Derek: 00:06

Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast. We are continuing our discussion on rebuttals to Christian non violence. In this episode, we're going to focus on the argument that nonviolence is passive and ineffective. While this will relate a bit back to episodes 45 where we were discussing, positive evidence for nonviolence. We just wanna dig a little bit deeper into that and kind of rehash some of those things as well as expound on it a bit because it is such a common objection.

Derek: 00:39

And, generally, the objection goes something like this. So people might say to a pacifist, well, so if you're not gonna fight, you're telling me that if there was another holocaust that you just let everybody die, you wouldn't do anything, you wouldn't fight back. Like, how unjust is that? That's that's passive. It means you're not doing anything.

Derek: 01:01

You're a coward, and you just sit back and let people die and are ineffective. So how do you justify that as a pacifist? I think a great place to start with this is Martin Luther King Junior, and he he has lots of awesome quotes. But he has one in particular that I think fits our situation here. And King says that, quote, my study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil.

Derek: 01:35

Between the two positions, there's a world of difference. Gandhi resisted evil with as much vigor and power as the violent resistor. But true fat pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love. So King highlights for us this very important moral ethic, which is that as a pacifist, we aren't being inactive, but rather our action is love.

Derek: 02:06

And it's just that the action of love, especially to a fallen world, and unfortunately, to Christians who've bought into the power of a fallen world, the power of love doesn't seem like power at all, but it seems like weakness. And that, of course, makes sense when you read the Bible, how Jesus oftentimes seems like this meek and mild, just weak, good for nothing, do nothing guy. But but really, he upends the powers that be through his love. And it's what Paul calls us to in Philippians, Philippians 2 especially. But throughout the rest of the epistles, the gospels, Peter, I mean, everything, they're just calling us to lay down our lives and to have this metric of love because without love, everything is meaningless.

Derek: 02:55

And, again, this does refer back to episodes 45, but it also touches on some of the other episodes we talked about. We mentioned Saint Cyril and how, you know, he said, well, if I don't kill my enemies to save my friends, I'm really not loving anybody. And, Cyril was able to throw off this metric of love because he thought he was keeping the metric of love. The problem with Cyril is the same problem that we have with the Pharisees who are talking to Jesus when I ask them, who's my neighbor? And Jesus highlights that we are willing to keep a metric of love for people that are either useful to us or people that are in our group.

Derek: 03:37

But the metric of love, we're willing to throw to the side when it includes people who we consider our enemies or those who are below us. And what what people are essentially saying when they say that, oh, so you wouldn't kill Nazis if there's another holocaust. You would just sit back and love people. What they're saying is, so, you wouldn't be willing to throw off the metric of love for your enemies? What kind of person are you?

Derek: 04:07

And that's just not what we see in the gospels. We are supposed to maintain the metric of love always. And, again, especially, Paul and Peter, and arguably John, really highlight this this notion of self sacrifice and of laying down your life for other people and not taking vengeance. So if there was another holocaust, no. Pacifists, if they were acting rightly, would not be passive.

Derek: 04:39

Their metric of action might just look a little bit different than being willing to kill enemies. As King shows us and as we see in a lot of other pacifists like Gandhi, the action would look like nonviolent resistance. It would probably look like harboring Jews at the risk of one's own life as the Quakers show us in, in the abolition era. It might look like, helping people get to safety at the risk of one's own life. It's it's a willingness to love the oppressed, but in that, not willing and a willingness not to throw off the metric of love for your enemies.

Derek: 05:23

So besides this idea that pacifism isn't really passive and that it's it's actually a continued action, a sustaining, action of love. Point number 2, I'd say here, about a new holocaust is that we've seen in the past the empirical evidence that non resistance, or I'm sorry. Nonviolent resistance, is something that actually ends up being better empirically, at least when we're talking about large scale, large scale problems. And we we've seen that in episode 4, specifically in in the study, named Why Civil Resistance Works. Jean Sharp also has a number of books that are helpful in seeing just how how nonviolent resistance really digs into the powers that be and how it brings a more lasting change oftentimes than violent resistance.

Derek: 06:25

And to go even further than the empirical evidence, I'd point to that anecdotal evidence that we've seen in Bulgaria and Denmark. You know, a lot of peep would say, okay. But I can understand how nonviolent resistance might work in in some smaller countries, but the Holocaust was large scale. And, look, it took a war to stop that. Well, not really exactly.

Derek: 06:53

I mean, yes, the the war did put a an abrupt end to to Hitler's reign, but we saw 2 anecdotal, pieces of evidence from both Bulgaria and Denmark where these two countries that were characterized by nonviolent resistance were actually the only 2 countries of which I'm aware that saved 99 to a 100% of the Jewish population. I mean, that's that's pretty amazing when you have a war machine like Hitler's and you've got the 2 nonviolent countries that are ending up saving their oppressed population. And in episode 4, we also, expressed how in Denmark specifically, it wasn't only the the Jews and the oppressed people who were saved, but it was actually Nazis who were beginning to be converted and and have their hearts changed by the nonviolent resistance that they faced. As a 4th point, I would also argue and I can't prove this one. This one isn't isn't, you know, as cut and dry as the other pieces of evidence.

Derek: 08:02

But, you know, I would argue that if I were in a holocaust, if I were the subject of of persecution in a new holocaust, I would hope that I lived in a country of which was filled more with genuine pacifists than with those who were willing to do violence for what they, against what they thought was evil. So why is that the case? Well, if you live in a country characterized by individuals who are who are genuine pacifists, not not just secular pacifists, but pacifists who are refusing to dehumanize enemies, then they are not willing to compromise on this area of violence. What we see in a lot of atrocities is that, you know, Hitler was able to kill Jews and and other groups of people, but he was able to kill Jews because they were enemies, they were less than them, they were less than the other Germans, and they were inhuman. And when you live in a population that is willing to do violence to people that they consider their enemies or subhuman, you don't have to get them to buy into violence.

Derek: 09:19

You only have to get them to buy into which group they need to hate, which group they need to to kill. And that's that's something that we've seen through history isn't really that hard to do. You get people doing that all the time, and people are blind to it. I would argue that we're doing that right now in the United States. While while we commit 100 of thousands of abortions, we've committed 50,000,000 plus abortions since Roe versus Wade.

Derek: 09:50

Now I wouldn't say that people hate fetuses, but I would say that they at least view them as subhuman or not worthy of rights. So, yeah, I mean, we're even doing that now. Hitler did it. All the countries where you have genocides, they do it. Russia, and and the tens of millions of people that they killed, they did it.

Derek: 10:15

China, under Mao, they did it. Cambodia, I mean, you name it. People only have to get a violent population to identify an enemy. And since enemies are deserving of violence, then we can do violence. If you live in a population that's not willing to do violence even to their enemies, and I was being persecuted, I wouldn't have to worry as much about my society, being manipulated to do harm to me because they wouldn't compromise on that violent stance.

Derek: 10:52

But even even beyond that, you know, if there was a new holocaust and a minority of the population is willing to kill me, to persecute me, that doesn't mean that I would be helped. Right? So it doesn't matter if only 10% of the population is trying to kill me. They're probably gonna get a hold of me and kill me without intervention. But the other reason I would want a majority of the population to be nonviolent isn't only because they can't be manipulated as easily, but also because, most likely, if if you're you adhere to Christian nonviolence, then the reason that you're not willing to kill your enemies is because you view all human life as sacred and valuable.

Derek: 11:39

And that means if you see that I'm being persecuted, then not only are you going to refuse to jump on the bandwagon and do evil to me, but you are probably going to value my life so much that you are willing to put your own life at risk to help me and save me. That's exactly what we see in both Bulgaria and, Denmark. We see people saying, I'll lay down on the railroad tracks because it's worth it to preserve these people's lives who are valuable. I'm not gonna do that by killing my enemies, but I will do that by putting my life on the line for these people's lives who are sacred. So if you're in a culture of many pacifists, many who who were, adhered to Christian nonviolence and the sacredness of human life, even enemy life, while they might not kill your enemies, they would certainly seek to to save all life, which is sacred even at the expense of their own.

Derek: 12:40

Now there there's a a converse to that, of course. Right? If people who are who adhere to Christian nonviolence are not willing to compromise on the sacredness of anyone's life, even an enemy's life, That seems to imply that those who accept that there are appropriate times for violence, they generally tend towards pragmatism, and therefore, moral compromise and inaction are are more expected from this group. And I I think this is, this can be seen in an example that, I and my wife talked about a few years back. In Panama City, Florida, I I heard a story that there was a rape a number of years ago, and it occurred on the beach, at night.

Derek: 13:33

So the beach wasn't fully populated. It wasn't completely light. But there was a a group of guys who were raping a girl, and this girl called for help. And there were some people who took some videos, well, some people who just walked by, people who heard it and, didn't really do anything, maybe called the cops eventually. But, basically, this girl was allowed to be raped, and nobody did anything.

Derek: 14:04

And, there's a there's a famous story. I can't remember it off the top of my head now, but it was like Genevieve or Genovese or something, back in New York City couple decades ago that, they use in in psychology, which was just the story of this girl who was stabbed to death in an apartment complex, screamed for help for a long time, and nobody did anything. And they call this the bystander effect. You know, well, if if somebody's screaming that loudly, certainly, other people hear because we're in a crowded area, and somebody else will do something about it. So I understand that there's there's a a bystander effect that goes on, in society.

Derek: 14:44

But I remember when when I was talking with my wife about this before I I adhered to nonviolence and saying, man, what would what would I do? What would we do in that situation? Because there's somebody who is crying out for help, but there's a group of guys around. And now I am not, a a very big guy. I'm, like, 5, 7a half.

Derek: 15:12

I don't work out. I did, like, cross country and stuff and ran so that I didn't have to work out so I could run away from anybody who was big. Right? So my in fight or flight, my response has always been flight because I'm puny, and I'm not gonna do any good in a fight. Nevertheless, it it seemed like to just let this this girl alone and and be raped was was terrible.

Derek: 15:40

But, you know, what good was I gonna do if I went up to the crowd? So, you know, talking with my wife, we're like, well, you know, it it doesn't seem like you should really go up and and try to break that up because what good is one person gonna do against 1010 probably big guys if you're at the beach? What are you gonna do against them? They're probably drunk. They're probably crazy.

Derek: 16:02

Like, you're just gonna get beat up. And and in fact, you might get killed. What's the point of a girl getting raped and me getting killed? Right? There's no point in that.

Derek: 16:13

And that's what I I would have said when I was when I adhered to violence. Because for me, and I think for most people who adhere to violence, violence is a tool to solve problems. If it's not going to solve the problem, you don't do it. It's a pragmatic effort. It's it's consequentialist in in a sense.

Derek: 16:36

The ends justify the means. And if the means of me intervening were likely that it would end up producing worse ends where I'm dead and the girl ends up raped anyway, what's the point of that? There's no point in my intervention. But now, as a as a nonviolent adherent, I would hope, I think that the right thing to do, would be for me to go there and for me to shine light on that darkness and say, get out of here. Don't do that to her.

Derek: 17:13

And if I got beat up or killed trying to intervene to value the sacredness of this girl's life, then so be it. But but me standing by and refusing to intervene is not the answer. But it is the answer if you are, if you're willing to do violence to people because violence is just a tool. It's a pragmatic tool. And, I I find that I, myself, used violence as a pragmatic tool.

Derek: 17:54

And most people that I know view violence as a pragmatic tool. They're pragmatists. And so if if you can't use it effectively, then you might as well just ref restrain yourself. And I think that's what you see in a lot of a lot of countries, a lot of Nazi occupied countries, is that people thought, well, what am I gonna do against the Nazi war machine? Right?

Derek: 18:20

You had some people who were in the resistance, but the resistance was very small and and, disorganized. And you just had a lot of people who did nothing. And that's where we get this quote from somebody like Edmund Burke, where he says, the only necessary thing for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. And that's what good people generally do when they adhere to violence, If they don't think they're powerful enough, if they don't think the violence is going to work, then they do nothing. And that's what most of Europe was.

Derek: 18:54

Most of Europe was passive to the Nazi Nazi machine. If you're in an army and you've got tanks and you've got all kinds of things and you can go up against the German army and you might do some good, I'll do that. But if I can't, then I'm just gonna kind of sit back and and wait for somebody who's got a bigger army to come through and take care of things. But as as the pacifist, as somebody who's nonviolent, the goal isn't, isn't that I'm gonna necessarily beat the other person, because it's not about beating the other person. The issue isn't about, the consequence of of winning.

Derek: 19:37

The issue is about the sacredness of life. And so I am protecting the sacredness of life by putting my body in front of somebody else's. I am sacrificing, I am showing the the value of life when I harbor a Jew in my home at the risk of my own life and the life of my own family. And I'm upholding the sacredness of life because I'm showing the Jew that they're valuable. I'm showing the Nazis that Jews are valuable because I uphold them.

Derek: 20:11

I'm showing my society that life is valuable because I'm willing to sacrifice my own for the life of somebody who's who's deemed unworthy. And, my example and my life and my my value are what's to be upheld. This faithfulness to God, not this faithfulness to some perceived result that I think is necessary. The the point isn't the results, though, of course, I want good results. The point is the upholding of integrity, of righteousness, of of, human sacredness, of all human sacredness.

Derek: 20:50

It's not just showing the Jew that they're valuable and refusing to buy into that. It's also showing the the Nazi that I'm not willing to do violence to you, and you're valuable too. And as a valuable human being, you should value all these other human beings. So in essence, when when you allow pragmatism to determine your actions, an evil is allowed to prevail, and accepting violence is is a pragmatic endeavor. And I I think that beyond just asserting that, I think that you can even see this inherent in in one of the tenants of just war theory.

Derek: 21:29

Right? Just war theory says that the possibility of winning is part of what you should use to determine whether a battle is is worth fighting, whether you should stand up for right. So in theory, right, just war theory, let's say Nazi Germany was just insanely powerful. Well, that means, and nobody else could could assail them. Well, that means that, well, then we shouldn't have fought the war.

Derek: 22:00

We should have just let them do what they were gonna do. And no, that's ridiculous. That is not the Christian ethic whatsoever. The Christian ethic isn't, we only fight battles if we think we're strong enough to win. The Christian ethic is we are faithful in upholding god's moral decree in our lives, this holiness, and exuding that to the world even at the cost of our own lives.

Derek: 22:31

And that ethic is present in Christian nonviolence, but it is not present in in, in systems which accept violence. I think we can kind of see the the counter to this, again, in a a quote from Martin Luther King Junior. And I really like this because he a lot of people will try to discount King on a number of bases. But but as far as the nonviolent area, a lot of times they'll say, well, King filed for a a, a gun permit. And that's true, but that was early on in his career before nonviolence.

Derek: 23:10

So I wanna read you a quote on what caused King to give up his use of violence to protect him. And I think it's it's very insightful on this point. Quote, how could I serve as one of the leaders of a nonviolent movement and at the same time use weapons of violence for my personal protection? Coretta and I talked the matter over for several days and finally agreed that arms were no solution. We decided then to get rid of the one weapon we owned.

Derek: 23:40

We tried to satisfy our friends by having floodlights mounted around the house and hiring unarmed watchmen around the clock. I also promised that I would not travel around the city alone. I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face to face with the question of death, and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid.

Derek: 24:05

Had we become distracted by the question of my safety, we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors. So King shows us right here that, as a from a nonviolent position, the reason nonviolent action is so compelling and and the the huge force behind it, the reason that people are able to do these seemingly unpragmatic things is that they count their lives as lost. King said that he was more free when he gave up his means of violent power. When he said, you know what? I already count my life as lost, and if I die, I die.

Derek: 24:51

Like, that's the the point isn't my survival. The point is doing the right thing and putting my money where my mouth is. And that's what Christians are called to do. We are to be living sacrifices. And if in our faithfulness, God calls us to be unpragmatic and intervene when a group of much stronger, more numerous guys is on a beach raping a girl, then that's what you do.

Derek: 25:19

If your your country doesn't have an army and there's nobody around to save you and that your your countrymen are dehumanizing another group of people. And there's no way in the world you can defeat your enemies by power. It doesn't matter. You defeat your enemy through love. And if you don't defeat them, that's that's in God's hands.

Derek: 25:46

But you show love to the depressed and through your non violence, you show love even to your enemies. And as Denmark shows us, as well as countless other examples of Christian martyrs and and things like that, love does often win. God does use love, to to overcome and to be effective. But the point isn't effectiveness. The point is faithful obedience and upholding human value.

Derek: 26:16

Yeah. I I recognize that my last two points have somewhat been more assertions than something that I've I've backed up. I think you can show lots of anecdotes of how these things are true, but I know you can also find find some counterexamples to to kinda say, well, see, there are some violent people who aren't pragmatic and they're willing to put their lives on the line even if they don't think they can win, even though that goes against the just war theory that justifies violence. Nevertheless, whatever. But I I do wanna throw one other thing out there to kind of help back up my case a little bit more, objectively.

Derek: 27:00

I wanna recommend a couple of resources to you, to to show you that those who accept violence are more apt to be coerced. And one of these is the famous Milgram experiment. You can search this online and watch tons of videos on it. It's extremely interesting. But, essentially, Stanley Milgram, after World War 2, was trying to figure out, man, how did the Germans get all of these people to, to do what they did?

Derek: 27:32

And around the same time, Hannah Arndt was making the same observation. She called it the banality of evil where she was like, these these Nazis who did these terrible things, they're normal people. And Milgram did an experiment that you couldn't do today, but that they could do back then, where he essentially had just everyday normal people come in. They were in this booth, and they were told that in in a room next door, they couldn't see, but they they could hear that there was another person in there. And so they were gonna ask that person a series of questions, and when the person got a question wrong, they would give them a shock.

Derek: 28:12

Well, each subsequent shock increased in, in its painfulness and actually even went up to being potentially lethal. And that this was labeled so that the people who are administering the shocks could see, like, danger, severe pain, you know, danger danger. This could cause a heart attack, whatever. And, so Milgram just wanted to see, hey, how far will these people go? And, of course, there wasn't a real person in the other room, although this was done, you know, back in the day, and so you would wonder maybe they would put a real person there, but they didn't.

Derek: 28:48

They actually just had a recording. And what Milgram found was that most people went really far even when the person in the other room was saying, oh, stop. No. No. No.

Derek: 29:02

I don't like this. When they were saying, like, terrible things because a man in a lab coat, a white coat, an authority figure told them to keep going. And so the people did. Now they might not have liked it. They might have been uncomfortable, but most people kept going.

Derek: 29:19

And Milgram uncomfortably showed the world that, you know what, the types of people who commit holocaust are pretty normal people. Another book I would highly recommend is called Ordinary Men, and it is just this gut wrenching, gut wrenching story of, of just how a lot of the Jews who were killed were actually executed by death squads, and a lot of these death squads weren't your professional soldiers, like, purse professional executioners, SS, Gestapo, whatever. Mo a a lot of the death squads were actually kind of like reservists, like your accountants, your bankers, just people who were called up, like Germany's police force. And they just went out, and they were told to shoot these people, and so they did. And it's, I mean, it's it's a very well known fact that atrocities are committed by normal people, normal people who are willing to compromise because they they view violence, as a means, an appropriate means, to accomplish a particular end.

Derek: 30:39

And sometimes, they view violence as a means to accomplish, an end in the sense of, you know, if we kill all the Jews, our country will be better. And sometimes, they just view it as an end to self preservation. I'm willing to kill somebody else so I myself don't die. Unlike Martin Luther King Junior, who said, I counted my life as lost, people who hang on to their lives so tightly and view violence as a legitimate means will often be coerced or convinced they will rationalize using violence on other people to accomplish some pragmatic end. If you count your life as lost and you are nonviolent, that does not happen.

Derek: 31:24

Oh, you you can compromise, of course. Okay? So Bonhoeffer would be an example. You can compromise, but, you you are going to have a very, difficult time just being coerced like that. It's much easier to make that the baby steps, to be coerced to use violence against other people if you are, if you adhere to violence as a means.

Derek: 31:51

So before moving on, I I will throw another resource here. One of Catalina's professors for her apologetics degree was a man named doctor Clay Jones, and he has a a funny, awesome talk on evil. And his life was has largely been spent looking at the evil of humanity. And, he he's got this great saying that I don't think anybody can forget, if you take his class or or listen to his videos, but he says that's not inhuman. It's what humans do.

Derek: 32:24

And his point, of course, is that, the things the violence that humans do to other humans is par for the course. It's what everybody does. It's not done by these, these crazy psychopaths, just by crazy psychopaths. It's done by everyday people. It's done by you.

Derek: 32:42

It's done by me. So what is my ultimate conclusion? Well, in the next Holocaust, if I were part of the persecuted group, I would hope that my neighbors were nonviolent Christians because the chance that they would love me and seek my well-being and sacrifice for me and resist cruel governments and cruel societies is much higher than in a society of those who accept violence as a means to neutralize human threats unworthy of life. So I would want my neighbor to be a pacifist because, like King, they would be more apt to count their lives as lost. They would be more apt to not be pragmatic and be willing to help me even if they didn't think that they could beat beat the man, beat the government, beat the machine, they would be more apt to help me regardless of who I am.

Derek: 33:47

And, likewise, there would be less violent people who could more easily be coerced to direct their violence towards me or who would probably just be so pragmatic that they would say, if I can't if I can't beat the machine, if I can't beat, my government's army, then, you know, I I feel bad for for the people who are being persecuted. But, you know, I'm just gonna do my thing and and hope and pray and and hope somebody else comes and swoops in who's more powerful and can overcome. Because violent people, people who adhere to violence, have a metric of power. Power is what determines, whether you can beat somebody. And if you can't beat somebody, like just war theory shows us, then it's not really a moral thing to pursue.

Derek: 34:41

And that's pragmatic. That's consequentialist. It's not Christian. And, of course, by saying that, I don't mean at all to imply that people who perceive violence as legitimate aren't Christians. No.

Derek: 34:55

I don't I don't think that at all. There are many people who are Christians who believe that violence is legitimate, but they're mistaken, just as I am mistaken on some of my beliefs, I'm sure. Well, hopefully, you have found this, at least thought provoking, if not convincing. And, hopefully, you don't ever need to put, put this into practice into seeing whether I'm right or not. But unfortunately, because violence is indeed what humans do, we probably will get that opportunity sooner rather than later somewhere in the world.

Derek: 35:41

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