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 a verdict they would accept and a verdict they would reject.
2. 00:10
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well, Moses, I suppose we're here to discuss verdicts. Reminds me of the fellow who asked the judge, 'Your Honor, do I understand you're going to try me?' Judge said, 'That's right.' Fellow says, 'Well, go ahead. My wife's been trying to try me for twenty years and she ain't succeeded yet.'
3. 00:25
   Mosesshare moment

   You begin with levity. I have stood before judgment that burns. The question before us is not whether we can be tried—clearly this age presumes to try all men, living and dead—but what verdict, if any, we would acknowledge as legitimate.
4. 00:49
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   That's a finer distinction than most make, and I appreciate it. I've sat through verdicts myself—some just, some unjust, some delivered by mobs that called themselves courts. So yes, let's clarify: there's verdicts we'd accept, and verdicts we'd reject. They're not the same animal.
5. 01:05
   Mosesshare moment

   Indeed. I would accept a verdict from the Eternal alone. His judgment I have received many times, in the tent of meeting, on the mountain, in the wilderness. He showed me my sin when I struck the rock in anger. That verdict I accepted, though it cost me Canaan.
6. 01:30
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   So you're saying you'd accept judgment from the Almighty, but not from men?
7. 01:34
   Mosesshare moment

   I am saying that divine judgment comes with knowledge. The Lord knows what I did in Egypt, what I bore in Midian, what I saw in the bush. He knows the weight of six hundred thousand souls crying for bread. Men judge by report, by fragment, by what survives in ink.
8. 01:59
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   I can't argue with that. Every biographer I've read gets at least three facts wrong about my childhood, and those are the verifiable years. But here's my question: if we only accept verdicts from those with perfect knowledge, doesn't that mean we reject all human justice? Including our own?
9. 02:17
   Mosesshare moment

   Human justice is necessary. I gave laws precisely because men must judge one another in matters of oxen, of property, of injury. But those are judgments within community, rendered by those who share the burden of the law. This... this trial of the dead by the living, across centuries, without shared covenant—this is a different matter.
10. 02:49
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So you'd reject it on procedural grounds. No shared covenant means no jurisdiction. That's a lawyer's answer, Moses, and I mean that as a compliment.
11. 02:58
    Mosesshare moment

    It is more than procedure. When the people made the calf while I was on the mountain, I did not accept their verdict that I had abandoned them. I had not. But neither did I reject their fear—it was real. I broke the tablets in fury, yes, but I returned to the mountain for their sake.
12. 03:24
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You distinguished between false verdicts and true grievances. That's the work, isn't it? I rejected the Supreme Court's verdict in Dred Scott—said it was wrong, would always be wrong, could never bind the conscience. But I couldn't reject the grievance behind secession, much as I wished to. Men really believed their way of life was ending.
13. 03:43
    Mosesshare moment

    You fought them nonetheless.
14. 03:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I did. Because their grievance, though real to them, was unjust in its foundation. They wanted protection for an institution that made chattels of men. So yes, I rejected their verdict that they had a right to leave, but I never pretended they weren't sincere. Sincerity doesn't make a thing right.
15. 04:05
    Mosesshare moment

    This is wisdom. A verdict may be delivered with full conviction and still be worthless. Korah and his company had conviction when they challenged my authority. They said I took too much upon myself, that all the congregation was holy. They meant it.
16. 04:26
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And the earth swallowed them, if I remember my scripture. That's a definitive rejection of a verdict if ever there was one. But Moses, you didn't make the earth open—you called on God to do it. You didn't trust your own judgment to answer them.
17. 04:39
    Mosesshare moment

    Because I could not bear that responsibility. Let the Lord make clear who is His, I said. I would accept a verdict that came with signs, with clarity, with the weight of heaven behind it. But a verdict from Korah? From men who saw only their own ambition reflected in holy words? That I rejected utterly.
18. 05:08
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So you'd accept a verdict from a legitimate authority, divinely appointed or otherwise confirmed. But not from a mob, even a sincere one. That's consistent with law as I understand it. A jury can convict, but only if it's been properly impaneled, heard proper evidence, followed proper procedure.
19. 05:26
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. But tell me, Lincoln—you have been tried by history more gently than most. Would you accept its verdict?
20. 05:36
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's the rub, isn't it? History's been kind to me in the main, so it's easy to say yes. But I know what it's done to other men—stripped them, revised them, made them villains or saints neither of which they were. If I'm honest, I'd accept a historical verdict only insofar as it's based on what I actually said and did, not on what the age needs me to have said and done.
21. 05:58
    Mosesshare moment

    This age has great need. It recruits the dead for its causes.
22. 06:05
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    It does. I've been drafted into campaigns I never fought, made to endorse positions I never held. When that happens, I reject the verdict—not because it's harsh, but because it's false. You can condemn me for what I did, but not for what I didn't do. That's the line.
23. 06:20
    Mosesshare moment

    The line is finer still. They condemn me for the Midianites, for the Amalekites, for commands I gave that seem to them barbarous. But they do not ask what those peoples did, what threat they posed, what the Lord commanded. They judge by their law, not by mine.
24. 06:46
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And you reject that verdict because they're applying the wrong standard. Is that it?
25. 06:51
    Mosesshare moment

    I reject it because they do not comprehend covenant. The Lord gave commands within a framework—His holiness, His purposes, His relationship with a people called out of bondage. To judge those commands by a framework that denies His authority is to judge nonsense by nonsense.
26. 07:19
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So you're saying context is everything. I'd agree with that. But Moses, here's where I struggle: if we only accept verdicts from those who share our framework, don't we make ourselves immune to correction? A man could commit any horror and say, 'You don't understand my covenant.'
27. 07:34
    Mosesshare moment

    He could say it. It would not make it true. The covenant I speak of is not private fantasy. It was given publicly, at Sinai, before six hundred thousand men of war, their wives, their children. It was written. It was tested in the wilderness. If I violated that covenant, let them show where.
28. 08:00
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So you'd accept a verdict from anyone who reads the covenant honestly and finds you wanting by its own terms. That's a testable standard. I like it. I'd say the same about the Constitution—judge me by what it says, not by what you wish it said.
29. 08:15
    Mosesshare moment

    But you bent the Constitution in ways it had not been bent before. You suspended habeas corpus. You raised armies without Congressional declaration. Your enemies called you tyrant.
30. 08:33
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    They did, and I answered them in writing—said the Constitution is not a suicide pact, that all its provisions must be maintained or none will survive. I accepted the verdict of history on that, but only if history reads what I actually wrote in defense. If it judges me without reading my answer, the verdict is void for want of evidence.
31. 08:52
    Mosesshare moment

    This is the heart of it, then. You would accept a verdict from those who examine the whole record. You would reject a verdict from those who select only fragments.
32. 09:07
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Exactly. And I'd add this: I'd accept a harsh verdict more readily than a false kind one. If I'm to be condemned, let it be for my actual failures—and Lord knows I had them. I delayed emancipation too long, moved too cautiously, sacrificed too many men to preserve a Union some of them didn't want preserved. Judge me for that. But don't invent sins I didn't commit.
33. 09:28
    Mosesshare moment

    In this we are agreed. A true condemnation I can bear. It is the false accusation that corrupts judgment. The people accused me of bringing them out to die in the wilderness. That was false—I brought them out to live in freedom, though they tested my patience unto breaking.
34. 09:54
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And yet you accepted God's judgment that you would not enter Canaan yourself. That must have been hard.
35. 10:00
    Mosesshare moment

    It was just. I acted in anger when I should have acted in faith. The verdict was proportionate, rendered by proper authority, and I accepted it. But I did not accept the people's murmuring, their faithless verdicts against the Lord's provision. Those I rejected to the end.
36. 10:24
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So here's what I'm hearing: you'd accept a verdict that's just, proportionate, rendered by legitimate authority, based on full evidence. You'd reject a verdict that's incomplete, motivated by ideology rather than fact, or delivered by those with no standing to judge. Have I got that right?
37. 10:41
    Mosesshare moment

    You have it right. And I would add: I would reject any verdict that presumes to know my heart better than I know it myself. Men may judge my deeds. Only the Eternal judges my heart.
38. 10:59
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's the final wall, isn't it? The interior life. I said once that I claimed not to have controlled events, but confessed plainly that events controlled me. I meant it. If history judges my actions, very well. If it claims to know my secret motives better than I knew them, it's overreached.
39. 11:16
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. The heart is deceitful above all things, as Jeremiah said, and desperately wicked—who can know it? Only the one who made it. All other verdicts on motive are guesswork dressed as certainty.
40. 11:35
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So we accept verdicts on our actions, rendered by competent judges who've examined the evidence and applied a fair standard. We reject verdicts on our souls, our hidden motives, our interior lives. We reject verdicts from those who haven't done their homework. And we especially reject verdicts that require us to be other than we were, in times other than our own. Is that a fair summary?
41. 11:58
    Mosesshare moment

    It is fair. Though I would say this: even a competent judge may err. Even a fair standard may be applied wrongly. In the end, I wait for the final verdict, the one rendered when all is known and all is weighed. That verdict I will accept without question. All others are provisional.
42. 12:29
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    All others are provisional. I like that, Moses. It leaves room for correction without surrendering to every wind of opinion. A man can say, 'I hear your verdict, I'll consider it, but I'm not bound by it until the books are fully opened.' That's humility and backbone both.
43. 12:45
    Mosesshare moment

    It is the posture of one who has been judged before and will be judged again. We do not fear judgment. We insist only that it be worthy of the name.
44. 13:00
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well said. And on that note, I think we've reached a verdict ourselves—on what verdicts we'll accept. Seems fitting.