America (Almost Never) Reads the Bible

Brace yourself, because your favorite Bible scholarship show is going to talk politics. It's not that we're veering out of our lane, though. Unfortunately, the politics have come careening out of their lane, and smashed headlong into us. It's not our fault! So yes, we're going to talk about the recent giant Christian nationalist piety performance that was "America Reads the Bible". This was an event where dozens of prominent members of the Christian right took turns reading bits of the Bible until they had gotten through the whole thing. A week worth of saying words, but was there any comprehension? Then, it's a sensitive subject, but an important one: suicide. King Saul dies in the Bible by purposefully falling on his own sword. It was an act designed to rob his enemies of the satisfaction of killing him. But was it a sin? Certainly, Christian tradition has held the act of taking one's own life as a sin for centuries, but is this theology biblically supported, or a later innovation? Is it possible that the labeling of suicide as sinful is actually wrong? If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. You are not alone: -- In the US and Canada: Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org to reach the 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. (Veterans, press 1). -- In the UK: Call 111 (Non-emergency) or 999 (Emergency), or contact the Samaritans at 116 123. -- International: To find a helpline in your country, visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention at iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres or OpenCounseling's International Suicide Hotlines list at blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/ ---- For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and the opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on the various social media places: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/data_over_dogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have you ordered Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Bible Says So⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ yet??? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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  Hey, it's Micah Sargent from Tech News Weekly, and this week, we go hands-on with Jennifer Patterson-Tuey. Jen was at the Apple Welcome Home event and had an opportunity to try out HomeView, the new device from Apple for the smart home. We talk about how it's kind of like a big Apple Watch tied to a low HomePod Mini, and we also talk about the other gadgets Apple announced that day, including the Apple TV 4K at its most expensive price, the HomePod Mini 2 at, well, its less saturated colors, and so much more. Then, I've got a quick little story about how eight states have decided to sue OpenAI as part of a consumer protection lawsuit,

• 1:52Speaker 02

  but how it's really about getting the reins on training AI with AI. You can check out Tech News Weekly by looking for Tech News Weekly wherever you get your podcasts, or by heading to twit.tv/tnw.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  If all going to church does is make you support ICE and hate your neighbor, one, your church is doing it wrong, but also just the act of going to church, or just the act of reading the Bible, doesn't accomplish what you think it's going to accomplish, precisely because it's just performative.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Things are good, things are good. We, you and I just spent some lovely time out in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Talking to some folks over at the Harvard Divinity School, and that was a barrel of laughs.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  I got to, I got to have some Dunkin' Donuts, so which, which was great, so.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  I skipped it. I shouldn't, I shouldn't have, but I.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  You did not become a Dunking, huh?

• 3:09Speaker 01

  No, I managed not to dunk this, this trip. I'll do it again.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  All bets are off, yeah, next time.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. But yeah, it was, it was a wonderful time. If you want to hear us talk more about it, and, and heap praise upon the, the organizers of it, and talk about the Religious Trauma Symposium that we went to, you can become a patron and hit us up over on Patreon.com, where we talked about it quite a bit on the after-party that, that our patrons get. That's the bonus content. Plus, if you sign up for that, you get to listen to those, this whole show early and without any ads. So it's a great reason to, to go and head on over there. Anywho, we have a fun show to talk about this week. We, we got it, we got some interesting stuff going

• 4:00Speaker 01

  on. We've got, we're gonna start with, we're gonna get topical and talk about America Reads the Bible.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Which, which is a marathon event in which a whole bunch of mostly smiling white folks read a bunch, read, read the Bible straight the way through, sort of 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM over at the, the.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  What do they call it? The museum of the Bible?

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  In Washington DC.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  It was a marathon reading of the Bible.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Fun for everybody.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  We're actually still in the middle of it as we record.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  As we record, it is happening probably as we speak.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  It will have been entirely forgotten by the time this episode airs. So we're filling you in on recent events in the recent past.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yes. So there's that. And then in the latter half of the show, we've got a chapter and verse. And we're going to be talking about a very, the death of Saul, which happened in a very specific way and has implications beyond just, just his own death.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  So I, it's a really interesting topic. I will say, as just as maybe a trigger warning that we will probably be discussing, we will definitely be discussing suicide. So keep that in mind for the latter half of the show. But for this first half, let's, let's get topical.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  And the topical, the reason, I don't know, like, is the Bible topical? I think that's a funny question because.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Increasingly, yes, the Bible is controlling our lives to a degree that we have not experienced in, in our generation. So.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's perpetually topical on our show, but,

• 6:00Speaker 01

  but what has happened as, as we sort of hinted at, it was a whole bunch of people, a laundry list of people have each been asked to read a small portion of the Bible. And it's just a cavalcade of, of, of sort of people from the religious right. I, I sincerely doubt anyone on the, even, you know, prominent Christians on the left side of the spectrum were invited to this.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  I, I did find out that they did reach out to some politicians and some religious leaders. I don't know which ones exactly. They said that they did invite some and they turned it down. So, and, and it, I don't know if it was just a token invitation to, to a couple of people, but overwhelmingly, yes, this is, this is the who's who in people you don't want to know.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  So we should list off a few of the people that we're talking about.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I, the one that I was most surprised by, Kathy Ireland.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Model.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Model, yes.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  It was like a big, one of the, one of the most important models in the 90s, I guess, maybe 80s and 90s. I don't remember exactly when her heyday was, but.

• 7:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, it was around that time period, but um, yes, I recall, I recall knowing about Kathy Ireland as a, as a younger man.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Knowing about.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  Yes. She's, she uh, is going to be reading, uh, as of today, this, we have not arrived at the New Testament, but she's going to be reading Luke 21 through Luke 22, 38. Oh, wait a minute, that just seems like the end of Luke 22. Why would they, um, by the way, when I looked up on the Christians Engaged website, which is kind of the home base for this America Reads the Bible thing.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  I don't know who they had putting this together, but they needed an editor. It was bad. It was real bad. But uh, yeah, Kathy Ireland, Dallas Jenkins, the creator of um, now I forget the name of the show.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  I don't know anything about Dallas Jenkins.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  The, the Jesus television show.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, uh, uh, uh, oh.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  I don't remember what it's called. Anyway.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  I'll keep the, in my head, um, The Departed keeps popping into my head and I'm like, I'm almost positive it's not The Departed. That just may be The Residual Boston.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Right?

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Uh, in me, but it was The Chosen, sorry.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  The Chosen.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  The Chosen, yes.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  I, I hope my friend who is one of the actors in that television show does not listen to this episode, but.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  You got it eventually. I mean, there's a whole bunch of politicians, you know, there's Mike Johnson, there's Ted Cruz and his pappy Raphael Cruz are both, are both taking passages.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  We got Mike Huckabee.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Dan Patrick of, of, uh, your grandparents will sacrifice their lives for the economy fame during the, the pandemic. Paula White Kane, the, uh, spiritual advisor, I guess, uh, mascot for, um, Trumpian religiosity. Erica Kirk is there. Ron DeSantis, Pete Hegseth, who, uh, is just a never ending fountain of ridiculousness.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  You got Ron, Ron DeSantis, who's the, the, the governor of Florida, you've got Ted, Greg Abbott. The governor of Texas, you got the governor of Tennessee, I think. And then out of nowhere, you got Victoria Jackson, uh, who was the, a goofball on SNL for a couple of years.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  For a few years, actually, she was on there for a long time and now she's just a, uh, a lunatic.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Geez, LeAnn Womack. The country singer. I, I recognize a song or two of hers.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  But I gotta say, we're burying the lead.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  The lead.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Because, uh, what we're building to is that president of the United States, Donald John Trump, uh, reading, uh, which is never a good idea.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  More like, more like grimacing at.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Definitely, uh, I wa, I did watch the video of him. And here's the thing, so, so yes, they released his video, he, he didn't, he didn't go to the event and read it from there.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  No.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  And part of the reason becomes very clear when you watch the video and they have these weird cuts back and forth from one camera angle to another, very, making it very clear that they're like, these are edit points.

• 11:04Speaker 00

  They had to stitch it together, yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  And there were still a couple of places where I, where you can hear that they've done something digitally. To fix what he said, and he's still got a lot of things wrong.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  He got it wildly wrong a bunch of times.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Like my, my favorite is in the very first verse that he read. So he was responsible for second Chronicles, chapter seven, verses 11 through 22. 12 verses is all he had to read. And the very first word, very first verse, he got out prosperiously.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Cause I think he was, he, he started thinking the word was prosperous or prosperity or something like that. And then it was, it was prosperously and he went prosperiously and

• 11:57Speaker 00

  through his clenched teeth. And yeah, it was, it was a struggle to hear him struggle to read these passages. But the, and I think the, the main parts of the, the whole passage that he was chosen for, that was chosen for him is that he, this is the part that says, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. And that's, that's from the NRSVUE. He read from the King James Version, obviously.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  He read from the new King James Version.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Was it the new King James Version?

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Indeed it was. That is the version that the entire event is focused on.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  But he didn't even get that right.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Cause he, I know he, he and Lee Greenwood are, are selling their, their God bless America bibles.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  That are, that are King James versions, but the.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  But I, I think, I think that the idea of the organizers of this event was that they didn't want to make anyone have to do some of the words that the KJV, some of the more arcane words.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, they didn't want to have, hear anybody say, um, he who pisseth against the wall.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  But also like there are big words that are, that are, you know, not in common circulation anymore. And I think some people, uh, including our president, forgive me, I, I just don't think he has the acumen to get at some of these words. But I, what's amazing is they gave him.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  You rightly point out which, what portion of this, of his bit, what they were trying to highlight?

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  But he didn't know that. He just like literally droned through the entire thing at a monotone, not understanding a word of it.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  It was, and also it's, it was a pretty small thing. Like you could have given him, there's a bunch of stuff you could have given him. This was a shocking thing, like literally when you find out that he's willing to do it, you find the best thing for the president to do.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Well, well, here's the thing, the, the opening celebration, the main, the big song that, that was some guy named Phil King, I don't, I've never, I don't think I've ever heard of Phil King. I don't know if you've heard of Phil King. He's, he was performing his original theme song. So the theme song for the event is called Heal Our Land. So, so this was very clearly the money shot of the whole thing. And they got a grimace Trump face in that, in that money shot. But yeah, it was, and the idea seems to be that we're hurting as a nation. Read the Bible, that will magically fix things.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  Which is not how things work, but also.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not how it's worked yet, Dan. You don't know. Maybe it's coming.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Maybe that teapot is out there in space circling around as we speak. You can't say it's not, but the, and the idea seems to be that, you know, we all, we all need to just read the Bible and just say we're Christian and then God will be like boom, healed. And, and it's, it's one of the most pathetic brands of Christian nationalism I've ever seen. And, and in no small part, because the list of people who are reading is a who's who of not just hatred, but just of degeneracy as well. Like the guy who, who read the main passage is a serial sexual predator.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Is a serial adulterer. Not only that, you know, there are a bunch of people that God can forgive people, God forgives people, these, we can't blame him for past sins. Trump has never once owned up to doing those things.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Said he was sorry for doing those things. He's even said he has no need for repentance. Like, this, this is not a-

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, he was asked if he had ever repented for anything and he was like, no, not that I can think of.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, he says he doesn't do anything wrong, so why does he need repentance? And on multiple occasions, he's said that. So this is, this is your guy?

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  This is your guy, the guy we all heard.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  This is the guy, I mean, the heal the land part is nice, but if you go back just a few words, as you pointed out, it says, "Humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways."

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  And I don't see humbling of self happening-

• 16:50Speaker 00

  No.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  -whatsoever.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  No, and when they, when they say wicked ways here, they obviously mean being a woman, or being black, or being trans.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Or being an immigrant, or-

• 16:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, being an immigrant, wanting healthcare that you can afford. These are the, the iterations, the manifestations of wickedness that this public reading of the Bible is supposed to magically purge from, from the land. And the, these are the people who are responsible for most of the social ills that plague our land today. Um, this is, it, it's such performative piety on the part of deeply bad people.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Um, like I, I mentioned Dan Patrick was the guy who during the, during the pandemic was like, yeah, your grandparents will be okay dying so that we can have, you know, so that the economy can recover. Yeah, that's, like, how much of a misanthrope do you have to be to, to actually say that publicly? And then start accusing other people of, you know, engaging in, in, just making it all up.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Uh, that, and, you know, Eric Metaxas, he was on the list too. What was, Eric Metaxas read Isaiah 52 and 53. He got to read the big Isaiah 53, "Suffering Servant" uh, song. And, yeah, he's, he's out there saying this is all, everything was a hoax. Everything that has ever happened that, uh, that has been bad for the right has been, has been a hoax. Everything from Trump having the election stolen from him in 2020, all the way to COVID and, and everything in between.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  These, these people are causing like, um, you said Ron, Ron DeSantis was on there, right?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  Ron DeSantis is causing all kinds of suffering.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  In Florida, uh, that is spilling out into other states as well.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  And it's not just, you know, he's just trying to solve a problem. These people aren't just trying to solve societal problems. And it accidentally causes some harm and they just consider that collateral damage. It's, it's absolutely baked into what they're trying to do. They want to punish people who disagree with them. They want to hurt people that they don't like. So, so like, you know, you, you look at how ICE is handling, uh, has been handling people for the last year, uh, in terms of just not even bothering to look at, you know, I, I heard a story the other day where a guy who is an American citizen, who had a real ID, ID on him,

• 19:30Speaker 01

  which you can't get unless you're a, an American citizen.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  And like, he was, he was arrested because he was brown and he had, you know, he had a, a last name that ended in EZ or whatever. And he, uh, he was arrested and driven around town and, you know, for hours and hours. And then, you know, locked up with a bunch of other people and they didn't, they, he had the, the documents that he needed on his person that whole time.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  And they refused to look at it.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Because the pain, because the suffering, because the, the cruelty is the point.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. The, these are, there are people who want to get off on being jerks. This is the, the O'Doyle rules, the theory of, uh, of governance.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  And it's, it's so disgusting that these are the people who are pretending to be the representatives of, of Christianity. And it, it's not that they are not, they are representatives of, of a particular brand of Christianity that unfortunately has been too prominent for, for, uh, far too long in our nation. But they are, are clearly worshippers of power more than anything else. That's what this is really all about.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  It's hard to make an argument against that. You know, there are some people I'm sure that are in this lit group of people who aren't.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Just sort of right wing ideologues. Obviously, all of the politicians I don't trust to be anything other than just right to right wing ideologues. But I'm sure that some of the pastors who have come in are, you know, are actual, they're just trying to, you know, their hearts in a right place.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I have no, I have no doubt in my mind that there are an awful lot of, like, I saw some of the people here were prison pastors and things like that. There are a lot of people going through a lot of stuff to try to make lives better for, for certain people.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  But along the way, they're hitching their wagon to a movement. And the movement is not concerned with helping individuals. The movement is concerned with power. And these folks have, have gotten caught up in it because there's, their particular brand of Christianity is too entangled with this movement. Even if they are trying to help the poor, even if they are trying to help the incarcerated, even if they are trying to help the sick and the immigrants and others, they are too entangled in a movement that is concerned with, with structuring power and values and, and boundaries so as to advance their right wing authoritarian and social dominance orientation identity politics.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Jenna Ellis, Trump's former lawyer, I think, is on there. Betsy DeVos. Betsy DeVos. Betsy DeVos. I don't know if you recall watching any of the hearings for her to be education secretary. She got so humiliated in those hearings and very clearly did not have the foggiest idea what she was there to do or what was going on.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  And they were still like, approved. Mike Pompeo was reading, Franklin Graham was reading some, Dean Cain, Superman himself, like, the worst Superman, read, read John, Chapter Five.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  So.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Now, now, now it's getting personal to you. When Superman is doing this.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, you heard the construction too. Uh, we're, we're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're, we're, um, doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this. Cause we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our, our old car and that took actual planning, which you know, I hate. Um, and so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances. And we had to set dates and we had to create a budget and it was so satisfying to actually make a plan.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  And then even though it took some discipline and there were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and we're able to pay off a car. I got a brand new car and it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them, it goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you can try to do that on your own or you can use a phenomenally useful tool like Monarch to do something like that. Uh, Monarch is set up exactly for that kind of financial planning. They have things like their debt pay down simulator and visualizer to help you track your progress, which I, this is brilliant. I, the, the fact of the matter is that all of these concepts are so ethereal. It's hard to sort of wrap your head around it a lot of the time. And with this visualizer, you can see how that debt is going to go down. You can actually simulate your freedom occurring in front of your very eyes. And I think that is an amazing thing.

• 25:12Speaker 01

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• 25:44Speaker 00

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• 25:59Speaker 03

  Every Sunday, we cover the week's tech news on This Week in Tech. Hi, this is Leo Laporte from the Twit Podcast Network, inviting you to join me this week for a doozy. Jason Calacanis and Gina Smith join me. We're going to talk about so many things. The flying car from Tesla, the guy who bugged the OpenAI conference room, wrapped it in toilet paper, and the new Surface Laptop. It's all coming up on Twit. You'll find it at twit.tv and wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  I want to know who read, I should have done this research. I should have figured this out before we went in. I want to know who read the bit about, do not pray publicly, and, you know, go to your closet to pray. I want to know who read the part that said, hey, maybe don't make it about loud and sort of public, you know, displays of your religiosity, but instead actually just be good and do it for the sake of itself.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that's Matthew 6. That's the Sermon on the Mount. Let me see if the, where is the, because I've got the website open, but they make it such a pain to find this stuff. So it's not, it's not happening yet. Because right now, I think we're still in, we're in the middle, we're in the late Jeremiah chapters. I don't recognize any of the names there. But if you give me a second, I'll look that up. Because I remember somebody was reading Matthew 5.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Mike Pompeo is reading Matthew 5 and I was like, woof.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Mike Pompeo, wow.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  He gets the beatitudes.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  So, uh, I, and I remember thinking, okay, who gets the rest of the sermon on the mount? And I, I think I didn't recognize the name, but, um,

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  I'll look it up real quick.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  I, I mean, it's just one of those things where, uh, that's actually, you know, that is so pertinent to this, I would say. I don't know. You, you tell me because you, you know, that verse better than I do. You know, I, uh, I'd say, I, I don't know, uh, if that, if that would apply, it feels like it would apply. It feels like this, uh, you know,

• 28:17Speaker 01

  this whole thing is such a performative display. It feels like it's, it like that particular bit of the sermon on the mount is apropos. But am I, am I reading too much into it is part of my question?

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Uh, so the, I, I think it would be apropos. I think when, when we think about what, what kind of stuff is, is God asking for in order to, according to second chronicles, heal the land? Well, what does everybody around second chronicles have to say? Uh, basically generate a just and a righteous society. Uh, have mercy, do justice, uh, all those kinds of things. Some, some dude named Chris Kubal is, uh, was reading the rest of the sermon on the mount. And Chris is the chief program officer at Intercessors for America, a national network of state leaders who are mobilizing intercessors to pray for

• 29:13Speaker 00

  and engage with state legislators. So I'm, I'm not hopeful that, uh, Chris really is concerned for what is actually being advocated for in the sermon on the mount.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, one wonders if he'll just, if he'll do a sort of,

• 29:35Speaker 00

  She.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Do not pray on the street.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Chris is a she.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Uh, well, Chris is a woman. Um, as, as far as I can tell, I imagine that the pronouns are going to be what, what, uh, What we think they are, but um.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, one, I can't imagine that anyone invited to this event has pronouns that do not match their their assigned at birth gender, but uh, you know, who knows? Yeah, it seems impossible that that would be.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  And it, it baffles me that there's a whole organization that people are obviously making millions and millions of dollars off of. Inviting people to pray for stuff to happen.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Um.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's not how things work. Uh, yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  All right. Well, I, I don't know that there's that much more to say about it other than, you know, this, it's an event where, and this, I think what's made clear, especially clear by Trump's uh, entry into this is that this is a drone. This isn't, no one's trying to highlight anything scriptural in this. No one's trying to uh, bring out a message uh, from, from the Bible for this. They're just, they're just saying all of the words of it. And then uh, you know, and, and I assume probably there are speeches before and after that are actually like

• 31:12Speaker 01

  more, more about what they're really getting after.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  But as you say, the, the, this is designed not to accomplish anything. It is just for show.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Oh, it's performative. Yeah. A hundred percent. That's, that's what this is all about. Now, now certainly there are people who believe this is going to affect some kind of change. And a lot of people are sharing it on, on Twitter. For instance, the, the first time I saw Trump grimacing at the camera, trying to squeak out second chronicle seven, it was because somebody shared it on Twitter and they were like, the president of the United States reading the Bible from the Oval Office. This is a new world with, you know, we're through the looking glass people. This is unreal. And, and it's. It doesn't, it's not going to change anything. It's, it's just performative to make people feel like they're, um, make people feel important.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Like they're making a difference when they're doing nothing.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  But they're also, I mean, there is this secondary thing that they're trying to do, which is they're making themselves feel important, but they're also trying to make non-Christians or people who disagree with them feel like they don't have a place at the table. Feel like their, their voices are not important. Their voices cannot be heard over the cacophony of, uh,

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, look how representative this is of, of

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  The, the real America.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  So I think a lot of the messaging here is if you're not one of us, if you're not a Christian, if you're not, you know, if you're Muslim, if you're Hindu, if you're atheist, if you're whatever, uh, you're not a real American. This is what real Americans do.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's coinciding with a, a push to, for people to, to start attending church more. Like Ben Shapiro was on a show and somebody was like, what, what would, what does a nation have to do? What does a, a broken nation have to do to heal? And he said, go to church.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  The Jew said, go to church.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  Well, well, yeah, what he said was, so I would, you know, if you're Jewish, go to synagogue, but go to church, cause this is a Christian nation. And, uh, um, and it's like, well, I, I don't know if Ben Shapiro knows the period of the founding, when the US constitution was constructed and our nation was created, is the period of lowest church attendance and church membership in all of US history up until now.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  So we're kind of, by not going to church, returning to the founders and, and their approach to, uh, to things. So going, going to church. If going to, if all going to church does is make you support ICE and hate your neighbor, you're, one, your, your church is doing it wrong, but also just the act of going to church, or just the act of reading the Bible, doesn't accomplish what you think it's going to accomplish, precisely because it's just performative. It is just a way to, to toe the line, to put on display your willingness to sign off on these credences so that other people will think you're a real one. And that just advances your own interests. It's all selfish.

• 34:22Speaker 00

  It's all entirely about advancing their own interests.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know, I think coming up soon, you, you and I need to do a, a thing about the, we'll do a whole segment about the claim that the founding fathers quoted the Bible more than any other book, or whatever.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh. You've, I've heard that for years now.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  And yes, we're definitely gonna need to do a segment on that one.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's enough of that. Let's, let's run away as quickly as we can and get into our chapter and verse. All right, so the chapter, the verse. We're in chapter, we're in First Samuel, chapter 31. It is the last chapter of First Sam.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and maybe, maybe give us some background leading into this chapter. Where, where, there's a battle. We are in media res in, in a battle.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  Well, there's, there's always a battle over.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  There's always a battle. What are these guys doing? We're, as long as you've got Philistines, you've got a battle somewhere.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  And we're, right now Saul and David are, uh, you know, they're at odds with each other.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  They're on the outs, yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, Saul has been trying to kill David for a while now, and.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Which will harm a friendship, I gotta say.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  It is hard to come back from that. But, and David has, and this is important, David has refused to kill Saul. On, he has had the opportunity and he has turned it down. And he has even made it clear why, and that's because Saul is the Lord's anointed and David is not going to harm the Lloyds, the Lloyds anointed? No, the Lord's anointed. That's a different guy. And, and this is, this is some hagiography. This is later authors who are responsible for curating the David tradition, who are trying to make it seem like, no, David would never have, have killed his rival.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  No, no. There's no evidence of, there's no evidence of that anywhere else in the book.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, he had the chance, but he, he turned it down and, and that made Saul upset. So, uh, we have Philistines doing their thing. And that's how chapter 31 starts off, that Philistines fought against Israel, the men of Israel fled and many fell on Mount Gilboa. Um, and then the Philistines overtake Saul and his sons. They killed Jonathan, so that's David's boy. Abinadab and Malkishua, the sons of Saul. And then Saul's not dead. He's been hit by some archers. He's got kind of a Boromir vibe going here. They have, they have wounded him badly. And then in verse four, Saul said to his armor bearer, draw your sword and thrust me

• 37:13Speaker 00

  through with it so that these uncircumcised may not come and thrust me through and make sport of me. The idea seems to be that, you know, they're going to abuse my body. They're gonna, this is going to be a big problem.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Which, uh, that's, that's going to happen anyway. So, but he just, but he didn't want them to have the satisfaction of, of killing him.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  Yes, but his armor bearer was unwilling for he was terrified. And, and the, the narrative kind of makes it sound like, you know, the armor bearer himself is, is scared to kill the Lord's anointed. He doesn't want to have that on his hands. So Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When his armor bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell on his sword and died with him. So we have what is represented tacitly. They, there is no commentary on the morality of any of this, but it is tacitly represented as an honorable death.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's it's not like you say, not nobody mentions whether this was a good thing or an evil thing to do. It just seemed it. It just seems like it's he I it feels like it's represented as being good as being noble.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the he is avoiding capture. He's avoiding humiliation. He is avoiding giving the enemy the pleasure, the the opportunity to do bad things. And so it is, you know, in a this is a society, an honor and shame society, and this would have been an honorable move. So I don't think we have any reason to think that anyone would have looked negatively upon this action. It would have probably been fairly unilaterally understood to have been an honorable death that that Saul did. And and he initially says, you do it. And the armor bearer is unwilling, so he has to take it into his own hands. And so and

• 39:10Speaker 00

  this is how a warrior would would honorably die in a situation where the tides have turned against him, and he has no opportunity for escape or for victory. And so you just fall on your own sword.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Help me out. When was this written? Like, do we have a sense of the the timing of the authorship?

• 39:29Speaker 00

  So there's there are a few different layers in here, but this is probably probably written somewhere around the eighth or seventh centuries BCE. So I think it is probably pre exilic. There may be some some post exilic layers in here, but I think the story here is is pre exilic.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess I just flashed on a line from Shakespeare, where I believe it is Macbeth, who says, Why should I play the Roman fool to die upon my own sword?

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  And I and and I know and when, you know, when I was in that play many moons ago, I did some research and just sort of figured out that. That was, at very least, to an Elizabethan author, that was attributed to Romans. It was a Roman idea, this idea of falling on one's own sword as a noble thing, rather than be captured.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, by the time of Shakespeare, I think that would have taken on a pretty negative stigma. But, but yeah, certainly within Rome as well, that would have been seen as an honorable death. You have that with, they're very military people. The military is kind of in charge of so much. So, so yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  I was just wondering if that was influential on this, but it seems like the timing would be wrong on that.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  Way off. Yeah, well, at least in terms of Rome's influence.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  Is that, yeah, no, I think Rome felt that way. Rome didn't invent that, basically, is what I'm trying to say.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  We do have some other prominent self-inflicted deaths in the Hebrew Bible. Probably the most prominent would be Judges 16, verses 28 through 30, which is Samson.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  I want to talk to Samson.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Fly me to the moon and have a temple fall on you. That's where he is between the two pillars that are load-bearing pillars in this temple. And he knocks them down, bringing down the whole temple upon himself. And so this is a way for him to take out as many Philistines as he can, along with himself.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  Which is treated as, you know, the, the, the, the judges are sometimes represented as kind of anti-heroes. They are kind of amoral. They do some odd stuff. And we've talked, for instance, about Jephtha and how they were probably looking a little sideways at Jephtha. But Samson, yeah, did a lot of stupid stuff, did some heroic stuff, and then brings down a temple on top of himself to take out as many Philistines as he can.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Which seems, which seems to be approved of in the, in the story of Samson. It seems to be, it's his final heroic act.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's, there's not really, he is kind of represented as a bit of a tragic figure. So it's not really clear that there's no moral point being made, I think, by the author. Certainly, they don't comment on the morality of it. But, but yeah, it, there's certainly no condemnation. If you're looking for somebody saying suicide is bad in the Bible, you're not going to find it.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  I think that's fascinating because, because obviously, now I jump to another Shakespearean quotation, which when Hamlet says, you know, he says, or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon against self slaughter. For many, many centuries, suicide has been completely foreboden. The church has, has, has counted that as, as a sin and as a grievous sin at that. So I think it's fascinating to, to learn that, that is, that is a later addition

• 43:28Speaker 01

  to, to the idea of, to, or to, to the pantheon of sins.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  Hey, everybody. Jason Snell sitting in for Leo Laporte this week on MacBreak Weekly. There's so much going on in the Apple world. So much, a little too much, if you ask me. Look, next week, they're doing their pro event. OLED touchscreen MacBook Pros. A touchscreen Mac? Is it even possible? Plus, maybe a new iPad Mini. People love the iPad Mini. But that's not all. We're still dealing with the fallout from last week when Apple introduced the 299 Apple TV 4K and the Home View. What's the app story there? And on top of all of that, it's iPhone Duo week. Did we get our orders in? Are we getting it before the new year? We will find out all of that this week on MacBreak Weekly. Get it at twit.tv or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 44:24Speaker 05

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• 45:55Speaker 00

  We begin to get a kind of moralizing of this, I think, in the Greco-Roman period. I think Josephus talks about Saul and talks about it as understandable yet regrettable. Like, it was a bad thing. And it's like Augustine is one of the ones who comes out hard against suicide as explicitly sinful. So it's not until we get deep into the period when Jewish folks and then followers of Jesus are incorporating, you know, philosophical, ethical philosophy, incorporating all these frameworks that they begin to wonder about the ethics of these kinds of things. And so it's within Greco-Roman period Judaism,

• 46:38Speaker 00

  late Greco-Roman period Judaism, almost into rabbinic, and then early Christianity, that we see the idea pop up, "Oh, this is a bad thing," where philosophy overtakes the honor and shame. Um, impulse.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  So I, I think that's probably where it originates yet, but yeah, it's, it's certainly not in the Bible. I, I have people reach out to me every now and then and ask about this, um, that they've had a parent, a brother, a child, or something like that, and their, and their pastor, whatever, or they're worried about whether or not, um, someone has told them that this is sinful and they're in hell.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's such a cruel thing.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  To say to a grieving person who's, who's lost, uh, who's lost a loved one.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and that, I think it's, it's people feel like they need to toe the line. People feel like they need to advocate for the, the, you know, socially costly position that, yeah, they're in hell. And, you know, you get that in all kinds of different, you know, there, there will be, uh, some brands of, of Calvinism where somebody will be like, oh, so and so, you know, was part of a community that, that hadn't really been churched, hadn't really been witnessed to, and so, so and so never heard of

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Jesus and never had an opportunity. And they're like, yep, hell. And, and I, some people seem to relish in being able to do that precisely because of how, how offensive it is to the people on the other side.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  But I think there are also people who feel awful about it, but still feel like it's their responsibility to toe that line. Even though, again, it's not biblical.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  It's not something they're getting from the Bible.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  That's an amazing, that, you know, it's such an interesting thing. Uh, I mean, the, the innovations in terms of, uh, philosophical thought are just basically that A, it's, uh, killing and thou shalt not kill. And B, that some, something to do with, uh, the, the idea that.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  It it takes away God's prerogative of of life like somehow the natural law.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  God has authority over what is.

• 48:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, your life is not your own.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, which which, you know, these are things that, like you said, Augustine and, you know, Aquinas and stuff came up with these. A fair bit after the Bible came out.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  And I guess I, you know, I think about how.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  This is a particularly sticky thing. People like, as you say, people love to condemn other people to hell. They do it all the time. They love to say, oh, you're going to hell to me because I'm an atheist, or oh, you're going to, like, they do relish it. But there's something especially difficult or problematic about doing it about.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Suicide, because it is a final act. There's no, you know, if you say to me as an atheist, you're going to hell, there's a redemptive path. You're at least saying you're going to hell if you don't, dot, dot, dot.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  But but yeah, it is a particularly intractable problem with this because it there's no redemptive path. There's nothing to follow where the person can can redeem themselves.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. And and these days. It is it is less often a question of someone. You know, in battle, having no way out.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  Falling on their sword. There's there's not really much honorable. Taking of one's own life these days, at least in our culture. Certainly, there are cultures where this kind of stuff does happen. But these days, usually, when someone takes their own life, it's because they are so despondent, because there is such an acute episode of despair and depression, it outweighs their their ability to to endure it. And, you know, they have access to means. So there's a.

• 50:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a particularly heinous aspect of taking that approach when so much of suicide these days is an outcome of depression and mental, mental health issues and circumstances that frequently are not within the control, not within the conscious control of, of the individual. So I think that is, I think that's a big, a big flaw in this notion, which again is, is something that is a post biblical moral development, rather than, than something that is commanded anywhere in the Bible.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Well, and there are other examples in the Bible of people taking their own lives. Judas, Judas comes jumping.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And, and this is the one where it's, you know, it's, it's an example of a villain who does it.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  So, and then there's another, there's a guy named Ahithaphel, who offers some counsel and the people don't take it. And so, Second Samuel 17, he saddled his donkey and went off home to his own city. He set his house in order and hanged himself. He died and was buried in the tomb of his father. So even, even this, in that context, he hanged himself, but he was still given a standard burial.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I was gonna say, like, what that sounds like is that, is because, because someone who was shameful would probably not have been given that, that same burial. Is that right?

• 52:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, in, in this time period, I don't, I don't know that there are a lot of things that someone could have done to have earned, you know, non-buryal. I mean, certain kinds of, yes, yes. Certain, certain kinds of criminals and things like that, I imagine they would have been, there would have been mass burials. But to be buried in the tomb of your father is, is unquestionably an honorable burial.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  And so this, and, and the fact that Ahithaphel is, is doing this after failing to win the voice of the people in, in, on this matter. Could be another, could be perceived as another honorable way to go. This, this is so important to me that my voice be heard, that when the people rejected my voice, I said, "I will honor your rejection of my life and my counsel and everything, and I will go and, and take my own life." So I, I can see how this could be, uh, understood as a, as a tragic but an honorable, uh, death.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Or even just a, uh, you know, I, I, my mind flashes on, you know, I remember at various points, hearing about Buddhist monks in, in Asia, who would self-immolate as a way of raising, uh, awareness of, of, of the, the suffering of a people, or that sort of thing.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, that incubus song, uh, is, is about, uh, what's it called? I don't want to sing it, but, um, but it, it talks about, uh, seeing a, took a look in a book, saw a guy fried up above his knees. This is about the monk. I think it was in, was, this was a Vietnam War protest, wasn't it?

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, there was definitely one of, one.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  That, that's happened within the last couple of years.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, there have been, I think, was it a veteran who, uh, or an active duty? Somebody, um, recently self-immolated, um, to raise awareness, uh, of, uh, ongoing problems with, uh, with, I think that it was war efforts on the part of, of the US, but, or.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  I think it's maybe speaks, maybe this isn't a very effective, uh, technique, you guys. If we don't know what this, if, if we remember the instance, but not the, uh, not, not the.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  Well, we got one of them.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got, we got at least.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  One of, one of them was more widely publicized and was actually a catalyst for, um, for a lot of, of discourse and, and some change. But, but yeah, the other one, unfortunately, because that's like, what a, what an extreme measure to take.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  To, to raise awareness. But, um, but yeah, that's not, that's the kind of thing that, that I think you have to take seriously, the notion that as a, as a conscious decision to sacrifice one's own life, uh, for something like that. I mean, why is that any worse than? Saying you're willing to sacrifice your life for your country.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Um, by going off to fight in, you know, a war that might be waged for money or for oil or something like that. Like there, there are, um, I, I, I think there are certainly mitigating and, um, extenuating circumstances that, that need to be taken into, into account. I think the blanket rejection of all of this as, as unilaterally sinful, um, you know, constituting murder thus. And that's where most people are going to say, well, the Bible does condemn it. It talks about you shall not kill. Well, uh, ratsah is, is really illegal killing.

• 56:09Speaker 00

  And so it depends on the laws of the country. And in the Bible, at least when that, uh, text was written, taking your own life, uh, would not have, would probably would not have been considered ratsah. So it probably wouldn't even qualify according to the 10 commandments. And there are countries where as long as you have gone through appropriate steps and everything like that, you can, uh, you can legally end your life on your own terms.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  I want to say there was a, there was a woman recently who did that, didn't she? Within the last few weeks.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Who, uh, who did what?

• 56:48Speaker 00

  It was, it was a victim of sexual assault.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 56:52Speaker 00

  Who, um, had been advocating for years, who I think, I can't remember if she was hospitalized or, or not, but she had been engaged in a legal battle between her and her father because her, she wanted to, um, end her own life and her father, um, didn't want to let her.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  And she, she wanted a physician assisted suicide.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  Right, exactly.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  And I think she ultimately won that. And the way it's represented, there are an awful lot of Christians who have come out and said, you know, the state, you know, killed a woman over and against the objections of her father, like misrepresenting it wildly.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  As that she didn't know what she was doing.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  And her father was trying to save her and the state stepped in and was like, whoa, kill your daughter against your wishes.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Well, I don't remember if I've mentioned it on the show, but just a few months ago, my mother, who was terminally ill, opted to have medical assistance in dying in Canada. And, and the, it was a mercy. It was a beautiful mercy.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  For her to have that option. And we were, you know, my sister and I were able to be present for it. And she was surrounded by people that she loved. And, and then I went and spoke to the, the people at the, the funeral home that was handling the disposition of her remains. And she, and this woman talked about how so many people who are religious get into huge battles, huge family fights about this. And, you know, they, they, if, you know, especially if the family is Catholic or whatever,

• 58:47Speaker 01

  suddenly it becomes this, this roaring battle and none, and nowhere in that conversation is the person's pain. You know, no, nowhere in that conversation is the, is the mercy of that moment. And I think that, you know, people don't choose to take their lives.

• 59:07Speaker 00

  Lightly.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Lightly. That is not something that you enter into, you know, sort of in a flippant manner. So, you know, I definitely was grateful that, you know, Canada has lots of different hoops you gotta jump through and lots of, you know, you have to, you have to be able to affirm that you are of sound mind and that you're not being coerced into it. Now that you have to have multiple meetings with multiple people and all this sort of thing. But, but yeah. It's nice, and I think that I think that the maybe the takeaway here should be that if people are trying to make biblical arguments against this sort of thing, you can tell them to go pee up a tree.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's, um, yeah, there's an awful lot that goes into that, that, and that's where I think we're trying to put the data over the dogma and allow the people's own feelings and own thoughts about these things and their own suffering. I don't think that any, any kind of attempt to critically engage with the Bible's position on this thing will come away with the perspective that someone who is being tormented by, by chronic suffering because of any one of a number of different states or conditions or pathologies or whatever, that they're supposed to suffer indefinitely

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  because you're not supposed to take a life, even if it's your own, which is, which is something that's nowhere said in the Bible. The gentleman was Aaron Bushnell, 25-year-old serviceman in the Air Force, who was, who self-immolated in front of the Washington DC Embassy of Israel.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Protesting against the genocide in Palestine. So.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Wow. All right. Well, heavy thoughts today, but you know, we gotta, we gotta get to, to the deep stuff sometimes. So.

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then just to finish up with the story of Saul's death.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. Okay. Saul, back to Saul. We'll go back to Saul. Absolutely.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  Saul and his sons all have all passed away. The Philistines came through. They occupied the towns. They stripped the dead. They found Saul and his three sons. They cut off his heads, stripped off his armor and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to the houses of their idols and to the people. They put his armor in the temple of Astarte and they fastened his body to the wall of Beathshan.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  So when he was hoping, when Saul was hoping that they would not make sport of him, sport was made.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, but at least, but at least he got to end it on his own terms. Now, now here's the interesting part, when the inhabitants of Yabesh Gilidad heard what the Philistines had done to Saul, all the valiant men set out, traveled all night long, and took the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Bechan. They came to Yabesh and burned them there. Then they took their bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Yabesh and fasted seven days. Now, this is relevant because the first thing that Saul did when he became king, after he was set apart and anointed as, installed as king, was go help the people of Yabesh

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  Gilidad from, they were being oppressed by a dude named Snake. His name, his name's Nahash, but which, which means Snake.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably his last name was Pelisken, but who's to say? And then after the death of Saul, David had returned from defeating the Amalekites. He was in Ziklag. On the third day, a man from Saul's camp with his clothes torn and dirt on his head, when he came to David, he fell to the ground, did abechence. David said, where have you come from? He said, I have escaped from the camp of Israel. David says, how did things go? Says, the army fled from the battle, but also many of the army fell, and Saul and his son Jonathan also died. And then somebody who was standing by said, how do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan died? The man said, I happened to be on Mount Gilboa, and there was Saul leaning on his spear while the chariots and horsemen drew close to him. When he looked behind him, he saw me and called to me. I answered, here, sir. And he said to me, who are you?

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  I answered him, I am an Amalekite. He said to me, come, stand over me and kill me, for convulsions have seized me, yet my life still lingers. So I stood over him and killed him, for I knew that he could not live after he had fallen. I took the crown that was on his head and the armlet that was on his arm, and I have brought them here to my Lord. And David took hold of his clothes, tore them. All the men who were with him did the same. They mourned and wept and fasted until evening for Saul and his son Jonathan. And then David said to the young man who had reported to him, where do you come from? He answered, I am the son of a resident alien, an Amalekite. David said, were you not afraid to lift your hand to destroy the Lord's anointed? And David called one of the young men and said, come here and strike him down.

• 1:04:21Speaker 00

  So he struck him down and he died.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  And David said to him, your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, I have killed the Lord's anointed.

• 1:04:32Speaker 00

  Couple of things to note here. That's not the story from the previous chapter.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  So it directly contradicts that story. But this raises a question.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  Is this two different accounts of Saul's death? Or is this this Amalekite who came upon the scene and was like, ooh, I'm going to grab that, I'm going to grab that and came to David and lied to him in order to, because he thought, well, David's Saul's enemy. I will be richly rewarded for reporting this and also being like, I was the one who took him out. And, and I am intrigued by the possibility that it is just an alternative account of Saul's death. I think most scholars would probably say the easier explanation is just that the Amalekite was lying.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I also, I also wonder, like, when I read it and I, you know, I don't have any background in this, but I, when I read it, I read it as this was the second half of the story. Like Saul had already done his thing to himself and then was seizing and convulsing and was asking for the mercy of death. And this Amalekite was there and he asked him to please just finish the job and he did. So I that's, that's how I read it. Uh, is that, that's not what, what I was meant to have taken from that?

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  I, I think that's like, that's, that's certainly a possible interpretation. The, the text isn't going to stop you from reading it that way. But the fact that Saul was leaning on his spear, he's upright. He's leaning on his spear, I think is, um, is not Saul falling on his sword. Um, and also the, the armor bearer is, is not in the story. Yeah. So, um, and, and he says, "Convulsions have seized me, yet my life still lingers." Um, it makes it sound like injuries other than getting run through, uh, with a sword, but yeah. So, um, yeah, I think most scholars would say this, the Amalekites just making stuff up, but we don't really have enough

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  background details and, and I'm intrigued by the possibility that it's just a contradictory account of the death of Saul. But this is another way to have David be like, "Oh, look what they've done to my boy." Um, you know, David is, is mourning and is, and is so upset about the death of his enemy that even killed the guy who claimed to kill him, which is a way to be like, "There's no way on earth David could have been the one who killed Saul."

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely not. There's no chance of it. Uh, this Amalekite was there. He saw, he saw the whole thing.

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. David was in tears, man. He was in tears. So it's, it's more a hagiography, uh, about David, just how exemplary he was, at least when it comes to things other than sleeping with somebody else's, well, sexually assaulting someone else's wife and then having him sent off to die.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  Which is coming up.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. All right, friends. Well, uh, thank you for joining us. That's it for today. If you would like to become one of our patrons, we encourage it. We beg of you. Uh, head on over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and, uh, and join up there. You can get access to our after-party. That's bonus content that you're not going to get anywhere else. And then, uh, also early and ad-free versions of every episode of the show. Uh, thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing. Thanks to JJ for being our, our producer. And, uh, we'll talk to you again next time.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

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