Ep 529 ｜ Why Bad Ideas Deserve to Be Mocked ｜ Guest： Seth Dillon
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
199.03812
Summary
Seth Dillon is the CEO of The Babylon Bee, the world's funniest, factually accurate news site. He and I disagree on the topic of predestination, but we have a lot in common in that we both believe in God.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week. Tomorrow
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is Thanksgiving, so I know that you're probably busy cooking, baking, preparing, hanging out with
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your family. We'll have a short episode today, and it's going to be a fun one that'll get you
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in the mood for, you know, a lighthearted, enjoyable time with your family on Thanksgiving. I am talking
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to Seth Dillon. He is the CEO of The Babylon Bee, the satire site. I have had the honor of writing
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several times for The Babylon Bee over the years. I have loved them, been a fan of them for a very
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long time. They're Christian, conservative, just all out funny people, and they're just genuinely
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good people. Like, the people behind The Babylon Bee are as great as their headlines, and so you're
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going to enjoy this conversation. We're not just going to talk about the woke scolds and the pearl
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clutching that now tends to come from the left side of the aisle and the importance of satire and humor
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and all that kind of stuff. We're also, towards the end of the conversation, going to talk a little
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theology. We're going to talk about predestination. We're going to talk about Calvinism versus non-Calvinism
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or Arminianism, and where we disagree. He and I disagree on the topic of predestination,
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and yet, obviously, we share very important things in common, namely Christ. And so it's a fun,
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productive conversation that I know you guys are going to really enjoy. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
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Thank you so much for listening to Relatable. I am so grateful for you all. We will be back next week
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with all new episodes covering all the craziness that is bound to be going on in the news. So
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for now, without further ado, here is my guest, Seth Dillon.
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Seth, thank you so much for joining us. First, just in case there are a few people out there who
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don't know you, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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Yeah, thanks for having me, Ali. I am the CEO of the Babylon Bee, which is the world's best and
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greatest, most factually accurate news source. It is.
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Fake news you can trust. Yeah, I mean, I run the business side of things. You know, Kyle Mann,
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who you know, our editor-in-chief, runs the content team and is really responsible for that side of
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things. I run the business and represent the company. And so, yeah, I've been doing that since
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I took over in 2018. So going on four years now, which is pretty awesome. And yeah, The Beast started
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in 2016. So I took it over from Adam Ford, its founder. Yeah. And it's really exploded under your
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leadership over the past few years. Has it surprised you how much it has taken off or did you see the
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potential right away before you decided to join? I mean, I saw I saw potential. That's why I got
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involved. It was already kind of taking off. It was going viral. And, you know, people are sharing
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these articles millions of times and the site was getting millions of views. So it had a huge amount
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of potential. I didn't I didn't necessarily think that it would get to where it is. I mean, I'm like
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I'm going on Tucker Carlson now every now and then. And he's talking about how we're the funniest site
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on the Internet. I mean, I wasn't expecting that kind of stuff. Elon Musk is retweeting us and
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talking about us quite a bit. Yeah, he's a big fan. So I never expected any of that. I don't think
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anybody did. And, you know, you never know what you're getting into with this stuff. But there's
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clearly a reason the B is successful. The B is successful because it's it's pushing back on the
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left's ideology. And obviously, you know, we make jokes at the right, too. We make fun of, you know,
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even ourselves, Christian church and culture. But but what what resonates the most and what gets
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shared the most are these jokes that we're making that you're not supposed to make. You know,
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nobody's willing to make them. They're politically incorrect. The targets of them are very well
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safeguarded and protected. And people are really hungry for real kind of natural raw humor that
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isn't filtered through the whole PC thing. So, yeah, I think that's really part of the main reason
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that the B has really taken off is that it's this refreshing take on satire and mockery and ridicule
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from a perspective that, you know, not a lot of people are doing it.
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I think my favorite reaction from typically the left to you guys is just that that's not funny
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and explaining why it's not funny, especially if it's something about AOC, maybe being unintelligent
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or something like that or a headline that they see as racist. And they take this whole Twitter
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thread to talk about why the Babylon Bee is not funny. And I love how you guys respond to that.
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It's never, oh, let me explain this joke or, well, let me put a caveat behind that. It's just like,
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well, if you don't get it, we're not going to explain it to you. And then you just double down
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and keep going. I think that maybe as much as just the humor behind the Babylon Bee is what people
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love is the attitude behind it. Just like we don't care. We don't care what you think. We don't care
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who gives us pushback. We're going to keep telling these kinds of jokes, don't you think?
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Look, it's in character for us to respond that way. I love the way Kyle handled that interview
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And they were asking him, they're like, OK, you wrote this joke. Why is this funny?
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Tell me why this is funny. I mean, what a weird, like, you come across as such a humorless scold
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to tell a comedian to explain to you why his joke is funny.
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And the really interesting thing is that there are obviously millions of people who think that
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our site is funny and that our content is funny because they read it, they share it, they laugh.
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So if you don't think it's funny, well, that's your opinion. It's one of those subjective things.
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It's like somebody saying, somebody who likes vanilla more than chocolate ice cream,
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demanding that you explain to them why chocolate is better. It's like, well, that's my personal
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preference. So it is fun to just kind of like repeat the joke and say, well, here's the joke. This is why
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it's funny. And then let them stay stupefied and dumbfounded about it. It's kind of fun to do that.
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But there are times we have to take it seriously, like when we had to send a demand letter to the
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New York Times, for example, because they call us a far right misinformation site that traffics
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and misinformation under the guise of that tire. You know, that's that's the kind of thing where
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it's like, OK, we will make jokes about that. And we have made jokes about New York Times and CNN
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and some of the stuff that they've said about us. But there's also there comes a place where you have
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to like draw a line and say, OK, our business could legitimately be threatened by these
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misrepresentations, because if the social networks are taking fake news really seriously
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and we're being characterized that way, we could get booted off the social network. So, you know,
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that was a situation where it's like that demanded a response.
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Let's analyze that a little bit, because I've noticed that the leftist media will do this,
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not just with the Babylon Bee, but when I made that little satirical video with AOC back in like
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2018, I got all of these very incensed and serious emails the next morning, totally unexpected to
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me from the Atlantic BuzzFeed, these mainstream outlets saying, you know, how do you feel about
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spreading this kind of disinformation? Like, how do you feel about duping so many people? You know,
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they're very serious and they're acting very mad about this. And then they act like it wasn't
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intended as satire, that I actually intended for people to think that I was interviewing AOC,
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which is just ridiculous. But they know, like the journalists know that the Babylon Bee is satire.
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They knew that the video that I did was satire. So why did they do this? Why did they pretend
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to not know? Why did they pretend that they don't know that it's supposed to be a joke? What do you
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think is behind that? Well, I, it's nefarious. I mean, like with the, the word I use for the New
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York Times, you know, I said, it's, it's actually malicious because they do know better. I mean,
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they do. We had, in the case of the New York Times, they actually did a profile piece on us where
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they came to our office, they interviewed our guys, they took pictures of us, like they had
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written about us before they covered us before. And then yet over the course of time, continued to
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just keep going back to this, you know, Ooh, maybe they're this undercover misinformation outlet.
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That's just pretending to be a satire site, you know, trying to get the termotives. I mean,
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in that case, it's really obvious why they're doing it. It's if they can get you labeled misinformation,
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then they can get you de-platformed. It's really, it's really that simple. And so it's,
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they try to act like there must be some, if they just treat it as satire, like satire is very
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permissible. It's very allowable. It's not harmful. So they have to try to find a way to make it seem
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harmful. So they'll either treat it as misinformation or they'll treat it as hate
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speech. Those are the two things that, you know, it's punching down. You're making fun of people
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that you're not supposed to make fun of. Punching down. That's the phrase that they use constantly.
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Even if you're, even if you're criticizing or making fun of like a congresswoman, you're
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punching down somehow. Yeah. Yeah. You're punching down on people. You know, the whole idea there is that
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these people are marginalized and oppressed and you have all the power and you're making jokes at them.
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And that's not fair. And, and really, I honestly, it's the other way around this whole situation
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with Dave Chappelle perfectly illustrated it. You know, he's one of these people, he's got it. He's
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got enough of a platform and a position and enough of a following that he's like anybody else would
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have been completely canceled. And, and, and, and when you have this situation where the people who
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are complaining that they're marginalized or oppressed have to have the power to get you canceled,
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they are actually the oppressors in that situation. I've said it before. Like if you have the will
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and the power to punish people who merely make jokes about you, then you're the one who's really
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in control there. The power dynamic is really flipped on its head and they're trying to act
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like victims. So they're actually creating a bunch of victims in their wake with all that nonsense.
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Yeah. I remember you saying that. I watched you say that on Tucker Carlson. And I thought that that
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was such a good point. You know, who has at least the cultural power, but probably the political and
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institutional power too, uh, by looking at who you're not allowed to make fun of. And Dave Chappelle
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made that point when he responded to all of the backlash about his special, he said, well, I'm the
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only one that's not allowed in the Netflix building. All of these people showed up to work. He's the only
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one that's not even allowed to go in. And yet people are accusing him of punching down by saying that a
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woman is a woman. And I think because of that, I am seeing what seems like a shift. People used to
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think that everyone on the right, that, you know, we were the pearl clutchers. Like we were the ones
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that couldn't take a joke and that you're not allowed to make fun of our faith. You're not allowed
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to make fun of our values, whatever it is. Um, and we were the ones who were no fun. And it was
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everyone on the left who was just like, Oh yeah, you know, we're going to be crass. We're going to push
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the limits. All the comedians considered themselves on the left. But now you're seeing people,
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Joe Rogan, Dave Chappelle, other comedians. I think a lot of people who probably still identify
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as independents being like, you know what? I I'm still probably not a Republican, but I know I'm
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not on the left who are at least coming out as anti-woke. And now it seems like really the only
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people who can tell a good joke are people on the right, because people on the left will freak out.
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Even if you use a euphemism, like let's go, Brandon, they can't even take that. They can't even take
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it. Um, do you see that shift happening too? That it's really kind of conservative to now
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almost have the monopoly or not even conservatives, but just non leftist like Bill Maher, even now is
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kind of part of that camp who are the ones telling the good jokes. The, I love Bill Maher, by the way,
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and some of the comments that he's made about, about cancel culture, he's right on the money.
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Um, it's one of these situations. Look, our new book, the Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness is a top
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seller in religion categories, a bunch of different religion categories, which I find is kind of funny.
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It's like, it's like, it feels like confirmation to me that wokeness really is a religion that we're
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telling so well in these religion categories. It really has, it's flipped, you know, you've got this
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situation where, um, one of these people's really tightly personal value, tightly held personal
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values, um, are, are really guarded closely by a lot of people. They don't like to see them held up
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to scorn or mockery or ridicule. The left has adopted all of these values that have really become
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very religious for them. Um, and so it really is like the shoes on the other foot here, where they're
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in a situation where they're at, the pearl clutching is happening from that side, but they've created
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all these rules about things you can and can't say and things you can and can't joke about that are
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really stifling comedy. And I think, I think there's going to be a revivaling comedy from the
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other, from the other side. People are going to find, um, that there's plenty of
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demand for real jokes that really don't care if they're offensive. You know, comedy is offensive
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by nature. It's going to, it's going to make somebody bristle, but you want to, you want to
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be able to laugh at yourself. It's a healthy thing to be able to like, look at yourself and the silly
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things that you do or say or believe and like laugh at yourself a little bit. That's fine. That's a
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healthy exercise. Um, so I think it's important for people to kind of push back. I love what Chappelle
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is doing. I love how Bill Maher is doing it. Um, I'd like to see more people really push back on that
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and then kind of hopefully bring things back to the middle because they've gone very extreme
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where there's so much you're not allowed to think and you're not allowed to say.
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Yeah. I think that those comedians, even though I, as a conservative Christian, don't have all the
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same values as someone like Joe Rogan or Dave Chappelle, they play such an important role though,
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in the so-called culture wars, they inject sanity into these insane conversations and people listen to
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them that wouldn't necessarily listen to me because they don't agree with me theologically
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or even politically. But when you have someone who is liberal and in most ways saying, Hey, you know,
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everyone here came out of a woman, like everyone here was born from a woman. Um, then I do think
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that there's a really important cultural role that they play in kind of shifting the Overton window
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back over. It gives people cover. And I think the Babylon Bee does that too. Like it gives people
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cover. They feel like, Oh, okay. So it's not just me who thought that this whole thing was absurd.
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Other people think that's absurd too. Um, and so even though the Babylon Bee, I mean, you tell jokes,
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I think that there is a very serious role and a very seriously important role that the Babylon Bee,
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uh, takes on in these culture wars and in changing the political narrative. Do you think so?
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Yeah. Well, I mean, the way that I describe it, when I like, there's kind of a twofold mission with
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satire, you know, you want to make people laugh, but you also want to make them think you want to
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challenge, you know, the status quo. Um, there is a lot about satire, you know, one of the main
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effective things that it does is it challenges the power structures and, um, speaks truth to power.
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Um, but I, I try to summarize our mission statement as really being very simple. It's
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to ridicule bad ideas. And that's exactly what you're saying. It's a, it's a, it's to go after
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these things that are really, they have harmful effects in society. Um, it, it results in speech
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depression, even like self-censorship. People are censoring themselves and doing the tyrant's work
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for him. And, uh, and so, you know, I think anybody who's out there ridiculing these ideas
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and ridiculing this kind of rigidity that's there, uh, and, and all this, all these restrictions
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that are there, uh, is going to embolden other people to speak out and feel comfortable
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believing what they believe and having a right to say what they believe. Um, so yeah, there
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is, there is some to that, um, that, that it's a little bit more, you know, um, uh, the onion,
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um, says, define satire as being a smart saying it's for a higher purpose. Yeah. I don't know
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if I can say that on your show. Can I say that on your show? We'll have to believe it out.
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Well, but yeah, you know, there really is in a sense, a higher purpose to it. There really is,
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because in our case, at least we are trying to ridicule bad ideas. And I think that's a moral
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good. You know, I think so too. And there are a lot of Christians, like when I've done those fake
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DNC ads in the past, of course, it's fun. Like you guys know this, the left makes it super easy
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to ridicule their ideas. It's actually hard to even make them satirical. All you have to do is say,
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this is what their ideas are. And they're ridiculous. All you have to do is put them on
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display, sans all of the euphemisms that they use to try to kind of like sanitize and normalize
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their ridiculous, absurd views, like defund the police. You don't even have to lie or exaggerate
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to do a satire about left-wing proposals. And so when I do the DNC, it's hard to, it's hard to
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exaggerate it. You know, it's actually challenging to exaggerate it. It's easier to just uncover it and
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expose it for what it is. Yes. And I think that's one thing that makes people mad is that,
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and they'll just kind of give you general anger that that makes me mad. But if you ask them,
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well, what was incorrect? Was there anything that I said in this particular video that was
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not a democratic policy or not a position that someone on the left holds? And also a reaction
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that I get, and I'm sure, actually, I know you guys do from people who profess to be like progressive
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Christians or whatever, but Christians will say, well, that's mean. You might be right, but that
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satire or that sarcasm is mean, and that's not loving your neighbor, and that's not kind. And then
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I take such issue with the tone police who are actually angrier about someone making fun of this
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really bad, really destructive, and sometimes evil idea, like men having access to women's
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bathrooms. They're more mad about making fun of that and the tone that someone uses to make fun of
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that than they are the evil idea itself. And that really bothers me about some Christians.
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Yeah. I think that's an important point, too, is that it's, you know, what is your goal? Is your
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goal to hurt people and make them feel stupid and bad about themselves? Or is your goal to protect
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people and actually push back on something that's harming people? In our case, you know,
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when I'm talking about ridiculing bad ideas, I'm not talking about, like, ridiculing people
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mercilessly and making them feel terrible about themselves. I'm talking about ridiculing ideas
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that are going to actually hurt people. And so, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's silly to care
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more about the fact that someone's making those jokes. And first of all, on the other side of it,
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they are perfectly happy to make jokes at your expense that completely make you look silly or stupid
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or even hurt your feelings personally. They don't care about your feelings. It's just
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certain people in protected groups, their feelings matter more than everybody else's feelings for
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some reason. So that's not fair either. But really, yeah, from that perspective, the Christian
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perspective of, you know, this isn't loving your neighbor, this is nice. It's not loving to your
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neighbor to lie to them either. It's not loving to treat skin color like it's the most important
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thing about somebody. It's not loving to deny the differences between the sexes. It's not loving to
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teach people to deny reality, to teach little kids to start transitioning just because they once played
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with a doll. That means they must be a girl. It's not loving to put them on that path. And so to ridicule
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the act of putting them on that path is immoral good.
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I just wonder what Bible sometimes these people are reading, because I know for me, like when I read
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Jesus's words to the apostles, when people ask him what I think are legitimate questions,
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and he responds in a way sometimes that's super off-putting, sarcastic, or he doesn't answer
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directly. He responds with a question. He uses different rhetorical devices in order to get his
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point across. We see that throughout Scripture. And it's not the 11th commandment that we should be
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nice. We can be kind. We can be loving. We can speak the truth without this kind of euphemistic,
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overly nice, but won't say what's real language that I think a lot of Christians resort to
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at the expense of the people who are suffering on the other end of these bad ideas.
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Yeah. No, I think you're right. There's plenty of examples of it in Scripture. There's
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examples in the prophets, too. It's replete with examples of exaggeration being used, hyperbole
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being used, ridicule and mockery being used. And I mentioned before, I said something recently about
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how we need to bring back shame in the sense that there is shameful behavior. There are shameful
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things that people are doing. And rather than talking about that or calling that out, we're trying
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to act like in this present moment in our culture, like nothing is shameful, like there is no shameful
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behavior, like anything goes. And I think, you know, satire has a role to play in kind of keeping clear
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in our minds, like moral boundaries of what's good, what's right, what's what's too extreme. And so,
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you know, that's kind of it's one of the important elements of it. I mean, obviously, you want it to be
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fun and funny. You really want it to be fun and funny. But sometimes, you know, you got to hit on
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these issues, you know, with with kind of a deeper purpose. Yeah, we're definitely in this cultural
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season of wanting to destigmatize and normalize every kind of egregious behavior. And some things
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need stigma, like some things have a stigma because they should be stigmatized, not everything,
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maybe some things do need to be destigmatized, that's fine. But some things have a stigma for a
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reason. Some things aren't normalized, because they're not normal. And we don't need to make them
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normal. And I think healthy shame does play a role in kind of giving us those boundaries.
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All right, let's look at your book, Wokeness, the Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness. I said that I'm
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triggered by the cover just because the raised communist fist and shake of era, his face really
00:21:33.180
triggers me. And there's a lot in this book that really triggers me because I mean, it's just funny.
00:21:40.640
It's just funny. The animations are funny. But I am reminded that,
00:21:45.580
that the ideas that you guys are making fun of really are as bad as they seem. Tell me about
00:21:52.220
creating this book, everything that went into it, why you guys made it. Also, how long did it take?
00:21:57.800
Because it looks like it's pretty extensive. Okay, you'd be surprised. I mean, the guys that we have
00:22:04.520
working for us are so productive creatively. That is awesome. They can put out a lot of material
00:22:12.500
in a very short period of time. Some of this is just kind of tapping into a lot of ideas that
00:22:17.660
we've already dealt with and exposed and talked about on the Bee quite a bit. So, you know, but this
00:22:23.520
was really a joint effort between Kyle, our editor in chief and Joel Berry, our managing editor. And
00:22:30.420
then all of the illustrations, everything are done by our creative director, Ethan Nicole. And so the
00:22:34.840
three of them just worked together on structuring this thing. And it's just, I mean, like at this
00:22:39.400
moment in time, when you have like, wokeness, just surging and popularity, and also at the same time,
00:22:45.980
like the left trying to distance themselves from it now, because so many, there's been so much backlash
00:22:49.740
to what's going on here, especially with like, critical race theory being taught in schools,
00:22:53.400
everything that just happened in Virginia with that election. The conversation is like coming to a head
00:22:59.320
right now where people are trying to decide is wokeness a good thing or isn't it? Yeah. And so
00:23:03.900
to have a satirical guide come out by the Babylon Bee that just kind of ruthlessly ridicules wokeness
00:23:11.440
and, but like you said, like you don't even really have to exaggerate it that much. There's a little
00:23:16.820
bit of exaggeration in this book, but when you read it, it's really, we're doing what you did in
00:23:20.280
those videos where you're, where you're exposing a Democrat platform. We're really just saying what
00:23:24.480
they say. Like they have really said that two plus two is saying, insisting that two plus two equals
00:23:29.440
four is true, is racist. You know? Yeah. They literally treat your skin color and your gender
00:23:36.200
and sex as being the most important things about you. They literally do that. So this book is just
00:23:41.120
kind of highlighting that in a really kind of obnoxious way without any euphemisms or anything,
00:23:47.540
exposing it for what it is. Oh my gosh. I just opened to page 104. So if you're listening with kids,
00:23:53.480
maybe don't listen to this part and maybe this also isn't a book to read to kids. I'm just going
00:23:57.780
to read this, this one part. Okay. Earth rape, how it works. Warning, disturbing. Inhale. Attacker
00:24:04.760
premeditates crime. He, she will perpetrate on victim. Prepares for assault. Rest. Attacker charges
00:24:10.580
up CO2 blast from inside the black empty void that once held a soul. Exhale. Earth is raped.
00:24:18.260
Just breathing. Yes. But it actually, I mean, it makes a point. It makes a point about how
00:24:23.080
ridiculous these climate extremists are about the toll on the earth that human beings are making.
00:24:28.180
This is basically what they say. Yeah. You're evil for existing and breathing, right? That's
00:24:33.400
basically what they say. Same thing for being white. You're evil for being white, you know,
00:24:37.020
just your skin color. So yeah. But that one that you just read, it's like, it's illustrated too. It's
00:24:42.300
like this whole graph and illustration. It's, you know, that adds a lot to it. So it's a fun book. It's a
00:24:46.720
great gift, especially for the holidays that we got it out in time, but it's selling like crazy. So
00:24:50.500
people need to buy them before they're off the shelves. That doesn't surprise me at all. So
00:24:54.680
definitely everyone get the Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness. Y'all's first book, I think, was How to
00:24:59.760
Be a Perfect Christian, right? Yeah. How to Be a Perfect Christian. That was back in like 2017.
00:25:04.940
Yeah. That was a while ago. That was a while ago. Yeah. But everyone should get both of them. You can
00:25:09.020
get it, you know, wherever. I'm sure that you get your books. Okay. Let's talk about a little bit with
00:25:14.320
the time that we have left. One disagreement that I know we have, which is a different subject than we've
00:25:19.000
talked about. Calvinism. Calvinism. I am a Calvinist. I believe in predestination. You do not.
00:25:28.280
And I don't expect this to be necessarily this long-winded theological conversation,
00:25:32.920
but I'd love for the audience to just hear kind of the differences in what we believe about that.
00:25:37.640
So you can start. What's your position on predestination and Calvinism?
00:25:41.060
Well, so, I mean, part of the problem is there's a lot of like misunderstandings of what the other
00:25:48.780
side believes. A lot of caricatures people throw around and, you know, people aren't always the
00:25:53.080
most charitable in treating the other side of this. You know, this is a long debate that goes back
00:25:58.100
centuries. There's been Christians on both sides of it for a long time. I think it's really, I think
00:26:03.080
it's healthiest if we come to this conversation, conversations like this saying, look, you know,
00:26:07.300
I'm not going to assume that you have ill motives or that you haven't read the Bible or that you're
00:26:11.600
uneducated and that's why you believe what you believe. I think we need to give each other the
00:26:14.900
benefit of the doubt and say, hey, look, you know, honest Christians who've studied their Bibles for
00:26:18.440
a long time and reached different conclusions on this stuff. As far as like predestination election
00:26:23.540
goes, you know, I believe that the Bible is very clear that election is a thing. It is a biblical
00:26:28.340
thing. The question is whether or not election is unconditional and individual as opposed to corporate,
00:26:35.060
for example. Like when you try to answer the question, well, who has God chosen to save?
00:26:38.980
I would say that the Bible is pretty clear on that. He's chosen to save anyone who believes
00:26:42.160
in Jesus Christ. That's who he's chosen to save. So belief in Jesus Christ is what puts you in that
00:26:47.180
elective body, not some unconditional decree of God from before time began that there are certain
00:26:52.600
people that he would select, certain individuals that he would select, and then sovereignly regenerate
00:27:00.120
So you read, and I totally agree with everything that you said. By the way, I have a lot of
00:27:05.040
good, awesome Christian friends that I learned from who are not Calvinist and who, you know,
00:27:09.800
aren't, who don't believe in every point of TULIP. And so completely agree with you. We have more in
00:27:15.480
common than we disagree on. So that's why it's kind of fun to talk about the disagreements.
00:27:19.340
And the most important thing in common, we have Christ in common, which is the most important
00:27:22.460
thing. So the differences are out on the periphery. Yeah.
00:27:25.080
Right. We both agree that it's by grace through faith. It's kind of what precedes that,
00:27:29.480
um, that I think that we disagree on. Whereas I read something like Ephesians one in love,
00:27:35.060
he predestined us for adoption as sons. And I read Romans nine to mean, um, I guess you could call it
00:27:41.660
corporate, but it is individual, uh, predestination that there is an elect and elect sounds like elite,
00:27:49.180
but of course that's not what we mean by it. We just mean that God predestined the people that he's
00:27:54.560
going to predestined. And while we do believe it is by grace through faith, we believe that he gives
00:27:58.960
grace that then leads to the faith, um, of salvation and that there's nothing that we can
00:28:05.540
add to our salvation. So me saying that, well, if I hadn't believed, or if I hadn't mustered up the
00:28:11.840
strength to believe that I wouldn't be saved, that to me is kind of giving myself credit for my
00:28:16.720
salvation. Whereas Calvinists would say, no, no, no, no. It is only because God predestined you.
00:28:23.520
And here's the, like, here's the conundrum that I find myself in when I try to see like your
00:28:28.620
position. And so maybe you can kind of work this out for me. Yes, you can try because I haven't been
00:28:34.920
able to either. So we agree that God is all powerful, that God is all knowing and that God
00:28:42.580
is omnipresent. We believe all of these things about God. So if that is the case, then how can he,
00:28:52.220
if he foreknows something, which we know that he does because he is all knowing, and if he is not
00:28:57.660
limited by time and space, he's everywhere at once, then how is his foreknowledge not the same
00:29:04.540
thing as predestination? Because he can do anything he wants to, if he can do anything that he wants to,
00:29:10.220
then he could, uh, cause someone to believe in him, but he is choosing not to, like he could cause
00:29:18.480
anyone he wants to believe in him. We know that he turned, uh, Pharaoh's heart into a heart of stone.
00:29:24.220
And so if he can do that and he chooses not to do that for some people, and he chooses to do it for
00:29:29.740
other people, then how is that not predestination? That's a very big question. Wow. A lot loaded into
00:29:37.960
that. Uh, well, where to begin? Okay. So first, let me take a step back first of all, and address
00:29:42.600
something that you said earlier, because this is, I think one of those caricatures, and some of it is
00:29:45.900
just like a way of thinking about things, but when we talk about like somebody exercising faith
00:29:50.820
in, in, you know, you meant, I think you used the words like mustering up the strength or something
00:29:54.760
like that. Um, it has nothing to do with personal strength. First of all, you know, people who
00:29:58.560
disagree with Calvinists about, uh, predestination election, um, you know, the, the point, the five
00:30:03.480
points of tulip, they would still say that salvation is all of God and it's by grace alone. Um, and that
00:30:08.760
God, you know, God has to initiate, God initiates, man merely real yields or resists, right? So if,
00:30:15.560
if I'm yielding and no longer fighting the lifeguard, who's trying to save me while I'm
00:30:20.400
drowning, I'm not saving myself. He's still saving me. I've just stopped resisting him
00:30:24.260
so that he can actually get me out of the water. So, you know, when you yield to God,
00:30:28.480
who's drawing you and wants to save you, that's not a situation where you have anything to brag
00:30:32.300
about. You know, Paul contrasts faith with works. He doesn't, he doesn't say that faith
00:30:35.680
itself is a work. It's literally just saying, I can't do anything to earn my salvation. I need
00:30:41.320
you to save me and yielding to him and allowing him to do that. And that's a response to God's
00:30:46.640
drawing on, on people's hearts, the Holy spirit, the power of the gospel unto salvation being preached
00:30:52.260
to them. Um, that's a response to that. It's not man initiating saying, you know what, I've decided
00:30:57.120
I need salvation and coming to God on his own. Um, so that's one point, um, on, on the point of like
00:31:03.140
God's foreknowledge and him knowing, I agree that God knows everything. Um, I would say that
00:31:09.120
God, uh, whatever you freely decide to do, God infallibly foreknows. So, you know, God knows
00:31:16.380
everything that's going to happen. And that's just the nature of him being God is that he knows
00:31:20.980
everything that's going to happen. Um, I don't think that that amounts to fatalism where, uh,
00:31:26.200
you know, because God knows that it's going to happen means that God determined it. There's a very
00:31:30.060
big difference between, um, God knowing what you'll infallibly and knowing infallibly what you will
00:31:36.060
freely do and God determining that you do it. I think there's a massive difference between those
00:31:40.260
two things. But he could stop anything, correct? He could stop anything from happening that he
00:31:44.340
wanted to stop from happening. And so if he's choosing not to, then this is not necessarily
00:31:51.240
a question that I have a perfect answer to, but if God chooses not to stop something, which we know
00:31:55.900
that is within his power to do, then isn't there a bit of responsibility? Isn't there a bit of
00:32:02.040
predeterminism in that? And him withholding, like choosing not to act?
00:32:08.480
You say that there's, that there's a big difference between foreknowledge and predeterminism. And I do
00:32:13.300
agree with that. I agree that the Bible speaks to that, that the Bible shows God is completely
00:32:17.720
sovereign, but also holds man responsible for his actions. So there's a little bit of like
00:32:22.320
concurrence there. And Romans 9 talks about that sovereignty of God kind of in this tension with
00:32:28.980
what human beings decide to do and their responsibility for the things that they do.
00:32:32.800
What I struggle with is if God is totally like, I think of it like this, like I love, I thought that
00:32:37.660
your lifeguard analogy was really, really good. I think people are going to benefit a lot from that.
00:32:42.140
The analogy also that I think of has to do with drowning in a pool, actually. So if you have a
00:32:48.160
babysitter who is babysitting a child and the child walks outside, walks into the pool and drowns,
00:32:57.180
parents come home, obviously awful thing. The only way that you would not hold that babysitter
00:33:02.540
responsible for what happened is if that babysitter was constrained in some way, so that babysitter
00:33:08.880
didn't have the power to save that child. Or if somehow the babysitter didn't know, or the babysitter
00:33:15.360
wasn't there, all of those would be irresponsible things. But those three things we know were not true
00:33:20.280
about God. Like we know that God is all powerful. We know that God is there. We know that he is
00:33:24.660
capable, that he has the knowledge to do something. So in the same way that that babysitter would still
00:33:29.260
be held responsible, even though the babysitter didn't push the child into the pool, their
00:33:34.560
capability of being able to save that child from the pool does hold them responsible.
00:33:43.280
Yeah. So like Alvin Plantinga, if you're familiar with him, he put together this argument
00:33:48.040
called the free will defense. It's not really original to him, but he really formulated and
00:33:51.540
structured the free will defense to explain how there can possibly be evil when God exists
00:33:56.340
and he's omnipotent, omniscient. You know, like how is it possible that we have evil?
00:34:03.080
The answer, the one possible answer, an answer that I think is biblical, is the fact that he's
00:34:07.660
decided to create free creatures. So when we talk about like sovereignty, you know, a non-Calvinist
00:34:13.640
like me would agree that God is sovereign. But when it comes to like human freedom, a lot of
00:34:17.720
Calvinists think, okay, well, if he's sovereign, it means he's got to control everything. He's got
00:34:22.200
to determine everything that happens. I don't see any reason why God couldn't in his sovereignty
00:34:26.540
exercise divine self-limitation and allow for free creatures to exist, to live in an environment
00:34:33.820
where love and goodness and joy and suffering are all possible because he sees some great
00:34:40.280
good in that. And if he decides to do that in his sovereignty, decides to do that, I don't
00:34:44.840
think that you can fault him for that if he's determined that he thinks that there's some
00:34:48.480
good to that, that it's better to have that than to not have that. And so, you know, when
00:34:52.720
God is being patient with us because he's not willing that any should perish and desires that
00:34:58.960
every man and commands that every man everywhere repent and believe, I think he's being genuine.
00:35:04.960
He's being sincere. He wants everybody to repent and believe. And I think that Romans is a beautiful
00:35:09.500
picture. If you zoom out of like specific passages that focus on, you know, God will harden whoever
00:35:14.280
he wants to harden. And, you know, if you zoom out from those specific passages, he'll have mercy on
00:35:20.940
whoever he wants to have mercy. Later on, it talks about how he wants to have mercy on them all in
00:35:24.620
chapter 11. What Paul's burden is there is to show, you know, that the Jews are really objecting
00:35:29.580
that Gentiles are being grafted in, that they're enjoying, that they're being, entering into this
00:35:35.840
covenant with God too, through Jesus Christ. It's supposed to be this exclusive thing. It's being
00:35:40.440
opened up. God is arguing, who are you to question me? How can you question me that I've opened it up
00:35:45.000
to everybody that I want to have mercy on more people? The election was originally with Israel,
00:35:50.220
and that's a corporate thing. And then it became in Christ and opened up to Gentiles. That's a
00:35:57.200
corporate thing. It's a larger corporate thing. And the one led to the other. So I see Romans 9 as
00:36:02.380
really being Paul's burden to widen the scope of God's mercy and include the Gentiles in it,
00:36:09.320
not just the Jews, and to do so through Jesus so that anyone who believes can be saved. And it's
00:36:14.480
ultimately his desire that all be saved and he'll have mercy on all.
00:36:21.000
So, and the reason that they're not is because he's not being deterministic. He's not forcing
00:36:25.160
Christ on anyone. He's allowing you to either yield or resist. So I think that's really comes
00:36:30.560
down to the key differences. And it's just, you know, what is God's desire? I think it's really
00:36:34.080
clearly stated biblically that God's desire is for all to be saved.
00:36:40.840
Like I said, I think we agree on so much more than we disagree on. When I look at Romans 9
00:36:45.040
and those surrounding chapters, when he's not just talking about Israel and he's not just
00:36:50.660
separating Israel and Gentiles, he's separating faith from lack of faith because he says not all
00:36:55.740
Israel is Israel. And he talks about how it is, you know, by grace through faith, even though it
00:37:02.200
doesn't use the same terminology that it does in Ephesians 2, talks about how it is through faith
00:37:07.540
that both Gentiles and Jews are now coming together and are reconciled to God and are reconciled to each
00:37:12.980
other. So because of that, because the distinction there is not primarily between Gentiles and Jews
00:37:18.200
in those chapters, but between those who have faith, Gentiles and Jews, and those who do not.
00:37:22.880
And then he says, he says that people are going to say, okay, but how is that fair that he makes
00:37:28.040
vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy unsaved and saved? Who can, who can resist his will? How is that
00:37:34.920
fair basically? And Paul answers kind of like what you said, who are you? Who is, who is the clay to
00:37:41.580
answer back to the potter? Why did you make me this way? Now, I think, like you said, we're, we have
00:37:46.540
maybe differences in, in interpretation there and, you know, there are other passages and love he
00:37:52.320
predestined us. And I guess you would interpret that as meaning kind of collectively. He predestines
00:37:57.400
the saints. He predestines, I don't know, the Gentiles to be saved. Whereas I would look at that
00:38:03.860
more individualistically, but I think, I think that's where we'll leave it. I really, really
00:38:09.600
appreciate you taking the time to so clearly articulate your thoughts. I think people will
00:38:13.440
benefit from it. Maybe one day we can have a longer exclusively theological conversation. That would
00:38:19.420
be fun. Okay. Yeah, it would be. I, you know, I appreciate you giving me the chance to talk about
00:38:23.700
it. You know, a lot of people don't want to touch these things because it can get so heated, but I
00:38:26.460
think if you, you know, if you just have an open heart and mind to hear what other people have to say,
00:38:30.780
it doesn't have to get that way. Yeah, definitely. Especially when you have Christ in
00:38:34.640
common. All right. Where can everyone find you, support you, the Babylon Bee, your book,
00:38:40.780
all that good stuff? Bee, we're easy to find. We're all over everything. Babylonbee.com. We're
00:38:45.600
on Twitter, Instagram, everything. Myself, I'm Bee Chief on Instagram and I'm on Twitter as Seth
00:38:52.940
Dillon. Yeah, I think the main thing I'd want to push is our book. Go buy the Babylon Bee Guide to
00:38:58.240
Wokeness. It's a top seller right now. We actually hit 14, number 14 on the all, on all books on
00:39:04.420
Amazon. That's awesome. That was pretty impressive. Our publisher's thrilled with that. Go make it
00:39:08.420
number one. That would be pretty cool. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Seth. Thanks for talking to us.