I accept the facts at presented, but it doesn't sit well with me.
"Jesus didn't die for vegetables," sure. I accept that Jesus didn't die for the peppers I'm neglecting in my fridge. But the cast of veggie tales are, within the universe of the show, sentient, sapient. We call them vegetables because of their similar appearance (and taste?) to what we call vegetables, but can they really be considered the same thing? If you were to take my consciousness and put it in, just to pick at random, a pickle, have I forfeited salvation?
Then again, as vegetables, do they need salvation? Being non-human, are they burdened by original sin? Do they despair, preaching a message they know does not apply to them? Do they hope that if they're faithful enough that they'll reach salvation?
>But the cast of veggie tales are, within the universe of the show, sentient, sapient.
For Christians, "What about sentient, sapient creatures?" is not a hypothetical question, it's already addressed in the Christian canon!
Christianity has always taught that humans aren't the only sentient and sapient beings in creation. Angels (and demons) have intellect, and will, and moral responsibility. They can have beliefs. They can serve God, or rebel against God.
The standard Christian answer to "did God die for these other sapient, sentient creatures" is "no." Christ took on *human* form. When Jesus (who was fully *human* in addition to being fully God) died on the cross, he died for the sins of all humans, but he did not die for the sins of the fallen angels. The Catholic church, and most Protestant traditions, teach that fallen angels don't get a chance at redemption.
>Then again, as vegetables, do they need salvation? Being non-human, are they burdened by original sin?
Once again, the Christian church has a canonical answer to this: *humans* have original sin, but non-human moral agents (like angels, and perhaps talking vegetables) do not have this burden.
Angels can sin, but they're not "born sinners" in the same way as sons of Adam. So if the vegetables are in the same lane as the angels, and they're not in rebellion or estranged from God, then the vegetables do not *need* redemption. The Phil Vischer Veggietales rule was that the vegetables can't have a "redemptive relationship" with God. They can still have a non-redemptive relationship with God, as the angels do.
Like the angels, the vegetables could still worship God, serve His purposes, and bear witness to humans, without ever needing to imply that Jesus's birth, death, and resurrection is "for them" in the same way it's for us.
>If you were to take my consciousness and put it in, just to pick at random, a pickle, have I forfeited salvation?
If we assume (as most Christians do) that your personal identity is anchored in your human soul, then moving your human soul to a new body wouldn't mean you cease to be human. You'd still be human, just with a different embodiment.
Again, this is not something Christians view as a strictly fictional hypothetical, because Christians already understand that our souls are more permanent than our current bodies, and Christians already expect a dramatic discontinuity in embodiment: when we die, our bodies will decay, but our human souls will persist and be restored to renewed bodies at the time of the resurrection.
Our renewed bodies will still be "us," but have different qualities than our old bodies: we're not given an exact spec, but at the very least we know our new bodies will be death-proof and decay-proof (whether or not we'll be more "pickle-like" remains an open question).
This article is way smarter than it has any right to be, judging from its title and apparent subject matter alone. My expectations were pleasantly subverted, bravo.
This seems so dark to me. These Vegetables are obsessed with a god who doesn’t seem to care for them. They mechanistically tell tales of good news for the humans to the humans and must desire it for themselves even though it isn’t fated to be. They live to serve the humans and their god and may only derive joy from doing so, not actually being included in the story they are telling.
They remind me of ancient Gentile “God-fearers” in a Jewish temple. Best thing they can do is get as close to the action as possible, try to catch crumbs from the banquet table with their non-existent hands. Or do they belong on the table as the main course? Idk.
Those initially benign rules have some strange consequences when strictly adhered to over time.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it! I elaborated on this point in a follow-up post, where I suggest that perhaps the vegetables are similar to angels: they are non-human creatures with have intelligence and will and moral responsibility, and the ability to serve God (or, one presumes, the ability to rebel against God, much as the fallen angels did): https://justinkuiper.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the
I think you bring up an interesting point, and I'd like to engage with it, using "angels" as a stand-in for "talking vegetables," if we're treating the two as being similar types of creatures:
I can see why it might sounds dark if you imagine angels (or vegetables) as "people who want to be in the human story but got assigned supporting roles forever." That's a very human perspective.
But most Christian traditions teach that angels predated humans. The angels were around to guard Eden in Genesis 3, but they weren't mentioned in the days of creation, and most interpret this as the angels already existing before the creation of the world (and before humans). Remember too that Satan had already chosen to rebel by the time of Eden. And, it bears mentioning that if God created talking vegetables, then as plants they would have entered creation on Day 3 of creation, with humans not showing up until Day 6.
So, angels (and vegetables) existed before humans showed up -- which is directly counter to the claim that "they live to serve the humans."
The Bible doesn't present angels as quasi-humans who live on the sidelines. Angels are an entirely different kind of creature. They have their own personhood and intellect (1 Peter describes "things into which angels long to look," which seems to imply that angels can have curiosity). The angels' "native environment" is not playing spectator to the humans on earth, but existing and worshipping directly in God's presence. And, to be clear, they're not NPCs reciting scripts: the angels can *choose* to rejoice and worship God, but they can also choose to rebel against Him (as Satan did).
You paint an interesting image of angels as "God-fearers," but I don't think it's analogous to what the angels experience. The angels aren't "outsiders waiting to be brought in," they're already "at court," so to speak. The angels don't get a dramatic redemption arc because they don't *need* one: angels were not "born sinners," they're allowed in God's court from the start, and that was well before the part of the story where humans show up.
If anything, the "twist" of Christianity is the opposite: the *humans* are the dusty outsiders and rebels, and yet they get adopted into God’s family in a way that's surprisingly generous.
What about for those of us who regard angels as human spirits? I grew up in the Mormon tradition, which regards itself as Christian and holds this view, but there are also other sects of Christianity that loosely follow this interpretation.
As an ex-Evangelical and follower of your work, I love the confusion I experience reading this piece. Like, wait, is the presumed audience of the newsletter Christian? Or are we just assumed to be so worldly that we're familiar with the work of Big Idea Entertainment's "VeggieTales"?
Either way, color me "seen".
Growing up as an Evangelical, it felt like ours was the identity that was everywhere, but nowhere spoken of. With the inauguration of George W. Bush, of course, that changed, but still Evangelicals were the "other" in mainstream dialogue.
Finding here, in an ostensibly secular publication, an exploration of the soteriological state of a member of the "nightshade family" feels wonderful, like the tribe of my youth i another bright thread in the American fabric, not to be hidden or excoriated, but just appreciated for what it is.
I'm glad you felt seen! Your comment made me smile
To answer your question: I would say that this post is written with the assumption that the reader is familiar with VeggieTales to a similar degree to how my post about Rogue One post ( https://justinkuiper.substack.com/p/rogue-one-understands-star-wars ) presumes reader familiarity with the Star Wars movies: I don't expect you to have seen *every* entry in the franchise, but if you were interested enough to click, I assume you're at least familiar with Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber (or Luke Skywalker and Han Solo).
Vegetables don't need to be saved, but I believe there will be vegetables, along with other plant life, on the new Earth--which is also where the new heaven will be. (See Revelation 21:1-3, where the new Jerusalem comes down to Earth.)
Fun read but I’m not seeing a lot that backs up the title claim that they aren’t Christian. They believe in Christ and the Bible. What else is required? The Pope has said he’d baptize an alien so at least some pretty important Christians think you don’t have to be human to be Christian. Do most of the Christian groups agree you have to have a personal redemptive relationship with god to be Christian? https://www.christianpost.com/news/pope-francis-talks-about-aliens-says-he-would-welcome-martians-to-receive-baptism.html
Thanks for bringing my attention to the Pope's remarks on aliens, this is a fun and interesting topic to engage with.
>They believe in Christ and the Bible. What else is required?
First, let's try to be clear about what is actually meant by "believe in." If your claim is that "it's enough just to believe that Jesus Christ is God, and to believe that the Bible is a factual account of historical events," that claim is contradicted very directly in scripture: James 2:19 tells us: "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!"
So, obviously it is not enough to be a monotheist who believes that Jesus is God and that the events described in the Bible actually happened, because even demons can satisfy those criteria.
And if you add the criteria "serves and obeys God," that also doesn't get you all of the way there, because the angels have knowledge of God, the angels know that Jesus is the Son of God, the angels love God, and the angels obey God. But despite checking all of those boxes, the angels are not "Christian" as the word is used in ordinary speech and in the church.
There are several things that separate humans from angels. Among them are the fact that humans are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27, Gen. 5:1-3, James 3:9), and the fact that God took on human form as Jesus (Philippians 2:6-8); Jesus was born as a human and died to redeem *humans*, He didn't die to redeem the fallen angels.
>Do most of the Christian groups agree you have to have a personal redemptive relationship with God to be Christian?
That phrasing is kind of Evangelical/Protestant-coded, but yes, I think that practically every Christian tradition would agree with the substance of the claim that to be a "Christian," you need to be in reconciliation with God, having been redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It's a very core Christian claim that our sin separates us from God, which is why Jesus had to die on the cross to redeem humanity; it's through Jesus's sacrifice and His grace that we're then able to be saved. That's what I'm talking about (and what Phil Vischer is talking about) when we talk about whether someone can have a "redemptive relationship" with God.
Notably, the angels do not have a redemptive relationship with God -- they are in communion with God from the start; the angels have a relationship with God that is NOT redemptive; the angels did not need to be redeemed, because angels are not "born sinners" in the same way as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. I actually made a follow-up post where I suggest that perhaps this is the moral lane that the vegetables on VeggieTales occupy: they have a relationship with God, but it's not a redemptive relationship: https://justinkuiper.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the
>The Pope has said he’d baptize an alien
Let's pay very close attention to the Pope's words: he said "If then God gave them the same gift He gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?"
The operative part is the first part of that sentence -- *if then God gave them to same gift He gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ*. The Pope is stating a conditional: *if* Jesus died for the sins of the aliens, *then* the Pope would offer the sacrament of baptism. This allows for the possibility of aliens that *don't* receive Jesus' gift.
Here, I don't think the Pope is really offering his own personal judgment on who can and can't be saved. Quite the opposite, in fact: he's taking the humble position of saying *the Pope* doesn't get to decide; it's *God* who gets to choose who is saved, and once God has made His decision, the clergy don't get to deny God's choice. (That is very straightforwardly "the point" of his sermon: he wasn't giving that speech to comment specifically on the personhood or humanity of extraterrestrials; he was using extraterrestrials as a hypothetical and hyperbolic example of how we might follow Peter's example of accepting everyone that God chooses to save.)
God, in his infinite capacity, could choose to make aliens who were image-bearers (in the same way that we homo sapiens are "made in the image of God.") But we cannot *assume* that aliens would be human in this sense, which is why the Pope includes that important qualifier.
Critically, we already know that God allows for the existence of rational moral agents who *aren't* humans and *aren't* saved by God through Jesus's sacrifice: see, for example, the aforementioned angels.
I can't get over the theological and craft-style depth of this analysis.
I'm getting ready to stage a kids' Christmas play on Friday in which a storyteller is telling the Christmas story to a group of kids, while it's acted out on the stage around them. I noticed in one of our rehearsals that the girl playing the storyteller kept watching the boys and girls acting out the story, and I had to explain to her that in *her* world, those actors didn't exist; they're figments of the kids' imaginations. So the audience is, in a sense, seeing two worlds at once. (Like in Veggie Tales, I guess.) I don't think she got it fully, but it's good to know I'm in good company!
I’m honestly floored this is even an issue for people. I don’t even know exactly what to think that this bothers people as much as it does. Anyone for that matter. Fandoms really have gotten out of hand these days.
possible counterexample: in the countertop intro to the minnesota cuke episode i remember larry saying he felt ashamed because people made fun of him when he was praying
I accept the facts at presented, but it doesn't sit well with me.
"Jesus didn't die for vegetables," sure. I accept that Jesus didn't die for the peppers I'm neglecting in my fridge. But the cast of veggie tales are, within the universe of the show, sentient, sapient. We call them vegetables because of their similar appearance (and taste?) to what we call vegetables, but can they really be considered the same thing? If you were to take my consciousness and put it in, just to pick at random, a pickle, have I forfeited salvation?
Then again, as vegetables, do they need salvation? Being non-human, are they burdened by original sin? Do they despair, preaching a message they know does not apply to them? Do they hope that if they're faithful enough that they'll reach salvation?
>But the cast of veggie tales are, within the universe of the show, sentient, sapient.
For Christians, "What about sentient, sapient creatures?" is not a hypothetical question, it's already addressed in the Christian canon!
Christianity has always taught that humans aren't the only sentient and sapient beings in creation. Angels (and demons) have intellect, and will, and moral responsibility. They can have beliefs. They can serve God, or rebel against God.
The standard Christian answer to "did God die for these other sapient, sentient creatures" is "no." Christ took on *human* form. When Jesus (who was fully *human* in addition to being fully God) died on the cross, he died for the sins of all humans, but he did not die for the sins of the fallen angels. The Catholic church, and most Protestant traditions, teach that fallen angels don't get a chance at redemption.
>Then again, as vegetables, do they need salvation? Being non-human, are they burdened by original sin?
Once again, the Christian church has a canonical answer to this: *humans* have original sin, but non-human moral agents (like angels, and perhaps talking vegetables) do not have this burden.
Angels can sin, but they're not "born sinners" in the same way as sons of Adam. So if the vegetables are in the same lane as the angels, and they're not in rebellion or estranged from God, then the vegetables do not *need* redemption. The Phil Vischer Veggietales rule was that the vegetables can't have a "redemptive relationship" with God. They can still have a non-redemptive relationship with God, as the angels do.
Like the angels, the vegetables could still worship God, serve His purposes, and bear witness to humans, without ever needing to imply that Jesus's birth, death, and resurrection is "for them" in the same way it's for us.
>If you were to take my consciousness and put it in, just to pick at random, a pickle, have I forfeited salvation?
If we assume (as most Christians do) that your personal identity is anchored in your human soul, then moving your human soul to a new body wouldn't mean you cease to be human. You'd still be human, just with a different embodiment.
Again, this is not something Christians view as a strictly fictional hypothetical, because Christians already understand that our souls are more permanent than our current bodies, and Christians already expect a dramatic discontinuity in embodiment: when we die, our bodies will decay, but our human souls will persist and be restored to renewed bodies at the time of the resurrection.
Our renewed bodies will still be "us," but have different qualities than our old bodies: we're not given an exact spec, but at the very least we know our new bodies will be death-proof and decay-proof (whether or not we'll be more "pickle-like" remains an open question).
So, the vegetables never left the garden?
This is not something I expected to be reading when I woke up this morning. Congratulations on that lol
This article is way smarter than it has any right to be, judging from its title and apparent subject matter alone. My expectations were pleasantly subverted, bravo.
This seems so dark to me. These Vegetables are obsessed with a god who doesn’t seem to care for them. They mechanistically tell tales of good news for the humans to the humans and must desire it for themselves even though it isn’t fated to be. They live to serve the humans and their god and may only derive joy from doing so, not actually being included in the story they are telling.
They remind me of ancient Gentile “God-fearers” in a Jewish temple. Best thing they can do is get as close to the action as possible, try to catch crumbs from the banquet table with their non-existent hands. Or do they belong on the table as the main course? Idk.
Those initially benign rules have some strange consequences when strictly adhered to over time.
Great post! A delightfully niche subject.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it! I elaborated on this point in a follow-up post, where I suggest that perhaps the vegetables are similar to angels: they are non-human creatures with have intelligence and will and moral responsibility, and the ability to serve God (or, one presumes, the ability to rebel against God, much as the fallen angels did): https://justinkuiper.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the
I think you bring up an interesting point, and I'd like to engage with it, using "angels" as a stand-in for "talking vegetables," if we're treating the two as being similar types of creatures:
I can see why it might sounds dark if you imagine angels (or vegetables) as "people who want to be in the human story but got assigned supporting roles forever." That's a very human perspective.
But most Christian traditions teach that angels predated humans. The angels were around to guard Eden in Genesis 3, but they weren't mentioned in the days of creation, and most interpret this as the angels already existing before the creation of the world (and before humans). Remember too that Satan had already chosen to rebel by the time of Eden. And, it bears mentioning that if God created talking vegetables, then as plants they would have entered creation on Day 3 of creation, with humans not showing up until Day 6.
So, angels (and vegetables) existed before humans showed up -- which is directly counter to the claim that "they live to serve the humans."
The Bible doesn't present angels as quasi-humans who live on the sidelines. Angels are an entirely different kind of creature. They have their own personhood and intellect (1 Peter describes "things into which angels long to look," which seems to imply that angels can have curiosity). The angels' "native environment" is not playing spectator to the humans on earth, but existing and worshipping directly in God's presence. And, to be clear, they're not NPCs reciting scripts: the angels can *choose* to rejoice and worship God, but they can also choose to rebel against Him (as Satan did).
You paint an interesting image of angels as "God-fearers," but I don't think it's analogous to what the angels experience. The angels aren't "outsiders waiting to be brought in," they're already "at court," so to speak. The angels don't get a dramatic redemption arc because they don't *need* one: angels were not "born sinners," they're allowed in God's court from the start, and that was well before the part of the story where humans show up.
If anything, the "twist" of Christianity is the opposite: the *humans* are the dusty outsiders and rebels, and yet they get adopted into God’s family in a way that's surprisingly generous.
What about for those of us who regard angels as human spirits? I grew up in the Mormon tradition, which regards itself as Christian and holds this view, but there are also other sects of Christianity that loosely follow this interpretation.
That doesn’t sound a million miles from Calvinism; those vegetables will have an industrial revolution soon
As an ex-Evangelical and follower of your work, I love the confusion I experience reading this piece. Like, wait, is the presumed audience of the newsletter Christian? Or are we just assumed to be so worldly that we're familiar with the work of Big Idea Entertainment's "VeggieTales"?
Either way, color me "seen".
Growing up as an Evangelical, it felt like ours was the identity that was everywhere, but nowhere spoken of. With the inauguration of George W. Bush, of course, that changed, but still Evangelicals were the "other" in mainstream dialogue.
Finding here, in an ostensibly secular publication, an exploration of the soteriological state of a member of the "nightshade family" feels wonderful, like the tribe of my youth i another bright thread in the American fabric, not to be hidden or excoriated, but just appreciated for what it is.
I'm glad you felt seen! Your comment made me smile
To answer your question: I would say that this post is written with the assumption that the reader is familiar with VeggieTales to a similar degree to how my post about Rogue One post ( https://justinkuiper.substack.com/p/rogue-one-understands-star-wars ) presumes reader familiarity with the Star Wars movies: I don't expect you to have seen *every* entry in the franchise, but if you were interested enough to click, I assume you're at least familiar with Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber (or Luke Skywalker and Han Solo).
Vegetables don't need to be saved, but I believe there will be vegetables, along with other plant life, on the new Earth--which is also where the new heaven will be. (See Revelation 21:1-3, where the new Jerusalem comes down to Earth.)
This was a rollecoaster. At first it had me thinking my favorite talking vegetables weren't saved, now I'm left wondering if a cucumber can sin.
The Fresh Prince example isn't quite accurate. That is Willard Smith playing William Smith. Not the same name.
Fun read but I’m not seeing a lot that backs up the title claim that they aren’t Christian. They believe in Christ and the Bible. What else is required? The Pope has said he’d baptize an alien so at least some pretty important Christians think you don’t have to be human to be Christian. Do most of the Christian groups agree you have to have a personal redemptive relationship with god to be Christian? https://www.christianpost.com/news/pope-francis-talks-about-aliens-says-he-would-welcome-martians-to-receive-baptism.html
Thanks for bringing my attention to the Pope's remarks on aliens, this is a fun and interesting topic to engage with.
>They believe in Christ and the Bible. What else is required?
First, let's try to be clear about what is actually meant by "believe in." If your claim is that "it's enough just to believe that Jesus Christ is God, and to believe that the Bible is a factual account of historical events," that claim is contradicted very directly in scripture: James 2:19 tells us: "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!"
So, obviously it is not enough to be a monotheist who believes that Jesus is God and that the events described in the Bible actually happened, because even demons can satisfy those criteria.
And if you add the criteria "serves and obeys God," that also doesn't get you all of the way there, because the angels have knowledge of God, the angels know that Jesus is the Son of God, the angels love God, and the angels obey God. But despite checking all of those boxes, the angels are not "Christian" as the word is used in ordinary speech and in the church.
There are several things that separate humans from angels. Among them are the fact that humans are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27, Gen. 5:1-3, James 3:9), and the fact that God took on human form as Jesus (Philippians 2:6-8); Jesus was born as a human and died to redeem *humans*, He didn't die to redeem the fallen angels.
>Do most of the Christian groups agree you have to have a personal redemptive relationship with God to be Christian?
That phrasing is kind of Evangelical/Protestant-coded, but yes, I think that practically every Christian tradition would agree with the substance of the claim that to be a "Christian," you need to be in reconciliation with God, having been redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It's a very core Christian claim that our sin separates us from God, which is why Jesus had to die on the cross to redeem humanity; it's through Jesus's sacrifice and His grace that we're then able to be saved. That's what I'm talking about (and what Phil Vischer is talking about) when we talk about whether someone can have a "redemptive relationship" with God.
Notably, the angels do not have a redemptive relationship with God -- they are in communion with God from the start; the angels have a relationship with God that is NOT redemptive; the angels did not need to be redeemed, because angels are not "born sinners" in the same way as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. I actually made a follow-up post where I suggest that perhaps this is the moral lane that the vegetables on VeggieTales occupy: they have a relationship with God, but it's not a redemptive relationship: https://justinkuiper.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the
>The Pope has said he’d baptize an alien
Let's pay very close attention to the Pope's words: he said "If then God gave them the same gift He gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?"
The operative part is the first part of that sentence -- *if then God gave them to same gift He gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ*. The Pope is stating a conditional: *if* Jesus died for the sins of the aliens, *then* the Pope would offer the sacrament of baptism. This allows for the possibility of aliens that *don't* receive Jesus' gift.
Here, I don't think the Pope is really offering his own personal judgment on who can and can't be saved. Quite the opposite, in fact: he's taking the humble position of saying *the Pope* doesn't get to decide; it's *God* who gets to choose who is saved, and once God has made His decision, the clergy don't get to deny God's choice. (That is very straightforwardly "the point" of his sermon: he wasn't giving that speech to comment specifically on the personhood or humanity of extraterrestrials; he was using extraterrestrials as a hypothetical and hyperbolic example of how we might follow Peter's example of accepting everyone that God chooses to save.)
God, in his infinite capacity, could choose to make aliens who were image-bearers (in the same way that we homo sapiens are "made in the image of God.") But we cannot *assume* that aliens would be human in this sense, which is why the Pope includes that important qualifier.
Critically, we already know that God allows for the existence of rational moral agents who *aren't* humans and *aren't* saved by God through Jesus's sacrifice: see, for example, the aforementioned angels.
I can't get over the theological and craft-style depth of this analysis.
I'm getting ready to stage a kids' Christmas play on Friday in which a storyteller is telling the Christmas story to a group of kids, while it's acted out on the stage around them. I noticed in one of our rehearsals that the girl playing the storyteller kept watching the boys and girls acting out the story, and I had to explain to her that in *her* world, those actors didn't exist; they're figments of the kids' imaginations. So the audience is, in a sense, seeing two worlds at once. (Like in Veggie Tales, I guess.) I don't think she got it fully, but it's good to know I'm in good company!
The veggies are ostensibly free from original sin. they don’t need to be saved. lol.
I have admit, a metafictional analysis of Veggie Tales and the theological implications of such was not what I expected from Substack.
i’m attending a veggie tales watch party in a couple weeks and will be bringing this up bless you
I’m honestly floored this is even an issue for people. I don’t even know exactly what to think that this bothers people as much as it does. Anyone for that matter. Fandoms really have gotten out of hand these days.
Shared with my wife. Can't wait to discuss this date night.
possible counterexample: in the countertop intro to the minnesota cuke episode i remember larry saying he felt ashamed because people made fun of him when he was praying
I knew it! I knew vegetables didn’t have souls!