Summary: Ghandi said, "There's hope for a violent man to become nonviolent, but not for a coward." Politics has a way of showing us the cowardice behind many of us who cling to violence and coercion. We are scared that if we don't put our leader in office, we will suffer persecution or fail to get our way in the nation. Fear, as we saw in 2016, makes people run to the ballot box. People are scared that integrity may lead to sacrifice, so we compromise with a lesser of two evils, consequentialist moral ethic. There is no hope of peace because we are steeped in fear. The second part in our Romans 13 episode takes a look at the implications of a nonviolent view of Romans 13 in the real world. If violence isn't on the table for Christians, and if the government bears the sword, what does that mean for our political involvement? I try to paint a picture of two ways of living to help you see how we often misplace our hopes and resources, and how we often undervalue the true power of the Kingdom life. While living nonviolently may mean a loss of power in one sense, it may mean grasping the only true source of power as Jesus reveals. *I didn't do a good job of explaining this in the episode, but there are a very broad range of views pacifists take as to what participation in government looks like. I am still not sure where I stand. The view I present in this episode is more of a pendulum swing all the way to one side - showing what the extreme may look like. From there you can figure out where you lie on the spectrum.
