Nonresistance - Brothers on a Journey - Podcast#2

Hello there and welcome to Brothers on a Journey, the podcast where we seek the way, the truth, and the life through the lens of the historic faith. In this podcast, we are extending to you, our viewers, the invitation to make this journey with us, join us as we seek to become perfect and obedient servants of our King Jesus. Today, joining me, we have Brother Len Martin. Over here to my left, we have Bill Scheiling, and then we have my best friend, my brother Daniel Willis. And I'll be hosting the episode today. My name is Jason Willis. And the topic for today, we're going to be talking about non-resistance. The question is, what does non-resistance look like in times of peace?

Or another way to think about it would be, what does non-resistance look like? How do we practice non-resistance when there is no war? You know, it's easy for us to think about if the enemy is busting in the front door and coming in and hitting us and trying to kill us. It's easy to understand that non-resistance is not killing them back.

But when we wake up every day at peace and we just go about our daily lives, what does non-resistance look like in these situations? So who would like to take a stab at that first? So just to define the word a little bit, though not everybody's familiar with the term non-resistance, it's a term that was used by the early Anabaptists or Anabaptists of some sort. I don't know when it was invented, but it comes from Matthew 5:39, where Jesus says, "I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil."

So non-resistance is the principle that we would rather let other people harm us rather than harming other people, or we'd rather die than kill somebody else, that we wouldn't do violence even if it's for self-defense or for war. And also, I think it's a more active thing too. It's not just something we don't do. It's an active outworking of our love for other people.

Peter quotes in First Peter, I think he quotes Proverbs or somewhere saying, "You, instead of if your enemy comes to you and is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him a drink." So it's not just that we don't harm our enemies, but we actually do active good to our brother, to our enemies, to anybody.

So I think in your summary there, you clarified a big point and something that's a pet peeve of mine because my growing up years and stuff after we left the Baptist churches and we were as a young, as a pre-teens growing up, I was introduced to this idea. And I always heard we were non-resistance, non-resistance, non-resistance. And maybe it was my fault, but the idea I kind of picked up is we don't do this. We just hold back. We don't do anything. And it's kind of like, how can you—our main doctrine is don't do anything. That's terrible. Our main doctrine is non-conformity, non-resistance, and non-accumulation.

How can you live not doing stuff? There has to be something that we do do. And you brought that out well there that comes from Jesus teaching there in Matthew chapter 5. I believe it's chapter 5, right? Or is it the end of 6? Chapter 6. I'm sorry. Yeah, chapter 6. But where he says to not resist evil, but—and then he goes on and says all the things that we are supposed to do. So it's actually a very aggressive way of life in the sense that it's things we're busy doing. It's something we're always returning. We are returning a response. We're not just doing nothing about it. And the response is good. And the response is good.

Yeah. Yeah, I think Bill will go over this in a little bit because I see it in his notes. I won't go over the whole thing. But there's in Romans, Paul in Romans 12:17 says, "Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Not avenge yourselves. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath where it is written, 'Vengeance is mine. I will repay,' says the Lord. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." And I think that's what we were talking about. We overcome the evil with good. And the thing that hits me really hard in between the eyes is, if it is possible, as much as it depends on us, be peaceable with all men. And so that's a huge—it's not just our friends.

Yeah, Jesus made a good point about that. He said, "If you love those who love you, you're not any better than the self-righteous people, the Pharisees, or the publicans, either side of the thing, because they do good to those who love them. But I'm calling you to do something much higher than that. I'm asking you to do good to those who treat you the worst and who take the most advantage of you and wrong you in the worst ways."

So just for an example of a way we can be non-resistant in times of peace, road rage.

It's really tempting when you're driving down the road and somebody cuts in front of you to just lay on the horn or tailgate them, get right up behind them and just show them that they were just—they weren't supposed to do that. This is just completely wrong what they did.

But that's not non-resistant, even though we're not doing anything to that person. If they cut in front of us, then we could just back off a little bit. And maybe they're having a tough day, or maybe they are in a hurry. Maybe they're just nasty people. But no matter who they are, we can practice non-resistance there. And my mom told me one time, it's kind of surprising. It was a very good picture of non-resistance.

She was in a drive-through and someone was just honking and honking, wanting her to go faster. And she realized it was building anger in her. And she thought, "Well, how can I bless them?" And so she got up to the drive-through window and said, "I want to pay for the person that's behind me as well." And then it is heaping coals in their head. They're going to get their food. "That person bought me that food?" It's like it was very non-resistant of her.

That was great. That's great. That very illustration was actually a major scene in my life that God helped me understand this concept in a deeper way and made me deal with myself a lot. Because back when I was a school teacher, of course, in the classroom, I'm faced with a lot of immaturity. And as much as I loved and enjoyed my students, they did a lot of stuff that could make it inconvenient for me. So then I'm learning about this whole thing of being kind in return stuff. And then in the summertime, I was driving a water tanker. And the place where I was filling up was right in downtown. So I'm driving through this little town, the town of Shippensburg.

There's 15 stoplights through there and sort of narrow streets. And people are driving their little cars and stuff. And they're not thinking that you have 32,000 pounds of water sloshing around in the tank back there. And that's hard to drive, challenging to drive anyways. And then so somebody pulls in or slams on the brakes in front of you, and you cream the brakes, and water goes.

And I'm sitting back there in the truck saying, "You don't know what you just about made me do." And there's this attitude of frustration. But what I saw at the bottom of it was my mentality about me being out there as I'm a big truck driver. I'm doing something important. This is a tough job. And y'all need to be careful because you can make this really tough for me. And I realized that's just completely the opposite of the way. That's not the spirit of humility and of the servant. The servant comes out, gets in that truck, and says, "My purpose, what gives me fulfillment at the end of the day is I serve my boss, I serve my customers, and I serve everybody I meet on the road."

And so really, I need to drive through town saying, "I'm here to make life better for them." And so if slamming on my brakes and getting in a stressful situation helps me take stress out of their life, then that's what I'm here for.

So that's the mentality. It's more than just things that we do, but it's actually a mentality that we have about who we are and how we relate to other people in the world and the stresses that they bring into our lives.

And I like the idea of non-resistance being something that's active. And it's difficult to think of examples for that. One idea that came to mind is, say, for example, that you're in your vehicle and for whatever reason, sometimes your coworker drives with you somewhere. And then one day, he's driving, and he gets in, and you realize he's frustrated, and you push your seat back. Man, you push your seat way too forward. You're like, "It's my car. I can have my seat however I want to have it." Right? But then you're thinking to yourself, maybe another time in the future, you pull up into work and you think, "We might be going somewhere today. Even though this is my car, I have all the right to put my seat wherever I want.

Let me go ahead and push the seat back just in case I'm not the one that sits in first." Little things that just thinking of others and not being resistant, even though he may have been completely in the wrong for blowing up over something trivial or stupid.

But yeah, just how can we think of active ways to be non-resistant in life? Yeah, to do something good, even maybe to an ornery person. So I'm just thinking about in different of the places where it exhorts servants and masters, especially in marriages. It talks about that, about doing good not only to the good and the gentle, but also to the cranky, contrary ones. I think it says the forward, the forward, but. I like your translation.

That's the BSP there. Bill Shiley paraphrased. But yeah, these are practical everyday things we do to people who don't deserve in our normal thinking, don't deserve to be treated considerately. They've asked for it. They get what's coming to them. And we don't do that. We're here as agents of mercy.

And a big part of this whole thing to me is that this is one way we're directly commanded to follow Jesus. So Charles Shelton wrote the book In His Steps. And the whole springboard for it is this minister studying for a message from there in, I think it's First Peter chapter 2, where it says that Christ left us an example that we should follow in his steps.

And there's lots of good things in the book. But in learning to look at the context of a verse, all of a sudden, I looked back and read through the first couple of verses through there and realized it says that Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps. And Peter's all into this thing about suffering and how important a mindset that we're going to suffer is through his several chapters there in his books there. That's actually we're pointed to that particular example of following Christ, that we follow him by being willing to suffer to be able to absorb evil and return good in response.

We actually, it's interesting just sitting here thinking, I had a lot of examples. Even Dad, before Dad was a Christian, he was going through Alcoholics Anonymous. And the book, the blue book, Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson, I guess, made it. And they were Christians. And they kind of took Christ out of the book in a lot of ways to make it for everybody. But there's a lot of the principles of Jesus in there. And I remember my dad's testimony of becoming sober was greatly bound on non-resistant principles and loving your neighbor. And he started to park as far away from places as he could so that other people can have the closer places. And he would start carrying a gas tank and a gas canister full of gas in his car because if he were to run—and I know this isn't someone doing evil, but just so if he ran into someone that was out of gas, he can give them gas.

And there were all these different selfless things. It was about getting out of self and being relieved from the bondage of self and using these principles of Jesus, which actually later in life, I was pointing at, "Hey, all those things you're talking about, those come straight from the Bible." And then I realized all these quotes in the blue book were from the Bible.

But anyway, the power of obeying Jesus, I know we're not talking about obedience in this message, but of loving others and getting out of self can heal someone even from alcoholism.

And we run into so many situations where we can show that kind of love.

If any of you live with real people or work with real people, as opposed to, I don't know what, but real people make mistakes, or maybe they don't even make mistakes, but they just do things in a really annoying way, or maybe they're annoyed at you. You did something that they're like, "That's terrible. How could you do that?" Or, "You wasted so much of my time by doing that thing."

Those are situations we all run into. What do you do when somebody's just insulting or mad at you or something like that? Well, I ran into some situations where I realized I was in the right, and I was really pushing these situations. I was sure I was right. I was like, "But you can't listen to so-and-so talking to my boss. This is just not the way it works." And I realized that this was actually hurting me in the long run. And also, it was just, you can't live that way.

A Christian can't be acting or can't be just looking for justice. And so I finally realized I needed to apologize to the people who were actually, I thought, were the terrible people that were being so unkind or unjust or whatever. I needed to apologize to them for the ways I had annoyed them without intending to annoy them. And so I went and apologized to them. And I actually ended up having a good working relationship with them after that because they were like, "Oh, this guy admitted that he was in the wrong." Now, they never admitted they were in the wrong. I don't know if they ever knew that they were in the wrong or whether they had justified whatever it was to themselves.

But it made it possible for them to work with me, and it made it possible for us to love each other. And I'm not saying that as a bragging thing. That was only what I should have done. It wasn't anything more than what I should have done.

So there we have an example of being non-resistance leading to or allowing the possibility to live at peace with people and work at peace with people. And that came through your non-resistance. Yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges that we face is the people we work with on an everyday basis. And sadly, among conservative Christians, so Jesus says that the way people are going to know that he is God's King sent to redeem the world is by when they see people living in a redeemed way, they see us living together in unity and in love. Then our unity and our love is going to be so—it's going to be so impossible, such a miracle in their lives from their methods and what they see that it's going to convince them.

That's going to be the ultimate apologetic. And yet, it seems like that's one of the things we've done the most poorly. We're known for all our factions and splinters and church problems. And I think that's one place we have a lot of—I know I have had a lot of work to do and still have a lot of work to do, and that is being careful with my attitudes and how I relate to my brothers. Often, it's such small things that can come up. And for me, one thing is—and I'm not looking at you guys and thinking you guys just tick me off all the time—but everybody has days when they're just busy or whatever, or they're facing pressure, and they kind of just say something that's not as thoughtful.

I mean, I do that. And I realize afterwards, "Oh, man, I didn't think about that. That probably kicked that guy in the shins. I just wasn't thinking about that." And I have to forgive and say, "You know what?

I know that brother, he's a good guy. He didn't mean that that way. And really, maybe he should learn better how to say that or learn to control himself better. But I can forgive, and I don't hold that against him. And even if he did mean it in a nasty way, I'm not going to help him correct that by becoming sour and holding a grudge and being resentful towards him about it."

But that's a place that seems like we have a lot of problems is, yeah, working within a brotherhood in a church together. We can't get along. We can be so wrong about right things. So a subject about whether or not we dress a way that's more like the world or less like the world, that's important. But there's a more important thing, and that is that we follow Jesus. Jesus says the first, the most important things, what's not going to pass away is love and charity and kindness in it. And so we get the weapons of the world instead of using God's weapons of forgiveness and of kindness and communication, gentle rebuke and admonition and things like that.

But I think that's one of the biggest places where we have to deal with roots. And then I think that's then when I have a problem dealing with somebody who, whatever, my neighbor who drives through my yard and leaves ruts or somebody who. Touches your knee. Yeah.

So. Flashback. Do I look relaxed?

Do you look relaxed?

That was like cringe. Let's get the non-resistant one over right in my sock. I'm punching him.

It's not so much that you touched my knee. It's the way you touched my knee. It's like this fingertips. It's just like this. If you're a—oh boy. If this is going on Patreon, I'm not sure. End of flashback. You can watch that if you're a Patreon. Someone who throws eggs at my windows or something like that.

There's a root thing that a root character that I have to practice every day that then is going to grow; it's going to affect those more rare and outlying issues that I face where I'm confronted by an evil person.

This is kind of a little off subject. I mean, it relates, but in the idea of assurance of salvation in First John, and you read the whole book trying to figure out how to live the way that we can be assured that we're with Christ, it constantly talks about your brothers, loving your brothers. And if we can't even get it right with our brothers, then we're lying to ourselves and we're not living in the truth like it says in First John. And so if we can't do it, it's harder seemingly to do it with the people closest to us. But if we can't do it with the people closest to us and someone comes and attacks us, we're probably going to attack them back.

We got to be able to do it in the small things. And that's the interesting thing is, especially in John, he actually holds that up and says, "That's how you measure your relationship with God. Don't be saying that you have a good relationship with God and you're full of God's Spirit. You have such great fellowship with God if you can't work together in peace with your brothers."

That's a good wake-up call. Yeah. And the question is, what does this look like in times of peace? Well, I wonder if there really is ever a time of peace for us.

We're always engaged in spiritual warfare. We're always engaged in the battle of light against darkness, of good against evil, of God against, well, anyone who puts himself against God. And in that warfare, we need to use God's weapons. We need to do it God's way. I think Bill made a comment similar to this. If we're ever using the world's methods or Satan's methods, violence or unkindness or even just demanding justice without any mercy, at that point, we have been overcome by evil.

As Paul says, "Don't overcome evil with good." I forget exactly who says. Don't overcome by evil. But if we respond in evil, we are actually being overcome by the same evil that this person, whoever it is, is practicing toward us. And I love the way Bill's put it a couple of times in some different terms. It really had a big impact on me. I may not get the verbiage right, but he basically explains that evil stops with us. Yeah. And we absorb it. We absorb the evil. That's so impactful to me. When evil comes, that we don't get to—we don't get to fight back with the devil's methods, that we have to—that we get the honor of absorbing evil and letting evil come to an end on the earth when it hits us.

And Jesus fought back. He fought back when people came to crucify him. But what did he fight back with? Well, it was by giving his life, by loving those people, by asking God to forgive those people. Put the ear back on.

He put the ear back on. That was the way he fought back. And he conquered evil and Satan and all the powers of darkness through his self-giving love. He did not conquer them by calling those angels. He conquered them by just letting them kill him. If he focused on his rights, which he would have rights as the creator of the universe, I don't think—we always—you hear everybody talk about rights because you said it earlier in this episode, I believe, that, "Well, I have the right. It's my car."

When we decide that our lives aren't about us and it's about others, we lose our rights and our duties are for others and to love others. And the King of Kings and the Lord of the Lords, the person that had all the rights to call all the angels down and wipe off everyone off the face of the earth, chose to love others, love us, and to give himself for us. And so we also, like in Peter, we're called to suffer for others and give up our rights so that our enemies might become our friends. And it has to start with evil ending with us.

I don't know if y'all want to talk about these, but I would like to, for people who don't know, do you know the story of—is it Dirk Willems? Can you tell that story real quick? Dirk Willems. He was an Anabaptist back in. You can see the picture. The Netherlands.

He was being chased by a constable or someone who was going to arrest him for being an Anabaptist. And he got to a river that was frozen over, and he ran across the ice, but he could hear the ice cracking behind him. I mean, I'm probably adding that to the story. I don't know if it's. It was Tim. Well, and the guy following him ran across the ice too and broke through the ice and fell in and was drowning. And there were other people on the other side of the ice who were also following to arrest him, who refused to go out there and save this man's life. So Dirk crawled back across the ice and pulled him out and saved his life.

But the magistrates forced the guy who was following him. He wanted to let him go at that point because he saved his life, but they forced him to capture Dirk anyway, and he was burned at the stake, just a really horrible death.

But he gave his life for that person who was following him. And that's such a beautiful thing. It ended in a terrible death, but he lived out what Jesus lived out. That's just so wonderful. And if he didn't get along with his church brothers, I doubt he would have done that. You don't just wake up one day and just do that. It's something you've cultivated. One thing that I think that would be practical for probably most of the people who end up watching this, because most people in the world are political, is politics divides. There's a saying in the world, there's a saying in family reunions, you don't talk about religion or politics.

And there's a narrative on both sides of the fence. And I came from—I was very political before I moved up here. And when I'm talking to someone, I can hear when someone uses the narrative of one side or the other, I instantly know.

And for me, I try to practice not using the narrative on either side. And when I identify that someone uses a narrative—because the narratives come from the news that's pounded, and you can hear it. It's the way that it's spoken. When I recognize the political narrative in someone and it goes against what my political stance was, and I had strong emotions tied to that, I purposefully be very cautious and make sure that I do not bring up any of the opposite narrative because politics can divide.

It can divide so greatly, but the message of the gospel is offensive in itself. And we don't want to—it's non-resistant, I think, to not engage in the narrative. We don't want to lose our ability to speak in someone's life about the things that matter, the kingdom, because we got political about something because we weren't careful with our words, knowing that there are specific words and phrases that just set people off. I mean, you see it driving on the road, you see someone's bumper sticker. And someone's like, "Man, you're just trying to poke someone in the eye with that bumper sticker."

Right. Yeah. And that's one of their—that's their modus operandi or however you're supposed to say it. But it's just their mode of operation is you punch the other side. If you're having a presidential debate, your point is to make the other guy look dumb, and they're just characterized by strife. It's the way the kingdoms of this world work. And Jesus' kingdom is built on a completely different principle. Yeah. And if Nero was the president of the United States killing Christians, we would be called to obey him. So we obey whoever's in power. So can we talk about masks then?

Yeah. Because I think this is. We're running short of time.

I think this is an area that has brought out maybe some of our weaknesses as Anabaptist people who would claim to embrace this doctrine when our "rights" are being infringed upon by the government. And a Christian is living in whatever country they're living in as an alien. They don't claim, they don't demand rights. They don't expect rights.

And I think that there's been a lot of disrespect towards the government and disobedience that has shamed the name of Christ by people demanding their rights and saying, "Well, we're not going to wear masks because it's not the government's business." I mean, like you brought up when Paul wrote there in First Corinthians 13 to render to all their—did I say First Corinthians? Yeah. Romans 13. Thanks for the correction. But when he says, "Honor the king," that King Caesar was eventually going to—his head was going to roll because of him. And he was a deranged person. But that concept of suffering, I know that maybe I'm not getting into the science, but I'm just saying hypothetically, if the masks were completely a control thing and there was no science behind it, in that case, I would know that I don't really have to.

I shouldn't have to wear this. This is unnecessary. It's the government exercising control. But I'm willing to absorb that because I want to leave that clear testimony of submission. And it doesn't change me. I don't feel oppressed because of this. They can't take away my freedom because my freedom is not certain things that I get to do. My freedom is that my peace, my value as a person, my purpose here as a Christian is to be available to suffer in order to be part of turning the world back right side up. And so we look at those things and we don't—yeah, I know that the government—I'm sure the early Christians living in the Roman Empire and how many times since have—they knew that the government was taking advantage of them, but they suffered willingly.

And that's one thing that's gone wrong in American society is we feel like some reason we're supposed to fight back and push off tyranny. And we're not oppressed by it. We don't go around feeling like we're lesser value or whatever, but we cooperate. We don't fight back. Very good. So yeah, we're a little bit short of time. The conversation's just heating up, and then we're going to get to the end of our time today. Anyone have any real quick thoughts they want to throw in before we bounce out of here? Love your neighbor. Love your neighbor. And be Anabaptist. I mean.

In this whole thing, there can be—there's two questions. One is, how is this going to work out? And we are in an army. We have a captain. Jesus is our king. And we are called to war after his methods. And a soldier who's in a war doesn't ask his general if he's sure how this is all going to—or he doesn't demand of him. He follows orders. And so many things, we're not sure maybe how it's going to work out, but we follow orders. And we're not sure if we're getting out of this alive either. Yeah. We're not. That's right. Yeah.

And in the Christian context, it's not that we never bring anybody accountable. We say, "Hey, so that was your choice, and I'm not responsible for that." It's not that we never create boundaries or anything like that. But the Christian is called to, if your brother trespasses against you, you go and you share it. You bring him to account for what's happened, and then you forgive. And then depending on how he responds, if there's not reconciliation possible, you either choose to suffer or you flee. That's the options Jesus gives us. And the Anabaptist joke was kind of a joke. It was in the sense of—I had a lot of thought behind it, actually. The Anabaptists were being rebaptized.

And by the Protestants and Catholics—I don't know if it was the Protestants, but they were being drowned. They were like, "If you want to be rebaptized as adults instead of you're sprinkling, we'll drown you." And that's okay to be drowned. That's what we do. That's what I meant by be Anabaptist. I didn't mean like you have to—if you're not Anabaptist, you need to become Anabaptist. It means be willing to die. Or may not make it out alive. And I hope you made it through this podcast episode alive. Thank you for joining us in this episode. We hope you join us next time.

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