Welcome back to the 4th Way podcast. We've recently finished the series laying out the case for Christian nonviolence. Today we are moving into our 2nd series, and that series is going to be on the issue of consequentialism. Now if you listened at all to the first series on Christian nonviolence, then you probably recognize that one of the common themes in those episodes was consequentialism or pragmatism. And in my estimation, consequentialism is is really the greatest cause of compromise in the Christian faith, and it it was the main reason that it took me so long to be able to embrace something like pacifism.

So please don't think that that because this is about some moral ethic of consequentialism and why that's a problem, don't think that this has nothing to do with the issue of Christian nonviolence because, for me at least, it has everything to do with it. It was only when I recognized that I I had a faulty, overarching ethic in my life and that most people around me have that same faulty ethic. It was only then that I was able to realize my blind spots and problems and embrace something like pacifism. So, in my opinion, consequentialism is really at the heart of of a lot of issues that we have wrong in in humanity, but, even more specifically in Western Christianity. So this new series will focus on unraveling consequentialism and and taking a look at its problems.

It's largely gonna follow my book, which is titled The 80%. Maybe we'll get into it a little bit later about why, why the book is titled the way that it is. But for now let's just start at the beginning and jump right into it. So when we're starting out the first thing that would be important to understand is what is consequentialism? It's really just what it sounds like.

Right? It's got consequence in it. So, a simpler way to put it is, the ends justify the means, or what are the consequences of my actions? Because it's the ends or the consequences of actions that are going to determine what is moral in the ethic of consequentialism. Now right off the bat, you are probably listening and saying, I'm not a consequentialist.

I know that the ends don't justify the means, but I can almost guarantee you that you do, in in a number of ways. I would have never called myself a consequentialist, but I I uncovered many, many areas in in which I was being consequentialistic. So over the course of, these 17 or 18 episodes, I'm going to kind of explore consequentialism as it unraveled in my life and my thought process. And, hopefully, you'll be able to to relate to that, as we go and be able to uncover it in your own life. Because I would have never thought I was a consequentialist, but very clearly I was.

Before, before we really dig into to the meat of consequentialism, I think it's really helpful for you to understand, how my life was formed. Because then when I unravel consequentialism, it it might give you a little bit it might give you some more touch points to be able to recognize how some of these things can form, where it might have formed in your own life, etcetera. If you have listened to the the last, to the last series, then you heard a lot of this in episode 1. I'll probably be coming at this from from some different angles, and I might, add some other stories and such. But if you listen to episode 1, in the Christian Nonviolence series, then I kinda gave you a a rundown, of this.

So you could skip this episode if you want, but I'd I'd recommend trying to glean some new information out of it, and you'll probably need a refresher by now anyway. So I my life was lived saturated with Christianity. Pretty much every single member of my family is Christian. I grew up in a Christian school, starting in 2nd grade. I went to church 3 times a week a lot of times.

Usually, at least 2. Sometimes even more if if there's, like, a missions conference or something. I went to a Christian college. I've taught in 2 different Christian schools. I did teach in public school for 4 years, and now I'm a missionary.

So, yeah, my life has just been saturated by Christianity. And pretty much everything that I that I believe is, a reflection of what other what my Christian community has poured into me. And while I recognize the the great good in all of that, I also realize that there's some there's some problems with that saturation. And, especially because the church isn't very ecumenical, wherever you grow up and whatever brand of Christianity you're in, it it's really just a big echo chamber. It's like Facebook.

Right? You you get on, you post something, and because, everyone who sees what you post is pretty much your friend, they just make you feel good about it. You're like, yeah, I thought that too. And you all just pat each other on the backs, and it's great. You just kind of, continue believing what you're believing.

And sometimes that's good. It can be very encouraging to be in a good community that edifies you and and that helps you to continue believing and to continue fighting. That's great. But where there are problems, this is a a very bad thing because it perpetuates the problems because you keep on believing it. You don't get confronted.

And it makes you arrogant about them because not only do you think you're right, but because everybody else around you thinks you're right on this thing, you you feel arrogant towards people who don't believe like you. And there are some some very big areas in which our community was an echo chamber, in a problematic sense. And what this what this echo chamber really did is it it sort of made Christians and, you know, each brand of Christianity on top of that kind of into into little islands, of isolation. Because, first, it did produce moral superiority, which is ostracizing. When you think that you're better than other people, other people are gonna know that you think you're better.

It's kinda hard to conceal that. And so your your moral arrogance is ostracizing. You have this idea that, you have to get clean first to come into the community. You have to be like us. And nobody's gonna say that, but you all know it.

You look around you. Everybody's the same as you. When somebody different comes in, different either because they look different or different because morally you just know they're different, then they just don't fit in. And, you also know that when you're in that community, because of this moral superiority, you really better not make a a mistake that's too big. A divorce, sex outside of marriage, if anybody would ever find out that you struggled with homosexuality, had an abortion.

I mean, you you might as well just go to another church. And it's not because, of course, nobody in my church would say that that we would ostracize you and hate you, but you'd know that from that point on, you're not gonna really be able to fit in. There's there's not a schema for repentant, like, true repentance and restoration and forgiveness, and it's something that's gonna stick around for forever. And, that's what our echo chamber produced. This is something that that people would deny they felt, but something that really drove people away and and wasn't wasn't warm and inviting for people to come in.

People who are different. On top of that moral superiority, which which was isolating, there's also this this moral blindness that I talked about. You know, we we damned the homosexuals for their just egregious sin, but we could forgive premarital sex of a guy or maybe even a girl if if she didn't get pregnant. We damned people who aborted kids, yet we failed to create a caring community that would would make them ever want to tell anybody that they got pregnant out of wedlock and needed help to raise a baby so they didn't have to abort. We didn't have a community that that could be open to that.

That's something more that had to be brushed under the rug and drove people to have abortions instead of, be embraced by a loving, forgiving community. We damned socialists. I mean, how dare they want to take all the money that that we earn while at the same time being materialist. You know, condemn the the government from trying to steal from us, but, you know, we didn't take Francis of Assisi's, idea that if we have 2 coats, and somebody's without one, then we are stealing. So we didn't consider our greed and materialism stealing, but the government better not steal from us to give to people in need.

We damned hedonist for just living for the moment while we ourselves are gluttons. Can't tell you. I it's kind of a it's a running joke, but it's not really a joke because it's serious. But, you know, a lot of a lot of pastors are, very overweight. And I understand that you can have thyroid issues.

You can have all sorts of issues that it's more than just, your self control and such. I get that. But I'm telling you that the the ratio of of, Christians and and pastors, especially in certain denominations, who were very well fed, too well fed, you know, we we damn the hedonist while we're we ourselves are gluttons. And that's just the way it is. We, we were fine damning people out there, but we were immune to our sins, inside of our community, the ones that we just couldn't really shake.

We couldn't shake the gluttony. We couldn't shake the materialism, and all of that stuff. So it was excused. It was kind of overlooked. I I really liked my community.

I still do. They're, I mean, overall good people. Every community has its issues. And I especially like that community because I felt good in it. Because I wasn't gonna, you know, get somebody pregnant out of wedlock and have an abortion.

I wasn't gonna be a homosexual. I was yeah. All of those things. So I I was fine inside of my community because it it felt good, because I fit in. But over time, I don't know.

I I've kind of always been a a questioner. I like to to try to figure out why things are the case, the logical coherence of things. And so I started to read Jesus's words more and more, and I don't know. Just a lot of what he said didn't really sit right with me. My community had answers for that.

We we could make things that Jesus said. We could make them metaphors. We could soften the blows of of some of his teachings and some of the biblical teachings so that we were still a a moral community that could make each other feel good about things and that could kind of overlook some of these other issues that weren't really a big deal. So that was fine. But around 2014, 2015, when, when there was a presidential election coming up and I saw Donald Trump, and I started to to hear the things that he said, read about the things that he was doing, He just he just wasn't a good guy.

And the more time went on, the more clear this was to me. I mean, certainly by now in 2019, almost 2020, when I'm recording this, surely by now, those suspicions are are more than just mere suspicions. But, I mean, 100%, I he he's just absolutely immoral and and wicked. And I saw my community propping up a guy who, to me, was very clearly immoral then and certainly immoral, certainly now. It's clear.

And but I saw lots of of my group defending him. And they were defending him for things that not like gluttony or materialism, or those sorts of things which my community could excuse. They were starting to excuse him for some of the things that we we hated, some of the things that we despised. I mean, he had lots of wives through the course of his history. He was very sexually promiscuous.

He was, is a liar. He, I've got a list somewhere. I'll I'll get to it eventually. But, if you don't know the problems that that a man like Donald Trump has, president Trump has, then you haven't been paying attention or you've you've been, I don't know, you might have some some motive for kind of brushing those things under the rug. But he he is clearly, he clearly has some problems.

Some some significant problems. But my community just defended him and and continued to defend him. And it was so I I was so confused. I didn't know what to do. And you even have people like, Christian leaders, like Jerry Falwell junior, who who lauded Trump.

It's not just defending him and saying, well, this is this is what we got to go with, so let's go with it. But people who are lauding him and saying that, you know, we we have to vote for a guy like Trump because we need a fighter. And I was even, I and my wife, we were both chastised for even considering voting for somebody else because Trump was the Republican ticket, and he was the moral choice. I I really struggled with that because there was this there was this big problem in my mind, this dilemma. Because I know that president Trump is is evil.

He's he's compromised. Like, it's not just, oh, he's done some bad things, but he's repentant and, like, we can deal with flaws. It's no. He's he is compromised. He's a compromised person.

And, you know, his his platform might even be compromised too. When you you know, if you are into environmental issues and you think that god wants us to take care of the environment and if you, if depending on what you think about immigration, I mean, the platform could be compromised too. But certainly, certainly, president Trump is compromised. But at the same time, abortion to me is is the biggest injustice in in our society right now. It's just absolutely evil and and tragic.

And I couldn't imagine voting for a Democrat. So what do I do? Do I vote for somebody who is clearly evil? Or do I vote for somebody else who's also clearly evil? What do I do?

And I really understood my community's lesser of 2 evils ethic, this idea that you have to vote for whatever evil is going to be the least evil, whatever evil is going to produce the, the best good. And I I really did understand that. It still really bothered me that people weren't kinda saying saying this, despairingly, like, oh, well, I guess we have to vote for for Trump because he's the lesser of 2 evils. He had a few people saying it like that, but most people that I know, they really jumped on that bandwagon. And it wasn't just, well, I guess I have to vote for president or for Trump, the lesser of 2 evils.

It was defending him and praising him and uplifting him. It wasn't acknowledging him as an evil. Probably because we know that if if everybody who votes for him acknowledges him as an evil, that's going to undercut the chances of him winning. Right? Because you have to make your guy look as good as you can.

So in in our strategy, what I basically had to do to do the greatest good was I had to embrace somebody who's clearly evil and compromised. And on top of that, to give him a chance of winning, I needed to start singing his praises or at least avoid criticism. Harsh criticism at least. And if I could do that, then I was a team player and I was moral, and I was I was doing the greatest good. That really weighed on me for a while to to think about, about voting for for Trump, because that really was my only option in my head.

I had I had to vote for Trump. And because to not vote would have been immoral. Right? Because that would have been irresponsible and passive. And to vote for a 3rd party was was to lose.

I thought about that more and more and more. And, you know, I realized that Trump wasn't the only pro life candidate. He was the only one only pro life candidate with a a chance of winning. And and to to vote for a third party candidate who was pro life would have been throwing my vote away. And right there, that revealed to me that choosing the good at this point became relative to the amount of perceived immediate good that I could do rather than on choosing that which was good.

So let let me clarify that, a little bit without without so many words. So, basically, good was an objective at this point. Right? It wasn't Donald Trump is evil, so voting for him is bad. It was good was relative to, what I thought the the best, consequence or end I could bring about, with the options I had available.

So I could vote for a moral person and a moral platform, but it was 3rd party and didn't have a chance to win. That's wasting my vote. I have done no good by voting 3rd party. Or I could side with an evil, uphold an evil party, or uphold an evil individual and maybe even a evil party. And I could I could do that, and that was moral.

It was moral for me to choose evil in this situation. When I realized that, that threw me for a loop, realizing that, we weren't voting for Trump because it was good. We were we were voting for it because it was, it got the results that we thought God would want. That that really bothered me because I recognize that I'm not an ends justify the means Christian and that Christian ethics can't be based on that. That it's relativistic.

And, and these Christians in my circles, they bemoan relativistic morality and the way that society has embraced that. So, yeah, I I started to have some pretty big problems. Now most people, if you've gotten this far, are probably really turned off to me by now because if you're a conservative listening to this, you probably sing the praises of Trump or, or at least think that, I'm criticizing your decision to vote for him right now, which I am. I am criticizing that decision. And you are free to criticize me back, and we can have a good discussion on this.

But I really want you to to to hear me out on this. So I'm gonna put Trump down for a bit and kinda get off that soapbox, and I will come back to that in chapter 12, I think. Episode 12 here. So I'm gonna put president Trump down for a long while here, in just a bit. And, instead, what I wanna do is I wanna start showing you the issue through my own life as well as as through some moral conundrums.

And then once we have that that whole long discussion, we'll come back to the issue of of voting and, morality and politics. When I was in in 6th grade in my Christian school, surrounded by all my Christian friends and Christian teachers, we had this wonderful poster. It was probably a Garfield poster, in in our science classroom. It was a poster on integrity. And the poster said something like, integrity is doing the right thing even if no one is watching.

And we can we can interpret that and and kinda change up the words just a little bit to show you what they really mean by that. What they mean is integrity is doing the right thing even if doing the right thing doesn't get you anywhere, doesn't get you any good, Doesn't do anything for you. Because doing doing the right thing even if no one is watching, the when people are watching, why does that matter for people doing the right thing? Because if somebody's watching, they can give you accolades, they might be able to, not just sing your praise as maybe, you know, if if your mom watches you when you're a kid do something good, she'll give you some candy. Right?

But integrity is doing the right thing even if it doesn't get you anything. Even if it doesn't get you anywhere. Doing the right thing is doing the right thing. And that is what integrity is. And it's obviously stuck with me since, 6th grade, the fact that I still remember it.

And I believed that. And I believed that my community believed that too. Right? So I I think that that's a good place to start with our our discussion here on on, consequentialism. Did I and my group really have integrity?

Well, we really loved the poster because we did think that we had integrity. We denounced same sex marriage, debauchery, abortion. We hated secularization and how they were taking under god out of schools and prayer out of schools. We we just decried everything that was evil. We were willing to take a stand.

But as I was thinking now, I I realized that we really only had categorical integrity. You know, I didn't know any homosexuals or teens who had or were considering abortions. And my group was largely out of the public sphere. We didn't have to worry about prayer being taken out of schools because, we were in our Christian schools and and home schools. Like, everything we hated was out there, not in here.

Like I was talking about earlier with the, you know, materialism and gluttony and all that stuff, we were we decried everything that the world did out there, but we were kind of immune from things that were happening in our community because they weren't really that bad. So we we kind of made ourselves immune to this idea of integrity because, we just we didn't worry about the things that we did. And we we went one step further than that on on some of the big things that were were harder to avoid. We we did something kinda shady. Instead of this this black and white.

Right? We had the black and white covered. We would things like premarital sex were clearly, clearly wrong and terribly wrong. And things like praying, clearly good. It's good to pray.

The Bible is pretty clear about that. There's some things that were really hard that the Bible seemed clear about that we couldn't insulate ourselves from because it was like it seemed like big deals to the bible, but if it was a big deal then we didn't have integrity anymore. And so what we did is we we turned them into conundrums and we we turned them into metaphors or conundrums. So did Jesus really mean that we should be willing to forgive everyone? Like, really everyone?

Even, like, your ex wife or ex husband, even if your ex wife or ex husband did some really bad things to you? Maybe Jesus meant that, but maybe he meant something else. Did Jesus really mean that we should really be willing to give to those who ask? Like, really if somebody asked me for something, I should be willing to give that? He must mean something else.

What about, when Jesus said that we should be willing to leave vengeance to god? He meant most vengeance. Right? Or maybe he meant a particular type of vengeance, like, vigilante vengeance, But not an intruder comes into my home and I can prevenge pre avenge myself, or, like, you know, an executioner. They can issue a lethal injection by the state.

I mean, we can take vengeance in some forms, just just not others. Did Jesus really mean that we should not take brothers and sisters to court? I get that if they, like maybe. Maybe if they scratch the paint on my car in the church parking lot. But if it's anything more serious than that, they didn't have cars back in the day.

So, you know, now that we have things that are really expensive and and, if if they hurt my car a lot or, like, my house or certainly, I can take somebody to court, a brother or sister to court. He can't mean that you never take them to court. Well, maybe I can take them to court in the United States because the United States is a Christian nation. Maybe that's what he meant. You know, I ironically, of course, the things the things that we turned into metaphors, were a lot of times the things that Jesus and the apostles in the early church spoke pretty clearly about.

Yet, we were very unclear about those things. But the the things the Bible was much less clear about or or spoke very little to, like, let's say homosexuality. The Bible really doesn't talk that much about it. Those are really big deal for us. But other things were were metaphors.

We're metaphors. And I'm not saying here that, that I'm not trying to argue for what sins should be weightier than others. My my simple point is just that Christians in my community, we are so good at manipulating the things that we determine are good and bad, and the the weights, the values of each of those sins and the altruisms that we give. And and, I mean, that's what the Pharisees did, and you see that a lot in Matthew 23. But we are so good at that echo chamber thing.

And and we are so good at insulating ourselves to critique and at being able to cast judgment out there. I mean, we glossed over our guilt by hiding it and metaphors and, you you know, well, that was only for Jesus and his messianic fulfillment or, you know, commands which are only applicable to the early church. We did such a good job at that, but we we failed to internally, reflect. Well, it looks like at this point I've done a a good job of jumping from, one contentious issue to another, criticizing, president Trump and now criticizing my own Christian community. So why don't we why don't I again, let let me put that that emphasis down here and ignore that hornet's nest for now.

And instead, let's move into a a clear conundrum, which is, I guess, kind of an oxymoron. But let's let's take a look at this this conundrum, this supposed conundrum, that I think is a a clear example and has a clear answer, to kind of this this installation that that we do for ourselves. You can see this conundrum appear on the TV, TV show MASH. And MASH was was about the Korean War, and, you have American soldiers over there and, you've got a group of of Americans taking out a bunch of South Koreans and trying to get them to safety. Well, all of a sudden they realize that the North Koreans are nearby, so they shut off this bus and everybody's really quiet.

Unfortunately, there's a baby on this bus that starts to cry. And one of the Americans is, you know, understandably scared and frustrated, and he he says, shut that baby up. And the mother does. But you can't reason with an infant, of course. So the only way she can shut him up is by smothering him.

And when the baby's cries go silent, the American looks back and he realizes what she had to do to smother, to to protect the people on the bus. And he's heartbroken. You know, I don't I don't know that he's sorry per se because I think most people on the bus recognize that their lives were saved and that was a good thing. Nevertheless, he recognized the cost of the salvation of the 50 people on the bus, and that was hard for him. But the question is, if you're that mom, is it moral for you to smother your child to save 50 lives?

And and we could also ask, is it moral for you not to smother your child? Because if you don't smother your child, you're you're essentially, killing 51 people, the child plus the 50 people on the bus. If you do smother the child, you're only killing 1 person and you're saving 50. Greater good. Right?

Now, I I really hate to say this, but that for me and my wife, was a conundrum for 5 to 10 years. I brought that up over and over again and just just couldn't figure out what the answer was because as terrible as it seemed, killing a baby was, Letting 51 people die was just that was unthinkable too. And 51 lives made in the image of god versus 1. It doesn't even compare. The value of 51 is is higher than the value of 1.

And that I just couldn't figure it out. I just couldn't. And I asked a lot of people for help too. I asked, I would guess, about 50 godly people, anywhere from just, like, you know, teenagers to fellow, couple friends that we knew to pastors, missionaries. Like, I mean, I asked a lot of people.

And out of about 50 people, there's only one person who said, no. You can't kill the baby. Like, that's wrong. Everybody else said, they're usually one of 2 responses. One response was, I just don't know.

That's hard. Like, I I don't know. I I wouldn't judge the mom if if, she did it. I don't know if I could do it. But, yeah, I I just don't think that's I can't say that that's wrong.

That's the first response. And the second response was, well, I guess you just you have to kill the baby. I know it sounds terrible, but you had to save 50 people, you have to do it. As my thoughts often do when I can't figure things out, they circle back around, you know, after some months or years. And that whole mass conundrum circled around right as I was dealing with this this election thing.

I'm trying to figure out what to do in in my vote. And something clicked for me. God and his, providence, and through his spirit just made it click for me. I realized that these two things are related. And this this M*A*S*H episode, this M*A*S*H conundrum, it's not a conundrum.

I'd been blinded by this ethic of consequentialism to think that it's on me to secure the ends and that those ends, the the ends that I'm trying to bring about, are what make something moral. And and it was so hypocritical because and this is where my community and our our willingness to just mask our own guilt, this is where that comes in. Because I was such a hypocrite. Like, I was willing to say that it's okay to kill one life to preserve the lives of others, but I would I would never say that in in, just another example I had talked about in our apologetics group, that year. We were we were watching Ray Comfort's 180 video on abortion, And, Comfort asked, you know, a bunch of people, okay.

So if you were, in Nazi Germany, and the soldier gives you a gun and tells you to execute, a Jew, or a line of Jews, would you do it if you know that if you refuse, he's gonna kill you and then kill the Jews too? And the people would say, well, I mean, if he's gonna kill me, I might as well kill the Jews because, you know, if there are 10 Jews and I kill them, well, then my life is saved. But if I don't kill them, then they're gonna just kill the 10 Jews anyway plus me. That's 11 lives lost. 10 10 lives lost versus 11?

I mean, I might as well kill them. Isn't that the greater good? And we were just abhorred by that morality. I I was just like, well, no wonder the Nazis were able to get people to do that kind of stuff. And those those people look at how relativistic our society is and how evil they are.

Yet, I'm sitting here trying to figure out whether or not I would kill a baby to save some lives. Because, you know, that's what I just might have to do to save some people's lives. And the the reason, I think, that that I was able to be so blinded, one of the reasons, is because I could imagine being in the position of of those soldiers, in in the MASH episode, and being in a war against some evil regime, and not, just trying to have to preserve life in that situation. I could empathize with the with that situation. I couldn't empathize being in a country, like my own homeland, God's America, Christian United States.

I couldn't fathom that I'd ever be asked to execute some innocent people because my country wouldn't do that. I couldn't imagine being a, pregnant mom or husband, of a pregnant lady in some faraway country where if another mouth was brought into the world, members of the family would starve to death. I couldn't imagine being faced with, do I abort or not in that situation? Because at least everybody that I knew, abortion is always an option. It's never a necessity, here in the United States.

You know, there's never really any time that you have to think too much about that. So I could put myself in the in the shoes of the M*A*S*H, the soldiers on M*A*S*H. I couldn't put myself in in other shoes. And I was I was willing to just avidly, I was I was willing to condemn people in other situations. But this M*A*S*H episode situation, this M*A*S*H conundrum was the same thing, and it was a conundrum to me.

And it and it absolutely shouldn't have been. So through that that realization of of consequentialism, god showed me my hypocrisy and my areas of failure. And I realized that the 2016 election was was really no conundrum for those of us who knew that Trump was was evil. It it wasn't a conundrum. As I promised, I will I will not, elaborate on that at the moment.

I will wait till episode or till, episode 12. So at this point, in this series, I I wanna take you through my journey. And I want to help you see that consequentialism is really one of of Christianity's greatest problems. And I I can almost guarantee you that you have it in your life as we speak, as I know I still have it in mine. So, in the next episode I want to look at the Christian's call to what does God call us to do?

What does it mean to live as a Christian? After that, I want to, look at some of the problems with a lesser of 2 evils ethic. This idea that, you know, we we if we have 2 evils, we need to pick 1 and do the the greatest good. And then I wanna look at, in the the next episode after that, consequentialism in the bible. Do we see examples of it?

In the episodes after that, episodes 5 through 9 or 5 through 8, I'm going to look at how consequentialism was uncovered in my own life. My one fear, or one of my fears here, is that I'm gonna sound like, well, since God revealed consequentialism in my life, look how good I am. And I once we kind of discuss consequentialism and the problems of it, I wanna first look at how God has shown me just how terribly consequentialistic I am, by by looking at where it's been found in my own life. And so I'm gonna lead with that. In episodes, 9 through 11 I believe we'll look at specific conundrums.

We're gonna look at some hard hitters, we will take a look at ectopic pregnancies, which I know will be pretty contentious, we will take a look at lying to save lives, we will look at the MASH episode again, and then we are gonna take a look once again at, voting, and specifically in regards to president Trump and the last election. After that, then the following 4 episodes will, be defending rebuttals against my position. You know, is my position pharisaical? Like, am I just being so focused on morality that that there's no heart in what I'm saying? We'll take a look at some of those common rebuttals.

And then in the, in the final episode before the conclusion, we're gonna take a look at how consequentialism even though it seems like this ethic is harder and it's something that maybe makes you feel like there's no hope because the expectations are so high, I want to take a look at a number of reasons why this is the, anticonsequentialism or inconsequentialism, as I like to tongue in cheek call it. Why inconsequentialism is life changing and beautiful and provides you with hope. Hopefully you'll be able to stick around through the whole series. If not, at least listen to 1 through 4. Especially, number 3 when we talk about the lesser of 2 evils.

Because that's just something I hear thrown around by Christians a lot and it's got a lot of problems. There are a lot of problems with that. Hopefully you found this, this interesting and and what's your palette for some future episodes? That's all for now. So peace because I'm a pacifist when I say it.