Derek: 00:22

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are going to finish up our series on means and ends. Throughout this series, we have explored how means and ends are concomitant. They are of a similar nature. One of the things, one of the sayings that I've I've used over and over is that the means are the ends in the process of becoming.

Derek: 00:46

The means are just the seeds for the ends. You don't get different ends than the means that you plant. We discussed this philosophically, theologically, and we took a look at some specific examples. Violence begets violence, like begets like. It's interesting that conservative Christians in particular like to scoff at how stupid evolution is or the big bang.

Derek: 01:16

They say that, well, you can't get an explosion, you can't get order from an explosion. And so then the question I would ask those conservative Christians is, then how do you get peace out of violence? The means are the ends in the process of becoming. In this final episode, I want to explore the means of politics and legislation. If you've been around this this podcast a while, you will know that this issue has been one of the most difficult for me to wrestle through, the issue of of politics and what our role as Christians is in politics.

Derek: 01:55

On the one hand, my culture has taught me to value voting and political participation as this sacred ideal, but on the other hand, participating particularly in higher level government or voting for those who I know are the Commander in Chief or will make war and bear the sword, that seems antithetical to the Kingdom teaching of Christ. If you want to, you can recap some of those arguments against politics, I'll try to link some of the episodes which touched on those below. But I also am, not this next season, but the season after maybe, I am thinking about doing one on politics where I compile some of the old episodes but I also am planning on maybe doing a new season and adding some new content as well. But in some of the other episodes so far, I talk about lesser of two evils ideology, voting an abstention, Romans 13 and the state, so a variety of things that you can already get. But today, I want to take a more philosophical look at politics and explore a case study which I feel is representative of the futility of political action.

Derek: 03:10

So we're actually gonna take a look at and see is politics, the way that we do politics today at least, is the political sphere, the type of means that gets us the ends we're trying to get from it. To explore this question, I am going to reference a great series of articles on Critical Race Theory put out by Bradley Mason. From my understanding, he hasn't gone through the whole series yet, but from my understanding, Mason finds some big pitfalls with with Critical Race Theory, he's not all for it, but he's also not a conservative who's just reacting against it. So just just to kind of tip my card, my hand here, I I have a real big problem with conservative Christians who berate Critical Race Theory. Not because they're wrong about Critical Race Theory, I mean it's messed up, like the the conclusions that it draws, it's undermining of truth, it's undermining of dialogue and discourse and objective knowledge, like that's a big problem.

Derek: 04:24

Like it's a huge problem and they overemphasize things and take things to extremes, I get that. But what I find from my conservative community is that we use our we use what we correctly identify as problems with the methodology of Critical Race Theory, we use that to discount some of the observations Critical Race Theorists actually accurately make. So Critical Race Theory identifies legitimate problems that the church has been largely blind to. I mean, conservative Christianity has a terrible track record with seeing racial issues, whether that's slavery, whether that's the civil rights movement, I mean, you name it, when it comes to race, we've been messed up. My church, the Presbyterian Church in America, has as late as the mid eighties, barred black people in some locations from entering the church.

Derek: 05:24

That's a the mid eighties, that's a huge problem. And not to mention that conservative Christians are largely known, the white conservative Christians are known to vote for the party that is huge into dog whistle politics and racial signaling with their policies and it's just a big problem. But what we do is we say, Oh, critical race theory is bad, which I think ultimately it is, I think it's very problematic. But then we discount, we dismiss the racial problems that they're trying to point out to us and that's a problem. Like, we should dismiss their methodology but recognize their claims as to some of our problems as being accurate.

Derek: 06:14

So I like Mason's series because what he does, even though I'm pretty sure he's against it, is he gives a history of why Critical Race Theory. Because it doesn't come out of a vacuum, it comes out of an observation that, hey wait, we've changed some things but there's still big problems, like why are there problems, why is this persisting? And Critical Race Theory is an attempt to answer these nagging persistent racial problems that we have because they're recognizing there's a problem there. Whereas, White conservative evangelicals don't recognize the problem because we don't experience a problem. And when we dismiss the problems that other people identify, that makes an even bigger problem.

Derek: 07:02

So Mason is going to argue that after the Civil Rights Movement, there was significant backlash and regression in terms of rights or treatment. He argues that schools actually have become more segregated, more blacks have been imprisoned, laws targeting minorities increased, and the list goes on. And you can see his article, it's extremely lengthy, but you can take a look, I'll put it in the show notes and he gives specific examples. We see a similar thing after the seeming advancement against race in our culture, as we elected someone like President Trump right after having our first Black President. Is it a coincidence that after having the first black president, you get somebody who has difficulty denouncing white nationalists and who has such a huge white nationalist following?

Derek: 07:57

Not saying President Trump is a white nationalist, but he's drawing a lot of support from those types of people and they're very excited about him. Why is that? Are they so vocal and open because this is kind of backlash for something that happened? I don't know, maybe. Historically though, it makes sense because we see this happen whether it's after Reconstruction and you see the KKK and the lynchings come out, whether it's after civil rights and you see different backlashes in the judicial system, like we see this happen frequently when there's racial progress, we see regression in some ways.

Derek: 08:40

So, particularly after the civil rights movement and the regression to racism which followed that as a backlash, scholars were trying to figure out what went wrong. And CRT, which had been in the works because CRT is just a form of theory or critical theory, and so CRT came out a little bit after this, it was in addition to critical theory, which I'm sure, you know, you can argue that it had its roots and it was really we could argue when it sprung up and where it was birthed. But we start to see it right after the civil rights movement become very prominent and something that people start to really really dig into. So we could talk about the topic of CRT, it's fascinating and I will put some resources below if you want to rabbit trail on that kind of stuff. Some resources that are more sympathetic to it in terms of at least its observations, but as well as some that critique it pretty good.

Derek: 09:47

But, well, that's fascinating. That's not really what I have in view for this episode. Instead, I wanna look specifically at Mason's third article in a series. And in this article, Mason is arguing, or at least shows how others argue that advancement in race laws, particularly after the civil rights movement, but always, that race laws have been, have fulfilled two basic, not requirements but I don't know, two basic aspects here to race laws. First, they have always been passed or almost always been passed in accord with the self interest of the majority And secondly, there is a failure at changing the underlying heart issue of the nation following legislation.

Derek: 10:43

So these are going to be important because if we're talking about means and ends, understanding why and how laws change and what and who they change are going to be important for us because seeing we can talk about means leading to ends but we can also take a look at ends and backtrack, dissect or reconstruct what caused those. So first, Mason argues that critical theorists argue that laws regarding race were almost always in line with the self interest of the majority. Now such a concept shouldn't really be surprising to us. It would be crazy to think that in a democracy, most people vote apart from their self interest. That just doesn't happen.

Derek: 11:35

I mean, who votes for the rights and the benefits of others if it causes the voter significant sacrifice either financially, socially, or politically? Like you just don't do that. Bill Clinton famously said, you know, it's the economy stupid, why are people voting for him? Because the economy's good, their pockets are filled with cash, why wouldn't they vote for him? You know, if things are going well for you with a particular person, if they have a lot to offer you, then that's great.

Derek: 12:03

We as Christians do that all the time. Abortion is something where we supposedly have an interest in another. But the other reasons that we vote for the Republican Party that are put forward most of the time is religious freedom, which I'm not saying is a bad thing but we want to keep our religious freedom more than we want to help the poor. Right there, we've got a lot of self interest wrapped up into our parties whether we want to admit it or not. If if you had listened to the episode back in our Consequentialism series, episode on race, you'll remember a story I told about somebody who kind of confronted us about something we posted on Facebook or something.

Derek: 12:51

And now this individual was talking about how, you know, okay, President Trump might be abrasive, but you know, look how look how good the economy is doing. So our conservative Christians are not only not beyond that kind of thinking, but even the most godly conservative Christians I know think exactly that way. It's self interest, financial interest is huge too. They don't try to allay my moral fears about Trump with any justice that he's accomplished, but instead they tell me about my Christian freedom and liberty, my right to bear arms, my wallet being filled, right, my security. My security is what's important.

Derek: 13:45

And we kind of mask that greed behind the wall of abortion. Not that abortion is a good thing, I did a whole series on that and I'm more pro life than most pro lifers, but that's in my opinion, it's a mask for real justice because we fail to do the things that would decrease abortions and we fail to invest our time and resources in adoptions and really helping out with the area of abortion. Yeah, I just think it's a facade that we like to put up there. We think we're so righteous because we wouldn't kill babies but we might not do negative evil, but we don't do positive good. Anyway, put that that soapbox aside for a moment.

Derek: 14:38

So my group's determination of who a good candidate is is, you know, you ask these questions. Will they take money from me? Or will they put more money into my pocket and keep it out of the undeserving poor's hands? That's important too. Will they give my religion special status by seeking to keep the 10 Commandments up and making our entry into schools easier?

Derek: 14:59

Will they protect my religious freedoms? Of course, the one justice issue that is a very very big one for us is abortion. But, you know, like I said, that's not all it's cracked up to be. If you want to go back and and listen to those episodes, can you can go back at the end of the season on abortion and hear why I don't think it's all that that a lot of people say it is. So the point in all of that is that our politics, even conservative Christian politics, is often heavily infused with self interest.

Derek: 15:35

So let's go back to Mason's article. In it, he identifies a variety of ways in which seemingly progressive racial legislation was only implemented and maintained if it aligned with the majority's self interest. Take Brown versus the Board of Education and School Desegregation. Why so many years after the fourteenth amendment passed was school segregation finally being passed? Why then?

Derek: 16:02

Why wasn't it passed immediately with the Fourteenth Amendment since the two seem to logically connect with each other? Here's a quote from the article. In the case of Brown, Bell cites as examples of compelling white interest the need for The United States to build credibility in the eyes of third world peoples and its struggle against communism, the pressure for equal treatment of returning black veterans from participation in two world wars and the recently paused Korean War, and the middle and upper class whites need for the South to finally transition from a rural plantation society to the Sunbelt with all its potential and profit. There is, in fact, a preponderance of evidence now in support of the first reason suggested by Bell, the struggle with communist USSR. End quote.

Derek: 16:53

So, and it doesn't seem all that ironic that the first presidential prayer breakfast in '19 was in 1953, and God being placed in the pledge was 1954, and God being printed on money, 1956. And all of those occurred at the same time as the Brown case. The US had a huge, huge interest in pitting itself against communism. Atheist, godless communism, and us going back to our roots and our Christian heritage and distinguishing ourselves from those evil communists. And it's in the same period, nineteen fifty to fifty four, that McCarthyism ran rampant.

Derek: 17:40

So you think about this, we're pitting ourselves against communists, their ideology, their human rights violations, which were horrendous, and we're trying to place ourselves in opposition to that. So it was in our interest to show the world that we were different and we weren't also responsible for huge civil rights violations. So it was in our interest, right? Thinking about the South and industrializing them, moving them and incorporating them from being a rural plantation society to one that's kind of more up to date and is gonna do better for us as a country in terms of economics, pitting ourselves against the USSR, all these things. We weren't just all of a sudden morally interested in the black community, but as a nation, it was in our self interest that we kind of fixed this blight on our society, this blight to the rest of the world.

Derek: 18:42

And on kind of a side note, I forget the author right now, but there's a there's a book called Negroes with Guns. And it's definitely not a pacifist book because he talks about how guns kinda saved him and his community, but it was interesting that when he had to flee from the FBI like trumping up all this evidence against him, he went to Canada, but he also went to Cuba. And he talked very glowingly about Castro and communist Cuba. And so it's it's just interesting. First of all, it's interesting to me as a citizen who's a conservative Christian who's always heard so much terrible about communism, and objectively, they've done horrendous things.

Derek: 19:26

But to have this black guy living in The United States who's saying, hey, the the only place that I I found acceptance and more freedom was in communist Cuba, that's interesting. And as The US, we couldn't really have that. We couldn't have a large percentage of our population who'd rather live in communist Cuba than, you know, the good free United States Of America, godly Christian nation. So beyond Brown versus the Board of Education, there were also Jim Crow laws. Here's a quote from Mason's article.

Derek: 20:04

Doctor. Bell argues that Jim Crow laws were first created by elite whites to appease poor whites with higher relative social status to blacks, without thereby having to share power and wealth with their poor, with their poor white laborers. But when the interests of elites had shifted due to the international stage and national economic exigencies, those with power moved towards slackening Jim Crow segregation. When Brown then signaled the removal of the distinct social status enjoyed by whites, they responded with outrage, fearing loss of control over their public schools and other facilities. And that's fascinating, right?

Derek: 20:47

So think about what he's what Bell is arguing here, whether he's right or wrong, this is just kind of the perception of critical theory here. But I think it makes a lot of sense. Bell is saying that, okay, you have slavery, who owns slaves? Mostly rich plantation owners. Well, those plantation owners after slavery have to get along and so we have sharecropper farming which is essentially slavery of continued slavery of black people.

Derek: 21:17

It was horrendous, maybe even worse in some ways because there's not a vested interest in the well-being of the workers. But then, also have poor white farmers who are hired out. Now, if you went from a society where black people were subhuman and you're a poor white guy, even though you're not technically a slave, even though you might be a wage slave, like you might be functionally a slave in the way that you're tied to the aristocracy or the wealthy, there's somebody who's below you and that feels good. You want the black people to be below you. Well now all of a sudden, if they're free, that's no good for you as a poor white because now you are basically equal with blacks.

Derek: 22:07

And in fact, blacks have now that they have more freedom to kind of be able to make money and save it up and be their own people, they might become better than you. And so Jim Crow laws were actually a way If you look at the Jim Crow laws, they're largely social, they're not economic per se. And so a lot of the Jim Crow laws are about status. Well, the aristocracy was well above black people and poor whites, they didn't like, what do they really care? But the poor whites really cared.

Derek: 22:45

They didn't want to lose status. And so Jim Crow laws, Bell argues, were ways that the whites were able to the rich whites were able to keep the poor whites happy. You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend type of thing. So if you, if really, for the poor blacks and poor whites, the rich landowners who aren't paying decent wages or whatever else, if they're really the enemy, if the rich white people can make the poor whites dislike the blacks, they'll be focused on that. They'll be focused on their position with black people as opposed to their position as wage slaves.

Derek: 23:38

I think that makes a lot of sense. And Bell argues that look, when our economy started to shift globally, especially after World War II, I mean, we just it explodes. We we have all of this trade and we have international interests and our economy shifts. At that point, if we're not rural plantation anymore and we're becoming more industrial and global, then the wealthy white ties to appeasing their poor white population isn't really as strong, so they could let go of Jim Crow. They didn't have to keep enforcing that, they didn't have to keep fighting that.

Derek: 24:23

And that's of course not saying that no wealthy white people cared about the status of black people and that no wealthy white people fought fought Jim Crow or at least put on a a front. But just saying, look, had this been had this been fifty years before, you would have fought a civil war over this because it was a plantation economy and they needed the poor whites in their society. But at this point, it just didn't matter. It was in their self interest to actually advance in the world's eyes economically. Okay, so let's move past Jim Crow and take a look at abolition.

Derek: 25:04

Here's a quote from Mason's article. Quote, he first considers abolition in the North following the Revolutionary War. Though idealistic abolitionist propaganda abounded, what ultimately turned the tide according to Bell was the superior economic advantage of wage labor given the nature of Northern industry and the interest of voting, of voting white laborers who did not desire to compete with slave labor. Even the emancipation plans themselves, Bell notes, effectively required the slaves to work off their own purchase value through gradual release and then left them without any rights of citizenship following their emancipation. Second, Bell considers the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.

Derek: 25:51

Again, as is well known, the proclamation only freed slaves in the South with the clear intention to serve Northern War interests, not primarily black interests. Third, Bell considers the post Civil War amendments, these the thirteenth through fifteenth amendments, only to conclude, Within a decade, it became apparent that the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery was obsolete. Southern planters could achieve the same benefits with less burden through the sharecropping system and simple violence. The fifteenth amendment, politically obsolete at its birth, was not effectively enforced for almost a century. The Fourteenth Amendment, unpassable as a specific protection for Black rights, was enacted finally as a general guarantee of life, liberty, and property of all persons.

Derek: 26:42

Corporations, following a period of ambivalence, were deemed persons under the Fourteenth Amendment, and for several generations received far more protection than the courts by the courts than did blacks. Indeed, blacks became victims of judicial interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment and legislation based on it so narrow as to render the promised protection meaningless in virtually all situations. So Bell basically looks at three aspects of emancipation, very early emancipation. So in the Revolutionary War, after that, there was a lot of abolitionist propaganda. But really, in the North, what was their interest is that they weren't weren't plantation style like the South was.

Derek: 27:25

And they actually needed wage laborers, they needed different type of labor. And white laborers actually didn't want to compete with slave labor because you can't compete with it. How do you compete with slave labor? And so if in the North, you had all these slaves, and the slaves were able to do this job, then a lot of white people would be out of work. Whereas for plantations and farming, especially before things like the cotton gin and other sorts of things, I mean, you could basically have everybody farming.

Derek: 27:56

If you had slaves farming, you still could have lots of land where poor whites would try to be farming, not just for subsistence but you know, to be able to sell. With the Emancipation Proclamation, that was in the self interest of the Union because it didn't free all slaves, it didn't do that. What it did free was slaves in Southern states which gave them incentive to rebel. You know, they wanted revolts and they wanted they wanted internal turmoil so that that would make the the war easier. Finally, Bell just argues that sharecropping replaced slavery, so the the thirteenth amendment was, I mean, not not unimportant, but he was just saying that, look, they it didn't really matter that there weren't slaves because they had functional slaves anyway.

Derek: 28:49

And the fifteenth Amendment, we didn't actually enforce. And the fourteenth Amendment, we didn't really enforce either. So yeah, Bell's argument, which Mason lays out, is just that you don't find legislative change where you don't find self interest, or significant self interest at least. Maybe not only self interest. Mason addresses a variety of other convergences of interest in his article, such as we see in Reconstruction, the Constitution, etc.

Derek: 29:24

But they all point to the same idea, that racial progress is only ever gained and sustained when there's an overlap of interests with those in power. Mason quotes Bell's conclusion as follows, quote, The judicial relief sought is to curb conduct or policies clearly harmful to blacks, but relief is more likely to be forthcoming if the complaint of activities are also damaging and embarrassing to the country's stated ideals, solidly embraced in the concept of equal protection, free speech and due process. The relief actually granted tends primarily to improve the country's democratic image and only secondarily or collaterally to repair the harm which initially prompted the litigation. And subsequent non racial decisions relying on the initial civil rights precedent often bring greater substantive benefit to the community at large than was obtained by blacks. So summary, you tend to get legislation when it's in somebody's self interest.

Derek: 30:27

It primarily is done when it improves the country's democratic image and only secondarily helps the citizens it says it's helping. And finally, oftentimes, this legislation ends up helping other people more than it does the community. So for instance, with the Fourteenth Amendment, the fact that you have corporations as persons, that helps capitalism, that helps the big businesses or a lot more than it helped black people because we didn't actually apply it to blacks, we applied it to businesses. So anyway, that's Bell's basic argument there. Okay, so Mason's first overarching idea is that we only see transformation in laws when there is self interest involved.

Derek: 31:25

Now maybe you think that's great, right? So, who cares how legislation is brought about if it's a just decision, if there's a just law that's created, even if it's out of self interest, so be it, as justice is justice. The problem is, here with Mason's second observation, that when laws change, it doesn't mean hearts change. And in fact, hearts often don't change. So, whatever problems were there, don't really go away.

Derek: 32:01

Now we can all agree that it's great slavery is illegal, but what what Mason argues that Critical Race Theory says is that, great that it's illegal, but it wouldn't have needed to be illegal anyway because it was phasing out. Like it was something that wasn't gonna be feasible any longer. The only reason they got rid of it isn't because their hearts changed and they decided to do justice, it's because they could no longer really exploit that injustice anymore. And so if you put this veneer of legislation on it and you slap it and you implement a law that makes it look like you're really good, then all of a sudden, you're like, Hey, we're pretty good. Look at us guys, look at us worlds, you know, give us a pat on the back.

Derek: 32:50

We've changed, we've progressed, we're we're great. But that thing in your heart that caused you to be okay with enslaving people to put money in your pockets is still there. You didn't really change your society, you just changed the veneer, you changed the facade. And that's why the Kerner Commission, which I referenced in the last episode, is so fascinating to me because you have in 1968, believe it is, this commission who identifies these deep roots of racial tensions and problems. But my community, conservative Christianity, we think, Oh, well perfect, we passed some civil rights legislation around that time and voila, we are a racially just society.

Derek: 33:39

I don't know what everybody's complaining about. What's the issue? And what we really do is we just, we suppress the wickedness that made those laws come about in the first place that said, Hey, we should treat people this way. It's because our hearts don't treat people that way. And so we just slap laws on them and figure out new ways to mess with people, whether that's, you know, dog whistle politics and know, law and order or busing or whatever else, you know, Atwater's famous quote talking about how politics has changed and uses coded language.

Derek: 34:26

But it's a big problem that laws are out of self interest and don't change hearts because it and that problem is twofold. First of all, it doesn't fix the problem and second of all, it exacerbates the problem because it blinds us to the issue. It blinds us to the problem because we think that we're so advanced and so progressive and we are so good now because of this law that we created and that hardens us. I see it in my community all the time, there's no systemic racism. I don't know what black people are complaining about.

Derek: 34:59

They're, you know, I'm not racist and it's just ridiculous that we think because we don't see things overtly, some law makes these explicit horrible overt actions wrong that were fixed. One of the images that I think specifically of is I think there's if you Google like Oprah Forsyth County, right, there's this county in Georgia, up North Georgia here And there's a video from, I think it's like 1987, it's one of Oprah's first seasons, and she goes to Forsyth County. Now Forsyth County in like 1915, something around there, 1919, they got rid of, they drove out their black population, like all of them, every single one of them, and they just took their land. They drove them out because apparently, one of them supposedly which may or may not have like raped and killed a girl. I don't know.

Derek: 36:10

But for that, they were so angry they drove out the whole community, the whole black community. So you see this video in 1987 where Oprah comes and she asks about the lack of the black population and how they drove them out and all that. And you see pretty big, I mean, I think Forsyth County is it was like it it's not this huge city or it wasn't. And you just see hundreds at least, maybe thousands of people protesting and yelling terrible things, having terrible signs and just being so explicitly racist, not wanting black people to come into their community. And I think, I was born in 1985, I'm 35 years old right now.

Derek: 37:02

If I can see in this video, 10 year olds, 10 year olds in 1987 who are yelling terrible things and who are who have so much hate in their faces that that they've learned from their their community. You know, they're 50 right now. A lot of those people who were there are 50 and they're the age of people starting to go into politics now, right? There are school boards, they're on, you know, they're in the House of Representatives, they're in the Senate, like people that age that had such violence and hate in their hearts. And when see that image and I think, Do we really believe that because some laws were passed or because we don't see that anymore?

Derek: 37:59

You're telling me that those 10 year olds, just all of them, just weeded that out of their hearts and they don't feel that way whether subconsciously or consciously about minorities. And it's just that you can't watch videos of that and say that laws have fixed things. So there's a lot below the surface that laws have not fixed, we have not addressed the issue. We are constantly uncovering more areas where racism prevails, whether it's in the law, in order policies which target minorities, the justice inequity, policing inequity, dog whistle policy, it doesn't matter, we continue to uncover it, though my community denies that. As far as laws changing hearts, my conservative Christian community will give lip service to this.

Derek: 38:54

They'll say that, well of course, the law doesn't change hearts. But they betray their true beliefs in two ways. First, they pursue legislation ferociously. I mean, if I don't vote, that's akin to treason because the way that we change society is through politics and I have to vote. We put our faith in legislation.

Derek: 39:25

Like we want legislation because legislation is power. We think that the way that you change things is through legislation. Like we put our hope in it, right? This is the most important election ever and four years from now, we're gonna have the next most important election ever. And four years before, we had the most important election ever.

Derek: 39:45

Every election is the most important election ever because we have to mandate things. Somehow putting, keeping God in the Pledge of Allegiance makes us a good society or makes us a better one than we'd have without it. We're infatuated with pretense and facades, kinda like some people in the Bible, one group. So we're willing to compromise all sorts of morals if we can vote for someone who might legislate against something like abortion or for religious freedom or really using those things to vote for the guy who we think will be best for our pocketbook. So my community's pursuit of legislation often with the fervor that they pursue it, it portrays a true belief about the importance of legislation.

Derek: 40:40

We really do think that that's where power and change lie for some reason. And secondly, when I talk to many of my conservative friends about race, their evidence that race isn't a big deal anymore is guess, legislation. Legislation is the evidence that racism isn't much of a problem anymore, other than in some minor individual circumstances. In the episode called Facing Another Virus, it's like episode 38 or something, I recounted the story of an individual I highly respect, but who tried to tell me that I shouldn't worry about race issues because things were so much better than they used to be. This person remembered going through the sixties, and since legislation had been passed since then, you know, there's not really anything to complain about.

Derek: 41:31

I can't tell you how many times I've heard civil rights legislation, the overturning of Jim Crow, or the abolition of slavery pointed out as evidence of a transformed society. So, it seems to me that there's duplicity in the way that we treat legislation. My group says, it doesn't change the heart, yet we reference it as indicative of a changed heart, and then we pursue it in order to change hearts and society. It just it doesn't make sense. And in Mason's article, he argues kind of the same thing.

Derek: 42:07

He says that legislation is not is often not indicative of a changed heart, and it's not a changing agent either, at least in regard to the issue of race in The United States. Okay, so we're forty minutes in so far, and that was a summary of Mason's discussion here on legislation and politics in regard to race. But, what does that have to do with our series, our season here, on means and ends? I think Mason's article highlights well that which many who adhere to Christian nonviolence claim. Politics and legislation are not meaningful means which are to be wielded by Kingdom Christians.

Derek: 42:54

While some policies are good and are reflections of good concepts, so called good legislation is often meaningless and or harmful as self interest is almost always, if not always, involved. Take a law which nearly everyone thinks represents good or good morality, like don't murder. While this is a good law to have, it is one which is in the interest of most of us, pretty much all of us. It's a law that is relatively meaningless because most people would adhere to this principle anyway. In societies where there aren't laws against murder, many don't murder because there's mutual respect, self interest, and a natural fear of retribution.

Derek: 43:39

They might go murder somebody from the next tribe over, but they're not gonna be murdering each other so much because there will be natural consequences in retribution. So laws which stem from a society's heart, like don't murder, are relatively unnecessary because they'd be adhered to by most anyway. While laws which are forced and imposed don't end up changing the heart, and honestly most of the time, they can or maybe some of the time they can end up hardening it if it's a law that's in opposition to what a majority want. And I think maybe Jim Crow is one of the places that you can see that where you have the powerful minority who is okay with relinquishing that for economic interest but the majority, the poor whites don't want to. So I think there are a couple implications for non violent Christians.

Derek: 44:38

The first implication is recognizing that politics and legislation don't work as promised. Pursuing legislation and politics as a means for societal change doesn't work. Especially in our society, they become gods. They're pursued and sacrificed to and coddled. They are false gods.

Derek: 45:01

But probably the biggest reason that non violent Christians often have problems with politics and legislation is because these means don't comport with Christ's means. Christ's teachings are all about the means of the heart: personal change, self reflection, and enemy love. Legislation on the other hand is about domineering through majority rule, enforcement by the sword, etc. Christ's way changes hearts, which then changes society. While politics only either represents what is already in the hearts of its people and doesn't need broad enforcement, or it forcefully imposes laws which are facades that don't change society.

Derek: 45:42

The means of Christ are concomitant with the ends. A heart which bows itself to the Lordship of Jesus will produce a heart transformed. Likewise, the means of politics and legislation are concomitant with their ends. A law established and maintained by violence or the threat of violence beats one into submission. Under Christ, hearts are formed and the actions spring from them.

Derek: 46:07

But under the law, actions are conformed only so long as violence is applied or the threat of violence. One of these means creates a humble servant which influences others, and the other means produces a people who are resentful, cling to power, view opposition as threat, and can't wait for rebellion. Now, we might not see that overtly today. We might not see racism overtly, at least through the eyes of our white community. But we subvert these laws, the heart of these laws, all the time in the way that we've structured our society, the way that we segregate church functionally.

Derek: 46:54

I mean, in so many ways, our hearts are not different and we subvert the true intention of the law. So when Jesus says, Hey look, you say you don't murder, you say you don't commit adultery, but you lust and you have anger, you've broken the law, the law didn't do anything for you, right? You need a heart change. Same thing is true here. Laws are nice ideas if our hearts are in line with them.

Derek: 47:24

But if our hearts aren't in line with them, they're terrible masks. Now, I don't want to be heard as saying that doing something in the world is not important because what I am saying is that the gospel is the means for for true change and true morality and true community. But what a lot of people will hear me say when I say that is that, oh, so you step out of the political sphere and you just preach the gospel? Well, you're not really doing anybody any good. Doesn't James talk about that?

Derek: 48:01

You know, if you say, Hey, I'll pray for you, you know, go on your way, but you don't give somebody who's in need of bread bread? That's not really faith. That's faith without works and faith without works is nothing. And that's not at all what I mean here. Unfortunately, what we've done is we have confessional lordship and practical idolatry.

Derek: 48:25

What we do is we say, if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, we're saved, and then we turn to Caesar for repentance, for a change in society. And that's not how it works. Stanley Harrowas says, The church is the Christian politic. And so what that means is, I don't only advocate preaching Christ with our mouths and confessing Him with our mouths, but we also need to turn to Him and the community with our feet. We are the body of Christ in the world and we are His hands and feet in the world.

Derek: 49:05

And so what that means for us who are the church is that our politic, the way that we change the world, is to not be under these laws that really are no laws at all anyway, that we'd either all adhere to, for the most part anyway, they're in our self interest for the most part. We don't need those things, forget those things. What we do is we live lives that go to the heart of the law. That in our churches we demonstrate diversity and unity in diversity, that we value the poor and the oppressed, the people who are powerless. And by living that way, not only are our hearts changed by the Gospel and therefore our actions, but as others see those actions and that new politic which doesn't vie for power but which humbly submits in service and love, that's heart changing.

Derek: 50:09

And when hearts are changed, society changes. And when society changes because of changed hearts, laws become obsolete. In fact, they're relatively obsolete anyway, as Mason argues here from Bell. So the means of the Gospel will produce the ends of the Gospel. This is obviously a short thinking through the means and ends in relation to politics.

Derek: 50:40

As we've seen in the series, the ends are difficult to separate from their means, and that's no different when using the means of politics and legislation than it is when using other means. It's a worthwhile endeavor to explore legislation, societal shifts and heart changes and all that accompany these things through time. We should evaluate our worship of politics and figure out if it's a promising means or one which compromises our kingdom allegiance. I definitely still struggle with this, knowing where to land, you know, and how to avoid escapism while also maintaining moral integrity. But you know, while it's easy for my Christian community to critique me and say, Look at all the good legislation has done, they're often very forgetful about our past with governments and politics.

Derek: 51:38

I look at the early church quotes and I see their aversion to politics. I look at the Christian witness and what happened to it when it started to compromise with taking state power. I look at my own denominations, you know, we adhere to the Westminster Confession. And what's really interesting is, it's almost treated like the Bible in a lot of ways. Like it's really highly revered.

Derek: 52:05

And great, I mean, we can revere the work of godly men, but what I find fascinating is that there's a revision in the American Westminster Confession of Faith, 1788. And you know, coincidentally, right after the revolution, in the same year that you have the Constitution created, you have Article twenty three and thirty one of the Westminster Confession changed and only the American Westminster Confession. And those just happen to deal with magistrates and how the Church is supposed to be purified and protected with the sword from heretics by leaders, by the civil leaders. That's really weird and like, you know, that's that if if I would argue that the president should do that today, that heretics should, you know, they can call councils and mess with heretics and stuff like, that would be seen as like heretical but man, that's what it was for like two hundred years, a hundred years in the Westminster Confession. And then we change it when it's self serving, when our form of government changes, we're like, yeah, we better take that out, right?

Derek: 53:29

So, can also look at the Crusades, can look at Christians, especially conservative Christians being the advocates of slavery and segregation. I just I don't look at politics and see it as a good thing for the Church. I don't see it as a good thing for our hearts because that's not what forms our hearts. It's the other way around, our hearts form our legislation. I wonder how the world might change if Christians began to consider the means more than the ends and especially considering that the two so often end up being of the same nature and character.

Derek: 54:15

The means are the ends in the process of becoming. Well, that's all for now. So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.