Spirit in Action
A Cultural Arsonist’s Literal Reading of the Bible
Joe Wenke has just released You Got To Be Kidding: A Cultural Arsonist’s Literal Reading of the Bible, and with humor and sometimes sarcasm, he brings new, unjaded eyes to the writings of the Bible. He aims to disarm those who would use the Bible for oppression and domination and is seriously focused on making you laugh on the way to the unshackling. Joe has been a corporate speech writer, a stand-up comedian, and has trademarked the Cultural Arsonist moniker.
- Broadcast on:
- 03 Feb 2013
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- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along I'm thinking that today's Spirit in Action guest will do a couple things for you. He'll get you to laugh, and while you're doing that, he'll also get you thinking. His name is Joe Wenke, and he's the author of a new book, You Got to Be Kidding, the cultural arsonist's literal reading of the Bible. My take on it is that over the past 30 or 40 years, our society has relinquished the fundamentalist, literalist portion of the population, almost all definition of what the Bible is and says. With this work of thought-provoking humor, Joe Wenke is part of the forces reclaiming the right to identify the content and meaning of the Bible. The fact that Joe does this through humor means that maybe it will get under the radar of some who otherwise would cover their ears and refuse to see other possibilities. Joe's a PhD in English, a former corporate speechwriter, and he's a stand-up comedian. Joe Wenke joins us today by phone from Connecticut. Joe, I'm very pleased to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you so much, Mark. My pleasure. In reading your book, You Got to Be Kidding, I found a lot of commonalities with some of the rye ways that I look at the Bible, too. I mean, I really enjoyed it. It was fun, and it was also thought-provoking from time to time. With all the humor and the rye comments, I think that some people might miss the fact that you actually know the Bible pretty well. Did you learn it as a Catholic kid, which I think is not really very likely, or did you just get the Cliff Notes Guide to the Bible and fake it? Well, you know, the Catholic Church is more focused on the New Testament, so I was pretty familiar with that. But over the years, I had become pretty familiar with the Bible and studied it in college, but I hadn't really studied it from the perspective of my current thinking, you know, the way that I now looked at the world. And the genesis of my book, if I can even use that word, was kind of strange. I woke up one morning, and the first thought that occurred to me was that I was going to read the Bible, and when I found something funny, I would write about it. And I walked over to my laptop, downloaded an electronic version of the Bible, started reading, and when I hit the atom and Eve's story, I saw something funny, and I wrote a sketch. And that's how the book got started. And so I then proceeded to read the Bible from beginning to end, and really paying attention to how ironic and odd it was if you read the Bible from a literal point of view. You know, that's basically how the book got started. And I wrote all the sketches very quickly, almost like emails, over a period of a few weeks. So I think when you're reading for writing, you read differently. So I'm pretty familiar with the Bible at this point. You can debate fundamentalists with some degree of success. That sounds fun, doesn't it? Well, not always fun. They can get kind of touchy. They're a little touchy, you know, at times. But we all get touchy. That's right. That's right. Well, you started out with Adam and Eve. Would you like to share that passage so listeners can idea what you have in the book? Sure. I think it gives you a sense of the point of view and the attitude of the book. I mean, again, the point of view is that if you have a well-developed sense of humor, you're intelligent and educated, and you're reading and writing in the 21st century, and you read the Bible literally, you get satire, not fundamentalism. And so here's sort of what that sounds like. This is the Adam and Eve sketch. God is looking for Adam and Eve. They both ate a piece of fruit, and he has really pissed. They're hiding behind some trees in the garden, and they're looking at their genitals, which they had never really noticed before. For some reason, God is having a hard time finding Adam and Eve. Where are you, he cries out. Adam decides to let God know where they are, figuring, I suppose, that he would eventually find them anyway. God is immediately in Adam's face, really upset about the fact that he and Eve ate the fruit. Have you eaten of the tree of which I command at you not to eat, he says? Cornered, Adam puts most of the blame on Eve, but implies that it's sort of God's fault, too, since creating Eve was his idea. He says, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." God ignores Adam for the moment, at least, and turns on Eve. What is it that you have done? He says, "Eve will take none of the blame either. The serpent deceived me, and I ate," she says. So now the serpent's in trouble, and God really throws the book at him. Because you have done this, God says, "Cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts in the field. On your belly shall you go." I don't know how the serpent got around previously, whether it had legs or wings or whatever, but from now on, it has to crawl. That's a tough punishment, but God is just getting started here. Before he's done, he makes sure that childbirth will be excruciating for Eve and all future women, and he makes Adam her boss. In fact, he makes men the boss of women forever more. For his part, Adam is going to have to work his ass off to even feed himself. His whole life is going to be miserable. Eads, too. Nothing but misery and suffering. And at the end of it all, they die. But here's the kicker. Everybody else who is ever going to be born gets the same punishment. Work your ass off, your home miserable, God forsaken life, and then die. Do you ever find yourself wondering why life really sucks? Like, what's the story? Why does it have to be this way? I just told you. And now that you know, there's really only one thing you can say, and that is thank you, Lord. That's it. I did the idea that you're not a great fan of the concept of original sin. No. I don't think that I should be blamed for somebody eating a piece of fruit eons and eons ago, and then to be punished ever more. Wait, 6,000 years ago, remember? Well, that's what they say. Creationists, well, I've already sort of used a few naughty words. Let me just say, here's my question. I mean, how is it possible for the earth to be less than 10,000 years old when the first asshole goes back at least half a billion years? I'm talking about the anatomical one. The other type, I'm not sure what that dates back to, but I'm betting that the earth is just a little bit older than 10,000 years. Well, speaking of sphincter openings, you've got a chapter on brotherly love as in not brotherly love. As in Cain and Abel or perhaps Esau and Jacob. I figure that there's something Freudian or deeply psychological in a way about that. I don't have the proper term for it, but in terms of talking about heartless, abusive brothers, considering that you grew up as the oldest of 11 kids in your family. Is there any chance that the abuse you're describing in the Bible or echoing in the Bible is something that you might want to confess to on this program? Yes, I'm always happy to confess to my sins original or not, whether I've copied other people in my sins. Yeah, but since I was the oldest, I wasn't really an abuser, but one of my brothers, Jack, is just a year and a week younger than I am. So we were very close as little kids, but I did take advantage of being a little bit older. And he's still very upset to this day that I invented a game called invisible baseball. So we would play invisible baseball in the streets of South Philadelphia and I was the pitcher and the umpire. And then when I was the batter, I was still the umpire. So I would throw him the pitch and he would swing his invisible bat and he would always strike out. And in those days, he couldn't figure why he was so inept and why I always won. But then later on, when it dawned on him, he got a little bit mad at me and he's still pretty touchy about it. But that's about as abusive as I ever became. But there are sibling rivalries and to bring everything up to date, there is some discord in my family currently about this book. Most of them are still Catholic. My one brother is a fundamental Christian. I'd say most of my family kind of mad at me for satirizing the Bible. But hopefully one day they'll get over it. Have they been mad at you a long time or is this book a new opportunity to attract their resentments? I think you're gay. Is that right? No, I'm actually not. I consider myself... I thought that from something that you said earlier. No, well, I'm a contributor to Huffington Post Gay Voices and I just did an interview for Revolution Gay. And I'm an LGBT activist, but I actually consider myself to be... Well, actually, I wrote a piece on this. I'm primarily attracted to transgender women and there's no word to describe that sexual orientation. Wow. A whole new vocabulary we have to develop. So what I've come up with is trisexual, which is a word that's been used to describe people who will do anything, which also describes anybody. It's not really a sexual orientation. But anyway, that's what I call myself right now. Actually, if we go back to the book, my good friend, Giselle Extravaganza, is a transgender model, very successful model. And she is the nun on the cover of the book. That's her. Some people know and some people don't know, but it's actually the cover is sort of a personification of the attitude of the book. And kind of an interesting story, too. The original designer of the book came up with the idea of showing a nun on the cover, but looking kind of scandalized. And it just seemed kind of a way of trivializing the book. But I like the idea of having a nun on the cover. So I went online, and I bought a nun costume, and I gave it to my friend Giselle. And she put it on, took a picture of herself, and she looked totally angelic. Much the way she does on the cover of the book. But we all then said, "Well, we have to make this funny, too." And we got a new designer, Jeffrey Michelson, who's actually not there in his own light. He just wrote a book where it meets Jeffrey, and he came up with the idea of having the title you've got to be kidding, coming out of Giselle's head as a cartoon bubble. So that's the story of the cover of the book. So it's sort of, you know, the book is there to call out the fact that a lot of people use the Bible to justify their own bigotry, oftentimes against LGBT people or, you know, discrimination against women. That's part of the point of view of the book, but doing it in a funny way, so it was just great to have Giselle in the cover. Now, she's going to be on the cover, actually of all of my books. We have quite a few books planned. And the sequel to this book is already done. It's a satire of the Catholic Church. And she's going to be on the cover as the poem. So that's another reason the family's not going to be real happy. Yes, they will face. Yes, exactly. Does your gender preference have something to do with them not being really pleased with you? That's another part of it, too. We're getting very messy now, yes. But there was a big blow up over that whole thing, too, which hasn't resolved yet. It's a great picture, by the way, really impressive. I really love it. It is. Well, Giselle is truly one of the most beautiful women in the world. She's done all sorts of modeling, Calvin Klein and Chanel and Runway work. And she's a close friend, and I thought she would be perfect to be on the cover. Good choice. Yeah. The title of the book is "You've Got to Be Kidding" and down at the bottom it says "Joe Wankie, the cultural arsonist's literal reading of the Bible." So, cultural arsonist. What's that? Yes, anybody can be a cultural arsonist. It just takes courage and wit. Cultural arsonist is somebody who goes about setting fire to stupidity and burning up bigotry, again, using humor as a tool, doing it metaphorically, of course, and totally non-violent. With a conscientious objector, it would have been way back when the draft ended a couple of months before I graduated college. But, yeah, I've always been very non-violent. But that's the whole idea of it, and I'm sort of encouraging people to speak out more and more because the bigots among us are not shy. So, I think it's important what we think, but it's even more important what we say and do. And so, that's what the concept of a cultural arsonist is. But I'm also, I've trademarked it, so I'm also going to sell cultural arsonist coffee mugs and t-shirts on my website. And I joked with my agent that I'm really just writing the books to sell junk on my website, but that'll be available soon, maybe in February. Go to joewanky.org and you can buy a cultural arsonist coffee mug. We even created a logo, which is pretty cool. And if you don't know how to spell Joewanky, you can get there via the link on northernspiritradio.org. Well, let's talk a little bit more about the book. There are a lot of interesting characters in the Bible, and you bring them out in all of their peculiarity in this book. All throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, what we often call the Old Testament, a lot of the characters seem to have superpowers. Do you care to name any of your favorite superheroes or maybe super villains from the Hebrew Scriptures? Well, I love the Old Testament prophets, and that's why I wrote this little sketch called the prophets, amazing powers. The interesting thing is, and I sort of look at them as magic tricks, not miracles, and fantasize that Jesus must have been a great student of what we now call the Old Testament, and really studied Elijah and Elijah, and maybe even practiced some of their more trivial magic tricks before he went on to turning water into wine and walking on water. But I mean, these guys do amazing things, and that's why I say Elijah, for example, has skills. He can make it rain or cause a drought, and when he's rambling around on the road, he doesn't really have to worry about food because magically the birds bring him food, and if it isn't birds, it's an angel. And there are different food tricks in the Old Testament, too. He goes and visits a widow, and after she feeds him and gives him water, he sort of creates a jug of flour and a vessel of oil that just keeps on replenishing themselves. And actually, he raises the dead, too. So these are pretty exciting chapters in the Bible. They're sort of like science fiction from way back when. But it's kind of interesting imagining these guys performing all of these amazing feats. And it's funny, too, if you, again, looking from the 21st century scientific mind, that's really funny, and people are just saying, "I literally believe every word in the Bible." You know, it's like really? Did you see what happened there? One thing I would have to take exception with you about was you didn't seem to be very impressed by the burning bush, which, from my point of view, it's one of the images I love in the Bible. There's a little bush burning out there endlessly, but you didn't like it. It struck me as being kind of beneath the creator of the universe to show up inside of a burning bush. It was like a bad old movie. Or maybe I was imagining the voice of the Wizard of Oz coming out of the bush, but it just seemed to be like slapstick comedy all of a sudden. Because, again, I was trying to imagine it literally like if I were walking down the street and then all of a sudden the creator of the universe appeared to me in a burning bush. I'd say, you know, couldn't you have introduced yourself with a little bit more dick on? You are, after all, the creator of the universe. And this is the way that I sort of look at all of these things. If you really try to think about them happening literally or happening to you, that kind of exposes, for me, the absurdity of a lot of these scenes. The Bible on them raises the issue of how in the heck do people believe literally in every single word, and how do they believe that the anthropomorphic creator of the universe is actually the author behind all of these passages? Yeah, it's a stretch. But, you know, I can see your point of view, too. I mean, it would be very cool if you were walking down the street and then suddenly there was a burning bush with a voice coming out of it. But I would think that maybe I had drunk too much the night before or had taken something I shouldn't have rather than thinking that that was indeed the creator of the universe. Actually, in the Psalms, there's a reference I've seen in one translation. It refers to the divine as humble mountain, making a plea to the humble mountain. And so the burning bush kind of, to me, is like, wow, that's a great way to look at divine window into divine stuff. Cool. Right, but you know what's really interesting is when you start talking about the Bible this way, you find that people have different reactions. So your reaction is just as interesting as mine and as compelling as mine. And it's just a different way of talking about the stories of the Bible, and it's sort of a more human way and a more humane way to talk about it, rather than using the Bible to justify, you know, some sort of prejudice that one has or to impose some sort of a moral code, which is really another one of my points is if you look at Old Testament morality, at least strikes me as more tribal code than anything else. People are always in danger being stoned to death for doing one thing or another. I mean, working on the Sabbath. Or if you're a woman and you marry and it turns out you weren't the virgin, you know, your husband has that option of stoning you to death because I guess it would be horribly embarrassing. And when I think about, okay, who today best personifies that kind of attitude and tribal code, it's really, you know, a group like a Taliban. It's not how we think of morality as a way of adjudicating relations between people who are trying to find common ground or trying to get along. And yet, time and again, we hear people referring to the Bible, you know, referring to Leviticus, for example, to maintain that homosexuality is wrong. The infamous remark, you might recall, that Rick Santorum, he didn't actually make it during the campaign. He had made it a few years before when people said, "Are you for marriage equality?" And he said, "Well, you know, the Bible is against man on man just as much as it's against man on dog and on parafrasing." And initially, he said, "Well, where did he come up with that?" But actually, if you go back and read Leviticus, the prohibition against homosexuality is immediately followed in the next verse with the prohibition against bestiality. So I don't think it was a coincidence that Rick made that comparison. Sure, yeah. I think you're talking about chapter 13. That's one that seems to have all day. Here's the reasons you get to kill people. I was wondering how many of them would put you on the hot seat. I mean, I was going through the list, I said, "Oh, I think I did that one." Oops, oh, yeah, maybe. Yes, quite possibly. Yeah, a lot of these would get me into trouble. You know, it's amazing the different things that you can and can't do. And, you know, that's why I have a little chapter on Weird Laws. And then I have a list of what gets you the death penalty. But then that's immediately followed by what's okay to do according to the Bibles. For example, owning slaves or even selling your daughter into slavery. And then a lot of the rules are very elaborate, like you can beat your slave with a stick as long as he survives for a day or two after the beating. But if he dies right away, you're in trouble. Or you can seduce a virgin as long as you pay her father and marry her. And if for some reason the father won't let you marry his daughter after you raped her, you're still okay if you pay him the right amount of money. So there's this weird relationship between, you know, rape, seduction, money. And the whole idea that women are owned by men. And you didn't know this stuff before, I guess, last year or two when you started going through reading the Bible? Did you know this? I knew it, you know, on a macro level. I had this idea and this memory of, you know, the harshness of mosaic law and the idea that women were only subordinated. But when I actually went and read each of the statements of mosaic law, it almost became like, you know, an absurdist play or something that Woody Allen would have made up, you know, way back when he was doing those New Yorker pieces. So you can have sex with another man's slave as long as you sacrifice a lamb afterwards, absurd. It's great stuff. It is great stuff. It's fine. I mean, you don't have to, that's what it is. You don't really have to make up a joke. It's a joke in and of itself. All you have to do is transcribe it. You have a portion where you talk about the Ten Commandments and about half of them, you know, they kind of make sense to you, right? Did you notice, by the way, when you were going through there that there are actually two different sets of Ten Commandments? Because, you know, when Moses comes down and he's pissed at the people he breaks and so he goes up and gets and they're not the same set. They're not identical. Yeah, I think he got mixed up, you know, and then we've been mixed up as a result ever since. But I think Ten Commandments are more than enough, so I'm glad that we don't have all 20. And even if it's a little bit confusing, that's fine with me. You know, I get the feeling that you don't much trust the books of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, that you don't trust them much as a moral compass? Now, why would that be, you know? Well, you know, here's the point. These things were written a long time ago, you know, and I think we have to look at them within the context of the culture that they were written. And I think we often tend to be anachronistic in thinking about people who lived a really long time ago. And so I try to imagine, well, who actually wrote this, you know, you can believe that the words were inspired by the creator of the universe. I don't believe that. But I mean, somebody was in the middle of the, you know, the desert 2500 years ago. What was the literacy rate then? Had to be less than 1%. There might not have been a lot to read, so you didn't miss much. Be that as it may. Not too many people could read. There was no indoor plumbing. I don't think they showered or bathed all that much. And we're thinking of these, you know, possibly nomadic people as being the authors of morality for us in the 21st century. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That's why I say the concept of so-called morality, to me, references in my mind more of the Taliban than anyone else. Who's just struggling with trying to do the right thing in their daily lives. You know, you don't sound much like a comedian when you're talking about this stuff. I think this stuff has had real consequences on your life. I don't know, growing up as an adult. Do you feel victimized by the Bible? Well, I never think of myself as a victim. But, you know, it's interesting, I've been talking about this with some of my friends recently. I think as you get older, you realize the degree to which your thinking is shaped by when you were just a little child. You know, with maybe things that people told you or that you experienced. You barely remember them, but they continue to mold your thinking. And so I think maybe more than the Bible, again, I was raised Catholic. I was more influenced by going to Catholic school and by the nuns. I mean, I went back, you know, in the day of the '50s and '60s Catholic school where it was more like a penal institution. It's the Catholic schools that George Carlin used to talk about, corporal punishment. And religion in those days was catechism. So you were drilled. There were specific questions and answers. Any sexual, which used to be called an impure thought, was considered to be a sin. It could even be, you know, a mortal sin. That kind of stuff actually stays with you. You know, no matter how liberated you feel that you've become, it sort of gets itself into the synapses of your brain and it's kind of hard to erase. I think a lot of people experience that. You know, whether they're raised Catholic or in some other religion, you sort of carry around the baggage of your upbringing. And you have to constantly try to transcend that, I think, in your daily life. Well, if you just tuned in, I want you to know you're listening to Spirit in Action. This is a Northern Spirit Radio production. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeat, on the web at northernspiritradio.org. And we have here as our guest today, Joe Wenke. His recent book is You Got to Be Kidding, the cultural, arsonist, literal reading of the Bible. You can listen to my interview with Joe and many other people from the past seven and a half years at northernspiritradio.org. You'll find links to them so you can get to joewenke.org via my site. And there's a place to post comments. We love it when you post comments. We love to have the dialogue be two way. There's also a place to make donations. You can make donations to me. And I want to remind you to support your local community radio stations. There are people who are doing really good work giving an alternative voice, like the voice of Joe Wenke, getting it out to the world. Now, again, the book, you got to be kidding, the cultural, arsonist, literal reading of the Bible. The book goes through the Bible with this literal eye, but with the 21st century person's power of discernment. And you get to notice interesting things. One of the things that comes out repeatedly through the Bible is the presence of virgins. And let's skip Mother Mary, but do you have any other favorite virgins of the Bible that you really like the stories of, Joe? Well, there is this one really odd story in the Old Testament that does have to do with a virgin. And the way I look at it, though, is that you can't really make a deal with God because you just don't know what's going to happen. And there's this guy in the Old Testament. I think his name is Jeptha. And he wanted to make a deal with God and be able to defeat his enemies. And it's almost like an old folktale where he says, "If you just give me these amazing powers, well, then, whoever comes through the door of my house, you can have that person. They can die." Lo and behold, his daughter walks out the door. She's a virgin, and oddly, she accepts the fact that she's going to die. She just requests to be able to go up to the mountains and mourn her virginity for the final month of her life. And then she goes off and does that, and then she dies. I thought that was a very strange story. I'm not even sure what to make of it, but it is indeed in the Bible. And I talk about it in my little sketch called "Don't Make A Deal With God." It's the story of Jeptha's tragic vow. That story, though, the really puzzling part for me is, so why did you say, "Whoever comes out of my door, you're saying, "I want to get rid of my wife. I want to get rid of my daughter. I've got a son I don't need." I mean, he's clearly saying it's one of his family. Yes, you would think. Oh, that's very odd. The other odd thing, and again, it's one of those little details. Again, if you're reading literally, we never find out the name of his daughter. I guess it wasn't that important. The other interesting thing is that, I mean, this is like almost a practical joke gone wrong, and God goes along with it. You know, he's sort of like the God of the book of Job, who makes a bet with Satan that, you know, if Job is tortured, he'll remain true, and Satan says no. But there's this sort of practical joker side to God, which I also call out in the whole Job story, because again, if you believe that God is the creator of the universe, then he created everything that's out there. So I'm thinking, "Gee, if I were the creator of the universe, would I have created all of these natural disasters? Why did he think that those were good ideas, you know, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, et cetera?" And then, you know, the universe is very messy as well with the viruses and the bacteria from Ebola, E. coli, HIV, herpes. That would not have been part of my universe. And then on a more trivial level, things like, you know, bad breath, hair lip, dandruff, acne. So you have to wonder, is God really the great cosmic practical joker? What's the explanation for all of this? I guess, again, to go back to what I was told when I was being raised in Catholic school, it's a mystery. Yes, it's a mystery. And I noticed, by the way, in your list of things that are, well, that you say that are bad that you wouldn't create, male pattern baldness is number one on the list. The picture of you makes me think that you don't really suffer from that. I don't, but I have a lot of empathy for people who do. And so that's not something that I would have inflicted on men and actually on some women as well. But I'm sure that the hair clothes for men and women are quite happy that the creator included male pattern baldness on his laundry list of things that are kind of messy and annoying. And you just have to scratch your head and wonder why. Yeah, actually, Joe, I have a fair amount of reverence for the Bible, although I'm so many miles and hundreds of miles away from literal. And I really enjoyed the humor that you have looking at all the stuff through the Bible. I 100% agree with that. Well, you know, the interesting thing, too, is that I've gotten a lot of reviews of the book so far. They've probably been between the bloggers and the editorial reviews and the customer reviews, maybe over 40 reviews. I would say I've gotten like two or three bad ones. The rest are good. The bad ones are the people who say you shouldn't read the Bible literally. It's all symbolic and they take it so seriously. They're missing the point that I am satirizing people who read it literally. I'm actually on their side. And, you know, obviously the Bible is one of the great works of literature. I say that reverently. I'm not just trying to take a secular point of view, but I mean it is a great artifact of culture. And there are, you know, Ecclesiastes is great poetic work. And the book of Joe Prob's Good and Evil and some of the earliest stories in Genesis are just classic mythic stories. So, yes, we need to have reverence in a sense, but we have to continue to question, and I think we have to have a sense of view. And I think frankly, because I approach this with a sense of humor, it diffuses some of the points that I'm making. I mean, that's another big issue these days. How do you discuss issues that people really disagree on? There's so much polarization. I think the right approach is to do it with humor, and that's what I try to do. So, given that you look at the Bible, you're reading it, you're noting the way that someone who takes it literally looks at it. When you look at the Bible non-literally, does that change your level of appreciation for it? Or do you actually feel connection, reverence, or anything? Or is it, you mentioned several books of the Bible that are quite, they're deep, actually? Yes, well, I think my favorite book of the Bible is The Book of Job. I read that when I was in college, and then I read C. G. Young's Answer to Job. It's not, as I say, when I'm writing about it, you're not going to get Elmore Leonard dialogue out of it. It's written in a kind of stilted way, but it's really very interesting at how it probes the whole question of the existence. Well, if God created the world, how did evil get there? He doesn't have to take responsibility, which is actually at the heart of the jokes that I'm telling about the Adam and Eve stories. We want to go back to that. It's a blame game. God blames Adam for eating the fruit. Adam blames Eve. He blames the serpent or snake. God doesn't blame himself. God's supposed to be all-knowing. He must have known that was going to happen before it even happened in the first place. So, again, how does the capacity for evil get into the world if it's not implicit in the capacity of the Creator? That's one of the great conundrums of all time, and I think the book of Job probes that magnificently. I'm in awe of that particular book, and it's amazing the degree to which Ecclesiastes reminds me of Samuel Beckett. Everything is for nothing. If you read Ecclesiastes, as I said, you're going to want to just crawl under the covers and go back to that, because the conclusion is that all is for not. So, I mean, there are awful lot of compelling aspects of the Bible we've been focusing primarily in the Old Testament, but obviously the stories of Jesus teach us lessons that many of us still live by, although oftentimes it's really something that you can distill into the golden rule. I do point out, and this may make some people feel uncomfortable, but that in fact the Gospels were written decades after the events that they described, and if we were to be confronted with somebody today who, out of the blue, began talking about things that happened many years ago and there's no collaboration, and they were an advocate for the people in the events that they were describing, we would be very skeptical. So, you know, it's kind of hard to get to the historicity of Jesus, but many of those Gospel stories are obviously very compelling. You know, there was one of your chapters where you talked about the prophecies that are taking this pointing to Jesus, and I wasn't sure if you were being serious or tongue in cheek there about those prophecies. Some of them, it's like the way you talked about it in terms of baseball made me think you were being tongue in cheek, but obviously a lot of people take them very seriously. Well, I was just making the point that the language of prophecy enables you to interpret the prophecy any way you like, so even when the so-called prophecy doesn't come to pass, you can still come up with a rationalization for what that didn't occur. So, I just go through each of the prophecies beginning with the language of the Bible and then translate it into, you know, what people believe, but there's no specificity with it. That's why I was saying, well, you know, if I were predicting the Phillies would win World Series this year, I'd say exactly that, but if I were speaking in the language of prophecy, I would never say that I'd give myself a more wiggle room and maybe say that a team will come forth from the east and reveal themselves to the world as the champions of all that is good and righteous. And so the Phillies don't win, but it's the Yankees, the Red Sox, or, yeah, as I said, God help us because they hate the Mets. I'm still right. So it's really, I'm poking fun at sort of the language of prophecy. Rather like horoscopes, right? Exactly. It's like your horoscope. You can make anything you want out of it, and people do. I sense a problem for you, Joe, when you get to Jesus' time, it seems like you like maybe even revere Jesus. You have a whole chapter to say how cool he is, and you don't, you don't seem to have as much sarcasm for him. Do you think you could even participate in a roast of Jesus, not literal one, you know, yuck, but, you know, like they do for celebrities? Well, you know, again, we don't know a lot about Jesus. I'm going to guess he had a sense of humor. So if he did indeed have a sense of humor, then I think it's possible to roast him. But, you know, you're touching on an interesting point. Depending upon one's point of view, you may think I've gone too hard on Jesus, or I've gone too easy on him, and that was one of the recent critiques of the book that I'm just too easy on him. From an atheist standpoint, that was an atheist reviewer. I mean, I think you need to be true to the story that you're retelling, and so that's what I try to do. I think the whole idea as Jesus, as a miracle worker, is pretty funny, and so that's why I treat that comically, and I suggest that he must have had a Harry Potter period where he was learning how to do these tricks. But I mean, if you're talking about the fact that he was betrayed by everyone, you have to take a different point of view on that, and what I was trying to do was to pass over to his point of view and think of my own life when I've been betrayed. And so there's a different sort of a different approach that I take there. The other interesting thing I find, though, is if you read the New Testament, and other people made this point, Christianity, as we get it from Jesus, is quite different than the Christianity we get from Paul. And he's sort of codifying it into rules, and it has more of an Old Testament feel. And at the same time, the New Testament God seems to be different from the Old Testament God. And Jesus is supposed to be God, so that's a third God, and then the fourth one is the Holy Spirit, who likes to show up as a bird. I feel like you're dissing the Holy Spirit. I really like the dove image. What can I say? Maybe it's because I'm a pacifist, yeah? Yes, I like the dove image, but I'm wondering why he wants to show up as a bird. And actually, I'm about to shoot a little video at my house that's going to be up on my website as a book trailer. And the Holy Spirit shows up at my house as a bird. And I'm really annoyed when he shows up and suggest that we've had arguments before. And he keeps showing at my house he's mad at me because I don't believe that he exists. And he thinks that if he shows up, I'll change my mind. And we have this argument, and he starts speaking in tongues, and that annoys me too, and I tell him, "Why not you speak in English? Even a parent can speak English?" And finally, I say, "Look, you shouldn't be mad at me. You should be mad at God the Father and Jesus because they're the ones who convinced you that it was a good idea to show up everywhere as a bird." And I get him to look in the mirror, and I say, "Look, I'll make a deal with you. If you have those two guys show up here, a little discussion in my dining room because I have lots of questions to ask them. And if you let me do that, I'll take your side against them, and it'll be 2-1-2." So I do have sympathy for the Holy Spirit, but if I were here, I would not show up everywhere as a bird, although I do like the dove image as well. So I'm having it both ways. I'm having it both ways. Of course. It's nice being that flexible. I'm glad you are that flexible, Joe. By the way, you mentioned Jesus doing maybe having Harry Potter training. And one thing that I noticed from your picture on the back of it, you know who I thought of right when I saw that? That was Snape, Professor Snape. That's who you look like. What's the hair, I think? Yeah. So were you just imitating greatness or what? You were in the movie, right? Well, I just wanted to look crazy on the back of my book, Mark. That's the truth. Or like 21st Century, Edgar Allan Poe, but without the mustache. So that was the idea of that photograph. My son thinks I looked totally crazy on the back cover, so I was able to get through to him, but he already knew that I was crazy. I thought in the book that you said that you didn't think Jesus had much of a sense of humor. And I just thought you should know that there's a book out there written decades ago by a guy named Elton Trueblood, who's Quaker, as am I. It's called The Humor of Christ, and it's really not knee slapping humor, but it's like when he uses hyperbole or whatever to make his point, like, oh yeah, right, a camel through the eye of a needle. Or when he says to Peter, so get the behind me, Satan. He's not really thinking this is Satan, right? He's just he's checking his chain, you know, get out of my living room, Manson. Right, but it's interesting. I have to take a look at it. But I, you know, I do a sketch on what I call the parables decoded, and those little stories are really marvelous. So again, dealing with the parables, I wasn't trying so much to be funny as to relate them to our own contemporary lives, you know, so I take the mustard seed, that parable as an example, and say, you know, the smallest thing may become the greatest thing. And I immediately thought, because I'm a fan of string theory and reading physics, you know, a plank-sized nugget explodes into the universe, or a decision changes the life or an idea changes the world. So there's a lot of magic in those parables. Oh, yeah. So I can hear more affection, as you said, the Hebrew scriptures growing up in the Catholic Church, both you and I didn't hear so much of them. So they're still kind of foreign. I guess I can more easily treat them as outside of my tradition, if you will. But I also think you have more credibility if you're true to the content that you're dealing with. So be funny when something provides that opportunity, but shift into a different rhetorical approach when the material is different. So that's what I do. One guy found it boring and thought it was too easy in Jesus. By the way, there's some stuff about Paul. Paul has some of the greatest, most beautiful language, you know, the greatest of these is love and other statements. In Christ, there is neither June or Greek or whatever. He's got some really great things in there, and he's got a lot of things as you point out in you got to be kidding. You point out some stuff that's like, really, this guy's got serious homophobia, et cetera. John Shelby Spong is one of the people I interviewed over seven years ago, one of the first people I actually interviewed for a spirit and action program. In his book, "The Sins of Scripture," he passes on the theory that comes from the 1930s that perhaps the issue with Paul and sex is that he's a self-hating gay. Well, you could conclude that. I mean, we're so-- He makes a good case for it. It makes a real good case for it. Well, frankly, when people are so strident in their attitudes and in an anti-gay attitude, you have to wonder, at times, are they a self-hating gay person who hasn't come out of the closet? You know, it's very striking, because as you say, there are some poetic passages, but there's a real downside to Paul's view of certainly sexual morality and his attitude toward women. Some of it, you can turn into humor and I do, but it is kind of disturbing, and I also make the point that he didn't really disavow slavery either. He returns a slave to his master. He recommends that the master free the slave, but, you know, I'm not sure that that's what I would have done or what a true abolitionist would have done is return the slave to his master. But a lot of the attitudes toward women, you know, come not only from the Old Testament, the idea that women are subordinate to men, but also from Paul. Very clearly, yeah. In chapter 69, which I think, by the way, you should have reserved for the message from Paul about sex is dirty. I think that should have been-- it might have been too subtle for other people. I know I should have shifted that. But actually, in the real chapter 69 in your book, you compare the Hebrew God with the Christian God. They're supposed to be, of course, the same being. It's not easy to make that equivalence for a lot of us, but they have very different personality profiles. So my question, Joe, from your extensive reading of the Bible, who do you think would win in a fight, the older, the new God? Well, the Old Testament God would definitely beat up the New Testament God. He definitely smite him. Yes, no doubt about it. I mean, because the Old Testament God, we know is the greatest mass murder in the history. Well, in all the history, first of all, he invented death. And one of my tweets recently was, was it a sin for God to invent death? Just think of how many people have died as a result of that one decision. After you have the invention of death, you have the whole Noah's Ark thing where he kills everybody on the planet, and Sodom and Gomorrah, and he's constantly lashing out and killing people. Where the New Testament God is kind of fatherly. He sent his son and it's like Fred McMurray on Father Knows Best. So, yeah, I don't think it would be any contest. A death match between the Old Testament God wins very easily. I'm thinking that the New Testament God could use non-violent resistance and win out. You know, kind of like Gandhi. I mean, if Gandhi took on the Old Testament God, I think Gandhi would win. Well, it would be a different type of fight, right? But, you know, it's kind of hard to imagine the Old Testament God having enough patience to let that non-violent protest continue. I think he would have lost patience and just zapped at the Gandhi and New Testament God. But hopefully you're right, and I'm wrong. That's another thing. I'm always happy to admit that I'm wrong, and I don't have any investment in my own wrong ideas. Set me straight, and I'm ready, or crooked, whatever the case may be, and I'm ready to go down that path. Well, speaking of impatience, how do you think it is that somehow Jesus puts up with the apostles who really seem to be complete underheads? And according to what we read there, he tells them what's happening. He repeats what's going to happen. I'm going to die and do this. And then, you know, Peter denies him three times all this kind of things. Do you have any explanation for how Jesus could have chosen to hang around with such a bunch of losers? Well, he liked hanging around with all types of people, and, you know, in the case of the apostles, I'm still puzzling through it because they're not a very impressive group of guys. I mean, I'm more on Jesus' side when he likes to hang around with hookers and criminals of various types of people who are discriminated against. But you would like to think that the apostles would have been stronger and more true. Again, the thing that struck me about the resurrection is they're all running off and hiding, and they're the same. Except the women? The women are there. The interesting thing, too, about the crucifixion is that none of the apostles are there in any of the gospel. Except John is there in John's gospel. I thought that was a little bit self-serving. But otherwise, it's the women. And again, with the resurrection, it's the women, too. But I do make this point that the description of the resurrection is a little bit disappointing. It's about a paragraph long in each of the gospels. It's different in every case. Different people are there. The apostles really aren't there. But I mean, really, I would have been waiting for the resurrection. You know, even if I had to hide behind a tree or in the weeds or something, because this would have been the most magnificent revelation of all time, but they are nowhere to be found. So that is another one of the mysteries. I don't know why he chose those guys. I also point out, I don't know why they went with Jesus, because he would have been a stranger. You know, you're there fishing, and the guy comes by and says, "Follow me." And you leave your family and your occupation and do that. So that's another kind of a bizarre thing, too, that goes without explanation. You know, one of the reasons I really like the book, and again, the book is You Got to Be Kidding. It's by Joe Wenke, cultural arsonist, literal reading of the Bible. One of the reasons I really like the book is because I feel like, for the last 30 or 50 years, people have turned interpretation of looking at the Bible over to the fundamentalist, and let's then pronounce what it means, what it says. Like as you mentioned, Rick Santorum, they know it, and they get to be the ones who define what religion or what spirituality is or whatever. So one of the things I really appreciate about the book is it lets you glimpse how they're looking at it, but it also does it with this rye tone or humorous tone frequently. Do you respect yourself for having learned the Bible? Well, you know, I've always been an avid reader, and I think I respect the fact that I decided to go back and read something that, you know, as you're pointing out, had been co-opted by fundamentalists that I disagree with, and that, you know, might not have been my first choice for entertaining reading. But to go back and to... Well, it's pretty entertaining, though. It is, but you wouldn't, you know, a lot of people are daunted by the idea of reading the entire Bible from beginning to end, and rediscovering it, but I really recommend it to other people, and you actually put your finger on exactly what I'm doing in the book. It's that the Bible has been hijacked by fundamentalists who are rather condescending toward everyone else. They think that they understand the Bible, they know it, so I'm thinking, well, Jesus, if somebody with my point of view reads the Bible literally, again, what's the result of that, and what I'm saying is the result is satire, not fundamentalism. And it's sort of reinventing the literal reading of the Bible for all of us who have that kind of point of view on life, an ironic point of view, a satirical point of view, a point of view that questions that says, you know, I have to figure out things for myself. And I think you validly make the distinction between what the Christian scriptures look like, which are, I guess, more comprehensible to us versus the Hebrew scriptures. For me, a lot of times, those stories look a lot like when I read some of the scriptures that are from India, or, you know, you think of Ganesh, the elephant god, or the multi-armed Kali, or whatever, those seem almost, they seem fanciful from our point of view, and when I sit back and take that kind of objective look at the Hebrew scriptures, at least parts of them look fanciful. And I'm exempting from that some of the more profound books. Yeah, I think they're farther removed from our experience. But again, ironically, it seems to me that the fundamentalists tend to focus more on mosaic law and on this kind of harsh view of life and this lack of acceptance for people who are different instead of embracing difference. You know, the universe is diverse. We should celebrate that, and we shouldn't be intimidated or demonize people who are different from us. It's really that simple. And Jesus didn't do that. So again, going back to the point of why I feel more of a sense of empathy with Jesus than we were just talking about, you know, he hung around with a bunch of deadbeats, none as the apostles, you know, good for him. Where are you at religiously these days? I take it, you're no longer Catholic. No, well, I guess, you know, to be honest, I would describe myself as an atheist, but I'm open to really anything, and I'm always looking for new ideas, new insights. The point of view of the book isn't really atheist. It's just a sardonic view based on a little reading of the Bible, but the word doesn't come up. But, you know, I'm really a person who's open to experience. I'm skeptical but questioning, and if I get new information, I will take all of that into account. And if the creator of the universe ever wants to contact me, I'll give him every opportunity to plead his case for his own existence. I don't suppose you want to give your cell phone over the area to the creator. Probably not, but, you know, he should know that the cell phone number, if he's the creator of the universe. So if it rings and he's on the other end of the line, I have a whole list of questions to ask him. I really hope he does exist because I have a bone or two to pick with him. Some of the miscalculations in the current universe. On the other hand, it may end up kind of like when Job finally got his audience with... I think so, yeah. The God of the book of Job is a bully. I don't like that version of God. You know, he comes on very strong at the end and is not a particularly pleasant supreme being. On the other hand, that God says, in fact you don't like him, he says, well, so that's your problem. He's in control. No, yeah. He certainly doesn't care what we think of him. Well, it's quite a wonderful read. It's quick and wonderful and deep, and it'll have you laughing and it'll have you thinking. The book is You Got to Be Kidding, The Cultural Arsonist's Literal Reading of the Bible. It's by Joe Wenke. You can find him on the web at joewenke.org, and you can get there via Nordenspiritradio.org. I have a link to him. It's a great book. Thank you for the laughs. Thank you for the insights. And thank you also, Joe, for joining me for Spirit in Action. Well, thank you so much, Mark. It was really my pleasure. I enjoyed it. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)