Welcome back to the Fourth Wave Podcast. This is an episode that I wasn't planning on doing, but when I saw that Keith Giles came out with another book called Jesus Unarmed on Nonviolence, I checked it out and after looking through it and especially after seeing the part where he talked about Incarnation, I was like, Man, this would be a perfect fit for this show and in particular, a good discussion to have for this season on Incarnation. Keith was very gracious to accept my invitation and to be able to put something together so quickly. So I hope you're able to enjoy this episode as somewhat of a recap of some of the things we've done throughout our seasons here, but also as something interesting in delving into what we're discussing now, this idea of incarnation and discipleship and what it means to truly live in the kingdom and to live as Christ. So here it is, Keith Giles.

My name is Keith Giles. I just turned 55 years old a few days ago, and I'm formerly someone who I used to be a licensed Interdane Southern Baptist minister. Did that for several years. I spent some time in the vineyard church movement. My wife and I planted a vineyard church with some friends of ours.

Golly. Probably close to twenty years ago. And fifteen years ago, maybe. And anyway, did that for a while, but we went through a phase where during that time, actually, was right right after about three and a half years of being a part of that church planting experience, which mostly was good. But during that time, we started shifting a little bit.

I had a big epiphany that the gospel wasn't what I what I was told it was for most of my life. And that was a big shock to me. That was a big that that was a major shift in my. My faith journey and then almost about immediately in the same time, my wife and I were feeling called to start a church and with our family to leave that church plant and start something different, pretty radically different. So I mean, what we ended up doing was leaving and starting something where no one took any salary.

All the offering would help the poor in our community. We had no statement of faith. We had no doc doctrinal statements. We were not under the covering of any denomination or any other church. We were just a bunch of people who love Jesus and wanted to care about, you know, serve people who are living in poverty and do our our best to help improve people's conditions in our community.

We did that for about eleven years. That was just phenomenal. That was amazing experience for me. And right around that time, I started publishing my first books and. Yeah, so and I've just finished a seven part book series publishing a seven part book series called the Jesus on series.

The final book came out this past week on my birthday and I've just been writing and teaching and I do some podcasting and trying to help. I say that what a part of what I do is to help Christians. I try to introduce Christians to Jesus, which is a hard thing to do because most of them think they already know who Jesus is. And to try to present a a better a more what I feel is a more accurate picture of who Jesus was and what he was about them. Most of the gatekeepers in Christianity today, I I think, are not doing a very good job of that.

So

Yeah. And I I'm sure that sounds that can sound arrogant to a lot of a lot of people like, hey. Let me show you Jesus because you haven't seen him before. But I understand what you're saying because for me, that shift happened 2016. I think there are a lot of people who that was kind of an epiphany for them.

And that was for me, I was working in our church's diaconate. And working with the poor is something that I've heard from a lot of people who adhere to nonviolence, that that's kind of a turning point to them because we see our lifestyle and we see how the poor are in the situations they're in. And then we go and we read Jesus, and you got to do something with that. But most of us are kind of far away from that. And so we don't usually have to deal with the words of Jesus because we don't have poor among us and we don't have real enemies.

Yeah. And that's a great point, Derek. I mean, I think for me and my own personal, you know, whatever you want call it, deconstruction, reconstruction, whatever, just reorienting my myself. It was all about Jesus. And it was the recognition that so much of my quote unquote Christianity was not very Christ centered.

It was it was maybe Paul centered or maybe even Luther or Calvin centered. It was centered around other things than Jesus. And then you start noticing, like you said, like, like we're not basing our posture or our reaction or response to, let's say, the poor in our community to what Jesus said, we're basing it on maybe some political pundit we follow or some podcast we listen to or some other ideology that has really nothing to do with Jesus. And that's what I'm that's what I'm saying. So I know I know it can come across like you said a little arrogant like who is Keith to tell people who Jesus is?

It's not that that it's not that I'm I know better than them. It's I'm just trying to say, let's go to Jesus. You all have a copy of the red letters somewhere in your house. I'm sure if you're a Christian, right? You got probably multiple copies of that.

Just flip over to those red letters, look at those, read them, and then try to live your life and and form your opinions and your views and your and your actions around Jesus. It just seems like a a no brainer, but it but it's recognizing that I grew up in a Christianity that did not do that. That was not even really interested in that. Or Jesus has just kind of become a minor character in this religion with his name on it. And it's really frustrating to me.

Know, I I I've I've talked before about like, how odd would it be to meet someone who says who says to you, I'm a Buddhist. And then you would say, oh, wow. You must really follow the teachings of Buddha. And they said, oh, no. Not really.

Or someone says, I'm a I'm a Muslim. Oh, wow. You know, you must really follow, the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. Oh, no. Not really.

I don't really listen to that guy. Like, what? What do you mean? You're calling yourself a Muslim, but you don't follow Muhammad or you're calling yourself a Buddhist and you don't follow Buddha? And yet we have Christians who are like, yeah.

I'm a Christian, but do not follow Jesus. I mean, not in a real way. They follow Christianity, which is a real religion, but so much of that religion isn't very Jesus centered.

Yeah. Well, I wanna I wanna jump in. I have a lot of questions, and I'm sure I'm not gonna get to to all of them. But I wanna I wanna focus kind of on the on the Jesus unarmed part, your book that just came out, and maybe kind of flesh out some things and also ask you some questions that I think maybe could be addressed to help people who might have the same questions.

Sure.

So the first one that I think is important to answer, because you talk a lot about the early church in your book, which that was one of the clinchers for me in coming to nonviolence, the realization that this stuff is early and it's univocal up until around Constantine. But we don't in The United States, we don't have much of this. We don't hold tradition and heritage up all that much. So if somebody was gonna say, alright, great. The early church believed that.

That was 1,700 years ago, 2,000 years ago. Why should I really care?

Oh, how would I respond to that? Well, and I think you're right. I think most Christians do. That is their attitude they have. And if that's your attitude, then okay.

Then I guess that's your attitude. But for me, I can just say, when I when I went back and was reading quotes from these early church fathers first, second, third century. When you when you see, as you said, this univocal commitment to nonviolence and you recognize that it's all grounded again on Jesus. Jesus said these things in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus taught these things.

He believed these things. He lived these things. And for them to be a follower of Jesus was to do those things, to obey those things like Jesus whole thing. Why call me Lord, Lord and don't do the things that I say? And they took that extremely seriously.

And so I guess I can only I can only answer the question of why it matters to me. It matters to me because those guys are as close to Jesus, much closer to Jesus than I could say I am in the sense of like just time and space. Right? These are these early Christians are disciples of the disciples that follow Jesus. Right?

And so they are carrying forward. I I would say a more accurate and a pure form of a Christology before he had a chance to be corrupted by people like Constantine and all these others, like the guys that came later. So for me, that's why it matters. I think it's also recognizing it. I I just can't deny if I read the Sermon on the Mount, if I then see what happened after Pentecost and the early Christian church in the book and, you know, in the book of Acts Chapter two, where these people who, like a few days ago, were total strangers, didn't know each other's names.

And yet now they love each other so much. They're selling property so that everybody has enough to eat. They just have this incredible love for one another. Well, where does that come from? Right?

It's the direct result of the fruit of the things that Jesus taught, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And it's to me, it's like, yes, this is what it's all about. And the farther we get away from that, we're getting farther away from Jesus and farther away from what I would say is an original Christianity that I I think we should all want to be closer to that kind of Christianity. I can't imagine actually any Christian who really did do what what you and I have done and read these early you know, read the words of these early Christians and read about the early church history. I I can't imagine reading those things and seeing those things and not saying, wow.

I want that. I want to live like that. I want I wanna have that kind of connection with Christ that I am really truly incarnating that kind of love for everyone, including my enemy that way. And so anyway, but at least that's what happened to me when I read those things. I read those things and I said, okay.

That that is a truer form of a Christ follower than I think I see anywhere else that I look around today.

Okay, so follow-up to that, which which I think is is probably even a bit harder to answer. Okay, let's say that I accept that the early church is important and and they're univocal. You don't have to read too much in the early church to recognize and you even highlight some of these things in your book that they were misogynistic. They believed that women were ontologically lesser most, if not all of them did. And some of their ideas about sex and like abstain during marriage unless you're trying to procreate it.

The less sex you have, the better. So there are things that we would think are not only weird, but wrong. So how do you decide what to pick and choose from the early church? Because if you say, Well, they're early and therefore more genuine, you have to have some metric to figure out what to keep and discard.

Yep. And you're exactly right. And that is one of the most depressing things that I found reading the early Christians is that, you know, initially I would just fell in love with their nonviolence and their enemy love. And I fell in love also with their ecclesiology, just the way they thought about the church, the church being not a hierarchical gathering, but it being a mutuality of we are all brothers and sisters and everybody, you know, has this sort of equality within the body of Christ to share their share what of Christ they have with one another. So I I fell in love with that.

And then you sort of turn the page and then you realize, you just read some of these awful, horrible things about women. And and you're right. It's extremely disappointing. So you talk about a metric. So this is a very good, very good question.

And this is something that I I encourage people to do anyway. I think when you and I read those kinds of statements that that Tertullian and other guys make about women and something within us recoils and says, ugh, that's disgusting. But why do I I would say one of the reasons why I rebel against that and I turn against that is you know what? It's not Christ like. Let me go because if I compare those things to the way Jesus treated women and even the way Paul like true Paul, not pseudo Paul, the true writings of Paul speak about women.

What I see is an honoring of women, bringing women up in equality on the same level as men. Jesus honoring Mary and saying, you know, she sits at his feet the way the men were, the male disciples were. And what he says is this will not be taken from her. And in fact, what she's chosen is the better thing. So he honors the women that want to be disciples and he holds them in equality with the men.

We wouldn't even know the names of the probably how many? There's probably thirteen, fourteen women specifically named by Paul in his letters Phoebe and Tabitha and Dorcas and Lydia and on and on and on, Junior and that he identifies them as apostles, as prophets, as evangelists, as church leaders, like like so. So in other words, what we see if we look at Jesus and we look at Paul, you know, with the earliest apostle who's doing most of the writing in the New Testament, what we see is that women are honored and they are key and essential and critical to the formation of the early church. And so now so then we then we look at some of these guys like Tertullian and we see them saying horrible things about women. The metric I would use is is a Christ centered method, It's a Jesus centric way of looking at things.

So we have to we have to take everything back to the to the filter or the metric of Jesus. Is this something Jesus would have said? Can I hear Jesus saying these things? And if I can't, well, then I reject that. That's not Jesus.

So so it's, you know, similar to what Paul says. Follow me as I follow Christ. The implication is don't follow me if I'm not following Christ. And then how are you gonna know if I'm following Christ? Well, you need to know Christ.

You yourself, right? You need to abide in Christ so that Christ abides in you. And then that's your filter. And we all need to learn to develop that discernment of like what is of Christ and what is it? And I think it's very easy to see this very strong anti women, very strong patriarchal system that unfortunately rose up pretty quickly after after the disciples had passed and their disciples took over.

A very strong patriarchy took hold. But again, that's cultural. That's not Jesus. They didn't get that from Christ.

Yeah. Let's zoom in one more level here because I kind of anticipated that you were going to have the Christocentric hermeneutic. Zooming in one more level, going to Jesus himself. One of C. S.

Lewis's issues with nonviolence, and I think something that I hear consistently is, pacifists turn to the Sermon on the Mount a lot. And it's very clear. Love enemies. This is what God is like. This is what we are to be like.

But there's also that passage in there that says, well, gouge out your eyes if you're having problems. And I don't know any pacifists who seem to take that seriously. And even some pacifists take the give to the one who asks seriously. But I haven't seen anyone take the gouge out your eye. So when you look at Jesus, to use a Christocentric hermeneutic, Jesus says gouge out your eye.

Jesus says love your enemies. When you're dealing with the words of Christ, how do you how do you discern between those things?

Yeah. Good question. So well, I think part of that has to do with the language that Jesus uses and the and the different the different ways that Jesus teaches. Right? So Jesus teaches the Sermon on the Mount, which is, I think, pretty direct.

And again, as you said, the nonviolence teaching is one based specifically on if you want to be like your father in heaven, love your enemies. Why? Because this is what God does. So it's it's telling you, first of all, this is what God is like. God loves his enemies.

This is how he transforms the world. This is how he responds to those who hate him. And therefore, that's why you should do it too. So that's that's a pretty straightforward thing to me. That's not a parable.

That's not a metaphor. That's not hyperbole. That's that seems to be a pretty straightforward thing. He's he's tying it to the nature and character of God himself or God self. When it comes to these other things like these other passages.

So I I do deal with this in my book. So again, you've got their Jewish idioms that Jesus uses in his teaching. There's these things called limited negatives, which he does quite often. And a limited negative is, for example, when Jesus says something like there's tons of examples, by the way. Once you once you see what a limited negative is, you you when you see it, you'll right away go, oh, there you go.

That's a limited negative. So a limited negative will be something where it's a it's a Jewish idiom. It's a way of speaking where you want to emphasize something. And so because you want to emphasize this one thing, what you will do is compare it to something else and you will you will diminish one thing over and above another thing. So you would say Jesus would say something like not only this, but especially that or not merely this, but even more so this other thing.

And, again, one of the examples is when he says, do not work for, you know, food or for for things of this world that pass away, that rust or that, you know, that vanish, that that are that are temporary. But instead, only work for the things of the kingdom that last forever and where moths does not, you know, devour and rust does not, you know, affect it and all that stuff. So so that's one example. Jesus says, don't work for the things that perish, but do work for the things that are eternal. Now, again, we almost we almost even if we don't know what limited negatives are, I don't know any Christian who takes that literally because we inherently get the gist of what he's saying.

If we took it literally, then you would say what Jesus is teaching there is you should quit your job and be homeless. Because he says, do not work for things that perish. So quit your what are you doing? You're working for things that perish. What are doing?

Stop doing that. Quit your job. Be homeless. And then and then, therefore, only work for the things of the Well, no. We know inherently that's not what he's saying.

He's saying don't only work for things that perish, but is but but mostly and especially and intentionally focus your energies on the things of the kingdom that last forever. And so Jesus does this kind of thing all the time when he says in fact, it's it's also what when he says, I didn't come to bring peace, but a sword. Basically, he came to bring peace. He's the prince of peace. It's there's a whole long thing in all about who his identity and what his purpose and his mission is about.

He is the prince of peace. He is teaching us the ways of peace. He mourns over the over the city because they they they don't know the things that make for peace. Of course, he is here to bring peace. But when he uses that idiom, the limited negative, I have come not to bring peace but a sword, he means I have come not only to bring peace but also a sword.

And then he explains in what way he means that. So again, I think part of it is us understanding we can't just read everything straight and literal. We don't when we read parables, we read them through a certain filter. When Jesus uses apocalyptic hyperbole, which is the same thing, the same kind of style of teaching that Jeremiah and Isaiah and some of the minor prophets use in the Old Testament. Well, we have to understand that that's what he's doing now.

And he's using the rules of that way of teaching and speaking. And then he does the same thing when he does the limited negatives. So the whole thing about, you know, cut off, gouge out your eyes or cut off your hand. I would put it in that category of like, again, this is a he's he's using a device to communicate something. And here's the reason why nobody, you know, gouges out their eyes or cut off their hand.

Because what he's trying to illustrate in this argument is it's so important for you to enter the kingdom of God that if there is something in your life that is preventing you from entering the kingdom, gouge out your eyes to get to the kingdom or cut off your hand to get to the kingdom. So, again, it's this he's he's downsizing, downplaying the physical, your eye, your hand, your body, your life in this world as compared to the eternal kingdom of God, which is worth so much more and lasts forever. It's the same kind of comparison, not just the things that perish, but the things that are eternal. And and again, when he uses that strong language, gouge out your eye, he uses that knowing like, okay, if you took him seriously and you recognize the point of what he's making, it's really important for me not to lust after women. Right?

In other words, to have a heart that sees women as if I'm a man, to see to see a woman as my sister. Right? As a as a sister in Christ, not as an object of my lust. And it's so important that if it if it if it if it's something that the only way I could solve that problem was to gouge out my eye, I should put probably gouge out my eye. But see, immediately, our minds are are worse.

We're not stupid. My mind says, okay. Is there something I could do without gouging out my eye? Because I'd like to do that first. I'd like to let's try the parts.

Let's try these other things first before I go to the ultimate solution of gouging my eyes out because I really don't wanna do that. Exactly. Of course, do.

That that reminds me of a you you had a quote at the beginning of one of your chapters, I think, about, you know, a man doesn't think that there are any other options until a mosquito lands on his testicles.

That's right. There's like yeah. It's a quote from Confucius where he says, yes. It's something like I wish I had the book in front of me. I could read it.

But he said something like, yeah. It's only when a mosquito lands on a man on a man's testicles that he suddenly realizes there is that violence is not the only solution. Yeah.

Yeah. That sounds exactly like like what you're saying. You Jesus says, hey, gouge out your eyes and and it's like, okay. I I I think I can do something else.

That's right. I think I could come up with five or 10 other things I could do first before I tried that solution.

Yeah. And and I really rethought that gouging out your eye thing when when news of Ravi Zacharias came out, and I was thinking, I bet Ravi, you know, in retrospect, wishes he would have gouged out his eyes.

That's right.

I mean, that that would have been better for him and for

A whole lot of other people.

Many, many other people. Yeah.

Yes. Exactly right.

So, okay. Let's say that I can accept the early church and Jesus' teachings and, you know, discard some of the things that are clear, hyperbole and such. So I can embrace nonviolence. I think one of the next questions that I would have before fully committing would be, you talk about a lot about Constantine and this shift. And I've studied him a little bit.

And you know, you get the two extremes, like he was wonderful for Christianity, he was, you know, the Antichrist, and then kind of people who are trying to balance him. Sure. And so I think one of the lingering questions for me is, okay, if the Anti Nicene church was really this robust in their theology of nonviolence, It seems hard to believe that somebody could have come in and within a generation completely overhaul the church. It seems like there must have been seeds of this type of capitulation in the early church before that. So could you talk a little bit about why Constantine is such a turning point for you and, why that doesn't represent the church as you see it?

Well, yeah. I guess on one level to answer your question, I would say, well, at least based on the evidence. In other words, I quote the writings of the early church fathers, pre Constantine are, as you said, they are univocal. We do not find a single church father or early church leader pre Constantine whoever justifies any violence of any kind. And they, by the way, they also don't justify.

And it's it's parallel. It's in parallel, not only not doing violence, but also having nothing to do with politics or the empire or the state or anything at all. So those those two things are intertwined. We have nothing to do with the state. We have nothing to do with violence.

And again, why? Because we're following Christ and because Christ this is what he modeled, and we're gonna follow this pattern to our death. And they did. They were murdered and put to death for a couple hundred years because of their because of those two things. They refused to say that Caesar was Lord.

No, we have no king but Christ. And then we suddenly see that Constantine. I guess I guess in one way to sort of generalize, I think what happened. If you try to put yourself in the shoes of those early Christians. So they have gone through hundreds of years of being persecuted, tortured, put to death, murdered, skinned alive, horrible, horrible things.

I mean, I've read some of the stories of some of the things Christians endured during that time, and it is horrible. It's horrific. It's the level of things where I think, could I have been a Christian back then? I don't know. Because being a Christian back then was to pretty much say, I'm willing to be skinned alive.

And that happened. I mean, that's one of the most gut wrenching things I I read about in the early church stories of the martyrs and things. But anyway, this is their reality. Okay. This is what it meant to be a Christian for them for hundreds of years.

And and then suddenly, Constantine shows up, and it's sort of like this. Oh my gosh. It seems like victory. Right? It seems like, oh, good.

Now the emperor is one of us. He sees what we see. You know? So now suddenly it's in their mind a lot of their minds. It's okay for us to basically make friends with the state and the empire.

And Constantine made it really easy, right? He, you know, kind of made sure that they felt secure, that we're not going to be arrested and tortured and burned alive and skinned alive and all that stuff. Okay, good. He's on our team. He's got our back.

He also gave a lot of them temples and places to worship in, converted pagan temples into Christian places of worship. He even put some of these bishops on payroll. Like literally, they received a stipend the same as they would if they were like a Roman senator or something. So those are difficult things to turn away from. It's like, wow, you're just blessing my socks off here.

This is really great. How do I turn down free money and free real estate and power and prestige in the community? Now all of a sudden I go from being hunted in the streets to being like celebrated, and I can walk around. I'm not I'm not ashamed. I'm not afraid.

So I think there it seems to me that those early Christians, what they it would have been really difficult. Again, if I'm putting myself in their shoes, it's really easy for me now looking back to point the finger at them and say, how could you have done such a horrible thing? I honestly don't know. It would have been such a relief. You know, it would have been like, Yeah.

Let's play ball. This sounds great. But I would say, again, because I can look back and I can see the fruit of what they did, even if I can maybe give them a give them throw them a bone on why they did it, I could still see that the the the result of what they did. So in other words, after hundreds of years of having the sword at the throat of the church being held in the hand of the Roman Empire, they sort of make friends and make peace with Constantine in the sense of like, hey, let's let's work together. This is not so bad.

And they do so largely because they believe that by doing so, the sword will come off of the throat of the church. The sad thing is the throat the sword never left the throat of the church. But what happened was after they aligned with Constantine, the sword is still at the throat of the church. But the disgusting horrible thing is that now who's holding that sword is another Christian because, Constantine has given them the power of the state and the power of the sword. And now they can execute Christians who they disagree with or who disagree with them.

They can now Christians are suddenly killing Christians who don't line up with the the the, you know, the doctrines and the faith and stuff. And that is the saddest thing to me. And so, you know, Christians go from being from enduring persecution from a pagan state and empire, and now they've traded it all so that they can kill each other. That's the most sick and disgusting and sad thing to me. And how could they have done it?

I don't know. But they did it. I mean, we can we can see the shift. We can see that that they turned the corner. It used to really depress me, Derek, when I first read that stuff.

And I would just think it would really bother me for the longest time was how could they have done this? And and it seems that they all just kinda went and played ball. They all just kinda did it. Well, then I realized, no, they didn't. They didn't all do it.

So that's why we have the desert fathers. And then there's also the desert mothers. And what these are are Christians at the time who did reject this, who said, no, we cannot have an emperor and a king who's Christ. We have only one king and that is still Christ. And we don't care what benefits we're getting from the empire.

We still stand in opposition to the empire. And they did not agree with this. And they essentially left society, went and lived in the desert and created, you know, sort of separatist communities as a way of literally disentangling themselves from the empire. So there you know, it gives me some hope that not everyone played along, that a lot of people did look at this and say, this is the wrong thing to do. We we should not walk in this direction.

This is a mistake. Unfortunately, though, the majority of Christians seem to have kind of, you know, gone along with Constantine. And sadly, I mean, that's what I see when I look at the history of it.

Yeah. And something that I think also comes up, and we kind of mentioned it at the beginning, but it seems like economics is tied very heavily to this as well. Because so you were getting kickbacks from the state if you were mainstream Christian. But then you also see like the attire of the people in the church change, and it becomes embellished. And like if you one of the things that you see a lot in the Anti Nicene church is a discussion of poverty and justice for the poor.

Yes. So I would love for you to talk about I think it seems to a lot of people like those are two very separate issues. But I mean, like I told you with my story, it was actually the economic issue that moved me towards nonviolence. And I've heard that from many, many people.

Yes.

How are the two things related? Economics, poverty and nonviolence?

Yeah. Well, that's a really good question. And my book doesn't deal with that poverty aspect of it, but absolutely, you're right. I would recommend a book called, I think it's called Poverty and Wealth by Justo Gonzales that deals with this exact thing very, very well. It's a wonderful book.

And he does connect those dots. And you're right. So, one of the other byproducts of the the shift towards the Constantinian church was not just favor from the empire and all that, not just sort of safety from, oh yeah, if we believe the right things, we're not gonna get killed. We're not gonna get tortured and stuff like that. But but yeah.

Sort of the the wealth aspect of it. So, again, that's something that Constantine also introduced. He introduced an idea of the clergy class having this wealth and status and authority, and that's where you start to see a really widening of the shift between sort of this an increasing of the hierarchy with model within the church. And then yeah. Once you do that, then you have you have the leaders.

I think this is probably one of the the if you wanna say it this way, one of the genius and the brilliant things that Constantine did. Because, honestly, I don't think he really genuinely was a follower of Christ. I think he figured out a way to co opt Christianity. It had grown so large. Their persecution of Christianity had not succeeded in squashing it.

And it was sort of like, you know, if you can't beat him, join him thing. So, you know, he was very, very smart and very calculated, I think, in the way he went about it. And so by identifying the bishops, making them feel safe, making them feel important, giving them giving them money so they got, you know, and and status. Once they were raised to a level of power and and prestige and status and they had wealth and and property and things like that. Yeah.

Then you you're right. You see a shifting away from a concern for those living in poverty, and you see a church really now more concerned about what matters to the empire. What's important to the state? What does Constantine would like us to do? Well, let's help him out.

Right? And and, you know, Constantine isn't very concerned about the poor either. So, yeah, that that's a very sad one of the other sort of sad things that ends up happening. This is why that's funny. Was just talking about this other day with somebody.

You know, that's why later on in, you know, post Constantine, you have people like Saint Francis who have these amazing sort of conversion experiences where they have a a connection or conversion experience with, like, the like, with Christ, with Jesus. It's a very Jesus centered sort of shift. And and what do they do? They care about the poor. They take vows of poverty themselves.

They have solidarity with the poor. They also practice nonviolence, radical nonviolence. And, there's an amazing story part part of the story of Saint Francis where he was invited. He had made such a big splash, right, within Catholicism and and Christendom at the time that the the pope took notice of this Saint Francis guy. Wow.

There's a lot of young people following him. And, wow, he's got these radical things. When he invites him to come to see to meet the pope. Right? And when Saint Saint Francis walks in, he's dressed like a hobo.

Mean, I he's dressed like a homeless guy. He has no shoes. He's filthy. He's dirty. He smells.

And, in fact, won't let him in the door at first because they think he is just some beggar at the door. And he's like, oh, no. I'm I'm Francis. And they're like, oh, oh, sorry. Yeah.

Yeah. The pope's expecting you. And then he walks into the, he walks into the Vatican, and it's a palace. Right? It's this massive palace.

It's gold and silver and pearl and rubies and jewels, and it's just he's looking around like, this doesn't look like the house of Jesus. Right? It's like, it's such a shocking collision, and it it becomes even a little bit like a a rebuke. I mean, not a harsh one, not a not a in your face one, but it's a very like, if we just hold these two things side by side. Right?

Here's the pope in a palace, gold and silver and all these jewels and things. And then we have Saint Francis, you know, poor, dirty, smelly, but he loves Jesus and he cares for the poor. And in fact, I think there I think there was even a thing where Francis even said to the pope, if I could take even a candlestick back home with me, I could sell this and feed my whole village, you know, for a month. And just that recognition of what the church had become, how far away it had moved from Jesus. When you look at Saint Francis in that situation, if you if you compare the Pope and Saint Francis, you'd say, one looks like more more like Jesus?

We'd say Saint Francis, of course. Exactly. Right? Mhmm. Because because it was a movement closer to poverty, closer to the poor, closer to the average person, and and farther away from something that looked like a castle with a king and, you know, a huge throne and armed guards and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So, yes, sadly, is that is the case that the church at the same time it followed Constantine into embracing violence and entangling itself with the empire, it also moved farther away from caring about the poor.

Yeah. It seems it seems to me that what what happened with Constantine is almost as if he was able to divorce orthodoxy from orthopraxy.

That's exactly right.

He was able to take the theology and kind of make it unifying. And so he was able to create a sacral society where every everybody is the same.

Exactly right, Derek. That sacral society, that's that's the really, again, the genius of what he did. If you look at the way he did it, it's it's it's him for the first time. It's an emperor for the first time. Not not an apostle, not a church leader, not any of the church fathers who who are calling for who suddenly decide, hey, everybody, we need to have one canon, one book that we all agree on this and only this are this quote unquote approved scriptures, the word of God, right, in book form.

And at the same time pushing for a need for a a set of doctrines that make you a Christian. You must believe these things. And if you don't believe all these things, you're not a Christian. It's Constantine who calls for that. None again, for over three hundred years, no no other Christian leaders felt that way.

Right? They all had their own personal canon. Right? Tertullian and Origen and Irenaeus and all these guys. They if you ask them and you look at their writings, they'll they they tell you.

Right? These are the books that they considered scriptures. Some of them were books that we also have in our Bibles, but some of them are books we never even heard of, never read in our lives. Some of them even are lost to us because they don't exist anymore. They weren't preserved.

And they all had their own separate canon, and that was fine. None of them cared about that. None of them was like, no. No. We've all we can't go forward until we all agree on what these the approved books are.

For them, it was okay to say, these are the books that speak to me. These are the books that or these are the writings that point me to Christ. And if they don't point you to Christ, that's okay. You have your own and they the ones that point you to Christ, good. As long as you're being pointed to Christ.

Again, the the emphasis in the early church pre Constantine was orthopraxy. In other words, what made you a Christian was in the ways that you follow Christ in your actual life, in the ways that Christ was reflected in your behavior. And with Constantine, because he suddenly makes he redefines, I would say, he redefines Christianity as do you believe the right things about God? Now suddenly it's about orthodoxy. And the interesting thing about that is because it's about orthodoxy, I can say I'm a Christian if I believe the right doctrines and now I don't have to care for the poor.

I don't have to be nonviolent. In fact, long as I believe the right things, I can be just as violent as I wanna be And I can ignore the poor as much as I want. And I can amass as much personal wealth as possible. And I can still call myself a Christian. Why?

Because because now to be a Christian is to believe the right things, not to do Christ like things, which was the orthopraxy that was the focus before. And, again, I think it's one of the one of the really tragic things that, Constantine was allowed to do that, to to entangle us with the state, to redefine Christianity. And again, I just you can see the way he did it, and we're still suffering from it now. Yeah.

And you talking about the birth of the monastic movement. Yeah. It's interesting that orthodoxy and orthopraxy were separated so that you have a select group of people who are orthopractic. And it was fascinating to me that you even see this all the way up through Aquinas, where he's like, war can be just if it's done by the state, but hey, you priests, don't do this priests. And it's like, because that's not representing Christ.

It's like, why? That doesn't even make sense that you're going to divorce those two things. Like priests can't do this, but I can as a Christian.

And

I think that maybe that's talking about this with you has helped me to maybe understand that maybe that's why working with the poor for so many people is something that draws them to nonviolence. Because it's almost like it's maybe not the first time that you're engaging in orthopraxy, but the first big movement towards orthopraxy, and it almost like alivens, quickens your spirit. It causes you to realize that you aren't incarnational when you just believe something.

That's right.

And you have a quote from your book that I think is pertinent here. You said, If we want a world in which we finally lay down our instruments of war, whether they be words or weapons, it only begins when the peace we celebrate becomes the peace that incarnates. And I think it was after I read that that I really wanted to reach out to you because right now I'm doing a season on incarnation. And I think one of the things that I realized from 2016 on is I think what a lot of Christians do is we think that because we're in the world that we are incarnational. But I think that this idea of there's an idea I call reverse incarnation.

So let's say you're down in the ocean and you're drowning and a helicopter comes and drops this guy off. He jumps in with you. Helicopter flies away. And you're like, Oh, you're here to save me, right? He's like, No, no, no, I just jumped in the water.

I'm gonna die with you. He's being incarnate. Like, he's down there with you. I mean, what good is that gonna do you? Like, that's nice.

I have somebody to chat to while I die.

While I die. Yeah.

Doctor. What you need is you need an exit strategy. And I think what I realized about my life, and I think a lot of Christendom is, we are incarnational, we are in proximity to some people who are in need. And so we're incarnational in some ways. But especially after 2016, I saw that we don't have this idea, we don't have an exit strategy.

We're not sitting on a hill where we capitulate the ends justifying the means. And people are leaving the church because we don't have a helicopter to take them away. We don't have an exit strategy. We just go in and we die with them. So I would love for you to talk about the importance of incarnation as it relates to nonviolence and to Christianity.

And I think probably also tying this to discipleship. Because you had mentioned Constantine wasn't He didn't place himself under the church. He wasn't discipled. So discipleship and incarnation, how are how are those important to nonviolence in the Christian life?

Wow. That is a big question. I think you're right, though. I think they're I mean, to me, in some ways, these are the it's the same thing. I think discipleship oh, so I guess we should part probably start by defining discipleship.

Discipleship, the way I was raised, the way it was sort of communicated was discipleship was a class you take on Wednesday nights for, you know, three weeks or, you know, six weeks, whatever. And you have a workbook and you study some stuff and you answer some questions at the end and then you get a certificate. And it says, okay. Look at me. I I graduated the discipleship class.

And that literally is what we did in the churches that I grew up in. But I think that's so wrong. That is not at all what discipleship is. Mean, discipleship, according to Jesus in the New Testament and the early church pre Constantine, discipleship was, every day I wake up, I'm saying, okay, Holy Spirit, what are we doing today? Okay, Jesus, where are we going today?

It was a constant daily living of your life under the submission of, you know, the living in obedience to to the life of Christ within you. Right? So I'm I'm going to lay down my way of thinking, my automatic ways of responding, and I'm gonna instead do my best to live my life every day the way I believe Jesus would live my life if he were me. Right? If Jesus were me and he was in this situation, this is what I believe Jesus would do.

And to my best of my ability, as I'm abiding in Christ and Christ is abiding in me. And to me, that's discipleship. And discipleship also, I would say, I recognized is that, again, most of the ways I thought of discipleship, I was taught to think of discipleship growing up, was a top, again, a hierarchical top down thing. So you need to go to this older kind of Christian man or woman over here. They've been a Christian a long time.

They have so much wisdom and knowledge and truth. And you're gonna sit at their feet because, you know, sit down and listen to them, and they're gonna tell you what to do. And you're gonna like you know what I mean? Like, they are going to disciple you. And it's like very much like they're they've got all the information.

They've got all the wisdom, and you're gonna just do what they say. That is not New Testament discipleship. Discipleship, again, and under the New Testament model is that, like, within, let's say, the body of Christ, everyone is a disciple. Everyone is a disciple who is being discipled by somebody by by everyone else, not just someone else. So in other words, like, like, in the context that we had when we had a little house church community for, eleven years in Southern California, we practiced this, right?

So I wasn't the boss. I wasn't the pastor. I wasn't the leader. We did everything we could to make Christ the center and Christ was our focus. We were all following Christ together.

And in that model, I mean, I was being discipled by nine year old girls and 12 year old boys and 80 year old women and 20 year old, you know, single women. And I mean, like, everybody in the room because everyone had Christ in them, and everyone had something of Christ to share. And I we all have to put ourselves in a position where we are capable of being led and taught. And that's why that's why one of the fifty eight one anothers in the New Testament is submit to one another. Everyone submits to one another in love, trusting that the people in in in the fellowship love me and they care about me.

And and they're and, you know, again, I follow them as they follow Christ. So everyone is discipling everybody else. We're all disciples who are being discipled, and we're all discipling each other. So it's not top down. It's very much in a sort of a horizontal lateral kind of a way.

So we're all brothers and sisters, and we're all there's only one Lord, that's Christ. There's only one king, one teacher, etcetera, that's Christ. And so if you practice that kind of a model, then it is very much an incarnational model because that's what I'm doing now. I'm living my life as Christ would live it if he were me. And so when you do those things, you can't help I mean, starting point should be, again, we talked about this, the sermon on the mount, right?

So we start with the red letters. And immediately, these are the major things Jesus is talking about. The way you care for the poor is the way you love him. Don't say you love me if you don't care for them. Right?

If you've done it for them, you've done it for Love your enemies. You know, it's it's this whole thing of, like, to follow Christ in this way is to be a disciple and is to be incarnational. They're not two different things. They're the same thing. And to the degree that you are following Christ in that way on a daily basis, and you are being discipled by other believers who are doing that too.

So in other words, this was a big epiphany for me. I I hope this answers your question. Tell me if I'm rambling. But so I remember reading I love Dallas Willard, and I actually got to interview him a couple of times before he died. And I remember reading Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart, and they're very much books focused on this sort of personal submission to Christ in your daily life.

Right? That that's what he's all about. It is about that sort of be becoming yourself a follower of Jesus. Okay? And and the way you do that is every day you submit yourself to Christ.

And so but what I recognized was in the church context, every if everybody in the room is also submitting themselves to Christ on a daily basis, then when we come together, we are all submitted to Christ together and also therefore to one another. And this is the way this is where to me the discipleship piece comes in. Because if I'm in a room with people who are all also submitted to Christ in that same way, then we can't help but point each other to Christ. We can't help but learn from one another and see Christ in one another and be spurred on

to those

sort of good works of following Christ in that way, to the degree that we all do that. So I do think those two things are very, very important. And again, I guess I don't see much of a separation between discipleship and incarnation.

Okay. And maybe this would be a good point because as you're talking, I think a lot of what you're saying reminds me, and if I pronounce this wrong, mimesis, mimesis? Yeah, mimesis, yeah. Mimesis. Okay.

I've only ever heard one or two other people talk about that just with the circles that I run-in. And it's something that every time I hear it, I'm like, oh yeah, that's fascinating. And so I would love for you to maybe because it seems to me, if I'm not mistaken, that discipleship and incarnation really relate to this a lot because when you talk about as human beings, we want to mimic something. And so I think a of people in my group say, well, the world is so alluring that people are drawn away from it because they want to mimic that. And what I'm coming to see is, no, it's just that the church isn't creating a countermemitic, which is essentially what discipleship is.

Can you talk about mimesis and how that might relate to this and impact this discussion?

Yeah. Yeah, Derek. That's exactly right. And that is what I find. Yeah.

That when you study so Renee Gerard is the guy that kinda verbalized this for, you know, modern Christians. And and at first, I thought it was nonsense. But then the Mart read it read his books and and really thought about it. I like, oh my gosh. This guy, I think he's genius.

I think he's figured it out. And all he's really doing is pointing out what's already there. This is the thing. He's not inventing something. It's already there.

And he's just helping us see something that's already there. So mimesis or memetic theory is really just recognizing that human beings this is how we operate. Every human being is mimetic. I don't care if you don't think you are. You are.

And this is part of what Gerard wants to point out is that most of us, it's a blind spot. We don't we don't recognize it. And part of what what part of what the scriptures are doing is, number one, pointing it out to us. Yes. You are memetic, and this is one of your biggest problems.

This is what, so I guess I should explain what, like, what mimesis is first, and then I can show you how how scripture points it out to us. So, again, like you said, we are all mimetic, meaning we all mimic the desire one another's desires. We we think we our desires are our own, but the truth is they're not. Mimesis can be simply described as like, if you have a toddler in a small room alone with a room full of toys, they'll pick up one or two toys and play with them and ignore all the rest until another toddler comes in. And then that toddler picks up a different toy that up to this point, the first toddler has ignored and cared nothing about.

And the minute that that second toddler finds a toy and and has joy in that toy and loves that toy, what does the first toddler do? Mine. I want that. Why do you want it all of a sudden? You didn't care about it before.

Why do you want it now? Because they want it. Because I see them enjoying it and I see how much they desire it and that makes me desire it too. And so this mimetic it's every human being does it. In some ways, we couldn't be human apart from this mimetic mechanism because it's how babies learn to speak the language that they're born into.

So Japanese babies can learn Japanese like that, even though it takes you and me the rest of our life to learn Japanese. We weren't born in the Japanese culture, right, they can do it instantly. Why? Because there's this built in mimetic mechanism that teaches babies how to, you know, care about what their parents care about, laugh at what their parents think is funny, enjoy the foods that their parents think taste good, act and behave and speak the way their parents do, and then then their peers as they get older and all this kind of stuff. So every human being in every culture does this.

We cannot escape it. But that so there's a good component to it. Right? The the one level, it's necessary and it's a good thing. Or it becomes evil or bad or gets corrupted is when that that mimesis, that mimicking of other people's desires, it creates a conflict.

And the 10 commandments points this out. I think six of the 10 commandments specifically point this out to us. It's God saying to us, hey, guys, this is your problem as human beings. You you desire other gods. You desire your neighbor's wife.

You wanna commit adultery. Why? Because you see someone else who's not your wife and you desire that person. And so it's it's all rooted the majority of, again, of quote unquote, the sins that are pointed out in the 10 commandments are the root of them is this wrong desire. And and the the sort of the good thing is that it says, this is your problem.

You have these wrong desires. The bad thing is it just says stop it. It says don't. But the but the what we know is that, well, I can't stop it. What are you talking about?

I'm human being. I these I am a medic by nature, and I can't not desire these other things. All of my desires are borrowed from people around me. And that's just that is a human condition. But what Jesus does this is why discipleship, I think, is beautiful.

Because what Jesus does is Jesus shows up and rather than say, stop it, stop being mimetic. Jesus says, you can't I know you can't stop being mimetic. So if you're gonna mimic somebody and mimic the desires of other people, mimic me and mimic my desires. Because when we mimic Jesus, Jesus is the one who doesn't have that kind of mimesis that the rest of us do. Jesus mimetic desire, he says, is to do the will of his father, to please his father.

Jesus desire is to love his neighbor. And so when I begin to, again, just redirect my built in mimetic mechanism that I cannot turn off and on. But then I redirect it towards Jesus and I say, okay, I'm gonna mimic this Jesus person. Jesus says, follow me. That's what that is.

The whole thing hinges on. Right? Take up your cross daily, die to yourself and follow me. So by following Jesus, discipling myself to Jesus, mimicking Jesus, I now now when I look at my neighbor, I don't look at what my neighbor has and I wanna take it away from him. I wanna I wanna steal it or take it or does I desire what my neighbor has.

By mimicking Jesus, when I look at my neighbor, what I notice is what they don't have. They don't have enough food. They're they don't have enough clothing. They don't have enough shelter. What do I have that I could give to them?

So by mimicking Jesus, it reverses the desire of desiring other people's things to take them for myself. And it reverses the flow of it. So now I'm giving to them. I'm loving them. I'm sharing.

I'm generous. I'm not I'm not grasping. And that again is this beautiful thing that Jesus does. If you in one way, you wanna say it, this is one of the ways I would say Jesus quote unquote saves us from our sins. If we're gonna define our sins as us being slaves to this mimetic desire that the 10 commandment says we we are and we can't escape from.

Jesus, the first time says, don't just say he doesn't just say stop it. He says, here's how to escape it and to turn it around. And that's, again, the beautiful thing that I think that's the most necessary thing about us recognizing our need to to mimic Jesus, to become disciples of Jesus.

Yeah. We're right around the hour mark. I have about two or three more questions. You have time?

Absolutely. Okay.

So that yeah, that's wonderful. But it brings up a really difficult question for me, which is if mimesis is so important and what we have represented for us is what we mimic, then that seems like church discipline and morality would be something that's at the forefront of our concerns. At the same time, in the nonviolent community especially, there is a much more accepting and loving manner towards people who are sinners, right? Mean, everybody's a sinner, but I mean, like towards the people that everybody knows are like egregious sinners. How do you how can the church be accepting and loving, but at the same time, uphold this purity, which isn't just a I don't want to make it come across as like a moralistic purity like the but like an honest, important purity, because if we don't exemplify what is good, then people are going to mimic what is bad.

That's right.

How do you hold those two things intention and work through that?

Yeah. It's a good question. So, again, I can I think I can probably just speak much much more on, like, my experience? Right? So for, like, eleven years, we were practicing this kind of stuff and meeting in homes and and not having a hierarchy and all of that.

So our our assumption was that everybody who was a part of our church family, that you were only there because I mean, this is kind of essentially what we said to people. Like, again, we don't have a statement of faith, so we're not asking to join us because you agree with any kind of theology. What we what we said was, like, do you love Jesus? And is it your intention to follow Jesus in your actual life? And is your idea of a great time spending, like, four hours, you know, at a time with these with a a group of people who just talk about Jesus and follow Jesus and encourage one another to know Jesus and and all that.

So, like, if if that's what you are saying that you who you are and what you care about and what you wanna be and what you wanna do, then you're in. You're welcome. Like, because that's what we wanna do. Right? So if you're in that gathering and that is the sort of the the assumptions of of why we're here, is we all love Jesus and we all wanna follow Jesus, and we're helping each other follow Jesus.

Right? As I said, we're discipling one another and all that. So let's say, as you said, somebody is not doing that or not doing that or or, you know, this, like you said, some kind of a sin, like a church discipline needs to be whatever. And so, again, the there is a model. Right?

Jesus gives us a model. Right? That if if there is someone who's living in this way that isn't again, it's the focus is orthopraxy. So you you have a concern for your brother or your sister that they're behaving in a way that goes against what they have said they care about, which is I wanna follow Jesus. I want the character of Christ to more and more be evident in in my life.

Well, okay. I do too. And I want that for you because I love you. And I and I believe that that's what you really want. So then when I so if I felt like there was something like, you know what?

I'm not I feel like they're moving away from that. Well, that's that's the basis by which I would have a private conversation with that person. Not like, I'm judging you. You're bad. You're you're doing something horrible.

You should repent and stop. Like, no. I come to them and go, you know, I just wanna remind you how much I love seeing Christ in you. And I have seen Christ in you, and it's beautiful. And it's been a wonderful thing for me to experience more of Christ in you because when I do, it helps me follow Christ.

And, you know, and I know that this is something that is important to you. And so it's in that context that I would say, do you feel like this one thing that I I'm seeing you're doing this or I what I say, I sense this thing is happening. Do you feel like that's helping you do that, or do you feel like it's pulling you away? Right? It's it's not a condemnation.

It's just a conversation. And, you know, then there's levels of it. Like, if they don't respond to that, well, then maybe you go with another brother or sister, and they also give a testimony of like like, Cash, I I love seeing Christ in you. I I I mean, I'm encouraged to follow Christ when I see you behaving in these Christ like ways. There's this one thing that I just feel like is going against that, that that I think you would even wanna take a step back and say, if you saw somebody if you saw me doing it, you'd wanna say, wow, Keith, are you sure that's something that would be good for you to follow Christ this way?

Like, is this following Christ if you're doing this? So again, it's always from the place of humility. It's always from the place of great love and concern for that person. That's what I think we see the evidence of in the in in Jesus saying, you know, going privately and all this stuff. The goal is always restoration and reconciliation.

The goal isn't to kick that person out of the church. That's not the point. In fact, that's the last thing anybody wants. We never want that. And thank God we never had to ever basically kick anybody out.

I I mean, we we had conversations like that now and again. But to be honest, you know, I would say for the most part, people very much responded again. It's not a it's not a, an abusive thing. It's so easy for it to become an abusive thing. My friend John Zenz has a wonderful way of perspective on this whole thing.

Like, again, I I you know, it says in the New Testament that we are to all to submit to one another. But here's the thing about submission in the body of Christ. Submission is something you grant. It is never something you demand. And so if everybody is operating on this level of I willingly submit to people in the body of Christ in why?

Because I know they love me and they care about me and they only want what's good for me. It's not something where I demand you submit to me. If anybody starts demanding submission, run. That now you're in the wrong spot. So I think if it's always done from a place of love and humility, then that church discipline really looks very different than most of us have probably experienced in our in our church experience.

I know I have. I've experienced it very differently. It's always been, you know, with a threat or very much a power over you kind of a thing versus just a genuine concern of like, hey, man. I really love you. I really care about you.

And and I because I love you, because I care about you in private, very discreetly, I'm not gonna talk about you. I'm not gonna gossip. I'm not gonna spread some rumors about you. I'm gonna come personally and privately directly to you and have a conversation with you that's all about love and that the goal of that conversation is restoration. And again, it's pretty uncommon.

Most of us have never experienced that, but I have experienced it in ways that have always been healing and always have been seeking the best for that person.

Yeah. As you were talking, I'm sorry, I just lost my train of thought. Yeah, oh yeah, I thought of Jesus because I think what, I mean, what you said is so, it makes so much sense. Like when I think about Jesus, he didn't care about his reputation. He ate with tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, because he cared about them.

And I think sometimes when I frame this question about church discipline and the purity of the church, I'm so focused on, well, how do we maintain the church's reputation, Christ's And so, well, he wasn't even concerned about that himself. What he was concerned about was bringing the one lost sheep and loving the sinner. And it's so easy to be focused on that result of purity as opposed to what makes Jesus says, they'll know you're my disciples, by the way you love one another.

That's

right. And in trying to maintain the purity of the church, we often end up not loving the sinner.

That's exactly right. And we and we end up not recognizing, like you were saying, that we're sinners too. Like, it's not like all the all the rest of us have cracked this sin thing. It's you're you're the problem. You need to figure it out.

Right? You you're you've broken you've broken the rules. It's like, no. We are all again, it's that whole that whole point of Jesus' story about, you know, before you go to your brother or sister to talk to them about the speck in their eye, you should have first wrestled long and hard with that plank in your eye. And and so what that means is if I really have recognized my own struggles in in areas that I struggle with, and I've really, really dealt with it.

And for me, it was a plank. Right? Well, then when I see a brother or sister wrestling with the same thing, I mean, were going through the same stuff I am. How can I not come to them with incredible humility and great compassion and be like, man, I know what that feels like? I know this is hard.

I know this isn't easy. In fact, it was harder for me to deal with this than it could I'm sure it's than it is for you. Right? There's so much humility and there's so much grace that I think Jesus intends for us to come to one another with like that. If we can come with it with that kind of an attitude.

And gosh, I think if we do, it's so much better. The other thing about it too, I think, like you were saying about being concerned about our reputation. I think so much you're right. I think so much of church discipline is more about we must project this this picture of holiness and perfection to the world. Look at us.

We are holy and good and perfect, and there's nothing bad. And, yeah, I don't think that's right. I think it is more like what we should project is we man, we are compassionate people. We are patient and loving and kind and upset and and accepting of one another. And are there some people in our body who are wrestling with some things?

Yes. They are. But you know what? We love them all the same. That's great.

Like, I'd rather that be what we project. It's not that we're perfect and we've we've none of us ever fail. It's like, no. We're a bunch of people. We all fail.

More some of us are struggling harder with others than others are in other areas. But you know what? We don't relate to one another that way. We we see each other, and we celebrate the Christ of one another. And we're being patient with one another, and we're helping one another grow and mature in the ways we need to.

And give them, know, give them as much time as it's gonna take for them to figure that out.

Yeah. And that's especially convicting as I think of that in the way that I often discipline my children. It's because I'm I'm concerned about how that looks, you know, on me.

Oh,

yeah. What other people are going to think.

That's exactly right, man. I've done the same thing. It's exactly right.

All right. So last question, and this heavy like a lot of the other ones, but it's maybe a more practical thing and speculative, and I find it really difficult. My wife and I have been having a lot of conversations about what we consume in terms of entertainment. And you had something in your book where you talk about Xbox, you know? Yeah.

And that's definitely something that I struggled with because I was a big Halo, Call of Duty person. And same thing in entertainment. I mean, like movies like Lord of War or American History X, which I mean are violent movies. But then I also, when you read the book of Judges and Ehud stabs Eglon and the guts come out and cover the hilts and all that stuff, I mean, like the Bible has violence in it as well. Yes.

So, and I understand that not all things are beneficial and sometimes it's just wisdom and like, sure, you can go do it, but it's not wise. When we talk about mimesis and the things that you consume, the things that you are around are going to form you and shape you whether you know it or not. What is something that so as we try to be discipled and as we recognize our mimetic tendencies, what's some wisdom that you might have in trying to discern what sorts of things we can consume? Because I can justify watching something like American History X, which is a wonderful movie in terms of talking about white supremacy and racism. And it's just so moving, yet at the same time, it's violence.

Right. And so do you justify watching that because, well, you're not watching that for entertainment, you're watching that as more commentary? Anyway, what are some guidelines, insights that you might be able to provide as to how we're shaped and how we should consume?

Yeah. Well, I'm really careful, Derek, about, I I am I didn't write my book, and I didn't put that part of in the book about my personal decision to put away my Xbox and not play Fallout three and and and all those kind of games as as a way of saying you should too. Like, I I don't wanna I I I don't wanna create a new law. I don't wanna create a new list of thou shalt nots and do's and don'ts and that kind of thing. So I I just wanna be upfront really careful about that.

I'm not I don't want anyone to say, well, Keith said I shouldn't do this, so I shouldn't do it. But what I did put it in there for was to share I do think but I do think that we as individual followers of Jesus need to be open to doing that kind of self reflection to ask ourselves, you know, is this inner if it's entertainment, if it's video games or movies or maybe it's sports, you know, maybe it's a violent sport. It's sort of football bashing into people or whatever, hockey. I don't know. Whatever it happens to be.

Like, again, it's it's not to say that is a wrong thing. Right? Xbox is wrong. Hockey is wrong. I know.

No. It's not. I don't think it is. And and any more than to say, like, well, alcohol is wrong. Well, maybe for some people it is, but for other people, it's not.

And then again, you need to be able to take some self reflection. That's all I'm saying. And and and putting that part in the book about how I felt like I I what I got convicted by was like, okay. I'm I'm committed to nonviolence. I don't believe in violence.

I don't believe it solves problems. I don't believe that violence is something that Jesus wants us to to do. And yet was I know what I was noticing in myself was like, man, when I wanna blow off steam or relax, I pop on this video game. And then the whole point of the game is, like, slow motion, you know, blowing people's brains out and killing as many bad guys as possible. And, like and I was getting some kind of a rush from that.

I was, like, being pacified by that. I was being that violence was sort of becoming maybe a substitute for something that I maybe I shouldn't turn to violence for that thing. You know what I mean? Like, that's probably not a good healthy thing for me to do because even though I'm saying I'm nonviolent and yet I have a whole lot of space in my mind and in my in my life for violence in in under certain contexts. And so, yeah, for me, I just I reached a place where I've I just felt like for me, it's probably a good thing for me to let let that go.

You know? Lay that aside. I don't I don't wanna do that. But I think everybody has to, for themselves, figure that out. You know what I mean?

And and and I think we should all be careful to do this too. So let's say you have had a similar conviction. Right? Maybe you're like, yeah, I prayed about it, and I think Jesus wants me to not play football or hockey anymore, or he doesn't want me to play Halo anymore. Or I feel like I shouldn't you know, it's not good for me to watch violent movies anymore because I can recognize why.

I recognize that it's doing something in me that's that's distracting me from following Jesus or it's in contradiction to something that I think is important about following Jesus. In other words, there's gotta be something specific that I can identify and say it's it's it's specifically drawing me away from following Jesus in this particular way that I really feel is important for me. And so let's say you have that conviction and you make those decisions. Great. That's for you.

Don't make it your mission now to tell everybody else how they also should should do the same thing that you're doing. That's, I think, the mistake that we can make quite often. And I so I don't wanna do that. I but I but I would say in general yeah. I guess here's the other thing I would say about this.

Don't go looking for something. Right? Because I didn't do that. I didn't, like, sit around going, okay. What's something in my life that I need to fast from or cut out of my life or, like, some artificial kind of, like, exercise I'm gonna do to just do something.

You know what mean? It's almost kinda like self flagellation or you know what I mean? Like or it's like, you know, the the the there's a big deal about, right, in following Jesus about dying to ourself. But then Phenelon, who I love, he's a like a sixteenth century Catholic bishop. He has wrote a series of letters called Let Go that I really love.

And he he makes a remark as he's discipling somebody and he's writing to this young man. And he points out to him. He goes, yes. It's important for you to die to yourself and to die to your flesh. He goes but but he points out, even Jesus didn't nail himself to the cross.

So stop trying to crucify yourself. Okay? This has to be something where, don't worry about it. Like when you are at the place where this becomes a problem in your life, if you are already abiding in Christ, you're already a disciple of Jesus, you're already living your life in this way, and in other words, you are leaning in this direction already, the spirit will bring up the problem things when they need to be brought up. And until then, you don't need to go artificially looking for them.

So I I guess in in general, what I'm saying is just be open to those things. If, you know, that little if that still small voice sort of whispers to you, hey. What about this? What do you think? Okay.

Then be open to that and and and be honest about that. Like, well, okay. Let me let me let me allow the spirit to search my heart in this way. But otherwise, yeah, I don't think we need to go looking for stuff, to to kind of make it happen. Right?

Because again, we don't do it. This isn't something we make happen. It's something we participate and collaborate with the spirit in.

Yeah. That's very helpful. And I think I can understand, like, you said is very freeing in a sense. But I think to people from my persuasion, you could probably understand this coming out of the SBC that, or if you've read Peter Enns talking about the idea of like, evangelicals tend to love certainty. What you say a lot of times is very scary because it's, I mean, well, what's the answer?

Like, what's the right answer to church discipline? What's the right answer to what I should cut out for my life? It's almost as if Christianity is a relationship with give and take and I need to be constantly discerning, you know?

That's exactly right. I know in the, that's exactly right. In the house church context, when I was really involved in the house church movement early on, that was so the number one question with house churches is always, what do you do with the kids? And everyone's always looking for what's the one thing. Like, tell me what I should do with children.

Should they be part of the group? Should they have a separate group? Should they be there with us for a little bit, but then we invite them to leave when we get more serious or whatever? There's all these you know, that's like the biggest, biggest question. And my favorite answer to that question, and I wish it was mine.

I didn't come up with this. I think it was my friend Ross Rody said this. Somebody somebody asked him that question once, and he said, I don't know. Ask Jesus. I thought that's the answer.

I think it's the answer to all these things. Like, don't ask me. I don't know. Why don't you you have Christ in you. Right?

You you're following Christ. You have the mind of Christ. Develop a discernment and a conversation and a relationship with Jesus in such a way that when you have a question, don't ask Keith. Don't ask anybody else. You know, be still and know and listen and and see what Jesus says, you know, and do that.

And then don't worry about anybody else's.

Yeah. Well, that's all I I have for you. I don't know if you have any closing thoughts or words, something you you wanted to say that you didn't.

Not not really. I guess I would just say thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation. I really like where we went. And hopefully, book you know, if anybody's interested in this topic of following Jesus into nonviolence and and all these kind of questions that we've covered in this conversation, I do recommend the book. I think it would be helpful.

There's a whole lot of mean, you and I didn't get into like, but what about the going by a sword? What about Jesus turning over the tables in the temple? And what about revelation coming back with a sword out of his mouth and all that kind of stuff? So, you know, there's this whole conversation of following Jesus into nonviolence. There's so many nuances to it.

There's so many levels of it. Even the idea of like, yeah, but nonviolence doesn't work. And what about World War II and all this stuff? Believe it or not, I did my best to answer all of those objections and all those questions because I've been dealing with these things for twenty years. So there's a whole lot more in the book that you and I didn't get to that it's much more practical, much more than the typical kinds of objections I think people have when it comes to this question of following Jesus into nonviolence and how do I do this and how do I make it work?

So I do think the book would be helpful to anybody curious about that or who wants to move in that direction. So I do recommend it. Check it out.

Yeah. I was pleasantly surprised by your book, not because I didn't think you're capable of writing a good book just because I've read so many things on violence. I was like, okay, this is going to be kind of just a recap of everything. And I mean, there was definitely a recap of things, but you brought in a number of angles. Mimesis in particular was one of the things and your, I forget what you called them, the negatives.

The limited negatives, yeah.

So there were definitely things that I didn't catch elsewhere, but this would definitely be one of the two or three books I would recommend to people first starting out because you do cover so much ground in in a relatively simple fashion that that people can understand from the beginning, I think.

Yeah. Thanks a lot. That's what I try to do. I try to simplify things that are complicated and difficult and hopefully hopefully make it something where the everyday person can grasp some of these concepts. So, yeah, thank you.

I I I hope so. And if anybody wants to connect with me, I'm on my blog on Pathios, keychaws.com. I'm on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Happy to interact with anybody who has any further questions about this kind of stuff.

Alright. Well, thanks so much.

Thanks, Derek.

That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.