The Charlie Kirk Show - How the Truth Changes Everything with Dr. Jeff Myers

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, the truth changes everything with Dr. Jeff Myers.

00:00:02.000 We talk about why truth is necessary today more than ever.

00:00:07.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:00:24.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:25.000 Here we go.

00:00:26.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:28.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:30.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:33.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:37.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:38.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:39.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:41.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

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00:01:08.000 The truth changes everything.

00:01:10.000 I hope you believe that because it's true.

00:01:13.000 We're going to talk about what is actually true and why does that matter.

00:01:15.000 Jeff Myers is with us, Dr. Jeff Myers.

00:01:18.000 Charlie, it's great to be with you.

00:01:19.000 This is going to be a lot of fun.

00:01:20.000 We're going to have a fun day.

00:01:22.000 Yeah.

00:01:23.000 We're working you.

00:01:23.000 We're putting you on tour.

00:01:24.000 So we got a whole hour here and then we're going to Dream City Church in a couple hours and we're going to hopefully have a really big, big group there.

00:01:31.000 I want to talk about Summit Ministries.

00:01:33.000 I also want to talk about your book, which I found to be really, really helpful and I really enjoyed.

00:01:38.000 So, but first, tell us about Summit Ministries and the work you do.

00:01:40.000 Well, Summit's in Manitou Springs, Colorado, little hippie town right at the foot of Pikes Beach.

00:01:45.000 We love Manitou.

00:01:46.000 We have been, Summit Ministries has been there for 60 years.

00:01:49.000 And during that time, they have focused on helping to equip and support a rising generation to embrace God's truth and to champion a biblical worldview.

00:01:58.000 So we're not just looking for young adults who believe that Jesus is real, but who take that as the basis of their reality and expand it to everything else.

00:02:07.000 So we want them to go into law and politics and the military and medicine and science and all these different areas, taking those biblical convictions with them.

00:02:16.000 The summit's been able to train about 100,000 young people in just two week-long courses.

00:02:21.000 You spoke at one of them.

00:02:22.000 We met over at Arizona Christian.

00:02:23.000 I was really impressed with the kids.

00:02:24.000 They're really impressive, aren't they?

00:02:26.000 And the cool thing is, some of those kids are headed off to Ivy League schools.

00:02:29.000 Some of them are headed off to trade school.

00:02:31.000 Some of them are going straight into the workforce.

00:02:33.000 They're all across the spectrum.

00:02:35.000 But once they learn that they can learn and they love to learn, then all of a sudden they light up.

00:02:42.000 They want to grow.

00:02:43.000 They want to read.

00:02:43.000 They want to ask questions.

00:02:45.000 They realize every kid is smart, different kinds of smart, but we can all be the sort of people who make a difference.

00:02:51.000 And you equip them with the proper apologetics background, correct?

00:02:57.000 And also their ability to reason through these topics, which in Protestant circles is not always done.

00:03:03.000 Catholics do actually a pretty good job of this.

00:03:06.000 So tell us about that.

00:03:07.000 Well, we talk about a biblical worldview.

00:03:10.000 So a worldview is a pattern of ideas, of beliefs, of convictions, habits that help us make sense of the world and God and our relationship to God and the world.

00:03:20.000 So everybody operates from a set of patterns.

00:03:22.000 If you want to be successful in sports, you had better understand the patterns of play your team is using.

00:03:27.000 And you need to understand the patterns of play that will be operating against you so that you can counteract them.

00:03:33.000 Same thing is true in business.

00:03:34.000 Anybody who's successful in business operates based on patterns.

00:03:37.000 Well, there are patterns of truth.

00:03:39.000 We can see what's going on in the world.

00:03:40.000 And if we operate on that, not only do we live more successful life personally, but then we become the kind of people who can watch a television show, immediately figure out what worldview is being presented, and then know how to respond intelligently to it.

00:03:53.000 So there are two sides to it.

00:03:54.000 You got to learn a biblical worldview.

00:03:56.000 Then you have to learn the counterfeit worldviews too, so that you know what you're up against.

00:04:01.000 And it is summit.org is your website.

00:04:04.000 Summit.org is the website.

00:04:05.000 People can go there, sign up for one of the two-week programs.

00:04:08.000 We're looking for 16 to 22-year-olds.

00:04:10.000 They do not have to be believers.

00:04:12.000 We're looking for young adults who have questions.

00:04:15.000 Good.

00:04:15.000 If they're not curious, they might not enjoy it that much.

00:04:19.000 But if they're curious, they say, I got a lot of questions.

00:04:21.000 I'm not sure what I believe, but I've got a lot of questions.

00:04:24.000 That's who we're looking for.

00:04:25.000 That's the kid I was when I went to Summit Ministries as a student.

00:04:28.000 I literally said to the director, hope you have a lot of answers because I have a lot of questions.

00:04:28.000 I just walked in.

00:04:33.000 And he said, we're not afraid of questions at some point.

00:04:35.000 Oh, I knew I was in the right place.

00:04:36.000 He'll ask even better questions of you, make you think about things.

00:04:39.000 So let's talk about your book.

00:04:40.000 I loved your book.

00:04:41.000 It's called The Truth Changes Everything, or just Truth Changes Everything.

00:04:41.000 It's great.

00:04:45.000 I suppose The Truth is also, it doesn't change the title.

00:04:49.000 You guys should check it out.

00:04:50.000 First, tell us why you wrote the book.

00:04:50.000 It's brilliant.

00:04:52.000 Well, I actually wrote it in a difficult season of life.

00:04:56.000 I want to communicate the truth.

00:04:58.000 But as I got the contract to write the book, I was also diagnosed with cancer.

00:05:01.000 Oh, wow.

00:05:02.000 And while I was trying to figure out the treatment process, I realized, you know, I might not make it.

00:05:08.000 And if once you realize you might die, then all of a sudden your focus on everything else changes.

00:05:15.000 The phone call might be the last person that time you get to talk to them.

00:05:18.000 That's very stoic of you, by the way.

00:05:20.000 I'm not saying you're stoic, but that's one of their beliefs is a memento mori.

00:05:25.000 Think about your death every day.

00:05:26.000 Well, and there's there's some value to it.

00:05:29.000 My sense now is 14 months in remission that every day is a gift.

00:05:34.000 But I realized, man, is this the book I want to write?

00:05:36.000 If this is the last thing I ever get to write.

00:05:38.000 And I realized, Charlie, this is the most important thing.

00:05:42.000 If we lose the idea that truth exists and can be known by us, we lose everything.

00:05:47.000 We lose our own mental health.

00:05:49.000 We lose our ability to relate to one another personally and we lose our civilization.

00:05:54.000 So I decided, no, this is it.

00:05:55.000 And the cool thing from, obviously I'm coming at this from a Christian perspective.

00:05:59.000 I hope that's not a surprise to anybody.

00:06:01.000 No, it's welcomed.

00:06:04.000 From a biblical perspective, truth isn't just a set of logical propositions.

00:06:08.000 It's not just a mathematical formula.

00:06:10.000 It's a person.

00:06:12.000 That Jesus came as the truth.

00:06:14.000 And it was that personal aspect of truth that actually enlivened people in science, art, medicine, education, politics, justice, and all of those areas to be the ones who really changed the world.

00:06:30.000 And they did.

00:06:32.000 And we can still do it now.

00:06:33.000 That's the whole point behind the book.

00:06:36.000 Tell us why Christians should study and pray on the word logos. 0.91

00:06:44.000 So the Greeks had this, this is a cool word.

00:06:46.000 It actually, it's translated word.

00:06:49.000 That's really a minimal translation.

00:06:51.000 It's not, doesn't do it justice.

00:06:52.000 It doesn't do it justice.

00:06:54.000 You could say it's a thought expressed.

00:06:56.000 That's a little bit better.

00:06:57.000 Or spoken truth.

00:06:59.000 Right.

00:06:59.000 But when the Greeks looked at the world, there was an obviousness to it.

00:07:03.000 You're walking down the road.

00:07:04.000 There's a big hole in the road.

00:07:06.000 If you keep walking, you'll fall in the hole.

00:07:08.000 You'll hurt yourself.

00:07:09.000 There's an obviousness to reality.

00:07:11.000 If you go up on top of the building and think thoughts of upness and jump, you're still going to go down.

00:07:15.000 There's an obviousness to reality.

00:07:17.000 That's the word they used to describe the obviousness of reality.

00:07:22.000 So in John 1, you only have to, if you can only read one thing in the New Testament, read John chapter 1, because John says, in the beginning was the word logos, the obviousness of reality.

00:07:34.000 All Greeks would have been tracking with him at that point.

00:07:37.000 And then he said, and the word became flesh and dwelled among us.

00:07:43.000 And we observed his glory, the glory as the one and only son of the father, full of grace and truth.

00:07:48.000 And everybody reading that would have been going, whoa, the obviousness of reality is actually a person.

00:07:55.000 That changes everything.

00:07:58.000 And that person was also divine.

00:08:00.000 Right.

00:08:01.000 Yeah.

00:08:02.000 Well, just think about the nature of the incarnation.

00:08:06.000 I was on a show the other day that was not a believer.

00:08:09.000 Well, audience, probably mostly progressives.

00:08:13.000 And I said, now, think about, because he said, if you could just communicate, if you could just broadcast one message to the whole world, what would it be?

00:08:21.000 And I said, I wouldn't broadcast it that way because you have to go there.

00:08:25.000 If you want to have diplomatic relationships with another country, you don't just send them long letters.

00:08:30.000 You go there.

00:08:31.000 You send a diplomat.

00:08:32.000 And that's what God has done.

00:08:33.000 He sent his son into the world.

00:08:37.000 And entirely aside from the apologetics of that, that is a provable fact that that happened, that Jesus rose from the dead.

00:08:43.000 These are provable historical facts.

00:08:46.000 But entirely aside from that, it was people who believed that that developed the idea that we have souls, that our souls say something different about who we are as human beings.

00:08:55.000 Therefore, every human being has value.

00:08:57.000 Rights were based on that.

00:08:58.000 Education was based on that.

00:09:00.000 Science was based on that.

00:09:02.000 Science did not rise in rebellion against God.

00:09:04.000 That's what I was taught in school.

00:09:05.000 It rose to applaud him.

00:09:07.000 Yes, that's right.

00:09:07.000 Yes.

00:09:08.000 Sir Isaac Newton loved biblical prophecy.

00:09:10.000 He actually wrote more about biblical prophecy than he wrote a lot.

00:09:13.000 Yeah, he wrote a lot about theology.

00:09:16.000 And a lot of other guys did too.

00:09:18.000 One of the stories I tell in the book is of Robert Boyle.

00:09:20.000 This guy grew up, I mean, he was a trust fund baby.

00:09:23.000 He grew up in the castle that had been built by King John.

00:09:25.000 His father had bought it from Sir Walter Raleigh.

00:09:28.000 He could have just kicked back for his entire life, but he didn't.

00:09:31.000 Instead, he became the father of chemistry because he wanted to explore God's invisible nature.

00:09:36.000 And how do we know that?

00:09:37.000 Because he actually wrote a book.

00:09:38.000 He wrote a devotional book, an apologetics book called The Christian Virtuoso on how you can be a good scientist and be a believer.

00:09:45.000 Yeah, there's, we could spend a whole hour on this, but if you believe that God created the heavens and the earth and the world has order and you want to just, you want to inquire to that order to serve man, that's where science was born, as we know it.

00:09:57.000 Not to change the natural world.

00:09:59.000 That's scientism.

00:10:00.000 That's secular progressive scientism, but to inquire, discover, learn, and appreciate for the betterment of humanity.

00:10:07.000 That's an inheritance of a Christian tradition.

00:10:10.000 Well, Kepler said we believe that it brings glory to God when we discover his invisible nature, when we think God's thoughts after him.

00:10:19.000 And it wasn't.

00:10:20.000 Truth is the fingerprint of God.

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00:11:01.000 That is Charlie to 74868.

00:11:07.000 So you mentioned the book of John, which is my favorite book to recommend to people.

00:11:13.000 Yes.

00:11:13.000 It's my second favorite book of the Bible.

00:11:15.000 Genesis is my favorite.

00:11:16.000 And then John and Proverbs is my three-favorite book.

00:11:18.000 So with you.

00:11:19.000 Yeah.

00:11:20.000 Isaiah?

00:11:21.000 Isaiah.

00:11:22.000 Yeah, I actually, you know, it's so funny.

00:11:24.000 Yoram Hazzoni was just on our program.

00:11:26.000 I don't know if you know him or not.

00:11:26.000 I do.

00:11:27.000 And he was so insistent that I have to really study Isaiah.

00:11:31.000 I really had never had a chance to.

00:11:32.000 I've read it, but I haven't really studied it.

00:11:35.000 Obviously, the prophecy is profound and confirms our faith in many ways.

00:11:39.000 But let me ask you, do you think that, because you're a very studied man and very thoughtful, and your book is very clear, do you think that Christians should understand the Greek tradition to better understand the context and also the language that is used in the gospel?

00:11:57.000 So understanding the original languages is important.

00:12:00.000 If you can at least get a commentary, a Bible dictionary, look at some of the words that are being used.

00:12:06.000 And I would say, so the Old Testament's almost all in Hebrew.

00:12:09.000 The New Testament's almost all in Greek.

00:12:11.000 So those are two ancient languages people aren't that familiar with.

00:12:15.000 The Hebrew, I think, is super important to understand.

00:12:18.000 I've been talking with a lot of Orthodox Jews about the nature of the Hebrew language.

00:12:23.000 They believe that it's the prototype language, that all language really came out of that.

00:12:27.000 Of course, Moses would have been, that was a total groundbreaker, how educated he was.

00:12:31.000 The brilliant philosopher that he was, and then also a leader.

00:12:31.000 Yes.

00:12:35.000 So he's rightly well thought of among Jews and among Christians.

00:12:41.000 But understanding the original language is really important because what these words mean, like we talked about Logos earlier.

00:12:47.000 That's such a cool word.

00:12:48.000 And if you just say, oh, Logos means word, no, you really haven't gotten it.

00:12:51.000 There's a whole philosophy underneath it.

00:12:53.000 That's right.

00:12:54.000 The same thing is true in the Hebrew language as well.

00:12:55.000 So you want to get a good Bible dictionary, get a good commentary, and then study into these passages and realize the depth.

00:13:04.000 Every Hebrew word is a whole philosophy of life.

00:13:07.000 And if you start to connect all the pieces.

00:13:09.000 And words can have simultaneous meanings.

00:13:11.000 For example, to honor your father also means to treat them heavily.

00:13:16.000 The curse is to treat them lightly.

00:13:17.000 And so there are synonyms and multiple meanings of the root words.

00:13:22.000 But to go deeper in that, do you think that Christians should at least be aware of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and the Greek tradition that was bubbling up during kind of the Hellenistic domination of the region as Christ ministered?

00:13:38.000 I take sort of a C.S. Lewis approach to this.

00:13:41.000 If the Greeks, if Socrates figured out something, it's because he's recognized a truth that exists that's bigger than him.

00:13:48.000 He wasn't revealing anything new to us.

00:13:50.000 He was just discovering it.

00:13:52.000 And if his insights are interesting and good, then we should pay attention to them.

00:13:56.000 But you've got to understand the philosophers for what they are.

00:14:00.000 When they think of God, they think of an idea.

00:14:03.000 They don't think of a person.

00:14:04.000 They think of a concept.

00:14:06.000 An abstraction.

00:14:06.000 An abstractions.

00:14:07.000 More like a force, but something that it does exist in an ideational way, but it's not something that it can ever relate to you.

00:14:15.000 It's nothing personal.

00:14:17.000 And that's when the Hebrews came along. 1.00

00:14:20.000 Then later Christians came along and said, no, it's all personal, that God comes to be with us.

00:14:27.000 You would see temples.

00:14:28.000 I mean, we were just recently in Israel.

00:14:30.000 You see altars.

00:14:31.000 You see temples.

00:14:32.000 All this stuff.

00:14:33.000 And people say, oh, well, the Hebrews had temples and then the pagans had temples.

00:14:37.000 So everybody had temples.

00:14:39.000 Well, there's a big difference.

00:14:40.000 Inside the temples of the Hebrews, there were no statues because God himself was thought to be there.

00:14:49.000 And that impersonal, immaterial, transcendent nature of God coming to be with us is unique.

00:14:57.000 I think if I could only understand one thing, I'd rather have people study that than study Aristotle, as cool as he is.

00:15:06.000 I think that makes sense.

00:15:08.000 And in the ancient world, polytheism was the norm and the Torah, the books of Moses, saying that there is only a oneness of God, there is one God was a transformational idea and was really a minority opinion at the time.

00:15:22.000 And this idea of monotheism and having a singular God was not a well-head belief at all.

00:15:29.000 So we're up against a break here, but the Ts, I do want to get into the nice thing.

00:15:33.000 So I do want to ask you, though, as you talk about truth and having that centered on Jesus, does, should we study the Torah or the books of the Old Testament?

00:15:44.000 Because pastors will email me and or I'll see their sermons like Andy Stanley.

00:15:49.000 He says we should just forget the Old Testament.

00:15:51.000 Really not relevant, not important.

00:15:55.000 Obviously, I think that's nonsensical and silly, but this is important because you do some at ministries and I'm sure you get an objection here or there from somebody who says, yeah, I'm cool with the Jesus thing, but that Leviticus, that's why I'm not a Christian.

00:16:10.000 So should we study, appreciate, understand the totality of the Bible, or should we just truncate it?

00:16:18.000 Say, hey, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we don't need Leviticus or Deuteronomy or numbers.

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00:17:27.000 So, Dr. Jeff Myers, truth changes everything.

00:17:30.000 Should we just kind of do the Andy Stanley thing and just kind of say, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Leviticus, you're a waste of time.

00:17:36.000 To me, that's a grave mistake, Charlie.

00:17:38.000 And I'm not here to pick theological fights, but the truth is all of scripture is inspired by God, the Apostle Paul said, and is profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training in righteousness.

00:17:49.000 He was not at that point, as far as we can tell, talking about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

00:17:55.000 He was talking about the Old Testament.

00:17:57.000 When you look at John, again, we were talking about John.

00:18:00.000 We love the book of John.

00:18:01.000 You read John chapter one.

00:18:02.000 It's so powerful.

00:18:03.000 John chapter one, Andrew goes to his brother Peter and says, we found the Messiah.

00:18:07.000 A little bit later, Philip goes to his buddy Nathaniel and says, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law.

00:18:13.000 And so did the prophets, Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth.

00:18:17.000 And that's that famous passage where Nathaniel says, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

00:18:21.000 Like anybody who's watched the chosen would remember that moment.

00:18:24.000 But in that moment, you realize these disciples believed that Jesus was the one who had been written about in the Torah.

00:18:35.000 And all of these prophecies from all of time, which were known by everyday Jewish people, including fishermen, were coming true. 0.65

00:18:45.000 And they were coming true in this man.

00:18:48.000 You cannot, I believe, understand Jesus unless you understand that he was a Jew and that he studied Torah.

00:18:56.000 How do we know that he studied Torah?

00:18:57.000 Because when he was 12 years of age, just before age 13, which would be the official...

00:19:01.000 In Capernaum or something.

00:19:03.000 He went.

00:19:04.000 His parents actually were in Jerusalem and they left because they thought he was in the crowd and they realized he wasn't there.

00:19:09.000 They just came back.

00:19:10.000 And what was happening?

00:19:11.000 Jesus was sitting with the teachers of the law.

00:19:14.000 The scripture there is so fascinating.

00:19:16.000 It says that they were amazed.

00:19:18.000 He was asking questions and they were amazed at his answers.

00:19:23.000 And everybody knows in education, the height of knowing a subject is if you can ask the right questions about it.

00:19:31.000 Jesus demonstrated a deep knowledge even at age 12 of Torah.

00:19:38.000 But Christians say we don't need the Torah.

00:19:42.000 Jesus liked the Torah, loved it, studied it.

00:19:45.000 Of course.

00:19:46.000 Quoted Deuteronomy more than any other book.

00:19:50.000 I asked this question in the audience.

00:19:51.000 What do the founding fathers and Jesus have in common?

00:19:53.000 They both quoted Deuteronomy more than any other book.

00:19:56.000 Yeah.

00:19:57.000 That's right.

00:19:57.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:19:58.000 Well, the founding fathers believed they were forming, they were looking at what the example was of a Hebrew republic.

00:20:04.000 They weren't just looking for scripture verses.

00:20:04.000 That's right.

00:20:06.000 Hey, this proves our point, you know, and people like the Bible, so let's throw this in here.

00:20:09.000 They were actually looking back and asking, what did when God gave the Hebrews this government, what about it really reflected the human nature of sinfulness, but also the human nature of we're amazing and we are born in the image of God.

00:20:23.000 Yes.

00:20:24.000 You know, how do you put together a government like that?

00:20:26.000 They had a long tradition for doing it.

00:20:28.000 It had been going on for 100 years or so before the founders actually started to get to it.

00:20:32.000 You know, Eric Nelson from Harvard University.

00:20:35.000 I think he did the study, didn't he?

00:20:36.000 He did a study on this and super well-respected historically.

00:20:39.000 I have it right here.

00:20:40.000 It was done like 10 or 15 years ago or something.

00:20:43.000 It's pretty amazing to look at that.

00:20:45.000 So the Torah is really significant.

00:20:45.000 So, yes.

00:20:47.000 If you don't understand the Old Testament, you cannot really understand Jesus.

00:20:51.000 That would have been the perspective of Jesus, of the disciples, and of the apostles.

00:20:55.000 So when somebody says, just set the Old Testament aside, I would say, well, what are your objections?

00:21:00.000 Write them all down.

00:21:02.000 Try to understand their cultural context.

00:21:04.000 It is very different from ours.

00:21:05.000 No question.

00:21:06.000 Try to understand, okay, this miracle.

00:21:10.000 I have a very hard time believing.

00:21:11.000 Just go ahead.

00:21:12.000 Write it down all of those questions and then commit.

00:21:15.000 I'm going to start looking for answers.

00:21:17.000 Instead of just denying them, I don't want to think about this anymore.

00:21:20.000 No, this is an invitation to think more.

00:21:23.000 That's right.

00:21:24.000 And we are living in a golden age in the sense of there has never been more access to robust, clear, and transparent Old Testament commentary in the history of humanity.

00:21:38.000 From Prager to Strong's commentary, there is, I mean, if you have a question about Leviticus or I don't understand why Lot and his daughters and that whole thing, it doesn't make any sense.

00:21:50.000 That can't be the word of God.

00:21:51.000 Well, hold on, like slow down and read what's really being said here in the original biblical Hebrew.

00:21:57.000 Write down the objections and find someone that might know something more than you or at least thought about it more than you, right?

00:22:03.000 I mean.

00:22:04.000 Yeah, you realize your buddy, your college roommate, may not have all the answers.

00:22:10.000 And you think, well, let's surely somebody out there has thought this through.

00:22:14.000 To say, I don't understand it, therefore it's not true, is the height of narcissism.

00:22:21.000 It's the same reason we like, you know, delivery services that bring food to our house.

00:22:26.000 They will bring me only what I want, only at the price that I want to pay, exactly the way I want it, exactly the time that I want it, or I'm going to give them less than a good review.

00:22:36.000 All of these things, it's like a kind of a grubhub narcissism that we have going on, where if it's not served up to me in a way that's obvious, then it doesn't work.

00:22:45.000 At Summit, one of our speakers one time was talking to the students and he looked around.

00:22:48.000 They looked a little baffled.

00:22:50.000 And he said, is this going over your head?

00:22:52.000 And some of them just nodded.

00:22:53.000 He said, then sit up straighter.

00:22:56.000 Whoa.

00:22:57.000 That's what you want.

00:22:59.000 Yes.

00:22:59.000 That's it.

00:22:59.000 For a young person.

00:23:00.000 Say, we don't feel sorry for you.

00:23:03.000 This is an invitation to think and you can do this.

00:23:08.000 Yeah, as it says in Isaiah 1, let us reason together.

00:23:11.000 So in your book, I'm going to let you make the case.

00:23:16.000 You talk about being nice.

00:23:19.000 I'm not a big nice guy.

00:23:22.000 I have a chapter that's titled, kind of tongue in cheek, how to speak the truth and be nice at the same time.

00:23:29.000 And the reason I wrote that chapter title was: we've done a lot of research at Summit.

00:23:34.000 We do a lot of polling.

00:23:35.000 We're not a polling company.

00:23:36.000 We just want to keep our finger on the pulse of what's happening in the country.

00:23:39.000 And we realize the number one reason people don't speak the truth is because they want to be nice.

00:23:45.000 They don't want to offend.

00:23:46.000 So that was a response to a lot of data you were receiving.

00:23:50.000 Right.

00:23:50.000 People don't want to offend.

00:23:52.000 And so I thought, well, you know what? 0.99

00:23:54.000 Let me show you how you can engage without being a jerk. 1.00

00:23:58.000 And you can. 1.00

00:24:00.000 You can do it.

00:24:01.000 Now, you have to ask pointed questions sometimes.

00:24:04.000 It doesn't mean that nobody will ever get mad.

00:24:06.000 It doesn't mean that everybody in your life is going to love everything that you say, but there is a way that you can communicate the truth.

00:24:14.000 If people get offended, here's what to do.

00:24:17.000 If people aren't believing what you're saying, here's how to demonstrate it in a reasonable way.

00:24:22.000 Mainly, Charlie, it revolves around asking questions.

00:24:26.000 So a lot of times people come into a conversation and they think they know more than they do.

00:24:30.000 And so they just blurt things out, like a bumper sticker slogan or whatever.

00:24:35.000 And I'm saying this is.

00:24:36.000 Men can become pregnant. 0.86

00:24:38.000 In Manatee Springs, Colorado, where I live, this is how people communicate their ideas through bumper stickers.

00:24:44.000 That's right.

00:24:45.000 Hyper-aggressive bumper stickers.

00:24:46.000 And they believe if they shout it out, then it's somehow more true because your volume is high.

00:24:52.000 But if you ask questions instead, you know, hey, how did you arrive at that conclusion?

00:24:57.000 What do you mean by that?

00:24:58.000 When you use that term, what is it that you mean?

00:25:01.000 Using questions like that, you can actually form relationships with people.

00:25:06.000 Yes.

00:25:06.000 Now, listen, my town is so far to the left.

00:25:10.000 Somebody said, I bet they all voted for Bernie Sanders.

00:25:12.000 I was like, no, you don't understand.

00:25:13.000 Bernie Sanders is way too conservative for my neighbors.

00:25:18.000 But we get along.

00:25:20.000 Why?

00:25:20.000 Because I can develop this sense of curiosity.

00:25:23.000 Tell me why you say that.

00:25:26.000 How did you arrive at that conclusion?

00:25:27.000 What's your basis for it?

00:25:28.000 You seem to think that it's, even though you say that there's no truth, you seem to think that this is actually true.

00:25:34.000 Help me understand why you say that.

00:25:37.000 And probe.

00:25:38.000 Jesus asked questions.

00:25:40.000 A buddy of mine, we went to breakfast once.

00:25:42.000 He said, Did you know Jesus asked 288 questions in the gospels?

00:25:45.000 And I just looked at him and said, you counted them?

00:25:49.000 Yes, I counted them.

00:25:50.000 288 questions.

00:25:51.000 Think of the questions of Jesus.

00:25:53.000 We always hear sermons about the teachings of Jesus.

00:25:57.000 How many of us have heard a sermon about the questions of Jesus?

00:26:00.000 Who do men say that I am?

00:26:01.000 Right.

00:26:02.000 Yeah.

00:26:03.000 And even completely random questions.

00:26:05.000 He meets a blind guy. 0.57

00:26:08.000 Jesus, heal me.

00:26:09.000 And he just says, What do you want me to do for you?

00:26:11.000 Can you imagine the disciples at that moment?

00:26:13.000 Like, he's blind.

00:26:15.000 Jesus didn't assume that the blind man wanted to see.

00:26:18.000 He asked him, What do you want to be healed from?

00:26:21.000 And there are a lot of people who are sick who don't want to be well.

00:26:23.000 We understand that from a psychological viewpoint.

00:26:26.000 Right.

00:26:27.000 But it took a question to really unearth what needed to happen in that situation.

00:26:31.000 Meet an alcoholic.

00:26:32.000 It explains that pretty well.

00:26:34.000 That doesn't want treatment, obviously, the ones that do.

00:26:36.000 Well, and the family doesn't sometimes want it either, because it changes the person to the point where the whole family dynamic is disrupted.

00:26:43.000 So, yes.

00:26:44.000 So healing has to happen on a number of levels in a very broad context.

00:26:48.000 Well, there's also an even deeper psychological and theological view, which is you have to want to be helped to get help from God.

00:26:59.000 You ever wonder why Jesus said your faith has made you well?

00:27:02.000 Right.

00:27:02.000 Exactly.

00:27:03.000 Like, wait a second, you're the son of God.

00:27:04.000 You're here.

00:27:05.000 You're the one who made me well.

00:27:07.000 There's a reason why God doesn't appear to atheists.

00:27:09.000 I truly believe.

00:27:10.000 They have no desire.

00:27:11.000 Like, I'm not going to.

00:27:13.000 You have totally shunned me out.

00:27:15.000 Okay.

00:27:16.000 So let me ask you about one.

00:27:18.000 What is the consequence when a society, civilization, a people or a generation says, I have my own truth?

00:27:25.000 Well, there are several different directions it can go.

00:27:27.000 One is truth then becomes, people still believe in truth, right?

00:27:31.000 If somebody says there's no such thing as truth, they've just proclaimed a truth.

00:27:34.000 Truth rises in every situation.

00:27:37.000 We all use words as if they're meaningful.

00:27:39.000 Somebody says, well, such and such is unjust.

00:27:41.000 I don't believe in truth.

00:27:41.000 You know, whatever serves me is what's true, but I think that's unjust.

00:27:44.000 Well, what do you mean by justice?

00:27:46.000 We all assume that there are categories of meaning that exist independent of our ability to perceive them.

00:27:52.000 The question is, to what end?

00:27:54.000 You know, the Aristotle we talked about earlier, the talos, what is the end of a human being?

00:28:00.000 What is our purpose?

00:28:01.000 What is the teleological purpose?

00:28:02.000 Why are we here?

00:28:03.000 So you've got to ask that question.

00:28:05.000 Well, it's come down to basically four views.

00:28:08.000 The sophistic view, which is, I'm here to win.

00:28:10.000 That is it.

00:28:11.000 Truth is whatever helps me win.

00:28:13.000 That's the Stanley Fish view.

00:28:15.000 You know, that guy was a professor of First Amendment of all things.

00:28:18.000 And he said, you are entitled to your own facts if you can make them stick.

00:28:23.000 Okay.

00:28:24.000 That's the idea that truth is whatever helps you win.

00:28:26.000 The second one we talked about earlier, pragmatism, which says that the truth is whatever works.

00:28:31.000 Well, the question is, works for whom and in what way.

00:28:35.000 Pluralism says truth is whatever helps us get along.

00:28:39.000 And then the other, the final view is deflationism, which is just kind of a cynicism.

00:28:43.000 That's more of a thing philosophers think.

00:28:45.000 Nobody else thinks about deflationism except philosophers, but basically they say truth is just an addition to the language that's unnecessary.

00:28:52.000 If I say the sun rose and then I say it's true that the sun rose, I'm saying the same thing.

00:28:56.000 Therefore, take out the words truth.

00:28:58.000 They don't really mean anything.

00:29:00.000 So you're ending up in one of those directions if you say there's no truth.

00:29:04.000 And so when the postmodernists will say that you have your own truth, that you get to decide truth, that it is not able to be ascertained objectively outside of your own will, your own experience.

00:29:21.000 They love that word.

00:29:24.000 Postmodernism, I have my own truth.

00:29:26.000 Right.

00:29:27.000 Yeah.

00:29:27.000 Postmodernism is one of the counterfeit worldviews that we face.

00:29:30.000 And it starts off with the idea that, hey, listen, when some people have claimed to know the truth, they hurt people.

00:29:35.000 You know, Adolf Hitler claimed to know the truth. 0.94

00:29:37.000 He killed people.

00:29:38.000 Stalin claimed to know the truth. 0.96

00:29:39.000 He killed people.

00:29:40.000 So the answer postmodernists say is, then we just don't claim to know the truth.

00:29:44.000 But what ends up happening is you claim to know a truth, which is the idea that no one can know the truth.

00:29:50.000 Of course, we all know that.

00:29:51.000 That is a truth claim.

00:29:52.000 Right.

00:29:52.000 It's a truth claim.

00:29:53.000 But then postmodernism says the words we use construct our truth.

00:29:58.000 That's the truth.

00:29:59.000 We don't really access a truth that is out there independent of us.

00:30:02.000 Now, of course, there's nothing about this conversation that makes any sense if its underlying premises are actually followed or actually true.

00:30:10.000 If words mean only what I want them to mean, then we can't have this conversation with one another.

00:30:16.000 I can't even have that internal conversation with myself.

00:30:18.000 M. Scott Peck in the 1970s was a psychiatrist.

00:30:21.000 And he said, if you're dealing with a mental health issue, the very first thing you have to do is grapple with reality as it actually is.

00:30:28.000 Exactly right.

00:30:29.000 You can't just say, well, you have your truth.

00:30:31.000 I have my truth.

00:30:32.000 You have your reality.

00:30:32.000 I have my reality.

00:30:34.000 The biblical perspective, John 8, 32, Jesus said, if you follow my teachings, you'll know the truth.

00:30:39.000 The truth will set you free.

00:30:40.000 That word for truth is aletheia in Greek.

00:30:42.000 Talked earlier about knowing the Greek words.

00:30:44.000 That's a really important one because it means reality.

00:30:46.000 Jesus wasn't saying, if you follow my teachings, you'll like yourself better.

00:30:50.000 He wasn't saying, if you follow my teachings, you'll know your truth.

00:30:53.000 He's saying, no, if you follow my teachings, reality itself will open up to you.

00:30:58.000 You might not like some parts of it, but you need to grapple with it.

00:31:01.000 That's where the good life is.

00:31:02.000 He who argues with reality lives in hell, as St. Augustine would say.

00:31:06.000 So how do you respond then to a college kid that says, I have my truth?

00:31:09.000 I mean, I hear it all the time.

00:31:10.000 I'm sure parents hear it.

00:31:11.000 I'm sure they say, I have my truth.

00:31:13.000 It's not your truth.

00:31:15.000 How do you respond to that?

00:31:16.000 First thing you have to do is ask what they mean by using the word truth.

00:31:20.000 If they mean your perspective or your opinion, like somebody in my town might say, speak your truth, man.

00:31:24.000 You know, what they mean is give your opinion, be bold, you know, assert yourself a little bit.

00:31:30.000 But if you're using the word truth in that situation, you're misusing the word.

00:31:36.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:31:37.000 So then I start from there and ask, okay, where are the points of agreement?

00:31:41.000 Science.

00:31:41.000 Does water boil at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at sea level or not?

00:31:46.000 Nobody's ever said to me, well, it's your opinion, you know.

00:31:50.000 No, they recognize that is correct.

00:31:52.000 Can the atmospheric conditions change it slightly?

00:31:54.000 Sure, but we established a scientific fact, okay, historical fact.

00:31:58.000 Martin Luther King was shot April 4th, 1968.

00:32:02.000 Nobody ever says, well, in your culture, maybe, you know, no, just, no, that's the, it is.

00:32:08.000 That's when it is.

00:32:08.000 We agreed on the calendar.

00:32:10.000 That's when it happened.

00:32:11.000 Then I ask, are there moral truths?

00:32:14.000 And this is where people start to go, nah, not really.

00:32:17.000 Moral truths are all opinions.

00:32:19.000 And so I'll ask him, okay, can you tell a difference between these two statements?

00:32:22.000 Statement A, it is good to care for abandoned puppies.

00:32:25.000 Statement B, it is good to torture abandoned puppies.

00:32:29.000 Can you tell a difference between those two statements?

00:32:32.000 And if they say yes, it's because they know that words actually have meaning, which refutes the entire point of postmodernism, which is that words don't bear any necessary relationship to the things to which they refer.

00:32:44.000 That's exactly right.

00:32:45.000 Do you find that line of questioning persuasive?

00:32:48.000 I find that a lot of people will say, hmm, I haven't really thought about that before.

00:32:54.000 But they'll talk about justice.

00:32:56.000 Is justice a real thing?

00:32:57.000 Is justice a category of meaning that really exists?

00:33:00.000 Because if it's not, then why are we talking about it?

00:33:03.000 If I feel, but nobody ever says, well, that's my justice, you know, or that's my murder.

00:33:08.000 You know, murdering that, killing that person is not murder.

00:33:10.000 Killing that person.

00:33:11.000 You know, we don't say that. 0.96

00:33:12.000 We just use the word truth in that way because it seems like it's more of a pluralistic, you know, nice thing to say.

00:33:19.000 And it's inherently totalitarian at its root.

00:33:24.000 And that's a great segue to what we're going to talk about tonight.

00:33:26.000 I do want to talk about that.

00:33:28.000 And we didn't even touch on this, but when you do not have a society, civilization, generation, or people that can say there is truth, you will get a despot, a dictator, a Caesar, a tyrant, or a czar.

00:33:38.000 It will happen.

00:33:39.000 Peter M. Sorokin, the Harvard sociologist who formed the sociology department there at Harvard, wrote a book of the sociology of all civilizations.

00:33:47.000 And he said, in the absence of a moral absolute, in the absence of existence of God, physical force is the only thing that remains.

00:33:56.000 And that in some ways, that's the postmodernist pitch, which is just we're just going to go back to tribes.

00:34:03.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:04.000 Email me your thoughts as always.

00:34:05.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

00:34:08.000 Thank you so much for listening and God bless.

00:34:12.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 02, 2023

How the Truth Changes Everything with Dr. Jeff Myers

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