Welcome back to The Fourth Way Podcast. I'm excited because today I am starting a series that has been years in the making for me. I have literally spent thousands of hours researching the topic of government, listening to podcasts, reading books, reading articles, and talking with people who are much smarter than I am. I don't anticipate that I'm going to say anything this season that you can't find elsewhere from a more knowledgeable source, but I I still think that I have a few things to offer you. What I do have to offer is that I like to compile information in manageable chunks, which I I arrange in logical sequences.

One of my frustrations with a lot of deep type topics is that a lot of times you have to scrounge around for pieces of information here and there, you know. You get a bit here, a bit there, rebuttal here, rebuttal there. And that can be really time consuming and tedious. So what I try to do is, just like I did with the season on nonviolence, the very first season that I did, is that I try to organize information into a logical sequence. And my hope is that I can give you a scaffold in this season for how Christians ought to view government.

And then I'm gonna provide you with some great resources to move out and fill in the areas that that you might find most important, and kind of bolster those things from from other sources. You can find links in the resources, and resources in the show notes of each of these episodes. I'm also gonna link to my reading list so you can kind of see the books that I've read which have influenced me. I'm gonna start the season off by making a case. After I make a case here, I'm gonna move into dismantling the opposition's case, and then I'm gonna finish by defending my case against some common rebuttals.

And that's the way that I I kind of like to do some of these these deeper topics. This season will be a little different in that after I've laid out the case for you, and and kind of gone through rebuttals, we're gonna end up having a bunch of interviews with a variety of other people so that you can hear some different perspectives too. And of course, after all of that, I'm gonna add some addendums to the season. And the addendums that I add might be, you know, additional thoughts that kinda came to me after recording the season, or they might be some thoughts which add to or bolster specific ideas from the season. I think that's kind of it, that's that's the plan for now.

That's kind of the way that my mind works when I do seasons like this. So while you go through this season, there is one other thing that I want you to keep in mind besides this structuring. Just like our season on non violence, this season on government is going to be a cumulative case. Our culture loves the get rich quick schemes, the weight loss pills, and all that, you know, easy stuff, right? Quick, fast, make it efficient, without a lot of investment.

So we don't usually have the value or patience for the fine aged wine that is the cumulative case. Cumulative cases take more time to lay out and to understand than do kind of, you know, the simple answers, but they're much stronger. If your only response to my 40 episode cumulative case at the end is, but Romans 13, then that's a problem, and I think it's intellectually disingenuous. Cumulative cases aren't demolished by a lone feather of evidence if they have the weight of a mountain behind them. So what I seek to do in this season is to build a mountain of evidence for you.

You might remove some of the pebbles or even some of the boulders from the mountain, which you don't like, but my hope is that the mountain, by and large, will still stand. And I don't need it all to stand, just most of it. If I can show you with a 50.1% certainty that my view is right, then you're more rational to believe the case that I make than what you might now cling to. So, certainty isn't my goal, but confidence certainly is. And this is an introductory episode, so we're not really gonna get to the nitty gritty in in this episode.

And you know, I I thought laying out the structure was gonna be important. But also, another thing I wanna do is I think it's important to set the stage for you for why this season exists, why I think it's important enough, and how I got here. So I need to explain what set me off on this path to exploring government from a Christian perspective, because to learn something, it's usually best that we recognize some cognitive dissonance. It said that, you know, necessity is the mother of invention because needs create holes in which we naturally seek to fill those holes, right? I think learning is the same way.

As Kuhn argued in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, nobody, including scientists, shift their views until there's some dissonance and a corresponding weight of information which allows for them to shift. A shift he coined as a paradigm shift. And the point is that we don't go looking to change our minds on things, and it takes some kind of void, and oftentimes a significant void, for us to be open to overturning our currently held beliefs. So even though, if I can create a 50.1% dissonance for you so that my side is more reasonable, you'd be more rational to believe what I put forward, but I do understand that to kind of change your positions, you're gonna need more than that, and a lot of times you might need 70 or 80% certainty to kind of have the momentum, the inertia to shift, to move to a different position. So I understand that it's more weight than that, but my hope is that if I can give you a 50.1% certainty or confidence level, that that will start you rolling on the path towards, you know, learning more and seeking more.

So, it has to start though with a void. If you don't recognize a void or intellectual conflict, then the next 40 plus episodes might be interesting to you, but not compelling. So let's try to kind of start digging the hole and making that void for you. What was it that brought me to the point of overturning my inherited beliefs about government? What helped me to have a paradigm shift?

If you listen to the first two seasons, you'll know that the twenty sixteen election and the Christian capitulation to results over integrity, at least that's how I saw it, was a big part in moving me to accept non violence. And I'm not gonna rehash that here, you know, if you want, you can go check out the first episode of of each of those seasons. But while the twenty sixteen election may have pushed me to assess whether I should be a republican or not, such a change wouldn't have been on the level of a paradigm shift for me. It would merely have been a party shift. Now, what brought me to seriously reconsidering my views on government was my subsequent adherence to non violence.

If I'm not to bear the sword as an individual, can I bear it as a part of a larger group? If I shouldn't bear a sword as an individual in a group, should I be seeking participation with or in that group? As I uncovered the moral ethic of consequentialism running rampant in my own life as well as in the life of my community, and then as I assessed all the political candidates and parties, I wondered how I could support anyone without accepting significant moral compromises in my own life. Whether it's abortion and stealing money from people, aka taxes, or war, racism, and anti foreigner sentiment, which evil was I to be complicit with? I just didn't know.

At the same time, I couldn't stand the thought of not engaging in government. How could that possibly be the right answer? I'm strongly convicted that being a Christian does not mean being a retreatist. We are to actively engage the world and government is such a big part of how seems is engaged. There's a lot of tension.

I was convicted that I was to be engaged, but that non violence was right, and consequentialism was pervasive in our hearts and contrary to objective Christian morality. That dissonance led me to start digging into the Biblical view of government, and then subsequently, into logical cases for and against various forms of government. My hope for you is that this season will give you a framework and tools to work through what a Christian's call is for government. I don't think there's a much more important issue in The United States right now, and perhaps even the world, because nationalism has been on the rise in the past few years, and an alternative authoritarian view from the opposing side is growing as well. Even if you don't hold to non violence as I do, I think we'll continue to create some dissonance for you throughout this series.

You might not be as primed to hear what I'm saying, but that's okay. If you're a Christian, I think you can also benefit from this season. While the first few episodes are going to be focused on the Bible, I think you would appreciate seeing how the Biblical view of government is quite different than what Christian status and nationalists portray it to be through their idolatry. And if you're a non Christian, I can almost guarantee you that the way that you perceive Christians is probably like the Jerry Falwell type Christians or the Graham type Christians that you see running the media now. And I just don't think that's historic Christianity and I don't think that's a good look at Christianity.

So if you're non Christian, you might not buy the first seven or so episodes of this season which focus on the Bible, but hang in there because there are logical, philosophical sorts things we'll get into as well. And if nothing else, it'll help you to see a side of Christianity or what I think Christianity should really look like and did look like at one time. I I think it'll help you to see that. So hopefully it'll give you some hope for what might one day again be. Like I said, we'll get into some logical discussions about what government is and how it's often built on presuppositions and contradictory ideas.

To give you an idea of what we're gonna be doing, I'll give you a very brief outline of the season. So for the first seven ish episodes, we are going to be talking a lot about the Bible, the New Testament, the Old Testament, the Epistles, Revelation, Romans 13. We're gonna be talking about a lot of different aspects of government and what that looks like for Christians. And we're also gonna talk about what the early church looked like and how they kind of viewed some of this this political stuff. Following that, we are going to take a look at the state, and we're gonna take a look at how when Christians have grasped at the state, what does that look like?

What does that produce? And we're gonna look at four different eras of that. We're gonna look at Constantine and his taking of the state for Christianity and Christendom, the Crusades, the Magisterial Reform, and then The United States. So we're going to take a look at them as kind of case studies. We're going look at government's impact on the world, you know, government in general, what has it produced?

Then we're going to look at philosophical arguments for or against government. We're going take a look at legislation and what does that really do about policing and voting, and what those things entail. And then, we're going to get into our rebuttal section. You know, what do we do with the Old Testament leaders in particular who were in secular government? Or, know, doesn't the fall necessitate government?

What about retreatism? Isn't it being retreatist to kind of denounce government? What about Jesus paying taxes? What about Paul invoking Roman citizenship? We can talk about a lot of that kind of stuff.

After those episodes, we'll be getting into some interviews. We're gonna talk about, talk with some Christian Anarchists and see what they say about government. I'm gonna talk to someone about communism and capitalism, and is there much of a difference between those two things, economic systems and how governments employ those things. And then I've got a couple other people lined up, I'm not 100% sure on how that's all going to play out. So, yeah, that's kind of the outline that I've got going so far.

We've got a lot that we're going to talk about and I'm looking forward to it. That's the plan for now. It is subject to change, but, should be pretty well in place. I hope you will stick around with us for the whole season, and if you haven't listened to any of the other seasons, I strongly recommend that you do, and especially the first two seasons, I think those are gonna be particularly pertinent. Though, I do have some episodes that touch on Government in Season three and four as well, I believe.

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 below to find other great podcasts and content related to non violence and Kingdom Living.