(5) S1E5 The Case for Christian Nonviolence: The Real World

Episode Transcript
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Derek (00:05):
Welcome back to the 4th Go podcast. This is the 5th and
final episode in the positivecase for Christian Nonviolence.
In the first episode wediscussed our biases and
presuppositions and howimportant it was that we
identify what those are so thatwe can be as objective as
possible when approaching theevidence for nonviolence. In the
second episode we discussed theBiblical case for nonviolence.

(00:28):
We took a look at the OldTestament and saw how we could
find glimpses of nonviolence inthe Old Testament.
And we also looked at the NewTestament, the teachings of
Christ and the apostles. In the3rd episode, we took a look at
the, case from church history,and we looked at what was the
early church doing, and whattorch were they carrying on. Was

(00:51):
it for non violence, or was itviolence? And, finally, in the
4th episode, we talked a littlebit about the the logical case.
We talked about empiricism, andwhat, the empirical evidence
shows.
And we also talked aboutintuitions. And And we talked
about coherence, and we focusedmostly on the incoherence of the
just war theory. And, today,we're gonna kind of continue by

(01:15):
making a little bit more of acase for the coherence of
nonviolence. So in this episode,I am going to flesh out the
coherence of pacifism. And Iwanna begin by doing that with a
case study.
And this case study is gonna beimportant. We're gonna see a lot
of other real life examples ofnonviolence in action. But this

(01:36):
case study is, I think, going tobe be a good start. So back when
I was in college, probablyaround 2,001, 2,002, there was a
school shooting. But this schoolshooting was was a bit different
than a lot of the other onesbecause this school shooting
didn't happen by a student, andit was done to the most harmless

(01:59):
group of people imaginable.
A lone gunman went into an Amishschoolhouse, and he took a
classroom full of individualshostage. He asked the, I think
it was just the men, maybe itwas all the teachers, to leave,
and then he ended up, shooting,I believe, 10 girls and ended up

(02:20):
killing, I think, 5 and,permanently permanently damaging
some of the other other girlswho were there, irreparably.
And, this was an interestingcase, not only because it
happened to the Amish, butbecause it was one of the few
glimpses that we get at how theAmish respond to such things.

(02:43):
The Amish did not put up anyresistance, and, that is a very
strange thing to see for, forsomething so violent to such an
innocent group of people thatthat there wasn't resistance,
that nobody fought back. And inthe minds of many people, this
was just it was a tragedy, andwe felt terrible for the Amish,

(03:06):
but it was also just so sad thatthat, violence senseless
violence was allowed to happenwithout without any pushback.
You know, had the Amishresisted, the headlines the next
next day may have read somethinglike, you know, the heroic Amish
save kids or, you know, the thepeaceful doves become, vicious

(03:31):
lions. I don't know. I that'swhy I'm not a journalist because
I could never even come up witha headline, let alone an
article. But the headlines wouldhave been pretty cool for a day,
and we would have been like,yeah. Those Amish, they they got
that shooter, and they savedthose kids.
Right? But that's not whathappened. Instead, we got
headlines of tragedy. We hadpeople making kind of under the

(03:55):
table accusations of the Amishallowing senseless loss. Nobody
would say that to their facesbecause what happened to them
was terrible and it wasn't theirfault.
But, in a sense, it was theirfault because they refused to
fight back. They could havemitigated some of the damage.
And a lot of people at leastthought that what they did was

(04:15):
passive. It was pointless. Itwas passive.
However, now that I I have begunto see, the value in
nonviolence, I recognize thatthere's something that so many
people are missing that I myselfmissed. And so I wanna point
that out to you today and andwant to break this case open and
maybe give you a little bitdifferent perspective. So, most

(04:39):
people think that the Amish'sresponse was passive and
senseless. However, theirresponse was absolutely anything
but passive. Within hours of theshooting, hours, they visited
and forgave the family of theshooter.
The shooter killed himself, sothey couldn't forgive him, in

(05:00):
person, but they forgave thefamily of the shooter. They
attended the shooter's funeral,people from the Amish community,
and they purposefully blockedthe news cameras to give the
family of the shooter privacy.The family of the person who
killed and maimed theirdaughters. They helped to clean

(05:22):
the the mother of the shooter'shome while she had cancer. They
built a sunroom as a gift onlymonths after the shooting for
the family of the shooter.
And and I know they've done anumber of other things. I think
they had, like, a a college fundset up, or something, like that.
But, anyway, you can you can goahead and check out the one of

(05:42):
the links in the article or orlook that up for yourself. The
point is, the Amish's responsewas was not passive. It was
anything but passive.
And, that's what a lot of peoplemiss about Christian
nonviolence. They think thatthey can judge Christian
nonviolence based on the endsthey think we should desire.

(06:03):
And, those ends should be selfpreservation and preservation of
good people, not preservation ofenemies. So, those should be our
ends. And, if those are ourends, what we do doesn't tend to
obtain those ends.
And, that's why we're we'reviewed as being passive. But,
you know, Christian nonviolenceis so powerful because, unlike

(06:25):
violent action, which I wouldactually maybe argue that that
violence is actually morereaction to a situation,
nonviolence instead is acontinuous disposition which
requires constant action.Somebody hits you, you
instinctively hit them back.Somebody has a gun if you are
are, maybe not scared senseless.Right?

(06:49):
Your reaction is going to be tomitigate the threat, to
neutralize the threat. So, butand and that's really just
reaction. That's a reaction ofself preservation. That's not a
lot of forethought. That's notethical thinking, moral
thinking.
That's not that's really there'sthere's not much depth to that
at all. It's just selfpreservation and reaction.

(07:13):
Nonviolence, on the other hand,is continued reaction, or
continued action. So nonviolencethink about the Amish here.
Nonviolence requiredpreparation.
It required that they wereprepared to do what they did in
a situation like this, that theywere trained to, when they saw a

(07:34):
shooter, or or an enemy, athreat come, it was so much in
their blood and in their mindsnot to do harm that they were
able to restrain themselves.And, you know, maybe a silly
example here of, maybe somethingthat you might be able to relate
to a little bit more, but Iremember taking driver's driver

(07:58):
safety course. And one of thethings that stuck out to me was
how to hit a deer. Because up inPennsylvania, we had deer like
crazy and everybody was hittingthem. And I remembered, they
said, what you're gonna do iswhen you see the deer, you put
on your brakes, you try to slowdown as much as possible.
But right before the moment ofimpact, you you step on the gas

(08:19):
so that the front of your carcomes up, and instead of the
deer coming up over and intoyour windshield and possibly
killing you, which is how a lotof people die from from hitting
deer, it will hopefully go underthe car because the nose of your
car will have lifted up. And Iremember telling my wife about
that, and she had never heardthat. And she was like, I would

(08:39):
never think to do that. And Isaid, well, I would. And it
wasn't because I took a driversafety course.
It was because I knew that thiswas a real threat in my world in
Pennsylvania. This was a realthreat to me. And so,
constantly, while I'm driving, Iam running through that
situation in my head andmentally practicing and

(09:01):
preparing and talking about itand thinking and, role playing
of sorts. And, I don't know if Iwould have done the right thing,
but it's so ingrained in meafter thinking about it so much
that I I really hope I would.There's a good example of this.
I'll I'll talk about a guyreally briefly at the end of
this this, podcast. But his nameis Pablo Yoder, and he's a

(09:26):
missionary in South America. AndI'll link his YouTube video here
where he he talks about this.But he he talks about
nonviolence, and and he has hadso many encounters with people
who have harmed him and hiswife, who've who've robbed them
and threatened them. And, hetalks about how in one of the
situations, they had asked himto go get some money.

(09:49):
And, he walked into his backroom, and he saw a baseball bat.
And he is a nonviolent person,and that baseball bat was not
there for protection. He justliked baseball, I guess. And he
said for a split second, itcrossed my mind to use that.
And, he didn't.
And he said, but after thatincident, I realized I have to

(10:10):
get that bat out of the house.And this is this is part of
preparation. Be nonviolent meansthat you set yourself up, not
only with a mindset, but alsoyour your surroundings, to set
yourself up for the bestpossible chance of doing what
you believe is the right thing.It's not something even for a
guy like Pablo Yoder, who hadexperienced many threats to his

(10:34):
life and and his well-being andthe well-being of his family.
Even him, when he walks into a aroom and sees a baseball bat,
that one little time, that onelittle thing could have tripped
him up in his actions.
Being a pacifist, beingnonviolent, is not something
that is easy or passive. It'ssomething that that takes
maintained willpower to do. Andthat kind of leads into the the

(10:57):
second part. It doesn't onlyrequire preparation beforehand,
It requires persistent resolveand endurance during a situation
to prepare and then to actuallyexecute something. And while
you're seeing injustice happen,to say that I myself will not
also participate in just ininjustice to stop this.
That requires some resolve,especially, I think, in the the

(11:20):
case of the Amish, especiallywhen you're seeing this
injustice happen to people thatyou love or to particularly
innocent, people, to kids. Imean, that's just yeah. That
that's horrible, and and veryhard to maintain. And the last
one, what about, intentionalityafterwards? The majority so I

(11:42):
don't know how much preparationthe Amish do, but a a huge
component of nonviolence is theaction afterwards.
Because nonviolence the reasonthat one is nonviolence is is
because we believe that imagebearers, enemies are image
bearers of God. And as imagebearers, we seek their

(12:03):
well-being, and we seekreconciliation with them because
we don't want to be theirenemies. And the intentionality
that comes afterwards with theAmish is just beautiful. Because
after you've been wronged sobadly, how in the world do you
forgive and do you look into thefaces of people who have done

(12:25):
you wrong or who are associatedwith with the wrong done to you.
How do you do that?
How do you sacrifice for thosepeople? It requires great
intentionality afterwards as itseeks reconciliation. So the
goal of nonviolence is enemylove and reconciliation, or as
some might call it, the gospel.That's what Jesus Christ did for
us, isn't it? While we werestill His enemies, while we were

(12:48):
still sinners, He died for us.
Violence is willing to put loveand forgiveness to the side for
a moment for a moment. We canhate our enemy and kill them so
that we can seek ourpreservation, the preservation
of others. And that's why mostviolent encounters that you see
don't end like the encounterwith the Amish. My Christian
community was all aboutprotection, guns rights, gun

(13:12):
rights. And, I know that thereare plenty of Christians who
have defended themselves.
And you you have to askyourself, why don't you hear
stories? And I'm sure there's 1or 2 out there that exist. But
why in general don't you hearstories of people who have used
violence as a means to stopintruders? Why don't you hear

(13:35):
stories of them doing thisreconciliation kind of thing?
Why don't you hear stories ofthem exhibiting the gospel?
And I'm not gonna say it'sbecause those people aren't
Christians. I I don't believethat at all. But it's because
they don't have a gospelmindset, Because violence and
the willingness to objectifyenemies is not a gospel mindset.

(13:56):
And that's why people are allabout, Christians in my
community. We're and are allabout shooting intruders and not
doing anything to reconcile.
That's not gospel. Violence isan easy means. It's a reaction,
and it's used to take care ofyour own interests. It's without

(14:16):
consideration of your imagebearing enemy. Violence exhibits
the world's power.
The way the world seeks power isthrough force. But non violence
exhibits the gospel, and it'scompelling. The family of an
assailant, of a murderer, is notcompelled by the fact that you
shot their loved one who wasattacking you. They're compelled

(14:38):
by enemy love. That's what thegospel is.
It is compelling. And the use ofviolence just isn't. Use of
nonviolence, as you see with theAmish, is. The headlines of of
the Amish schoolhouse shootingwent around the world. It wasn't
just some local news story ofof, you know, a a shooting that
was stopped by some heroicperson.

(14:59):
Now that story went around theworld, and it touched a lot of
lives, and it brought a lot ofattention to the gospel. And you
just don't see that withviolence. Violence tends to
propel people away from God.Nonviolence compels people
towards the gospel. So with withthat kind of explanation in mind

(15:19):
and thinking about what it meansto be nonviolent and how
nonviolence really isn'tpassive, and a lot of times
violence is really passive otherthan a momentary action.
It's passive, and it's seekingof restoration. I wanna go ahead
and take a look at some otherreal life examples. And, the

(15:40):
this first one is a is a goodsegue, because I think you can
see both how violence propelledthis individual away from God as
well as how the nonviolence thathe came to embrace compelled him
towards the gospel. Or perhapswith him, when he was propelled
towards the gospel, herecognized the need for

(16:01):
nonviolence and, just howviolence did not did not fit. It
wasn't coherent with the gospel.
And the guy's name is RonaldSkirth. He was in World War 1,
and he wrote a book calledreluctant The Reluctant Tommy.
And I heard his story from DanCarlin's Hardcore History,

(16:21):
episode on, on World War 1,which was amazing. But this this
quote in particular stuck out tome, and I wanna share that with
you. Alright.
So Ronald Skirth. At 19, I foundmy standards of conduct
obsolete, my ideals shattered. Ihad lost all faith in
institutional religion. Mychurch had authorized me to

(16:43):
break the 6th commandment in thename of patriotism. Blessed are
the peacemakers?
No. Not 1917. Blessed are thewar winners. Blessed are the
munition makers. Twice blessed,for they lined their pockets and
kept their skins intact at thesame time.
These were the thoughts that Icouldn't dismiss from my mind
during those dreadful months. Iwouldn't have stuck a label on

(17:04):
myself then, but I know now whatI had to become what I had
become. It's a word that isdistasteful to many, pacifist. I
still believed in God, though Iwas being assailed by doubts. I
prayed daily, prayed that hewould stop the war going on and
end the misery it caused.
Soon, it became obvious that hewasn't going to. For the longer

(17:24):
it went on, the worse thehorrors of it became. I'd been
taught, God is love. Rubbish. Icouldn't help thinking.
If he loved us, if he wereomnipotent, he could put a stop
to it today. But then I thought,perhaps he isn't omnipotent.
Eventually, I worked it out, atleast for myself. God was
alright. It was we who werewrong.

(17:45):
Why the hell should he care whathappened to us a lot? We had
brought this war evil intoexistence, not God. The reason
evil and ugliness weretriumphing over goodness and
beauty, why pity and compassionwere considered weakness and
ruthlessness and crueltyregarded as noble. The reason
for all this was the wickednessin ourselves and not the
indifference of God. That waswhy the more murders you

(18:06):
committed, the bigger the heroyou became.
That was what major superiorofficers slap you on the back
and say, splendid old chap.Jolly good shooting. When your
shells had destroyed in minutesthe beauty which craftsmen had
toiled lifetime lifetimes tocreate. So Ronald Skirth, kind
of goes to show, he didn'tbecome an atheist, but I I think

(18:27):
he makes it kinda clear thatthere are foxhole atheists. And
that's because, more thananything else, war brings out,
violence brings out this idea ofthe problem of evil.
And if there is one issue thatpeople have with god, especially
today, it is the problem ofevil. Why why is there so much

(18:48):
evil, and why is it just soseemingly gratuitous? And that's
that's really the biggestobjection that I hear from from
most people who are agnostic oratheists. And what makes it
worse for Christians isn't thefact that violence exists at
all. What makes it a 1000000times worse is that it
especially exists withinChristianity.

(19:10):
It exists within Christianitytoday, as the as a, quote,
Christian nation. We we createmore wars than just about
anybody else. We do so muchviolence across the world. We we
spend so much money on themilitary. We are just a violent

(19:30):
culture, and we're a selfproclaimed Christian nation.
We've got the crusades, theinquisitions. You look at all
the European wars that thathappened in between all these
countries that are supposedlyChristian. I mean, you look at,
even more modern, like, afterthe inquisitions, you look at

(19:52):
what protestants were doing toeach other, to Anabaptists, as
well as to other people thatthey considered heretics,
burning people, drowning people,torturing people. It's just
horrendous. And Ronald Skirthhad this realization that, he
thought that violence perhapsdisproved God or at least some
of God's attributes.
He recognized that, no. No. No.God's alright. We're we're the

(20:15):
problem.
You know? If I've gotta pickbetween violence being logical,
rational, and God, like, no. Godmakes sense. Violence doesn't.
And I think he's right.
And, continuing with the idea ofwarfare here. So starting in
World War 1. Let's go to WorldWar 2 because this has given, I

(20:38):
think, one of the one of thebest proven grounds for the
different means that one canemploy to accomplish things. And
so I wanna take a look at at 3particular cases. 2 very similar
and then one a little bitdifferent.
So first case, we've gotBulgaria. You didn't think you
were gonna hear anything aboutBulgaria, did you? No. Because

(21:00):
Bulgaria is really small andunimportant in in our minds.
Right?
You probably can't even locateit on a map. Bulgaria just is
irrelevant. Sorry if you're fromBulgaria or if you like
Bulgaria. And to our missionaryfriends in Bulgaria, I don't
mean that personally. ButBulgaria is just just nothing.
But man, in world war 2, theywere pretty awesome. Bulgaria

(21:24):
started out with a population of48,000 Jews. Bulgaria proper
because there there was, I don'tknow. It's a long story. You'll
have to check out the article.
But, the main portion ofBulgaria, had 48,000 Jews, Jews,
not its territories, justBulgaria proper. And at the end
of the war, depending on thenumbers that you look at,

(21:45):
Bulgaria either had 48,000 Jewsor 50,000 Jews. So Bulgaria, at
worst, maintained its Jewishpopulation while they were an
axis controlled country andpossibly even gained Jews during
that time period, during WorldWar 2. So how does that happen?

(22:08):
Well, did they have a a reallystrong resistance who bombed the
German trains and andassassinated German leadership
and all that?
No. They're Bulgaria. What arethey gonna do? They're they're
small. They don't have anypower.
But what they did is they thecitizenship rallied around the
the Jewish people, and theysaid, you're not going to do

(22:29):
this to them. You had priests,volunteering to lie in front of
trains that were about to hauloff Jews to the concentration
camps. You had farmersvolunteering to do the same. You
had priests who were making,fake baptist baptismal

(22:49):
registries or whatever, sircertificates for Jews so that
they could pass inspection, butfrom the, from the Germans. You
had you had them doing all sortsof nonviolent things, and they
saved their whole Jewishpopulation.
Now, a better one or maybe abetter one, depending on how you
look at it, but is Denmark.Almost the same thing happened

(23:13):
in Denmark. And, Hannah Arendtwas, a a Jewish individual who
escaped Germany, went to Sweden,escaped Sweden, and ended up
eventually in the United States.And she she's written a bit
about evil, and I don't thinkshe's a Christian at all from
from what I could tell. And butshe she writes a little bit

(23:35):
about evil and kind of how hownormal people can be so evil,
and she writes a bit aboutDenmark.
So let me read you her herlittle piece here. Hannah Arendt
concludes that the cause of thecase of Denmark is the only case
we know of in which the Nazismet with open native resistance,
and the result seems to havebeen that those exposed to it

(23:56):
changed their minds. Theythemselves apparently no longer
looked upon the extermination ofa whole people as a matter of
course. They had met withresistance based on principle,
and their toughness had meltedlike butter in the sun. They had
even been able to show a fewtimid beginnings of genuine
courage.
So in Denmark, they had a 99%success rate. I think out of
around 8,000 Jews, and I can'tdo the math really quickly. I'm

(24:20):
just trying to remember numbers.But around 8,000 Jews and, like,
400 ended up making it out ofthe country on, on trains by the
Germans to ex to concentrationcamps. But only, like, 48 of the
elderly there died, even most ofthose lived.
So so in Denmark, they even moreso than Bulgaria, there was just

(24:43):
a an overall defiance of whatthe Germans wanted them to do.
They refused to repair Germanboats. They they they just,
like, defied them at every turn.And what Arndt notices is is
that even more than the factthat they saved 99% of their
Jewish population, even morethan this, You see that, and she

(25:07):
gives several examples, but yousee that German officers who
were stationed there actuallybegan to not be trusted by the
other Germans because the Jews,when the Germans were were
coming to sneak in and and takesome of the Jews, somehow, they
were tipped off as to the Germanmovements and plans. And the
only people who had thatinformation were German officers

(25:30):
in in Denmark.
So Arndt notices that that thisrefusal to comply, this
nonviolent refusal, it wasn't,you know, you couldn't say, hey.
Look. They're shooting at us andtrying to kill us. You just had
people who were observingindividuals putting their lives
on the line, doing the rightthing. And these Germans just
said, look, you're you're moreright than my country is, than

(25:53):
my orders are.
And it created a change of heartin many of the Germans stationed
in Denmark. So, 2 countries thatwere occupied, and one was
actually, in I think controlledby the Axis, an ally. Two
countries, small, no nosignificant armies, no

(26:15):
significant resistances comparedto other countries, but they
saved collectively about a 100%of the Jewish population there.
That is that is insane. Like,what other country can you say
that of?
And I I just think that thatspeaks for itself, and I'll just
shut up and and move on. But I Iwas amazed that I had never

(26:35):
heard about those two countriesbefore in those two instances
because war and violence is moreglorious. Right? Refusing to
repair a boat, not so much. 3rdcase, and this is instead of a
collective, because I know thatthat sometimes it's easier to
say, well, yeah.
If we had a collectivepopulation who would all band

(26:55):
together and and do something,then that's one thing.
Forgetting that that collectivesstart off with individuals
making the right choices andthat it shouldn't matter as a
Christian what the group's doingif I have integrity.
Nevertheless, here's an exampleof an individual. Sophie Scholl.
She was a German student.
So she was she was a young lady,and she was participating in

(27:19):
nonviolent meetings and handingout pamphlets and things like
that. And she ended up beingbeheaded for she was beheaded
for her nonviolent actions. Andso there's a there's a quote
from her which I I love becauseit's that integrity thing. How
can we expect righteousness toprevail when there is hardly

(27:39):
anyone willing to give himselfup individually to a righteous
cause? Such a fine sunny day,and I have to go.
But what does my death matter ifthrough us, thousands of people
are awakened and stirred toaction? So that was a German
girl who defied Hitler, not bytrying to kill him, but by
trying to mobilize people to dothe right thing. You might say,

(28:01):
well, yeah. I've never heard ofSophie Scholl, so a lot of good
she did. And, again, the endsdon't justify the means, so it's
very noble what Sophie didregardless of of what happened.
But you would be wrong about howmuch of an impact she has had.
In Germany, in 2003, SophieScholl was voted one of the most

(28:22):
influential Germans. She took4th place. She was the 4th most
influential German. And she beatout famous Germans like Bach,
Goethe, Gutenberg, Bismarck, andEinstein.
So Sophie Scholl didn't doanything. Yeah, she did. It
doesn't matter if she did ordidn't, but she did. She took a
stand, she mobilized people, andshe stood up against evil while

(28:45):
refusing to do evil herself.Alright.
Let's move on to, away from thewars here. And let's move on to,
a more of a societal war. Go onto civil rights and you've got
Martin Luther King Junior. Andmost people who are listening to
this probably from the states orfrom the west, and you
understand that that MartinLuther King Junior was very

(29:09):
involved in the civil rightsmovement. And, he would he's
just he's got several reallyprofound statements.
But one that that stands out tome is King's recognition of how
important non how importantnonviolence was to his
effectiveness, to his his,disposition. So there were there

(29:33):
was a time in his life when hewas not nonviolent, and he did
try to get a a, a gun permit,and he had armed bodyguards, and
and he was kind of taking theviolent approach to protect
himself. And a lot of peoplewould point to that and say, no.
King wasn't nonviolent. Look.
He had armed bodyguards. Yeah.But there was a a genuine shift

(29:53):
in what King did. King talksabout that here. King says, how
could I serve as one of theleaders of a nonviolent
movement, and at the same timeuse weapons of violence for my
personal protection?
Coretta and I talked the matterover for several days and
finally agreed that arms were nosolution. We decided then to get
rid of the one weapon we owned.We tried to satisfy our friends

(30:13):
by having floodlights mountedaround the house and hiring
unarmed watchmen around theclock. I also promised that I
would not travel around the cityalone. I was much more afraid in
Montgomery when I had a gun inmy house.
When I decided that I couldn'tkeep a gun, I came face to face
with the question of death, andI dealt with it. From that point
on, I no longer needed a gun norhave I been afraid. Had we

(30:34):
become distracted by thequestion of my safety, we would
have lost the moral offensiveand sunk to the level of our
oppressors. I think King'sstatement here points out a
number of things that we'vetalked about. First of all, like
I mentioned with Yoder earlier,who, found that baseball bat in
his home while he was beingattacked, It takes preparation.

(30:54):
It takes a lot of forethought tomake the right decision, if if
you believe that nonviolence isthe right decision. And King
shows that here. But anotherthing that he shows is really
this gospel idea of awillingness to lay down your
life. If you you have to acceptthat to be able to be

(31:17):
nonviolent, that Jesus Christowns your life, and that you can
lay that down even for yourenemy. And King says that that
at this point, that's what madehim effective because before,
when he had a gun, he was sofocused on the preservation of
his own life when he had armedbodyguards preserving my life.
When he gave that up and and hedidn't give it up, irrationally.

(31:39):
I mean, he still had had tookprecautions. But when he gave
that up, he didn't seek to tolose his life, but he counted
his life as nothing so that hecould be consistent, and so that
he could, be effective, in inhis integrity, and showing
people that the message that hepreached was also the message
that he lived. King has twoother quotes which I I really,

(32:02):
really like, So I'll, I'll getto those right here. King says,
my study of Gandhi convinced methat the true pacifism is not
non resistance to evil, butnonviolent resistance to evil.
Between the two positions, thereis a world of difference. Gandhi
resisted evil with as much vigorand power as the violent
resistor, but true pacifism isnot unrealistic submission to

(32:22):
evil power. It is rather acourageous confrontation of evil
by the power of love. And I lovethat King highlights there this
this false notion that pacifismis passive. King says, no.
It is not passive one bit. Ittakes, and this is what we've
been saying, it it actuallytakes constant action, and it's

(32:42):
continuing to face evil head on.But instead of the power of
weapons against flesh and blood,it is instead, the the power of
love. And another quote I Iforgot to put here, King talks a
bit about how it's not the thewhite people that they're

(33:03):
fighting. You know, it's nottheir goal isn't to fight white
people, but it's to fightinjustice, and how that
injustice actually is the thetrue evil, this non flesh and
blood thing, this immaterialthing, or or these demons or
whatever you wanna call them.
And that is the real enemybecause the white people that

(33:25):
some of King's blackcounterparts wanted, like
Malcolm x, wanted to physicallyfight, King recognized that
those individuals were not theenemy because while King was
oppressed by the injustice thatthey perpetuated, at the same
time, those individuals werebeing oppressed by the evil

(33:46):
that, that was reigning overthem and in their lives. And so
King viewed his oppressors asvictims of of the same sort of
thing. And what a beautiful wayto look at things, to to
recognize that, you know, youput these quotes together, these
ideas together, and Kingrecognized that he could count

(34:07):
his own life lost because it wassecure in Christ. And, at the
same time, he could recognizethat his his enemies were being
oppressed and in need of ofsalvation, even though King's
physical life was the one thatwas in danger. What a I mean,
that's just a that's extremelyprofound and and beautiful.

(34:28):
So last quote by King, short butawesome. King says, darkness
cannot drive out darkness. Onlylight can do that. Hate cannot
drive out hate. Only love can dothat.
And I think that is that is verybiblically minded as well, light
and darkness themes, and, justbeautifully put by King. How are

(34:48):
you going to use a means that isdarkness, that is, violent to
solve the problem of violenceand darkness? It it doesn't
work. Moving on. Go get toanother Christian, and we'll
talk about Jim Elliott.
Now, before we get into this, Ido wanna say I do not know if
Elliott was a pacifist. And, infact, I would probably assume

(35:11):
that he wasn't. Elliott was andand I feel bad for the other
guys because Elliott's alwaysthe one who gets recognized, but
he's with 2 other people. Ithink Nate Saint was another one
and a third guy that nobody everremembers his name. But they
were missionaries to some tribein South America who had been

(35:32):
unreached, and they were tryingto make contact.
And they had a gun in the plane,and when when they went to make
contact and were speared, theychose not to not to shoot. They,
they chose not to shoot theirpeople who, I guess, were their
enemies because they werekilling them. Now while Elliott

(35:52):
may and his group might not havebeen pacifists, their action
represents the power ofnonviolent action. Because
whether they have thedisposition of nonviolence all
the time or not is irrelevant.In this instance, they display
nonviolence.
And if you ever watch the movieThe End of the Spear, it kind of
goes into it it tells the story.But you realize that their

(36:15):
refusal to kill changed thecourse of history for that tribe
who was unreached, and it pavedthe way for their acceptance of
the gospel. Charles Spurgeon,another guy who you wouldn't
expect to be pacifistic. He'sreformed, and especially in his
time and in his denomination,pacifism not a super popular

(36:38):
thing. But Spurgeon has a numberof things to say about violence.
And I like using Spurgeonbecause I am reformed and
Presbyterian, and so usingSpurgeon is kind of, you know,
you use Martin Luther KingJunior or you use Gandhi, some
of these other people, andindividuals find excuses to to

(36:58):
say, well, those guys are crazy.But Spurgeon is very revered in
my community. So what doesSpurgeon have to say? Well, I've
got 3 quotes from him. Firstone.
I wish that Christian men wouldinsist more and more on the
unrighteousness of war,believing that Christianity
means no sword, no cannon, nobloodshed, and that if a nation
is driven to fight in its owndefense, Christianity stands by

(37:20):
to weep and to intervene as soonas possible and not to join in
the cruel shouts which celebratean enemy's slaughter. Pretty
straightforward. 2nd quote, thechurch of Christ is continually
represented under the figure ofan army, yet its captain is the
prince of peace. Its object isthe establishment of peace, and
its soldiers are men of apeaceful disposition. The spirit

(37:41):
of war is at the extremelyopposite point to the spirit of
the gospel.
3rd quote, what pride flushesthe patriot's cheek when he
remembers that his nation canmurder faster than any other
people. Ah, foolish generation.Ye are groping in the flames of
hell to find your heaven,breaking amid blood and bones
for the foul thing which he callglory. Killing is not the path

(38:03):
to prosperity. Huge armamentsare accursed to the nation
itself as well as to itsneighbors.
Again, very straightforward. Wealso got, a guy, Desmond Doss.
And, there's a movie that justcame out a few years ago called
Hacksaw Ridge. And Doss, DesmondDoss wanted to do something for

(38:26):
his country, but he refused tokill. And so he was a medic, and
he would not shoot or even carrya weapon.
And there goes back to thatpreparation thing. He wouldn't
even carry a weapon. And he hiscounting of his own life lost,
and his desire to love everyone,even his enemy, made him a an

(38:50):
absolutely amazing person. I'msurprised that a story was ever
made about him, because thatthat kind of thing doesn't
usually happen. Usually, weglorify the violence.
But the movie is very good. Veryviolent, but good. Next guy,
Pablo Yoder. And I'm sorry thatthese are these are all guys
except for Sophie Scholl, butthese are just, the individuals

(39:10):
that kind of stood out and I wasable to find. Pablo Yoder.
And nobody's ever heard of him.He but he is a a, modern
missionary, South America.There's not really that much to
say about him other than histestimony is is really
interesting because he talksabout all of the the instances
he's experienced gang violenceand how he's worked through that

(39:33):
as a pacifist. I'll link thevideo here, but, it's just a a
good real life modern example ofwhat nonviolence can look like.
Gandhi, I'll throw him in justbecause he's such a big name.
I know he's not a Christian, andI don't think you have to be to
to have good thoughts onnonviolence. But, so I'll I'll

(39:54):
just throw him in here. Gandhi,quote, object to violence
because when it appears to dogood, the good is only
temporary. The evil it does ispermanent. I so agree with that,
and I've got a great example foryou when we get to the the the
counter rebuttal stage, and wego through the effectiveness and
ineffectiveness, and and talkingabout how, while violence

(40:18):
appears to do good, many timesit perpetuates and exacerbates
evil.
Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer.Saved this guy for last, because
a lot of people point toBonhoeffer as the, like, gotcha
guy. Because Bonhoeffer was apacifist, but then he wasn't

(40:38):
because he was in Germany and hecame up against Adolf Hitler,
and he recognized how evilHitler was. And that just kinda
pushed him over the edge andsaid, I I gotta do something.
Something. Now, a couple caveatshere. I really haven't
researched Bonhoeffer all thatmuch, but there is a group out
there who, has some evidencethat they put forward that shows

(41:01):
that the the thing Bonhoefferwas actually taking part in was
was not really the anassassination attempt on Hitler.
And there are they kinda get tothat in a roundabout way because
there were several assassinationattempts going on or several
kinda coup sorts of things. Someof them were nonviolent.

(41:21):
And, anyway, they they say thatBonhoeffer was executed for some
other reason. I really don'tknow if that's true or not, and
I couldn't really care lessbecause, like I said, you know,
Paulo Yoder could've grabbedthat baseball bat. Desmond Doss,
he he could've carried a gun, oror picked up a gun off of a dead
soldier and shot somebody.Reactions to situations, being

(41:44):
pushed over the edge is possiblefor everybody. And the fact that
you have so many people, earlyChristian martyrs included, who
are willing to lay down theirlives without doing violence.
You throw in a guy likeBonhoeffer, whom maybe did fall
here, and so what? Right? He hehad some thoughts about
nonviolence earlier in his life,and we can still take a look at

(42:07):
those and and see what he had tosay when he was compelled. So
here's here's the quote fromBonhoeffer. To believe the
promise of Jesus that hisfollowers shall possess the
earth, and at the same time, toface our enemies unarmed and
defenseless, preferring to incurinjustice rather than to do
wrong ourselves, is indeed anarrow way.
Now I don't know, also, ifBonhoeffer did try to

(42:31):
assassinate Hitler. I don't knowwhat his disposition was.
Because maybe Bonhoeffer said,look, I I have to do something,
and I'm probably wrong aboutthis. I might be wrong for
trying to kill somebody, but I'mgonna do it. And I will pray
that god forgives me.
So I don't know, even ifBonhoeffer did end up not being,

(42:53):
not sticking to his nonviolence,that doesn't mean that he
thought it was right. Sosomebody who knows more about
that than I do can comment oradd to that. Okay. So what have
we seen? Well, throughout theseries, we have we have seen a
very large case for nonviolence.
We have seen the biblical case,which in the New Testament, at

(43:17):
least, at worst, seems to, saythat the government alone can
bear the sword. And at bestsays, basically, Christians
don't don't do any violence.Love your enemies. So that's
that's, looking pretty good fornonviolence. The early church,
when we look at how theyinterpreted what the Bible was

(43:38):
saying, they decided to avoidgovernment, and they decided to
avoid armies.
They decided to avoid capitalpunishment. They voided
violence. They wouldn't even,take a robber blow for blow. And
so the way that they read theNew Testament, being so close to
the apostles, is hands down forthe nonviolence case. When we

(44:00):
looked at intuitions andempirical evidence, well, that
points very heavily towardsnonviolence.
When we looked at logicalcoherence, the just war theory
can't maintain its own internalcoherence with it with what it
says the morals of a just warshould be. And the the violence,

(44:20):
the violent position is is,incoherent. It it, is self
defeating in a number ofdifferent ways. And then when we
look at how pacifism plays outin the real world, how it is a
taking up of your cross, it is alaying down of your life, it is
accounting your your life aslost and putting your faith in
Christ. And we look at realworld examples of where this has

(44:43):
sometimes succeeded, where it'sbeen the only thing that's
that's succeeded, for example,in Bulgaria and Denmark, the the
places that saved the Jews, andin other places, where it hasn't
succeeded, like with SophieScholl or Martin Luther King
Junior in terms of their livesbeing lost.
Though, when you look 40 yearsout, Sophie Scholl is the 4th
most influential, person,German, in Germany. Martin

(45:06):
Luther King Junior, his movementwas successful, and he is
remembered as a hero. So the thecumulative case for non violence
is just, I mean, astounding. Ithink you have at least 51%,
rationality to believe, tobelieve that non violence is the

(45:28):
route that you should take. Andremember, since this is a
cumulative case, all I need is50.01% for you to be more
rational to adhere to nonviolence.
And, hopefully, you can kind ofsee that the same way. I do have
counter rebuttals that I need togive, and I'm planning on
starting that as soon as thispodcast is over, as soon as this

(45:51):
series is over. And we'llhopefully be able to allay some
of your your, disagreement ormaybe areas that you think are
problems. But as far as thepositive case goes, I think,
hands down, nonviolence wins. Solet me leave you with just
something that I think, a quotefrom a man named Shane
Claiborne, who has an awesomebook called The Irresistible

(46:15):
Revolution.
And this book was was absolutelyamazing, but this one section in
particular helped me to to putnonviolence in perspective,
globally, as well as to kindasynthesize a lot of the the
things that we've discussed sofar. And it I wanna leave this
kind of as an exhortation to allof us as we try to make the

(46:37):
church the church. So I'll endwith this quote. Claiborne says,
I explained to him that I wasshocked to find so many
Christians in Iraq. He looked atme puzzled and then gently said,
yes, my friend.
This is where it all began. Thisis the land of your ancestors.
That is the Tigris and theEuphrates. Have you read about
them? I was floored by myignorance and the ancient roots

(47:00):
of my faith.
It is the land of my ancestors.Christianity was not invented in
America. How about that? Bishopwent on to tell me that the
church in the Middle East wasdeeply concerned about the
church in the United States. Hesaid, many Americans are for the
war, nodded, and he asked, butwhat are the Christians saying?
My heart sank. Tried to explainto him that many of the

(47:21):
Christians in the US areconfused and hope that this is a
way God could liberate the Iraqipeople. He shook his head and
said, very humbly, but weChristians do not believe that.
We believe blessed are thepeacemakers. We believe if you
pick up the sword, you die bythe sword.
We believe in the cross. Tearswelled up in my eyes as he said,

(47:42):
we will be praying for you. Wewill be praying for the church
in the US. Be the church. Letthat be our prayer right now.

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