Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We are continuing our discussion of consequentialism today by looking at examples of consequentialism in the Bible. Now, I feel the need to preface this with, the acknowledgement that, of course, I am having to make some educated guesses here as most of the time the Bible doesn't really explain all of the motivations and thought processes of individuals in the Bible as as they're making their decisions. So, yeah, I am going to argue that many of these characters are showing consequentialism, but, of course, I do acknowledge that I can't guarantee that that's the case because I don't have that insider knowledge and neither does anybody else. But I think in most of the cases that I'm gonna put forward, you can see how consequentialism is almost certainly at least one aspect of why the people are making the decisions that they're making.

And I'm gonna argue that the consequentialism that we see in the Bible is rarely or never seen in a good light. I'm not gonna say never, hands down, because I just don't know all of the stories in the Bible and I can't think of all of them right off the top of my head. So you might be able to find some stories that seem like consequentialism is encouraged, but I'm gonna argue that I really don't think that's the case. And I'm gonna give you a lot of examples of individuals who seem to implement consequentialist ethic and why that's problematic in the Bible. We'll begin with kind of our overarching case study and after that we'll get into just briefly listing a number of other references.

Let's start with the case study of Jesus's crucifixion. When we think about the crucifixion of Christ, we could condemn many different groups of people. We could certainly condemn the Jewish leaders And maybe even that's the group that that most of us want to condemn the most because they're the ones who instigated and initiated the the trial and and pushed things through, and they were a large part of the crowd and and getting Jesus crucified. So, yeah, the Jewish leaders had had some pretty significant responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus. You've got the the peasants or the the crowd, whoever composed the crowd that was calling for Jesus' crucifixion.

And even to a certain extent, you have the disciples who deserted Jesus. And had they stuck around, maybe they probably wouldn't have really been able to change that much. I doubt it. Now Jesus did have more than 12 disciples, so, maybe maybe if most of his disciples stuck around, he could have made a pretty good stand. I don't know.

But, nevertheless, even even if they couldn't have changed things, their faithlessness and desertion certainly makes them culpable to a certain extent for, even if not his crucifixion, it, it was a betrayal. Point is, there are a lot of people responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus, And we can throw Roman in there, and and the leaders that Jesus goes to trial with and talks to as well. You know, the interesting thing though is that there is one individual in this whole process who usually garners our empathy and avoids harsh criticism even though this individual, I would argue, was the most responsible for the death of Jesus, and that is Pontius Pilate. Now we empathize with Pilate. I empathize with Pilate because, of all the people in this in this issue, Pilate really had this thrust upon him.

The, the Pharisees kind of pursued Jesus and and kept butting heads with him and they were conniving, and there was a lot of premeditation there. You also had disciples and they chose to follow Jesus because they believed in him and and what he said. So they were choosing involvement with Jesus as well. And then there were the the bystanders in the crowd who just had this bloodlust. I mean, they could have gone home.

They could have gone to the market. They could have gone on their merry way and done whatever else they wanted to do that day. They didn't have to call for an innocent man's blood, but they decided to. They chose to participate. Pilate, on the other hand, he had Jesus thrust into his court and he had to make a judgment.

He had to make a judgment one way or the other. I mean, we can we can pity that guy because what was he supposed to do? And if you if you know a little bit about who Pilate was and and his history, And I'll recommend a a pretty good, just like, over overview source for this. There's a, a good YouTube channel. I can't remember the name of it right now.

Like, 10 minute bible or something. 10 minute bible hour. But it's just a really interesting look at at who Pilate was from what little we know about him. And what little we know is that Pilate probably wasn't one of the, like, the major, in the in the aristocratic class. He wasn't like this guy who was a shoo in for for some great position.

He probably got in due to some circumstances, which allowed him to get in. And and in a normal Roman culture, he, and time period, he wouldn't have really been able to get that position. But because of just some happenstance, he was able to to eke out this position. And also, the position that he he does hold here isn't the greatest position because of of the place. It's not really seen as a as a wonderful place to be, but it it's a potential stepping stone for Pilate.

And so far, Pilate has not had a a very good interaction with the Jewish people. There have been there's at least 1 or 2 other potential revolts dealing with, like, the Roman banners and and Jewish, ideals about idolatry and and coinage and just different things, where they kind of butt heads. And Pilate tries to hold his ground and the Jewish people unexpectedly hold their ground. And Pilate's like, I I can't really kill them all. So, you know, he's kinda seen as weak, he has to back down, Rome's not really happy that there are these people pushing the buttons with him and and starting these potential revolts.

So Pilate's really on shaky ground with the Jewish people, but he's also on shaky ground with Rome. And if you make one misstep with Rome and keep your position and your life and everything, you're lucky. If you do it 2 or 3 times, that's a big problem. So in summary, Pilate isn't, an inherently important person in ancient Rome. He's disposable because of who he is, who he was born as, as well as the the position that he holds here in this, faraway place that's not all that important.

So he Pilate's disposable. And Pilate's already made a misstep before, at least one, and he he really can't afford to make another misstep. So here he is. He has this this, this case thrust into his presence and he has to judge. And he has to be here, actually, the the ultimate judge.

I mean, if you think about it, Judas helped to catch Jesus, but that's all all Judas could really do. He didn't have any more power. The religious leaders, they were able to accuse Jesus. That's all they were really able to do. The disciples were only able to show solidarity and and faithfulness.

They couldn't really do much else. Christ's fate essentially rested solely on Pilate's shoulders. And that's not even something that I have to assert without evidence because beyond all of this evidence that we have for who Pilate is and the situation and all these other players, John 19 10, we have Pilate quoted as saying to Jesus, don't you realize I have power either to free you or crucify you? Pilate acknowledges that, look, the power is in my hands. I can free you.

I can crucify you. That's the choice that I have before me right now. So hands down, Pilate is the individual most responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus because that decision to free Jesus or let him go rested on Pilate alone. Now why do I have so much empathy and why do we Christians have so much empathy for Pilate? There are probably a lot of reasons and I think having a situation thrust upon you does seem like it is a bit different than, you know, conniving like the Pharisees were and and basically trying to have premeditated murder.

Nevertheless, that's still a big problem when you could free the savior of the universe or you could crucify him. But we give Pilate a pass because we can really empathize with that. We can understand his consequentialism, his his notion of, well, if I just kill this one guy, I mean, I don't really want to. It's this one guy's life. It's a decision I don't like.

But, really, if I kill him, the Jews are gonna be happy. They're not gonna revolt. That's gonna save Jewish lives because if they revolt and Rome puts them down, you know, at least Jews are gonna die. Maybe some Roman soldiers are gonna die. And then not only that, but on top of that, Pilate's life and family, probably there would be some pretty serious repercussions in his life.

So what's one guy's life for for some harmony and peace in the kingdom? And ultimately, that's what it came down to. Pilate was saying, one guy for lots of people. And that that's just the decision I'm gonna have to make. And we get that.

We understand that. And we don't really come down nearly as hard on Pilate as we come down on the other players here. It's interesting that that, Caiaphas, the high priest, actually says somewhat of the of the same thing where he says, isn't it better that one man should die for the people? Yet, at least in the story of Jesus, we recognize that that that is just absolute horror. That it's terrible.

It's evil. That we would be willing to sacrifice in a sense and goodness for a little bit of pragmatism and and this, this outcome that seems to be better because it saves more people from from harm. And we also we can look at Pilate's attempt to absolve his complicity with evil by washing his hands and and some water symbolically. And we recognize that that's that's futile. I mean, what is what is the point of doing that?

You can say that you're clean, but you're not because you just made a terrible decision. Ironically, we try to do the very thing that Pilate did. And, for some reason, we think that it's gonna work for us. We try to be consequentialists and embrace an evil and forego what is the good because we think that the thing that's more important than the good is an outcome we desire, or an outcome we think God desires. And I think we do that in in many situations, and we will get to specific conundrums in, in later episodes.

And I'm gonna show you how, you know, I I was doing it, and still am doing it, in my life in the next few chapters. And and certainly, I think one of the the biggest and most recent events was how we embrace the lesser of 2 evils idea, how we embrace consequentialism, in the last presidential election. I just think that's a problem. So let me summarize this this case study here of pilot up with just quoting my, the the last two paragraphs in this section in my book, because I I feel like I was able to write it better than I can say it, and I'm not going to be able to say it more succinctly or better. So here's my quote.

Like Pilate, and like our forefathers, we 21st century pragmatists offer Jesus up to beatings and scourgings, hopeful that such morsels will be sufficient to abate the bloodthirsty evil which desires more blood. We mar Jesus through our moral compromises, hopeful that through them, we will be able to calm the crowds and gain some sort of advantage over our society, typically through politics. When we've perpetrated as much harm as we're willing to do to our innocent savior, when we've compromised ourselves as far as we're willing to go, only then do we give society over to itself and wash our hands of what follows. But the damage is already done. We've marred the name of Christ, and we've ensured His crucifixion.

He is now so disfigured from our beatings that onlookers have little choice but to look on Him and mock Him. We have compromised the truth of our Lord, and if truth can be compromised by the only ones declaring that truth exists, then as Pilate asked, what really is truth then? It's nothing. It's worthless. And those around us know it.

I'm ashamed to say that cultural Christianity has been set on a course to crucify Jesus again, though this time by His own followers, crucifying Him as a criminal and not as our savior. The world sees what we Christians are willing to compromise. They see what we're willing to do. They see the types of people we're willing to stand behind. They see the self interest in the issues we emphasize.

Sadly, we Christians acknowledge all of these compromises as necessary. We acknowledge our complicity and compromise, yet we somehow think this is a good thing. We're doing it for the greater good, which somehow justifies our moral evil. We call this evil good, wash our hands, then act as if such a thing could absolve us of the evil we're doing, but it can't. We may like to think that what we're doing is sacrificing on behalf of God, but we would do well to remember that God desires obedience over sacrifice.

What we so often like to call sacrifice is no such thing. It's disobedient pragmatism. Through such pragmatism, we inadvertently disassociate ourselves from God and distort His image to the world. That is how I, I essentially see it. We are Pilate in, in our culture.

We cultural Christians are Pilates because we uphold some other ethic, some we uphold the outcome as that which gives us our moral guidance. And in doing such, we, in our our lives lived out in our testimonies, those of us who say that we're disciples of Christ, we disfigure Him through through our lack of holiness and through our our lack of trust in Him and His control of of the outcomes. Well, I'd I would love to end with the example of Pilate, because I I think it's just such a powerful example. It's the, like, culminating example of consequentialism in the Bible, because you can you can really empathize with Pilate, you can see how how, the consequentialism occurred, and it's the story of Jesus. I mean, all of these things come together.

You just you know what right is, and it's also clear. But, nevertheless, I think it's it's gonna be good for you to see some other places where I think you can see consequentialism at play, and and the theological problems that that are present in it. So you've got Cain, probably, one of the first examples of consequentialism. And Cain brought his best to God, rather than that which God commanded. He brought the the fruit of his his fields, he was a farmer, and he had good stuff to bring to God, but that's not what God wanted.

So Cain sacrificed, but he wasn't obedient. And through that, God rejected him, and that probably was part of what led to him killing his brother, his jealousy. Abraham lied to save his life twice, lied about his his wife slash sister. Abraham, the consequentialist again, decides to help God out. And, I mean, this is noble in a sense because Abraham believes God's promise about the child that he's gonna have, but he can't figure out how God's gonna do it, so he tries to help God out a little bit.

And and, you know, kudos to Abraham for trusting God that that God was gonna give him a son. Nevertheless, when Abraham tried to help God out rather than be patient and rest in in God bringing about what He promised, he had a child with his servant. And for whatever reason, I know that a lot of a lot of conservatives focus on one aspect of that that story, and Ishmael and his lineage and all that stuff. But, you know, the the really terrible part is, I mean, Abraham, then kicked out Hagar and Ishmael, and the only reason they didn't die in the wilderness was because an angel had to come and save them. So, this story is just beyond terrible, because, there there are all kinds of injustices and, and things that go on with it in Abraham's attempt to help god.

Jephthah sacrifices his daughter, to God, and I know that some people try to get around what I think actually happened there, by by turning it into metaphor. Nevertheless, you know, you've got this this guy who makes a promise to God that the first thing that comes out of his house, he will sacrifice. And so he makes a a rash promise to God, but then when he recognizes that his daughter came out of the house, you know, rather than say, well, you know what? God doesn't want human sacrifices, so, you know, I should repent of the the stupid vow I made. He goes ahead with it and and kills her because that's what brought him victory in battle.

So, you know, you gotta you gotta kill your own daughter for your rash vow and stick to your consequentialism. You got Saul's disobedient sacrifice that we highlighted, before and I'm sure we'll come back to where Saul decided to sacrifice to God rather than obey him, and God dismissed him as king for that reason. And Samuel was ticked, and it it was just bad because obedience is better than sacrifice. We see in future Israel that they attempt to make alliances with foreign nations, particularly Egypt. I think Isaiah 31, Jeremiah 42 are some examples.

And it's the smart thing to do, to fight this other bigger foreign power that's coming in to take you down, but it's not the right thing to do. God gets ticked and, Israel falls because of it. Yet, we see other kings who, rather than make foreign alliances, trust in God, and God does miraculous things to save them. I think Sennacherib's army's defeat by the angel is one example of that. I don't remember that story in full exactly, but I think that's that's one example of somebody who trusted in God to fight for them, rather than trying to make foreign alliances that God explicitly said don't do.

But, you know, I can imagine Israel, probably a lot like, certain brands in the United States, where, you know, this is God's chosen nation. And if you're in Israel, more explicitly, it is God's chosen nation. And you want that nation to survive, and surely God would want that nation to survive. So, I need to do the smart thing to keep that nation going, because isn't that what God would want? And they make sacrifices through moral compromise in order to accomplish something that they think God would wanna accomplish, rather than just obeying Him and the things that God explicitly said He wanted them to do.

The the means He said they should use, and, avoiding the means he told them not to use. You really see consequentialism all over the place. And, I think that's because consequentialism is appealing. It's appealing to me all the time still, even though God has helped me to begin to recognize when it's present. It's still so appealing to me, and it it's still something that I often miss, I often don't see.

And there are a lot of reasons why it's so appealing and why we see it so much as an ethic. I think, first of all, it's because it allows us to determine good and evil. I mean, isn't that the age old sin? Isn't that the sin? That's Adam and Eve's sin, and eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Right? You get to decide what's good and what's not. It's what was always bugging Jesus. It's this God gave you his will. You know that the cross is his will, yet Satan tries to tempt him in the desert to accomplish God's will in 3 different ways.

Right? Through, economic means, controlling the masses, through, the religious institution, and through, through political means, through the kingdoms. And you can go back to, episode in season 1 on the messianic role and and hear a lot more about that. But then you also see Peter trying to tell Jesus he's not gonna suffer, and you see Jesus sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. You see Peter pull out a sword and and show Jesus that, hey, I'll fight with you.

Let's do this. But Jesus refuses it and heals instead. And you see, Luke say that Jesus could have called legions of angels. I mean, you see time and time again that Jesus is tempted to put down the means that God has given to him and to take control. And Philippians 2 tells us that this is one of the the biggest ways that that Jesus served, was that he didn't count on equality with God, he didn't grasp at that.

But he submit submitted to God even in suffering pointless death, seemingly pointless death. And, I mean, that's that's what the point of, of one of the points of Jesus's death was, is that we submit to God no matter what. It's it's what Adam and Eve didn't do, and it's what Christ was ultimately able to do perfectly. But we love to control things. That's why Israel wants to make an alliance with Egypt.

It's why we want, somebody I forget Falwell's quote, but, we want a fighter for us. We want somebody who you know, the fruit of the spirit, those might be some nice ideals, but that's not what we want in the White House. We want a fighter. We want somebody who's gonna throw off the cumbersome fruits of the spirit, because that's just not what gets you anywhere in this world. And I'm not even that cynical to think that all of this desire for control is because we we want to be in control personally.

I think part of it is, maybe like Saul or Cain or other people, we see in the Bible, is that we want to feel useful for God. We want to feel like we are doing something for God. Now, Israel making an alliance with Egypt, I'm sure that there were were people in in Israel who wanted an alliance with Egypt to save their own skins, but there were probably also some pretty, religious people who wanted to do it for God, for Yahweh, because they wanted his name to be great. I'm sure that you could look at a lot of cases of consequentialism in the Bible, and you could look at a lot of, individuals who are consequentialists in the last election or in any of these these things that we're gonna talk about, these specific ways that consequentialism rears its head. And you find a lot of righteous, good, godly people who aren't trying to control things for themselves, but believe that they're trying to control things for God.

And they wanna feel useful for him. And I get that. I understand that. And that's that's noble in a sense, because you want to accomplish something for God. But the thing that we need to understand is that it's not about us circumventing God's means.

That's not what makes us useful for God. What makes us useful is that we are broken and contrite, we're repentant, we are willing to submit to his means. And even if those means don't seem useful, our job isn't to, to prop ourselves up or puff ourselves up and and try to be shiny for God, and and something that is we perceive as useful. Our job is to submit. And and that's the hard part, not only to not have control, but because submission to God's means often means that we don't have immediate results.

Consequentialism is so alluring because not only does it give us control and not only does it make us feel useful, but we often see more immediate results than if we rely on God's means. You know, a God who, takes 2000 years to bring about the culmination of His promise to Abraham, God who leaves his people in slavery for, almost half a millennium. A God who leaves the child sacrificing Canaanites unjudged for about the same period of time, half a cent half a millennium. A God who doesn't snap his fingers and save everyone or damn everyone from the get go, but takes 1,000 of years to provide a savior. And that savior, when he comes, he doesn't come and save.

He, he lives for 30 years before he really does anything of note, and then He dies on a cross and it's been 2000 years since then, and we haven't seen the the ultimate restoration of things. We're talking about a patient God who, not only in this this overarching patience, but even in in a lot of stories that you see in the Bible, when you see people waiting, for, a wall to be built, or a temple to be built, or to see the promised land. Time and time again, God is is a patient God who who takes his time and works through relationships and doesn't seek the immediate results. But that's not really comforting to us. We want to know that what we did worked.

And that's that's one of the big allures of consequentialism. It helps you to seek out those immediate results, much better than patient faithfulness on God's means. Patient, obedient, holy faithfulness is hard. The method doesn't always seem to work for accomplishing worldly things, but it's God's desire for us. It's God who fights for us and is, the victor and the judge.

We see that in Hezekiah's foolish prayer when God answered that with a mighty victory because God fought for Hezekiah. While at the same time, we see Hoshea's, wise alliance with Egypt, it was crushed in God's judgment. We see that faithfulness is what God desires, and we need to remember that God's will is very clear for our lives. None of us may have an explicitly clear directive like Abraham or Saul. God might not speak to us and tell us to build an ark.

He might not appear to us on a mountaintop. But, God's call is very, very clear. The lives we are to lead, the fruit we're to bear, and the characteristics we're to promote are clear. Our job as Christians is to live holy, faithful lives lived in hopeful dependence on God's power, not our own. Full stop.

That's all for now. So peace because I'm a pacifist and I say it, I mean.