Welcome back to the Fourth Wave Podcast. Alright, so we've spent quite a number of episodes talking about the biblical and the early Christian view of government. That's going to be an important baseline for those of us who are Christians to move forward in the discussion on government. But now that we have an understanding of what the big K Kingdom is and we have that under our belts, it's time that we talk about what the little K kingdoms are. So in today's episode, we are going to discuss what the state actually is.

Is it rainbows and butterflies? Or roads, dams, and the prevention of anarchy? Is the state a necessary good, a necessary evil, or is it necessary at all? What is the state? Let's go ahead and dive into the episode.

Gonna begin with a quote from Murray Rothbard whose book I will link in the show notes below. I'm beginning with a quote because I don't think that anyone else sums it up so succinctly and accurately. Though I'm sure there's a Samuel Clemens quote out there somewhere that probably can. So Rothbard defines the state as follows, quote, the state is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area. In particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contributions or payment for services rendered, but by coercion.

End quote. So I guess you could kind of think of the state sort of like a mafia, right? A state or a nation provides some services, whether you ask for them or not, and then charges you for those services, whether you wanted them or not, and then maintains the exclusive right to do violence to you if you don't pay for the services which you may or may not have wanted, and may or may not have used. If you think of this in terms of any other product, it just doesn't make any sense. Now imagine Amazon showing up at your door with armed henchmen telling you that they were there to install all these smart features in your home whether you liked it or not, then and they were going to charge you a third of your income to do it, plus sales tax for the products which were inefficiently produced.

That is basically the state. If you want to imagine the American state or any other empire through time, Now just picture that you became good friends with the Amazon guys and they went over to your neighbor, assassinated him, took his smart devices and gave them to you for a discounted price since they weren't on the inventory. Sure, we still have to pay our taxes but man, get discounted oil and bananas and all kinds of other stuff because we beat up our neighbor. So states essentially are just thugs, mafias. Ultimately, what it what it boils down to, just like it would in in a city where you've got mafia protection, is that the state is an organization of a group of people for security.

And while most people assume that this security is physical security, it seems to me that just about everything also boils down to economic security. Now I was amazed at how so much of my reading on government ended up being a discussion on economics. If you wanted to find out what some legislation was about or what held it up or what made it get passed or what some war was about or why a president was elected or not elected, most of the time, economics was at least a significant part, if not the main part of any issue. A lot of times, if you don't understand the economics of something, you don't really understand the governmental policies and the politics of what's going on. Economics influences or explains just about everything that government touches.

Whenever a group's physical security is in danger, I can almost guarantee you that it's because they are viewed as an economic threat to someone else. Maybe they're encroaching on water, grazing land, job opportunities, or they pose some other economic threat, or maybe they are economically profitable, maybe they can be used as slaves or exploited economically in some other way. Whatever it is, economics is a huge part of it. With the economic interest of the state in mind, let's dig in a little bit more and describe what states tend to do in light of this. First, states are arbitrary authorities born out of domineering others.

So what does that mean? Well, they're not arbitrary in that the groups that compose states have no similarities or cohesion, but in that their authority is garnered arbitrarily. So for instance, one day the American colonies were under British rule, and the next day, they're a sovereign nation. What made the first state a state? What made the British crown a state?

What then made the colonies a state? Now so, a group of people came together and decided that they would use force on others who threatened their security. What gave the leaders of this state the authority to domineer others within a territory that they arbitrarily determined was in their jurisdiction? And if the colonies could become a sovereign nation, and they could become a state, why was the confederacy illegitimate in their secession and desire to be a separate nation, and be its own state? The simple difference often ends up being that it's just the colonies won while the confederacy didn't.

And as Christians, we have to ask, well, how is it that the former garners God's protection under Romans 13 while the latter doesn't? Governments are arbitrary authorities which wrest authority from others by force. And that's why they seek to maintain a monopoly of force. We are The United States not because God handed The United States some authority, but because we just decided to take it and to establish it and just pretend that it's true. Hey, we're our own sovereign nation state.

We can do what we want. Why? Because we beat Great Britain. And why can't the Southern states, the confederacy do that? Because they lost.

So authority ends up being arbitrary. I'm not at all saying that God isn't in control over what states win and what states don't, but in human terms, from our perspective, authority is arbitrary, it's arrested, it's not something that's actually there and handed off and given and earned. Groups of people literally just come together and fight and agree to have power. So not only are states arbitrary, but states also monopolize violence. And this violence though, is illegitimate.

So there's a great quote from a pamphlet called A Solemn Review of the Custom of War and it was written long long long time ago. And and generally, I like it as as a pacifist pamphlet, but it has a pretty good section here which I think relates to government pretty well. So let me read it out here. Quote, That we may obtain a still clearer view of the delusion of war, let us look back to the origin of society. Suppose a family like that of Noah to commence the settlement of a country.

They multiply into a number of distinct families. Then, in the course of the years, they become so numerous as to form distinct governments. In any stage of their progress, unfortunate disputes might arise by the imprudence, the avarice of the ambition of individuals. Now, what period would it be proper to introduce the custom of deciding controversies by the edge of the sword, or an appeal to arms? Might this be done when the families had increased to 10?

Who would not be shocked at the madness of introducing such a custom under such circumstances? Might it with more propriety be done when the families had multiplied to 50, a 100, a thousand, or 10,000? As the number becomes greater, so do the danger, the carnage, and the calamity. Besides, what reason can be given as to this mode of deciding controversies would not be as proper when there were but 10 families as when there were 10,000, and why might not two individuals thus decide disputes as well as two nations? Perhaps all will admit that the custom could not be honorably introduced until they separated and formed two or more distinct governments, but would this change of circumstances dissolve their ties as brethren and their obligation as accountable beings?

Would the organization of distinct governments confer a right on rulers to appeal to arms for the settlement of controversies? Isn't it manifest that no period can be assigned at which the introduction of such a custom would not be absolute murder? And shall a custom, which must have been murderous at its commencement, now be upheld as necessary and honorable. End quote. So just like arbitrary authority, there is arbitrary violence.

Saying that violence and authority are justified because a group of people have gotten together and decided to domineer over others just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense if there are 10 families and six families decide to domineer the other four, like no, that's wrong, but when enough people get together to do it and succeed and win, we recognize them as legitimate states and that just doesn't make sense. So states fabricate authority, they monopolize violence, and another thing that states do is they dilute culpability. Now this ends up being a pretty big one because it's something that allows states to do the horrendous evil that only states can do. You know, when you look at the atrocities, the genocides, all of the the terrible, horrible things that go on in the world, they're done by states.

And states can do that not only because they do a good job of making enemies out of other people, but they dilute culpability. And I think Tolstoy in his book, My Religion, really of paints this picture really well. So I'm going to read an extended quote from there, and then we'll maybe discuss just a little bit more. But the moment we detach ourselves from the idea that the existing organization established by man as the best, is sacred, the moment we do this, the objection that the doctrine of Jesus is contrary to human nature turns immediately upon Him who makes it. No one will deny that not only to kill or torture a man, but to torture a dog, to kill a fowl or a calf is to inflict suffering reproved by human nature.

I have known of farmers who had ceased to eat meat solely because it had fallen to their lot to slaughter animals. Yet our existence is so organized that every personal enjoyment is purchased at the price of human suffering contrary to human nature. We have only to examine closely the complicated mechanism of our institutions that are based upon coercion to realize that coercion and violence are contrary to human nature. The judge who is condemned according to the code is not willing to hang the criminal with his own hands. No clerk would tear a villager from his weeping family and cast him into prison.

The general, or the soldier, unless he be hardened by discipline and service, will not undertake to slay a 100 Turks or Germans or destroy a village, would not, if he could help it, kill a single man. Yet all these things are done thanks to the administrative machinery which divides responsibility for misdeeds in such a way that no one feels them to be contrary to nature. Some make the laws, others execute them, Some train men by discipline to automatic obedience, and these last, in their turn, become the instruments of coercion and slay their kind without knowing why or to what end. But let a man disentangle himself for a moment from this complicated network, and he will readily see that coercion is contrary to his nature. Let us abstain from affirming that organized violence, of which we make use to our own profit, is a divine, immutable law, and we shall see clearly which is most in harmony with human nature: the doctrine of violence or the doctrine of Jesus.

What is the law of nature? Is it to know that my security and that of my family, all my amusements and pleasures are purchased at the expense of misery, deprivation, and suffering to thousands of human beings by the terror of the gallows, by the misfortune of thousands stifling within prison walls, by the fear inspired by millions of soldiers and guardians of civilization, torn from their homes and besotted by discipline, to protect our pleasures with loaded revolvers against the possible interference of the famishing? Is it to purchase every fragment of bread that I put in my mouth and the mouths of my children by the numberless privations that are necessary to procure my abundance? Or is it to be certain that my piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share and that no one starves while I eat? It is only necessary to understand that, thanks to our social organization, each one of our pleasures, every minute of our chair's tranquility is obtained by the sufferings and privations of thousands of our fellows.

It is only necessary to understand this, to know what is conformable to human nature, not to our animal nature alone, but the animal and spiritual nature which constitutes man. When we once understand the doctrine of Jesus and all its bearings, with all its consequences, we shall be convinced that His doctrine is not contrary to human nature, but that its sole object is to supplant the chimerical law of the struggle against evil by violence, itself the law contrary to human nature and productive of so many evils. End quote. I love Tolstoy's depiction there of just the machinery of the state and how, you know, no person is going to just go and kill somebody, but if you just diffuse the responsibility, you get these mass murdering machines. And that's one of the reasons states are so deceptive and tricky because morality, evils, all of that kind of stuff just gets diffused throughout the system and often times it's hard to put your finger on some of the specifics that are are just so wrong with states.

Finally, point number four, the state is parasitic. States do not create their own wealth, but instead they rely on taking the wealth of its citizens or those outside its borders. Whether it's exploitation of developing countries or whether it's exploitation of its own citizenry, states are parasitic. The modern state which produces fiat currency is also parasitic in that it produces the tax of inflation through the printing of currency. So when the government wants, you know, I I save $1 and the government wants more money, so it goes and prints more money and for itself that it can use, but now my dollar is now only worth 75¢.

The government essentially just took a quarter on every dollar from me because they printed money. So they're parasitic in that way. In summary, the state is a grouping of people with similar interests, or at least a majority of whom have similar interests, or a powerful conglomerate within that group that have similar interests who acquire authority arbitrarily by force, they win a battle or they win whatever fight or conquest they're in, then they use that contrived, that fabricated authority to preserve their economic interests through force, either imposing their will on others with their jurisdiction or exploiting those outside of their jurisdiction, outside of their borders. And then being parasitic on those both within and without of the borders. And then on top of all of that, as a citizen of a state, I don't feel super responsible for what's going on in, you know, for the war that happened in Iraq or for the famine in Yemen that's killed like one hundred thousand kids because of our government supporting Saudi Arabia and stuff.

Like, I don't feel responsible for that because what could I do? I mean, responsibility is just absolutely diffused. The drone operator, what could he do? He joined the army, he needed to pay for college, he or she just, you know, they're just doing their job and the person above them tells them to push a button and they push a button. And through this diffusing of responsibility, this fabrication of authority and all of these things, this economic interest, this greed, and you get just horrendous evil on a scale that you wouldn't otherwise get on an individual scale.

Just think about this, you know, from 1776 to 2019, if we took all of the murders and non negligent manslaughters from the worst year in history, so take 1991, and in 1991 there were 25,000 murders and non negligent manslaughter, twenty five thousand. So, if you take from 1776 to 2019, however many years that is, and you assume 1991 murder rate, 25,000 per year, then we would arrive in the whole of United States history from individual actions, we would arrive at 6,000,000 murders or killings. Now that is the amount of just Jews that Hitler's Germany executed in less than four years. I think, I haven't brushed up on like the Filipino genocide that The United States pulled off in the early nineteen hundreds. But I I wanna say that was like around a million people.

So whatever, you start you start adding up Native Americans, slaves, and the immigrants group, the various immigrant groups that The United States messed around with, the stuff that we did to civilians in World War II, yeah, the the Filipinos, South Americans, I mean, when you throw in just the the horrendous evil just The United States did throughout history, The 6,000,000 is a drop in the bucket and that's assuming the worst possible rate you could get since 1776 here for individuals. So this diffusion responsibility just creates untold amounts of evil, death, and suffering. So when we look at what a state is and then we you know, we think about all these things that it does, and then you reflect back over the Biblical view of kingdoms as compared to the big K kingdom, and we have to ask whether or not the state is something that is compatible with God's kingdom. Seeking to be a part of this type of institution just, it seems like, when I think to the early church quotes, it seems like the things that our states do just tie us to absolute evil. So I wanna read something here really quickly.

It's from this other guy, Aidan Balu, who was I think around the eighteen hundreds, but he wrote this other book which I I have for for our book series. But it's called Christian Non Resistance and All Its Important Bearings. So he's got this section, I'm gonna read it and then we'll discuss really quickly, but I I think it it summarizes the way that at least at this moment, I'm thinking and feeling about government in light of of all of the biblical side of things that we we took a look at in the early church. So here's what he says, quote, If a political compact, civil or military league, covenant or constitution requires, authorizes, provides for, or tolerates war, bloodshed, capital punishment, slavery, or any kind of absolute injury, offensive or defensive. The man who swears, affirms, or otherwise pledges himself to support such a compact, league, covenant, or constitution, is just as responsible for every act of injury done in strict conformity thereto, as if he himself personally committed it.

He is not responsible for abuses and violations of the constitution, but for all that is constitutionally done, he is responsible. The army is his army, the navy is his navy, the militia is his militia, the gallows his gallows, the pillory his pillory, the whipping post his whipping post, the branding iron his branding iron, the prison his prison, the dungeon his dungeon, and the slaveholding his slaveholding. When the constitutional majority declare war, it is his war. All the slaughter, repine, ravages, robbery, destruction, and mischief committed under that declaration in accordance with the laws of war are his nor can he exculpate himself by pleading that he was one of a strenuous anti war minority in the government. He was in the government.

He had sworn, affirmed, or otherwise pledged himself that the majority should have the descriptionary power to declare war. He tied up his hands with that anti Christian obligation to stand by the majority and all the crimes and abominations inseparable from war. It is therefore his war, its murders are his murders, its horrible injuries on humanity are his injuries. They are all committed with his solemn sanction. There is no escape from this terrible moral responsibility, but by a conscientious withdraw from such government, and an uncompromising protest against all its creed and constitutional law, as is decidedly anti Christian, He must cease to be its pledged supporter and its dependent.

End quote. Now I understand how things are if you're an American. You have been indoctrinated in the state since you were young. Heck, you have done something since you were a child which practically no other countries do except those like North Korea and China. You and your children, unless there, you know, is homeschool or special circumstances in your situation, have pledged allegiance to your country in school.

I did it. I did it as a teacher. You essentially take faithfulness vows to your state, to the government. On top of your indoctrination from childhood, your experience of government has been overall a pretty good one because you live in the dominant empire of the day. We export our problems to other countries and we import our exploitations.

Of course, we love our government. It's very profitable and convenient for us in a way that it isn't to the malnourished and dead Yemeni, Iraqi, Afghani, Haitian and list of countries could go on there. Right? Whoever has experienced the collateral damage or direct damage of our empire. But because I know it's hard to look in the mirror and come face to face with the evil that we've perpetuated, enjoyed or been silent about, we're going to spend our next few episodes doing some case studies here because I think this diffusion of responsibility, this idea that, well, I mean, other people are doing it and I don't want it but I enjoy the benefits and I vote and I try to do my part and I still support our flag, I support our troops, I support our government because it's it's a great government, right?

But Balu points out that, look, if you're gonna be if you're basically going to say, hey, I didn't want this but, you know, now that you made that decision to to go and do what you're gonna do and do all these evil things, well, because I wanna uphold the constitution, I'll go along with it, right? And that's terrible. Imagine if your church wrote into its whatever creed, doctrine, whatever, that, you know, it was going to allow the Sunday school teachers to molest the children that were in their classes. You disagree, but you know, you're committed to your church and so you're gonna stick with them and you vote and surprisingly, the majority of people say, yeah, that's okay. Sunday school teachers can molest kids.

You say, well, I I really don't like it but I'm gonna stick with that church because I I made a commitment to it. And we'd say, no, that's ridiculous. That would be immoral for you to stick with it because molesting children is horrendous. Well, how much more so through through American history has the horrors of our nation, I mean, been, at least on a scale in terms of numbers, the the the numbers of people that we've harmed and killed and exploited has been just tremendous. Yet, we still participate as Christians, we participate, many of us, in government and we haven't backed out of it.

And what's sad about that is it's even, we are citizens by birth, right? We didn't choose that. So, it's so strange to feel this crazy, tight, deep obligation to a state that we never chose to be a part of. Whereas, when it comes to a community like a church, we recognize, oh no, I chose to be a part of that and now I'm gonna choose to not be if they're gonna do something wicked or evil. The dedication and loyalty that we have to our state despite all of the evils and wickedness that it does, it just you try to apply that to anything else in your life and it just doesn't work.

I think Aiden Balu, when I read it to my wife, she's like, I don't know, that just doesn't sound right, that sounds extreme. And it does because to Americans, it sounds extreme. The more I read it, the more it makes sense when I start to think about analogies and comparing it to any other institutions and associations that I have. I think Aiden Bali was right. If you're going to prop it up, you've got to accept everything.

You've got to accept it. So anyway, over the next few episodes, we are going to start moving into Christians in government because you might say, hey look, I wanna be involved in government because I disagree with Aiden Balu. I think that we can change government and we're gonna change it for the good. And I get that. So over the next few episodes, we are going to look at governments that have been run by Christians.

What do Christian governments look like? What have they looked like throughout time? So, at the end of, I think we're planning on taking a look at four different Christian governments. So at the end of those case studies, my hope is that we'll be able to determine whether or not the fruit of Christianity's mingling with government is sweet and ripe or absolutely rotten. Are bad governments a fluke or are they the norm?

We know what the Big K Kingdom looks like, and we know how governments form and function because we looked at that this episode, so looking forward to playing this out in the real world in our next episode. 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.