against Nonviolence): https://sojo.net/magazine/july-2018/nonviolence-naive
- King Quote: THE ULTIMATE WEAKNESS OF VIOLENCE IS THAT IT IS A DESCENDING SPIRAL, BEGETTING THE VERY THING IT SEEKS TO DESTROY. INSTEAD OF DIMINISHING EVIL, IT MULTIPLIES IT. THROUGH VIOLENCE YOU MAY MURDER THE LIAR, BUT YOU CANNOT MURDER THE LIE, NOR ESTABLISH THE TRUTH. THROUGH VIOLENCE YOU MAY MURDER THE HATER, BUT YOU DO NOT MURDER HATE. IN FACT, VIOLENCE MERELY INCREASES HATE. SO IT GOES. RETURNING VIOLENCE FOR VIOLENCE MULTIPLIES VIOLENCE, ADDING DEEPER DARKNESS TO A NIGHT ALREADY DEVOID OF STARS. DARKNESS CANNOT DRIVE OUT DARKNESS: ONLY LIGHT CAN DO THAT. HATE CANNOT DRIVE OUT HATE: ONLY LOVE CAN DO THAT.
- 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 4th week podcast. We're continuing
to discuss our rebuttals toChristian nonviolence. Today's
episode, we are going to look atthe supposed necessity of
violence. I debated on whetheror not I wanted to do this
episode because I think it'sgonna be pretty short. And,
also, it's going to kind of runinto the the previous episode as
(00:30):
well as 1 or 2 of the upcomingepisodes.
Nevertheless, I think that thatthis episode is gonna be
important to pull out andisolate, just to kinda to give
it its own its own space to beable to look at because I think
that it is such a a strongargument, and it's it's unique
(00:51):
enough that, it warrants its ownlook. So let's dive in and and
see what this rebuttal is. Oneway to maybe look at the
rebuttal is to watch the movielord of war. And, again, I
understand that I'm a I'm aadhere to Christian nonviolence,
(01:12):
and, I probably shouldn't likeall these violent movies, but I
really like dark movies. AndLord of War is is a fantastic
movie, that I wouldn'tnecessarily recommend to
anybody, but I love it.
It's just it's cynical about thethe way that evil is in the
world and about the the powerthat we really have against it.
(01:36):
And I don't know why I likethose kinds of movies. It it's
really, like, pessimistic anddark. I'm I'm just weird. I
don't know.
But, anyway, Lord of War, you'vegot Nicolas Cage who's playing
this guy who ends up gettinginto arms dealing. And in the
course of his arms dealing, hemeets up with lots of really bad
(01:59):
people and dictators and andother sorts of things. And on
one of these trips, he takes hisbrother with him. His brother
has has gotten a pretty strongconscience, and he he's messed
up from all of this this armsdealing because he recognizes
the gravity of what he's doing.Cage, on the other hand, he is
(02:20):
rationalizing at every turn, andhe's like, well, if they're
gonna just get the guns fromsomebody else, you know, they
might as well get them from me.
I can make money off of it. And,I mean, they're gonna do what
they do they're gonna do whatthey're gonna do regardless. So
he takes his his brother on thistrip, and his brother's pretty
messed up in the head from fromall of the stuff that they've
(02:43):
done and and the consequences ofof what their guns have on
people's lives. As they'resitting there doing this one
deal, they they recognize that,they're doing a deal with these
warlords. And down below in thevalley, there's this tent city
of, some minority group, andthey see the army trucks pulling
(03:08):
in.
And Cage's brother knows what'sgonna happen. Basically, these
guys are ordering all theseweapons. And as soon as they've
made the deal, they're gonna usethe weapons that they're selling
to go ahead and slaughter thethe the minority group in the
tent city. And the brother justjust can't do it and, ends up,
(03:35):
doing something valiant and,getting killed. And the atrocity
the atrocity happens anyway, atthe expense of the brother's
life as well.
Some people will will kind ofpoint to this sort of, this sort
of event. They'll say, let'ssay, kind of like this tent city
(03:57):
here, you've got you see these,warlords and these ISIS trucks,
this convoy rolling in, andthey're going towards this tent
city and they're about toslaughter everybody. You know
it. Now instead of being 2 guys,Cage and his brother, you've got
(04:17):
you've got a larger band ofpeople, and you're you're pretty
sure that you can take, thisISIS group. Why wouldn't you go
and intervene by killing ISISand stopping the massacre that's
about to occur?
Why wouldn't you do that?Because to just let them go in
and slaughter everybody seemsnot not just foolish, but it
(04:42):
seems immoral to allow such evilto prevail. And before I get
into into the discussion on thisparticular subject, I do wanna
remind you that we did talk inepisode 7, I believe, when we
discussed Saint Cyril. We didtalk about how you do have to
remember that if you levy such aclaim against the nonviolent for
(05:04):
refusing to intervene, you haveto levy the exact same claim
against God because for everyatrocity that occurs that a
nonviolent individual allows,God allows the same atrocity
plus billions of othersthroughout history and in the
future. Every atrocity thatoccurs is an atrocity in which
(05:27):
God could have intervened in hisomnipotence and omniscience, but
refused to.
So just keep that in mind aswell. But let's get into the
discussion at hand. So the firstpoint that I would say to a
refusal to intervene violentlyin a situation that is so
(05:47):
clearly evil. ISIS, evil. Thethings that they do to people,
evil.
K. That's that's clear. So whywhy is intervening a problem or
lack of intervention not aproblem? And first thing I would
(06:07):
say, which isn't gonna becomforting at all, but is
important, is that moralitycannot be determined by the
ends. If violence is wrong, itdoesn't become right based on
any perceived outcome, perceivedor actual, and that's important.
So when I perform an action, ifI were going to go and intervene
(06:30):
with ISIS, with this ISISconvoy, the perceived outcome
I'm shooting for is to defeatthem and save innocent lives. I
am not guaranteed that that isgoing to be the outcome. So any
action I embark on is going tobe an action based on perceived
ends, not necessarily actualends. 2nd, I would point back to
(06:55):
the empirical evidence thatnonviolence is a better course,
because nonviolence proves to bemore effective in the long run.
And so if you're saying, I knowthe right thing to do is
nonviolence, but I need to dothis thing, I need to do
(07:15):
violence to accomplish thisoutcome that I perceive will
occur.
What you don't understand isthat if you say violence is
wrong and then you you use aperceived end to justify that,
you're you're saying that yourperceived end is more important
than God's objective standard.But it's encouraging to know
(07:39):
that nonviolence is in factoften more effective if you can
just hold out. And so even thismetric of of being effective in
accomplishing a perceived end,is not necessarily true, is not
usually true. 3rd, and and Ithink most importantly, I think
(08:01):
there's this myth that violenceres resolves things. And, I
mean, yes, empirically, we wecan see that.
But I think this idea of ofresolving things long term can
be shown a bit more clearly. AndGandhi has a a good quote I'll
introduce this section withwhere he says, I object to
(08:24):
violence because when it appearsto do good, the good is only
temporary. The evil it does ispermanent. Now you might be
thinking, that's really stupidbecause if I stop the sis's
convoy right now, I know thatI'm going to stop an evil act,
and the end of saving theinnocent and judging the guilty
(08:44):
is gonna be done. What is therethat's bad about that?
And to show this, I would and tokind of help explain point
number 2, like, why isnonviolence in the end usually
more effective than violence? Iwanna point you to a movie
called The Kingdom. Again,another violent movie and
(09:06):
another movie that that I like.In the kingdom, there is this
this terrorist act, and whatends up happening is this group
of people goes to try to capturethese terrorists, and in the
end, they find them and killthem just as served. Right?
(09:29):
Well, the movie the the lastcouple minutes of the movie are
are just the the best, the bestpart of the movie because the
movie doesn't end. You know, youthink you'd have this closure of
the guilty being punished andthe innocent avenged, and that's
it. Right? Happ happy ending.But the last 2 minutes are just
(09:50):
are just beautiful in that itshows the cyclical nature of
what violence does.
So I'll I'll put a link to theclip below, but what ends up
happening in the last 2 minutesis, you've got one of the actors
who, at the beginning of themovie, when this lady found out
that, I think it was herhusband, had died in this
(10:11):
terrorist act, this guy goes upand whispers something in her
ear. At the end of the movie,they they asked this guy, so
what did you whisper in in inher ear? And he said, I told her
we're gonna kill them all.Alright. Well, right.
Fine. She's justified becausethose people committed a
(10:32):
terrorist act, killed a bunch ofpeople. They deserve to die.
Right? They should all bekilled.
So, but what's beautiful is thatthen the scene pans to a boy in
whatever country they were in. Idon't know if it was Iraq or
somewhere over in the MiddleEast. And the boy, his grandpa
(10:55):
or dad had just gotten killed bythis American, American special
forces team. And he's talking toone of his relatives, and he
says, we'll kill them all. Andthat's such a beautiful scene
because it shows the cyclicalnature of violence.
(11:16):
So maybe those people whocommitted a terror terrorist act
did deserve to die. Maybe that'strue. Let me let me give you
that. But what's what ends uphappening is that in our
avenging, when we go over and wekill them in what we think is is
(11:36):
justice, we are justperpetuating this violence in
the hearts of the relatives ofthose people that we killed.
Their cause is now justified.
Their hatred for us isjustified. And because we
couldn't forego vengeance,because we thought it was in our
(11:58):
hands to to make justice. And sowhat what you see is, going back
to the the example of the ISISconvoy, we go and we slaughter
the ISIS convoy who's on theirway to slaughter innocent
people. We are more justifiedthan them because they are about
to do something that isatrociously violent to people
(12:20):
who don't deserve it. That'sunjust.
They're they're going to shedinnocent blood. We are shedding
guilty blood. But what we do inthis is we we have this
temporary outcome that weperceive as good. But what we
end up doing is we end upperpetuating hatred and
(12:42):
violence, in in the hearts ofthe families of those ISIS
members and people who arelooking on and wanting to join
ISIS. And, we just we createmore violence than we do good.
And we see this in in a lot ofexamples. We can take a look at
World War 1 and what came out ofof that, when the Middle East
(13:05):
was born and the relationshipsbetween various countries. We
can see it with with all theproxy wars that we do, where I
mean, we gave weapons toAfghanistan when they were
fighting Russia, but nowRussia's fighting, but but then
Afghanistan ended up fightingus. You just see this all over
(13:26):
the place where violence isperpetuated because we build up
this animosity in our violentactions towards others. We
justify in their minds.
We justify their causes, and weeither water or plant seeds of
hatred. That's what violencedoes. The Christian way,
(13:49):
however, is to be the first tobe willing to lay down our
lives, to be willing to foregovengeance, and to be willing to
love even our enemies. And wemight not see any effect, and
lots of Christians weremartyred. Lots of people who
(14:10):
tried to help in abolition, in,saving Jewish lives, in in, in
fighting back in the civilrights movement nonviolently,
lots of those people lost lifeor limb.
So we're not saying that this isnecessarily going to be the most
effective, but that isn't reallywhat it's about. It's about
(14:33):
doing the right thing. But evenbeyond doing the right thing, we
do find that it actually may bemore effective in some ways. It
just takes patient, persistence,perseverance to be willing to
lay down our lives daily, toforego vengeance, and to refuse
to do violence to others. It'sour our willingness to break the
(14:57):
cycle as Christians that is whatwe're called to do.
And for as for as valuable andand effective as we might think
violence is, generally, thateffectiveness is very momentary
and immediate, and it's not, itdoesn't have the breadth, or the
scope that it should. It doesn'ttruly restore. It just puts a
(15:22):
band aid on on something. So,recommend watching that, the
clip from the kingdom andthinking a little bit more about
the cyclical nature of violencebut for now that's all so peace
because I'm a pacifist when Isay it I mean you.
Welcome back to the 4th week podcast. We're continuing
to discuss our rebuttals toChristian nonviolence. Today's
episode, we are going to look atthe supposed necessity of
violence. I debated on whetheror not I wanted to do this
episode because I think it'sgonna be pretty short. And,
also, it's going to kind of runinto the the previous episode as
(00:30):
well as 1 or 2 of the upcomingepisodes.
Nevertheless, I think that thatthis episode is gonna be
important to pull out andisolate, just to kinda to give
it its own its own space to beable to look at because I think
that it is such a a strongargument, and it's it's unique
(00:51):
enough that, it warrants its ownlook. So let's dive in and and
see what this rebuttal is. Oneway to maybe look at the
rebuttal is to watch the movielord of war. And, again, I
understand that I'm a I'm aadhere to Christian nonviolence,
(01:12):
and, I probably shouldn't likeall these violent movies, but I
really like dark movies. AndLord of War is is a fantastic
movie, that I wouldn'tnecessarily recommend to
anybody, but I love it.
It's just it's cynical about thethe way that evil is in the
world and about the the powerthat we really have against it.
(01:36):
And I don't know why I likethose kinds of movies. It it's
really, like, pessimistic anddark. I'm I'm just weird. I
don't know.
But, anyway, Lord of War, you'vegot Nicolas Cage who's playing
this guy who ends up gettinginto arms dealing. And in the
course of his arms dealing, hemeets up with lots of really bad
(01:59):
people and dictators and andother sorts of things. And on
one of these trips, he takes hisbrother with him. His brother
has has gotten a pretty strongconscience, and he he's messed
up from all of this this armsdealing because he recognizes
the gravity of what he's doing.Cage, on the other hand, he is
(02:20):
rationalizing at every turn, andhe's like, well, if they're
gonna just get the guns fromsomebody else, you know, they
might as well get them from me.
I can make money off of it. And,I mean, they're gonna do what
they do they're gonna do whatthey're gonna do regardless. So
he takes his his brother on thistrip, and his brother's pretty
messed up in the head from fromall of the stuff that they've
(02:43):
done and and the consequences ofof what their guns have on
people's lives. As they'resitting there doing this one
deal, they they recognize that,they're doing a deal with these
warlords. And down below in thevalley, there's this tent city
of, some minority group, andthey see the army trucks pulling
(03:08):
in.
And Cage's brother knows what'sgonna happen. Basically, these
guys are ordering all theseweapons. And as soon as they've
made the deal, they're gonna usethe weapons that they're selling
to go ahead and slaughter thethe the minority group in the
tent city. And the brother justjust can't do it and, ends up,
(03:35):
doing something valiant and,getting killed. And the atrocity
the atrocity happens anyway, atthe expense of the brother's
life as well.
Some people will will kind ofpoint to this sort of, this sort
of event. They'll say, let'ssay, kind of like this tent city
(03:57):
here, you've got you see these,warlords and these ISIS trucks,
this convoy rolling in, andthey're going towards this tent
city and they're about toslaughter everybody. You know
it. Now instead of being 2 guys,Cage and his brother, you've got
(04:17):
you've got a larger band ofpeople, and you're you're pretty
sure that you can take, thisISIS group. Why wouldn't you go
and intervene by killing ISISand stopping the massacre that's
about to occur?
Why wouldn't you do that?Because to just let them go in
and slaughter everybody seemsnot not just foolish, but it
(04:42):
seems immoral to allow such evilto prevail. And before I get
into into the discussion on thisparticular subject, I do wanna
remind you that we did talk inepisode 7, I believe, when we
discussed Saint Cyril. We didtalk about how you do have to
remember that if you levy such aclaim against the nonviolent for
(05:04):
refusing to intervene, you haveto levy the exact same claim
against God because for everyatrocity that occurs that a
nonviolent individual allows,God allows the same atrocity
plus billions of othersthroughout history and in the
future. Every atrocity thatoccurs is an atrocity in which
(05:27):
God could have intervened in hisomnipotence and omniscience, but
refused to.
So just keep that in mind aswell. But let's get into the
discussion at hand. So the firstpoint that I would say to a
refusal to intervene violentlyin a situation that is so
(05:47):
clearly evil. ISIS, evil. Thethings that they do to people,
evil.
K. That's that's clear. So whywhy is intervening a problem or
lack of intervention not aproblem? And first thing I would
(06:07):
say, which isn't gonna becomforting at all, but is
important, is that moralitycannot be determined by the
ends. If violence is wrong, itdoesn't become right based on
any perceived outcome, perceivedor actual, and that's important.
So when I perform an action, ifI were going to go and intervene
(06:30):
with ISIS, with this ISISconvoy, the perceived outcome
I'm shooting for is to defeatthem and save innocent lives. I
am not guaranteed that that isgoing to be the outcome. So any
action I embark on is going tobe an action based on perceived
ends, not necessarily actualends. 2nd, I would point back to
(06:55):
the empirical evidence thatnonviolence is a better course,
because nonviolence proves to bemore effective in the long run.
And so if you're saying, I knowthe right thing to do is
nonviolence, but I need to dothis thing, I need to do
(07:15):
violence to accomplish thisoutcome that I perceive will
occur.
What you don't understand isthat if you say violence is
wrong and then you you use aperceived end to justify that,
you're you're saying that yourperceived end is more important
than God's objective standard.But it's encouraging to know
(07:39):
that nonviolence is in factoften more effective if you can
just hold out. And so even thismetric of of being effective in
accomplishing a perceived end,is not necessarily true, is not
usually true. 3rd, and and Ithink most importantly, I think
(08:01):
there's this myth that violenceres resolves things. And, I
mean, yes, empirically, we wecan see that.
But I think this idea of ofresolving things long term can
be shown a bit more clearly. AndGandhi has a a good quote I'll
introduce this section withwhere he says, I object to
(08:24):
violence because when it appearsto do good, the good is only
temporary. The evil it does ispermanent. Now you might be
thinking, that's really stupidbecause if I stop the sis's
convoy right now, I know thatI'm going to stop an evil act,
and the end of saving theinnocent and judging the guilty
(08:44):
is gonna be done. What is therethat's bad about that?
And to show this, I would and tokind of help explain point
number 2, like, why isnonviolence in the end usually
more effective than violence? Iwanna point you to a movie
called The Kingdom. Again,another violent movie and
(09:06):
another movie that that I like.In the kingdom, there is this
this terrorist act, and whatends up happening is this group
of people goes to try to capturethese terrorists, and in the
end, they find them and killthem just as served. Right?
(09:29):
Well, the movie the the lastcouple minutes of the movie are
are just the the best, the bestpart of the movie because the
movie doesn't end. You know, youthink you'd have this closure of
the guilty being punished andthe innocent avenged, and that's
it. Right? Happ happy ending.But the last 2 minutes are just
(09:50):
are just beautiful in that itshows the cyclical nature of
what violence does.
So I'll I'll put a link to theclip below, but what ends up
happening in the last 2 minutesis, you've got one of the actors
who, at the beginning of themovie, when this lady found out
that, I think it was herhusband, had died in this
(10:11):
terrorist act, this guy goes upand whispers something in her
ear. At the end of the movie,they they asked this guy, so
what did you whisper in in inher ear? And he said, I told her
we're gonna kill them all.Alright. Well, right.
Fine. She's justified becausethose people committed a
(10:32):
terrorist act, killed a bunch ofpeople. They deserve to die.
Right? They should all bekilled.
So, but what's beautiful is thatthen the scene pans to a boy in
whatever country they were in. Idon't know if it was Iraq or
somewhere over in the MiddleEast. And the boy, his grandpa
(10:55):
or dad had just gotten killed bythis American, American special
forces team. And he's talking toone of his relatives, and he
says, we'll kill them all. Andthat's such a beautiful scene
because it shows the cyclicalnature of violence.
(11:16):
So maybe those people whocommitted a terror terrorist act
did deserve to die. Maybe that'strue. Let me let me give you
that. But what's what ends uphappening is that in our
avenging, when we go over and wekill them in what we think is is
(11:36):
justice, we are justperpetuating this violence in
the hearts of the relatives ofthose people that we killed.
Their cause is now justified.
Their hatred for us isjustified. And because we
couldn't forego vengeance,because we thought it was in our
(11:58):
hands to to make justice. And sowhat what you see is, going back
to the the example of the ISISconvoy, we go and we slaughter
the ISIS convoy who's on theirway to slaughter innocent
people. We are more justifiedthan them because they are about
to do something that isatrociously violent to people
(12:20):
who don't deserve it. That'sunjust.
They're they're going to shedinnocent blood. We are shedding
guilty blood. But what we do inthis is we we have this
temporary outcome that weperceive as good. But what we
end up doing is we end upperpetuating hatred and
(12:42):
violence, in in the hearts ofthe families of those ISIS
members and people who arelooking on and wanting to join
ISIS. And, we just we createmore violence than we do good.
And we see this in in a lot ofexamples. We can take a look at
World War 1 and what came out ofof that, when the Middle East
(13:05):
was born and the relationshipsbetween various countries. We
can see it with with all theproxy wars that we do, where I
mean, we gave weapons toAfghanistan when they were
fighting Russia, but nowRussia's fighting, but but then
Afghanistan ended up fightingus. You just see this all over
(13:26):
the place where violence isperpetuated because we build up
this animosity in our violentactions towards others. We
justify in their minds.
We justify their causes, and weeither water or plant seeds of
hatred. That's what violencedoes. The Christian way,
(13:49):
however, is to be the first tobe willing to lay down our
lives, to be willing to foregovengeance, and to be willing to
love even our enemies. And wemight not see any effect, and
lots of Christians weremartyred. Lots of people who
(14:10):
tried to help in abolition, in,saving Jewish lives, in in, in
fighting back in the civilrights movement nonviolently,
lots of those people lost lifeor limb.
So we're not saying that this isnecessarily going to be the most
effective, but that isn't reallywhat it's about. It's about
(14:33):
doing the right thing. But evenbeyond doing the right thing, we
do find that it actually may bemore effective in some ways. It
just takes patient, persistence,perseverance to be willing to
lay down our lives daily, toforego vengeance, and to refuse
to do violence to others. It'sour our willingness to break the
(14:57):
cycle as Christians that is whatwe're called to do.
And for as for as valuable andand effective as we might think
violence is, generally, thateffectiveness is very momentary
and immediate, and it's not, itdoesn't have the breadth, or the
scope that it should. It doesn'ttruly restore. It just puts a
(15:22):
band aid on on something. So,recommend watching that, the
clip from the kingdom andthinking a little bit more about
the cyclical nature of violencebut for now that's all so peace
because I'm a pacifist when Isay it I mean you.
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