The Fourth Way

In this Christmas episode empires beware as we discuss what it means that peace has come to earth with (as) Jesus.

Last episode we came up with six ways that Israel changed in order to usher in peace. This episode I take those six ways and discuss a few ways that we can use those six ways to help bring our communities closer to peace.

II Chronicles 14-15 describe a really interesting episode in Israel's history where a king got it right and achieved peace.. only to then get it wrong and lead to peace departing them. This episode analyzes what made for peace and what destroyed it and discusses what lessons we can draw from this.

Jude is a short and rather odd book for a number of reasons, one of them being that it can feel really harsh and divisive. In this short episode we will walk through this short book to discover that it's not divisive, but actually calls for just the opposite.

This is a bit of a follow-up episode.. After two episodes of talking about biblical peace, I thought it might be good to talk a bit more about some of the implications of that as well as why reframing things this way/recognizing this saturation of peace is important and how it can make a difference in how we understand and live out our faith.

We continue this season on peace by looking at how the concept is understood within the New Testament. We find that it is of the same essence of the peace that we find in the Old Testament, but more vivid and complete as Jesus has come as our peace. Peace is not just a big theme within the New Testament but massive. As Alan Kreider said, "Peace is central to biblical faith. It is impossible to exaggerate this."

Craig starts a season on peace with this episode which gives an overview on the meaning and importance of peace within the Old Testament.

I summarize and wrap up our season on Christian Anarchism.

Using James Olson's book, "Fair Play," I we start to wrap up our season by looking at how moral compromise is inevitable if one chooses to participate in government.

I had the opportunity to chat with Craig Harguess of the Bad Roman Project to discuss his coming to anarchism and how he deals with some of the hard questions. 3:20 Intro to Christian Anarchism, nonviolence, and their connection 7:30 Christian Anarchism's freeing from moral consequentialism 9:30 Why use the term Anarchism? Is voluntaryist a better term? 12:45 Is the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina a good picture of what an anarchist society would look like? 16:45 What do you consider the strongest argument against Anarchism that makes you think twice? 19:00 Why pursue Anarchism rather than reform? 21:00 Would you vote for Ron Paul? 23:00 If all Christians left politics, wouldn't that have a negative impact? 25:30 How do you hold such a negative view on government and human tainting of power while not becoming a conspiracy theorist or jettisoning truth? How do you discern truth? 39:15 Recommended resources 42:30 Importance of viewing Christian Anarchism as a cumulative case

We do a prepeat episode reading and talking through chapter 7 of Adin Ballou's "Christian Nonresistance in All its Important Bearings."

[A repeat season from our episode on nonviolence which looks at organic and lasting change which comes about apart from legislation]. I think this has been one of my favorite episodes to research and complete so far. I get to talk about Quakers, pre-Revolution America, abolition, nonviolence, Critical Race Theory and legislation, and other awesomeness. I discuss the interesting story of Benjamin Lay and use him as template to evaluate nonviolent methodology as well as impact and effectiveness.

[A repeat episode looking at how legislation doesn't really get us what we think it does.] We finish up our "Means and Ends" series by looking at government and politics. What might these means tell us about the ends they are able to procure?

I had the opportunity to chat with Rebekah, Titus, and Joash about how to square a nonviolent ethic with doing justice for the most oppressed. 0 intro 8:25 joash intro 10:55 how to define justice 17:50 how to do justice Jesus's way 25:30 how ijm works with the state 31:15 position on nonviolence 35:10 how handle government corruption 41:30 how would you not include the state in sex trafficking 44:00 does a top down approach just mask the evil 53:30 court vs. wilderness prophets 58:00 how do you work through the lesser of two evils complicity 1:02:50 temptation to wield power 1:06:20 west distracted by personal inconveniences

This is a follow-up episode to our previous two on communism and capitalism. The goal of this episode is to call the Christian to rise above systems of state sanctioned violence, of which both capitalism and communism end up being a part. Rather, we are called to live willfully and peaceably in the Kingdom of God, and to bring that Kingdom to those around us. This episode takes a look at our call and our hypocrisy.