Lincoln×Moses

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Abraham Lincoln sits down with Moses for THE TRIAL. The subject — On what they hope comes after, and what they fear comes after.
2. 00:11
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   You know, Moses, I once heard a fellow say he wasn't afraid of dying—he just didn't want to be there when it happened. Got a good laugh. But here we are, both of us long past that appointment, and I confess I'm still turning the question over: what did I hope would come after? What did I fear?
3. 00:26
   Mosesshare moment

   You jest. But the question is no jest. I stood on Nebo and looked into the land I would not enter. The Lord showed me what would come after my death—not for me, but for the people. That is the only 'after' that mattered.
4. 00:50
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well now, that's a difference between us right there. I spent considerable time worrying about the Union—whether it would hold, whether the freed people would find real liberty. But I confess I also wondered about my own soul. What becomes of a man who's sent so many others to their graves?
5. 01:06
   Mosesshare moment

   You speak as though you decided their deaths alone. Did you stand with sword in hand? I killed the Egyptian with my own hands. I saw the firstborn of Egypt struck down at the Lord's command. The earth opened and swallowed Korah and his company at my word.
6. 01:30
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   But you had—well, you had your authority direct from the Almighty, or so you believed. I had only the Constitution and my own judgment, such as it was. Many a night I wondered if I was right. If the war was just. If I'd be judged harshly for all that blood.
7. 01:46
   Mosesshare moment

   Authority from the Almighty brings no comfort. It brings only weight. Do you imagine I did not question? I argued with God Himself at the burning bush. I begged Him to send another. Even with His voice in my ears, I feared I had led the people wrongly.
8. 02:11
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Then you understand. What did you hope would come after your death? For yourself, I mean, not just for Israel.
9. 02:17
   Mosesshare moment

   I hoped... I hoped to have been faithful. That is all. The Lord buried me in the valley and no man knows my sepulcher. There would be no shrine, no idolatry. I hoped my work would stand without me. I hoped the Law would endure.
10. 02:39
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    The work standing without you—yes, that's the thing. I hoped the amendments would hold. That the slaves truly would stay free, that we wouldn't just slide back into some new form of bondage. I feared we would. I feared men would find clever ways around what we'd written in law.
11. 02:55
    Mosesshare moment

    And they did. As my people found ways around the Law. As every generation finds ways around the words of its fathers. You cannot write freedom into being, Lincoln. You can only point toward it and hope the people walk that direction.
12. 03:16
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Point toward it—yes, that's well said. Though I did hope the pointing would be backed by federal law and bayonets if need be. But for myself, after death? I told my wife Mary more than once I didn't know what I believed about the hereafter. The preachers all had their certainties, but I never could manage them.
13. 03:34
    Mosesshare moment

    You feared there was nothing?
14. 03:36
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I feared there was nothing and I feared there was something. If nothing, then what was the point of all the struggle, all the sorrow? If something, well—what manner of Judge awaits a man who presided over six hundred thousand dead?
15. 03:49
    Mosesshare moment

    Six hundred thousand. Yes. The number is a weight. But you did not kill them for your own glory. You did not kill them for gold or land for yourself. I have seen men who did. I have seen Pharaoh.
16. 04:07
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No, but I killed them all the same, or ordered the killing. Or continued the war when I might have stopped it. That's the question that haunted me then and I suppose haunts me still, in whatever this is we're doing now. Could I have stopped it sooner? Was I too slow to act, or too quick?
17. 04:24
    Mosesshare moment

    You were slow. I watched you. The captives cried out and you waited. You calculated. You weighed politics against righteousness. I know this hesitation—I fled to Midian for forty years before I returned to Egypt. But the Lord does not always honor our timing.
18. 04:49
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's a fair criticism and one I heard plenty of in my time. Frederick Douglass said as much to my face. But I had to preserve the Union first or there'd be no freedom worth having. You ever feel that? That you had to do the smaller wrong to prevent the larger?
19. 05:03
    Mosesshare moment

    The law I brought down from Sinai permitted slavery. It regulated it, set terms for it, but permitted it. Do you think I did not see the contradiction? But the people were not ready for more. They had just come out of bondage themselves and already they wanted the flesh-pots of Egypt.
20. 05:32
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So you compromised.
21. 05:33
    Mosesshare moment

    I gave them what they could bear. And I hoped that in generations to come they would grow beyond it. I feared they would not.
22. 05:44
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And did they? Grow beyond it?
23. 05:45
    Mosesshare moment

    Some did. Many did not. The prophets who came after me cried out against oppression, against those who ground the faces of the poor. But the Law remained, both liberation and limitation. What did you fear would come after your death, Lincoln? Truly?
24. 06:09
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I feared the hatred wouldn't die. That it would fester in the South, and calcify in the North into self-righteousness. I feared we'd win the war and lose the peace. I feared that colored folk would be technically free but actually enslaved by a thousand new chains we'd invent. I feared I wouldn't be there to stop it.
25. 06:27
    Mosesshare moment

    And you were not. The bullet saw to that.
26. 06:31
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Yes. Five days after Lee's surrender. Mary said I seemed almost cheerful that week, lighter than I'd been in years. I wonder sometimes if I hoped, in some hidden part of myself, that it would end before I had to face the reconstruction. That's a shameful thought, but I'm being honest.
27. 06:46
    Mosesshare moment

    You were permitted to die before the failure. I was permitted to die before the conquest. Neither of us entered the land we promised. Perhaps that is its own mercy.
28. 07:01
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Mercy or cowardice? I don't know. What did you hope for, Moses, after your death? Not for Israel—for you. Did you hope to see God face to face, as you'd spoken to Him?
29. 07:10
    Mosesshare moment

    I had already seen Him as much as a man can see and live. I hoped for rest. Forty years in the wilderness, forty years of complaint and rebellion, forty years of carrying a people who would have stoned me a dozen times over. I hoped for silence. For the burden to pass to another.
30. 07:36
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Rest. Yes. I used to dream about that, especially in the last year. Just to sleep without the telegraph waking me, without another list of casualties, another border state threatening to bolt. But I also feared rest. Feared it meant I'd given up, or that I'd be forgotten.
31. 07:54
    Mosesshare moment

    You feared being forgotten?
32. 07:56
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Vanity, I know. But yes. I'd come from nothing—dirt-poor Kentucky, barely any schooling. I'd made myself into something. I feared dying and having it all fade away like morning mist. Feared that the Union would forget what we'd fought for. That the colored man's liberty would become a footnote.
33. 08:13
    Mosesshare moment

    And has it?
34. 08:14
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I don't rightly know. I see my face on currency and monuments, which is more remembering than I deserve. But whether the cause is remembered—whether it's truly won—that I cannot say. You tell me, Moses. Three thousand years later, did your people remember the Law? Did they keep it?
35. 08:33
    Mosesshare moment

    They remembered. They argued over it, split into factions, killed each other over interpretations of it. They kept it and broke it in the same breath, as all people do. Your fear was correct. And so was your hope.
36. 08:49
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Both at once?
37. 08:50
    Mosesshare moment

    Both at once. The people failed as you feared. And the people rose as you hoped. New chains were forged. And new deliverers came to break them. This is the way of the world under heaven. Did you imagine you would solve the human problem in one war?
38. 09:14
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No. No, I didn't imagine that. But I hoped we'd bend the arc a little, as Parker said. Bend it toward justice. I feared we'd bend it back the other way.
39. 09:26
    Mosesshare moment

    You did bend it. Then others bent it back. Then others bent it forward again. The arc is long, Lincoln. Longer than one man's life. Longer than one man's death. What comes after is not a single thing. It is a long wrestling, generation upon generation.
40. 09:52
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's cold comfort for a man lying in his grave wondering if he spent those six hundred thousand lives for nothing.
41. 09:58
    Mosesshare moment

    It is not comfort. It is truth. You wanted comfort? You should not have freed the slaves. You should not have preserved the Union. You should have taken the easy path and let the nation split. Comfort is not for liberators.
42. 10:20
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No, I suppose it's not. Did you find comfort in death, Moses? Do you have it now?
43. 10:25
    Mosesshare moment

    I have what I hoped for. I have rest from the burden of leadership. I have release from the people's complaints. But I do not have certainty that it was enough. No man has that. Not even the prophets.
44. 10:44
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Then we're in the same boat, you and I. We did what we could. We hoped it would be enough. We feared it wouldn't be. And now we wait to see if the judgment—whether from God or history—will be merciful.
45. 10:56
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. Though I wonder if the judgment is not the waiting itself. To see your work continued and betrayed, honored and forgotten, both at once. That is the after. That is what comes.
46. 11:15
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well, that's cheerful. Reminds me of another joke I heard once, about a man who—no, never mind. It's not the time. You've given me something to think on, Moses. Not comfort, as you say. But truth. I suppose that'll have to do.
47. 11:28
    Mosesshare moment

    It is all any of us have. The work, the hope, the fear, and the long arc bending in the hands of others. We plant. Others water. What grows is not ours to control.