Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are consuming our look at John Howard Yoder's book, The Politics of Jesus. We'll do a quick but thorough recap here to catch you up and help you to summarize what's been going on so far to give us some context for this episode. So Yoda argues that Jesus faced temptation just as we do. That as the second Adam, Jesus' temptation was like Adam's temptation.

This temptation was the defining of good and evil for self or the usurping of power and control and a refusal to submit to God's means. We see this evidenced in Satan's temptations in the wilderness and all throughout Jesus' life at various points when when he was tempted to be made king multiple times or when Peter tried to prevent him from suffering and Jesus said, get behind me Satan, at the cross with Rome, etcetera. As we seek to live life like Christ then, we must seek to live what he explicitly taught and modeled to us as kingdom living. As we do this, we will find that we throw off means and institutions which seek to coerce others through force or manipulation. We will often find that the means we are called to implement seem weak, foolish, and inefficient.

Our job, however, is to, like Christ, submit to the foolish means of God, to refuse to define good and evil for ourselves, and simply to obey. As we do this, we'll discover that our lives become disengaged from methods of power most others find as necessary, which to some will appear like quietism. Some, the political and religious zealots with whom we most closely align, will view this as a betrayal and persecute us. At the same time, others who see the lives we live and the truth in which we speak will see the threat implicit in the alternative we're offering. In this way, we become a threat and may be persecuted.

This is the cross, hardship and persecution which come upon us as a specific result of our faithful adherence to the means of God and our refusal to compromise with the powers that be. So, you're all caught up. Let's dive into the next part. Just to to note, the tone of this episode may be a little bit different than the tone of others. In most of the others, I'm going off of kind of loose notes and, you'll notice I probably say a lot of ums and and so and and all that stuff.

And there are a lot of pauses as I try to think. In this one, I am going to be going largely off of the text that I wrote on this. And so I will be reading quite a bit. So maybe you're you'll be happy that I won't be stuttering through this and mumbling. Maybe you'll like this tone better or maybe you won't.

Maybe you'll hate that I'm basically just reading to you. But I'll link I'll link my written portions below so you can just go and read it instead of listening if you'd prefer. So here we go. The last third of Yoder's book was probably the most influential for me because it tore down the theological dissonance I had brought to the table. The first two thirds of Yoder's book made sense because I knew the Bible pretty well, and a lot of what he said was Sunday school stuff.

Jesus said love your enemies. Yeah. Jesus said turn the other cheek. Of course. Jesus loved the outcasts.

Undoubtedly. Jesus pushed back against the powerful religious institution of his day. Correct. But for some reason, my stupidity, the Western heritage, and unique bias Christianity has in The US, I don't know, something, I'd always left Jesus' words where they were, with him. I never took them upon myself, really.

I'd willfully and or subconsciously made Christ difficult expectations for me either suggestions, symbolism, or applicable only to him and his mission. But Yoder demolishes those options in his last section of the book. Now Yoder makes a very important point that is vital for you to consider before you sift through his line of reasoning. Just as you've heard it said that where you spend your money is where your priorities likely lie, Yoder argues that where you spend your social capital is likely where you believe the levers of power lie. It will be vital to understand where your biases lie here as we progress through Yoder's arguments.

So here's Yoder's quote. Quote, one way to characterize thinking about social ethics in our time is to say that Christians in our age are obsessed with the meaning and direction of history. Social ethical concern is moved by a deep desire to make things move in the right direction. Whether a given action is right or not seems to be inseparable from the question of what effects it will cause. Thus, part, if not all of social concern has to do with looking for the right handle by which one can get a hold of the course of history and move it in the right direction.

For the movement called moral rearmament, ideology was Ideas have legs so that if we can get a contagious new thought moving, it will make its own way. For others, it is the process of education that ultimately determines the character and course of civilization. Whoever rules the teachers' college rules the world. Whichever the favored handle may be, the structure of this approach is logically the same. One seeks to lift up one focal point in the midst of the course of human relations, one thread of meaning and causality which is more important than the individual persons, their lives and well-being because it in itself determines wherein their well-being consists.

Therefore, it is justified to sacrifice to this one cause other subordinate values, including the life and welfare of oneself, one's neighbor, and of course, the enemy. We pull this one strategic thread in order to save the whole fabric. We can see this kind of reasoning with Constantine saving the Roman Empire, with Luther saving the Reformation by making an alliance with the princes, or with Khrushchev and his successors saving Marxism by making it somewhat more capitalistic, or with The United States saving democracy by alliances with military dictatorships and by the threatened use of the bomb, end quote. Most Christians say that we believe the true seat of power is the throne of God, but I think Yoder would say that our actions really betray us. And more than ever, the moral majority and the Republican Party make this very clear for me as that's my group, But I think you said see the same thing on the other side.

I think now it's popular because I'm recording this one. Is it May? Yeah. I'm recording this in May. It's supposed to air in January.

Right now, you see all of this vote blue no matter what because Trump is so detested among Democrats that they said, look. It it really doesn't matter. We need to get control. We need to get our party in even if the guy is not great. Right?

That's that's basically what Yoder is saying here. We need our guy in power, we need a handle on the powers that be. So let's delve into Yoder's analysis of how our view of power and shaping history plays out. Yoder says that those who desire to shape history through some mechanism of power do so with three major assumptions. First, they assume that the relationship of cause and effect is visible, understandable, and manageable so that if we make our choice on the basis of how we hope society will be moved, it will move in that direction.

Second, we assume that we are adequately informed to be able to set up for ourselves and for all society the goal toward which we seek to move it. And finally, assume that effectiveness in moving toward these goals which have been set is itself a moral yardstick. In summary, the movers and shakers of history generally believe in cause and effect that their ideal is the moral standard through which their actions are to be guided and through which good is to be determined And that they can accurately predict the future and how their actions will determine that. Taking that understanding of the working out of power in our world, let's look at the moral majority in American politics. And again, you may feel like I'm picking on the moral majority because I am because that's kind of the line of the line that I come out of.

That's that's my group. This is our struggle. And so I'm not denying that other groups have their pitfalls and problems, but this is my group's problem and kind of my perspective. So the moral majority, their yardstick for effectiveness is the overt presence of God and his moral laws. By the overt presence of God, I would mean, like, Christian paraphernalia, 10 commandments in courthouses, under God and the pledge of allegiance, Bibles in hotel rooms, prayer in schools, led as well as a lack of competing idolatrous paraphernalia, religious symbols from other religions and public places, etcetera.

So the second form, having God's moral law, is ensuring that things like gay marriage are banned, transgender bathrooms aren't implemented, and religious freedom is instituted and maintained. To my group, religious paraphernalia and religious legislation, which upholds good things like family and denounces bad things like, transgender bathrooms, that's that's really our goal. That's how we control society for God and how we make it godlike. The problem with the moral majority view in politics is is really quite simple though. Christians by and large know both logically and intuitively that effectiveness itself is not a goal.

Actions are not deemed just or right based on their effectiveness. On top of this, there are actions which are morally fine but are actually bad if love is taken out of the equation. Paul speaks to this very clearly when he talks about Christian liberty and that is the very crux of his love chapter in first Corinthians 13. A chapter sandwiched between two chapters discussing how to effectively use the spiritual gifts and how to use them without bickering and competing. Yoder asks, is there not in Christ's teachings on meekness or in the attitude of Jesus toward power and servanthood a deeper question being raised about whether it is our business at all to guide our action by the course we wish history to take, I don't think there's a better question to ask, especially at this time in American history.

Effectiveness will either be measured by preservation or progress. That's the conservative and liberal bent. Preservation of what is or progress. Both of these systems have a major flaw to the Christian. Jesus' ethic was not measured by effectiveness but rather by servanthood and submission.

To be a conservative or progressive who marks success by effectiveness makes the assumption that history has moved us past the time of primitive Christianity and therefore out from under the relevance of the apostolic witness on this question. Yoder is not surprised, however, that we have moved beyond the teaching of servanthood and submission to one of effectiveness. It was the main temptation of Christ, and it is what the world throws in our faces constantly. It's what Yoder says next that clinches everything for me. It is a loosening of the shackles my heart has felt with all of my social compromise in the past decade.

It is the spiritual intuition that Christianity is more than just establishing surface level morality through legislation, and it is the clarifying of how such a compromise as we saw in the last election well, I guess, two elections ago now. And if president Trump is in there, this last election as well. And if Biden went in because everybody's just voting blue no matter what, the the shoe fits for everybody, it seems. So how did we get here? Well, here's here's the quote from Yoder that sealed everything for me.

It's a long one, so, buckle up. Quote, whether Jesus be the Christ or not, whether Jesus the Christ be Lord or not, whether his kind of religious language be meaningful or not, most types of ethical approach will keep on functioning just the same. The cross is not a recipe for resurrection. Suffering is not a tool to make people come around nor a good in itself. But the kind of faithfulness that is willing to accept evident defeat rather than complicity with evil is by virtue of its conformity with what happens to God when he works among us aligned with the ultimate triumph of the lamb.

The vision of ultimate good being determined by faithfulness and not by results is the point where we moderns get off. We confuse the kind of triumph of the good whose sole guarantee is the resurrection and the promise of the eternal glory of the lamb, which an immediately accessible triumph, which can be manipulated just past the next social action campaign but getting hold of society as a whole at the top. What in the Middle Ages was done by Roman Christianity or Islam is now being attempted by Marxism and by democratic nationalism. In spite of all the difference language and in the detailed vision of just what a good society would look like, as a matter of fact, even the visions are not all that different. The real uniqueness of each of these positions is only that it identifies differently the particular moral elite which it holds to be worthy of guiding its society from the top.

We may well prefer a democratically controlled oligarchy to some other kind. We may well have a chance between Marxist and Islamic and other statements of the vision of the good society. But what our contemporaries find themselves practically incapable of challenging is that the social problem can be solved by determining which aristocrats are morally justified by virtue of their better ideology to use the power of society from the top so as to lead the whole system in their direction. Once a desirable course of history has been labeled, once we know what the right cause is, then it is further assumed that we should be willing to sacrifice for it. Sacrifice not only to our own values, but also not sacrifice our own values, but also those of our neighbor and especially the enemy.

In other words, the achievement of the good cause, the implementation in history of the changes we have determined to be desirable creates a new autonomous ethical value, relevance, itself a good in the name of which evil may be done, end quote. That's that captured me because as I I read this, before the twenty sixteen election, and it just it was exactly my group. It was sacrificing values, neighbors, especially enemies and foreigners, sacrificing them in the name of relevance, itself a good in the name of which evil could be done. Not much sums up the where Christianity by and large has devolved to. Or I don't know.

Maybe we've always been there. I've I've just come around to to seeing all this. I don't know. But and that's just that summarizes my group. And and I think the other group too, but definitely summarizes my group.

If Jesus be the Christ or not, it doesn't really matter. Our ethical system goes on just fine all in its own. In fact, better without him looking over our shoulders. Yet, what we do apart from him is done in his name because we know better than him what he really should want. Yoder moves on to expound on Philippians two, which also helps to blow this wide open and connect a lot of of what we talk about.

So let me read that that here really quickly and connect us to what Yudhira just said. Your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. And notice I'm sorry for the interruption already. But notice, we are told to be like Christ in this way. It's explicit.

Be like Christ, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus in your relationships with one another. How? I'll emphasize some of those things as we go. So back to the verse, verse six. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. And this is just just another one of those verses that didn't make sense to me for most of my life. You know, while while I had always interpreted this as, you know, Jesus didn't grasp at deity, which just means that, you know, he wasn't trying to prove that he was god, I guess, is what I what I would have thought. It's not really what makes sense in context.

I mean, he he was divine. Like, so what what do you mean grasping at equality with god? And I'm gonna go into another quote from Yoder that I think sums this up really well. So here's another extended quote about what Yoder would say to Philippians two here. Quote, Christ renounced the claim to govern history.

What Jesus renounced was thus not simply the metaphysical status of sonship, but rather the untrammeled sovereign exercise of power in the affairs of that humanity amid which he came to dwell. His emptying of himself, his accepting the form of servanthood and obedience unto death is precisely his renunciation of lordship, his apparent abandonment of any obligation to be effective in making history move down the right track. The universal testimony of scripture is that Christians are those who follow Christ at just this point. The lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power. John is here saying, not as an inscrutable paradox, but as a meaningful affirmation, that the cross is not the sword, suffering and not brute power determines the meaning of history.

The key to the obedience of God's people is not their effectiveness, but their patience. The triumph of the right is assured not by the might that comes to the aid of the right, which is of course the justification of the use of violence and other kinds of power in every human conflict. The triumph of the right, although it is assured, is sure because of the power of the resurrection and not because of any calculation of cause and effects, nor because of the inherently greater strength of the good guys. The relationship between the obedience of God's people and the triumph of God's cause is not a relationship of cause and effect, but one of cross and resurrection. We find the most desperate encounter of the church's weakness.

John was probably in exile, Paul in prison, with the power of the evil rulers of the present age. But this position is nothing more than a logical unfolding of the meaning of the work of Jesus Christ himself, whose choice of suffering servanthood rather than violent lordship, of love to the point of death rather than righteousness backed by power, was itself the fundamental direction of his life. Jesus was so faithful to the enemy love of God that it cost him all his effectiveness. He gave up every handle on history, end quote. So the application of Yoder at this point is clear.

Christ lived the life of the second Adam and we are to be like Christ. As we live in him, we will, like him, also bear our crosses as a result of our actions. But in Christ's example and seeing him as the first fruits of our resurrection, we are able to lay down our lives in faith and humbly submit to the means of God, relinquishing our control because we have a foretaste of resurrection. When it says that Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, he was accomplishing what the first Adam did not. Rather than seek to define good and evil, rather than than seek to employ his own methods and grasp at power, he humbly submit to loving others, and he submit to God and his means.

And Paul tells us in Philippians that we are to be like Christ in this way. That about wraps up what I am going to pull from Yoder's The Politics of Jesus. There is a lot more to that book. I recommend picking it up and reading it. You can read more of what I've written on it.

I do go into a little bit more detail. But even there, I don't cover all of what Yoder Yoder said, and Yoder says things better than I do too. I hope you can see Jesus Christ for who he is, who he revealed himself to be. I hope that you can take him seriously, and I hope that that's not a depressing thing to you because it's it's such a beautiful thing. Not just the promise of resurrection, but the relinquishing of control that we can give up to God and the faith that we can have in him and the beautiful, beautiful lives that that he can empower us to live as we live in the kingdom.

I mean, I've just started on that journey in the past couple years of of trying to relinquish more control in terms of money and violence, and my life has just my life has changed more in the past four years than in my in the other, like, twenty eight or however many years I've been a Christian. It's just been transformative to see Jesus for who he really is. So I hope you will pursue this topic further, and I hope that it is helps you to understand the argument for being like Christ, I guess, and and foreseeing Christ as less of a a metaphorical storyteller and more of a depiction of god whom we should desire to emulate. There is one more episode, dealing with Yoder in the book, but it won't be going into anything that that, Yoder has written. It's gonna be addressing another topic, but I'll leave that to be a surprise and an unfortunate surprise.

It's not, gonna be the my favorite topic to discuss, but it will be an important one. And I wanted to make sure that I got this book out there first. The the the discussion of his book out there first. So that is all for now. Peace because I'm a pacifist.

When I say it, I mean it.