“A Merry Heart Doeth Good Like A Medicine”

This is Hans Schile from the Finishing Well Podcast.

On Finishing Well, we help you make godly choices about Medicare, long-term care, and your money. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Today, I'm here with Seth Dillon, the founder of The Babylonian Bee.

His name is Seth Dillon. Seth, thank you, my friend, for being a friend of good and for all the great stuff you're providing us out there. You're also in the hot seat, aren't you, with all this stuff going on? Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. We like to make people laugh, so I do hope that we're friends of good, friends of the truth. I think humor is a powerful vehicle for truth delivery, so making people laugh, but also making them think and consider the narratives that they're encountering and whether or not they're really true, I think is also vitally important.

The scriptures are clear that a cheerful heart doeth good like a medicine, so you're a much-needed medicine for the soul. Some of the stuff out there just absolutely borders on the ridiculous. You have been censored, and I've heard you speak about this, just the things you've done, just for fun, just little parodies where people take themselves, obviously, and you guys way too seriously. Give an example of stuff you put out there where people are actually sending you cease and desist letters and taking you off big social media platforms. What in the world? Well, it's a variety of things.

Sometimes we'll make a joke where somebody will say they don't want their brand associated with that joke or the figure that we attach them to in the joke, and so we'll get cease and desist from brands, but most of what we face is jokes that are taken so seriously, they get fact-checked, or we'll have jokes that come true because they were an insane parody or satire and ridiculous when we first wrote them, and then Democrats came along and made it real life. Yeah, and I want to talk a little bit about the exciting event coming up in North Carolina you're speaking at. I want a lot of folks that may not know you, and I was encouraged when I heard you speak because you talked about your faith.

You didn't hold any punches on that. Who is Seth Dillon? Give us a little bit about yourself, maybe your journey to faith, and how you started this crazy thing called the Babylonian Beat.

Sure. My background is in the church. I was raised as a pastor's kid, and the first thing everybody wants to know is what denomination. My dad was a pastor of non-denominational churches, Bible churches and community churches over the years, and so I spent my youth in youth group and kind of learning the ins and outs of evangelical Christian culture from behind the scenes and within the church. So my background is religious and evangelical Christian in nature. I went to a Christian college as well, Palm Beach Atlantic University, and I graduated with a degree in business, and I had no idea what I was going to do with that.

I always wanted to be a writer, and I love humor. The Babylon Bee fell into my lap as just this thing. I encountered it online the way a lot of people did. I didn't found it.

I acquired it in 2018. The guy that founded it, his name is Adam Ford, and he did these Christian comics online that became kind of popular, and then eventually he launched the Babylon Bee as an answer to the onion and a lot of stuff that these secular progressives were putting out there that was sometimes funny, but just coming at the issues from a particular worldview that he disagreed with. And he thought there'd be an audience out there for humor from another perspective, and I think he was absolutely right.

But I came across headlines like, you know, Holy Spirit unable to move through congregation as fog machine breaks, and it shows this image of a sanctuary that's just so cloudy you can't even see the stage. Silly church jokes like that, which just spoke to me because I got them. They were inside jokes, and so there was political stuff too. But yeah, I came across it, and I just thought I wanted to get involved because humor is so much fun, and I think that it's impactful in the culture, and it's necessary. And I had no idea what kind of impact we would end up having.

You know, we're not just making jokes anymore. At this point, we're like on the front lines of the battle for free speech in the public square. I love it, and thanks for sharing that. Seth Dillon's our special guest here on Truth Talk. I'm Stu Everson, and we tracked him down on a special phone line, and we're just honored to be able to visit with him briefly here. He's speaking at a powerful event. It's celebrating the big gala for the North Carolina right to life that's in November of this year, 2023.

And you may hear this interview in 2025 because whenever we get a guy like Seth, we want to play this program a lot to encourage folks. But thank you for your stand for life, my friend. I mean, Seth, in a country, and I was going to ask you about how you have used, you have leveraged the power of humor to expose some evil things. Like, we're a country that was founded on freedom, yet the youth of our country have fallen snare, fallen prey to Marxism.

We're a country that's founded on life and liberty, yet we're killing our own young in America. Can you talk about how God has allowed you through kind of the lens of humor to kind of maybe awaken us a little bit to this? Well, you know, there's a couple of ways to go about telling the truth and pushing back on bad ideas. You know, you can engage in rational argument and try to refute them, and that's necessary, and a lot of people do that. But I do think it is challenging to rationally refute or reason with someone who's abandoned rationality on purpose.

And that's what we have right now. What's happening in the culture, this sociocultural Marxism, this wokeism, is an ideology that's rooted in really anti-truth, it's anti-reality, and they're trying to get you to say that two and two make five. They're trying to get you to say that men can get pregnant, and all of these insane things. And so reasoning with someone who's abandoned rationality and reality on purpose is very difficult. But what isn't difficult is ridiculing it, because it's so mockable and it's so insane. And so I think ridicule, even more so than refutation, I think is effective in this current climate where reality and reason themselves are under attack. And so yeah, I think humor is effective that way. And you know, it's Chesterton who said, humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle. I love that quote, and I think it speaks to why the bee is so effective right now in this current moment.

Yeah, the Babylon Bee, I mean, you've got so many followers, I love your stuff, I really get a laugh, I forward it on to people. I mean, the ideas of, really, of the left, and that's a broad brush, I get everyone mad when we talk about socialism and all that, but like, literally, like, how can you destroy our country worse than the socialist ideas that are afoot right now, that disregard life? I mean, we know that that's steeped in atheism, and it's like they punish people that are for the free markets, and you know, Seth Dillon, you have free speech right now, but that could change. How important is it that we have, and this is something that's been on my heart heavy, how important is it that we have good dialogue, and how does humor enable us to, even with people that are against freedom, against life, but humor kind of can open a door for us to be, to laugh at each other, and to, you know, try to build friendships to persuade people in the right direction. Have you found that to be the case?

Absolutely. You know, that's one of the things that's so annoying to me about the current, you know, safe space, you know, hypersensitive, I'm offended by everything, you know, generation that's being raised up right now. It's super annoying because what they claim to be doing is trying to prevent harm. They're trying to prevent harmful, offensive jokes and stereotypes from hurting people and upsetting them. But by being perpetually offended by absolutely everything, they're actually, they're not preventing harm, they're actually preventing healing, because what humor does, when you allow yourself to be joked about, and you joke about others, you know, it actually does allow you to kind of break through some boundaries and bond with each other and recognize that we're all fallible, and we all mess up, and we're all deserving of some mockery from time to time, we're all passengers on the ship of fools.

And so there's a healing element to humor that is completely inhibited and blocked by this, you know, hypersensitive, you know, if you tell a joke I don't like, I'm going to punch you in the face or get you canceled kind of culture. Humor needs to be allowed to do its job, you know, we need to be able to, I think, we need to be able to laugh at each other and ourselves, take ourselves a little bit less seriously. Seth, what would you advise our listeners, a lot of folks listening to this show, Truth Talk, we're really encouraging our listeners to share the truth, and to share the good news of Christ, and to do it in a kind, loving, and even winsome way.

I can't think of anyone more winsome than the Babylon Bee and Seth Dillon, I mean, you guys are doing it all the time. What words would you give us, you know, you grew up as a pastor's kid where, man, the church, I think we can oftentimes take ourselves so seriously, you know, and get so wound up and get so angry at stuff we shouldn't be angry at. So give us a little word, will you, on how to speak the truth in love and even speak, you should create a whole other verse, speak the truth in humor, you know. What kind of word would you give our listeners on that, just some advice going away? Well, you know, an important thing is, you mentioned the importance of free speech, having the right to talk is so crucial, because we can't push back on bad ideas if we're not allowed to say anything critical of them, you know. And that's really the direction that the tyrants are trying to take us in, they're trying to censor you, but also pressure you to censor yourself.

And when you censor yourself, you're only doing the tyrants' work for him, and so I, you know, some of the advice that I give people all the time is that it is important that we not censor ourselves, that we not cave to that pressure to rein in what we say or what we believe or why we believe it, to boldly speak the truth. And the reason that that's so necessary is because, you know, they've done studies on this on social conformity, the famous ash experiments or something to look into if you or your listeners haven't looked into that. But they've done studies on social conformity and how, you know, a whole table, a whole room of people can go around and give the wrong answer to an obvious question. And when it comes to you, you'll feel pressured to agree with them on the wrong answer, even though you know the right answer. But just one person dissenting in that group and saying the right answer frees people up, it sort of gives them a permission to say what's true, what they really believe. And that level of conformity drops dramatically when that happens. And so I think it's important that people speak the truth boldly, not just because it's bad to censor yourself, but because you'll embolden others to do it too. Wow. I love it. Sometimes you might be the only voice of freedom in the room.

Sometimes when you're scrolling social media, the only voice of sanity is the Babylon bee. And Seth Dillon, I don't know what he's doing there. Seth, real quick, I've always wanted to ask you this. What's the biggest complaint? You know, I speak for and speak to a lot of people of faith, a lot of churches. I really try to bless our pastors, encourage them, and mobilize the body to share the gospel and the truth network and all of our wonderful affiliates that are brave enough to carry Truth Talk. What would you say is the biggest attack you get from your allies, like from believers? What's the biggest kind of criticism you get from Christians, if you don't mind me asking?

I'm just kind of curious about that. I know we're almost out of time. You've been more than gracious with paying out with us today on Truth Talk, but what would you say that is? That's a good question. I'm not sure what the, probably one of the more common ones is just a criticism of the whole mockery, the whole project of mockery and ridicule to begin with as being something that is, you know, our Christian audiences sometimes, especially more legalistic Christian audiences, will consider that really abrasive or not edifying or even unbiblical, because it's, you know, you're not being kind, you're not being tolerant, you're not being inclusive, you're, if anything, you're being a bully. And my answer to that, I know we don't have a ton of time to get into that because I have a lot that I can say in response to that. But the short answer is that I think there's a moral imperative to mockery. We're not talking about mocking people for the purpose of making them feel bad about themselves. What we are trying to do is mock bad ideas so that they aren't taken seriously. And I think part of the reason that we're in this current state that we're in right now is a culture where, you know, we're talking about sterilizing and mutilating children and having a debate about whether or not preborn babies are human and have rights and all of these things. We've taken bad ideas too seriously and they have catastrophic consequences. And so I think there's a moral imperative to chipping away at those bad ideas and exposing them for being as absurd and stupid and silly and mockable as they are so that they aren't taken seriously.

Bad ideas taken seriously have catastrophic consequences. Well, no, so are you trying to tell me, Seth, that if you were hanging around about maybe 4,000 years ago or so at a mount called Carmel and the prophet Elijah was saying, hey, where is your god? Is he out using the facilities? Where is your god? Before he called down fire from heaven, would the Babylon bee have had something to say about that at that time, you think, when the duel was going on between the prophets of Baal and the prophet of the true god? Well, it's a great example of how there is biblical precedent for, you know, mockery and hyperbole and satire. You know, Jesus used a lot of hyperbole. He made hyperbolic statements all of the time and for a purpose.

Sometimes it was really biting too and it cuts and sometimes cuts deep, but for the purpose of healing, not for hurting you. Love it. Hey, as we get out of here real quick, you're going to be in North Carolina soon to speak for the North Carolina Right to Life. You speak for these kind of groups all over the country and I really want to publicly praise you and just applaud you for using your voice, your platform for life, to encourage life, to encourage folks to be much about, you know, God's work and to be a light in the darkness. Quickly, what's your message? And, you know, don't give the whole thing now because, you know, we've got people who want to come out to this big gala at the North Carolina Right to Life gala in Greensboro at the Curry Convention Center, but what's kind of your general message? Give us a little teaser of what they can expect when Seth Dillon takes the stage with a Babylon bee. What's going to happen real quick?

Tell us. Well, you'll definitely see some jokes and some humor injected in there, but it's a serious topic. You know, I'm going to talk about how if life is ever sacred, it's always sacred. And I'm going to talk about how we need to not compromise. Every time you, when you compromise on the issue of life, you know, when you give any ground, when you seed anything there, you know, the culture of death always wins. You don't win when you compromise.

You know, you're giving something up. And so I'm going to speak to that a little bit. I'm going to talk about some of the takeaways from my conversation with Joe Rogan that went viral last year when I sat down with him and we debated abortion and I took the hard line of saying it's not right, even in cases of rape, it's not right to kill someone else here. If anything, you know, you can't have, you can't have the death penalty for the wrong person.

You know, if the rapist, if anyone, the rapist is the one who deserves the death penalty, not the baby. So, you know, he and I got into it and we had a whole conversation about that. So I offer some takeaways from that conversation and then how we can use humor in this debate too, even though it's a really tough topic. And so I think it'll be, it'll be a fun time.

Wow. Seth Dillon, been a great time hanging out with you. Thanks for being with us.

How can we pray for you and how can more people find out about the Babylon bee that don't even know what we're talking about here? Well, Babylonbee.com, that's our website. We're on, we're on social media right now. We've been kicked off a few different platforms here and there, but we're still on most of them at this point. Follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter.

That's where we have, you know, the most engagement and biggest audience. Thank you, Elon Musk. Yeah, very good.

As far as prayer, you know, just continued prayer for the bee's success and impact on culture and for wisdom and discernment as we figure out what to do next. And it's okay if I forward all the angry letters I get for this interview right back to Seth. Is that okay for your inbox? Yeah, yeah, yes.

Send them to wedon'tcareatbabylonbee.com. Okay, wow. I love it. Hey Seth, God bless you, man. I appreciate you hanging out with us and we'll see you soon in North Carolina. And we'll visit again on Truth Talk, man. You're a blessing. You take care, okay?