Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today, we are starting to close out our series on nonviolent action by looking at a very important question for Christians. Is the Gospel enough? And what do I mean by that? Well, as we've discussed in various episodes over the seasons, we know that the problem of evil is a heart problem.

No laws can be put into place to fix the heart. In fact, last season we saw how it can be argued that legislative advancements hardly ever, if ever, gain ground. Why is that? Well, because either one, social consensus was already moving in that direction and wouldn't have needed a law, or two, laws implemented are countered by other laws, like we saw with the war on drugs coming immediately after voting rights expanded, or the third reason is that the law is largely symbolic and really doesn't do anything. So if the Christian knows that the Gospel changes hearts and only this will truly change a society, are Christians to invest their time pursuing social justice through legislation?

Or should we just preach the Gospel? And I don't want to caricature this question, so I'm going to use a black conservative evangelical named Vadi Bacham to present it from one of his sermons, which I will link in the show notes. So here's an extended quote from from Bauckham's sermon. Quote, it is so disheartening to see so many pastors and Christians lose their religion and exchange it for social justice. Pastors marching with protesters who are members of BLM and marching with Christians for social justice.

But then again, it is not that surprising when we understand that the Bible warns us that many will be seduced by false teaching and godless ideologies. The Bible is no longer the standard for many Christians. Social justice is now the new standard. Christians and pastors are marching and protesting the murder of George Floyd hand in hand with God haters. Christians and pastors who have Bibles are doing this.

Why? Do they really care about justice or have they bought into the false narrative that is being pushed by social justice warriors who place people into groups of the oppressors and the oppressed? The social justice movement's answer for sin is redistribution of power and wealth. That is why you hear Christians like Lecrae who suggest that the solution to sin is the redistribution of power. If we get more black people into positions of power, then we can stop racism.

Lecrae has just abandoned Biblical Christianity and adopted social justice as the answer for sin. But Lecrae is not the only one doing this. Countless Christians and pastors are teaching that the answer to racism is redistribution of power. By the way, there is not such a thing as as racism. The Bible calls it for what it is, hatred.

Justice is never accomplished by the redistribution of power. Black people have extremely wicked hearts. So to replace a white person with extremely wicked hearts with a black person who has the same extremely wicked heart will not fix the sin problem. The same goes for Asians and Hispanics and all human beings. Humans have extremely wicked hearts.

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? The answer to injustice, murder, crime, etc. Is not rioting, protesting, redistribution of power and wealth, or anything else that sinful man can come up with. God provided the answer in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel is the cure for sin. Did the Apostle Paul call for protest when Nero persecuted and oppressed the minority culture of the Roman Empire which happened to be Christian? Did the Christians protest the unjust murder of Peter and Paul? Were there thousands of other Christians who were murdered by Rome? But what happened when persecution came to them?

They went out preaching the Gospel. Paul even preached to prison guards who were converted. But we live in a different society than that of the Roman Empire, so we can and should fight for more just laws and practices. And as of this very day, I am personally unaware of any unjust laws on the books that are targeting minorities. Why?

Because Christians in the past challenged those unjust laws and put an end to them. President Trump recently signed a Prison Reform Act to correct some of the problems with our penal system. There's nothing wrong with fighting for law enforcement reform act that might address some issues as well. But if you think that is going to stop racism, police brutality, violence and injustice, you are greatly mistaken. More cops will kill unarmed black and white men.

More blacks will murder other blacks. More whites will murder other whites. More children will be sold into sex trafficking. More women will be raped. More husbands will beat their wives.

And yes, even more wives will physically abuse their husbands. More men and women will commit sexual sin and a higher percentage of black babies will continue to be murdered in the womb. Many pastors and Christians have lost their way. They're jumping on the social justice bandwagon without any regard as to what the gospel of social justice really is. It is seeking to address sins and grievances through a godless, anti God, anti Biblical worldview and Christian denominations and organizations are jumping on this bandwagon and leading many pastors and churches astray.

The Gospel is of first importance, but sadly, those who use this as their slogan have traded it in for social justice. End quote. So, you might want to go back and listen to that a couple times. I'll I'll also post that extended quote in the show notes because there's really a lot there and I'm not even gonna scratch the surface of getting into all of the things I would like to say to that. But let's first of all talk about where is right.

So Bauckham is right about the problem and solution. The problem is the human heart, right? And redistribution of power and wealth isn't going to ultimately solve justice issues that doesn't fix the the latent or the the root problems. Bauchman is also right that the Bible doesn't counsel us to protest against injustices, at least not through government. And of course, we could have the conversation like, like, Bauckham ends up having in one of his, a little bit later on where he talks about we do have a different form of government, so there are methods for us to be able to address things, but we don't really see a pursuit of rights as something that is biblical.

I mean, Paul does invoke his rights, but even then, a lot of times he does it or the one time that we see him do it, it's he lets himself be beaten and then says, Oh hey, I can't believe you guys did that to a Roman citizen. And then the people are like, Oh man, we shouldn't have done that. But he didn't invoke his rights to get out of the situation. And even when he invokes his rights later to be able to go to a higher up judge to get to Rome, he does it not as so much as a protest it seems but he's like, Hey, kinda wanna get to Rome and I kinda wanna witness, you know, to higher up judges. I wanna go all the way and it's more of a practical thing, it's not so much a protest.

He's just kind of, he's asked, Do you wanna Do you wanna appeal? Like, is that what you're saying? He's like, Sure, yeah, do it. And I think this is a really important point and it's one which I discussed in the episode, probably everybody's least favorite episode I'm sure, which would be His Stripes and Our Stripes, where I talk about how the New Testament calls us to suffering in ways that we can't even imagine today and in ways that we try to get out of, And the New Testament doesn't try to establish our rights, it actually calls us to subordination, to submission, not acquiescence, not just saying, Oh, I'm just gonna allow evil to continue, but to humility and a willingness to remain in our position because our ultimate position is in Christ and it's secure and we don't need justice now because vengeance is God's and He'll take care of it. And our identity is in Him.

So the Bible often calls us to suffer in our positions. And while suffering is often viewed as a purifying agent and something that can be used for our good, ultimately a lot of the places which call us to suffer aren't viewed, the thing that's in view isn't our ultimate good, though God will bring that about, but what's in view is our witness to those who are oppressing us, to our enemies. Our ability to bear up under suffering with joy shows our oppressors that our identity is not in circumstance, but rather is grounded in something eternal. Our ability to suffer like Christ and to demonstrate that to oppressors, while it might be purifying for us is it's primarily viewed as a tool of kenosis, this thing that we can, this way that we can display Christ to those who obviously need it. I mean, if they're oppressing us, they need Jesus, right?

So that willingness to suffer and to not try to usurp our position, it's a declaration of the Gospel in us and through us to those living a life antithetical to the Gospel and therefore in dire need of it, the only thing that can truly change them. So it might surprise you, and it surprised me too, that I actually do agree with Bochum to a large extent, at least with what he says on the surface. And that's probably going be surprising particularly at the end of a season like this one on nonviolent action because for as amazing as some of those stories of nonviolence are, and for as much as they are vast improvement on the use of violent force to resolve conflict, and they ultimately, a lot of them end up seeking reconciliation and doing a better job in the long run, there are some of them which I think might have been better for Christians not to participate in. So whereas a group of Christians in The Philippines going to surround and protect a rebel army about to be slaughtered might be good because the actions are a defense of life, other actions like some of those in the colonies which subverted the British government might not have been fitting for Christians to do.

I'm not completely sure about all that. And this episode will have me kind of taking my best guesses at things and asking a lot of questions and saying, well, this is kind of what it seems like at the moment to me. So this is an episode that rather than really closing out the season is gonna be maybe a springboard for future reflection and come back and add to this season as I learn more and think more. So hopefully, you can hold these ideas loosely as you work through them yourself as well. And hopefully, you can be gracious to me as my thinking might change over time.

But I think Bauchem is right and that there are actions which may not be fitting for Christians to do in regard to seeking a change of status or of legislation. But for as right as Bauchem is on the surface, I think that he and his group tend to be very wrong in certain ways. It seems to me that conservative evangelicals have this double standard in regard to social justice, and social justice is just like the word communism. You throw it around as an attack on other people, but then you equivocate on a term. Like when it applies to you, it doesn't really apply to you, it's a different word, then it's just justice.

But when other people do things that are against your political affiliation, well that's just social justice which is against the Gospel. So in one breath, Bauckham says that we're in a different empire and we should fight for just laws, but there aren't any unjust laws on the books that target minorities, he doesn't think. But then he goes on to say that President Trump just passed a prison reform act that fixes some of the problems. Fixes problems that Bauckham just said didn't exist and it only fixes some of the problems? That means that there are still some problems existing to fix and fight against.

And you see this kind of doublespeak with a lot of conservative evangelicals. Republicans have to get credit for doing good things and we have to fight for certain justice issues like fighting against abortion. And the rights agenda also includes fighting for marriage which somehow means fighting against homosexuality but not against divorce, which is a much larger problem for Christians and society in terms of numbers. The Rights Agenda also includes fighting against immigrants, which just seems antithetical to the way that the Bible views that justice issue. So whereas I think I largely agree with Bochum about the primacy of the Gospel, I don't think Bochum, and I don't know his personal position on all the political issues all that well, but I assume something about him and even if I'm not right about him, he's representative of many conservative evangelicals that I do know because I see them using him a lot.

So I think that he or at least the people that he represents, most conservative evangelicals, I don't think they apply this idea of the Gospel consistently. When they say the Gospel alone, that's really just a mantra used to spiritualize their position and condemn the other side. So while the mantra is then discarded when it comes to their own pet issues, the Gospel is enough for racial injustice but it's not enough for abortion. The Gospel is enough for fighting poverty and economic issues but it's not enough to fight Marxist or socialistic pushes from the left. And that right there is my big issue, one of my big issues with the right.

The Gospel is a weapon strong enough to fight any enemy out there, just not the right's own boogeymen. We've seen this a lot from conservative Christians. Jerry Falwell had an infamous piece entitled Ministers and Marchers back in the sixties which encouraged Christians in the middle of the civil rights movement not to get involved in social justice issues. But once civil rights won, once Falwell and his group segregationist institutions started being threatened by having tax exemption pulled, and they realized that the civil rights movement and the so called communists on the left were advancing, social justice through politics became a good thing. And it was no longer social justice, it was just justice.

Falwell ended up pulling and destroying pretty much all of the copies that he could get his hands on of ministers and marchers, he didn't want any trace of that, and he did a complete 180 from out of politics to in politics. Falwell established the religious right and fought for social justice until the day that he died. It was just the social justice that suited him and therefore, it was just justice. I think we see the same thing with John MacArthur who has preached many sermons against protests and social justice for race issues, but then he turns around and protests governmental laws in his state in regard to public worship. I'm not as familiar with Baucham's corpus of work as I am with MacArthur, but I think Baucham, like most conservative evangelicals, is doing the same thing here.

He dismisses political processes and social justice for certain issues and then embraces such strategies when it comes to his own pet issues. In my opinion, this type of thing is the modus operandi of modern conservative evangelicals. We see the exact same type of thing happen in regard to Complementarianism. When you go to the Bible, you're kind of faced with two paths in regard to women in the church. You can view women as being all included because Jesus teaches women, Paul recognizes women as apostles and ministers, deaconesses, particularly at the end of Romans, Priscilla teaches Apollos, and there are only one or two passages that seem to indicate prohibitions on women in the New Testament.

But those passages are vague and should be overruled by the clarity of the rest of the New Testament on women. Now that's the egalitarian approach. The other approach would be to take the Bible at face value all the way and allow a few passages to dictate our view on women. Says that women shouldn't speak in church, so let them remain quiet. It says women shouldn't teach a man or have authority over him, and this is grounded in the creation of Adam and Eve which is important.

It's not just something that, oh, well, we just do this in church. It's grounded in creation, meaning that it's universal. So women shouldn't teach or have authority over a man in anything. In the same first Timothy passage, it says that women shouldn't have braided hair. And in other passages, it says that women should have their heads covered.

So we adhere to that too. On top of this, we see the early church fathers clearly grounding the treatment of women in creation and they see women as equals in terms of value but also as lesser creatures in certain ways like in their emotions or in their weakness towards deception. So from this patriarchal reading, it's clear that women should be silent in church, not teach over a man anywhere, and not have authority in anything over a man anywhere. What you don't get from the Bible is most forms of complementarianism or maybe even any forms. To come up with that kind of a position requires cherry picking in my opinion.

So what we see with conservative evangelicals in my opinion is that we tend to like to straddle this cherry picker line. We want the best of both worlds. We don't want patriarchy and we don't want egalitarianism, so we go with complementarianism. We know that suffering is important but we won't suffer against unjust governments, we won't suffer as slaves and we won't suffer in bad marriages, but we'll call the homosexuals to suffer in celibacy. We can't get rid of suffering altogether, right?

And we start to call our daily travails suffering and cross rather than what the Bible depicts cross as being a result of conscious choices and bearing those consequences of making those choices of integrity. So we conservative Evangelicals, we don't want to be seen as backwards and ultra fundamentalist Bible thumpers, but we also don't want to throw off everything and become just cultural mirrors. But we do want to be culturally relevant, right? So we pick the path of the middle which allows us to not be too Christian and not be too secular. We kind of pick pick the thing that that helps us to be relevant but not fully compromised.

When it comes to politics, we know that it would be a huge sacrifice to give up political action altogether. At the same time, we know that the Bible calls us to certain levels of subordination and that it calls us to a life that's going to include suffering and that we aren't supposed to bulk at our position in life because the Bible isn't about rights. So what do we do? We take stands, but we take them on things which don't largely impact us. We stand against homosexuality and abortion because those things don't impact the majority of those in our community, cause we don't participate in those things as much.

They're two of the safest things we could stand against. At the same time, things like divorce, while still viewed negatively, aren't soap boxes for us because it impacts too many in our congregations. Greed is explained away and has become so subjective that none of us have to worry about it applying to us. Gluttony is never preached on. Helping the poor is avoided because that's Marxist talk.

And while we have, you know, one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament that's deeply convicting, Ezekiel 16 where it talks about Sodom and Gomorrah being destroyed because they were overfed and they were comfortable and they were unconcerned, they didn't help the poor and needy, we've got passages like that that are so clear and the rest of the Bible echoes warnings against wealth and greed, but I'm a conservative evangelical and I cherry pick. We ignore our own serious sins and and we only highlight the sins of others. Okay, so enough railing about my group here. Let's answer the question, is the Gospel enough? The answer is of course, yes.

But for the sake of consistency and integrity, we have to mean that it is then enough for all things. It's enough for race and gender issues, but then it's also enough for abortion, religious freedom, immigration, and everything else under the sun. The only fix to anything is going to be the Gospel. Yes, that's true. Legislation doesn't ultimately change things.

Yes, that's true. In fact, legislation has a tendency to suppress the real problems or to disguise them which is why we see racial tensions flare up decades after white people thought that the problem was fixed. So yes, Christians absolutely need to make our priority the Gospel. 100% agree. That being said, there is often a tendency to only give lip service to the Gospel and to fall into the opposite ditch here.

While politics and social movements might be fighting, the opposite response of doing nothing of tangible service is fleeing or freezing. Oftentimes, proclaim that we should just preach the Gospel, which excuses them from getting their hands dirty at all. But while the Gospel teaches us that we ought not to fight for our power and position because both of those things are secure in Christ, we are to combat the manifestation of evil. So while we may not seek to legislate abortion against abortion, we ought to sacrifice our resources of time and money to adopt, to provide for a local mother in need, to donate to women's shelters, to keep our doors open to mothers who need it, etc. And while we might, may not seek to legislate racial justice legislation, which we know is meaningless, we might choose to move into the inner city or into a minority community.

We might place ourselves under the tutelage and authority of a minority congregation. We might join a big brother program or become a peacemaker in cities where gang violence is an issue. And this is exactly where conservatives like Baucham are right. The Gospel isn't about seeking to gain or shift power. The Gospel is about recognizing that we already have the power.

That power just looks like being a servant and sacrificing of oneself. It's through that kenosis, through the laying down of our lives that true change is accomplished in the world. The Gospel alone cannot mean that we just verbalize the Gospel message, you know, tell people, hey, just repent and believe and then we go on our merry way without discipleship or anything added to that. Sure, the Gospel is a message of hope that we proclaim and that's how it starts, but it is also the Gospel of the Kingdom, the life we live in now. And the Great Commission is not to make converts, it's to make disciples.

Jesus tells us that we who hear His words and obey them are building on the rock, right? Not just hear the words and proclaim Jesus, but obey them, that's the rock. The Gospel can't be a call to disengage from issues nor can it be a call to subvert the means of God which He intends to use to bring about His Kingdom. That means being the Church, living out the Kingdom and putting it on display in their incarnation. So whereas the left tends to sacrifice theology and the right sacrifices social action, both also subvert the means of God by cherry picking how they apply these things.

The left says social action is important yet wants us to be theologically rich on racial and economic justice. Yet, it foregoes justice towards the unborn. The right says that the theological message is important yet foregoes preaching on issues that are problematic for our own groups. And both of these groups seek to change the other by commanding coercive legislative force. It's an absolute mess.

So where does that leave me on the topic of nonviolent action and the gospel? I definitely recognize nonviolent action as a beautiful act and one that is more in line with the grain of the universe that a loving God and a patient God created. Nonviolent action makes a lot of sense because it seeks reconciliation. It's more holistic and I think it's a viable option when it's used to love and protect vulnerable people. I think one of the clear ways that non violent action is very good for a Christian is with the peacemakers and the UCPs.

I think they're perfect examples. They place their bodies in harm's way in order to help groups reconcile. But as for some of the other non violent actions like some of the protests and such, I don't know, I go back and forth on it. I've participated in several of those protests in the summer of twenty twenty, but I'm still not sure how I feel about those in retrospect. Maybe our being in a democracy impacts the nature of the means that we have available to us as Christians.

So it was interesting to me that Bauckham kind of praised the legislation that we gained from Christians in the past, from the work that they did. And I think to myself, Well, what does he think Christians in the past did to try to encourage that legislation? You had the underground railroads, you had Quakers and abolitionists kind of doing subversive things, right? Doing illegal things for sure. In the civil rights era, you had a lot of Christians, more of the liberal Christians and black Christians, you had them marching and doing protests.

Like where does Bacham think that these, a lot of these legislations came out of? What Christian actions contributed to them? Because it wasn't the other side, it wasn't the side that was splitting because of race or the side that was keeping their slaves that caused that legislation. So again, it's a double standard, it's a historical double standard. Oh, it was okay for King and those people to protest then, but these protests, no, that's no good.

It's different. But it seems like in a democracy, protests are legitimate, right? I mean, they're legitimate means to try to change things. And if Baqam is okay with protests at one point, why not this point? We can talk about the problem of the ideologies being protested, but how are Christians joining in protests?

How is that a problem? How is that seeking just seeking power? I don't know. I have difficulty with what seems like duplicity to me. But I don't know.

Maybe protests are good if the ideology is good. Maybe protests which demonstrate solidarity with a group are different than those which call for legislative change, or those who are just seeking to usurp some power and implant another. I don't know. But I do think that being a prophetic witness to one's current political system is a Christian duty, but where that line is between seeking power or seeking to shift power and seeking to shine light on darkness, I'm not sure. Jury's still out for me.

But I will say that I will disagree with Vadi. I don't think that the the current protests should be excluded because there are godless people in the crowd. And I know that some people have an issue with BLM, and I think some of that is is taken out of context when you when you actually read their ideologies, I think it's taken out of context. But yeah, sure, I'm sure that they're affirming of some things that I wouldn't be. But it's just really interesting to me that BLM and other groups are kind of discounted because of some of their not orthodox theology, even though they're not a Christian organization.

Yet, conservatives just latch themselves onto the Republican Party which has some huge glaring theological problems. So it's interesting that, again, duplicity, you see it everywhere. You want to discount BLM because there are godless people in it, yet you attach yourself to a party that has plenty of godless people and racist ideology rooted into it and all kinds of things. So it's just duplicity. And you know, from a different angle too, two of the protests that I was in were put on by the AND Campaign and I think One Race, I don't know that much about One Race, but the AND Campaign is really solid.

I love them. And Bauckham just seems to put everybody under the umbrella of BLM and taking the worst part of what he views as the worst part of their theology out and making that all encompassing of this whole movement and that just completely strawmans it and denies that there are other groups involved in these kinds of things. So again, I part of what just chafes me about all of this is duplicity, again, I've used that word a lot here, but the duplicity of this double standard of terminology and of application, but also the just straw manning, you know, it's the end of the world, these people are the worst people, and then you don't hold yourself to the same standards and recognize the problems on your own side. It's just that makes me not want to believe somebody very much at all. It makes it hard for me to trust what they say.

And I've got some big problems with what people like Bachman and MacArthur say, particularly in regard to justice issues. And I assume when they have such huge glaring issues in terms of the application of justice which is central to the Bible, that makes me think that there are probably some pretty big gaping holes in their theology somewhere. Duh. Okay, back on track. This issue is still pretty murky to me, and I by no means feel that I can judge someone for participating in non violent action in our democracy.

However, I think there are two things that I can call Christians out on. First, I can call out the inconsistent application of the Gospel. If you're saying that the Gospel precludes one group of people from seeking to shift power for their pet issues, while you yourself aren't excluded from seeking to shift power for your pet issues, that's a problem. That's just hypocrisy. Whatever our standard is, we need consistent application.

Second, I can call out Christians who encourage the use of violent means for overthrowing power. Whether that's pro revolutionary war, Christians who come out of the woodwork every July 4, Warhawk Republicans or Antifa leftists, violent subversion of authority has no place in Christianity. It's just not a morally legitimate avenue to take. And even if it were, why would you take it? Because it doesn't work as well as non violence as we've discussed at length in this series.

So I don't know if this episode did much to solidify anything for you. I felt like I was kind of, maybe not ranting, but I felt like I was kind of going back and forth and part of it is because I told you that this is a dialogue that I'm having with myself, which I guess makes it a monologue, but sometimes I feel like there are two of me. And I'm talking with myself and going back and forth and I can see different things and it's still muddy. I'm actually recording this, what is it, 12/02/2020. So I am almost I have almost completed a year's worth of episodes because my plan is so I have all the way through like January 2, January first of '20 '20 '1.

And I've done that because this issue of politics and legislation and government and all that has been such a difficult one for me. One that I've been thinking about for a long long time. And so I wanted a year's worth of episodes so that I could just sit back over this next year and just read a bunch. My goal is, in 2021, after our resource episode, so like April of twenty twenty one, I want to start a series on government. And hopefully, will have a year and a half of reading books on Christianity and government under my belt and I'll be able to come down with a bit more assurance, maybe not complete certainty of course, but have a much better idea and more coherent opinion on this thing, on this topic.

So I'm sorry if this was kind of discombobulated. No, I do feel confused at the end of discussions like these. More often, you know, I feel confused more at the end than at the beginning because it just, I don't know, it just gets mixed around in there. But you know, that's the beauty of religion and grace. We can struggle through this together and we can show grace to one another even if we end up landing on different sides.

But hopefully this season has given you a lot to chew on both in terms of your view on non violent action as well as your view on the Christian vocation. I have, linked a bunch of resources in the show notes for you to take a look at including an article entitled with the same title as this this episode, which I I take some different angles and add some different things to that, so that might be worth your read to kind of get get some more thoughts on on the Gospel and my frustrations with our community. And I'll post a bunch of other resources in the show notes as well. But that's all for now, so peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.