In the twelfth episode of The Babylon Bee podcast, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle talk about the strange world of church camp, both sharing their own experiences as well as stories that were sent in by readers. As usual, a few news stories are covered and hate mail is dramatically reenacted by Dave. Stories of the Week and relevant timestamps: 7:47 Chick-Fil-A Installs Confessionals So You Can Repent From Eating At Popeyes (Also includes Judas Isacriot Eats Popeyes and the Trumpets stories) (13:46) CNN: 'Our Ratings Are Only Tanking Because Trump Is Killing Off Viewers By The Millions' (17:25) Jesus Ratioed On Twitter For Saying 'Love Your Enemies' (23:02) Main Topic: Church Camp Horror Stories (1:00:23) Hate Mail! (1:06:00) Paid Subscriber-Exclusive Portion: More church camp horror stories Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
In a world of fake news, this is news you can trust.
Who snopes the snopes?
We do.
You're listening to the Babylon B. Here are your infallible hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
Yes, the voice you are hearing right now is none other than someone you've probably never heard of before, Kyle Mann.
And this other voice here.
Ethan Nicole.
You know that because I just said my name first.
Did you?
Yeah, there's no question.
What?
Well, I said as an introduction of myself, I just said my name.
So that upon hearing my voice, you knew my name.
I thought you meant you had pre-recorded something that I wasn't hearing right now, and you had this whole like, I am Ethan Nicole.
I am, no.
I might.
I could do that.
That's like when Brian Gadawa introduced himself.
actually did he that might have been in the one You're referring to an episode that you haven't had in a release yet.
Yeah.
So that's a teaser.
You guys will really enjoy that.
Yeah, we got another.
Hopefully, people seem to like Brian.
There's maybe one negative comment, I think, but that guy seemed grumpy.
Yeah, there was a guy that was like, I really, it was super boring.
I disagreed with everything that guy said.
But it did sound like he listened to the whole thing.
So that's a good idea.
All we need is the download.
Yeah, a lot of people seem to like it.
I love analyzing movies now and then.
We can't do it every episode.
That would drive me crazy.
Once in a while.
Yeah.
So, Ethan, you look a little bit older.
Do I?
Sitting across the table from me here.
The other night I was sitting there and I was like just kind of chilling out with my headphones.
No, I didn't have headphones.
I had a cigar in my mouth.
And then I looked down and realized that it was past midnight and I had turned 39.
Did they ever have that experience?
Well, you haven't had that experience because you're not 39 yet.
I'm like in my early 30s.
Yeah.
You're such a youngin'.
Yeah.
That's the weird thing is because you like, you know about all this old stuff.
You're an old soul.
You don't seem like you make a big deal out of birthdays, Ethan.
No, I don't really.
I was over at your house like the minute you turn almost at the minute that you.
Yeah, you were there just before.
And you didn't say, hey, by the way, I'm turning.
I hate people that tell you it's their birthday.
I think the worst thing I feel very sad for people that like send you a birthday, like a big invite, like, hey, it's going to be my birthday.
So everybody meet at this restaurant and we all get together.
It's like, shouldn't someone throw your party for you?
We had, there was a...
Isn't that weird?
Like, you're telling everybody to come bring you presents and stuff and get together.
We had an acquaintance at church once that invited everybody to her birthday and then told everyone, oh, and by the way, it costs $80 a person.
You know, they were doing like wine and paint and food and, you know, one of those things.
And it's like, everybody come and bring your $80, you know?
And it's like, oh, I don't know if anybody showed up.
It's pretty brutal.
You didn't get a present?
You're going to tell them to bring $80 and a present.
Yeah.
This is like, must be a rich area.
Now, when someone says, like, no presents accepted or no presentation.
I mean, you still bring a present, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, they don't mean that.
They're just trying to, they're virtue signaling.
So Ethan's sitting in his garage, chomping a candy cigar.
Candy cigar and turning 39.
Well, congratulations.
39.
It feels a lot like 38.
And I keep forgetting if I'm 37 or 38, so I'm going to keep forgetting if I'm 38 or 39.
I think.
But 39 is a little more.
It's notable because it's right on the border of 40s.
Yeah, I don't think you'll forget.
Well, I don't know.
I never knew.
But your memory is also going.
Yeah, so last night my wife took me out to sushi and I had all-you-can-eat sushi, which I always tell myself after I have it, just don't do it again.
Never do it again because it's not as good as it sounds.
Like, cause just shoving tons of raw sea creatures into your mouth until you're completely stuffed is just, there's no way that's going to end up good.
So I'm feeling it.
I'm feeling it right now.
There was no scenario in which that ends up at any moment as well.
The podcast could have to go on pause because the entire cast of the song Under the Sea is going to have to enter the sewage system of this building we're in.
Oh my gosh.
I'm sorry.
This is some quality content right here.
Yeah, I don't do the all-you-can-eat sushi.
You're wise.
It sounds great, but it's not.
We have sushi restaurants that we like.
My wife likes it a lot more than I do, but we have ones that we like.
We get the rolls that we like and the sushi that we like.
You know, I don't know.
I can't eat more than one or two plates anyway.
I know.
I always end up eating way more than I like.
I'm like, well, I got all you can eat, so I got to get six more rolls and shove them in here somewhere.
They got to fit.
Now, is it like all sitting out there?
Oh, like a buffet?
It's nice.
There's a good place I go to called sushi martini.
Okay.
And I don't like their martinis because I make my own specific martini that I is really good.
A martini with sushi and it does not sound good to me.
Yeah, there's actually a fish swimming around in it.
That's still alive.
That's disgusting.
You got to swallow it.
No, that's not true.
All right.
I thought it was true.
I had you for a second.
And then it's good that you tagged that with satire.
By the way, this is satire.
Snopes, thanks you.
I think Frank posted something on Twitter, like all of our articles should say at the beginning, this is satire.
And then while you're reading it, you are now reading satire.
Yeah, after every sentence.
Warning.
You are now reading satire.
You have just completed reading satire.
Well, I didn't have a birthday, but my kids got their orange belts in Taekwondo.
Whoa.
Can they do when you get an orange belt?
Can you do a jumping spin kick yet?
Or is that later?
Yeah, no, that's when you get to use the, that's when you turn into a ninja turtle.
You get to beat people with a stick.
How's that work?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Some magical.
Do they break boards yet or is that later?
They're just learning to with like the plastic ones that fit together.
Oh, they fake it?
There's like a fake.
They do a fake board before they do the real board.
I'm guessing they fake all the way up.
Might be.
I guess you'll find out.
I don't know how it works.
Once you go through the gauntlet.
So orange is like third.
I think it starts white.
Did you get little stripes?
well they do it different too it's like different from yellow and then orange right That's what I remember.
But I took care of it.
Because they had purple, because I already had purple.
So they did like white, yellow, really?
Maybe blue.
I thought purple was like right before black.
No, brown's before black.
I thought it was purple, brown, black.
No?
Oh, no, blue.
Whatever.
It may be blue, brown, black is next.
Who knows?
So, you know, as a kid, it was like the kids.
Oh, it's all capitalism.
As a kid, the kids who got to do karate to me were like so cool.
You know, oh, you know, karate.
Yeah.
And everybody signed up after the Karate Kid movie, and it just became this whole cultural thing.
We did this.
The guy came to town and it was like white trash karate.
It was called Kenpo.
And this guy who had like very bulging chest hair out of his gi named, I think his name was Gil McGill or something.
He was this weird guy.
Rex Kwando.
Yeah, it was like that.
He's a white, totally white, pasty white guy.
And it was like really cheap.
So my mom took us because we were like really poor.
And they're like, there's no kicking.
There's no spin kicking.
There's no jumping.
Like everything that was cool that the ninja turtles did.
He's like, we don't do any of that.
He's super mad because all these kids watch ninja turtles and then come in and they're like, hey, can you teach me how to do all that stuff?
He hated it.
We just sit and meditate for two hours every class.
You just do these like really straightforward punches and stuff.
Sad.
Well, speaking of sad, should we get into this week's stories?
Not good.
Not good.
Here we go.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
Chick-fil-A installs confessionals so you can repent from eating at Popeyes.
They do.
I didn't know Chick-fil-A was Catholic.
I know.
Sometimes you've got to muddy the waters.
But the guy who owns Chick-fil-A is his last name's Kathy.
Kathy Lick.
That could be.
I've never heard it used before, but that would be a great nickname for Catholics.
Kathy?
A bunch of Kathys.
That sounds like derogatory.
All these Kathys are out there.
I love GK Chesterton.
Too bad he's a Kathy.
I just call him Filthy Papist.
Filthy Papists.
That sounds dirty, too.
That sounds gynological.
Have you gotten to get your Papist exam?
Oh, man.
Papist examination.
Whoa.
Well, we've got jokes about bowel movements.
Pap smears.
There's a lot of lines here already on this episode.
Lines are being crossed.
It helps when we have guests.
They reign us in.
We show off and we try to be good.
It's just us in this little room.
So, I mean, we've talked so much about Chick-fil-A on this podcast.
The main reason that this story we're ringing up because there's a little bit of a feud.
I just followed it.
Is there a feud between Popeyes and there's a kerfluffle?
By the way, I'm sick, and I'm going to, my voice is going to crack even more than usual.
Just so you know.
Yeah.
Ladies, tell me more about Chick-fil-A.
Get ready.
Yeah, there was a kerfluffle.
Popeyes introduced.
Did you say fluffle?
Kerfluffle.
There's no L in there or no first L. Isn't it fluffle?
Fuffle.
Okay, hold on.
Kerfuffle.
Kerfuffle.
It's not kerfuffle.
It's not kerfluffle.
Hold on.
Now we're going to Google it.
Ker fluffle.
What?
No, never mind.
I was wrong.
Well, that was the loudest what I've ever said.
Ker.
Now you might be finding people who are mistaken just like you are on the internet.
It's on Urban Dictionary as Kerfluffle.
What's Urban Dictionary?
That's ask.
No offense to the urban community.
This website lets you ask questions.
What's the difference between kerfuffle and kerfluffle?
Kerfluffle's not a thing.
And it says kerfluffle was a four-piece English folk band.
Okay.
Oh, wait.
No, that was kerfuffle.
I don't know.
I've got no idea.
So, anyway.
Yeah, so there was a brew ha-ha.
Email us if you'd like to tell us if you think it's kerfuffle or kerfluffle.
We'll do a poll.
Yeah.
That's how all truth is determined.
It's our gif versus gif.
Yeah.
Well, debate.
Is it gif or gif, Ethan?
I say it's gif.
I think we're together on that.
Yeah.
Rational people say it's gif.
Solidarity.
So there was a brew ha-ha.
Oh, yeah.
It's a brew-ha.
A real racket.
A real.
Is it pronounced racket or is it pronounced like relaka?
A ruckus.
Raw.
A ruckus.
So there was a throwdown between Popeyes and Chick-fil-A because Popeyes introduced a chicken sandwich, which is Chick-fil-A's territory.
Whoa, okay.
I didn't catch this part of the story.
This was the, this was like, this isn't part of the story.
This is like the whole story.
Okay.
That's the story.
That's it.
They introduced a new sandwich, and the sandwich was like, we prayed over this sandwich and it's from Jesus.
Yeah.
Well, so there was a big, it was a big deal.
People were saying, oh my gosh, I didn't know Popeyes had a chicken sandwich.
I think they've actually had it for a while.
Oh, they never had a sandwich and now they do.
Well, I think they've had it for a long time, but they just, you know, they did one of those marketing pushes.
Like, did you know we have a chicken sandwich?
And it was really effective because obviously everybody's like, what?
You know, I didn't know you had a chicken sandwich.
I want to enjoy a chicken sandwich and still not hate gay people.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And so because it's a culturally charged issue, people on the left are like, you know, I don't want my chicken sandwich with a side of homophobia.
You know, hold the hate.
Covered in hate sauce.
Exactly.
So people are rushing to Popeyes to show their support.
And then so at the Babylon B, we stood in solidarity with Chick-fil-A.
And we fired back.
Yeah.
We had a few.
So we had the confessional, which I was very happy with how that Photoshop turned out.
Beautiful.
Patting myself on the back on that one.
But it was very dramatic.
You get to see the light kind of glowing off the Chick-fil-A guy's face behind the screen of the professional.
You showed me the original reference image.
I was like, that's not going to work.
It's never going to work.
And you made it work.
So it was tricky.
Good job.
Pull out some tricks.
And then we had, sorry for sniffling.
I'm trying not to.
Judas Iscariot.
It turns out, just before he denied Christ, he was at Popeyes eating a Popeye's chicken sandwich.
Is that true?
That is true.
Yeah, that's what the scholar said on our story.
We consult with scholars for all of our satire pieces.
Yeah.
At least one.
Who's that?
Well, so in the article, I made it like it was Dan Cathy, the Chick-fil-A guy in disguise.
I'm glad this did.
Clearly, I didn't read it.
I'm glad to hear that you didn't even read the article.
I didn't even read it.
Trumpets.
There's the one with the Chick-fil-A employees.
It's a good thing I didn't put the headline in my notes.
Yeah, marching around the Popeyes blowing trumpets.
Yeah.
Is that a reference to something?
No.
Okay.
Yeah, you got to read your Bible to figure out what that one's about.
I know that one.
I'm not that bad.
That was one of our subscribers pitched that idea.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
It worked out.
See?
Good job, subscribers.
You can rise to the top.
You can do it.
You can climb.
You believe in yourself.
Claw your way over all the wannabes.
Anything can happen.
You can make any dream come true.
If you believe in yourself.
I'm trying to find that Disney theme.
And the dreams that you wish.
You know, it's true about dreams, kid.
If you dream really hard, whatever you want will definitely happen, and your life will be great forever.
And you can get a Chick-fil-A joke published on the Babylon B.
The pinnacle.
It's the pinnacle of your whole life.
But wait, there's more stories this week.
CNN is quoted on the Babylon B, a very reliable source, as saying, our ratings are only tanking because Trump is killing off viewers by the millions.
Man, I already had issues with this president, but the fact that he's killing millions of people.
But they're CNN viewers.
That's true.
Because they had an actual reliable psychiatrist on their show who theorized that Trump has killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao in the last century.
I don't even know what those numbers are.
I mean, it's 100 million plus.
You always hear like this, not to joke about death, but you'll hear it.
They'll be like, Mao, it was like somewhere between like 50 to 100 million.
Like, that's a huge difference.
Yeah, the gap there, the margin of error.
Like, yeah, because if you killed like six people, like six to six to ten people, they'd be like, or even if it was like one, between one and four, it's like, well, that's a huge difference.
Like, are you a serial killer or did you just kill somebody?
Are you just a regular killer?
Or did you kill 50 million or 100 million?
It's like, well, it depends how you look at it.
Maybe it's like, did the starving people really, was it really his fault?
The people that fell on the stairs.
Yeah, I think there's some disagreement.
Like, yeah, is it his fault if there's a famine?
You know, but in China, it definitely was.
Like, the government was not getting the food to the people.
Like, did everybody who died of natural causes during that time also count as a death?
Yeah, and then people will say.
You got to be fair with Mao.
People will say that about capitalism.
Like, look at all the people that died from capitalism.
And it's just like people who died.
I suspect that with almost all statistics about death, because how do you really, like, unless it's like a piano fell on them, then you can have that.
You know, clearly that killed them.
When the piano falls on them, the researchers go over to the chalkboard.
Yeah.
And under the piano column, they scratch one tally mark.
Another for pianos.
Like, if somebody dies of second-hand smoke, shouldn't they also, all this other stuff be factored in?
They were around radiation, or they like had death common in their family traits.
Yeah.
Which we all do, I guess.
I'm genetically predisposed to dying because my parents, everyone before me did that.
And they watched The Last Jedi the week before they died.
Yeah.
So there's a correlation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The actual quote from this guy, like this guy, you know, we're basing this on truth.
This guy on CNN said, Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, in the last century.
He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.
Like if he said the exact same amount as them, that'd be pretty insane.
But he said many more millions.
You're like, what is that?
Many more million?
So that's got to be close to the billions, right?
Or a billion.
Did you?
I didn't listen to the thing.
I don't know what the context was if he was saying he was getting into all this healthcare stuff.
I briefed him.
Healthcare.
I looked over it.
Yeah, it's like what we're talking about of cause of death, like, you know, someone pulling the trigger on a firing squad.
Yeah.
Versus like, well, I disagree with Trump's healthcare policies.
Therefore, he killed this person.
Millions have died.
Yeah, I don't know.
Slightly, it just seems slightly hyperbolic.
Just a little bit.
Just a little.
Just nuance.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, we're in the middle of the Trump Acoste.
Yes, the Trump, Trump apocalypse.
Trumpalypse.
All right, this one.
This uses a little bit of Twitter language.
This one did not do as well on Facebook, but it did great on Twitter.
Jesus ratioed on Twitter for saying, love your enemies.
What does ratioed mean, Ethan?
For all the confused Facebook people.
Ratioed is a thing that happens on Twitter.
When somebody posts something that the Twitter community finds repulsive.
Are you reading something?
No, I'm just saying.
You're reading so mechanically.
It's like, you know.
It's something that happens in the Twitter community.
It's like, Siri, define ratioed.
So when the number of comments far outweighs the number of likes, that is called ratioed because it shows that the tweet wasn't really liked.
There's just people are just slamming it.
Yeah.
Which example, there's a recent one.
This guy who actually got ratioed this last week or whatever.
And this guy named Matthew Staldon.
I think he's from the UK.
He said, always remember.
Did you say Matthew Stalin?
Staldon.
Oh.
Staldon.
There's a D in there.
I'm going to say he's responsible for millions of deaths.
I try to do my best British accent.
Always remember that almost all racists are united by one thing.
I'm turning Australian.
Almost all racists are united by one thing.
They don't like being called racist.
I don't even.
Brilliant point.
You sent me that link, and I was like, I still don't really, I don't really get what he's trying to say.
It's so circular.
It's like, you could use that on anybody.
You know, one way to tell somebody is not a serial killer is if you call them a serial killer.
They don't like it.
Yeah.
The opposite idea of that would be like, if you aren't racist, you love being called a racist.
Which is just like, hey, man, you're racist.
Yes.
Thanks, bro.
Man, I love you.
Oh, man.
That is.
So clearly he got like ratioed hard.
And then he replied to it.
Like a guy goes, I can't remember.
Somebody just said, like, just called him on his logic.
And he said, that's a peculiar response.
Somehow reading into, oh, if you respond that way, you're also a racist.
And so then that response got ratioed.
Like a ratio inside a ratio, like a double ratio.
It was ratio.
What do they call?
What was that movie with all the dreams?
Inception.
Yeah, it was ratio inception.
Yeah.
Anyway, that's Twitter geekery, probably.
Yeah.
So, I mean, well, the thing is that, you know, just people not liking your stuff isn't really proof that you're wrong.
That's true, which is funny because it shows that Twitter is this crazy place.
And because Jesus saying, love your enemies, because Twitter is all about the opposite.
Despise your enemies.
Yeah.
And it's, yeah, you'll have the people like, my enemy wants me destroyed because they are a white supremacist.
And like you find out they're talking about some guy who's wearing a Ben Shapiro t-shirt or something.
Oh, or the Gadsden flag shirt.
Yeah, it's Chris Pratt.
He wants to murder us all.
I wonder if Chris Pratt likes being called racist.
He probably loves it.
Yeah.
Because he seems pretty open-minded.
Therefore, he loves being called racist.
It's his favorite.
But isn't that the leftist thing?
Like, everybody's racist?
Yeah.
Seems like.
At least all white people.
Like, even they say they're racist, right?
But they have like, they've paid penance for it and are reformed racists.
Yeah, they're currently sanctifying themselves from their racism.
Cleansing themselves.
Yeah.
Totally.
Only white, though.
Only white, yeah.
Well, that's the thing is: you can't be racist if you're a minority.
Well, they literally redefine the terms to where racism is prejudice plus power, is what they say.
So if you don't have power, you cannot be racist.
But then it doesn't count.
It doesn't count if you're like, we're actually going to have Kira Davis.
Yeah, Kira Davis is going to be coming on.
Kira Knightley.
Yeah.
That's where I was going.
You think of Kira Knightley?
Your head is like Knightley.
Your head's like Knightley, but that can't be right.
It can't be right.
Yeah.
She's going to come on and talk about.
Oh, man, Kyle's coughing.
Did I give him my comment?
No, please.
No.
Talk about more race type stuff.
She's got credentials because she's mixed race.
So she's got it.
She's got like both feet and both doors.
So everybody doesn't like her.
Yeah, pretty much.
So she half likes being called racist and half doesn't like she's very torn on the issue.
So about this article, I just love this idea that Jesus is like, just says this really innocuous thing.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
And then I think in the Photoshop, you put the first comment is the guy says, this ain't it, Chief.
That's like the most common thing I'll see on Twitter when we post an article and that people kind of like it ruffles their feathers.
There's always the guy that's like, this ain't it, Chief.
Or there's a bunch of gifts for it.
Yeah.
This ain't it, Jesus.
Like that just like, oh, that settles it.
This ain't it, Chief.
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
Should we move on to what's next?
Topic.
The topic of the week.
We're going to talk about Bible camp.
Let's do this.
And now, the Babylon bees topic of the week.
All right.
For our main topic, we are going to get into church camp, Bible camp, Jesus camp, whatever you want to call it.
It's just where Christians take a bunch of kids out in the woods and just they have their way.
You can't say have your way.
You can't say that.
That's good connotations, man.
They do their thing.
I like that.
You isolate them.
They're isolated.
I like that you've just got all these kids that are bored in the summer and the moms and dads that are like thrusters.
They're just like, I don't know.
Put them on this bus in the woods with strange people.
And just send them up there.
Strange people.
For me, growing up, you know, church camp was this mystical, like mysterious, enigmatic thing.
It was like, oh man, when I turn 10, I get to go to church camp.
Yeah.
You know, and your brother comes back.
Older for me at all.
My older brother comes back and he's like, you know, oh yeah, I went to church camp.
You know, it was amazing.
I can't talk about what happened there.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, oh, man.
I can't wait.
Nobody talked.
He can't talk about it.
It doesn't make it mysterious.
They were harvesting organs.
Okay.
No, I'm just joking.
So, Ethan, I think you had, you did youth.
What is it called?
Young Life?
Young Life.
Yeah.
Young Life's a little different, I think.
But I've never been to official church camp, I don't think.
I've been a little tiny mini ones.
But yeah, Young Life has like the big resort camps like Woodleaf.
They have that one where the Raj Niche cult used to be called Big Muddy.
It was called Big Muddy.
Now it's called Wild Horse Canyon.
But that's where all this up in Oregon, although that huge cult lived out there and they were like poisoning the water supply and this crazy like orgies and stuff.
This was the church camp or the cult.
The Rajnishi cult that you should have to do.
Can you put in the show notes how we can sign up?
I don't know if they still exist or not.
If you ever watch the Wild, Wild Country parental guidance, it's probably like R-rated or something.
Was it a documentary?
Documentary on Netflix about that cult.
And it's bizarre watching it if you've been to that camp because you recognize all these spots there.
So this, so they, Young Life took it over.
Yeah, it got sold.
Somebody bought it or owned it and then donated it to Young Life.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
That's kind of like Calvary Chapels.
They always take over these old strip clubs.
You know?
Yeah.
There's like poles everywhere.
Well, they just take over like old weird businesses.
Like, oh, they used to be a Burger King.
Yeah, I think I've been to some that were like theaters.
Now it's Calvary Chapel.
They like theaters.
Yeah, so anyway, I think we're going to share our own church camp story.
Yeah, go ahead.
This isn't really, I mean, this isn't philosophical.
This is just an experience I had that's embarrassing, really.
So it was my first time being a Young Life leader at a camp where I had my own cabin of kids to lead.
And I was kind of, I was sitting at the kind of the main hub of the whole camp, and I had been spending my entire day blobbing children.
Does that sound gross?
Blobbing.
The blob is a giant pillow of air that you, one person sits on one end of it, and the other person jumps off a platform from very high up, lands on the blob, the air shoots up, and the kid shoots up in the air.
That's like, was that in heavyweights?
Yeah, I think we had one at the camp I went to also.
Yeah, and like you can, if you get a really small person on one end and then a very large person like me, you can like send them like past the floaty things that say where it's safe, like out wherever.
I don't know what's dangerous past the floaty things, but I don't know if there's like gators out there or what.
I thought it was always lame when you got, you finally waited forever and then you got on the blob and the kid behind you was like this little twig.
50, 50 pound.
That's why I spent the whole day there because everybody loved me because I was the morbid obese guy that was just launching people like crazy.
They were like picking you up on their shoulders.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the Angus movie about the fat kid who's like awesome.
Yeah.
Rudy.
So I had just been blobbing like a madman.
And your life was, your life is all downhill.
The rock star, yeah.
Is your life all downhill from the moment?
From the blobbing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm sitting out and it's really the main artery, like all this stuff, the pool and everything, the shop.
There's like a little ice cream store right next to us.
And then where we're sitting is kind of the main spot where you have to take these stairs up to the cabins.
So it's the main artery where everybody has to go through to get to everything.
So it's a constant flow of traffic walking past at all times because it's a big camp with hundreds of people.
And I'm sitting there talking to my guys and then some guy who comes out of the, where they're playing table tennis and a ball comes bouncing out and gets lost.
He's like, you guys see how that ball went?
And nobody saw it, but then he pointed at me and said, and I don't know if I can say what he said.
He basically related to the idea that he found a ball, but not the one that he was looking for.
Is that okay to say that on this podcast?
I guess it is now.
And so my shorts are ripped completely open.
Oh, no.
Like, not just a little bit.
Like, I'm looking down.
I look down and realize that, like, my testimonies, I don't know what you'd call, like, what's the Christian word that you would use for your special area?
God-given area was just completely wide open, like sitting out on display as if it was a museum or something.
Like, like on those Michelangelo carvings, you know, it's not, wow, there's no hiding it.
Kids have been walking past me all day, and I'm a leader.
I'm like a anyway, so that was my story.
There's not like a funny ending, except that I just went running back to my cabin and changed my pants.
So just let that linger or what?
Just have some silence.
Nobody, but the weirdest thing to me is nobody said anything.
They walk.
So many people walk past me.
They had to have seen it because it was not hidden.
Like I was sitting with my legs apart.
That's like everybody.
Sorry for the visuals everybody's getting.
Don't look at pictures of me on the internet.
That's like bad dream.
That's like nightmare status.
Like jump up in a cold sweat.
Like, forgot all my clothes and I'm at school taking a test.
Oh, you mean for me?
I think that for the people that saw me.
Oh, well, that too.
Yeah, it is.
It's like that.
It's like where you in a dream where you're sitting in a public place, then you look down and realize you're naked.
Yeah.
Oh, that's why everybody's staring at me.
And then you wake up.
For me, it was like I look down and realize, oh, I'm at camp and I'm a leader.
And then you're like, oh, this is just a dream.
And then you're like, oh my gosh, laughing really loud.
It's not true.
And then I don't wake up.
It's kind of a funny ending.
Like, I just picture you like cackling and running off into the sunset.
Well, everybody noticed, like, everybody was sitting with me, I think maybe because they weren't aimed at me, didn't notice, but everybody laughing.
Oh, my gosh, you know, shocked.
All right, you got to get us.
You have a story to top that?
I don't, I don't, actually.
I can't top that.
We didn't really have any, I didn't have anything absolutely wacky like that, but I do remember, like I said, church camp was this just this like mystical thing.
And then you go and it's like the mountaintop experience of, you know, they had these programs where like every night you had the big campfire, you know, had like a heart-to-heart talk.
And yeah, so I went to Forest Home and they had, there was like a couple of camps, I think, and they had Indian Village, which was you get to stay in teepees.
You know, and there's a camp chief and he does his little like pow wow every night.
And they culturally appropriate every term from Native Americans.
And that becomes the church camp theme.
So you're saying that the church camp that you went to is highly racist.
So I might have accepted Jesus or I might have accepted the great spirit.
I'm not really sure.
The great spirit of the owl.
I'm inhabited by the spirit of the buffalo.
This is pure racism right now.
I'm 132nd Cherokee, card carrying.
I have it in my wallet right now, so I can make these jokes.
I remember there was this camp counselor who really wanted to read C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, which is a fairly long series to read when you're at camp.
The whole answer to all the books.
I think he read, I think he picked one book.
Like he wanted to read everybody, The Horse and His Boy.
It's the worst one to pick.
It's so long.
Yeah, I guess it is kind of terrible.
I'm reading it to my kids right now.
Can I say that on a podcast?
You didn't like horses?
I really.
We actually got like a third, two-thirds of the way through it, and my kids and I all agreed, like, we are just tired.
We're not enjoying this.
Apparently, he wrote that book really fast.
Like, I heard that he cranked it out, like, wrote it in like three weeks or something.
Wow.
Yeah.
It feels like that.
It feels like a book that could really be trimmed down to me.
Anyway, I'm not allowed.
You're not allowed to criticize C.S. Lewis.
I, yeah, I'll hate mail, Ethan at BabylonB.com.
But I actually think it's a pretty good one because the whole message by the end is- We did get back and read.
We did finish it though.
To say we finished, we have to read.
So we went back when we read the whole series, went back and finished Horse and His Boy.
Okay.
Yeah, we're like, we're like three-quarters of the way through.
So the big revelation, like three-quarters of the way through, is that Aslan is the one who has been guiding them this whole time.
I mean, there's like the cat that sleeps with him when he's sad, and the lion that scares off the hyenas and the one that attacks them.
And all of that was Aslan a lot.
Very Calvinistic.
I appreciated that.
So I like that a lot.
Yeah.
So anyway.
Mountaintop experience at Church Camp.
Now that Ethan's done slamming one of the greatest Christian authors of all time.
We all have our bad days.
No, his bad day was that hideous strength.
Oh.
I can't stand that book.
I think Doug Danaple likes it a lot.
Really?
I think he's the one that's posted about it on Twitter with him on soon.
Yeah, we'll have to see.
I'm going to have him defend that hideous strength because I didn't understand it at all.
I'm probably just not smart enough.
I don't think I ever got through the whole space trilogy.
Well, the first two are amazing, and that last one is just like it was.
I think it just didn't fit in the trilogy.
It was a totally different thing.
Anyway, so like he gets, but it's weird because we have a week, and this guy gets like 10 minutes with us, you know, three or four times.
Yeah.
And so he's like reading The Horse and His Boy to us.
And we get to like, we get like one and a half chapters in.
And that was the end.
That was the end of one.
That was the end of his whole.
He didn't teach or anything?
Well, he just, yeah, he just read The Horse and His Boy to everybody.
But he didn't get very, like, he got it one and a half chapters in.
Okay.
And it was like.
You guys got to read the rest of this when you get home.
Yeah.
It's like this idea of this guy that has this massive tome, and he's like, guys, I love this book.
Let's read it.
He just was excited to read it to somebody.
He's excited.
Yeah.
It could be like me, like, is my, when my kids hit this age where they wouldn't let me read to them anymore because they didn't care.
They're getting older and they could read their own books faster or they just didn't like reading.
I had this like hunger to read to somebody.
I was like, I like reading books out loud.
It's really fun.
But yeah, so you know, I ever thought of it.
I could go out to homeless people and like hand them money and be like, can I read The Hobbit to you?
I'll pay you five bucks.
You can stand out with a cardboard sign and we'll read.
We'll read to you for giving you money.
For giving you money.
For negative money.
So yeah, I don't know.
I feel like Church Camp, you know, the whole thing is kind of manufactured and funneled towards this final night where you throw your sin in the campfire and everybody comes forward.
And there's almost this like pressure of everybody must come forward.
You know, and there's like there's like the one kid who doesn't, you know, and everybody else walks to the front.
Yeah.
And I don't know.
The pressure is on.
And you said you accepted Christ at a.
I did.
Yeah.
Young Life Camp.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a bit different for me because when I went to camp, I did not want to go at all.
I had no interest.
I thought it sounded stupid.
And then also I was a self-proclaimed atheist at the time.
Though I had been kind of questioning it, I'd almost stayed after it Young Life a couple times.
Things were kind of happening in me.
But I was actually working a late night, like 3 a.m. paper route with my mom during that summer, making money.
My mom was working all these crazy jobs and she could barely stay awake to do this job.
So she'd pay me to do it and I wanted that money.
So my mom said, I will pay you.
I'll give you a paid week off.
I'll send you this camp.
So my mom was poor.
So I mean, she could barely afford to do that, but she felt like I really needed to go.
So I went begrudgingly, basically got paid to go by my mom.
And all my friends who were like other kind of punk rocker grunge guys, we went.
And the first thing they did when they got off the bus is they went out to the woods with some, they had someone had brought like some kind of alcohol and they had all gotten, we're all getting drunk.
And it would have been my first time drinking, but something about it, I don't even know why.
I was just like, I'm not going to do it.
I don't know why I don't want to.
And I think, I don't know, that was like kind of a dividing moment for me.
Like I, that whole week, I don't know, it was like I could go with these guys or not, but they the weird thing is that almost everybody there accepted Christ.
Like they all came forward.
It was a very large amount of people.
And then once we got home, yeah, it was weird.
It was like, it's like they were looking at me going like, oh, oh, you're still doing that?
Like, I thought that was just a thing we were doing up in the woods or the camp.
I thought that we were going to go back to normal now.
Yeah, totally.
And so you feel like the weird kid if you stick with it because I think so many people go up for the fun, fun and games.
Or, you know, maybe their parents sent them up there to get rid of them and do the fun games.
And then it's probably similar to like when people who are like really into drugs and stuff go out and have some crazy weekend and like they all get crazy like high and then they do all this crazy stuff and then they don't talk about it when they get home.
It's like, yeah, oh yeah, we don't.
We killed a lot of people.
I have a very closer to Christian view of people who do drugs.
Yeah.
Murderers.
Yeah, I injected one marijuana and then I went and slaughtered a bunch of people.
All crazy.
Yeah, all high on marijuana.
Yeah, but it definitely is.
It's almost like the sales pitch where, you know, yeah, you have to come forward and then, I don't know, I feel like you come home and then you're down on yourself.
Like, oh, now I'm screaming at my brother for, you know, as we're fighting over the Game Boy or whatever.
Yeah.
A week later.
And it's like, oh, I guess nothing really did change in me.
You know, there's this whole pressure.
And I think we have a bad view of what salvation is and what sanctification is where, you know, God doesn't change you immediately necessarily.
But that's kind of the change that we expect.
Yeah, we're kind of in love with the idea of the overnight conversion and the numbers to be able to report back to parents and people, especially people that are donating money to say like, we converted 5,000 children or whatever.
And which I think, not to completely disparage church camps, I think there's a huge, it's really good to get away from society and distractions.
And even just the beauty of nature, I think, is really good to get out into.
And that is a great way to come face to face with God, I think.
Makes sense.
But just kind of having that, you know, in mind that we're making disciples, not just conversions, you know, and that it's a whole process.
It's really a process that's going to take you your whole life.
It's not just an overnight thing.
Yeah, we don't.
The ordinary faithfulness of following Jesus is not as exciting as saying, we saved 3,000 kids at this crusade or this church camp.
And so we gravitate towards the latter.
And like, is God excited by that number, do you think?
Or is that like, I mean, he maybe?
Well, I mean, in the Bible, you know, it says that they converted 3,000 in one day in the book of Acts.
And that was a big deal.
So I mean, I don't think, I don't think numbers are necessarily like a bad thing.
Yeah, they're not a bad thing.
And God knows the truth of what's going on there.
And it's not even a bad thing if somebody comes forward and then doesn't stick with it.
I mean, it's a common term, the seed was planted.
Because I think I have had my own moments where I came forward a couple times before that time where I think I was just getting ready.
Anyway.
All right.
Digging into some stories that were sent in by our members of our Facebook group.
We have the Babylon B Small Group, which is a funny name for a group of like almost 17,000 people at this point.
Is it that many?
Yeah.
When I closed that thing to post, it was like a 12,000 or something.
Yeah, it's constantly.
So now we just kind of use it for the occasional B post.
But all right.
So there's some stories some people send in for about church camp.
This guy, Barry Scott Will, says, when my oldest son first went to camp at age six, he was selected as camper of the week and was given a Bible as a prize.
On the way home, he started to read it and he got to the story of Lot.
And then he got off the bus and said, I know where babies come from.
He's six.
Oh, man.
You know where babies come from? Is when a man knows a woman.
Is that what happened in Lot?
I'm trying to remember if I remember what their story is.
Well, yeah, I don't know if he's talking about the Sodom and Gomorrah thing.
Okay.
Or if he's talking about Lot and his Lot and his daughters in the cave.
Which is.
Yeah.
He may have had a messed up version of how babies are made.
We're saying.
Because the Sodom and Gomorrah story ain't going to tell you how babies are made.
That's true.
I know babies aren't made.
That's the weird thing.
He says he got to the story of Lot.
I mean, did he start in the beginning of Genesis and get to know that?
He said he started right at the beginning.
I actually edited some of the lines out of these to make them a little shorter.
And he said he, because the sentence was he began at the beginning or something like that, the very beginning of the beginning.
So I guess he started right at page one and was reading through.
But you'd figure out where babies came from before that.
Before Lot.
Would you?
Well, Adam knew his wife.
Yeah, just from the word new.
Yeah.
New.
Maybe every time, maybe it takes a while.
Every time the word new comes up, you're like, wait a minute.
That doesn't mean you.
Kyle.
Please.
Stop it.
Yeah, that does change the meaning of that song.
They need a different spelling for that version of no.
Knowing.
Well, there needs to be a font, like italicized.
Yeah, like you say it really long.
Scare quotes.
He's new.
I would get a translation of the Bible that had scare quotes around it every time.
Adam knew his wife.
I like it if there's a little asterisk by new, and then down at the bottom of the asterisk that says, imagine Barry White music.
Yeah.
Or just said, you know what we mean.
Wink, wink.
Wink, wink.
Yeah, a little winky emoji.
What were we talking about?
We're reading stories.
Stories, church camp.
This one comes from Jennings Lawton de Priest.
Sorry, like I said, my voice is very cracky today.
Jennings Lawton de Priest.
I like that name.
He should be a pastor.
The only summer I had church camp, a church camp girlfriend, I caught the swine flu.
And he adds Romans 1:18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
So I guess he's saying that God punished him for having a church camp girlfriend with swine flu.
How do you have a church camp girlfriend?
Is that, I mean, is that just at the camp?
Just at the camp.
And then you're done.
It's happening like crazy at the Young Life Camps.
I remember from day one or two, there's these guys.
Like, I could never understand it.
They were like an item with these girls.
They'd be all over you the whole time, snuggled up together.
I love you so much.
Oh, my God.
And then, like, when the buses would pull away, they're crying.
And that was their whole relationship.
Man, I guess now you add them to Facebook or you add them to Instagram or whatever.
Now you know each other.
You're in contact.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
That's totally, that's crazy.
That was weird as kids.
Like if you, you know, had a crush on a girl or whatever and you had to give them like your home phone number.
Yeah.
And then like your parents would answer the phone.
It's like, hi, is Kyle there?
And they're like, why?
Who's this?
You know, and it's just like a super awkward.
You're trying to intercept the phone call.
Yep.
I once convinced myself that this girl would go on a date with me if I asked her dad permission.
In truth, she wanted nothing to do with me.
But I built up the you said, I had a friend that like convinced me of this because she was very like you thought the way to get to her was to ask her dad, and then she would see this as a romantic.
Yeah, she was his very Christian, like, okay.
And my friend actually convinced me of this, like my roommate at the time.
I think it was like 18 or 19.
And she, and he's like, she's very traditional, man.
Like, you got it, like, I think what it is, because he thought that we were like an item, we had to be together.
And because he had like matched me, he'd been the man from Matchmaker.
And so I like worked up the guts and called her dad.
I'd never talked to him a day in my life.
He was the scary, like, farmer guy.
And when I asked him, he kind of just started laughing.
And he goes, well, I guess if she wants to date you, it's between her and you.
It's nothing to do with me.
And when she thought next time she saw me, she was laughing too.
Like, it was like, oh man, I was so embarrassed.
And that's how Ethan met his wife.
Nope.
The church camp girlfriend.
How about this?
So, this kid, I don't know.
I don't know.
I would like to get into the theology of this one.
There's a church camp.
This is from Tyler W. Matthews.
There's a church camp I went to as a child where the theme was, The enemy of my enemy is my friend, which is an interesting theme for church camp.
Just it's a weird logic to use.
They used this to pit Satan against you as your enemy, and the enemy of Satan is Jesus.
And you should tag team with Jesus against Satan.
I like the idea that you're just taming up with Jesus out of this convenience.
Well, he hates Satan.
He hates Satan too.
So that's the only good thing about him.
Because isn't the idea of the enemy of my enemy is my friend?
It's like, that's the one thing you have in common.
You don't like them that much, but otherwise you'd have nothing to do with each other.
Yeah, you're allies of convenience.
Yeah.
Well, Jesus doesn't like Satan, so he must be all right.
Like, I always seem like it seems like the left teams up with Muslims a lot because they don't like Christians, like terrorists.
Like they're really like, did you say Muslims?
But he just said terrorists.
Not just not all Muslims.
Not all Muslims.
There's this weird, like this weird thing where they don't condemn Muslim Islamic terrorism as bad as they do Christian stuff.
Like Christian people said this word, but then it's like, well, anyway, that's a whole tangent, but it has that feeling to it.
We'll do a whole Muslim episode.
We're going to do a whole Muslim just for you, Ethan.
You can rant about Muslims.
What am I doing here?
Why am I talking about this?
Anyway, a bit hokey, but so this theme, he says, rang a bell with the kids there.
My church was super fundamental and didn't allow us to read or talk about Harry Potter because they were literally afraid we'd start casting spells on each other or something.
Anyway, he says, my smart aleck friends and I started a Voldemort fan club.
Why?
Because my pastor told me that my enemy is Harry Potter and his enemy is Voldemort.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
So he's doing math here.
This is a beautiful mind.
And that's why my pastor nearly got run out of the church when we said, Do you think he really got nearly run out of church?
Like pitchforks and torches and hand grenades.
When he said that he told us that Voldemort was our friend.
You told our children that Voldemort is their friend.
Never underestimate the spiteful power of honorable fifth graders with critical thinking skills.
Do you think that they're as brilliant as he thinks they were?
I do like that his one accomplishment in life was like that he looks back on his whole life.
You're getting his pastor around a church.
Well, I was going to say being on the honor roll in fifth grade.
I was on the honor roll.
Yeah.
You underestimate.
We had our kids in public school for a while and we went.
I went to the award ceremony.
It's like, everybody's in honor roll now.
Really?
I never was.
Well, now I'm saying now it was like weird.
It was.
Oh, really?
They do like a, they do like presidential or a principal's award, and then you sit there while they call out the names of all 200 kids and they all, they all go up there and hold up a certificate and then they all sit down and then they go.
Okay, now the honorable and it's a few, a little bit fewer kids, but still it's like you know, 150 kids go here.
Do the people that think of this have kids?
It's like, do I?
I don't want to.
This feels like a thing that like a professor type person would think of like oh, this is good for them psychology, psychologically.
They've never sat through one of these stupid ceremonies.
Yeah, they should just say, all of you, or they should make the kids go up there who didn't get an award.
If you did not get them, now the children who did not get an award, the three kids at monster, get slapped.
Well anyway yeah, I don't know if that logic checks out with the Harry Potter enemy.
My enemy, my friend, doesn't, doesn't.
Yeah, I like this one.
This girl Hannah, says that um, at church camp they played a game called fish and eels, which on its face it sounds like it's just a like shoots and ladders.
Yeah, or like, did you ever play sharks and minnows?
No, it was.
Like it was just a game where you, you chase each other and it's like one team's the sharks and one team's the minnows, multiple people are tagging.
You know they're chasing you.
That that's it.
It's just tag.
What about, like let's call it rubber monkey, Caveman or something like Caveman, Cowboy Chicken, like you turn around and you're like it's a little bit rock paper scissors.
Yeah, we did stuff like that.
It's not rubber monkey Caveman, but it's something like that.
Yeah, we did.
Like bear hunter.
Uh yeah, there's a bunch of bees or something, not the bees.
So anyway, this girl says that they play fish and eels and i'm like okay whatever, fish and eel.
And she says in which they would fill the camp pool with fish and eels from the camp, like how they capture them and campers would jump in to catch them.
She's got a punchline.
She's got a funny punchline here, but it almost doesn't to me.
That's the best part.
That's the best part that they.
Yeah, she says her her friend lost uh, her one of the campers lost their weave in the pool and then it got weave's kind of like a wig right, but not for bald people, it's just like one, one small part of it.
I think it adds to your hair or something.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'll ask my wife.
She cuts hair.
Okay honey, what's a weave?
Oh, she does my hair.
She could do your hair, your hair, done by your wife.
Uh-huh wow yeah, you always that's.
I was wondering why you always have a fresh haircut.
Yeah, my wife very good hairstylist and you always look like you're like well, you always look okay, Kyle doesn't seem like he showers very much.
He always looks like he just got out of bed.
But I always noticed that the hair on the back of your hair like always has that new, like first day of school.
Look wow yeah, I thanks.
it's just weird like usually a guy who always looks like he got out of bed his hair would be like just super long and shaggy but it makes it's all coming together
thanks just completely insulted you didn't i so anyway she says her friend lost a weave in the pool and it was caught as an eel and awarded points for an eel but but i'd like to circle back and revisit the idea of dumping a bunch of fish in an eel a presumably chlorinated pool yeah what is that like you're an eel get into the head of an eel you Got dumped into a.
I don't know how you got caught.
I don't know if you got caught with a hook or like in a big net.
And you got dumped into this blue hell where your eyes have got to be burning.
You're breathing chemicals.
You're like, ah!
And then there's giant hands trying to grab you.
I'm trying to, hold on, I'm closing my eyes and I'm trying to imagine.
Are you imagining this?
Yeah, just a nightmare.
It does sound like a nightmare.
It seems a little bit cruel to animals, to be honest.
I'm almost going to call that this is fake.
You think it's fake?
I remember our young life camp would put fish in there.
Yeah, they put actual fish in the pond.
No, but in the pool.
How do you catch the pond and put them in the pool?
Because a lot of camps have these, like we call the mill pond at Woodleaf.
And there's so many fish in there, and they're those like really aggressively hungry ones.
Like you can spit in the water and they'll come up and get it.
So they're really easy to catch.
So you can get a bunch pretty easy.
So I buy it.
I don't know about the eels, but get a big net and yeah, or even just, I mean, yeah, a net.
You put a little piece of food on top of the lake, a bunch of fish come to get it, and you just scoop them up, probably.
I believe that.
I believe that.
But you could do that at Woodleaf Camp.
And I remember we had, there was a game, and now I remember looking back, they would, they throw a live, a couple of live fish in the pond, and like teams would try to catch it.
Sorry.
I'm just, I'm just saying it happens.
It's real.
This is incredible.
I'm going to read this one.
This one isn't, it's not technically funny.
I just, it brings up a lot of interesting ideas to me.
It's there's funny stuff.
Chris Rice says, the only time I ever went to a church camp was when I turned 18 and I was told that our local Assemblies of God district was putting a week-long spiritual warfare camp at a district campground.
Nothing about church camps ever appealed to me whatsoever.
But the idea of learning spiritual warfare sounded amazing to me in a whole week of it, simply amazing.
Once I got there, I found out it was operated like a military boot camp and was intended for troubled teens who had discipline problems.
It was operated by some old military vets.
So he went voluntarily to this, like thinking it's gonna get, and there's these teens being like, you know, it's like that show, oh, scared straight or whatever.
I was anything but a problem teenager.
Also, I didn't drive there, so there was no escape.
It was one of the worst weeks of my life.
We had to line up in order, do the whole sur yes, sir.
But there were demerits and punishments and lots of marching.
Lots of marching.
A demon battling camp.
I love the idea that they have like demon dummies up on like sticks and like you're like charging at them with your rifle and your bayonet and just stabbing it.
There's like a minefield of there's like I imagine there's like landmines and like on the mines it says like lust gluttony and like you're trying not to hit the mines.
Harry Potter.
Harry Potter.
Boom.
I lost my leg.
Let this be a lesson to you kids.
So do you think Carmen operated this camp?
There has to be church camps where Carmen visited.
Or still he's still alive.
I talk like he died, but he didn't die.
He's a life coach now.
Yeah.
It'd be amazing.
He did have like cancer, I'd think.
Yeah.
He like overcame overcame it with the spiritual warfare.
That demon.
There's a great Carmen music video where he goes into the warlock's house.
And like he, it's got all the tropes, like the crystal ball and the Ouija board and the Dungeons and Dragons books.
And he's like rapping against the warlock.
I love Satan Bite in the Dust where he's like, he goes to an old saloon.
He's like a country gunslinger.
And there's all these weird, they're demon guys, like with these crazy Hollywood makeup on where they look kind of like half alien, weird demon creatures, but they're wearing cowboy outfits.
And each one is like spirit of alcoholism, spirit of temptation, spirit of and like that.
So he's like gunning them all down.
He's just like blasting people with his gun the whole video.
I like all of the Carmen metaphors that he uses.
Like, I'm a gunslinger.
I'm a medieval knight.
Yeah.
I'm fighting the warlock.
Oh, we've got to do a Carmen episode.
Absolutely.
We got to get him on.
You think we can get Carmen on?
I doubt it.
You don't think he'll come on?
Maybe.
I don't know.
Anyone know Carmen out there?
Send him an email.
All right, let's do one more and then we're going to go into our hate mail.
Okay.
This is from Robert Jeffrey Smith.
And he says, as a grown man, I went to a John Eldridge-inspired Wild at Heart men's weekend.
Okay.
So if you guys don't know what Wild at Heart is, it was this whole phenomenon like 15 years ago where.
Yeah, like making the Bible for men again.
Yeah, it was like recapturing masculinity.
You know, shoot a gun, roll it.
It's fine to punch people in the face in a bar.
Because that's what Jesus would have done.
Yeah.
I don't know if it says that in the book.
Shoot, yeah, shoot stuff and kicking a bear in the face.
Do some mud wrestling with some bears.
And that was kind of the whole gist of it.
So anyway, he says, yeah, that sums it up.
We got it.
That's the gist.
After one sermon at this camp, we were all asked to walk in prayer to God, to walk in prayer, to ask God what his name for us was.
Apparently, God has a special name for each of us.
A voice in the back of the room said, I hope it's not Sally.
To me, what that guy said, the joke, was more masculine than the whole idea that you have to go walk by a pond and like walk around a bunch of teams and feel the spirit tell you your new name.
That sounds like something that I hate to say it, that a lady Bible study leader would come up with.
It's Bob.
His name is Bob.
That's the awkward, that's one of those awkward things where you go out and do it.
You're like, and then you're trying to think of like, well, you're hoping that you can be clever because hopefully it's a spirit, but you're like, what would you, what would the Christian answer to that be?
What's a good my name is Israel for I struggle with God.
I wrestle with God.
Yeah, I guess that's probably where it comes from, right?
Is the Bible.
Yeah.
But what they didn't do it like that, though.
They didn't go like, all right, God's going to give you a name now because we're at a retreat.
And when you go walk around that pond out there, you're going to come back and he's going to give it to you.
I think a lot.
You just tell God to give you a name right now.
Yeah.
And I think a lot of bad theology comes from taking like one instance in the Bible to describe something and say, like, institutionalize it.
Like, now, all 300 of you in this camp are going to get a new name.
Yeah.
Because that's what we have to do here at this program.
So go walk around the lake.
And a lot of times in the Bible, it was like you just changed the name a little bit, right?
Yeah.
Like, what's an example of that?
You're the theologian here.
Like, I don't know.
Well, no, Peter.
Abraham and Abram.
Peter was Simon Peter first, like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, there's like little man, I'm blanking.
I'm blanking.
Abram and Abraham.
Abram and Abraham.
There's the Saul and Paul thing, but I don't think that.
Yeah, Saul and Paul just changes the letter.
I think one of those Twitter things where they're like, change a letter to ruin a movie.
Yeah, but I don't think Paul's name actually changed like maybe it wasn't exactly spelled like that.
Well, Saul, Paul, RuPaul.
I don't think it was actually changed because of his conversion.
I think there was just two different ways to refer to him.
But we take it as he was Saul and became Paul, but that's not actually what it says.
I'm reading through the book of Acts right now, and it doesn't say that.
Oh, we just added that?
Yeah, it wasn't Saul to Paul.
So Jesus did not change his name.
What?
Yeah.
I'm not blowing my mind.
Ripoff.
I'm blowing your mind.
Holy cow.
That wild at heart retreat.
If I can say one thing about John Eldridge, he did this.
He had this crazy blog post.
John Eldridge is the author of Wild at Heart.
He had this crazy blog post a few years ago where it was like, Jesus appeared to me as a pirate.
What?
A pirate?
He says, like, Jesus appears to him and like manifests himself in all these ways.
Like, he's walking and he sees a rock that's shaped like a heart.
He's like, oh, there's Jesus.
There's Jesus.
And then it's like.
Cactus that looks.
It actually might have been his son or something.
It says, my son told me that Jesus appeared and looked like a pirate and winked at him.
You know, and it's just okay.
That's all.
I have nothing else to say.
That's it.
I thought I was going to say, yeah, like, is he like canceled now from Christian Columbia?
I've canceled him.
I just canceled them.
Yeah, I remember I was super into that book when it came out.
We were, yeah, I was on board.
I was into it too, you know, and I think there is something to the capturing, recapturing masculinity.
Totally, yeah.
I think it was more.
I think the book had a lot of problems, but I do think it spoke to a need that we had at the time.
It really did.
Because everything in the 90s was like those really cheesy worship signs, like drama.
Christianity gotten very feminized.
Yeah.
So I think it was speaking to a need.
I don't think it did it in the right way, but yeah.
Okay.
Anyway, now that we've slammed a 20-year-old book, we're going to move on to our idea when you get back and you have to come with your name that you had.
But it's secret.
Oh, you don't share it?
I thought you could share it.
What do you say?
I think it's just God's special name that he calls you.
Usually it's like you have to come get in a circle and like, all right, what did God say your name is?
And then maybe say, my name is Horatio.
It's like a very Gnostic thing.
Like you just, you elevate yourself to this level of spiritual half.
At least half these guys, probably all of them made this up right now.
Anyway, now we can move on.
I just wanted to tell you.
You can call me Hulk.
God killed me.
God changed my name to Spider-Man.
Yes.
All right, here we go.
Hate mail.
Let's do it.
I really miss Adam Ford.
All right.
It is recording.
Just let you know.
This is my.
What?
Did you think that wasn't professional?
I was trying to be professional.
Was I not using my recording voice?
No, I'm just scared because we did a whole portion.
Oh, gotcha.
I didn't record on accident.
I thought you were saying, Kyle, it's live.
Stop acting like an idiot.
I now want to confirm every time we start a new segment that I am recording.
It's like the satire notice.
This is satire.
This was satire.
This is still recording.
This is a recording.
This is just recorded.
We are not actually in your phone, literally.
What?
Talking to people.
They're listening right now.
We have a secret name for you, listeners.
It's Bob.
Spider-Man and Sally.
Okay, so here we go.
I have been a fan for a while and have I can never do it.
I can never do it.
And I read them a bunch of times beforehand, so it shouldn't be funny to me anymore.
I have been a fan for a while and have printed out many of your pages to share with others.
That's ages, ageist laughter.
But do you know that nobody our age prints out stuff from the internet?
You can hold it up on your phone.
But dude, due to your slams against President Trump, I am considering removing you from my life.
What does that involve?
Removing us from their life?
Because even if they quit the email list, if they're on the running email list, I'm guessing.
We're still kind of in their life.
They might get shared.
So they might have to actually come find us.
Someone emailed us the other day and said, How do I cancel the Babylon B?
Like, not how do I cancel the subscription?
Or how do I cancel seeing you on social media?
It's like, how do I cancel the Babylon B?
Like, the whole thing?
Your entire life.
We already did taken, but man, this would be a good taken one.
Yeah.
Considering removing you from my life.
I don't know.
I'm thinking an old person voice.
You know, do we do the old person voice and offend our baby boomer audience?
Rambo Stallone or something.
Rambo Stallow.
His name is.
Backslash in the list.
Sylvester.
Isn't even a Rambo Stallone?
What?
I like that his name's Sylvester.
Like, he's this big hulking guy.
And he's like, hey, Sylvester.
That's a guy's name, Sylvester.
Laugh.
I've been a fan for a while and have printed out many of your pages to share with others.
But due to your slams against President Trump, I'm considering removing you from my life.
So, yeah, printing out the pages from the internet.
That was something I did like in the 90s because we didn't really have the internet.
And if I got to go somewhere where there was the internet, it was like, oh, this is so cool.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd print it out at the library.
Bring it home.
Oh, I got all this cool stuff.
You know, that's how you shared memes with your friends.
You printed them out and then ran over to your friend.
Hey, did you check out the sick meme?
Like long lists of jokes.
Yeah.
Long list of jokes.
Yeah, print out a joke list.
You know, my dad still, he probably listens to this.
He's probably going to, he's going to hear this, but he would, he would, like, print out his favorite Babylon B articles.
I'm going to mention this in the father's episode.
I think he did, yeah.
But he'll print them out and like, you know, leave them around the house.
Nice.
Like, hey, that's my article.
Print it out.
That's cool.
There's something special about seeing your words like on a page.
It's real.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's kind of nice.
Like, I don't want this person to stop printing our articles out.
That's pretty cool, actually.
We should add a feature to our website where you can like filter out and never see a Trump joke if you can't handle it.
That's a great idea.
Like, I can't handle, like, the I can't handle list and then like, don't make fun of.
And then you just choose what you can't stand.
Yeah, you check off your triggers when you sign up.
My triggers are.
We can make Babylon Bee a safe space.
It's a safe space.
The world's first safe satire space.
So if you work at Snopes, you could just choose I can't handle jokes.
Yeah.
And then your whole website turns white.
It's just gone.
It's blank.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, was that our show?
Have we done it?
We did it and we successfully recorded it.
We did.
It's recording.
I can see the little red thing.
All right, everyone.
Well, we're going to continue with it for our subscribers for a little bit.
So if you'd like to become a subscriber, go to babylonbee.com/slash plans.
Yeah, and what are we doing?
We're going to do some more church camp stories and maybe some unused headlines and stuff like that.
And then write a check and stick it in your keyboard.
Oh, yeah, and do that.
Yeah.
If you want to send us money, there's lots of little slots and holes and laptops.
Just shove money in there.
Any hole.
Yeah.
Any what?
Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.