Moses×Twain

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on TITANS: Moses and Mark Twain, on On the cost of getting their name on a building or a movement.
2. 00:09
   Mosesshare moment

   They built a golden calf while I was on the mountain. Melted down their earrings, their bracelets. When I descended with the tablets, they were dancing around their own creation, singing its praises.
3. 00:26
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Well now, that's the thing about monuments, isn't it? People will build whatever idol suits them at the moment. Usually takes less than forty days, in my experience.
4. 00:36
   Mosesshare moment

   I smashed those tablets. The first set. Ground the calf to powder and made them drink it.
5. 00:44
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Strong medicine. Though I notice you went back up that mountain and got yourself a second set. Same words, I presume?
6. 00:52
   Mosesshare moment

   The same Law. But I had to carve those myself. The first were written by the finger of God.
7. 01:02
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Ah, so the replacement work fell to you. That's usually how it goes. The Lord provides the concept, man provides the labor, and somewhere in between somebody's brother gets killed for worshiping the wrong thing. Cost of doing business, I suppose.
8. 01:17
   Mosesshare moment

   Three thousand fell that day. The Levites moved through the camp with swords. It was... necessary.
9. 01:26
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Necessary. That's a word that's covered a multitude of sins throughout history. I've heard it used to justify slavery, wars, the subjugation of women, and the election of some spectacularly unqualified individuals. Usually by men who won't be doing the dying themselves.
10. 01:46
    Mosesshare moment

    I did not seek leadership. I argued with God. I told Him I was slow of speech, that He should send another. But when you have seen the burning bush, when you have heard the voice that cannot be denied...
11. 02:05
    Mark Twainshare moment

    When you've seen the burning bush, you're pretty well committed to the program. Can't very well go back to tending sheep and tell people, well, I had this interesting botanical experience but decided it wasn't for me.
12. 02:18
    Mosesshare moment

    You mock, but you have built your own monument. Your words are taught in schools. Your name adorns libraries, riverboats. You created characters that have outlived you.
13. 02:34
    Mark Twainshare moment

    True enough. Though I notice Tom Sawyer never asked anybody to butcher three thousand people before breakfast. He just conned his friends into whitewashing a fence. Different scale of operation.
14. 02:47
    Mosesshare moment

    You wrote under a false name. Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain. Even you understood that the man and the monument must be separate.
15. 02:58
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Sam Clemens was a riverboat pilot and a silver prospector who went bankrupt. Mark Twain was the fellow people paid to hear opinions. Seemed prudent to keep some distance. Sam could go to the saloon without people expecting wisdom.
16. 03:13
    Mosesshare moment

    I never entered the Promised Land. Forty years I led them through wilderness, and at the end, God showed me the land from Pisgah but forbade me entry. I died within sight of it.
17. 03:30
    Mark Twainshare moment

    On account of you struck that rock when you should've spoken to it, as I recall the story. Seems a harsh penalty for one mistake after forty years of service. But then, monument-builders don't retire, do they? They just become part of the architecture.
18. 03:46
    Mosesshare moment

    I struck the rock in anger. I took credit for the miracle when the credit belonged to God. That was my sin.
19. 03:55
    Mark Twainshare moment

    And there's the eternal problem. Once your name's on the movement, every miracle gets attributed to you, and every failure too. I wrote some books I'm proud of and some I'm not, but they all say Mark Twain on the spine. Can't smash the tablets and start over.
20. 04:13
    Mosesshare moment

    But you chose this. You wrote for money, for fame. I was called.
21. 04:20
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I wrote for money because I had creditors, and I wrote what I hoped was truth because lies come back around. As for fame, that's just infamy that's learned to smile for photographs. You say you were called. Well, called or not, you still answered. Could've stayed with Jethro's sheep.
22. 04:41
    Mosesshare moment

    And let my people remain in bondage? Sometimes the cost of leadership is necessary because the cost of silence is greater.
23. 04:53
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's a fine sentiment, and I don't entirely disagree. But it's worth noting that the fellow who says 'follow me to freedom' rarely mentions that some portion of the followers won't complete the journey. They die in the wilderness, or they get shot down for worshiping the wrong bovine, or they just wear out from walking.
24. 05:12
    Mosesshare moment

    A generation died in the wilderness, yes. Because they would not trust. Because they built the calf. Because they rebelled when the spies brought back fearful reports. None who left Egypt in adulthood entered Canaan, save Joshua and Caleb.
25. 05:33
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Forty years of wandering does seem an extravagant way to wait for a generation to die off. Though I suppose it kept everybody employed. Were you aware, while you were leading, that you were essentially running out the clock on your contemporaries?
26. 05:48
    Mosesshare moment

    I was aware... that we could not go back. Egypt was closed to us. Forward was the only direction, even if the path was long.
27. 06:00
    Mark Twainshare moment

    And that's the trap of having your name on the building, isn't it? Can't turn back once the cornerstone's laid. I spent the last twenty years of my life on lecture tours, reading the same stories, telling the same jokes, playing Mark Twain for audiences who'd paid good money to see him. Sam Clemens was tired and bitter and broke, but Mark Twain had to be charming.
28. 06:24
    Mosesshare moment

    You could have stopped.
29. 06:26
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Could I? I had a publishing house that went bankrupt. I had debts. I had a reputation as a humorist, which means people expect you to be funny even when your daughter's dying of meningitis. The monument demands feeding.
30. 06:41
    Mosesshare moment

    I understand. When Miriam died, when Aaron died, I still led. When my own sister spoke against me, I still led. The people's need does not pause for personal grief.
31. 06:57
    Mark Twainshare moment

    And yet you also had three thousand people killed for worshiping incorrectly. Let's not skip past that part. The cost of your monument included other people's blood.
32. 07:08
    Mosesshare moment

    It included my own blood as well. My own exclusion from the promise. Do you imagine I paid no price?
33. 07:19
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I imagine you paid a considerable price. I'm just noting that when monuments get built, the stonemasons and the architects rarely pay the same costs. You died outside the Promised Land, true enough. But you died at a hundred and twenty with your eyesight intact. Those three thousand died considerably younger and more suddenly.
34. 07:41
    Mosesshare moment

    They died in rebellion. They chose the calf over the Law.
35. 07:46
    Mark Twainshare moment

    They chose wrong, according to the winner's account. History being written by those who survive to do the writing. I don't doubt they deserved some form of correction, but wholesale slaughter has always seemed to me an admission that you've run out of better arguments.
36. 08:01
    Mosesshare moment

    You speak as though there was time for argument. As though idolatry could be reasoned with. They had seen the plagues. They had walked through the sea on dry ground. And still, in my brief absence, they turned away.
37. 08:18
    Mark Twainshare moment

    People are reliably foolish, I'll grant you that. I've made a career observing it. But here's what troubles me about monuments, Moses, and I include my own in this: they tend to simplify. The story becomes 'Moses led them out of Egypt' and we skip the part about the three thousand. It becomes 'Mark Twain was a humorist' and we skip the part about Sam Clemens being a complicated, often angry man who buried his wife and three of his four children.
38. 08:50
    Mosesshare moment

    Then perhaps monuments are necessary precisely because they simplify. The people need Law, not ambiguity. They need direction, not endless questioning.
39. 09:05
    Mark Twainshare moment

    And that's where we part ways, I think. I've always figured people need exactly the opposite—less certainty from their leaders and more willingness to say 'I don't know.' Every great disaster I've witnessed came from somebody being absolutely certain they were right.
40. 09:22
    Mosesshare moment

    I was certain because God spoke. Would you have me doubt the voice from the burning bush?
41. 09:29
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I would have you consider that a great many people throughout history have been absolutely certain God spoke to them, and they've used that certainty to justify all manner of cruelty. I'm not saying your bush didn't burn. I'm saying the smoke makes it hard to see clearly.
42. 09:46
    Mosesshare moment

    So you would have no monuments? No law? No one willing to lead?
43. 09:51
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I would have leaders who remember they're mortal. I would have monuments with footnotes. I would have laws written in pencil, not stone, so we could revise them when we learned better. But that doesn't sell tickets, does it? People want their Moses certain and their Twain funny, and heaven help the man who admits he's just making it up as he goes along.
44. 10:13
    Mosesshare moment

    The Law is not made up. The Law is eternal.
45. 10:18
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Your law says not to suffer a witch to live, and I've seen what that particular piece of eternity cost some innocent women in Salem. Your law says a lot of things that seemed eternal until circumstances changed. But I suppose that's the price of having your name on stone tablets—you can't issue corrections in the morning edition.
46. 10:39
    Mosesshare moment

    And yet the Law endures. Three thousand years, and still it endures. Can you say the same of your words?
47. 10:51
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Time will tell on that score. But I'll say this: if my words endure, I hope people read them with skepticism and argue with them. I hope they don't take them as eternal law. Because the cost of monuments, Moses, the real cost, is that they stop conversation. They say 'thus it is' when they should say 'thus I saw it.' Your name is on a whole religion now, and people kill each other over interpretations of what you meant. That's a heavy price for anybody to pay, even a hundred and twenty years' worth.
48. 11:25
    Mosesshare moment

    I did not ask for a religion. I asked only to die in peace. But the work required doing, and someone had to do it.
49. 11:37
    Mark Twainshare moment

    And there we agree, finally. Someone has to do the work. I just wish more of us would remember, while we're doing it, that we're building monuments that might last longer than our wisdom does. Makes me wish I'd written 'subject to revision' on every book. But then nobody would've bought them, and I'd have stayed broke. So it goes. The monument demands to be built, and we're the ones holding the chisel, for better or worse.
50. 12:06
    Mosesshare moment

    For better or worse. Yes. That, perhaps, is the one truth we can both carve in stone.