Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are starting a new season talking about voting. Now, for those of you in The States, you know that this year is an election year. And really, you've probably been very aware of this for like two years because there's not really much downtime between presidential election seasons as like two or two and a half years before the next presidential election, you're already getting commercials and the media is going crazy and and putting all kinds of articles out there. So this is something that that has just been we've been bathed in here for a while now.

Derek: 01:07

But still, there's this ramping up of of everything and of coverage and stuff as you get closer to the actual election. And so everybody talks about the importance of being an informed voter. So I want to talk to you and help you to be as informed as possible on your options. Because most people are going to talk to you about, you know, the the Republicans and the Democrats and, you know, the the merits that each of those have. But very few people are going to branch out and really tell you all of the options that you have.

Derek: 01:43

And so to just lay things out there for this first episode, this season, I want to talk to you exclusively about the option of abstention from voting. Now you might be thinking to yourself, why would you have a whole season talking about abstention from voting? I mean, wouldn't that be like, you know, a doctor or somebody, a health professional saying, hey, you know what? I'm going to do a seminar on not exercising. No.

Derek: 02:14

Or a teacher, you know, telling students, you know, tomorrow we are going to have a class, like all day, we are just going to talk about and learn about not doing your schoolwork. I think that's probably how abstention sounds to a lot of people. They'd say, well, why would I want to know how to do an unhealthy, irresponsible sort of thing? Like, that just doesn't make any sense. But I can tell you, and I'll I'll get more into my story a little bit later, but I can tell you that there was a an election that I felt like I was just going to mar my soul by making one of the main choices that that people were making, and I needed to to explore other alternatives because I thought there were only two alternatives.

Derek: 03:03

And so, yeah, you might feel ineffective engaging in abstention, but I do think that that's that's kind of a misunderstanding, and we're going talk about the practicality of abstention a little bit later in the season. But also, just from a Christian standpoint, the refusal to mar one soul, the refusal to engage in evil, and the the upholding of integrity and faithfulness despite potential consequences, negative consequences, or a lack of positive results, feeling like you're you're not doing anything. And so I want to talk to you about this very important option of abstention from voting, and why I think that it should be a viable option that you have on the table, or that you at least respect in others who choose to abstain. But this season, I'm also going to argue that I think it's actually almost always, if not always, the appropriate moral choice for Christians, at least in terms of of large scale voting like, you know, national presidential elections or congressional elections and stuff. So that's kind of a a really big overview of where we're going.

Derek: 04:21

Now, let's let's zoom in a little bit more and and give you a feel for where we're headed more specifically. So this season is actually going to be a lot of repeat episodes. If you've been around The Fourth Way for any extended length of time, you have probably heard quite a number of episodes that pertain to voting, directly or indirectly, because I've done quite a lot. I mean, I had a season on non violent action and and involvement in the government and the ways that we petition and and things like that. I've had a season on the government and the, you know, the morality of engagement with government.

Derek: 05:04

I've had a season on consequentialism and and morality and ends justifying the means and discussing how that undergirds a lot of things including voting. And then we talked about propaganda in two seasons ago in season eleven, and discussed a lot about government and and involvement there. So we've had a lot of episodes that really touch on the issue of voting. But if you've been around for an extended length of time, you also know that in general, what I like to do is I like to create cumulative cases. I like to lay my seasons out in a way where there is logical progression towards some sort of case.

Derek: 05:46

So, for example, in our longest season, in my season on propaganda, season eleven, I made a progression from taking a look at propaganda and lies and deceit and how that was used on the small scale with domestic abusers. We took a look at the use propaganda's use in racism, in the media, medical community, government, and we just kind of we got bigger and bigger and bigger in terms of propaganda and conspiracies until we were taking a deep look at the government. So that's what I wanna do here in this season on voting. Since I have so much content already, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pull repeat episodes and I'm gonna create more extended introductions to a lot of them and tell you how they're going to fit in to to the season. So rather than trying to make the case piecemeal and hop around all over, you know, all over my seasons, I want to kind of streamline this for anybody who's interested in the topic of abstention so they can find everything all in one place here, and just kind of make the logical progression towards the the final case.

Derek: 06:57

Of course, you are free to jump around throughout the season as you wish, and in fact, would recommend that. And as you hear something that piques your interest, there are lots of other seasons to go back and explore that are gonna fill in a lot of the details for you. Nevertheless, I think this season is going to be particularly useful for researching abstention from voting, particularly from a Christian perspective. In this episode, all I really wanna do is I want to lay out for you my position on voting, and that will kind of give you a glimpse as to where we're gonna head this season. And I wanna describe how this season is structured so that you're gonna kind of understand where we're going, how we're gonna get to the conclusion.

Derek: 07:47

Because I'm willing to bet for most of you that as I lay out my case for why abstention should be on the table for Christians as a moral choice, and even a pragmatic one at times. It's probably going to be a case that you haven't heard before. So when I explain my position and how I got there today, and then I describe the rest of the season, you're gonna maybe hear some pieces where you say, oh, I really need to jump in at that part of the season and I need to hear an explanation about that. And so this is gonna give you a good idea of of where we're going and when you want to tune in. Alright.

Derek: 08:24

So first, I think probably the big question is, how in the world did I ever come to conclude that abstention is a a good thing and maybe even the good, the right thing for a Christian to do. And you're gonna need a little bit of my background story here just so you know that, you know, I I didn't grow up in an Amish community close. I mean, they they were close to me. I grew up in Pennsylvania. But my family, my friends, my school, like, we were not Amish, Anabaptist, you know, secluded sorts of people as as you might kind of envision those sorts of people as being.

Derek: 09:04

I was very much in the mainstream of culture. I went to a Christian school, but, you know, I I was I played on a hockey team who were very un Christian. We had lots of interactions with the secular community, with sports, with video games, with TV, movies. Like, we were we were not withdrawn from society. And in fact, going to the church that I did, and a lot of churches in in our it was non denominational, but a lot of churches that were kind of associated with our church and school and everything, they actually even had American flags up at the front, up at the front of, like, the church.

Derek: 09:48

And so I was raised in a culture that told me from when I was very little that patriotism was really good and that voting, it was not only a good thing to do, but it was actually a moral imperative. In fact, voting was so important that we had a bunch of people throughout the decades go over and kill some Vietnamese and Iraqis and North Koreans to secure that privilege for me to vote. And so to not vote would be to dishonor the memories of those people who died in the jungles of Vietnam so that I could cast my ballot. Now, I don't say that at all to tarnish the honor and loyalty and and all of that stuff that, you know, a lot of soldiers have had in going off and fighting in America's war. In fact, you can go to the very last episode we just played, which is the most one of the most powerful pieces, Memorial Day pieces that I think you can ever find by Harry Emerson Fosdick, a World War One veteran entitled The Unknown Soldier, who talks about how, you know, this sort of propaganda is just a it's actually the stain on the soldiers' lives.

Derek: 11:13

To connect this idea that soldiers going and fighting fighting in the jungles of Vietnam, that it has any connection to to my ability to vote or to my freedom. It just doesn't make any sense. And Fostik talks about that, how he he as a clergyman who went over and encouraged the boys to go off, you know, to to face their deaths, how he was a mouthpiece of that and how he came to the conclusion that with with the rest of his waking days, he was going to do the opposite. He was going to be the mouthpiece that kept men and women from being sent to their deaths for for nothing. But that's not the view that that we had growing up.

Derek: 12:02

The view that I had growing up was that I had to vote in order to, you know, honor those who sacrificed their lives for me. Stanley Howarwas has a great piece on this called The Sacrifices of War and the Sacrifice of Christ, and he connects this idea too of how, you know, sacrifice, human sacrifice is used as a cudgel that kind of guilts us into, you know, performing in a certain way, believing certain things, seeking to honor certain things. Just like for Christians, you know, Jesus' death on a cross is kind of what compels us towards loving service, or one of the main things. Howarwas argues that especially on nationalism and things like that, how you basically turn soldiers into those sorts of sacrifices, and you attach them to acts that you want to you want to perpetuate. So anyway, sorry, it's really hard for me not to go down these rabbit trails.

Derek: 13:13

You'll have to go and listen to our season on propaganda, on Just War Theory, all those other seasons. So that ties in here. But point is, I grew up in a culture that was extremely patriotic and extremely focused on voting. It's it's a it's a duty that I had, a responsibility that I had if I was going to love my neighbor. So really, I grew up with huge assumptions, and I I didn't care in the least to test those assumptions against reality, against other philosophical viewpoints, against Christian morality.

Derek: 13:55

Like, I didn't care to test it at all. It was just so self evident. And when you're that steeped in ideology or culture, it often takes a huge wake up moment to force any evaluation. There has to be some huge cognitive dissonance. And for me, that wake up moment was 2016.

Derek: 14:19

It was the twenty sixth or I guess it was probably 2015, whatever, whenever that presidential election was between President Trump and Hillary Clinton. And I don't wanna recap the whole thing because I recognize that I've I've actually talked about that in a lot of my various seasons. But in that election, I came to recognize that any vote I could cast for any of the mainline parties was going to be a vote for that which I assessed as blatantly evil. Different sorts of evil, right, but both were just blatantly evil. So in that election, I ended up voting third party.

Derek: 15:05

And I don't know that the third party candidate was, you know, would would pass the moral test per se, but like at that time, I could could hold my nose and and vote third party knowing that they didn't really have a chance of winning, but I I just could not vote for either of the main main party candidates. But so so that wasn't necessarily what caused me problems. Right? Okay. Vote third party.

Derek: 15:35

Right? Big deal. You got two bad candidates, so pick a third one. Yeah. But it was a big deal because what happened is all of the people who had been indoctrinating me, teaching me, discipling me my whole life, the vast majority of them, from my family, religious institutions, churches, everybody.

Derek: 16:00

Right? They were they were telling me that, no, no, no, don't vote vote third party, that's wasting your vote. They told me I had to vote, but I couldn't vote ethically, or how I thought was best. You know, I couldn't really vote my conscience. My conscience had to be Republican or Democrat, and for my community, really, if those are your only two options, your only option is a Republican, and I had to vote for results.

Derek: 16:33

Now, such an admonition against me, right, that I I couldn't vote third party, that I was throwing my vote away, that I wasn't choosing the greatest good, You know, such an admonition like that seemed wholly antithetical to Christian morality and to objective morality. Right? Probably because it was. But it was this antithetical spirit to to the Christ which which toppled the whole system for me. It just it blew things apart for me.

Derek: 17:03

If my if the people who had been discipling me my my whole life and and they didn't really believe in the importance of voting ethically, as evidenced by the fact that they were now telling me that I was wrong to vote ethically, right, then something is wrong with their moral system here. So that was the first big wake up call for me when my community just did not pass the smell test. Right? I knew that there was hypocrisy, there was just illogic, like the moral logic didn't make sense telling me that morality is objective and we have integrity and you can't throw off integrity, be faithful. And then all of a sudden, I was told to put those things on hold in order to achieve some particular result.

Derek: 18:00

So in that election, I voted for a third party candidate, but what was uncovered in my group for me in in the philosophical theological thinking of my group was that I needed to really reevaluate the whole system. This was much bigger than, oh, well, it's it's not just republican democrat, maybe I can vote third party. Right? It was kinda like, I need to to really reassess everything here in terms of politics and theology. So the biggest thing that I uncovered, which is going to be the first part of our season after this introductory episode, is this idea of consequentialism.

Derek: 18:40

As I started thinking through my belief system about what I was taught about politics and, you know, about moral integrity and all of that, I started to recognize that in this particular instance, in regard to voting, my group was consequentialists or prag pragmatists, whatever you want to call it. The ends justify the means. And I discovered as I went down that rabbit hole that consequentialism really bathed a whole lot of our Christian ethic here in The States, of conservative evangelical Christian ethic. My whole life I had heard bemoans this idea that our culture is moral relativists, you know, that it's whatever is true for you is true for you. And I recognize that really it's it's the same moral ethic in my Christian groups by and large.

Derek: 19:38

It's a moral relativism. Maybe, I don't know, maybe it's a little bit better because on moral relativism, it's whatever is true for you is true for you. But on Christian realism, it's more like, well, I know what's true, but since we're not living in an ideal world, you know what, I'm just gonna have to toss integrity and and morality to the side, and, you know, one day we'll pick that up in the kingdom of God when he brings that. And so it's it's sort of a little bit better in the sense that you recognize that there is objective truth and objective morality, but actually that kinda makes it worse because then to forego that means that you, you know, to to whom much has been given, much will be required. Like, you know what truth is.

Derek: 20:27

You know what goodness is, and then you're refusing to do it. And that that seems worse than moral relativism to me than kind of an ignorance about the the truth of morality. But anyway, I I have a whole season on consequentialism where I lay out that case for you. But in the next episode, I am going to pull out the the one, hopefully, the clincher episode for you that is going to just tear consequentialism down. It's going to tear it apart, blow it out of the water, and you're just gonna see how antithetical to Christian morality consequentialism is.

Derek: 21:06

Like, it's just untenable as a Christian to hold to that. And that's for Christians, I mean, that's gonna be the crux of my my non pragmatic argument. Right? The the argument from just moral integrity and faithfulness is going to rely on you coming to the conclusion, if you if you haven't already, that consequentialism is not a tenable Christian position. It's heretical, unorthodox, whatever you wanna call it, you can't do it.

Derek: 21:35

Like, they don't coexist consequentialism with the ethic of Jesus Christ. And and then a lot of the rest of the season is going to be showing you how how you any engagement then in voting because of of what government is and and what all that entails is going to force you into a consequentialist decision. So even if you hate me so far, I challenge you, at least just listen to the next episode. If you get through the next episode and you're you're not convinced, then I don't think I'm gonna convince you after that as a Christian. After that episode on consequentialism, the consequentialist ethic, I am going to take a look at one chapter of one of my favorite books of all time, just a an extremely powerful book written by a a Christian, abolitionist, anarchist, sort of, like he wasn't completely about not no government whatsoever, but especially because he was an abolitionist, kind of saying, Look, I can't participate in government at all at this time.

Derek: 22:48

And also because he was nonviolent, you know, I can't participate in a in a violent government. And so Balu writes this fantastic book, but this one chapter in particular I'm gonna pull out as just a sampling for you to be able to kind of hear his case that applies particularly particularly to voting. And actually, he has like one or two other chapters that deal with voting too. And I actually, for my last season, season twelve, when I read some great works, I have Aiden Balu's work reproduced in whole in that season. So you could actually just go and listen to that after you finish this episode and hear his whole book.

Derek: 23:29

But at least for the next episode, I'm going to create a a new introduction to that episode and tell you kind of how it fits in. And then you're gonna get to hear from a great mind why he has an issue in participation with government in the form of voting. And just to kinda spoil things a little bit and wet your palette for what he's gonna argue, his essential argument is just that, look, if if I vote at all, and remember, he's he's voting while there is slavery and he is very against slavery. He said, look, if let's say I vote for Abraham Lincoln, and I know that he wants to emancipate the slaves. But Abraham Lincoln loses, and this other guy from the, you know, from the slavery party, he wins.

Derek: 24:23

And what am I going to do? Well, I throw up my hands and say, well, you know, I voted and I'm gonna wait four years until it comes around again to vote again. And of course, you can do other things, you know, you can protest, you can write signs, you can write to your your elected leaders, you can do other things. But what Balu's point is in this chapter is that, yeah, but basically when you vote, you are agreeing to the system. You are saying, okay, I'm gonna give it a shot.

Derek: 24:56

If my guy doesn't win, I consent to the rule of the other person. I can I've approved of the process. I have thrown my piece of power into the ring, and I've handed that over and and and that's just kind of the way it is. I've approved it. It's kind of like when my kids, they'll, you know, they'll wanna make a decision, but of course, there's a lot of self interest involved, you know, who gets to pick a show or who gets the the first pick of dessert.

Derek: 25:25

And so they'll they'll say, oh, let's do rock, paper, scissors. And inevitably, almost every time, they play rock, paper, scissors and the person who loses says, no, that's not fair. And we tell our kids all the time, we say, hey, look, if you would not have agreed to do rock paper scissors, and you would have through dialogue just continued to try to work things out and not come to an agreement, you know, we would have kept the TV off or that dessert would have sat there until you were able to come to a resolution. But when you agree to a process and you submit to that process, then the results, whether you like them or not, so long as they're they're a part of that process, then that's all you, right? You are responsible for those results and for dealing with those results and for maybe not liking it, but submitting, right?

Derek: 26:21

And and that's Balu's argument here with government. Whatever if you go vote and the government does something that is constitute you know, your person that you don't want gets in office, but they do something that is constitutional, that you don't like, too bad for you, you've consented. Right? You've handed over your consent and you agree to that. So that means for conservative Christians who don't like abortion, when you agree to the process, then essentially what you're gonna do is you are handing over your authority, and when somebody gets in office and ends up promoting abortion, not rescinding it, making more liberal laws, whatever you wanna however you wanna look at it, then, hey, you're you're responsible for that.

Derek: 27:13

Right? Because you agreed to the process. You consented. So you'll get to hear that whole chapter from Baloo later, and it's something that you really have to mull over and really works well if you read his whole treatise. Nevertheless, it'll be a good look next episode.

Derek: 27:32

So after talking about consequentialism and taking a look at, you know, what government entails and what voting kind of gets you, we'll specifically look at the the process of voting. We're going to take a look at the morality of voting, what Christian responsibility looks like, what Christians are called to, what our moral responsibilities are, and we'll also take a look at the the pragmatism of abstention versus voting. What does voting actually get you, and what might abstention do for you? How might that work out in the real world? And after we do that and look specifically at voting, we will, in the final section of the season, be looking at the kingdom aspect of voting, which is going to include some interviews with a variety of Christians, and some hopefully good discussions, which I think I'm going to pull largely from our season on propaganda towards the end with Doctor.

Derek: 28:36

George Kalantzis, and maybe one or two other interviews as well. So I know that this episode probably just maybe fired you up because most people aren't going to agree with me, especially right out the gate. So you are probably not liking me too much at the moment. Nevertheless, I hope that you will at least hear out my case throughout the season. At least give the next few episodes a listen, especially the next one, and have a dialogue with me if you want.

Derek: 29:09

Reach out to me, email, whatever. But for those of you who just feel like you are exiles, exiles in Babylon, that you don't have a home, that you have been forced into just a moral no win situation, especially over the last decade or so in politics. I think there's hope for you here. I think I'm going to help you to see that abstention is a viable option, if not even the right option for you to take and how you can be a good responsible citizen and Christian and how you can love your neighbor through this. That's all for now.

Derek: 29:55

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 nonviolence and Kingdom Living.