Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. This is the 4th installment in our series on Christian Nonviolence. In the first episode, I told you a bit about my story, how on my journey to nonviolence I had to first address some of my biases and presuppositions to be able to objectively look at the case for nonviolence. In the second episode, we discussed the Biblical case for Christian non violence. Taking a look at the Old Testament gave us glimpses of this idea of non violence, as well as how Christ seemed to prescribe non violence, and how the New Testament authors viewed non violence, and violence and vengeance in the New Testament.

In the last episode, we discussed church history. We took a look at some of the early church fathers. We looked at examples of individuals who left the army. We looked at ideas of government and what that all entailed and how Christians viewed that, and we also took a look at enemy attestation and what enemies were saying about what Christians seemed to be doing. I'd mentioned in the last episode that this next episode was going to be discussing real life examples of individuals who incorporated non violence into their lives.

However, I've decided to save that for the next episode. And instead, in this episode, I want to take a look at the philosophical or logical aspects of Christian non violence and its counterpart. That means we are going to take a look at intuitions, we're going to take a look at empirical evidence supporting non violence, and we're also gonna take a look at the internal coherence today of the just war theory, the, the opposite aspect of non violence. So while in the next episode we'll get to the internal coherence of non violence Christian non violence and and how that plays out in real life. In this episode, the coherence aspect, we're gonna first try to tear down the Just War idea, and show you how it's incoherent.

So, in the next episode, we can put in its place what the coherence of non violence looks like. So, without any further introduction, let's jump right in. Intuitions. Now, I have to admit that when it comes to the idea of intuition, I wholeheartedly agree that intuition seems to say that non violence is just incoherent. It doesn't make any sense.

I 100% understand that, because I was there, and honestly, I can play certain scenarios through my head, and intuition screams at me that to kill or to do violence is a good thing, and the best thing to do in certain situations. I, I 100% understand that. And I think, I think the majority of Christians, and even those who adhere to non violence, would probably agree with me on that. Intuition, oftentimes, compels us to believe that violence is an option on the table. Now, I do want to be clear, I am not at all here to bash intuition, because I think intuition is is invaluable in life.

Intuition is a fantastic starting point for for beliefs. However, it is a terrible end point. Let me give you an example. So, my kids have never jumped from the 7th step on our stairs, and they didn't need to see anybody else jump from that step. They didn't need to jump from it themselves.

And, in fact, even if they had seen me jump from the 7th step, they could have climbed up to the 7th step, and seen other people be successful. And they could have intuitively recognized that if they jump from the 7th step, there are gonna be some problems. Because their intuition of their physical capability, of gravity, of the height of things, of of how much their body can handle. They just intuitively know that they can't jump from the 7th step, or that it's not a good idea. They get that.

And intuition, there's so many examples that we could come up with, but intuition is vital for understanding the way the world is, or beginning to understand, and and understanding what to pursue and what to avoid, and those sorts of things. But at the same time, we can all understand that intuitions can be very faulty. And we could go into a number of real life examples that cognitive scientists give us, and, there are so many TED Talks you can watch on this, and we just all understand that intuitions are are flawed oftentimes. But, let me let me give you an example that I think is going to help us as we try to progress into our discussion of non violence. So, I like to think of intuition the intuition of jumping off of a 30 foot platform.

I I I climb up to a 30 foot platform, and let's say there's ground underneath me, not water. I can get up to the top, and just like my kids standing at the 7th step, I can look down and I can recognize that jumping is not a good idea. Jumping from 30 feet will do some serious damage to my body. However, fast forward a couple 100 years, and I go to the moon, and they have a 30 foot platform up there. And, I get to the top of that platform, and I look down, my intuition tells me not to jump.

I can't do it. It's gonna hurt my body. It might kill me. But, because the moon's gravity is so much less, I I intellectually know that if I jumped from that 30 foot platform, I would probably be fine. My intuitions are wrong, and they're wrong because they're based on another planet.

They're based on the way that I grew up, the environment that I grew up in, they're just based on, on something completely different. They're not based on the facts of the situation. They're not based on the reality of me being on the moon. Now, as a Christian, I think it's fairly clear that we are aliens. We are not earthlings in in a certain sense, and the book of 1st Peter lays that out more clearly than any other book.

But, we are strangers here, we are foreigners. This, you know, we are we are old men and women, we have put those off because we have become new men and women in Christ. Now, you don't have to read Paul too long to recognize that even though Paul saw that he was a new man, and he was being given new intuitions, he really struggled with the old man and with the old original intuitions. He was standing in the freedom of Christ, standing on this, this 30 foot platform on the moon where he has just been given liberation, and intellectually he knows the truth of what Christ has taught, he still struggles with those earthly instincts, with that gravity that just weighs him down. Likewise, we are going to struggle with our old natures, with our old intuitions that that aren't intuitions we're to really have or bring or foster in the Kingdom of Christ.

Our goal is to be like Christ who defies these intuitions. I think Philippians 2 is really a a great passage to look at, and you'll probably hear me refer to Philippians 2 fairly frequently. But, Philippians 2 is just beautiful in how Paul is telling the individuals to lay down their lives for others, to put others first. And the way that he tells them to do this is to look to Christ and do what He did. And what did Christ do?

Well, He gave up his, this notion of divinity, this idea that He had to control things. He laid that down at the feet of God, and He obeyed. He obeyed even to a torturous death. He obeyed to give up heaven and become human. He obeyed in every way and gave up His His sovereignty, His control over things, in humble obedience.

And, for His love of God, but also for His love of us. It was self sacrificial. And Paul tells people to do the same thing, and this is absolutely counterintuitive. To lay down my lives for others, and even enemies? That's just crazy.

But Jesus and the apostles just destroy our intuitions. Blasts are to be first. The weak are strong. We're supposed to have joy in giving rather than receiving. The poor are gonna be blessed.

Masters are to serve. Slaves are brothers and sisters. I mean, what kind of world is this? This is not the world that my intuitions were formed in. The intuitions that Christ wants to foster in me, the way that I become like Christ, is absolutely counterintuitive in just about every way.

So, when when people point to intuitions as something that is an evidence against non violence, that can be a good thing for their case, or it can be a bad thing for their case. Because sometimes intuitions really work out for you, something so strong that it just, you know it has to be true. And, there are other times where something is is so strong that you, as a Christian, you just know that it has to be wrong in some weird way. When that when that strong intuition is a self centered intuition, It's intuition about self preservation. Whenever there's this just extreme worry, about the self and this, this self, focus, most of the time, those those extreme intuitions tend to be intuitions that aren't great in terms of kingdom mindedness.

So, yes, intuition's great, but we have to remember that Christianity is often counterintuitive. Now, if that's the only thing I could say on intuitions, we'd kind of be at a stalemate, where I say that Christianity is counterintuitive, and most people say non violence is intuitive, and we could just kind of end there. Fortunately, I think I, I have some resources that are going to be able to show that intuition is really not in the favor of those who advocate violence. Now, common sense intuition, like, if you ask somebody, is going to be, yes, violence is an option. But, when you really get down to it, conscious, the consciousness, the the conscience that God has seared into our souls, when it has the opportunity to evidence itself, shows us that our intuitions are actually quite different than we think they are.

So, here I want to refer to, a man named S. L. A. Marshall. And, Marshall fought in World War I, he was a leader, as well as in World War 2, and I believe Korea and Vietnam.

But in in World War 2, Marshall noticed something really odd. He noticed that only about 15 to 20% of of people, of soldiers on the line were actually firing their weapons. And he could tell just by looking that even some of those individuals who were firing their weapons were not firing in any direction that was that was gonna have any chance of doing damage. So they were firing well over the enemy's heads or down into the dirt. Based on Marshals' findings, the Army was actually pretty appalled at what was going on with, with their soldiers.

If you only have 15 or 20% of your fighting force shooting at the enemy, it's a problem. Right? Think about how much better you could do if you got everybody, or even 90% of people, to fire. And so, because of Marshall's research, the army actually implemented a lot of behavior sorts of things, like, they changed the circular targets in their their practices to, to human silhouettes. They, they incorporated, like, in their their drill sergeants began to, say all these terrible things when they would when they would be marching, you know, talking about killing, raping, pillaging, just these things that were just meant to desensitize men to violence and to killing.

It was really meant to to create a distance between them and the enemy, so that when they saw the enemy, they didn't really see a human being, they saw just a target. And, because of Marshall's research and the Army's implementation of behavioristic processes, in Korea, the firing rate went up to about 50 to 60 percent, and then in Vietnam, we saw 90 to 95 percent of US soldiers shooting to kill. You really see this come out in a book called On Killing. And, and the book references Marshall's study, but it it goes far more into just this idea of of killing. It goes back further, and it also incorporates a lot of anecdotes from soldiers who recount their experiences.

So the book On Killing begins kind of with the with the Napoleonic era. And, based on some of the the tests that the Prussians were doing, you know, they'd line their their regiments up at 75 yards and they'd they'd shoot a target that was 6, 6 feet high and like, you know, the width of another enemy regiment. And they had all their people just fire at it. And so, you know, you get a certain hit rate of, like, kill a couple hundred people, 500 people a minute or something like that. And, okay.

But, when you start to go look at the numbers of deaths in battles due to infantry fire, across the board, and in most battles, you really only see a handful of people dying per minute. And that doesn't make any sense. 500 people a minute versus 2 people a minute is significantly different. So, the author of On Killing goes into discussing a lot of these, these pieces of evidence and findings that go to show that Marshall's discovery in World War 2 is really something that people have kind of known has been going on since Napoleon. One other example of the many is that at Gettysburg, they found tens of thousands of multi loaded weapons.

Now, we're not just talking about, you know, a soldier in the heat of battle forgets that he already loaded his weapon and loads it again. We're talking about some weapons that have in the double digits of loads into their into their weapons, where people would literally load to look like they're to look like they're going through the process of of firing and reloading. They would just load, pull up the gun, and put it act like they fired, put it back down, load. You had people who just would refuse to fire, but not overtly, because if you don't at least act like you're loading and somebody sees you that might be a problem, for your commanding officer. So he, the author goes into many, many, many examples of how the kill rates just are not even close to what they should be from infantry fire.

He goes into these these, to some certain anecdotes, which aren't, are more sparse for the the Napoleonic era, but he goes into the multi loaded weapons from Gettysburg. He just explores so many things that seem to show, hey, there's an issue here. And he doesn't really say exactly what that is yet, he just sets up that, look, there's some issue where people are not shooting, people are not killing. What's the, what's the issue? Throughout his book, I believe the author's name is Grossman, but he, he really shows through through stories of soldiers from more modern wars, that it is really hard for people, even in the heat of battle, even when your life depends on it, even when your your your partner's life depends on it.

It is really hard for people to kill another human being. There are all kinds of anecdotes he gives about people who are like deer in the headlights, and they they go through this whole moral conundrum within a split second of not wanting to kill. He shows the remorse of people after they've killed, even though they feel like, or even though to us it would seem like a just kill. You have to defend yourself. There is just this huge aversion to killing, and Grossman shows that very well throughout his book.

Well, I would love to talk about this book for an hour. Let me just kind of pull out what the, the main concept is. People have issues killing, and the way that the army has gotten people to kill is by creating distance. And, Grossman really shows how how distance is necessary for one human to kill another human. And he gives an example of bombers in World War 2, and how they just slaughtered 100 of 1,000 and 1,000,000 of citizens in World War 2.

And people don't really have a problem with that, and the bombers don't really have a problem with that. They don't really feel remorse for for what they did. Yet, when you get down onto the ground and you get to people who've fought in close combat, and who've seen the faces of the people that they killed, or, they they see the people that they've killed from, you know, 20 yards or 50 yards, there is is just significant damage that is is done to these people because they recognize the humanity of the individual that they're killing. And so what Grossman points out is the way that you get people to kill is by you create distance. And you can do this in a lot of different ways.

You can do this with superiority, like us versus them, we're better. You you see this a lot in the early 1900, you know, the Eugenics Movement? How do we put a a man, Ota Benga, in the Bronx Zoo? Do we put him on display? Because he's not really human.

Right? He's he's black, he's an Aborigine. And we can do that to people who are like us. You create superiority. You can also create moral superiority.

You can have, God is on my side, not their side, and so I need to kill them, or they're they deserve to be killed. You can create mechanical distance. So, if I shoot somebody through thermal imaging, I I see kind of the the silhouette of a human, but it doesn't it's not really human. Or, if you've ever played Call of Duty and you're in the AC 130, you see the night vision silhouettes of people. Or if you know about drone operators, you know, you just kinda see these blobs and you just press a button and It seems like you're playing a video game.

You are, if you're playing Call of Duty, but you know what I mean. It's like you're playing a video game, and you're not really killing people. So you can kind of create mechanical distance, which is what happened with our our bomber pilots, why they don't have issues. Because they're not killing people, they're bombing buildings. Then you could also create physical distance, which is also kind of another aspect of the the bomber pilots.

If you can't see people, if they're really far away, and maybe you just see kind of like a blur, or if they're running, if it's dark, then that physical distance makes you think that you're not really a person. So, for for one human to kill another, you really do need this this notion of distance. You need to strip them of their humanity in some way. Because our intuition is so strong, just don't kill other people. But, only 15 to 20 percent of individuals have historically even shot in the general direction of the enemy, and a good portion of those individuals were not shooting to kill.

I'll refer back to On Killing a little bit later, but I I really want to recommend that you take a look at that book. It's it's fascinating from a psychological perspective, from a war perspective, and it's also just it's interesting to hear the anecdotes of people who've killed. And while it would be easy for me to say, oh, no, they're justified. Their kill was legitimate, and that was fine. Even people who are in those situations that everybody else can say is a legitimate justified kill, oftentimes you'll see them refer to it as murder.

They themselves say that they murdered people, or they will use all of this, this language that tells you they're not really okay with it, they're trying to justify it. And Grossman does a good job of of pointing that out, how how language can kind of betray people's true feelings. It's just a really, really good book. So, what's the ultimate point about our intuitions then? Well, Jesus doesn't only transform a Christian's intuition.

I think Grossman and Marshall show us that, that there really is a remnant of the human conscience that's retained. This, this God given intuition on taking life seems to be retained in us, even if we don't deny that in our violence soaked culture now. We know when we get into the heat of battle, when we get into an instance where we have to pull the trigger on somebody else, that that's just not what you do. Now, maybe in our culture that, that intuition is going away, and Grossman does a really good job of of pointing that out, how we're being desensitized. And it it's really made me think a bit more about video games, because that's I love video games, and particularly shooters.

And so, he talks about that desensitization and what the army does and and how that's occurring in our culture. Though, I don't know that we've retained that God given intuition to the same extent, but, Grossman does a good job of showing how historically we have retained that. Alright. Intuitions seem to be on the side of non violence, because not only is non violence this counter intuition to this, approval of violence which is self focused, and which has to see another human being as lesser, and which is willing to do harm and evil to another for one's own preservation. And not only do we see this play out in in studies like Marshalls and Grossman's, now I want to turn to the more empirical evidence of the positive nature of how non violence has influenced the world.

Now, I have to highlight here that I am absolutely not a consequentialist, and I I really harp on consequentialism a lot, and I hate it. I think it is it is probably the the thing in the United States and the West, and maybe in all of humanity, that just undermines Christian virtues. I think it's a huge problem. The ends do not justify the means. However, I also do want to recognize that if I believe in an orderly God, a God who's who knows what He's doing, God who has intentionality and purpose in His actions, then I would probably guess that what God has us do tends to be the ideal way to do things.

And, if you're doing something in the ideal manner, then probably it's going to produce the best outcomes. Of course, in a broken world, God's means probably tend to require the foregoing of immediate results, and God's means probably are also going to require pretty great sacrifice. And, I think you see that with non violence. And take a look at something like the civil rights movement, and you have a lot of sacrifice for a lot of years, but you see that it's ultimately not the civil war that really resolves things, but it's the nonviolent movement that seeks reparation and love. Now, I don't want to discount civil war at all, and that that it it did nothing, and I I really don't know how to how to weigh all of those factors and and figure things out.

I don't know what would have happened if we had somebody like King without first having civil war. I I just don't know. But, I can probably give you a pretty good idea, empirically. So research has gone a long way into proving that non violence might not only work sometimes, but it might actually provide the best chance at lasting transformation. Those are some keywords there.

Right? Lasting transformation. In a book slash long article called Why Civil Resistance Works, the authors go through tons and tons and tons of violent and nonviolent movements over the past several decades. Probably, I I don't remember exactly, but maybe 50, maybe a 100 years. I don't remember.

But they show that over that time period, nonviolent movements are more than twice as likely to have full success as violent movement. And I believe it's like 70% to 40% success rate, if you count partial success as well. The lasting transformation. So just about twice the the positive results for non violence versus violence. A couple things to note, the authors obviously aren't looking at, you know, individual examples of, like, home defense and such.

Instead, they they look at society wide movements, non resistance movements versus versus violent movements. And we could talk about scale and how that influences the way the way that actions are beneficial or or produce change. But, nevertheless, point is, we can empirically show that non violence is overall twice as good as violent movements. And, that's something I did not expect to see. I never expected to be able to empirically show that non violence has even close to the same effectiveness as violence.

Because I grew up in the United States, where every July 4th we celebrate the violent revolt against a government, because that's how you change things that are that aren't ideal for you. If you wanna check out some other resources on this, from, I think, back in the seventies or eighties, there's a guy named Gene Sharp, and he has a book, I believe, called Everyday Rebellion. And he's got a series of books that deal with with non violence and its effectiveness and, how it really deals with power structures. It's very insightful. And I think Sharp's book is particularly helpful for people who feel who think that nonviolence is passivity and not doing anything.

Sharp really does a good job of showing you how nonviolence actually is still attacking power structures, but in a different way, and actually in a more meaningful way. Because, rather than dealing with symptoms, you deal with causes, and rather than create more harm and more violence and more enemies, you are working for restoration and understanding. Sharpe does it, I would say, if you read Why Civil Resistance Works, and just see the evidence for yourself, and then take a look at Sharpe's book to try to figure out why in the world is this evidence so counterintuitive to the way that I would have thought the world works. Of course, I would argue that it's counterintuitive because it's God's way, and it's self sacrificial. But, you know, take a look for yourself.

As kind of a part 2 to the empirical evidence, I want to jump back into the On Killing book and just throw in something that I I thought was really interesting. And this I kinda questioned whether or not I wanted to put this in here, because I I don't know that it it necessarily proves much about non violence. But, since this is a cumulative case that I I'm trying to make, I thought it might just be an added an added straw that might eventually break the camel's back for you. So, Grossman talks a little bit about how in World War 2, we had this this bombing campaign on both sides, the Axis and the Allies. And people were implementing bombing of civilians, bombing of cities.

And, you know, they said there were some military targets around, but we know that that's not really what was going on. And especially from our side, 2 2 nuclear bombs and then all the fire bombings that we did, we definitely were were aiming for civilians. And we pummeled some of these places. And I know London and and some other places were also pummeled by the Axis. But part of the reason that we pummeled civilian locations was because we wanted to dishearten them, we wanted to discourage them.

And, literally, according to Grossman here, we wanted to drive them insane. Because in World War I, there was this huge problem of shell shock and people coming from the front lines who were just going insane. Insanity and psychoses abounded in World War I. And we wanted to do that to the civilian populations of our enemies, and they wanted to do that to us. Because if your civilian population can't make ammo, then you're not going to be able to shoot at us.

So we bombed and bombed and bombed, and we and we we used all kinds of bombings, and the worst was was, the fire bombings and, we'll get to that a bit later. But what was really interesting about this is that researchers after the war discovered that civilians had maybe only a slightly increased risk of psychosis as before. So mental disorders that you might expect to occur from from these stressors were really only slightly increased in civilian populations that had experienced this continuous bombing. And it was also interesting, because other groups of individuals that you would expect would have a higher, risk for mental mental problems, like, POWs and medics. Medics who often are not really firing at the enemy, but have this huge burden of trying to save lives and running across the battlefield up to the front where people have gotten shot and, just this this insane responsibility and vulnerability.

You'd expect there to be issues in in those groups of people. But, there's really no statistically significant increase in those groups compared to the the normal soldier. And, Grossman argues that the combat soldiers, the only thing different between the combat soldiers who are experiencing the horrors of wars, and the medics, and POWs, and the the civilians being bombarded, the only difference is that for the combat soldier, they had this added weight on them where they would this weight that they have killed other people, or that they were willing to kill other people and they were in a position to be killing. And they they had to be thinking about that and and viewing other people as as inhuman. So the thing that ups your chance for psychosis is not necessarily the trauma you experience.

So trauma is is certainly a a part of but what seems to be the factor that skyrockets psychosis is being put in a position where you have to face the choice to kill. And, Grossman also mentions where where you feel this animosity of other people who are viewing you as as inhuman and trying to specifically kill you too. So, empirically, it seems like this this notion of killing, even justified killing, right, you're you're killing your government, there you go, Romans 13, you're killing in a justified fashion, these other people who are trying to kill you, fighting the Axis powers, you're fighting countries who've invaded other countries and oppressed people. So, you, even in in this situation, the factor that increases your chance for psychosis is being put in a position to view other humans as not human, so you can kill them. Obviously, I've simplified Grossman's argument and and evidence significantly here.

Highly recommend you you check out the book On Killing. And, interestingly, Grossman is not a Christian as far as I can tell. In fact, I would I would say he probably isn't, because his whole goal in all of this you know, he starts off by by talking about, like, our primal instincts and how it's it's great that we we don't have this desire to kill other people. It's great that we have this aversion to kill other people because the human race wouldn't survive, and he talks about the evolution of this, and then he talks about all of that. Yet, his goal is to help the army figure out how to get people to more effectively kill while supporting them so that they have less of a chance for mental issues coming out.

His his goal is not at all to stop the killing, because he thinks that killing needs to be done. His goal in this book is to get people, and in his mind, hopefully the right people, right, the United States waging just wars, in his mind. His goal is to get other people to kill. Do it healthfully healthfully. So Grossman is definitely not on my side when it comes to non violence, but I find that that what he discovers, what he uncovers in his research, really helps a lot with the empirical aspect of Christian non violence, as well as the intuitive aspect.

So Christian non violence says that the ends are not what justify the means, and Christ taught us what means we're supposed to use. While we would expect God's means to work better overall, which evidence seems to indicate is true, our goal is faithfulness and not results. Morality is found in always loving, which includes loving our enemies. Let's take a look at our our final aspect here, which is gonna be internal coherence. And, in this episode, I really just want to look at the internal coherence of the opposite of nonviolence, which I'm gonna just call the just war theory here.

And, the reason I want to take a look at the opposite before taking a look at the coherence of non violence is because I think it's gonna help to create a vacuum and, as well as kind of a foil to compare the coherence of non violence to. Because when I, when I talk about non violence, there are gonna be all kinds of questions that that come up, and, oh, well, what about this? Or, well, no, I think that, you know, it would be just to to kill in that situation. But I I want to kind of create this dissonance for you here, where you recognize that we need a coherent theory of non violence because the theory of a just war is incoherent. There's there's a huge hole here, and I want to create the hole for you in this episode, and in the next episode, try to fill it with what non violence looks like in real life, and and how that's coherent.

So let's talk about just war, the just war tradition. What exactly is a just war? Well, there seem to be 6 pretty agreed upon aspects of of what a just war entails. One of those is pretty new, and I'll save that one for last. But the first five have have been around for most of the time.

So, the first one is, there has to be a legitimate authority. And really, without a legitimate authority, pretty much everything else breaks down, because the having the authority to kill is, is this umbrella justification needed for all of the other ones. And some Christians try to argue that, you know, you have the authority in your own home to kill an intruder. And they try to argue all these of the these aspects of authority, but really, at least from the New Testament, the only legitimate authority that seems to be given the sword is gonna be Romans 13, which shows us the government. The government has the right to bear the sword.

We will talk a lot more about Romans 13 in its own episode. Some people are gonna extend that and say, well, if the government tells me I can shoot an intruder in my home, then I'm an arm of the government. You get into all kinds of arguments like that, but just know that without a legitimate authority, you don't have just war. You can argue about what a legitimate authority is, but you need it. 2nd aspect is a just cause.

So, what is a just cause? That's a great question. But, generally, just cause is is viewed as something where you are protecting the lives of your own people, and that can be preemptive or retaliatory to a certain extent, where you're just retaliating to prevent that future attack, which would be likely if you don't retaliate. While we could argue all day long about what a just cause would be, people are always gonna find ways to to justify doing something that they want to do. My biggest issue with this idea of just cause is its inconsistent application.

Let me give you an example. We go into, let's say, Iraq evades, invades Kuwait, and we decide to go over there and intervene. Should Iraq have invade invaded? Were they killing people? Were they were they doing things that they they shouldn't have that were immoral and and terrible?

Probably. I I don't really know that much history about it. And we intervened. Okay. So we want to say that that's a just cause.

Great. Alright. There's there's a good standard for you. You have a country that's invading another country, and that is is killing innocent people. Good.

Well, now we end up having these other countries, like, let's say, Rwanda or, you know, generally you see these in in Africa, let's say the Congo, whatever. You have these other countries where you've got these genocides and these terrible, horrendous atrocities occurring, probably Myanmar, North Korea, wherever else. But, you know, let's stick with the with the African countries, which don't have much recourse. They can't nuke us, theoretically nuke us back. So you can't argue that, we're just not invading them, for our for our own well-being.

Let's take an African country like Rwanda. You have a terrible atrocity going on there, and you don't do anything about it. Why? Why why with Iraq, and why not with Rwanda? Because if Iraq was a just cause, surely, surely some of these other countries where you have genocides and atrocities going on would be places where we should get involved.

So, why Iraq and not these other African countries? Well, because there's some interest that we have in Iraq, that we don't have some of these other countries. And, that's probably my biggest issue with with just cause. If we wanna say that there's a just cause, that if there is something that warrants us going in to protect other people for the moral good, and we apply that only out of self interest when we can get oil money or, some political clout or something out of it, we justify it in that manner, then we refuse to assist in in areas where all we're doing, helping other people not to die and be slaughtered, and we don't really get anything out of it, then that seems like an immoral application of the just cause. So, I'm off for just war theorists wanting to talk about just cause, but then show me how in the world you're you're consistently applying that.

And I I haven't seen that yet. Ultimately, that's because it seems to me like just war theory is often a cover for, national prosperity and self interest, as opposed to doing the moral good. 3rd aspect of just war would be proportionality. So, if a, let's say a Russian fighter, which they have a tendency to kind of do stupid things sometimes, you know, accidentally runs into one of our planes and kills our guy. It might be disproportionate if we go ahead and and bomb one of their cities and kill lots of people.

That might not be proportional. So, proportionality just says that we're not gonna we're not gonna go overboard with retaliation or with our preemptive strikes. We're not gonna do more than we need to do. 3rd one would be civilian and non combatant safety. We do not want to shoot people, or kill people, harm people who are non combatants, and that one is probably one of the most agreed on and uncontroversial.

4th aspect is reasonable success. There has to be a chance of success for me to engage the enemy, for me to declare war. And that's because if I throw all of our troops at an enemy, knowing that they're all gonna die, and we're not gonna accomplish the moral good, and the evil person is going to win and implement their their evil agenda anyway, then I might as well lessen the evil done by limiting the amount of deaths and choosing not to go to war, but to just surrender. So there has to be reasonable success for me to choose to engage in violence. And finally, the new one, the the newer one, this idea of just peace.

And just peace is one that says, if we're gonna fight a war, if we're truly concerned about morality and justice, and we want to make things right, and we don't want to see future wars so take World War I, for example, leads to World War II because of all the, the fracturing, and, and the terrible conditions we gave to the losers. We need to help in rebuilding and restructuring, and we need to come alongside of the defeated, even though they were our enemies. And I think that's a fantastic one, and I think it's a step in the right direction for the just war position. And, yeah, that's, that's the newest one. Something we've only kind of come to terms with recently.

Okay. So knowing all of those aspects of what it means to to have a just war, and we can we can probably apply those to just violence as well. Right? We can we can talk about the intruder coming into your home, or whatever. If we take these ideas that you have to have this legitimate authority, there's proportionality, just cause, etcetera, let's, let's evaluate that.

So I've got some questions for this position. And, the first question would be, what example of a just war can you give that comes even close, even close being just? And, I'm I'm sure some history nerd can give me some war that maybe is kind of close, but I'm, I really don't think you, you can. Probably not. And, and if you can, you probably can't give me 2.

Let's, let's take the one that everybody thinks is really this just the epitome of a just war, and that's World War 2. And, I think it was one of the worst, worst wars ever. And, why is that? Well, Just Cause for the United we'll speak from the United States perspective here. So, Just Cause for the United States.

Did we have it? What was our reason for joining the war? Well, it wasn't to free Jews or political prisoners. We didn't really know that that all of that terrible stuff was going on until we liberated people in, like, 45. We didn't we didn't really know what was going on.

So, we didn't join the war to save the Jews. We didn't join the war to help Europe, because the war was going on since, I believe, 39, and we only joined a couple years later. Oh no, we didn't, we didn't join to help Europe. We joined to retaliate. And I think you see this this fairly clearly.

Right, right when World War 2 starts for us, one of the first things we do is, I think it was called the Doolittle Raid, where we just went and we kinda did this, this symbolic bombing. It wasn't like anything super destructive to the Japanese, but we symbolically like, bombed them and and got close to them so that they they knew that we were serious and and we could we could reach them. We joined the war because we wanted to retaliate. We didn't need to join it for our protection. We would have joined it before Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese sunk a couple of our boats, but all we would have had to do is build up our fleet and protect our coasts. We there's no way we were gonna get invaded. We just had it would have been absurd for anybody to attack us had we built, especially had we built up our defenses. We did not need to attack anybody, but we did because we wanted to retaliate. Now, maybe you disagree with that, and that's fine, because that's not even what I'm gonna hang my hat on here.

We're gonna get to one later, which I I think is so appalling that it just it just, it would make you throw this war out as just in and of itself. Just authority. Yeah, sure. The United States, we the government approved it. Just authority.

Reasonable success? Reasonable. Yeah. You know, the UK was about to fall had we not gotten involved, most likely, and pretty much all of mainland Europe was was fallen. So success was was certainly tenuous, but it was probably reasonable, I would say.

Proportionality? Not at all. No way. And I'm gonna lump proportionality and and civilian safety in because the 2 kind of go hand in hand. And I'll use I'll use 2 two lines of reasoning for why the proportionality was was atrocious.

The first one is the atomic bomb. How in the world is that proportional to to what has been done? Now, a lot of people like to argue that we we killed a 150,000 people to save a 1000000 American lives, and that's that's certainly proportional. They killed a 100, that 150,000 citizens. I mean, you can, you can give an analogy of, now, can I, can I execute 1 innocent person to save 10 people's lives?

Like, execute them? Put a gun to the back of their head, blow their brains out, so that I can save 10 people's lives? No. Not at all. But for some reason, when we use an atomic bomb, kill a 150,000 people, incinerate them, and and create lifelong damage for so many others, that's justified?

No way. No way. Not only is it not proportional to what has been done to you, but it's also doing that to civilians. So, I've got problems with that. But, but even more than that, and what most people don't know, sadly, that the atomic bomb wasn't really that bad in comparison to to the other bombings.

The Tokyo firebombings killed over 200,000 people. And, 2 bombings, 2 a bombs killed, you know, a 120,000, 150, whatever. The the firebombing of Tokyo, twice, 2 firebombings, killed over 200,000 people. And Tokyo is not the only place we bombed like that. We bombed other other places whether with fire bombs or or other types of bombs.

We bombed civilian locations. Hamburg, 3,000 people. Dresden, I believe, was was another location. I mean, we just we just slaughtered civilians. And fire bombs were were particularly terrible because they were purposefully created to be viciously evil.

And, Grossman, in his book, On Killing, goes into this, but they would have these small, like, 5 pound bombs that were incendiaries that were meant to start fires on roofs. They'd have a little bit heavier bombs that were meant to to cave in cave in, ceilings and walls, blow out windows to to feed the fire with oxygen, and we'd have these larger bombs that were meant to create huge potholes on the road so that fire trucks couldn't get to it. And, what you do is you create just this this firestorm that would demolish everything in its path, create hurricane force winds, suck things into it because of the the vortex that it would create. And, even if you're in a bomb shelter, it's gonna get down to you. Heat will just melt you, and, you'll be deprived of oxygen.

You're you're just gonna die. And that's what we did to 100 of 1000 people with firebombs, and with with other types of bombing, millions of people. World War 2, I I believe the figure is something like 2 thirds of the people who died were civilians. I mean, tens of millions, tens of tens of millions of people of civilians were murdered by by our army on purpose. So, no, proportionality and civilian safety were not at all reasonable in World War 2.

We executed innocent people in order to save other people's lives. We're not talking about collateral damage, we're talking about we executed them. But, you know, the good thing is, just peace afterwards, we helped them rebuild and, you know, at least we we got that aspect of the just war right. So, in my book, we get 3 out of 4 for the just war of World War 2, as the United States anyway. Maybe if you wanna go with Just Cause and say that what we did wasn't retaliation and we really had to do it to save lives and, to save our lives, okay.

It's fine. I still got proportionality against civilian safety, which the a bomb and fire bombs alone, I think, just demolish the the notion that World War 2 was a just cause for the United States. It is in retrospect if you count the Jews, maybe. Maybe. But still in terms of number of lives and how many civilians we executed, I don't know.

K. Let's take, another war. What about the revolutionary war? America's favorite war. Because without that war, we wouldn't have the United States.

This one would be problematic here. Number 1, just authority. Nope. Have that one. Don't have the umbrella umbrella, justification.

Because we weren't a government yet. We're under another ruling government. So there's no legitimate authority. Just Cause, we didn't wanna pay taxes. Felt like we should have a stronger voice in certain political realms.

Philly? We're gonna kill people and and have a rebellion because of taxes and representation. And what strikes me as as particularly ironic about this is I hear a lot of people reminder, I run-in conservative circles. A lot of people talk about how ridiculous, like, let's say, the Black Lives Matter movement or just the other racial sorts of things. Like, you know, civil rights, that was was 40 years ago.

Slavery, that was a 150 years ago. Let's just get over it and let I mean, that let the past be the past. But what the what the black community in particular is complaining about is that they don't have fair representation in the court systems, criminal justice system, politics. They don't have fair and equal legitimate representation. Yet, when you see somebody like Malcolm X in retrospect, especially back in the sixties, when they really didn't have representation.

There really wasn't equality. You have somebody like Malcolm x who wants to do violence. Not a revolutionary. He's a terrorist. Well, what do you think the colonials the colonialists were who were trying to rebel against England, if not terrorists, and for far less reasonable issues?

Taxes and representation? Malcolm x and and other people in the sixties and and around that era were were trying to push back against segregation, inequality, maltreatment, lynchings, all those sorts of things. And even today, what what certain movements, you know, whether whether you agree with the Black Lives Movement, with every aspect of it or not, at least part of what they're trying to voice is this idea that that there is unfairness in the system. And many people, black community, are trying to do that in a non violent way and are getting called babies and told to stop whining. Yet, every July 4th, we celebrate that people used violence to get out of taxes, get better representation.

So Just Cause? No. We're o for 2. Proportionality? We're trying to take a little bit of your money and not listening to your voice all that much and kill them?

Okay. I guess, you know, maybe the the first shots fired were were at us, but if if you take the police shootings of today and say, well, you were resisting authority. What did you expect to happen to you? There you go. Menelists who were rebelling against the government, you got shot because you existing.

Expect. So, no. Proportionality. A just authority. A legitimate authority trying to get us to stand down.

We as not a legitimate authority without a just cause acted disproportionately. Reasonable success for the colonists? No. Not even close. Obviously, there was success, so it was possible success.

But it wasn't reasonable. No way was it reasonable. Nobody expected doing that. Civilian safety? I don't really know how you count that.

Probably, because they fought out in fields and stuff. Sure. And then Just Peace. I don't know how to count that one either. So, I'll give you those last 2, civilian safety and Just Peace.

The other 4 horrendously, horrendously, off base in terms of Just War. Rationalization. Just doesn't work. So what example of just war can you give me? I can't think of any.

And the 2 that we celebrate the most in the United States are possibly 2 of the worst. Maybe World War 2 isn't as bad as it seems like it is, but when you look at the a bomb and fire bombs, it's it's pretty bad. Okay. Question number 2. If civilian safety is one of the things that we're we're focused on here in a just war, but if war in politics always creates collateral harm and harms indiscriminately, how does that work out?

So who is a combatant? Is is the farmer who produces food the army buys? Is the farmer a combatant? Is the chip maker makes chips for a Tomahawk cruise missile? Is he a combatant or she a combatant?

What about the plastics maker who provides the plastics or the chipmaker who makes the chip for the Tomahawk cruise missile? And you can go down the line. Right? Well, the problem is, if those individuals aren't combatants, then in in most wars, we have blockades and sanctions. How do you deal with that?

I know in World War 1, there was a a blockade, particular blockade that just devastated Germany and caused starvation and just horror there. How do you how do you justify a blockade? Because that action actively causes the death of many, many civilians, refusing to let them have food. And you can talk about your right to trade with people in terms of sanctions, but in terms of blockades, I yeah. I just don't know how you how you get past that, the fact that you are are killing 1,000,000,000,000, 1,000,000,000, indiscriminately causing the deaths of people on purpose.

How do you deal with that in just war? Alright. Here's an interesting one. Question number 3. In a nuclear age, how is it possible to fight any war?

Because fight a just war can't have reasonable success. Going to refuse the nuclear option. Let me explain. Let's say you're the United States. You are a just war theorist, and you are elected president.

We have all these nuclear weapons. Russia, more volatile. Now, all of a sudden, we're at war with Russia. Well, as a just war person, you cannot go into a war and use nuclear weapons. Now, maybe you could if you, like, bombed certain parts of Siberia, like a military installation or something.

But you're you're not gonna bomb Moscow with a nuclear weapon because you're gonna kill tons and tons of civilians indiscriminately. You can't have that because then it's no longer a just war. That's immoral. But at the same time, Russia has nuclear weapons. And they're not just war theorists.

They're focused on themselves, and they have no problem their weapons on you. Particularly, they know that you won't use nuclear weapons back. They said, wait a second. We're in this war. I have nuclear weapons.

You don't. I'll use the nuclear weapons. And if you're not gonna retaliate, get destroyed, and I don't. It's there to lose for Russia. So if they have nuclear weapons, you can't use yours.

And by not using yours, they can just threaten to use theirs, and you can no longer win. So you have to choose which aspect of the just war theory you want to compromise on, and you're gonna be immoral, one way or another. So in the nuclear era, it's just impossible to fight a just war between 2 nuclear nations. Alright. 4th question.

Kind of moving a little bit away from from war a little bit, but how how is torture not just just war theory? And now, I I can't prove that torture is wrong. And I'm sure there are a lot of people listening to this who would say, well, of course, torture is okay. I think a lot of Christians, even even conservative ones who might be okay with just war, I think you have this intuition that torturing people is just wrong. And you might be okay with Americans torturing people, but when you see other people doing it, you know it's wrong.

And you just need to have the consistency to apply that to your your own group, if you have that intuition about other groups. But most of us know that it's wrong, intuitively, or a lot of us, I should say. But in just war theory, if you're gonna go with with those, 6 criteria, how is torture not just? If you're an arm of the government, say you're in the army or FBI or something. Right?

You have legitimate authority. Say you have a a just cause. You found this terrorist, planting a bomb. Know that there are other bombs being planted. You don't know where.

You need information from him. So there's just cause to try to prevent deaths of thousands of people. There's proportionality. Torture him, the terrorist, in order to gain information to save thousands of lives. Person's physical harm to save thousands of lives seems pretty proportional.

And he's not an innocent person, so you're not harming an innocent person to save a 1000 lives. Civilian safety? Yeah. That's what you're shooting for. You're not harming civilians.

You're only harming a combatant. Reasonable success? Just let them sit there. Nothing's gonna happen. There's no success.

If, you know, you're kind of on the clock, now it might be great to try to build a relationship with them. That might be more effective in the long run, research shows. But if you maybe got an hour, you might not have the time to do that. Go hardcore pretty quickly, get some information. So reasonable success?

Yeah. More reasonable to torture than to just sit there and try to build a relationship. And just peace. Yeah. Definitely just peace.

Because if you let the guy live, you torture him. Afterwards, you're gonna have the opportunity to help try to rehabilitate him. That might be ridiculous. He might not ever wanna do that, but certainly can't do it if he's dead. So if you're able to, you're able to only torture him, so he survives.

Bomb ends up not going off, so he doesn't kill people. And maybe he doesn't get the electric chair or, life in prison. Might have this chance to build a relationship and and debilitate, and he may, at some point, be able to come back into society. I don't know. But there's more of a chance of that than if the bombs go off.

But really, torture on just war theory, rationalize that really easily. I mean, it can fit all six criteria. But to me, torture is so intuitively wrong, I just I just really can't see that as as being something that, that's on the table. So, again, not not necessarily a proof, but more of a a question I'd pose and have people seriously consider. Alright.

5th question. How has the marriage of the church and state worked out for Christianity over the past, 1500 years? Since, let's say, Constantine Augustine, through medieval Europe to today where some people might consider the United States a Christian nation. But but not even close to what it was in in Europe where the the church and state were were really married. How's that worked out?

I can tell you anecdotally that a lot of atheists I run into know personally. They've got some significant problems, and and one of the top problems they tend to have with how the church has used violence throughout the ages. For a church church who has proclaimed just war and then tried to implement that, again, I just don't know where you see examples of just wars and when the state tries to wield the sword in a manner that's Christian. Never does. Always ends up bad for the Christians.

In hindsight, you see the the horrors of of what Christian Europe did. And, two resources I would really recommend on this. Anatomy of a Hybrid goes into a lot of a lot of how the state and church have been married and the problems that that's had. And then Dan Carlin, it's hardcore history. He has a a good episode on torture.

And it's it goes into things that they were doing Christian Europe time. And those two books are gonna give you some some insight into what the state does with the sword, the churches behind them, rationalizing things, acting as if there's such a thing as a just war, or just violence. Question number 6. What action can cause a person to lose their right to life? What gives you the right to be the taker?

See that a lot in in Grossman's book where many soldiers really struggle with with the fact that they've taken life. Even if we might look at it and say, well, no. You were justified. They just recognize that they don't have that right, that that something is wrong with the taking of life even in those circumstances which may be viewed by the outside as justified. You know, if we believe that human beings are image bearers of God, it really begs the question, at at what point does somebody stop being the image bearer of God that allows us to to take their life?

Last question. Is it really possible to kill your enemy in love? Because we know clearly that we're supposed to love our enemies, but really do violence to your enemy love? I'm I'm just not sure how how it's possible to fulfill the command of Christ while you're killing somebody, doing violence, or torturing them. In summary, I think the just war falls short on many, many premises, probably starting with the first one, just a, legitimate authority.

Even given legitimate authority and and giving violent view of Romans 13, how government can bear the sword, even given that, other justifications just fall apart, any war that I can think of. On the individual level, lack of love for enemies and and empirical evidence of how nonviolence works and anecdotes of the soldiers and and the empirical evidence in and studies of people's intuitions and what's happened in war, I just I can't see how a just war theory can lead up to scrutiny. It's it just falls apart. And Stanley Herawas wrote a a good article about this where he brings into question whether just war theory is coherent. And it was great because what he essentially says is that, look, everybody looks at pacifists and and people who adhere to nonviolence, and they always say, you guys are idealists.

Nonviolence is just this idealist pie in the sky notion that can't happen and it doesn't work. First of all, we we see that it does work. We see that empirically. But, secondly, what makes you think that the just war theory works? You might think that nonviolence is idealistic, and and admittedly, it does seem that way on the surface.

Just love your enemies. Right? But when you really dig into the just war theory, you recognize that just war theory is infinitely more problematic. It doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of intuition. It doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of empiricism.

And when you take a look at its criteria for being just and for upholding morality, it just isn't ever done, and in some cases, it just can't be done. So in my book, just war theory is incoherent. It it leaves this gaping hole. Doesn't work. Doesn't make sense.

We need a better explanation. That explanation is non violence, and I'm going to give you some examples of what it looks like in the next episode. So peace is my pacifist. When I say it, I mean it. It.