Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. We are continuing our discussion today on consequentialism by taking a look at real world examples of where we can see Consequentialism in action. Since many of the areas of Consequentialism we've talked about are kind of esoteric, like grace or love, and they're less tangible. And the other aspects of consequentialism we've talked about like consequentialism in ectopic pregnancies or lying to save lives are less applicable since we likely won't face those situations. I wanted to point out how I believe consequentialism is impacting the world today and how it seeped into our ethic.

Before we get into specific examples, it is important to understand that you will likely disagree with me as to whether or not some of these examples are good examples of consequentialism. There might be some actions or ideas which I describe that you might believe are moral, while I believe they're compromised with consequentialism. And the point of this episode is not to get you to agree with every single moral position I hold, but instead I want to provide you with enough examples so you can latch onto a few and recognize how consequentialism is exemplified in the real world. Let's take a start by looking at how I believe we can see the effects of consequentialism in religion. One of the most tragic examples of consequentialism I've seen in religion is the way in which the Christian world has handled sex scandals.

These sex scandals aren't really relegated only to the Catholic Church. We have a trainer in our church who trains all individuals who are going to work with children like in the nursery and such. And I don't remember exactly the exact data, but it was like, you know, what was the leading cause of prosecution in The United States for Protestant churches in 2012? Sexual sexual misconduct or sexual allegations. Twenty thirteen, same.

Twenty fourteen, same. Twenty fifteen, same. Not 2016. Twenty '17, same. Twenty eight, you know, it was like that.

It was like, oh my goodness. This is this is the problem in Christian churches today, not just the Catholic church. This sex abuse, molestation, all that stuff. You know what? While I can understand that individuals fall and people who you think are awesome do evil things, even even really evil things like molestation and child abuse and sexual misconduct, all that stuff.

What has what has gotten me about all of these sex scandals is that you you don't just have individuals doing them. You have pastors doing these things, priests doing these things, deacons doing these things, and then essentially being protected by the congregation or the the leadership, where there's denial, sweeping under the rug, ignoring a lack of seeking restoration, a lack of repentance and admission. I just I can't I don't understand the systemic, or systematic, issue. I I don't know how if your pastor does something like this, you're not calling them to repent and you're not asking them to step down and get counseling and, you're not seeking restoration with the the families and the people. And I I just don't know how how that's the case, how, we aren't able to hold each other accountable, we we sweep it under the rug.

But then again, I think I do understand it, and it's because of consequentialism. In our minds, it would be catastrophic for this stuff to come to light. It's it'd be catastrophic for church attendance and and therefore finances, but it'd be catastrophic to the gospel as well. If our pastor or Christian leader is is really gifted, they're a good preacher, then who would take his place If the world found out that that we can be guilty of of such evil, then what would that do to the name of Christ? So instead of instead of admission and repentance and all of those things, we silence victims and critics, and we brush egregious sins under the rug.

And we do it in the name of Christ because it's for God. We wanna protect his name so that the gospel's not marred. We we just mar our Christ's image in the world. And, I think one of the main reasons, not that scandals occur, but that that's, you know, these sexual allegations turn into big scandals where there's lots of people who cover it up and and victims are mistreated, I think that is a result of consequentialism. We have to protect the name of God instead of live out the lives that God has called us to live out.

We've also seen this as missionaries in Romania. There is a just a remnant of of Romanians who've been mistreated by by religious institutions. When when communism fell, people religious people just flooded into Romania, and they would have these bait and switch programs. And these things are still going on. I just talked to somebody at a church the other the other week, and they were telling me, oh, yeah.

I'm I go with an organization, and we we go all over. They've gone to Romania before. You should you should you should let us know, we can come out there. And he started to describe this to me, and I was just aghast. I he so it's this medical mission and what they do is they work with a local missionary, is good.

That's a good part. But then what happens is you advertise that you're going to do like these medical procedures but then when they get in the waiting room, they they have to come to like a church the night before or something. They have to attend in order to receive the procedure. And then when they're in the waiting room the next day, somebody goes through and works works the crowd and and makes, you know, gets to everybody. And then they have to let go.

They hear it one more time like in a side room or something right before they visit the doctor. I I don't remember exactly, but I know there are three instances, a church service and then two other times that they get it in like either a small group or individually where they get the gospel presented. And this person just thought it was great, like, well, people really want to get treated medically and we really want to get them saved and get the gospel into their hands. So, if they want something and we want something, then we'll just kind of know that's a fair trade. But, oh, that's just that's so painful to listen to that that goes on.

And I'm I'm sure that God uses that, and I'm sure that people have become Christians out of that and that, you know, praise be to God that he uses that. But I know that there are Romanians and, who have such a bad taste in their mouth because they've been the objects of people. You know, it's people come over and try to convert them to their religion so their religion can grow in number. And they do these bait and switch programs where they tell them they're gonna do one thing and then they try to convert them. And they just have such a bad taste in their mouth for for other religions besides Orthodoxy in part because they've been so abused by by people in the the ways that they've evangelized.

And that's consequentialism right there. We think that the gospel is so important that we can mistreat people and objectify people in order to convey the gospel to them. In our minds in our minds, we don't recognize that by verbally bringing the gospel to people in that manner, we're actually not bringing the gospel to them because they're not able to see to see that in our lives. Gospel isn't word only. It's word and deed.

And that that's made Romania, particularly difficult. I hate it when people ask me, what are you what are you doing here? And I I say that I work with the church, and then they ask, is it orthodox? And I say, no. I go, yeah.

You're just one of those people coming over here to to use us. It's really hardened hearts and it mistreats people. Good intentions, right? Wanting people to come to know Christ, but terrible execution. Another way that I see consequentialism in religion is the way in which the religious right in particular has kind of thrown nature to the side Because the left says something, we have to be opposed to it.

And, you know, we're all about taking dominion over over creation. And this is God's earth, and he wouldn't let it he wouldn't let it go bad because he created it for humanity and whatever all kinds of weird beliefs. We are we are okay mistreating animals. We are okay mistreating the environment and not being good stewards of it because we're humanity, and the world was created for us. And we trade on God's good, so we think that certain things are good, but we don't we can ignore other things that are good.

Humanity is good but but so is nature. So are animals, so are forests and we just completely toss those things to the side. The religious right is so against even discussing climate change and looking at evidence. One of the things I just realized the other other week is is that it's so ironic. A lot of the religious right loves oh, now I can't think of it.

Pascal's Wager. That's what it is. Pascal's Wager, which is essentially well, if you know, God might not exist and but if you become a Christian and God doesn't exist, you didn't really lose anything. Right? Not much.

But if you don't become a Christian and God does exist, you lose eternity with Him and you end up spending that in hell. So the smart thing to do, the wise thing to do is to become a Christian to hedge your bets. I don't like Pascal's Wager but a lot of Christians love it. Now here's the thing, and we also use it in another instance with abortion, you hear it all the time where people used to say, Well, we don't know if an embryo is a living human being or not. We don't know if it's a person or not.

And then the question is, Well, if there was a construction, a demolition group going to destroy a building and somebody said to them, we don't know if there's anybody inside but we we don't think there is. Would they be justified in demolishing the building? And say, well, no, because you have to hedge your bets, on the side of caution, make sure make sure that because to demolish a building, even if you think there's nobody inside but don't know, to demolish that building and take that chance isn't worth it. But then it it dawned on me that this this argument that we love is is something that we go against in terms of climate change. I just saw a Christian, I believe it was a senator, the other day who's saying, well, we don't know, you know, the the data is not conclusive about climate change and so we're not gonna we're not really going to move forward with anything.

And it's like, if the argument for climate change, there's a lot of evidence. Now, maybe it's it's still murky and we're not sure. But Republicans are so against it that they don't even, like, look at data and things. They just shut it down immediately. But if if climate change is right, the ramifications of it are huge.

And if it's wrong, if we would just start to try to cut oil and and stuff, at worst, pollution in a lot of cities gets better. Air quality for people to live gets better at worst. You know? And at best, we save the world. It it's Pascal's wager, basically, but, you know, we're okay with it in in these other instances.

But because it's a partisan issue, we shut it down here. We just we don't seem to care too much about God's good earth. We we like the dominion and lordship aspect of it, but not the stewardship aspect so much. And that's because kind of like maybe the Catholic seemingly did with the the heliocentric or the geocentric theory. Right?

Putting humanity at the center is good in certain sense to recognize the image of God. And certainly, the Democrats, Liberals don't do that in terms of abortion. But the Republicans seem to take it too far in not viewing our responsibility as as being anywhere else to any significant degree. So for for conservatives, the ends justify the means or the they're consequentialist in that we can sacrifice nature for human consumption and and our good. We see so moving on from the religious area, we see in economics.

We see consequentialism in action. How many of us continued to buy Nike shoes after we found out that they were made in sweatshops? And there might not be anymore, but I mean during that time when we knew that they were, how many of us stopped buying them? How many of us, do take due diligence to find out, if if our the the $5 clothes jeans we're buying at Walmart, probably not $5. I don't know how much cheap jeans are at Walmart.

But the the super cheap jeans we're buying at Walmart are made ethically both in terms of the environment and in terms of the the human labor that that made that. With all the technology we have at our fingertips, it's so easy to figure out a lot of things if if they're made ethically. But we don't want to because if I had to change my buying habits, I couldn't get everything I wanted. And if I not only could I not get as much as I wanted, but I'd probably have to only get a few things. Instead of having a wardrobe of clothes, I'd probably only have a handful of of good outfits.

Maybe maybe instead of 50 outfits, I'd only have 10. And people might see that I'm wearing the same clothes twice within two weeks. We just we don't seem to care about how our our purchasing affects others. And certainly, part of this is is greed and materialism. But we also try to justify it to consequentialism.

You know, we say, well, if I stop buying these items, then poor people across the world would be even worse off because they'd have no job. If the item is already made, I might as well buy it because there's no sense in it going to waste. So we end up supporting the system. Another area that people seem to be okay with consequentialism is in thievery. Now, a lot of people love the Robin Hood type movies like Ocean's 11, you know, the a group of people are going to steal from a casino.

Well, casino owners are evil and super wealthy. They don't need that money anyway. So we're good with that. We might never steal it but we like that other people do. Kinda like vigilante movies.

We we like it when there's some sense of justice for people who we know are corrupt. And that plays out for us too. And I mean, I know a lot of Christians who are willing to steal music and movies, who are willing to pirate those. And that's that's a problem, but they they justify it by saying that, well, the people in Hollywood have enough money. So and not only that, but if there's a movie and I know that the director's bad, I don't wanna support the director because, you know, they give some of their money to Planned Parenthood or I don't wanna pump my money into Hollywood and supports their wicked way.

Whatever. But we excuse it, and instead of just not watching something or listening to something, we steal it because the ends justify the means. Probably one of our favorite areas, past economics, one of our favorite areas to compromise with consequentialism is in the area of violence because violence is power. One area that we're willing to compromise is torture. When I started looking at the nonviolence, I was appalled to discover how many Christians advocate and support the use of torture.

I mean, just just appalled at our willingness to embrace that. But we excuse this by saying, you know, if I if I torture one person to get information that can save two or more lives, then the equation's weightier in my favor. Saving two lives better than marring the dignity of one life. So I'm justified. We also rationalize it ideologically.

It's fine for me to torture a person who's wrong and evil, especially in the service of saving one who, saving someone who's right and good. The ends of saving lives justify our discarding of the image of God in our enemy, and that is a big problem. Has so many other other implications in terms of, what we can and can't do, and how we can then be manipulated, to torture groups by redefining who our enemies are. But nevertheless, we'll just leave it here that this is an example of consequentialism. Killing unarmed combatants and civilians.

The Walking Dead was was really popular as I started my my conversion to Christian nonviolence. And, one of the one of the characters on The Walking Dead that I couldn't stand at first was this guy who refused to kill people. He would disarm them and he'd might leave them tied up and stuff, but he wouldn't kill them. And I'm just thinking the whole time, look, if you leave these guys if you let them live, you're gonna see them again, and it's not like they're gonna have mercy on you. If you know they're evil and you're in a in you're in a post apocalyptic world where there aren't armies or police forces and stuff, you gotta kill them because they're just gonna mess you up or mess somebody else up.

You can't leave them to do that. You know, I I think the sentiment of killing unarmed combatants who could later be a threat or even the acceptance of the deaths of unarmed civilians as inevitable in in bomb strikes and drone strikes and stuff, I think that's a common sentiment among many Christians. There's collateral damage and you you have to do what you have to do. It's war is not pleasant and sometimes you just gotta do things that that are unsavory. And that right there is consequentialism.

Military service in general. And I know most people are gonna disagree with me on military service. You can go back and listen to season one and I think hands down, the case for nonviolence just overwhelmingly wins. It has so much evidence for it that as a cumulative case, it it's it's hard to assail. But let me just tell you one of my experiences with this recently as I thought about it.

So I was in a Sunday service the other week, and it was the day before Veterans Day. During the service, those who had served in the military were asked to stand and be recognized. And it was a congregation of about 400 people and in that congregation there are at least 50 individuals who stood up to be recognized. And for most Americans, that's that's a badge of honor. But to me, after having thought about nonviolence for the last couple years, it really seemed like an indication of how far we'd fallen in our willingness to compromise.

And I thought about church documents like the apostolic tradition, the canons of Hippolytus, the Council of Nicea, or the testament of our Lord. And I thought about theologians like Tertullian, Origen, just a martyr, or soldiers who risked the at the cost of their lives and left the the Roman army, like Martin of Tours, Maximilian of Tabessa, or Marcellus the Centurion. You know, I I just thought about the early church documents and examples and how they were univocal as to to the incompatible nature of of any violence with Christianity. And then when I looked at the crowd around me of people standing up, like cheering and embracing that that, yes, we were willing to use violence to on other people as Christians. That just seemed so far removed from from what Christianity is is was supposed to be.

And, you know, I can recognize the courage and commitment that that many soldiers have. But for a Christian to not only accept that, but to elevate it to the especially to the extent that we do, it's just problematic. And you don't find pushback against the non nonviolent position until the March. So why do we why do we accept soldiering today? And I think the answer to that is that, you know, when when Christianity married the government, you you've gotta start thinking pragmatically.

And how do you preserve a nation? You got to do it through force. So if you become a Christian nation, that means Christians need to preserve their nation through force. That's consequentialism. Alright.

On to nationalistic sorts of things. Revolutions. I've had a huge problem with the American Christian conception of of revolution for a long time. It seems really weird to me that Romans 13 could be used to give people like president Trump a blank check for his actions or the expectation from my allegiance to him and my respect to him. Yet it it wasn't used in the same way for presidents who weren't on our side, who weren't on my group's side.

And it it also struck me as odd that Romans 13 didn't have any qualifications, and it was written in an age of great injustice and persecution towards the innocent. But we qualified it when we needed to, you know. Okay. Well, so maybe maybe Romans 13 was written around the time of Nero, and maybe Christians were facing persecution, and maybe they were supposed to submit to that government. But, you know, in the seventeen hundreds, Great Britain was worse than Nero, and and it was it was okay for us to to fight back against them because we didn't wanna pay taxes.

It doesn't work. Like, it just doesn't make sense. We celebrate our independence, and and we think that the founding of our nation was great. And I'm certainly thankful that that I live where I do, and it it I'm blessed by the way that history has turned out, certainly. I'm not denying that.

But that doesn't mean I can't objectively say that shouldn't have been done according to the Bible. Like, how do we how do we say Paul's writing Romans 13, writing around Nero, and and our revolution was good. It just it doesn't work. We're we're hypocritical and we have all sorts of double standards in terms of how we deal with revolutions. Then there's jingoism.

Few months ago, I was talking with somebody about the issue of immigration and he said, don't you think we have an obligation to protect our people? Now, this person was another Christian and but I knew what he meant in context. When he said our people, he meant Americans. Like, don't don't I have a duty to make sure the Americans are good first? Because as we all know, I'm an American first and a Christian second.

No. That's that's absurd. I'm a Christian first and American second. I have an obligation to humanity, not Americans. And if America does something that is harming humanity, then my allegiance is not to America, it's to humans.

But the way we view immigration, the way we view wars, tariffs, all sorts of things, it's America First. We're willing to throw poor countries under the bus to preserve our jobs. We're willing to help countries based on if they have oil or not. We allow genocides to happen if it's a country that doesn't matter to us. We're just consequentialists.

And, you know, our people are Americans, not Christians. Right? We're aliens in the kingdom of God. We're not aliens in in The United States. Those are just some ways that consequentialism seems to rear its ugly head in in the world.

Hopefully, some of those have at least resonated with you and help to clarify. So that is all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I'm in.