Moses×Lincoln

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Moses sits down with Abraham Lincoln for THE TRIAL. The subject — On who taught them to work hard, not how to be brilliant.
2. 00:12
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well, I suppose we ought to start with an admission. My father thought reading was a waste of good daylight. Said an honest axe would do more for a man than any book. So when folks ask who taught me to work hard, I tell them: Thomas Lincoln. When they ask who taught me to think, I tell them: I stole that from books he never knew I had.
3. 00:31
   Mosesshare moment

   Your father was not wrong, only incomplete. I learned the weight of labor in Pharaoh's brick-pits, watching my kinsmen break their backs for no reward. That is one kind of teaching. But brilliance? That came later, at the burning bush. No man taught me how to speak for God.
4. 00:55
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Now hold on. Are we saying brilliance just strikes like lightning? Because I've seen clever men who never did a day's work, and they were about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
5. 01:06
   Mosesshare moment

   You mistake my meaning. The capacity for wisdom may be given, but only labor makes it real. I spent forty years tending Jethro's flocks before I was ready to lead a nation. Forty years of thirst and silence and sheep. Do you think I could have carried the Law down from Sinai if I had not first carried water in the desert?
6. 01:36
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   That's closer to my own experience. I split rails until my hands looked like tree bark. And when I finally got to the law, I read Blackstone by firelight until I could argue a case in my sleep. The brilliance, if you want to call it that, was just stubbornness wearing a better coat.
7. 01:52
   Mosesshare moment

   Yet you were not taught stubbornness. Your father did not sit you down and say, 'Abraham, today I will instruct you in perseverance.' You either had it, or you did not.
8. 02:07
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Fair point. Though I'd say poverty is a hell of a teacher. When your alternative to stubbornness is starving, you learn quick. My stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, she encouraged the reading. But the hunger to improve myself? That wasn't hers to give.
9. 02:22
   Mosesshare moment

   So we agree, then. Work can be taught. The desire to transcend work cannot.
10. 02:30
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Maybe. Or maybe we're both just flattering ourselves. I knew plenty of boys in Indiana who worked just as hard and got nowhere. What made me different? Luck? Timing? The fact that I was tall enough to get noticed?
11. 02:43
    Mosesshare moment

    You are being too modest, which is unlike you in my brief acquaintance. The Lord does not raise up leaders by accident. You were chosen, whether you knew it or not.
12. 02:58
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well, I never felt particularly chosen when I was losing elections. Lost for state legislature, lost for Congress once, lost two Senate races. If God was choosing me, He had a funny way of showing it.
13. 03:10
    Mosesshare moment

    Do you think I felt chosen when I killed the Egyptian overseer and had to flee into Midian? Or when my own people rejected me the first time I spoke to them? Election by God is not the same as popularity among men.
14. 03:29
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's a comfort, I suppose. Though it still leaves the question: what separates the man who works hard and fails from the man who works hard and changes history?
15. 03:37
    Mosesshare moment

    The willingness to be broken first. I was a stammerer. You were melancholic. Neither of us was born brilliant in the way the world measures it. We were born stubborn, and then life ground us down until only the essential remained.
16. 03:57
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's darker than I usually put it, but it's not wrong. I used to say the best way to predict a man's future was to watch how he handled failure. Success just makes you comfortable. Failure makes you think.
17. 04:09
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. And no teacher can give that. You cannot instruct a man in how to endure the wilderness. You can only throw him into it and see if he walks out.
18. 04:22
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    But surely we learned something from others. You had Jethro. I had Mentor Graham, who taught me surveying and grammar. We didn't spring fully formed from the desert.
19. 04:32
    Mosesshare moment

    Jethro taught me patience and the management of flocks. He did not teach me to hear the voice of the Almighty. That is the distinction. Skills can be passed from one man to another like bread. Vision cannot.
20. 04:48
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And yet you needed both. I've known visionaries who couldn't organize a prayer meeting. They had the fire but no kindling. The hard work, the daily discipline, that's what lets the vision take root.
21. 04:59
    Mosesshare moment

    Agreed. But the vision comes first. A man can labor all his life and build nothing but his own prison. Look at Pharaoh's slaves. They worked harder than any people on earth, and it profited them nothing until someone came with a vision of freedom.
22. 05:22
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So you're saying the brilliance is the seed, and the hard work is the soil. Without both, nothing grows.
23. 05:28
    Mosesshare moment

    That is closer. Though I would add: the seed is not planted by human hands. It is given, or it is not. Your work is to tend what grows.
24. 05:42
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's where you and I might part ways, Moses. I believe in Providence, sure. But I also believe a man makes his own luck by showing up every day. If I'd waited around for God to hand me the presidency, I'd still be splitting rails.
25. 05:55
    Mosesshare moment

    Did you choose the moment of the nation's crisis? Did you decide that slavery would tear the country apart precisely when you were ready to hold it together? You showed up, yes. But the stage was set without your consultation.
26. 06:13
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I'll grant you that. Though I'd argue I was ready for that stage because I'd spent thirty years preparing without knowing what for. The law practice, the debates, even the failures. They all built the muscles I needed.
27. 06:25
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. And that is what can be taught: the habits of preparation. The discipline of showing up. But the spark that makes a man seize the moment rather than flee from it? That is not taught. It is either there or it is not.
28. 06:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You think it's innate, then. Born into some men and not others.
29. 06:48
    Mosesshare moment

    I think it is given by God to whom He wills, when He wills. I did not ask to lead Israel out of bondage. I argued with the Almighty, told Him I was the wrong man. He said, 'I will be with your mouth.' And that was the end of the discussion.
30. 07:11
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well, I argued with myself plenty, but the Almighty kept His own counsel. I just knew that if the Union died, the whole experiment of self-government died with it. Call that Providence or call it stubbornness. Either way, I couldn't walk away.
31. 07:25
    Mosesshare moment

    And there it is. You could not walk away. Not because someone taught you to stay, but because something in you would not permit retreat. That is the difference between a laborer and a leader.
32. 07:42
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So we're back to the original question. Who taught us? And the answer is: no one taught us the part that mattered. They taught us to work, and we're grateful for it. But the rest? We had to find that ourselves, or it found us.
33. 07:54
    Mosesshare moment

    Precisely. And this is why I mistrust those who promise to make leaders through education alone. You can teach a man to read and write and cipher. You can teach him history and rhetoric. But you cannot teach him to stand before Pharaoh and say, 'Let my people go.'
34. 08:15
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Or to stand at Gettysburg and redefine what a nation is for. Though I'll say this: education gives a man the tools to articulate what's already in him. Without those tools, the vision stays locked inside, useless.
35. 08:27
    Mosesshare moment

    True. Which is why both are necessary. The God-given spark, and the man-taught discipline. But the spark comes first. Without it, all the discipline in the world produces only a very efficient slave.
36. 08:44
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And with the spark but no discipline, you get a dreamer who changes nothing. I've seen those too. Full of fire, empty of follow-through.
37. 08:52
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. So perhaps the answer is this: we can teach our children to work, and we must. But we cannot teach them to be great. We can only clear the path and hope they have been given what we cannot provide.
38. 09:11
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's a hard truth for a democracy to swallow. We like to think any boy born in a log cabin can grow up to be president.
39. 09:18
    Mosesshare moment

    And so he can, if he has been given the capacity. The cabin does not disqualify him. But neither does it qualify him. The opportunity must be there, yes. But the man must bring something the cabin did not give him.
40. 09:38
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I suppose that's fair. Though I'd still rather live in a country that gives every man the chance to find out what he's got inside him, rather than one that decides for him at birth.
41. 09:47
    Mosesshare moment

    On that, we agree entirely. Let every man work. Let every man be tested. And then let Providence separate the wheat from the chaff.
42. 10:01
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Providence, or just the grinding wheel of history. Either way, the work comes first. And for that, I'm grateful to my father, even if he never understood what I was working toward.
43. 10:11
    Mosesshare moment

    And I am grateful for the bricks I hauled, and the sheep I tended. They taught me that I was not above labor. And when the time came to lead, I knew what I was asking of others.
44. 10:27
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's the final lesson, isn't it? The hard work doesn't make you brilliant. But it keeps you honest.
45. 10:33
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. And honesty, in a leader, is rarer than brilliance. Far rarer.