Welcome back to the Truthway podcast. Today, we are going to continue our discussion of rebuttals to Christian nonviolence. And in this episode, we are going to discuss what I believe is probably the greatest hurdle for people to accept the position of nonviolence, or it's at least the the strongest argument in people's mind to be easily dismissive of Christian nonviolence. Because in in their minds, the issue that we're talking about today is just so clear, that it's something that prevents them from really looking more deeply into all of the arguments for nonviolence and against, just war and a legitimate use of violence. Before we discuss the argument, it is important to note that this is not a logical argument.

It's not a biblical argument. It's not a philosophical argument. It is an emotional intuitive argument. And while that doesn't necessarily discredit it, and while there are, other sorts of of, threads that you can pull on from the logical or biblical to to somewhat support this, really, this this argument comes down to an emotional 1, and a very strong emotional 1 at that, and and 1 that I can acknowledge is, is very strong and intuitive. So so I'll give it that.

However, it is important to recognize the basis of this argument because that should help to determine the weight of the argument as well. So what is this this argument, this emotional argument? It's probably the first thing that you ever thought of when somebody brought up the word pacifism. And that is, what would you do if someone broke into your home and threatened your family? And we don't have to get more specific than that.

You can imagine, you know, somebody comes in to rob your home. Great. Whatever. But there's some pretty bad things that people can do, especially if you have kids. Thinking about the extreme sorts of scenarios are are very difficult.

And to be quite honest, if I had a gun, available and somebody came into my home to do my kids harm, especially if that that harm was sexual or torturous in nature. I I'm pretty certain I would use the gun. I don't know that I would have have the wherewithal to be able to to restrain myself. Nevertheless, what should we do, and and, does this argument really overthrow nonviolence? So first, we need to kind of go back to this idea that that really the nature of this argument is an emotional 1.

And no matter how strong your emotions are against something, you have to understand that emotions do not outweigh the evidence. So far in the series, we have laid out the biblical call to love enemies and to forego vengeance, and this doesn't negate that. This doesn't negate the call of Christ to lay down our lives like him, to be sacrificial. This doesn't negate the early church teachings on what we do, to to those who assail us. And remembering that even Augustine himself only thought that violence was legitimate in, in the use of the state, such as the police force or the army.

So even even the early just word herence largely thought that personal defense was illegitimate for Christians. This also doesn't negate all of the logical incoherence we looked at of of, a violent position and how 1 just can't maintain a consistent position of violence with what we know to be empirically true, what we know to be biblically true, etcetera. So for as strong as our emotions run, our emotions, when we're able to think about, the scenario outside of, outside of being emotion laden in the moment, we're able to see that our emotions do not negate the case that we've made so far. Second, because this is an emotional case, I want to kind of point out other examples of of emotions that we have, where we recognize that actually the suppressing of emotions is important. You know, the the biggest 1 for Christians is this idea of betraying Christ, of giving up our faith.

And people point to early martyrs and and especially in in my conservative community, you know, we talk about think about persecution and what that would mean for us because it's probably inevitable for us, as a culture eventually. Cultures ebb and flow and, persecution of religion ebbs and flows. And 1 day, our culture, maybe even us, will face persecution. And so what would we do if put in that situation? You can see there's a a good movie about, Richard Wurmbrandt who was in Romania, and he tells his story and, in in a book called Tortured for Christ, which just came out as a movie.

And in that movie, he, and in the book especially, he talks about the various sorts of tortures that they did on him. But even worse than what they did to him, some of the things that they did to, the fellow pastors who were in prison with him. For instance, one one individual he brought, his family or at least his son was brought in and tortured and killed in front of him. That would be really hard. But Christians recognize that the right answer we we can sympathize with those who go through torture, and we can even sympathize with those who deny Christ because, I mean, under under the right circumstances and without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, I mean, who wouldn't give up Christ in in some of these extremely torturous situations or where our families were threatened, whether that's through torture or rape or just the the worst imaginable things possible.

But we recognize that ideally, the best thing we can do is to not deny Christ under those circumstances. We recognize that more than our comfort or pain or well-being, our life, more than those things, are important. There is something there are some ideals that are above that. So So we we recognize the emotion of the situation, but we also recognize outside of that situation that the emotion doesn't negate what the truly correct answer is. And that's because we recognize that there's this value in faithfulness to our lord, this this idea of lordship, which supersedes life and comfort.

Now the question then is, when it comes to nonviolence, is a nonviolent lifestyle, is that something that demonstrates faithfulness? And is that something that our lord wants? Is that is submission to nonviolence, even in the most dire of circumstances, something that demonstrates lordship? Even more so than just saying, you know, I serve Christ. Anybody can say that.

But being nonviolent is something that, requires actions beyond words. It's a laying down of one's own life, one's own control over the situation, and submitting to the means of Christ, which is cross and suffering. And, of course, I would argue that even though the this rebuttal to Christian nonviolence that, you know, it it seems so obvious that if somebody came into your home to do terrible things to you and your family, it's ridiculous that you wouldn't use violence. That's just wrong. Well, clearly, we recognize that there are scenarios as a Christian where, where laying down our lives and, giving into that is appropriate.

And the big question is, is nonviolence one one of those situations? And I would say, yeah, because we've made a very strong case for it and demonstrated that it is the ideal of Christ. It's the representation of Christ. It's what god calls us to at least in in the New Testament era. So, yeah, I think I think that overwhelmingly negates this argument of emotion.

To move beyond that specific example, point number 3, I would say, is that we recognize that scenarios don't at all determine morality. I've used several times the example of prostitution in order to feed one's family, and talking about how no matter how much we can empathize with an individual who feels like they're forced to prostitute themselves out in order to to feed their family or to preserve life, we would say that that is a a moral wrong that they shouldn't do. Even if we can understand them, show grace and mercy to them for choosing to do that, it's something that in the ideal, we say, no. That that is objectively wrong no matter what situation you're in, even if we can sympathize with you. More strongly, we can see in the Bible, we see an example of when, I believe it's Jerusalem, is besieged by an enemy.

And food is becoming so scarce that, 1 mother goes to the king and says, hey. I got ripped off by my neighbor. And the king tries to figure out what's going on. And the mother says, look. Yesterday, we agreed that we'll kill my child and eat him.

And then tomorrow, we'll kill our neighbor's child and eat him so that we can we can live, so that we can be fed. However, we ate my kid yesterday, but today the neighbor's hiding the kid, and that's unjust. Now did those families need to kill and eat their own, children in order for people in their family to survive. Let's just assume that they did. Right?

Say, yeah. They they did. Was it then just or justified that they murdered their own children and ate them in order to preserve their life? Or would we say, no. Look.

There are some things that are more important than the preservation of life. And refusing to murder and eat your own kid, that's 1 of them. Now until we're put in that situation, we can't say for sure that, we wouldn't do that or that we wouldn't at least empathize with that, people who did. But looking at it apart from emotion, we can say that is objectively wrong, and to die is better than to compromise. I don't care how dire your situation is.

That compromise is unwarranted. And no matter how sorry I feel for you, what you did is wrong if you killed your kid and ate him. And, you know, this is this just takes us back to this theme that we've seen over and over and over again when we talk about nonviolence or, the choosing to do violence. It's this idea of of consequentialism where people somehow think or maybe they don't think this, but they they're unwilling to admit how consequentialism or the ends justify the means. That concept has crept in to their morality.

And that's what we see here with this emotional argument. People are saying, okay. You might have a good biblical case. You might have a good example in Christ. God might have called us to forego vengeance.

You may have the early church on your side. You may have, empirical evidence and logic, and you can have everything going for nonviolence. But in this situation, I'm gonna say it doesn't matter because, it doesn't make me comfortable. Because to see terrible things happen to my family is uncomfortable, and I can't admit that we live in in that type of world where I would have to make that sacrifice. Essentially, what that's saying is the ends justify the means.

To make sure that my family doesn't have to experience terror and horror. I can I can alter morality for that situation? In the end, our our job as Christians is to remain faithful, not to remain comfortable, not to remain free from suffering, and not to keep our family behind a white picket fence and, free from all harm. While we might attempt to do that and attempts to do that are good, compromises in order to keep that are not good, and violence is a compromise. Ultimately, we can't control circumstances.

And when we face evil, we are called to be like Joseph who remains faithful and recognizes God's provision even through difficulty. While the world might intend things for our harm, we know that God brings our good about. God's call in our lives is not to avoid all harm, but to be faithful. I know that's not an easy answer, especially to an emotional argument. You know, it it would be great if I could bring out some emotional trump card that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside about how awesome this position is.

But there's nothing I can say that that will do that from a nonviolent position. The truth about nonviolence is the the truth that Christ faced. And, again, we come back to Philippians 2. Jesus Christ gave up, his his divinity in a sense, and that he he gave up his power to control. And so he said, god, here's my life.

You take it. And that led him to, that led him to torture. It led him to death. It led him to suffering. It led him to, being born in a manger.

It it just led him to all sorts of hardships. But Jesus remained faithful, even though it was a huge temptation for him as we see throughout his ministry to to bow to Satan or to let Peter defend him or to call those angels before the cross or to, talk god into changing his mind. It was a huge temptation for Christ, but he submitted even to the cross. And that's what Christians are called to do as well. And that's not an easy answer, and that's why Jesus said, the way to him is narrow.

The path is narrow because health and wealth are not his promises, but suffering and cross are. And, of course, I'm not at all saying that, you know, people who fail at this are not Christians. I think people who are dismissive of this, and who refuse to incorporate cross and suffering as, as an orientation that that they're supposed to be open to, I think that's problematic for people who call themselves disciples. But for people who who fail at this ethic, I don't think that's a problem. And I'll give you an example here.

The guy's name is Pablo Yoder, and I'll link a video for him below. But he he goes into detail about some of the experiences that they've had with gangs coming by and and coming into their house and even 1 time assaulting his wife. And, he he just talks about his struggle, when he found a baseball bat in his room. And for a split second, he thought about using it. And after that, he's like, I've got to get this out of my house because, you know, it's so easy for me to fail because I want to control.

I want to use violence. I want to give in to my emotion. I want to take vengeance now on this evil. And, and he talks about that struggle. And he's been doing this a lot and has had a lot more experience with it, but it's still a struggle for him.

Just like it was a struggle for Jesus after thirty three years. So there's no guarantee that we won't fail, just like anything else. To sin is to be human, and, Christians still sin. Nevertheless, we are to strive towards faithfulness and towards enemy love. And if we're unwilling to to look at our lives and figure out how to grow in that, I think that is a problem for for Christian disciples.

Now I want to end here with with something that I think I came to realize is very frustrating from the nonviolent position. It's understandable, but it's frustrating. So I carried with me this, this rebuttal to nonviolence for a long, long time. It it it's the the argument that stuck with me the most and that just poked me in my side even after I accepted pacifism. To think that I would be nonviolent if I had the means in front of me.

To think that I would be nonviolent if somebody came in to do terrible things to my family. I just I couldn't imagine how that was right even till till fairly recently. But then then something clicked with me. And it clicked after there was another school shooting, and I see all of the conservatives who, you know, don't want any guns to go away or don't want any more background checks or or any any restrictions whatsoever, they were actually arguing, and I I guess still are, that the correct answer is to just have more armed guards to use to use more lethal force. And I I just I found it really interesting as I I was going through Facebook, and and I saw this cool video about, like, how these schools were getting, like, door stoppers or just these different things that they could implement in shooter situations that were nonlethal.

They're really simple and inexpensive. And, you know, they they would keep people out. And during the same time, I I was seeing, more liberals advocating for better health care, universal health care, as well as health care for the mentally ill, while conservatives were arguing that we shouldn't restrict guns because, most of the shooters are mentally ill, and that's not representative of the normal population. But at the same time, while they're recognizing mental illness as a problem, don't want the state to spend more money on people and people's health. And this really goes back to to, part 2 of our Romans 13 as well, where I would see conservatives talk about how much they hated abortion.

And then in conservative states, they're willing to make punitive laws against women so that they can put women in jail, which will cost taxpayers lots of money to keep you know, if you're gonna put a woman in jail for life for murdering her child. And that's a lot of money that you're gonna spend on just one one inmate. That's a lot of taxpayer money. And conservatives are willing to do that punitive thing towards people. They want to implement those sorts of laws.

Yet, we're we don't have the same same voice or the same agreement on, doing the proactive positive justice sorts of things, like funding women's shelters through the state or funding universal health care so that women, could take care of children, especially single mothers who might consider abortion. We don't do those positive proactive things, but we're really willing to, to spend lots of money on on more negative things. And you see that with with, with this gun debate in The US. Conservatives are willing for for every school, presumably, to hire at least 1, probably more, especially for bigger schools, to hire more armed personnel who are salaried, who get paid a bunch of money every year. They're willing to do that, to put lethal force in there at a huge, huge, huge expense.

But they're not willing to extend health care because they don't want the government to give people freebies. They're not willing to to buy, they're not they're more willing to spend money on putting lethal force in place than on buying some of these these other contraptions that are able to make schools safe, like these door stoppers or, you know, like I don't know. There are all sorts of devices that that, they're offering to help keep people safe. It's just it strikes me that as people who are supposed to value life, our our typical response is, as conservatives, is to implement a costly a costly, answer that seeks to take somebody's life. And I I think that's my big problem here.

If if you really care about life and then, you know, if you're a homeowner, what sorts of preparations can you make to prevent violence from coming to you? You can invest in alarm systems. You can invest in floodlights or motion sensors. You can invest in doors that have have, really strong locks or double locked or whatever. You can invest in very strong glass, like bulletproof glass so that nobody can break the windows to come into your house.

You can invest in a dog or 2. So even if it's not a an attack dog, a dog that makes noise and and barks to scare people away. You can invest in security cameras. You can choose to live in a neighborhood that is well lit or gated or or whatever else if you have enough money, to live in a gated community. I mean, the things that you can do to prevent violence coming to you are are nearly limitless, these nonviolent options that you can have.

Now some of those options would be more expensive than than just a gun, but they're also less dangerous than a gun too because your goal should be to not get in a violent confrontation anyway. And we know that people who have guns in their home are, have a a very increased chance of doing significant harms harm not to, an intruder, but to loved ones. And we know that having guns in the home lead to a significant increase in, in somebody's ability to commit suicide because, there are many times that suicide can be prevented just by extending the time that an individual has to think about killing themselves. And so if you don't have a gun in the home, it might take that individual a little bit more time to seek out a way to do harm to themselves. And by that time, they they might be able to have thought through it and and get over that.

So it it just strikes me as odd that for people who love life so much, or say they love life so much, that our go to means for for self defense is lethal. And and how many people who have a lethal means at their disposal to stop an attacker have gone through all of the steps that they could to prevent somebody from from coming into their home and doing them harm? Almost nobody, I would I would suspect. Right? We don't go through all of our nonlethal means and do everything in our capability to prevent harm from coming to our enemies.

We go through maybe 1 or 2 steps, and our favored response is gonna be the lethal option, Even though the lethal option ends up putting us in more harm as well and doesn't do as much to prevent people from, from coming into our homes. But, you know, ultimately, there even if somebody did all of the defensive things that they could do that were nonlethal, there's no guarantee because we live in a fallen world. And, there should also be no guarantee on our safety because as Christians, it strikes me as a bit odd to argue that we should be building these compounds and that we should be, focusing on trying to move up and live out in gated communities when I think that Christ calls believers to something quite a bit different than that. And in my estimation, you know, you you do what you can to prevent evil from happening to you. But the answer when evil does come your way is not to return evil with evil, but to say, look.

I did what I could to prevent evil from happening. I live in an evil world, and evil has befallen me like it befell Job or Joseph or or a number of other people. And rather than return evil for evil, I am going to uphold what I believe is moral, and that is nonviolence, nonviolent enemy love. And I'm going to trust that even in this suffering, God loves me and will bring about good just as Joseph, discovered with his brothers. And I'm gonna trust in his sovereignty, And I am going to submit.

I'm going to lay down my control at his feet. And I'm, through his spirit, going to endure. And that's the Christian answer. Taking an an enemy's life into your hands is not the Christian answer. Being violent is not the Christian answer.

Sacrificing somebody else for your well-being is not the Christian answer. And for as hard as it is in our, American culture where we are self made and where we are able to insure ourselves, where we are able to protect ourselves, and, and and, you know, only restricted by our means, we can but we can hedge our bets to the extreme. It is very unpalatable for us to think that evil could befall us and it not be within our control. And, I would just point you back to Philippians 2 and say, look at what Christ did for us, and he calls us to do the same even for our enemies. I'll leave you with 2 resources, that that I think would be good.

1, is a book by John Howard Yoder, which talks about this idea of, individuals coming in and, and assaulting you and and how we respond in nonviolence. And another is by, Shane Claiborne called The Irresistible Revolution. And it's really I think it's in 1 of the appendixes that, appendices that he talks about, this this question of what would you do when somebody comes in. And his response is somewhat like, like the last episode where we talked about, you know, an ISIS convoy and if you do violence to somebody, and then that just perpetuates violence. His answer is sort of like that.

And it it's not gonna quell your emotions on this when you think of the most extreme scenario that happens to your family. But, nevertheless, it's a really good book overall, and I would read the whole thing, not just the the appendix, mentioned here. There are a number of other books, I'll I'll see if I can recommend, that I haven't read but I've heard are good. So I'll put a couple of those down there. I just can't vouch for them.

Nevertheless, this is a difficult question. It's 1 that still bugs me emotionally. It's 1 that I still, but by the grace of God, would probably not act in a way that I think, I should act. I would probably do violence if I had violence at my disposal. It it is it is, of course, a very difficult thing to deal with.

Nevertheless, it's why I think we have to work through this kind of thing now, outside of the the heated emotions and and think about that and make up our minds now. So anyway, that's all for now so peace because I'm a pacifist and I say it, I mean it.