With Elon Musk now squarely at the helm of Twitter after completing his $44 billion acquisition of the social media giant, the self-described “Free Speech Absolutist” has already signaled his intention to unban many previously banned pages, including the Babylon Bee, which Musk has seemingly singled out.
In two brief missives Musk, who frequently retweeted the satire site before their suspension, wrote “anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail” and “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”- likely referencing the banning of the Babylon Bee for this post, which many see as an inflection point for the whole debate and the straw that broke the camel’s back. Consequently, #babylonbee was trending Friday night
Having already fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head lawyer and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, Musk has pledged to clean house and is expected to lay off up to 75% of the workforce to purge the company of anti-free speech sentiment.
In response to the news, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon has been ebullient, and it’s only a matter of time until they are sharing the special brand of satire again.
Several days ago, the Babylon Bee, Christendom’s premiere satire website, managed to snag a two-hour interview with Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of Tesla, Space-X. Musk is well-known for his love of memes and has occasionally retweeted the Bee.
At the end of the show, after guests are invited to give rapid-fire answers to 10 questions, one of the hosts asks Musk to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Here is his answer*:
Bee: “To make this church, we’re wondering if you could do us a quick solid and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.”
Musk: “I mean, let’s just say like, I agree with the principles that Jesus advocated. There’s great wisdom in the teachings of Jesus. And I agree with those teachings. And things like turn the other cheek, are very important because, as opposed to an eye for an eye, an eye for an eye leads everyone blind. So forgiveness, you know, it’s important and treating people as you would wish to be treated. Love thy neighbour as thyself. Very important.”
Bee: “So that’s like a 60 70% ‘yes’?”
Musk: “I would say I believe in the God of Spinoza. (Editor’s Note. Baruch Spinoza was a famous Philosopher during the 17th century who basically argued that God and nature were one, and ferociously rejected the God of the bible. So hey, if Jesus is saving people, I mean, I wouldn’t stand in his way. You know, like, “sure I’ll be saved, why not?”
Bee, clapping with crosstalk: “Sweet. We did it!. I think he just said yes. We got him! Do you want to get baptized or anything real quick?”
Musk: “I was baptized. Yeah, they dunked me in the water when I was just a baby. I even had, like, you know, whatever, the blood and water of Christ. That was kind of weird, you know? As a little kid, let’s give him some weird-tasing wine You know like ‘what the hell is this?’ I’m like ‘isn’t this kind of weird?”
Bee, looking at camera: “just cut it off when he said ‘yes.'”
Musk: “Is this kind of like, some weird metaphor for cannibalism or something. I don’t get it. Like what the hell? I remember thinking that was just crazy when I was a kid. And like ‘whoa’ you know? Even as a metaphor it’s kind of odd, you know? So it’s like, should we giving alcohol to minors?”
Bee: “We do grape juice, we’re Baptists. But I think it’s unusual to even be thinking about that as a kid. As a kid you just go through the motions, and it’s later on that you think, ‘wait a minute, what does this actually represent? What am I doing?”
Musk: “No, when I was a kid, I was like, ‘is this actually the blood and body? What? I’m not for eating somebody…this is just pretty odd’. You know, I remember thinking that even at age five. So I was definitely in Sunday school, when they were telling me all the stories and I was like, asking questions and like, they really were upset that I was asking questions. I was like ‘how did Jesus feed the crowd with five loaves of bread and three fish, like, how big was the crowd? And like, where did the fish and bread come from? From his cloak or something?
Because I was reading books, and I was like, did they materialize? Where do they come from, you know? Would you take a bite of the bread and the bread would just come back to being a full bread? They left out the details”
Bee: “Where did the universe come from?”
Musk: “Well, I’m not saying I know all the answers here. It’s just, Jesus was obviously very pro-alcohol, you know? Because one of his miracles was turning water into wine. Yeah, that was like they were having a party. They ran out of wine, and they’re like “let’s keep this bender going” Who can solve this problem? Friggin stores closed. Jesus like “I got you: water, now wine.” And they’re like “party on!” So pro-partying with alcohol was literally one of the miracles. So it’s definitely- you’re the savior, you keep the party going with lots of wine. That’s great. “
We’re grateful the Bee broached the subject, but ultimately, the whole thing was awkward given that they assumed that Musk knew the gospel or anything about Christianity, which he did not.
It would have been far more profitable to say something like “because we’re a bunch of Christians here, we’d regret it if we didn’t at the very least explain to you what the gospel is that we believe, because it’s one of those things that frequently gets twisted and lost and misrepresented” and give him a clear presentation, rather than making a joke out of it an having the whole thing be a non-starter.
To be blunt, if anything, the attitude and tone they took about it could very well be viewed as blasphemous. It was not good at all and came across as if they really didn’t care that he be given a serious, biblical view of the gospel- because whatever that was, it wasn’t the gospel. Joking is all well and good, but this is not something you joke about.
It’s a missed opportunity, but we hope they get another chance at it one day.
*Editor’s Note. Because Musk has a bit of a speech impediment and an occasionally jilted way of talking, we lightly edited the interview for clarity.
Editor’s Note 2. Our initial article didn’t go into our displeasure with the presentation, and we added a few lines to highlight the problems. Original post can be seen here.
