God's Uncontrollable World and Moby Dick

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God's Uncontrollable World and Moby Dick

October 19, 2022

Moby Dick is one of America's most well known fiction novels. Written in 1851, it shares an epic story of a man's destructive desire to see revenge on a white sperm whale named Moby Dick. Don't be fooled though, this book depicts timeless Christian truths that all men should heed. We hope you enjoy our commentary on this classic book and are edified by the lesson it teaches us all.

There is a twitter page that automatically generates quotes from Moby Dick. It's a fun follow!

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Transcript

[Music] Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life.

Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus Christ every knee shall bow. In tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron.

[Music] And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] Friends, welcome to the For the King podcast. I'm your host, Rodley Ramsey, and I'm joined today with a frequent guest on the podcast, Noah Kellam.

Say hi, my friend. Hello. There he is.

Good to be here. Good to have you. Thanks for joining me.

Noah always helps me out when I need to get these Wednesday episodes done. I like doing it with somebody else and not just talking by myself. That could be kind of a slog to get through.

So, as you can see in the title of this episode, we have a specific task today of presenting to you a book Noah and I have just read together and just talking about some of the biblical themes, some of the things we liked in the book and why we would commend it to you. You'd commend it right Noah? Would you commend it? Man. Suggest somebody read it? I would suggest you try.

It's... It's for a unique person. Yeah, it's a long book, but it's... Man. There's some really good books.

It is. Yeah, so this is one of the Hallmark works in American literature. Moby Dick is probably, if you look up any of the top 10 best books of American literature, usually Moby Dick will be top 10 at least, if not top five of some of the recognized best fiction novels, fiction books of America that America's produced.

So, Moby Dick is well known, but as Noah said, it is extremely difficult to read. So, we do... Like, I mean, I advise it. I think it's worth... It's just good to get outside of this quick and easy, quick easy fast understandable clickbait, you know, news articles, that kind of thing.

That's the kind of reading most Americans do now. It's like... It's like maybe five to ten paragraphs of some topic real quick and it just shoves it down your throat and then you forget it 10 seconds later. Yeah.

And it's really, really good to actually sit down and work through a 500 plus page book that is extremely dense. The English is very articulate and dynamic and not at all easy to read. Like, not only is it a longer book, it's also difficult to read.

So, it takes longer to get through on top of it being longer. Yeah, and it's a completely different time frame and different culture. So, it takes more work to understand as well.

Oh, yeah. But, I mean, so I guess I would say walking away from finishing it up, it is definitely... I guess it's doable. You'll understand and take away things.

You're not gonna... I had to look up things a lot in this book, like different regions of America, like "Why Was it Antuchet?" I didn't understand the background of like whaling and where whaling happened, what certain things were on the boat. Like, a wooden ship is totally different than the kind of ships we have now. Like, an actual sail ship.

So, when they're describing things that are happening on the boat... A carpenter on the boat that will flourish. Yeah, yeah, there was... That kind of blew my mind too. Just, you know, so I guess for at least that fact, it's worth reading just to kind of know how the kind of men that came before us, just to get oil for lamps.

Right. There was a... Like Noah said, there was a forge on the ship and they had to continue to make new harpoons and new items to go out and fight these whales to kill them. They had to continually make new equipment and things like that.

I mean, they had to go through a lot to get this stuff. So, the history of it's great. A single voyage, you said, would take like three years.

I think was the norm. Yeah, three years. You wouldn't see your family.

Just with a bunch of men. Yeah. Doing men stuff, doing sailing stuff.

Yeah, just men, no women. You can't take your wife, you can't take your kids. So, that's kind of, you know, what I guess the content of the book, you know.

So, I guess before we really, really get into it, you know, there are probably going to be spoilers in here. So, if you plan on reading the book, you don't have to necessarily maybe read it and then revisit this podcast and kind of hear our take on it and some of the things we thought about it. But, you know, just before we really get into this, it's definitely worth reading and let alone just worth reading to bend your mind in a different way.

It hasn't been bent before to start, you know, flexing some of your muscles in your mind in a different way that you have not done in the past. Okay, so genre of the book, it's historical realism, I'd say. It's, you know, it's a novel.

The main character ish male. But it's kind of, it's based in the real world, I guess. It's not a fictional world.

It's fiction as far as it's a made-up story, but like the way the physics works and the animals and the people and what's actually happening is very realistic. It's not like a fantasy world where there's like spells being cast. Right, and the setting is real places.

Yeah, in the real world, yeah. Right. I think Herman was a sailor, so he's just drawing on some of his experiences to tell the story.

Yeah. Yeah, and it's evident when you get into the book that he did these things himself, the way he describes it. The depth that he describes these things.

So we have a book here, you know, Moby Dick, that's based in the real world, historical realism. It's following the story of a man named Ishmael. So we meet him at first, very famous intro.

Call me Ishmael. Call me Ishmael. It's very, very, I think that's been on Jeopardy a bunch.

There's a lot of game shows that are, well, you know, what famous book starts with, call me Ishmael, you know, and then people have to get the answer right. But now we could know if we could definitely throw down some money and really walk away with millions. I don't think there are more books to start with, though.

There might be another one, I don't know. So that's kind of obviously very, again, famous book, famous intro. We meet Ishmael.

He was a merchant sailor, sailed on merchant ships, and he's heard about the terrors or the adventures of a whaling ship. Totally different beast, you know. So he travels to Nantucket, and Nantucket is a very famous whaling town on the eastern United States.

I can't remember which, I think it's off the coast of Massachusetts. Do you remember exactly where it's at? It's somewhere out, it's on the eastern seaboard somewhere, and it's an island. I think it might be off the coast of Massachusetts.

So he goes there to find- New Jersey, maybe. Yeah, it might be New Jersey. I can't remember exactly where it's at.

Somewhere there on the eastern seaboard, he goes there to find a whaling ship. He goes there by himself. And yeah, Nantucket, this whaling town, he goes to find a whaling ship, and he meets a pagan right off the bat, that Quee-Quee.

That's how I was pronouncing it. I don't know how you said it. The Quee-Queg.

Quee-Queg, something like that. Quee-Quee. Zero, it's spelled.

So he meets this Native American fellow, which he comes from a whaling people. He comes from a Native American group of people that are also known for whaling. That's why he comes to Nantucket, because his people were known for that.

He leaves there, comes here. As far as I'm remembering. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah. So he's a harpooner, which is kind of a esteemed role, obviously, because you're the one that's pegging the whale. You're the one that's actually like sticking something into it.

You're the one that's really kind of doing battle. You're up front there. So obviously, people already have respect for him for what he does.

So Quee-Queg's kind of this like jack-of-all-trades kind of guy, really good at what he does. Like he's a high-class harpooner. So basically, they befriend themselves.

There's some good comedy at the beginning of the book of how they become friends. And Ishmael thinks he's going to like eat him or something or murder him in his sleep. Yeah, as he's introduced, Quee-Queg is literally a cannibal.

Yeah. Like when he's first described before he actually enters a scene and meets Ishmael, he sounds like some crazy violent guy. He's outselling human heads to people.

And he gets-- I mean, I think Ishmael is-- There's no other room in the place where he's watching for the nine-- The innkeeper, yeah. The same room as Quee-Queg. And then they meet.

Yeah. And then eventually, you know, I obviously don't want to spoil a whole lot, but they become friends. Now, I kind of want to get into some of the spiritual components of the book, you know.

That's kind of the setting. That's kind of what happens. And then after they become friends, they find this whaling ship.

And they meet this man named Ahab. Now, this is kind of where we can get into, you know, we're not just going to go through the book and just tell you the book. You can go like, you know, find an audio book and listen to it if you want to.

But we kind of want to draw out some interesting principles that applied today to us. And, you know, obviously, like we said, why we would commend this book to you. So he immediately meets this pagan.

Ishmael meets this unbelieving wild man, okay? And Ishmael is already having this kind of like internal conflict where he's a Christian. And he's like kind of has pity on this guy for worshiping his false gods. And Ishmael, even at one point, partakes to try to bridge the gap there.

Do you remember that kind of conflict of his head when they're in the room and he wakes up and sees them worshiping the idol. And he kind of compromises there, but he does it to kind of bridge the gap. And then their friendship is kind of struck after that.

And they kind of, you know, then they obviously strike up the friendship after that. But I just, I think it's interesting right off the bat, Herman Melville, who is a Christian, puts this, he has this strong emphasis of the friendship, the kind of working togetherness of this Christian man and then this pagan man right off the bat. As they go out on an adventure to slay Leviathan, right? So, and by the end of the book, you know, quick, quick still there, obviously.

And we don't know really what happens to the heart of this man, but there's this weird interaction between Ahab and the pagans of the ship. He always kind of, you know, sees them as kind of like the grunts because they're all, all the harpooners are the pagans, right? So he obviously like knows that they're the ones that are kind of going to get the job done and kind of help him to fulfill his task, which we'll kind of get to in a second, the spiritual implications of that. But it's interesting just in this book, this union.

Do you have any thoughts on that, Nama? Well, I guess maybe a few. I thought her, Herman? Her man did a, well, the way he portrayed the interaction between Nish male, Protestant Christian, and it, Queequeg the pagan, they have a similar sense of honor. And I think that's what they're able to really unite over.

Quequeg's culture, it is a cannibalistic culture, but they have a strong sense of honor. So Queequeg, having left his tribe and became immersed in the New England culture and the whaling, he maintains those good aspects of his old culture and also the poor aspects. I mean, he still worships.

He has a little figurine, this is God that he worships. He's tattooed from head to foot. I mean, even the way he speaks is this very rudimentary and it takes Nish male a long time to come to an understanding of him so that they're actually able to communicate.

So I just thought that was kind of an interesting thing, the culture between them, how they have some shared things. And that's kind of what they're able to bond over. Yeah.

No, that's awesome. Yeah, and even I guess it goes to show that you cannot escape being made in the image of God. Even if you believe in God or not, you're still made in his image regardless.

They still share those principles, honor, and they both are whether they know it or not at war with Leviathan. Even if, unbeknownst to Quequeque, he is, he's allied himself with Satan by worshiping one of his henchmen, one of his demons. He's worshiping a false God.

Satan obviously still rules over him and hates him, wants to see his soul destroyed. Satan doesn't really ally himself with anyone. Sure.

So I mean, in that sense, they don't, it's just, it's kind of an interesting, they both go on the journey together to fight Leviathan. Yet the only person that makes it out is Ishmael by the end of the battle. And we really, after the beginning of the book, we don't hear much from Ishmael.

Like we hear, like we see a lot of Ishmael's journey initially, but then, you know, after maybe page 200 ish, you don't really hear anything of him. You actually meet some of the other crewmates and really you get to see Ahab and Starbuck kind of duke it out the most. Right.

A lot of it is just Ishmael's observations of the different interactions between the other characters on the ship. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, it's interesting to see how Herman has this dynamic character who is mostly just acting as a narrator and how he develops as a consequence of these other things that are going on in the ship. Yeah. Like Ahab is definitely the most prominent character in this story.

And I would say one of the most interesting characters of any fiction novel that I've ever read is that he's this very masculine man. He's been a sea captain, a whaler for like 40 years, maybe. Yeah.

Like essentially his whole life. Right. So he has this battle with a white whale where he ends up losing his leg and he personifies the whale to a degree that he thinks that it maliciously attacked him.

And essentially it ruined his whole life and he makes it his life goal to kill the whale. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you're right. He almost embodies. So in the scriptures, in Isaiah, we see that the Leviathan is pretty much likened to Satan.

Leviathan is this like physical manifestation that represents the serpent, which would be Satan. So throughout the whole book and even actually at the very beginning of Moby Dick, Herman Melville adds, do you remember that at the beginning? He has like 50 different ancient stories and epics and poems that include the Leviathan, that include the whale, specifically the sperm whale. I don't know if you read that.

I like went through the intro in the beginning and stuff and maybe a little bit. So he has like these, all these different poems and epics and stories that included the Leviathan. And it's always portrayed as, I mean, now in the modern world, you know, whales seem like nothing to us.

We can just destroy those things, although I know it's no big deal. So, you know, we got to understand where Melville's coming from when he's writing this. Killing a whale is a monstrous task.

It's not an easy thing. Yeah, it's extremely dangerous and it's not easy. And especially as Melville builds up this entire book, the sperm whale specifically, you're going to learn a heck of a lot about whales and whaling if you read this book.

And, you know, so Ahab does basically ascribe this malicious force to the whale, which is basically satanic and then focuses, hyper focuses on the whale his entire life because it takes off a limb. So now he has this constant reminder with his peg leg as he walks around of, you know, what the whale did to him. And every single, every single moment back in Nantucket, he's thinking about the next time they get to go out and possibly find the whale.

Yeah, he basically... Possibly kill the whale. He drives himself mad, just brooding on revenge. Where it totally consumes him.

And he ends up driving his whole crew. Well, for like the first interaction with Ahab, they're already out to sea. They've are the people who own the ship have hired all the crew before they even meet Ahab.

And then they're like probably three days out into the ocean before. Ahab comes out of his cabin, introduces himself, I guess. And gives this long speech about... I mean, it's actually a really cool interaction they has where he talks about his mission.

And he does in such a way, he's such a good leader that he's able to rally the whole crew behind him and bind them in an oath along with him to hunt down and kill the white whale. Yeah, like I said, he's... I think that's something that a masculine figure can do. They have a vision and they have this ability to bring others along with them to share their vision and then to weed them towards achieving that vision.

Exactly. No matter what it is, I mean. Now, yeah.

So he does the first part of a leader really well where he gives everybody a mission, a collective mission, wins the hearts of men, and then they're all fired up and ready to go. Now, again, spoilers, by the end of the book, he's not a good leader in the sense of he can't think reasonably because his mission has actually now become his idol rather than a mission. Right.

He's exchanged it. He's exchanged the truth for a lie. Yeah, it's interesting.

Coming up toward the end, well, throughout the book, Melville will interchange sections of narrative with kind of informative sections to build context. Also build suspense. Which he does really well.

He does build suspense. Yes. But then the last probably 10 chapters, maybe it's all narrative.

So he's done all the work of building up the context. So you have a good understanding of the dangers of whaling, like the science of whales, the history of whaling, the anatomy of whales. The magnitude of whales.

Yeah, how big they are, how strong they are, all these things. Then it gets down to the true narrative. So you have the context, now it's just all narrative.

Ahab is given just opportunity after opportunity to give up his mission, go home. Like they have, they've already hunted down several whales or like full of oil. Yeah.

So they basically can... They have... ...give their whale in mission. They have their whale, yeah, they've got what they need in terms of oil. Um, but he just... He's consumed with this idea of killing the whale.

Like, uh, when he first appears, he gives this speech where he talks about why this is driving him, um, to do what he's doing. And it's like, it's really a beautiful section. Um, where Ahab's describing, um... I don't know how to articulate it even.

Yeah, what's happened to him and just why he can't get it out of his mind. I mean, can you... It's kind of profound. When you really think about it, imagine you're in a situation where you lose a limb and it's from like, it's from a creature.

I mean, we do this today. If a grizzly bear kills a human, usually DNR will hunt that animal and kill it because it is... It's now... It's bold enough. It's transgressed God's law that animals are not to harm humans.

So in Genesis 9, it says, it includes animals. If an animal even kills a human, then its blood will also be required. So, you know, Ahab gets this in his mind, this principle of God's creation that animals ought not to harm humans.

Basically, we have dominion over them and they should just let us do whatever we want to them. So Ahab's obviously hunting the whales and then, you know, one of them fights back and Moby Dick's not any ordinary whale. No.

I mean, this whale, it's albino. So it's already unique because it's albino, but it's also like, I don't know, in my mind, I was thinking it's like 150% of a normal sperm whale. It's big.

It's like a crooked jaw. Yeah. It's tailed as skew.

So it's like more dangerous and like more able to be used as a mace. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's extremely intelligent. The way it moves and the way it reacts to... Like it knows... It's a tactician basically. Yeah.

So the way they... Immense power. I know. The way they kill a whale, I mean, you'll see it very well described in the book.

They basically bleed it out. They penetrate the blubber to hit an artery above the blowhole or near the blowhole. And then, eventually the whale just bleeds out.

So I had always wondered that. How do they kill whales? Those things are huge. How do they even like, why does it not just dive deep? Like why can't it? And the reason is because whales are mammals.

They have to come to the surface. They need air. And when they come to the surface, they can't dive down immediately.

So they're a sitting duck and then humans will swarm them in their rowboats. Right. That they take out from the main boat and then they'll harpoon it and stick lines in it.

So it also creates resistance where it can't swim away as readily. And then also starts to bleed it out. But what Moby Dick does is it overpowers everything.

If it gets stuck, it can basically like... Like one guy gets dragged in and dies because the line wraps around him and he gets a drug in when Moby Dick descends. So again, this whale is super strong. The boats can't even keep him from descending.

And he... The way he attacks and maneuvers is... Yeah, it's very... It's like he's a tactician, you know? It's like he's a real... He's a human almost. So he kind of like projects his trauma. Right.

I'm not trying... I don't want to sound like a lib here using the word trauma. But he projects his missing limb and the fact that an animal did this to him while he was whaling in bad circumstances. I forget exactly like the details, but I know that he's in a boat and he somehow gets in Moby Dick's jaw and he just takes his leg off.

Right. Where he probably could have killed Ahab, but he decides... It seems like he just decided to take his leg. Yeah, just to take his leg.

Exactly. Yeah. So... Right.

Right. That along with just the immense power of the whale. Yeah.

So it's... Well, can I add something real quick? Because I forgot about that detail because it is... Moby Dick could have killed him there the way it's written. And... That also is an element to why it drives him mad because it's almost like a challenge. Like, I'm going to take something from you and overpower you.

Come and get me. Go ahead and try Gate Revenge. Yeah, and then he as a man... Wants to.

He has to. Yeah, he has to. In a sense.

Yeah. So the way he describes his desire to go after the whale, it's like he's encountered something that he as a man has to conquer. And it's like... So the way he's able to rally all the men behind him is he points out there is no greater task for a man than to conquer the uncomfortable.

Yeah, that's a good way. That's how he boils it down. He describes Moby Dick to him what it did to him.

And like, yeah, he does. He implants the vision into their minds and they're like, "Yeah, we got to control this thing. This thing is a beastly.

It's a monster. We need to destroy it." Right. So it's like it becomes a battle of the will or it's like the will of man.

Oh, man. Whoa. Boy.

The will of man. The will of man against... I mean, you could say the will of nature or maybe you could even say the will of God. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So let's go there.

That's what it turns into by then. So we're 30 minutes into this. Hopefully you guys are getting a little like, "Whoa, this seems like this could be a pretty compelling story." You know, let's actually get to the meat of the lesson it teaches.

Why it's worth it. Why it's right there. Why it's worth reading.

So we've kind of already described how he views the whale, how the whale's portrayed, how massive it is and strong. And the word I want to use is uncontrollable. Okay.

Who does that sound like to you? What is this an archetype of? What is Melville written into his story to teach us a lesson as humans? Well, I think Moby Dick is, again, it has this kind of demonic element to it, right? Where it's this uncontrollable force of nature. But there's also undergirding the whole thing is the will of God. It's God's providence.

It's God's creative order that cannot be tampered with. It can't be broken. So you have an uncontrollable force of nature.

You can almost think of Moby Dick like gravity. Like men just like, "I want to define gravity. I want to go to the moon." So we try to do it.

I want to fly. And then we... So there's things we can conquer, but we never broke the law of gravity. We can just suspend it for a time, given other laws of physics, right? So we're still playing by God's rules, I guess is the point.

And Moby Dick kind of embodies God's uncontrollable will, providence, and creation. Can't be broken. So what do you think? What do you think about that? Well, I mean, I tend to agree.

So I mentioned earlier, Ahab, like there are these things that happen in the narrative that seem like signs that Ahab should forsake his mission. Yeah, go into that. So I don't remember all of them.

I remember a big one was the May mast catches fire. Yeah. Frog lightning.

Right. So it looks like a candle. And so one of the shipmates, maybe Starbuck.

He points out to Ahab, this is a sign from God. He literally does say, like, providence is telling us. So he maintains some discernment where Ahab has lost all the... He points this out to Ahab trying to give him every opportunity to listen to wisdom.

Yeah. Namely, like, except the will of God is not for you, Ahab, to go to your death, leading your whole crew to death with you. He has an opportunity to do it, but he obviously doesn't.

Do you remember any more stuff that happens? They meet... There's a whole thing called the coffin. Yeah, there's the coffin. Yeah, they... Yeah, that's an odd... So there is some humor mixed throughout the book.

Quee Quee is like on his deathbed and just decides not to die. It's literally what it says. He just... He remembers he has something to do, so he just like doesn't die from this like scurvy or something.

They might make a coffin for him. But they make a coffin and then he's... But it's... It ends up being used as a life raft. Yeah, it's used as a life raft, which is how I think Ishmael... Oh, that's it.

...uses that to survive at the end. Right. So it's like... Basically, it was this symbol of death.

And Quee Quee kind of postpones it in a sense like it's destined for the ship on the path they're on. But it's this providence of God where Quee Quee all of a sudden does not die. And now it's this symbol on the ship.

They also meet... They meet another ship. I forget the name of it. The Rachel.

I think it might be the Rachel and they just had an encounter with it. And the other captain just lost his arm against Moby Dick. Do you remember that? The one... He lost his son too.

Yeah, he lost his son. It like decimated his bow. They're searching... So they're searching for his son.

Yeah, that's for help. This is like... This is the last sign too. The very last sign before the last three chapters that are about to chase and then going to try to kill Moby Dick.

Which ends in their doom. They meet this bow. The other captain has just lost a limb.

But you know what actually what that man did with that experience? He says Moby Dick is uncontrollable. He said... And he calls Ahab a madman and he actually asks for Ahab's help to try to mend the damage Moby Dick has done by helping him find his son. But instead... So this was a great... This man was in a great need and Ahab refuses.

And Starbuck and the crew are like, "What? We should help this guy." Like that's kind of... You know, that's how it's written where everybody's kind of like, "Okay, we could help this guy." And by the way, by the end of the book... Well, I'll say that but that comes into... That's a cool little detail Herman Melville puts in there. I'll just say that one. I don't want to say it for anyone listening.

But basically that bow ends up being helpful. And that's the last sign. And then after that... So you have this man, this like what Ahab could have been.

A man that learns his lesson, humbles himself before the almighty hand of God. Losing a limb. Instead of turning to wrath and fury, a self-destructive, chaotic kind of wisdom.

Where he's using his masculinity and the things embedded in him from God to want to go conquer and fight, which are good things. But he points it at an uncontrollable force. So this is what happens when a man says, "I can control my destiny.

I can control my fate. I can become God." Right? That's bad. It's good for man to be like God and wanting to have dominion over the things that God gave him to have dominion over.

That's good. That's us imaging God. But when we say, "I can also control my fate.

I can also control reality. I can control God even." And you try to make yourself God, that's when those good things God has put in men goes awry and then basically you get yourself destroyed. You get smoked.

Right. So... And that is the big takeaway why this book is so worth reading. Mm.

From near the beginning of the book, when Ishmael comes to Nantucket, he wanders into a church. There's a sermon going on. Yeah.

The sermon is on Jonah and the whale. Yeah. That was just an interesting connection.

So it kind of starts with that and the idea of Jonah forsaking the wolf God and trying to run away to his own doom. It's kind of the same thing that happens to Ahab. Exactly.

So Ahab had the benefit of knowing the scriptures so he could have looked at them. He could have repented. Right.

He should have been humbled by the act of God in his life and done his duty as a man to continue to do the whaling the way God had wanted him to. He was a whaler. He should have kept whaling, provided oil to make money for his family and provide for his family.

And even in the book it says he has a wife and a kid, yet he neglects them. Hermabell continues to use the word megalomaniac to describe Ahab. So he's basically an absentee father that's been on this track, this track to destruction.

And he doesn't come home that trip. And this is basically the warning to the man on his life. All of you listening, you know, this is the great warning to us.

It's the same principle that's taught in the book of Jonah. If you do for God's will for your life and you try to turn the other way, God will swallow you up. He'll swallow you up and he will destroy you.

You will be consumed. You know, in Isaiah 6 when Isaiah is before God and he just says woe is to me, I'm done. That's it.

You're just you're done. That's what could happen if the man, if the man under the sun doesn't repent and bend the knee to God. And you're almost kind of like, in a sense, you're more kind of in.

Like we see parts of Ahab in all of us, I guess. But I kind of, your average person is more like Ishmael, where, or the crew, where you are. You have a few men that are so alive and they're megalomaniacs.

They want to control the whole world like a like a like a Joseph Stalin or a Mao Zedong kind of sort. A Karl Marx, a Joe Biden, you know, these crazy men that just want to control people's lives and just destroy things. And you get these kind of men and then and then the crew, the people, when the king goes astray, the whole kingdom goes astray.

So then that you just have the people that get wrapped up in this. And they tell down their heartstrings like, oh, it's a woman's right to choose, you know. And then you try to get this, oh, yeah.

So let's murder, you know, let's control the situation. Let's control that. You know, you had sex, you know, without at a wedlock, right? Let's control, you know, let's try to get our hands on that and destroy the baby and take this into our own our own hands, right? So your average person doesn't critically think like if the only one that was critically thinking was Starbuck.

All throughout the story, he continues to come to Ahab to try to get into averse course. And he never ever does. And there's a few times Ahab almost does.

You get a glimpse of Ahab's mind. He's kind of contemplating what he ought to do. There was a point where they needed to stop because they were taking on water or something and Starbuck advised it and Ahab was like, he said, no, it for Starbuck kind of reason with him.

And then Ahab conceded, but it says in the book, Herman Melville writes in that Ahab was contemplating why he did that and he couldn't tell if it was he genuinely thought that they needed to stop and not pursue the white whale anymore or that he was just trying to please Starbuck and please his men so they wouldn't abandon him. So he still can basically lead them to their destruction. Do you remember that? You know, so he.

To prevent immunity. Yeah, to prevent a mutiny. Exactly.

So this is the kind of insanity of men and you almost relate more in your life as like you are Ishmael, you are kind of these people that just get wrapped up in the craziness of Satan's devices and schemes because we're all like sheep, right? So we just kind of follow and only with God's spirit and enlightened mind from the Holy Spirit can you hope to avert your gaze away from being a Megal maniac, like basically going and heading down to your own destruction. No, you won't. So I don't know.

What are some big lessons you kind of took away? It's been a while since I've read this book, it feels like. That's been like a month or so now. Oh, I mean, that's really the main that's the main gist and we have some good masculinity in there, which is great book for that.

I didn't know if you had one other. Sorry, I almost drank your water. If you had one other kind of or anything else, like, you know, we had to hit on or I didn't bring up.

I thought. I mean, Herman. Pretty good storyteller.

I like how he does like most of the characters. They all have like some quirks about him. I think there is one of the shipmates stub.

He's just like you won't find him without a tobacco pipe in his mouth. Yeah. That's like I like maybe the novelty of some of his writing where some of the chapters are just entirely devoted towards some of the observations Ishmael has of the environment that he's in.

Like I remember there was a chapter where it's just it's a really quiet morning and he's, I think, up on the masthead. It's his turn to be a watch and he's just making some kind of observation about the water and he has some theological analogy that he comes up with. So it was really cool not only having a good narrative, but also him being able to share yeah, like the novelty or the.

The mundane things of being a whaler when there's nothing really going on. Yeah. And you're just out at sea like days and days like that and like the little thoughts that you'll have or the observations because you really don't have any concerns like all your needs are provided.

You're surrounded with other men who are in the same situation. Yeah. So there's camaraderie.

But yeah, it's just it's really. I can't think of a good word. It's very different from our culture where we're constantly trying to get stuff done and move from one thing to the next.

Exactly. But you know, there's just a beauty to observing the mundane things of life. No, that's good.

He did capture that amazingly. The detail of the book is great. Just the language is beautiful.

Yeah, the whole book is very poetic. It is. And like Noah said, we want things so quickly now.

Highly recommend this book to you. It will force you to slow down. It will take a second to read.

Okay. It's gonna take a second. It took me - Noah kept making fun of me because Noah got done before me and it took me a while to get through it.

It's an older book. It's 150 plus years old. I mean, it's an old book and it's written in an old way and it describes things in a way.

We're not used to things being described now and it's beautiful and it's worth your time. It'll make you a better reader. It'll make you a better thinker and it will teach you a lesson about, like we said, the providence of God, the uncontrollableness of God's will and his providence over the whole world.

And most men will hate God and will take a road to their own death. They'll destroy themselves in the process of trying to bend the world to their will. That's the big takeaway from the book.

Again, the words are beautiful. The writing is great. Highly recommend it.

Yeah, I think that's kind of - it's pretty much kind of what we wanted to get across here. Any closing thoughts? Uh, no. I think I got it all out.

Sure you did, dude. All right, guys, thanks so much for listening to the For The King podcast. Noah and I are - we're big time on gab these days.

We really like Andrew Torba. Andrew Torba's awesome. We're really excited about Christians starting to build things in our society, a parallel Christian economy.

So let's support him. Get on gab. If you're not on gab, you can find me at For The King Pod on gab.

And also I've been on Twitter a lot tweeting and stuff. So you can find me on Twitter as well. And I also have a website for thekingpodcast.com if you want to check out the website.

I have a few blogs on there, some writings of mine. I'm trying to get better at writing, so check that out. Maybe that'll edify you.

And if you have any inquiries or questions or want to interact with part of the podcast, you can reach me at forthekingpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks so much for listening, guys. Bye. Bye.

Bye.

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