Podcast #69: You’re Not Gonna Live Forever (or Learn how to Fly)

20 October 25, 2015 by

69_finalThis episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors begins with a heartwarming tale of “tough love,” that special brand of care that renders the phrase “kill them with kindness” all the more meaningful. We take a call from a listener demanding to know more about Jason’s life (which demand is rebuffed), and another from some guy who hates Mother Teresa and implies she was some sort of monster. We discuss one of the New Atheist’s controversial view of gun control, completely solve the riddle of reincarnation, and then tackle the issue of radical Islam. We are asked to weigh in on Justin Bieber’s wiener (which one of us has seen and the other has also seen but won’t admit it), and then take another call about the difference between Edward Snowden and Kim Davis. In our “Dick Move, God” segment we meet a grieving elementary school teacher whose students learned a valuable lesson about what happens when you damage the ego of the Lord’s anointed. Christian is biebered by people who refuse to “Feel the Bern,” while Jason’s bieber involves being forced to think about useless people.

Also: Bears, God? Really? Wow. Just… wow.

Links from this Episode:

20 Comments (click here to leave a comment)

  1. Bishop Robert Barron also really liked Christopher Hitchens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW8yBnpN48w

    As I understand it, Hitchens didn’t like Mother Teresa because he didn’t like the way she was helping the sick. But last time I checked, I didn’t see him doing too much for them. While he lived in luxary drinking Scotch, smoking cigars, and going around making fun of the poor dumb Christians, she spent virtually her entire life dedicated to helping and living with the poor and suffering. She founded a Charity (Missionaries of Charity) that has >4500 sisters and is active in 133 countries. She also won the Nobel Peace Prize (not that means much – Obama… Ha!). And that fact that she did all that while experiencing a “dark night of the soul” that lasted decades, receiving no consolation from God, is all the more impressive.

  2. Speaking of reincarnation. I saw this story posted on Facebook by one of my friends a while back, and thought Christian would like it, if he hadn’t already seen it:

    You were on your way home when you died.

    It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

    And that’s when you met me.

    “What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

    “You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

    “There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

    “Yup,” I said.

    “I… I died?”

    “Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

    You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

    “More or less,” I said.

    “Are you god?” You asked.

    “Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

    “My kids… my wife,” you said.

    “What about them?”

    “Will they be all right?”

    “That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

    You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty. “Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

    “Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

    “Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

    “Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

    “All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.” You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

    “Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.” “So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

    “Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

    I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

    “You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

    “How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

    “Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

    “Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

    “Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

    “Where you come from?” You said.

    “Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

    “Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

    “Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

    “So what’s the point of it all?”

    “Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

    “Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

    I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

    “You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

    “No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.” “Just me? What about everyone else?”

    “There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

    You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

    “All you. Different incarnations of you.”

    “Wait. I’m everyone!?”

    “Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back. “I’m every human being who ever lived?”

    “Or who will ever live, yes.”

    “I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

    “And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

    “I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

    “And you’re the millions he killed.”

    “I’m Jesus?”

    “And you’re everyone who followed him.”

    You fell silent.

    “Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

    You thought for a long time.

    “Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

    “Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

    “Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

    “No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

    “So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

    “An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

    And I sent you on your way.

  3. I’m not sure what the actual complaint against MT is, although I did read the link we posted with the podcast. However, I’m pretty sure that no one is claiming that Hitchens was a better person than MT.

  5. I’m glad I tuned in this week. Good podcast!

    1. I am beibered by the fact that I’m becoming a Sam Harris fan boy. It’s annoying how persuasive the man can be.

    2. I think the reason why he is shifting Christians “gun O meter” is because he is giving the arguments from a consequential point of view rather than the usual pro gun constitution lover. He basically says “this is where we are… where should we go from here” when most other people talk about the issue as if we were starting from scratch.

    3. Hitchens was a joy to read, but he was also kind of an ass hole. I think his “missionary position” attack on mother Teresa was kind of nutty and rabid.

    4. Liberals missing the boat on Islam is ALMOST as annoying as conservatives treating muslims like shit around the globe. We need to be able to voice the issue (liberals failing miserably here) without trampling on all the liberal “cultural muslims” who don’t really have any idea what their doctrine should be.

    5. Things that will help people understand Islam.

    A. The Muslim doctrine of abrogation. (Followed by an understanding of which scriptures in the Quran were written “last”)

    B. The gates of Itjihad

    C. The hadith (and their importance given itjihad)

    D. Sharia Law

    E. Jihad in its various forms (as explained by all four major schools of Sunni Jurisprudence)

    All you need to understand to grasp the pickle we are in dealing with these people.

  7. It gives an interesting perspective on the golden rule – blasphemous – but interesting all the same.

  8. • Jesus didn’t actually say that his followers would take up snakes and drink poison. That bit was added on later by someone that thought Mark needed a better ending than the women fleeing from the tomb and keeping the whole event to themselves.

    But everything else in the bible is definitely inspired and definitely the word of God. Yesiree.

    • Well, Moses did say that you should stone rebellious teens to death, so that church was just following “The Word of the Lord.”

    • That was one of the passages we skipped during Calvary’s youth group.

    • Jason Stelman: International man of mystery.

    • Jim Baker is back on the air and his new scam is apparently selling survivalist supplies at high markups to the rubes who think civilization is going to end.

    • Speaking of con men, you guys should follow John Oliver’s example, start your own non-profit church, file for tax exemption status, and really rake in the donations. Our Lady of Perpetual Drunkenness. You can sell different titles: Deacon, Prayer Partner, Grand Poobah… Offer ordination online…

    • Asking people to make that kind of coordinated effort and sacrifice to mass charge an active shooter as he is opening fire on them in what was a seemingly safe place seems unrealistic. The first primal instinct will be to panic. The second primal instinct will be escape. If I were rational, my thoughts would be, “Do I rush this lunatic with nothing but my fists and die and orphan my children or do I try to escape or play dead and possibly die, but possibly live?”

    • It’s well to say that certain people shouldn’t have a gun, but does he support laws that would restrict ownership from those people?

    • I’ve never understood what the point of reincarnation? I mean, it’s all well and good for me to come back for another go round, but if I don’t remember anything about any of the past rides, how am I supposed to learn what I supposedly need to learn? Seems rather sadistic. “Okay, you need to learn something really important. But every time you die, you’re going to forget it all and start from scratch.”

    • The mind is an interesting thing. I’ve had dreams before where I lived an entire lifetime. I married. I had children. I grew old. I died. It felt like I lived 80 years. And then I woke up. It’s happened twice so far. And there are times, I suppose, when I wonder if I die, will I wake up and find myself in my bed with this life having been a dream.

    • I’ve had overwhelming feelings of déjà vu before where things have happened that I knew would happen because I remember it happening before. It’s all in our heads.

    • Do good now, son, and one of these lives, you might come back as an American.

    • My initial thoughts on Islam are that we, in this country, have completely lost our damn minds on the subject and obsess and worry about terrorism to a degree that we don’t worry about far more common causes of death that are much more likely to afflict us: heart disease, cancer, car accidents, gun violence… We’ve constructed an incredibly large and invasive security apparatus to protect us because 14 years ago, some fanatics killed 4,000 people. Meanwhile, we’re fatter and eating worse than ever and do jack shit about lunatics getting their hands on guns.

    • My main objection to how we talk about Islam is that everyone tends to say “All A is B” instead of “Some A is B, Some A is C, Some A is D”.

    • I think the vast majority of Muslims are probably like us. They want to live their life in peace, get married, raise their kids, get a good job, and leave the world for their kids a little better than the world they inherited. The problem is the assholes. I think this because there are a billion Muslims in the world and the vast majority of them have never picked up a gun and decided to kill people for no other reason than that they are infidels.

    • The bible itself contains several commandments by Jehovah to kill apostates and infidels and raze their cities to the ground to prevent impurity from spreading. Most of us simply ignore those passages and focus on the bits about loving your neighbor. I think most Muslims are probably doing the same.

    • Culturally, there is a lot of shit in that part of the world that is backwards and barbaric. Again, you can see elements of this in the Old Testament Law. A cultural change has to happen. Christians should be leading that change, but we’re largely spending our time bombing the region with little regard for how many innocent people die so long as a few guilty ones die too.

    • If you’re naked outside in public, it is different than if someone hacks your phone server. In the latter, you didn’t want or intend for your body to be seen by anyone other than the intended recipient. But if you’re at a nudist beach and letting it all hang out, then you gave up any expectation of privacy you had.

    • Hey, he didn’t do ‘nothing.’ Bieber sang “Baby” a lot in some godawful songs.

    • Here’s a list of 10 artists that died in poverty: http://mentalfloss.com/article/28010/10-cultural-giants-who-died-coinless

    • Yes, that juxtaposition depresses the hell out of me too.

    • You know, being famous doesn’t have to be bad. Think Paul Newman or even Harrison Ford. Really famous guys that didn’t have the paparazzi following them around documenting their life. They stay(ed) out of the spotlight when they weren’t working. It’s just that most of the people who are ‘famous’ these days are equally famous for their poor life choices: booze, drugs, sex, fights, etc.

    • Glad that we know about the surveillance state. Not happy that Edward Snowden took government documents to China and then Russia. Doesn’t seem like if you’re concerned with massive state surveillance, privacy, and freedom that those would be the two destinations you would choose to go to.

    • Now, with the echo on, say: “SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!”

    • National Socialism (aka Fascism) is not democratic socialism. Democratic socialism is the highway system. It is the Internet. It is, for many, your schools or your utilities. It is the reason you have a forty hour work week. Government looks out for the general welfare of the people. Government for the people. You are free to vote. You are free to choose your leadership. There is no coercion.

    Fascism is a one-party system where you have no choice. Other parties are outlawed. Government is not for the people, people are resources for the government.

    • God, in the Old Testament, is much like the old Greek gods. The best move you can make is to keep your head down and try not to get noticed by him, otherwise you get changed into a minotaur or a gorgon or get mauled by a bear or incinerated for doing your job.

    • “To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.”

    • Yes, I don’t understand the national obsession with the Kardashian family. Kim made a sex tape and now we’re in year 10 of millions of people following the goings on of a vapid, annoying clan of idiots who have somehow earned millions of dollars from their idiot followers.

  9. New DXP T-shirt:
    “Justin Bieber’s wiener.”
    “Yeah, I have no problem with his wiener being out in the public.”

    Also, it’s pretty much guaranteed Peter Rollins will be begging y’all for an interview if you tell Jay Bakker that all guests get a free bottle of gin.

  11. I’ve read this a couple of times, Chris. Who is it? Sounds like Douglas Adams.

    “To summarize: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.”

  18. To be fair, it IS hard for someone to accept God’s forgiveness, if they are actively rejecting their need for God’s forgiveness.

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