Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. For this episode, I was invited by Rebecca Mui to do an interview with a fellow reformed brother who also leans towards non violence and social justice. I really enjoyed getting to know Joe Ashe a little, and I was so happy to hear about the fantastic work that he's doing to help the oppressed. And of course, it's always encouraging to me to hear another reformed Christian who comes to similar conclusions on non violence and social justice, and somebody who recognizes how our brand of Christianity really ought to lead to those very ideals. Now, to many who are nonviolent and probably lean more Anabaptist, that might sound a bit crazy to you.

So you want to dig a little bit deeper into the Reformed grounding for social justice, I'll make sure to link to a previous episode that I did in the show notes which discusses some of the catechisms and such and why they lead to justice. But anyway, I loved this interview because I thought Joe Ash handled the questions very honestly. There were some extremely difficult questions posed to him and there were moments where he admitted that what's true and right in regard to methodology is often very hard to parse out. There's a lot of gray and a lot of unknowns. I think Titus ended up doing somewhat of the same thing with Rebecca and I in full agreement when he voiced the opinion that we love what Joe Ash is doing by freeing the oppressed through working with the government, while we simultaneously recognize that this is a difficult thing for us to square with a consistent ethic of non violence.

And it's especially difficult for me and why I'm placing it here within this season because I kind of lean towards the conclusion of Christian Anarchism. How can I excuse working with the government? So this is a really murky issue, and I I think it's a great episode to place within this current season on government and Christian Anarchy because it would be really easy for me to make it come across as if the conclusions and methodologies that that I'm drawing out for you here are all so clear and so palatable and without question. So in all of this, even though Joe Ash and I probably come to some different conclusions on how we should deal with government, I'm not judging him here because he's honest and he seeks the kingdom and he recognizes the difficulties and the murkiness that a fallen world often provides us. With that murkiness being admitted, I do want to highlight what I think are two big takeaways from this episode in regard to the position of Christian Anarchism, which I would argue for.

The first takeaway is that there's a distinction between wielding an evil means and allowing an evil means to be wielded. We understand this distinction with God all the time, with a prime example being Joseph when he was sold into slavery. God didn't actively and directly beat Joseph up and sell him into slavery. He didn't even hire or command anybody to do it. Rather, God allowed His wicked brothers to do it without intervention.

God could have stopped them, but He didn't. He permitted the evil. In this interview, I'm going to argue that we can have similar interactions with the state. There's a difference between me seeking to wield the power of the state to bring about justice and to bring that down hard on somebody for vengeance, like pressing charges on someone who steals from me and allowing the state to do what it will with the power that it has. Pressing charges against a thief is me seeking vengeance.

Informing the state of a murder or pedophilia though, that seems a bit different to me. That's giving them information that they then can choose to act on as they will. I provide perhaps the closest example that we can get from the Bible, which I think is in first Corinthians five. Now in that passage, there is an unrepentant adulterer in the Christian community. And Paul says that the community ought to remove their protection from them and pray that this man be delivered over to Satan so that his flesh may be destroyed and his soul saved.

They weren't pursuing his harm, they weren't seeking to beat him, and they weren't going to directly harm him, but they recognized that the adulterer had removed himself from God's kingdom and had placed himself under another's authority, Satan's authority to be exact. Paul encouraged the Christians to allow that authority to do what it does, even though what Satan's authority does is evil, as are his intentions and all that he does. The second major takeaway is more of an afterthought which didn't make it into the episode, but one that I want to supply here. Josh mentioned that one of the reasons he works with the state is because evidence shows that it is the most efficient way to get results. Now, don't know any of these studies and I haven't researched it, but one question that I would pursue if I were going to look into this issue further would be in regard to what this effectiveness really looks like because I'm somewhat skeptical.

I'm not skeptical of of Joe Ash's, skills at researching, and, I'm not skeptical of, the conclusions that researchers draw. But if if you know anything about research, there are definitely ways that you can spin things or ways that you can miss things, which is just as common. You know, you you can miss an angle because you're not really looking for something. And so what I think is, I'm reminded of a video interview of a former British drug agent. This agent talked about the biggest drug bust that he had ever done, and maybe even the biggest drug bust in British history.

And he said that he became disillusioned after that bust because someone told him that he'd only disrupted the drug market for like an hour. All that work and all that risk that he put himself in going undercover only ended up creating a power vacuum which others were happy to fill and which ended up making the larger gangs actually more powerful and made violence more inevitable and on a larger scale because the bigger gangs absorbed the market that was lost to this weaker gang. So the interview is extremely fascinating and I'll make sure to link it below. And I mean with all the other decades of data that we have on drug wars, it's hard to see how legislation and state control ends up doing more good rather than more harm. Of course, this makes more intuitive sense to me when we're talking about drugs and something which is more of a personal choice as compared to the thing that JOASH does which is to help especially vulnerable women who are sex trafficked and especially even more than that, children who are being exploited.

Now, I rejoice when the state raids sex trafficking rings, when they free slaves, and when it punishes evil. But I suppose the question is for me, do I think that I as a Christian ought to be pulling that lever of the state? Or is there a way for me to pull that lever in a way that isn't actively seeking vengeance, but merely informing them about evildoers who have placed themselves through their wicked actions under the secular state's jurisdiction? Just like we see in in first in Corinthians five. So these are some really hard things to work through, but I really enjoyed working through them with Rebecca, Titus and Joash.

I hope you enjoy the episode, I hope you learned something, I hope you walk away feeling a little more humble in our lack of certainty as we all try to navigate this wicked, dark world through the light of Christ. Enjoy the show.

We tend to think that, you know, we have to accumulate all this power to do good. But when we do that, we're discounting the power of God to operate in and through our meekness and our faithfulness.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Kingdom Outpost. Today, we're going off script and we're talking about justice in real practical terms this time rather than, you know, just in theory, just in terms of theology. We're hoping to dive into it. So we have a guest today.

We have Joash Thomas. Could you introduce yourself and what ministries you're involved with and your backgrouund?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, good to be here. Huge fan of the work that you guys are doing. My name is Joash Thomas. I have the joy of serving with International Justice Mission in Canada as our National Director of Mobilization and Advocacy.

So that includes church mobilization, mobilizing the church to give, to pray towards the work of setting the captive free, setting the oppressed free, but also includes mobilizing the church to be a voice in the public square to advocate with the Canadian government on behalf of those in oppression around the world. So if you're unfamiliar with IGM, we're the world's largest anti slavery organization with offices all over the world that rescue people from violence, sexual violence, human trafficking. And, yeah, our mission is to protect the poor from violence. So excited to be here and, yeah, looking forward to jumping into this conversation.

Awesome. And Derek, you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah, my name is Derek Ryder, and I just do a little podcast called The Fourth Way, which focuses on non violence and justice issues. And my family is missionaries here in Romania.

Awesome, and Titus.

Yeah, I'm Titus. Brenna and I, my wife Brenna and I live here in Virginia near Charlottesville and are hoping to move to Noida, which is a satellite city of Delhi next year to start an ESL center and plant churches.

Awesome. And I'm Rebecca and I don't really do very much here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia except run the Kingdom Outpost and kind of write articles and organize stuff like this. All right, so maybe we could go around we could of off the top of our head just kind of define how would we define justice in the kingdom of God. Joesh, you want to start?

Yeah, absolutely. So you know a big part of my job is going across Canada preaching at Canadian churches, and it's something I used to do in The States as well. But, you know, preaching about biblical justice, you know, justice from the lens of the Bible. So, you know, we live in a day and age where, the political kingdoms of both the left and the right have kind of hijacked the terms justice and injustice for their political ends. And so it's important for us as the church to define and constantly redefine what justice and injustice is and isn't from the lens of Christian tradition, from church history, the lens of Christian theology, that the church has believed everywhere and always.

So the definition of justice that I offer is the Augustinian definition of justice, which I find really helpful. Thomas Aquinas reiterates this as well, but they define justice as giving to each person their due, giving to each person what is due to them from God. So that's how I would define justice as well. Includes both good and bad. So, you know, for the righteous, for the oppressed, that means giving to them the good life that God intended for him, because God is a good God.

And for the wicked, that means giving them the accountability and consequences of their actions, because God is also a just God.

Awesome. And Derek, any thoughts on the topic?

Yeah. I mean, this might be a little bit juvenile, but one of the one of the issues that that I feel like I come up against a lot when it's like politics, you know, and you're talking about abstention or, you know, voting third party and it seems fruitless, or, you know, when you talk about non violence and people are like, Well, that just can't work. And, there's this pragmatic ideal of what justice is, like how do we get the best that we can get, given the hand that we're dealt? And what I feel like a lot of the early church fathers talked about and what I feel like Jesus kind of embodied was that the kingdom is seeking the ideal. We're to live in the ideal and pursuing the ideal even if we don't feel like we can accomplish that.

So, like, an analogy that I might give would be, we've got four kids, seven and under right now. We have an ideal of keeping our home clean, but that doesn't happen. Like, we pick up all the toys and within five minutes, all those toys are scattered all over the place. Yet, we work towards that ideal and we try to train our kids towards that ideal like, Okay, it's time to clean up again. We got to clean up the mess again.

And, I think that's kind of how I would view justice in the kingdom. It's this idea of seeking Eden, trusting God to eventually get us there and that we can't do it ourselves, but that we're gonna keep on pursuing the ideal because that's what God wants us to do. And and he gives us the strength to to do that and to not become overburdened and and depressed.

Yeah. I I would say I have more questions than answers when it comes to this topic. Justice is something we see pretty clearly on God's heart in the Old and New Testament. And then we see our culture is really obsessed with this idea as well. Know, if you look at America where I'm from, we had an entire war, civil war, based on what is just and what is fair.

And then we see a lot of the racial unrest and divisions today are based on this issue again. And so it's in the scriptures, it's in our culture, and it's something that's on my heart. But I guess for me, lot of the tension would come with my commitment to non violence, because justice seems like the sort of thing where if there was ever a time when it would be justified to take up arms against the oppressor, it would be in a lot of these situations. So I'm interested in getting into that a little bit later. As far as a definition of justice, yeah, I guess equality comes to mind, making sure everyone has equal opportunities and that systems that have oppressed people are torn down and yeah going about that work in a way that doesn't compromise the ethic of Jesus.

I was just thinking, was actually just arguing a little bit. I don't think we were really arguing Titus, but to me, to me, I feel like justice has to start in the church because otherwise we don't really have something to offer. Like the world of course is unjust and it's full of immorality and things like that. And I think, I guess I kind of accept that, but then when it's in the church that just really grinds my gears and I'm just like, no it can't be because if we don't have something different to offer then what are we doing at all? So to me, somehow justice is something that like the church is the kingdom of God has to do.

I know like we may not always keep the toys off the floor in that sense. It's going to be a battle all the time, time, but we just, we absolutely have to because like we can't, we don't really have anything to, we don't have a gospel if we don't have justice and righteousness in the church and if we don't deal with things like abuses and yeah yeah

yeah no I agree 100% in fact I think the primary way we're supposed to seek justice is through this alternative society known as the kingdom of God like we see in the first century that justice was established in the church in many different ways, like justice for women, justice across ethnic barriers, justice across economic barriers, across social status. So I do think that's the primary way we're supposed to seek justice. Now, I don't think we're supposed to ignore the world either, and that's where I'd be interested in hearing some of the perspectives of the other guys on the call and you as well, Rebecca. Cause that's where I have a lot of questions. How are we supposed to go about that?

If I can offer something here, I think you're absolutely right Titus. I think something that we often neglect in our pursuit of justice with the best intentions is that we also have to seek justice Jesus's way, right? So the way we seek justice has to be consistent with the fruit of the spirit. So for me, that's often the filter question whenever, you know, I'm tweeting about something or advocating for something or convincing my neighbor to seek justice. I'm always analyzing my heart intentions and seeing, you know, just asking questions like, is this loving?

Is this gentle? Is this peaceful? You know, is this joyful? Like, am I seeking justice through the right lens as well and not just seeking it from a retributive lens? Because that is, as you pointed out so beautifully, that is not the way of Jesus.

So, you know, something that we at IJM keep in mind constantly is that, you know, God has given the state the power to wield a sword. So we as the church are not called to wield a sword. We're called to come alongside the state and equip the state and support the state and being more just. So if you look at the Old Testament, God gave the state the power to wield the sword to mainly two ends, right? To protect the oppressed, to protect the poor, but to punish the wicked at the same time.

So that's the state's responsibility. So it's important for us as we're seeking justice to respect the authority of the state. So that's why you'll never find AJM overseas kicking doors down and rescuing people as badly as we want to rescue them. What separates us

like the Underground Railroad? Have you heard of that?

Yeah, yeah, I want you know, I want this on other organizations and the good work they're doing, but our approach is different from a lot of the other organizations because we respect the authority of the state that God has bestowed upon the state. And it's the state's job to protect their poor and oppressed. So we build capacity with the government's law enforcement capabilities, their their judicial capabilities, and we train them to effectively do the job that they're mandated to do according to their constitution, but also the divine mandate of the state to protect the poor from violence.

This is where we pull Derek in with his 500 episodes on non violence and whether or not the state in fact is justified in their use of the sword.

Well, so I've struggled with that. So being non violent, you know, one of the hardest questions is when you see so much abuse in the Western church, you know, like, just can't be right to not bring in the government to exact justice. And, But when you do that, the question is, Well, am I complicit with the violence then that they do? Because I don't think I should be in the army or be a police officer to inflict violence. And I don't know if I have an answer to this, but I look to one Corinthians five, and in one Corinthians five, there's this guy who committed sexual immorality with his, I guess, stepmom.

And Paul says, All right, he's not repenting, he's not changing, so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna excommunicate him from the church and we're gonna pray that his flesh is delivered to Satan. So, he essentially prays for his fleshly demise, right? The church is no longer going to protect him. And so, he's not speaking of the government at that point, but I think where I land on this at this point would be when somebody commits especially grave injustice against another human being, they have lost the protection of the church.

They're in the hands of God, and we're not going to protect them. We will deliver them over to the authorities that God does His bidding through, and God does His bidding through Satan. He doesn't participate in the evil that Satan does, but he uses Satan to bring justice just like he used to Syria and Babylon, and God uses the government. So, I'll call a police officer, I'll, pursue governmental authorities even though I'm non violent, and I think that I'm justified in doing that and not complicit.

I was just thinking that what George described would be how abuse advocates would say that we need to deal with certain issues like immorality or sexual abuse in the church, that that is Caesar's job in the sense that when you have a case like that, it's not your job to investigate it, it's not your job to, know, the church tries to take on these roles that, you know, tries to hush it up, deal with it in house and that's when a lot of problems happen. So, kind of like an extreme case like that, which is not really that extreme because it is quite prevalent. An issue like that kind of pushes our sort of non violence convictions that we might have to the face on clash of values or just like that conflict that we have like, you know, pursuing justice but not pursuing vengeance. Having, you know, the church and then we have the reality that it's so messy and just like evil that it's just so pervasive. I guess it really forces you to say, yeah, of course, that's the state's job, that's their job to deal with these things.

We also have a responsibility, of course. What do you think, Titus?

Yeah, I'm trying to think through this and I have more questions for his Zoom name is Valentina, but I think it's Joash. Right? Mister Thomas.

Valentina is my wife. I'm using my wife's laptop this morning.

Sounds good. Well, if you wanna pull her in here for that, that'd be great. But no. I'm curious, in your organization, is most of what you do working alongside the authorities and delivering up those who are oppressors to the authorities? Or are you focusing on other things as well?

Like I said, I'm very inexperienced in this field, so I don't know what other techniques could be employed, but I would primarily wanna employ other techniques, whether it's helping women who are at risk for sex trafficking to find other jobs. Of course, like I described earlier, creating an alternative society in the church where justice does run like a river, and and whatever other things I could do to where my my primary job is not to to bring in the the sword of the state necessarily. Although in certain situations, I think that's that's certainly necessary.

Yeah. So we bring in the sword of the state for a very specific reason. And that's because we have seen that the best way to shut down human trafficking, specifically, one of the big issues that we go after, the best data proven way to shut it down is by getting the state up to capacity and getting the state to own its responsibility to shut it down. So when you get the state to go after the bad guys, they go away. They close shop because it doesn't become as lucrative anymore.

All of a sudden, are consequences. There's accountability for their actions being provided by the government. And so it just doesn't become lucrative for them to operate anymore. So that's why our theory of change is a bit unique and a bit more nuanced than a lot of other great Christian organizations that do similar work. We essentially equip the state to do what God empowered it to do in the first place.

But that's not all we do. That's a big part of what we do. That's a big part of our theory of change. But we also do other things. So if I were to take you through what an entire rescue operation looks like from start to finish, The first thing we do is we collect evidence through investigators.

So these investigators use state of the art techniques to find children in trafficking or find families in labor trafficking. And once they've collected the evidence, we take it to the local police station and say, here, we've done all this evidence collection work. The laws of your country require you to go after the bad guys and to go rescue the oppressed. So we then send social workers with the local police team to go so that the police kicks down the doors and our social workers are there to advise. And then we also train the police on how to interact with victims of trafficking, with victims of sexual violence, because a lot of times they're not trained.

So their line of questioning cannot be trauma informed. It can be triggering. It can actually, you know, devastate the survivor a lot more. So we, you know, coach the police in that aspect too. But then we also work with social services that the state provides.

And then we bring in IGM partners that provide aftercare. So we don't just rescue survivors and let them go. We put them through an intensive rehabilitation recovery program. A lot of times we partner with local churches that provide aftercare services. But bottom line, we stay with them until they're fully restored and until they're in a place to sustain themselves and their families.

So a lot of times you'll find survivors who open up businesses, who end up building homes for themselves, their families, and we get to share in that joy of restoration and rehabilitation as well, because that is a kingdom thing as well. Right? This kingdom that Jesus promises this this good news of the kingdom is a kingdom that we see that's fully realized in Revelation when Jesus comes back, when every tear is wiped away, where all oppression shall cease and where God's justice is restored. And that also includes the restoration of the oppressed. So we take that bit seriously as well.

And aftercare is a big part of what we do. We offer free aftercare training and resourcing to other organizations that want to follow our state of the art techniques and trainings. But yeah, so we do both essentially. We care for the individual survivor and we get the local church involved in that. But at the same time, we also make sure that the state is holding the traffickers accountable.

And so we fight their cases in court. Literally what Isaiah one seventeen tells us to do, plead the widow's cause, plead the cause of the oppressed. We provide legal representation to them in court and we get trafficking convictions to put as much distance as possible between the bad guys and others who are vulnerable, who could also be oppressed in the future. So our goal by 2030 is to protect half a billion people from violence. So we believe that if we're building these justice systems, if we're transforming these broken justice systems, there won't be a refugee crisis.

There won't be a trafficking crisis because we're preventing it from ever happening in the first place. So that's also why we work with the state.

I was just gonna say that's amazing. Like, I respect that so much. I am curious and this is a bunny trail and I'm not trying to get in a debate contrary to what most people know me for. But do you have the cognitive dissonance of believing that it is wrong, but it's always wrong for Christians to kill or do you think that it's okay for Christians to serve in the military and the police force? Because if you're fine with that, then I assume you wouldn't have as much cognitive dissonance as we're all struggling with here, the rest

of Yeah. I'll speak to this personally. Personally, I am a pacifist. So that's another reason why I'm personally excited about the work you do. I've become a pacifist over time after reading the early church and seeing how the early church up until Augustine was almost unanimously pacifistic and anti violence and anti participation in the military and state.

And so personally, I am of that conviction. I won't take up arms personally. I'll respect the authority of the state to do that. And this is where I feel like Augustinian theology can be a little helpful because he recognizes the role of the state. And even the early church fathers who were personally pacifistic recognized the authority of the state and they respected the authority of the state.

But they were also clear that the church has its own job, the state has its own job, and we shouldn't try to create overlaps there. So yeah, to answer your question, I think we can also be just in the way that we seek punishment for perpetrators. So I think I'm speaking for the organization here when I say that we almost never seek the death penalty. I don't think we've ever sought the death penalty. We seek, you know, for us, the end goal is putting as much distance as possible between the perpetrator and the abused.

So, you know, we seek lengthy criminal sentences. And and there are other organizations that are Christian that do the good work of, you know, reaching out to the oppressor when they're in prison. You know, that's that's not our mandate specifically. But, you know, we seek to put as much distance as possible by seeking lengthy criminal sentences. So we never advocate for violence even against the oppressor.

You know, I mean, you can make an argument that it's it can be cruel to lock someone up for a long period of time, especially, you know, a lot of countries around the world and the majority world, but we never seek violence towards the oppressor. For us, the oppressed is the priority. That's why, you know, in seeking accountability towards the oppressor from the state, we just want to put as much distance as possible and and do that in a Jesus like Christ like way. Yeah, so hopefully that provides

Yeah, some I No, that's really good. This comes into kind of what Derek was talking about earlier. When I tell people I'm a pacifist and yet I would still call the police, they're like, Oh, you'll get the pagans to come in and do your dirty work. I'm like, yeah, that's kind of what God did in the old testament. He got the pagans to come in and do his dirty work.

So yeah, it's a tough conversation, but it sounds like you guys or I don't know if you're I'm sure your organization probably is not all past this, but it sounds like you've been able to to walk that line in a pretty healthy way.

I'm kind of curious what you do about governmental corruption. I won't name any specific countries, but in my experience, a lot of the time human trafficking flourishes when it's because like there is a huge turning of light ice, you know, corruption. I shouldn't say too much, but yeah. What do you guys like? How do you handle the issue of corruption?

Yeah. That's a terrific question. I recently got asked that question to our president, regional president for Africa and Europe. And so they oversee operations. This person oversees operations both in Africa, but also Eastern Europe, countries with reputations of having corrupt governments.

It's easy for us to think that corruption is the number one issue that we often face against. It is definitely a factor in a lot of countries that we operate in. But we have actually found that political will and capacity tend to be bigger issues when it comes to taking on injustice. So oftentimes, you'll have laws in the book like, you know, slavery is illegal in every country in the world. But there's no political will to enforce those laws because the police systems that were often set up in these countries were set up by colonial masters, and they were designed to protect the rich and not the poor.

Right? So so we work on generating that political will from within. Try to find that person of peace within a police department. Even if it's, you know, a tainted or corrupt police department, there's always that one person because of common grace who God has there because, you know, they want to genuinely serve their community. So we try to find that person.

We try to get them promoted, we get the media attention, we support them, build a partnership with them. And so political will tends to be oftentimes the number one issue that we come up against or a lack of political will. And then capacity tends to be another issue. So we take on cybersex trafficking in The Philippines, where, you know, we call it online sexual exploitation of children where kids and we've rescued kids as little as two or three months old are put in front of cameras. And guys in The US, Australia, UK, Canada pay $50 for an hour of live directed sexual abuse.

Right? This is a pretty huge problem in The Philippines that we take on. So when we turned our attention to this issue in The Philippines, the number one point of feedback that we got from the Filipino Police Authority and National Bureau of Investigation, which is their FBI, is that, hey, we want to take this on. We have the political will. We know this is a big issue.

We just don't have the capacity because we barely have computers. We don't have the technology to go after this kind of cybercrime. So in those cases, we then come and try to facilitate partnerships with Google or Microsoft to make sure they have all the equipment they need. And, you know, and a lot of times in Africa, it's filing systems, where their filing systems aren't mess, you know, and this is like, it may seem like a super trivial thing to us. But when you're seeking justice in a court in Africa and your file gets lost in the clutter, you have no chance for justice, right?

So we then send volunteers who help organize their filing system and teach them how to organize their filing systems. And that's a form of seeking justice as well to make sure that every oppressor gets their date in court, that every survivor gets their date in court for justice. So those two issues tend to be bigger issues than corruption. Corruption, whenever we've encountered it, what we try to do is we try to build relationships with the person above them. And so we keep going a level up trying to build that relationship.

So that way, if a police officer at a police station is corrupt, we have a relationship with the superintendent or the commissioner who is a person of peace and who puts that pressure top down. So we do that. We have relationships with the media to spotlight police officers doing good work. So those are the ways in which we take care of corruption. And we've worked around them successfully by God's grace everywhere we are.

But that's often not the number one issue that we come up against.

I guess I was thinking like in terms of, I guess it doesn't come up in pacifist discussions that often, but it really is like in the front lines, you do end up working hand in hand, like I know people who advocate for sexual abuse victims, they go with them to court, you know, they do very similar things to what you are describing. So I guess my thought is in that kind of situation where you really have, you know, someone there or who is trapped in that situation, how would don't know Titus, how would you do it without involving, like, involving Cesar at all?

No, I mean, I'm learning a lot in this conversation, and I think that I would involve Cesar at some level. Don't know if that would be my primary technique. I would try as best as I could to do everything else before bringing in the state. But, know, Joe has said that that data has revealed that it's the most effective way. And so you can't argue with that.

Right? Like, why wouldn't you use the most effective way? At the same time, the way of Jesus tends to not always be the most pragmatic. Right? And I'm not saying involving the state is not the way of Jesus, but I would wanna, first of all, like I said earlier, employ any other technique that I could before bringing in the state.

Now I understand that there the organization that you work for, Joe Ash, has a specific mandate, and you're working for that organization. So that that's a little different than, like, instance, if I'm annoyed, and I come across a situation where there's abuse. But even as I'm saying this, like, if I'm annoyed and I come across a situation where someone is being sexually trafficked or sex trafficked, yeah, the first thing I'm gonna do is involve the state. So I guess I'm contradicting myself. I'm kinda thinking out loud here.

No, man. And raise a great point. I appreciate you wrestling with that tension. But yeah, I can tell you for a fact that someone who spent his entire childhood in India, who spent a year in the Delhi area working for our IJM office in Delhi, you know, I can tell you for a fact that the most effective way to shut down a situation of trafficking is just getting not just the police involved, but also equipping the police. And, you know, there's no doubt that we live in a broken world where there are broken institutions.

But as Christians, the way of Jesus is also to find a way to redeem these things, right? And to restore these things the way the Father originally intended them to be. That's why we redemptively engage with the state as well. But I think to your point, it's so easy for us when we're not faced with issues of violence on a daily basis to, you know, have a bit more theological space, not just on this issue, but like on a range of other issues as well. So, you know, I'm excited for your experience in Noida.

And, you know, Derek, you're in Romania where, you know, I talked about countries that have a reputation for corrupt governments. We're in Romania, and that's the reputation we thought we'd run up against. But surprisingly enough, you know, we've found God has sent us people of peace, and we haven't run into corruption yet in Romania. We probably will at some point, but we haven't yet. So, you know, yeah, it's it's it's so encouraging to me to be a part of this conversation where we have ties to the West, but we're still living in the non Western or the, you know, in the majority world where violence is a bit more in your face.

And so I'd be curious to get your thoughts in the months to come on how you continue to process this as a pacifist, as a person of peace in these contexts.

Yeah. So do you mind if I shoot out a question there, Rebecca? All right. And I think this will be a segue because I see on the question document, we've got some CRT stuff that we want to hit a little bit, of course. So, I personally think that that CRT makes some good observations about systems and things.

Their solutions are non gospel and a lot of them are terrible, terrible implications, but, you know, they identify why certain things, certain injustices have persisted. And so, like, I think one of the examples that they might say is, okay, look, there was a top down approach to slavery in The United States as compared to like Great Britain. Great Britain, nobody was killed, it phased out over decades. United States, a lot of people were killed. And then, okay, slavery's gone, but now you've got the KKK who essentially has free reign, you've got lynchings, you've got the police system which is now jailing blacks and using them for work, so slavery.

You've got sharecropping which is slavery because they can't leave because they're financially and physically restrained. So, top down approach, it didn't really fix the problem. The problem was in the hearts of the people and until that changedchanges, you're still going to have racism and oppression. And I think you can look at a lot of different examples of top down approaches throughout history where it looks like a problem was solved through government, but really the issue shifts and maybe becomes more insidious and more subtle and more discreet. And so, one of the questions that I would have is, with governmental approaches Yeah.

So, thoughts on CRT and that observation of top down approaches usually making it scamper like rats into the dark, and then how you see that impact your particular job.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question to wrestle with, Derek. I would argue that we could have done a lot more in The US in terms of a top down approach. So if you look at history of racism, slavery in specific, great, we rescued all these people from slavery, Emancipation Proclamation.

We had a brief period of Reconstruction. But then political realities shifted, Right. And especially having lived most of my U. S. Life in the South in the Bible Belt, I can tell you for a fact that, you know, them pulling out of Reconstruction really quickly and somehow thinking that a few years after, like, you know, a couple of centuries, two, three centuries of slavery would fix everything.

And I mean, to a large degree, you know, you have Christians who stick who still think, oh, it's been so long since we ended slavery. Why is there still a problem? Well, the sin of injustice in this particular case was rampant for three hundred years. What makes us think that, you know, we can just overcome it in one hundred years or, you know, even a couple of hundred years for that matter? So so there still could have been a lot that could have been done from a top down approach that wasn't done.

But you're absolutely right about the power of bottom up change as well. You know, this is why I left the thriving practice as a political consultant to come work for IJM and do mobilization. Because at the end of the day, you know, we you know, at the end of the day, as a Christian, I believe that the gospel changes people and then people change the world in mission with God. So you need both. Need, you know, I would argue you need both.

You need a consistent top down approach and you need a bottom up approach as well. But you also need the church speaking truth to power at all times to make sure that there's that top down approach taking place. So, you know, I can't help but wonder what would the reality of today look like if the church had been a voice for justice in the public square, even after it wasn't the cool thing anymore, even after the tides in the South shifted and Reconstruction turned into deconstruction in the South. Like, Even after that happened, where was the church when that happened? The church was complicit with the state and the church didn't have its independent prophetic witness.

And as a result of that, even today, like two hundred years later, have people walking away from the church because of the church's failure to be a voice for the oppressed for justice in the public square back then. So I'm right there with you. I think that's a healthy tension to live in where we need to be faithful to our calling as the church, but we also need to call the state to do its job without trying to do the job of the state. Yeah, but it's a tough question for sure. No doubt.

Is it?

Sorry, I didn't answer your CRT question. You know, jumping back into that. Yeah, like so organizationally, IJM doesn't have a stance on CRT. But I can tell you for a fact that from our experience, systemic injustice does exist. And there's no doubt about that.

And theologically, as someone who believes in the doctrine of total depravity, I find it hilarious when other reformed Christians try to argue against systemic injustice when if you believe in total depravity, you will believe in systemic injustice. Not only that, you know, as I was preaching at a church this past Sunday, I was preaching from Isaiah one, where God is calling out systemic evil and systemic injustice. So I have a hard time understanding how Christians could read the Old Testament and not see God's heart burn against systemic evil and atjustice. So, you know, I think that's one of the helpful things personally that's, you know, in CRT. But, you know, ultimately, I think we need to build a better understanding of common grace in the church to be able to dilute these issues better.

So common grace, which acknowledges that the Holy Spirit is in the word, but the Holy Spirit is also in the world. So what can we learn from the Holy Spirit at work in the world? And not all of it's obviously going to align with scripture. But, you know, what does align with scripture? And a lot of times when the church is silent, God calls the rocks to cry out.

Right. And so in a moment like this, I think it's helpful for us to learn from our mistakes and look around in culture and see where the Holy Spirit is moving in a way that aligns with scripture and then, you know, try to work with that so that that could be some of CRT could be, you know, could be other things, but we have to get better at looking for the holy spirit at work in the world at the same time.

Yeah, that whole total depravity thing, like in my circles, I don't understand their issue with systemic I mean, do understand it. It's, you know, political posturing and wanting can't admit wrongs and lack of repentance. I understand why, but it just theologically blows my mind.

You mentioned earlier, Juresh, that slavery is illegal in like human trafficking is illegal globally. Is that?

From what I understand, it's illegal in every country in the world. But it's still a big problem with 40,000,000 people in slavery today. And a big part of that problem is because most countries in the world lack the political will to take on slavery and to protect the poor from violence. So that's where we step in as representatives of the church, as Christians in the space.

I guess a good argument for Christians being involved in top down justice, just thinking of it, well, we rarely think of it from that side, I would say pacifists rarely think of it in a top down sense, but a good argument for that would be the fact that it started with Christian advocacy, that started the ball rolling in making slavery illegal and that had that probably had a huge ripple effect that makes it now illegal in all the countries.

Totally. Yeah, I've been reading. I just finished reading Doctor. Issa Macaulay's Reading While Black. And one of the arguments he makes in that book is that the abolition movement was essentially a Christian movement.

There wasn't anyone else before the Christians showed up to own this space of advocating that the state end this particular form of violence. And a lot of times they were pacifistic Christians who led the charge on calling the state to do its job. So I do believe that we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. We can look at church history and find a rich tradition of Christians who were personally very pacifistic, but who also called the state to do their job of protecting the oppressed, know, since scripture is clear that, you know, God has given the state the authority to do that. So if our end goal is to protect the oppressed, to rescue the oppressed, why wouldn't we use every tool that's available to us?

Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a fine line. Niebuhr has a good article, I forget what it's called, but he talks about how there are two types of prophets. He talks about the court prophets and the wilderness prophets, and he basically says that, and this was back in like the 70s or 80s, that evangelicals were being court prophets, you know, going to the prayer breakfast and schmoozing and all that stuff, looking for fame and whatever. And so what, I agree with prophetic witness.

I think what, what my, what the difficulty for me is, because I wasn't a pacifist before 2016, so a lot of people don't like Trump, I like him because he helped me to really assess my theological views. But yeah, what I saw were a lot of court prophets. And it seemed like It seems like there's this fine line between prophesying to the state that they're being unjust and need to transform, and then prophesying so that the state helps you to wield power. And that's really what I struggle with. It's probably a false dichotomy you either have to do this or that, but I've just seen the ugliness that it leads to, which makes it difficult for me.

Totally. Yeah. I'm I'm with you 100%. I think that's often why Christians choose not to engage with the state because we see those bad examples of, you know, the crusades up to 2016, the past few years, the era of the court evangelical where, yeah, you just see bad examples of this. I have a personal theory towards this.

I like again, this is a personal view. I call it the Billy Graham approach versus the Franklin Graham approach. Again, not to disparage anyone, you know, just to call out the realities. But if you look at Billy Graham, you know, yeah, he started off in his political relationships with presidents as, you know, someone who would stump for him. So he, you know, do that.

And then he got really burned with Nixon after the political scandals came out and realized that he was used by the state as a leader in the church. So his approach from post Nixon to essentially, President Obama or Bush right before Obama was he would be there in the background as a counselor, as a pastor to these people in power. You know, he'd be there to speak truth to him. So he had a big hand in bringing restoration to the Clinton's marriage. You know, he had a big hand in counseling George W.

Bush through 09/11, you know, so so I mean, he had a he was there as a pastoral presence to to care for him as a human being, as a fellow image bearer, and to speak truth whenever the opportunity presented itself on policy issues. And obviously didn't get everything right. But, you know, there's there's definitely some impact that he had on policy issues toward a kingdom perspective. But then you've got the Franklin Graham approach, which is basically going and stumping for a president on Fox News. And so you're absolutely right.

There is a huge difference between the two. And it's a thin line because, you know, to Franklin Graham's defense, he probably wanted to, you know, build bridges with the state. And, you know, it got to a point where he probably said, hey, let me let me help you out with the influence I have. And, and we can do a lot of good together. So let me go and defend you on impeachment than Fox News.

But that's where the lines get blurry. Right? I think it's important for us to know as the church what issues to engage on and what issues to not engage on. And, you know, and how to engage on the issues we're engaging on. So there's a whole, probably a whole PhD or book to be unpacked there, but hopefully that's, you know, a helpful framework to continue to think about these issues in the days forward.

Yeah, it's hard and that would be one of the other questions I'd have because I, at this point, I abstain. I abstained in the last election and I foresee myself doing that in the future because my group kept telling me that, you know, well you have to choose the lesser of two evils. And first of all, I just don't think that's a Christian ethic, but secondly, like, well, what standard are you using to determine which the lesser evil is? And I don't know, I'd be interested to hear, like, so when you consider participation in the government or voting, how do you determine at what point you become complicit or endorsing of or whatever with an evil? Because both sides have egregious evils.

And and I'm sorry. I'm assuming a United States approach too, like republican democrat. I realize that you guys probably don't have to deal with that.

Yeah. Something I've noticed moving up to Canada is that politics is a lot less polarized up here. And it was fascinating for me. We moved up right in the middle of election cycle, and we barely noticed there was an election going on. That's how different it was compared to my experience working in politics and around politics in The US where, you know, there's an election going on because of the negativity and the polarization, right?

Canadian Christians, I mean, there's definitely fear, but there may not be that level of polarization as there is in The US. But that being said, I personally believe that it's never a binary choice for a Christian, right? And which is why I love your podcast and the premise of your podcast being not just a third way, there's actually a fourth way and probably a fifth way and a sixth way because we serve a big God who doesn't like to be constricted into our human theological boxes. So there's always alternative ways and it's never just a binary choice for us. And you know, it's a matter of conscience for each Christian to decide how to engage, where to engage.

But as long as we're ultimately engaging to seek justice for the poor and the oppressed as part of our kingdom identity, that's awesome. Yeah, we're not going to get everything right because we live in a broken world. But as long as that's our end goal, glorifying God in the public square by seeking justice for the poor and the oppressed, I think think God is pleased with us and with that heart intention. So if our intention is to seek power for ourselves, that's a very anti Christian thing. The thing that blew my mind away was I won't mention which countries specifically because it could, know, get us in trouble in those countries.

But, you know, I'm sure you're already thinking with me, but there are a lot of countries in the world that we operate in, they're actually hostile towards the church, hostile towards organizations like IJM, hostile towards human rights groups. And so, you know, in the midst of that, I see our colleagues in the field every single day waking up, even though they might have a target on their backs, but they don't go to advocate for themselves, even though they have every right to. They go to advocate for those with lesser privilege than them. And that to me was mind shattering working in The US political world and then getting exposed to IJM because that to me is Christian advocacy. That to me is Jesus like advocacy that we see in Philippians two, where Jesus made himself nothing, even though he had every right to exert his right, exert his power, you know, push for power for himself.

He chose to make himself nothing for our sake. And and I think that ultimately should be what guides us in the public square. So, again, apologies if I'm not giving you very specific answers. I find it helpful to pull back a little bit and think about the larger boxes and then hopefully that the Holy Spirit gives us guidance on specific issues and how we engage with them.

Wow. Is there ever do you think there's ever a temptation for Christians working in justice advocacy to maybe see like okay I could do a bit more if I had this power that I could if I had power, you know, I could accomplish so much more. How do you deal with what would, you know, what would be some ideas or guidelines you would have in mind for kind of dealing with that temptation?

Yeah, the temptation is very real. Even Christians and politics for that matter, right? So I know so many fine Christian women, Christian men and women who got into politics with the right intentions, even justice minded intentions. But then realized, oh, I'm just like a backbencher state senator. I'm just a backbencher state representative.

Imagine all the good I could do if if I had power, if I had the power of the speaker, the governor, the lieutenant governor, secretary of state. I could do so much good. But what I've noticed is as they go about seeking that power, they lose themselves, they sell their souls. And then ultimately it becomes more about the pursuit of power than the end goal. And I won't take names, but I've seen so many people who I respected, people who mentored me in the political world, lose themselves because of that.

And and just have horrible public witness today because of the things they did to go about and seek that power, all the good intentions, right? So. So I think I would go back to, you know, what I shared earlier, seeking power to me isn't a Christian thing. You could make an argument that seeking power for our oppressed neighbors is a Christian thing where we have a seat at the table, we pull up a chair form and we give them a seat at that table to make their voices heard. That to me is a very Christian thing.

But seeking power for ourselves is a very selfish thing no matter what the end goal is. You know, this is where I think the church needs to learn to prioritize faithfulness over power. Because we tend to think that, you know, we have to accumulate all this power to do good. But when we do that, we're discounting the power of God to operate in and through our meekness and our faithfulness. So I think at the end of the day, God desires for us to be faithful whether or not we have power.

And the church has always been on the margins historically, right? So what makes us think that if we get power, you know, we're gonna be different. Like there's a certain level of pride and arrogance that comes with that. So I think the goal should always be faithfulness and especially faithfulness in seeking the well-being of our neighbors, seeking human flourishing, seeking justice for the poor and the oppressed.

Yeah, it sounds just like the temptations of Christ, right? I mean, hey, you can have power in this way and this way and this way.

Telling me Jesus dealt with this.

So I stalked you on Instagram like a week or two ago to just, you know, try to figure out some questions that I'd have for you. Yeah. So I think the only one I have left, and I think you've touched on little points that you can maybe draw in, but you had mentioned that the Western church is distracted from true justice by the politicization of personal inconveniences. I don't remember if that's how you said it or not, so. But yeah, I see that so much with like certain mandates and things, and talking with somebody who's familiar with the Chinese house church and saying, Yeah, they just, they comply with the state.

But I think what a lot of people would, in my circles, would push back on is that they foresee, or they see these inconveniences as really signs of tyranny, right? The government is just making this law and that law and that law. It's a stepping stone from tyranny. So, I'm fighting against abortion by voting Republican, and I am fighting against tyranny, the tyranny that is to come because the government takes and takes and takes, and then eventually, you know, it's a tyrant who's leading you. So, do you balance what you know from the Western church, The United States in particular, what you've seen in other parts of the world, this idea that you see these things as inconveniences, but others see them as tyranny and oppression, which would be a justice issue.

How do you bring all of those things together from two very different viewpoints?

Yeah, absolutely. Know, this is exactly why I think it's helpful for us as North American Christians to lift their head up and look at the church and the world around us. And, you know, same could be said for Christians in India or China to lift their heads up and look at the global church around them all over the world. Because ultimately, we're part of this global body, right? And there are things that we can learn from each other.

And one of the things that I think the North American church can learn from church, the church in the majority world is how to operate from the margins, right? So if you look at churches that are actually growing and thriving and planting other churches in the world, like, Yeah, churches in countries where the government is terrorizing the church are the fastest growing churches in the world. And that's just, you know, the plain reality of it. So so, you know, are there things that we can appreciate from being in the margins? And, you know, I think once we lift our heads up and learn from how our brothers and sisters around the world respond to challenges like that, you know, we we will then look at our circumstances and think, oh, this is like nothing compared to what my brothers and sisters in Afghanistan are going through right now, for example, you know?

Yeah, but unfortunately, we in the West have a sense of individualism and looking inward more than looking outward. And that that then hinders, you know, our informed perspectives on the global church. So I think, to answer your question, I think there's a lot that we miss out on when we don't learn from our brothers and sisters in Christ. And, you know, yeah, most of the church in the majority world is in the margins, and yet they're seeing God bless them with unprecedented growth and multiplication. Right.

So, you know, so what makes us think in our arrogance that we have to be in power that, you know, there has to be a Christian state for us to achieve kingdom wins, you know? So again, it goes back to the whole faithfulness versus fame kind of dynamic, right? Like, why don't we just seek to be faithful wherever we are, regardless of who's in power? Like, what would it look like for us just to be faithful to what God has entrusted us with instead of trying to seek fame and power and these external things that we think will help, but is ultimately not the way of Jesus. It's the way of the world.

So, yeah, again, not sure if that directly answers your question, but I think when we lift our heads up, we start to notice that the things that we see as inconveniences can actually be blessings even from the Lord for his kingdom and for his church. So maybe that's the perspective we need.

I do find the Christian pacifists or maybe the Anabaptist position to be empowering in that way for the churches that's on the margins, living in a country where you're always going to be the minority, where if there are Christians in politics, they're always going to be looked on with suspicion that they have a foreign agenda or something like that. So, is, it does feel empowering because it feels like you don't need to be like the West, but there is a sense that I do think, I don't know if you saw this in India, but in, let's say, Malaysia, in several countries and cultures that I noticed, there is this sense of like we want to be like America or we want to be like, you know, and that part of the part that's like oh we need more Christians in power, we need a Christian lobby, if only we could have that many Christian voters. And so I don't know, a tendency to see the Western churches as successful in that way and the tendency to want to imitate that. That is like, I guess, a little bit worrying to me. I don't know if you've seen that in the majority world.

Yeah, absolutely. So when I came to The US, immigrated to The US from India, I was 18 years old. And my whole childhood in India, I'd looked up to these Western Christian influencers, these worship leaders, like these churches, these preachers. And I was like, yes, like, oh my gosh, it's actually cool to be a Christian in America. Like, I want that, you know.

And then I came up to The U. S. And to North America and noticed how a lot of what's glorified in the rest of the world from the American church is actually just hollow stuff. It's shallow stuff. Like something I noticed right off the bat is, you know, like in the in the Indian Christian church, regardless of how much money you make, every time the offering plate is passed by you, like you put in something because you're glorifying God.

And regardless of how rich or poor you are, you don't let the plate go by without putting something. And coming to the American church, that was the first time I noticed, you know, people just passing the plate. Like one person among 50 or 100, maybe putting a couple of dollars in and, you know, and sure, people give online and that kind of stuff too. But to me, like, it was just goodness, like, this is a very superficial, shallow faith. So, you know, so to Christians like you, Christians who are in the majority world who look at the West and, you know, think, oh my goodness, like, I wish we had that here in our country.

I would say don't discount the blessings that God has given you in the midst of your tribulations, in the midst of your trials. Like, look around and look at the circumstances as blessings, because quite honestly, the church in the West would probably be better off if we had those similar circumstances. We'd actually be growing and multiplying and, you know, being more faithful in the public square, more justice seeking if we had those circumstances. So there's definitely stuff we can all learn from each other. But I can tell you for a fact, as someone who grew up in the majority world church and experienced the American church that, you know, the Western church is not what we make it up to be, that it's a very superficial, shallow kind of faith.

And that's exactly why I'm excited because of conversations like this. You know, these are the conversations we need to learn from each other and sharpen and be faithful wherever we are, where God's placed us.

That's really awesome. This has been a really, really meaty conversation with just so much to think about afterwards. So thank you for joining us, Joyce and Derek, and I hope to see you guys around sometime.

Well, thanks for Yeah, thanks for this. This is a joy and, you know, so grateful for you, your listeners, and incredible conversations you're shaping in the church, in the global church. So thank you both.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing. To

Romania. Yes.

Absolutely.

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