(1) S1E1The Case for Christian Nonviolence: Uncovering Presuppositions
Hello, and welcome to the first episode of the 4th Way podcast. We're called the 4th way because we believe that there are 4 ways to live life and to respond to situations, fight, flight, freeze, or faith. Now a lot of people really only think that there are 3, fight, flight, or to run away, and freeze to be passive. Most people think that fighting is ultimately the faithful way. However, we here at the 4th Way podcast believe that Jesus Christ taught us something else, that faithfulness comes through a lifestyle that is nonviolent.
Derek:So, in this series, we are going to be talking a lot about nonviolence. In this episode in particular, I want to share my story with you because my coming to to a position of nonviolence is something that absolutely changed my life. It highlighted so many biases in my life, and it removed a lot of biblical dissonance from me and allowed me to accept the words of Christ for the words of Christ instead of having to make everything into a metaphor or conundrums. So I'm excited to share my story with you today, and, I think that it would be very beneficial to you, especially if you come from the background that I've come from, which is a background of conservative Christianity. I think that my story will probably help you to uncover some of the biases that you may have and and some of the presuppositions that you have.
Derek:And, that's gonna be very important because in subsequent episodes, we will be making a positive case for nonviolence, for Christian nonviolence. And, it is extremely important that you have your biases in check so that you can take an objective look at the information. So, hopefully, my story helps to uncover some of that in you. And, here it goes. So I was born, raised, and, I would probably still consider myself to be a conservative Christian.
Derek:And I I really am thankful for my conservative Christian community and for all of the opportunities that I had. The conservative group, in in Pennsylvania, I'm not from the Bible Belt of the South, but, kind of a Bible Belt up in Pennsylvania. We've got a lot of Amish and Mennonites and Bible churches and and those sorts of, types of Christianity up there. And I went to a Christian school. I went to a Christian college after I graduated from my Christian school.
Derek:I was at church usually at least 2 times a week, sometimes 3. If we had a missions conference, maybe every day of the week. I taught at a Christian school right out of college, and then I taught at another Christian school after that. And, now I'm a missionary in Romania. So, my life has just been saturated with Christianity, and specifically, the conservative brand.
Derek:To give you kind of a an understanding of what conservative Christianity means for those of you who may not necessarily have have too much exposure to that, I'll I'll give you a few glimpses of of what that was like. So in our church, which was also our school, we had a Christian flag, And that was extremely normal to me, but I've come to realize that it's really weird to a lot of people. A lot of people don't know that there's such a thing as a Christian flag. And there's there's a pledge to this Christian flag too. Let's see if I can remember it.
Derek:I pled pledge allegiance to no. I don't remember it. I could get it if, if somebody started me on it. Anyway, there is a pledge to the Christian flag. Go ahead and look it up if you don't believe me.
Derek:But, we also had an American flag right on the the opposite side of the Christian flag, And that was very normal for me too, this this idea of patriotism, going hand in hand with with Christianity. Because in our minds, we were a or are a Christian nation. And so the American flag and the Christian flag are side by side, and we would say that the Christian flag is dominant, but both of those things go pretty hand in hand. And and we really uphold American patriotism about as much as we uphold Christianity and, and that sort of thing. So that was pretty normal for me, but I know now that it's really not that normal for a lot of people.
Derek:We also, being conservative, we were also very big into, like, the Puritan work ethic and this emphasis on personal responsibility. We we worked hard, or we at least like the idea of working hard. We you know, this is the the area for, like, Amish barn raisings and farmers just saturated with with farmers who work dawn till dusk. So, there was this just idea of personal responsibility, personal effort, and that extended into our moral lives as well. There is this idea that you are to be morally independent as well, and that whatever happens to you in life we wouldn't say this, but looking back, I I think we kind of have this understanding that a lot of times, the things that happen to you are somewhat a result of of your moral failings or moral successes.
Derek:So that was that's kind of something that stands out to me as being a part of my my conservative culture. And then something that doesn't really seem to to fit with Christianity in retrospect, but something that was a very big part of my culture was gun culture. And, I think there's this idea kind of playing off of our our personal responsibility and individualism that we really liked in our church. I think guns kind of represent that freedom a lot. You know, it's blaze your own trail.
Derek:You know, that's kind of how the west was won. That's how territory was conquered. That's how we we had this manifest destiny, and we we became a Christian nation through through this independence and this this work and, all our efforts and bravery and and exploration. So gun culture was a very big part of of my growing up. Tons of people had guns.
Derek:I had guns. I loved to shoot them. Still like to shoot them. I no longer hunt, but, I I love guns. They're really fun to shoot.
Derek:So there there's a lot of other stuff that I could talk about in terms of what conservative Christianity was like, but those three things, I think, are gonna be very pertinent as as we take a look at nonviolence. I think those three things are gonna come together. You'll see, maybe in this episode as well as future episodes. But, here's where I I really see some of those big disconnects with my community and some of the things that we really failed at because of of these things that we upheld that we thought were good and maybe were to a certain extent, but became idols and things that blinded us to true justice, holistic justice. You know, we maybe had a glimpse of some aspects of justice and some good things, but we had some pretty big failings.
Derek:So two examples come to mind. First of all, my community talked a lot about personal responsibility, and that extended to, if somebody breaks into my home, and I have a gun, I'm gonna blast them. And, no regrets about that because that moral failing is on them. They know the consequences that they're getting themselves into, potentially. And so, they come into my house.
Derek:I'm not gonna ask questions. That puts my family at risk. I'm just gonna blast the guy because I don't know if he has a gun. I don't know what his intentions are, and I'll just shoot him. Okay.
Derek:Maybe maybe some of you can kind of understand that, but the conversations get a lot weirder than that. Because, for example, you know, you'd also get this advice from people. Well, if they're on your property and you shoot them, you better make sure that they're dead, because if they're alive, they can come and sue you. Kind of like the the liar liar scene that you see where the, I think, a thief falls on some kitchen knives in, the home he's burglaring, and he ends up suing the homeowner. Apparently, I guess I don't know.
Derek:I don't know if that's an old wives' tale or something, but apparently that can happen. And so, advice was given within our community, somewhat jokingly, but not really, that if somebody comes onto your property, you're definitely gonna shoot them. And if you shoot them, you should kill them. So somebody comes on your property, just kill them. That was the point.
Derek:And they'd even say things like, if they're running away, you better shoot them before they get off your property, because once they're off your property, then you're liable and that that's gonna be a problem. So make sure you kill the guy while he's on your property. And in retrospect, I mean, that's not just wrong, but that's that's sad that that we were so indifferent to human life. But because of our emphasis on individualism, and and American pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you you are your own person, and you're responsible for all these things. We refuse to take responsibility for other people too, and especially for our enemies.
Derek:And the gospel just didn't touch that aspect of our life. Our American ideologies superseded our Christian ethic and the ethic that Christ taught, to love even enemies. So that's in retrospect something that that played out that was just very is right now very strange to me, but it was just absolutely normal and made complete sense back in the day. Another thing that I recognize in retrospect is that we we really lacked mercy and grace. We saw poor people, and if it was a poor person from another country, we could understand that because they're not part of God's country, the United States.
Derek:They're not part of a Christian nation. And so the things that kind of have befallen them, you know, especially, let's say, children in Africa who have had evil governments and famines and natural disasters or hurricanes in in, in other parts of the world. We we get that. Tsunamis, we we can help take care of that. We understand when when acts of God happen to you, when natural evil occurs.
Derek:We can help you. But people in our own community, the impoverished, single mother, well, I mean, why did she get pregnant out of wedlock at 15? That's that's her choice. She should have known better. Regardless of somebody's situation, they could have chosen to get an education.
Derek:They could have chosen to persist. And we just this this idea of individualism and just this blindness to how blessed so many of us were in our families to have people who modeled things and provided us with resources. We were just absolutely blind and still are. My community is is very blind to to mercy and grace, particularly to people who are who who we perceive should be responsible for themselves. We don't do well trying to understand and empathize with systemic issues, and that is a huge problem in our community.
Derek:Well, I would say that if I had to summarize what what was kind of conveyed to me, my basic understanding of what my job as a Christian was to be, it was to avoid secular culture, while imposing what we considered to be Christian culture on people. So that family who who was impoverished because of their bad choices, we're not gonna really show them mercy and grace. We're gonna kinda avoid touching that and being tainted by that. We're gonna avoid that secular culture, though, that that evil, but we'll try to touch it with the gospel. And if we can get them to become sanctified, sacred, if we can get them to become a part of our Christian culture, then we can touch them.
Derek:And, so that's why a lot of what we focus on wasn't really mercy to our community. If we did anything, it was revivals or evangelism outreaches and and things that focused on the soul, which are wonderful. But, you know, James and and some of these other passages, Micah, have a lot of things to say about mercy towards people, Job especially. You know, mercy is not just, hey. I'll pray for you, and, hey.
Derek:I care about your soul. But mercy is is very physically focused as well. And there's a great book on this by by Harvey Khan. I I forget the name of it, but I just read it. And he, man, he synthesizes the gospel and and talks about how we have just castrated the gospel by taking off this this physical part of it, and we have we have separated the sacred and the secular.
Derek:And that's that's exactly what my community did. And at the same time, we were we were trying to impose our Christian will on others. And the way that we did this, the reason that we had our Christian flag right next to an American flag was not only because we were a Christian nation, but because our job was to keep this a Christian nation and to expand that nation, to expand the the sacredness of this nation. And so that's why during president Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, we decried how horrible it was that a leader of ours would would dare to do such a thing, to be corrupt in that manner, because we wanted to uphold family values. Now we're a little bit hypocritical there because we had lost the divorce the divorce battle and lots of people that we knew were divorced, so we didn't wanna rail on it too hard because we didn't wanna step on toes.
Derek:But so when we said uphold family values, we mean democrats who do bad things or gay people, because we didn't know any of those at the moment. You know, that's what we meant by upholding family values, and we wanted to impose that through legislation. We wanted to impeach Clinton, and we wanted to ban same sex marriage, while at the same time just kind of giving giving divorce a pass. So we kinda had some some issues there, but we didn't wanna lose more ground. We defended the pledge of allegiance and this the phrase under god on, and things on our currency, and and in pledges and ten Commandments and court houses and all kinds of other things.
Derek:We did not want to lose ground. We do not want our Christian nation to lose its Christianity in our minds. So so we were very big into into imposing Christianity on the government. We We wanted Christian prayer in schools, and I say Christian prayer because that's that's exactly what I mean. We didn't want prayer in schools.
Derek:We wanted Christian prayer. God forbid a Muslim or a Satanist try to put prayer in schools. That would just that would be terrible. But we wanted Christian prayer because we're a Christian nation, and we wanna impose Christianity. We wanna do it through legislation, through force, through the the arm of the government.
Derek:We this is something I only realized recently, but, you know, our view on immigrants was was not good and has probably gotten even worse, in recent years because we thought that they were a threat to our country. And there are lots of there are lots of narratives as to why we think immigrants are problems. But, ultimately, I've discovered that I think it's it goes back to this Christian nation idea, and the issue isn't necessarily that immigrants would come in and potentially take our jobs. Maybe that's true. Maybe they would hurt the economy.
Derek:Maybe they would suck up some resources. Okay. And that impedes my comfort a little bit. But that's that's sort of hard to rationalize with with Christ's idea of mercy and helping the destitute and and those sorts of things. What I realized though is our main issue with immigrants coming in is that it waters down this Christian nation, because you have people coming in from other countries that are, Muslims, Buddhists, whatever else.
Derek:I don't know what the what the main immigrants are to the United States, but we have big problems with that. And conservative Christians usually are are, Protestant in nature. We've got, Baptists and certain brands of Presbyterians and, bible churches and and all those sorts of of, institutions. And so even individuals coming from South America or Central America, well, they're not really Christians because they're Catholic. Now, I I don't believe that.
Derek:Catholics, who believe the gospel are Christians, and there are many of them. And there are many protestants who don't believe the gospel, who are not Christians. But growing up, there's this idea that that really the only Christians are evangelicals, the only true Christians. And so Catholics weren't Christians, and that's who's coming from South America and Central America and Mexico. And, you know, and especially there, maybe maybe some Catholics, maybe some European Catholics would be true Christians.
Derek:Maybe. But in South America, where they've got all those, like, weird, older native concepts that they've kind of incorporated into their Catholicism, nah. They're not really Christians. So we can't really let them come into our country and water down this Christian nation, because that's what we are. We are a Christian nation, and God has entrusted that to us.
Derek:And we need to preserve it, and we need to expand it. And so that's where where my childhood and and my values kind of led me. They led me to that sort of view of the world. Well, 2015, 2016, president Trump, not not president then, but, Trump comes onto the scene. And when I see him and I hear the way that he talks and I listen to to what he says, I just am utterly appalled.
Derek:And so much more has come out since 2015 that make it even worse, but I was I was just appalled. And you've got a guy who lies, who surrounds himself with people who lie, who makes derogatory comments against others, against immigrants, against women, against poor people, against his enemies. He's aggressive with lots of people, including nuclear nations like North Korea. He's arrogant. He has itching ears.
Derek:He he needs to to always be complimented. He can't stand not being, praised. He is his sexual exploits are just, I mean, many, and he's he's on, what, his 3rd wife, Something like that. He's he's greedy. And the list could just go on and on and on.
Derek:And there is nothing in Trump that is that is praiseworthy. Other than now that he's been president for a while, he does follow-up on on a lot of the things that he says he's going to do in terms of of policy. But, you know, other than that, just his character is is horrendous. And there was such a clear line for me that that this man was evil, and it I just didn't know what to do in this election because, at the same time, I I couldn't vote for somebody like Hillary for several reasons, but it's particularly because of the abortion issue. I mean, abortion is just objectively wrong, and I think I can prove that.
Derek:And it's, I I couldn't vote for somebody who would accept and promote and advance such an egregious evil, but Trump was such an egregious evil too. And it baffled me that that my community, the community that I loved and still love, just pretty much embraced Trump with open arms, for the most part. And especially once we saw that Trump was going to be the person who definitely was the guy that we had to go with if we were gonna vote Republican, if we weren't gonna vote 3rd party, if we wanted to win. Well, that guy was gonna be Trump. And at that point, not only were we endorsing him, but we defended him at every turn, including some of his, just egregious evils.
Derek:And that that boggled my mind that our community would embrace him and promote him and defend him. And, but I didn't know what to do, because I didn't know what other choice we had. Didn't I have to vote for the lesser of 2 evils? At the same time, I was kind of rehashing an old conundrum that I had thought about for years and could never really figure out what the answer was. And, it it's this M*A*S*H conundrum, the, a conundrum from the, TV, series M*A*S*H.
Derek:And in this episode, you've got a bunch of US army personnel and and South Korean civilians on this bus. They're driving, and all of a sudden, they they realize that there's a North Korean patrol around. And they stop the bus, and everybody's absolutely quiet. Well, unfortunately, there's a baby on the bus, an infant, who starts to cry. And one of the US soldiers says, shut that baby up.
Derek:And so the mother can't rationalize with her infant child, She has to choose. Do I do I quiet the child? And by quieting the child, the only way that I can do that is to push its face into my clothes and smother it and the child will die. Or do I let the child cry? If I do that, I'm sure we're gonna be found.
Derek:And when we're found, I know we're gonna be executed. Do I kill one life to save 50, or do I, through my inaction, cause 50 people to die? 51 people with the baby. Right? What, what do you do in that situation?
Derek:And that was a conundrum to me for so long. And, I asked a lot of people for help on this one, friends, family, religious leaders. I probably asked about 50 different people. And, I got 2 types of responses usually. The first response was, I I think if I were in that situation, I don't think I would kill the child.
Derek:I just I couldn't do that myself. But if somebody else did it, I don't think I could judge them for that. I don't think that I could say that that is wrong. I just couldn't personally do it. That was probably the majority of answers.
Derek:It was it was ambiguous. Then the other group said, well, I guess you you kinda have to do it, don't you? Because or you have to kill the child because it would just be wrong to let 50 people die. You have to kill the child. It's it's unfortunate.
Derek:It's sad. It's the lesser of 2 evils. That's something you gotta do. In all of this, I had only one person from my conservative Christian community, only one, who said immediately, you can't kill the child. That's that's wrong.
Derek:Like, those 51 lives are in God's hands, and you can't take that into your own. One person said that, and it wasn't me, unfortunately. It took me 5 or 6 years of thinking through that issue until I came to a point where I said, you know what? That that one person might only be one person, but that one person makes a whole lot of sense. And it was it was during this time that I I realized that my community, the community who is is good and loving and supportive and and, fantastic in so many ways, has a huge, huge blind spot.
Derek:And we, for the past, probably 15 to 20 years, have been bemoaning this moral relativism that our culture has. You know, it's good for you, it's good for you, it's good for me, it's good for me. Yet, when it came to certain issues, our pet issues, issues where we felt we had to maintain control, or issues where we could sympathize with or issues where we could sympathize with somebody. Now we couldn't sympathize with a mother who made a choice to have sex outside of wedlock and now doesn't feel like she can support her baby. We can't sympathize with that because we would never do that.
Derek:And so, of course she shouldn't abort. She needs to deal with the consequences. But, we could imagine that were we an American soldier on a bus in a war zone and there was a child crying, if we were in that situation, we we can understand why you'd kill that child. And so, or if there's an election where you have 2 evil people, we can understand to maintain control of the situation and and a situation that we can empathize with, we can understand choosing an evil. So, we were moral relativists too.
Derek:We're consequentialists, and and by that, I just mean the ends justified the means for us in certain situations, not in abortion, but in presidential elections? Yeah. Of course. We had to maintain power. We had to maintain the Christian nation.
Derek:We had to advance the Christian nation, and so we had to pick a lesser evil. Well, needless to say, as as these things were circling around in my head, I really began to examine my life. I had lived in Mexico for 2 years, right out of college, and I remember walking into a Catholic church and seeing these idols. And I do mean idols, not not icons, but, idols from local local Mexicans who, you know, 100 of years ago, the Catholics came there, put guns to their head, and said, convert or die. And so they converted.
Derek:Right? They they put on a good show, but they also incorporated their local deities into the church. And so they were syncretists. They they were Catholics in appearance, and they went to a Catholic church and did mass, but they were really bringing in their other religion too. And I remember feeling so sorry for those people that the gospel was just not embraced in their lives because they had these idols.
Derek:But what I was realizing at this point in my life now, 10 years after Mexico, was that I was a syncretist. My community was syncretistic. For a lot of us, you know, that included idols of wealth or comfort, self interest, pragmatism, you name it. All those sort of political control. Right?
Derek:We had we had lots of idols. They just weren't the physical sort that you could see in the churches. You couldn't see them sitting up front on on pedestals or anything, but you could see them if you looked around. You could see them in people's lives. You could see them in your own life.
Derek:And, man, I was seeing idols. I was seeing idols in my life at this point. And I recognized that it was ugly, and I was a huge syncretist, and so was my community. And there was just a flood of emotions at that point of, you know, I I cycle through anger. Sometimes I get angry that because certain things have become so obvious to me because of God's gracious conviction in my life that I just, when others belittle people or or are just so unmerciful, it makes me angry.
Derek:And I have to fight that because that's evil and that's unmerciful towards my own community. And but by the grace of god, I would still be a syncretist in those ways. And but for the grace of god, I have many things that will never be uncovered that I'm syncretistic about right now. So, I have to to be careful of my anger. There's also sorrow.
Derek:There's a feeling of abandonment or deception or or betrayal. That's a better word. Feeling of betrayal from my community because you question, well, I thought these people were in my life were so godly, but they're so blind to to the syncretism that we have. And you ask all sorts of questions and and try to deal with with, how that relates to who's a Christian and what it means what the spectrum of Christianity is. You either have way less Christians than you thought there were, or if you take a gracious approach, you realize that, yeah, me and my conservative syncretists are wrong about some pretty big things, but God is gracious and and we're in the kingdom.
Derek:But then that probably also means that some of the liberals that that we think are so bad and are syncretistic in their own ways, yeah, they're probably in the kingdom too. And I know a lot of people take a hard line approach and want to exclude people, but I think at this point in my life, recognizing that that God's grace is so big that that he was he was merciful to me in my just evil and unmerciful heart, I think the kingdom's a lot bigger than than I thought it was as a conservative Christian. And that's good for, for us, for conservative Christians, because we've got a lot of things wrong. We're a great community in a lot of ways, but we've got a lot of things that we need to work on. Anyway, if you would like to know more about my experiences with, coming to this realization, if you want to hear an argument for why the ends don't justify the means, if you want to see how God has uncovered, my, unmerciful actions and and led me to some realizations of how I was syncretistic and, as well as specific applications of of, ends justifying the means, like, you know, is it moral to lie to save lives?
Derek:Or what about ectopic pregnancies? Specific conundrums? Then check out my book. It's called The 80%. You can get that on Kindle or you can get it for free.
Derek:I'll put a link here, because I really couldn't care about selling it. I just would like to engage with people and and hopefully be able to have a dialogue and, figure out where I'm wrong and where I'm not. Then, hopefully, that can spur people on to to change and and towards good. Well, anyway, at this time, all these realizations kinda coming to a head, a friend sent me a debate on pacifism. This debate was at Harvard and it was with some some pretty smart people who had done a lot of research and taught at seminaries and and other sorts of things.
Derek:And I didn't really wanna watch it. It was an hour and a half, but my life was pretty busy at this point. And, but at the same time, I I had really there'd been a lot of things that were swirling around in my head and I realized that I was, I had some pretty big blind spots. And so seeing those blind spots, I, I recognize that maybe I should hear this video out. I really think the Just War guys are gonna win.
Derek:I don't think the pacifists have a chance. Right? Because they're passive, if right? So, I'll listen to it, hour and a half of my time, and then I can say, I know that I, I stand against pacifism and here's why. Get that out of the way.
Derek:Needless to say, I watched the debate and I think the pacifist won, hands down. And the case for pacifism was no different than it was a decade before when I had heard pieces of it. What was different was that I recognized my syncretism, and I recognized my biases, my my preconceptions, my nationalism, all these things that just that made me say, well, Jesus didn't mean that because that wouldn't work. Or, well, that was that must have been a metaphor. Or, well, Jesus was the messiah, so he had to do things differently.
Derek:Right? That's not prescriptive for my life. All of those things that that I had used to excuse away the the teachings of Jesus, just weren't there. I had no excuses. And when I saw the case side by side and without my biases to to just shut down the evidence, I I I had to side with pacifism.
Derek:I wasn't convinced from an hour and a half video, but I recognized that this this issue was a lot more complex than I had thought it was. I contacted the the group who had arranged this debate. I believe they're called the Followers of the Way. And, I mean, within, like, an hour, I got a response. And one of the first things that I was told to do is go read the politics of Jesus.
Derek:And so I read that book by John Howard Yoder, and it it made so many things click. And the floodgates opened, and that's how I got started on this journey. So, I'll put a link to, to the debate. I'll put a, link to the Followers of the Way page so you can contact them if you'd like. And also I'll put a link here to my summary of John Howard Yoder's book.
Derek:I I did that for myself so that I didn't have to go back and and, read it over and over again, but so I can just pull out what what was important. So if a shorter summary and maybe, hopefully, a little bit easier to understand, if that would be beneficial to you, I'll put a link here to that as well. So, that's that's kind of the story of how I began the journey to pacifism or Christian non violence. And if you're from the West or if you're from the United States like me, then I hope the story will be helpful to you. Because before you begin the journey of of looking at the case for Christian non violence, you really need to assess your moral framework and presuppositions first.
Derek:Because if you come to to the table, with with all of these excuses and without evaluating and and making sure that you're neutral, you're you're gonna shut down a case for anything, but pacifism included. And when you do that, when you're able to neutralize, your position, then I would encourage you to kind of come back and listen to future episodes as, as we lay out the case for pacifism, and then get into some rebuttals and things as well. So, one other thing I want you to know before we we end this podcast and begin, the the cumulative case for pacifism is that you do need to understand this is a cumulative case. And what that means is there is not one argument, there's not one Bible verse for or against Christian nonviolence that I can show you to make things, go away, to make you able to to just choose 1 or the other, hands down. There is not one philosophical argument.
Derek:There there really isn't anything I can give you that's going to to help you one way or the other to be sure about this. So it's a cumulative case, which means that you're gonna have to weigh all of the evidence. You might hear something that doesn't sound very convincing and you say, really? If that's what you got going for Christian non violence, then count me out because I need to be convinced. Right?
Derek:Well, that's not really fair. And let me give you an example why that is. So you've got let's say you got a crime. Somebody commits murder. Somebody's on trial.
Derek:You hear the prosecutor. The prosecutor says, this guy doesn't have an alibi. You say, so what? It doesn't matter that he doesn't have an alibi. That doesn't prove that he did it.
Derek:I'm out of here. He's not guilty. Well, no. That doesn't make any sense. Not having an alibi is not a big deal in and of itself.
Derek:But as a part of a cumulative case, it can be a huge deal. If you found out that this this guy had gunpowder, residue in his hand, he had just had a fight with the deceased, Somebody matching his description was seen in the area running away from the scene of the crime right after the crime was committed. All those sorts of pieces of evidence kind of come into line. Then if he can't explain where he was, if he doesn't have proof of where he was during the time that the crime was committed, then not having an alibi is a huge deal. And that's the thing about a cumulative case.
Derek:Cumulative cases, any individual piece that you isolate probably isn't a huge deal. Some are bigger deals than others, but in and of themselves, individual pieces of evidence don't really have much weight. And that's what I feel a lot of people do when they try to undermine the case for Christian nonviolence. They try to undercut this one piece of evidence, or or they they say, look. This thing that they say for Christian nonviolence, that's not compelling.
Derek:Great. You're right. It's not supposed to be. But when you add them all up, what is the weight of the circumstance? What is the weight of of, the evidence that we have?
Derek:Now, unlike the example of crime, and and in the United States, we have this 12 jurors, and they have to be unanimous and that the person was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Great. That's awesome. We don't want innocent people to be put in jail, even if that means letting some guilty people go free. I like that.
Derek:But what you have to understand here is that we've gotta have a conviction. And this isn't this isn't a court of law in the United States. You have to live your life, which means you have to convict some ideology. And either you're going to go with fight and say, no. Fighting is a way of faithfulness.
Derek:Right? That that's what it means to be faithful at times, that we fight and we kill and, we use violence, we use coercion. Or you have to convict Christian non violence. You have to say, no, Fighting is off the table. That's not faithfulness.
Derek:You gotta make a choice. It's one or the other. And so since that's the case, we're not looking for beyond a reasonable doubt here to prove our case. We are looking for 51%. If we can prove to you at this podcast or through all other, individuals who are espousing Christian nonviolence, if we can show you with 50.0001% certainty that pacifism or Christian nonviolence is the weightier case, then you are more rational to change your ideology to nonviolence and to give up just war theory or whatever it is that you cling to.
Derek:Right? Anything over 50% friend Christian nonviolence, and we win the case, and you are more rational to side with us. So keep that in mind as you start listening to future episodes. That is something that so many people miss, and I understand that when you hold to an ideology, usually, I think Kum said, like a paradigm shift. Right?
Derek:It it takes a lot there's a huge tipping point to get you to change ideologies, and I understand that. And that's why I wanted to lead with my story because it's very important that you get yourself to neutral. Because it shouldn't require a huge tipping point of 90% certainty for you to become, for you to adhere to non violence. It's to take 51 percent, certainty. So keep that in mind as you listen to future podcasts.
Derek:I think that's pretty much all for now. I'm excited to get into the next episode, which will be, the biblical case for Christian nonviolence. And that's all for now. So peace, because I'm a pacifist. Can I say it?
