The Charlie Kirk Show - Live on Stage at the Pastor's Summit with Michael Knowles

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 Happy Sunday.

00:00:01.000 Advertiser-free conversation brought to you by TPUSA Faith, where we just had 1,100 pastors in Nashville, Tennessee, largest gathering of its kind, with Michael Knowles.

00:00:15.000 Michael Knowles and I talk about Dante.

00:00:17.000 We talk about hell.

00:00:18.000 We talk about the trans movement.

00:00:21.000 And if you want to support our program directly, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:25.000 Again, no advertisers in this episode.

00:00:27.000 Thank you, Steve from Tennessee.

00:00:29.000 Thank you, Carol from Minnesota.

00:00:30.000 Thank you, Lynette from Texas.

00:00:32.000 Thank you, Elaine from Nebraska.

00:00:34.000 Sherry from Virginia.

00:00:35.000 Robert from California.

00:00:37.000 Kate from Pennsylvania.

00:00:39.000 Rebecca from Georgia.

00:00:40.000 Pollyanna from California.

00:00:42.000 And Lisa from North Carolina.

00:00:44.000 CharlieKirk.com/slash support.

00:00:47.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:48.000 Here we go.

00:00:49.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:51.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:53.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:56.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:00.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:01.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:02.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:10.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:19.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:22.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.

00:01:32.000 Now, I have to warn all of you, I'm only going to mention this once, okay?

00:01:36.000 Michael's a Roman Catholic, so don't run out of the room.

00:01:39.000 I'm waiting for a reenactment of the defenestration of Prague. 0.52

00:01:43.000 Charlie's going to throw me out the window, launch the 30 Years' War.

00:01:47.000 But before then, I don't know, we can talk about something else.

00:01:49.000 However, I will say this, and I've said it publicly before: evangelicals, those of us that are not Catholics, we can learn a lot from the Catholics on how they've built schools for multiple generations to influence culture.

00:02:00.000 There is a lot that we can learn.

00:02:03.000 How many Protestant, Bible-believing Christians are there on the Supreme Court?

00:02:07.000 Not even close to as many Catholics as there are because they invest in education way better than Protestants do. 1.00

00:02:14.000 It's the truth.

00:02:15.000 On that uplifting note, Michael, I'm going to turn.

00:02:18.000 I want to turn my chair.

00:02:19.000 I feel like I'm facing away from you.

00:02:20.000 Yes.

00:02:22.000 So Michael is a podcaster, and Daily Wire, which many of you know, is headquartered here in Nashville.

00:02:27.000 And I actually was texting Michael this morning and I said, hey, Michael, you got to come to this event.

00:02:31.000 And Michael made headlines a couple months ago because Michael gave a speech where he said, we must, I don't want to misquote you, but eradicate transgenderism from the public conversation. 0.51

00:02:43.000 Is that correct?

00:02:44.000 Now, it got misquoted as transgenders.

00:02:47.000 It's transgenderism.

00:02:48.000 Michael, what did you mean by that?

00:02:49.000 And floor is yours.

00:02:51.000 I chose my words very carefully because I knew that the libs were going to run with it.

00:02:56.000 But I wanted to make the point as clearly as I possibly could.

00:03:00.000 I said, and I've now memorized this line because it was misquoted by the media, including by the White House, by Corinne Jampier.

00:03:07.000 I said, for the good of society and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely. 1.00

00:03:19.000 The whole preposterous ideology at every level.

00:03:24.000 Pretty clear.

00:03:25.000 I felt pretty clear.

00:03:26.000 Thank you.

00:03:28.000 Now, the way that you know that this line really, really worried the liberals is that they had to lie about what I said.

00:03:37.000 And first it was the Daily Beast, then it was the Huffington Post, then it was the White House, then it was the president's spokesman.

00:03:43.000 And the news outlets changed their headlines when I pointed out that they had committed criminal libel.

00:03:50.000 And a number of politicians pointed this out too.

00:03:53.000 So I think they got a call from their legal departments.

00:03:56.000 The editorial departments changed it.

00:03:58.000 But you know exactly what happens.

00:04:00.000 These liberal media will run the lie on page one, and then they'll maybe issue the correction on page 2,000 three weeks later, and nobody sees it.

00:04:10.000 And so that's what happened here.

00:04:12.000 But the reason that I gave my speech, the reason that it resonated in the room, and the reason the liberals lied about it, was because what I endeavored to do was take back ground that the liberals thought they conquered.

00:04:26.000 The liberals thought that they had already won on the issue of transgenderism, and so they thought the debate at this point was between do we trans the kids at age eight or do we wait until they turn nine?

00:04:37.000 Do we do it?

00:04:38.000 Is it third grade or do we wait until fourth grade?

00:04:40.000 And I said, no, either transgenderism is true or it's false. 1.00

00:04:46.000 Either a man can be a woman or a man cannot be a woman. 0.96

00:04:49.000 If it is true, if a man really can become a woman, not only should we tolerate this for 25-year-olds, we probably should trans the kids, right? 0.99

00:04:57.000 I mean, if they really can be born in the wrong body, then it would seem cruel to force them to go through the wrong puberty or all of the jargon that they talk about.

00:05:08.000 But we know it isn't true.

00:05:09.000 We know that a man is a man.

00:05:11.000 We know a woman is a woman.

00:05:13.000 And so if it isn't true, then it isn't true for anybody else either.

00:05:17.000 And so, you know, Charlie, I mean, you are so good at this.

00:05:20.000 You are so good at just bringing the fight to the liberals, especially on cultural issues where the liberals think they've already won.

00:05:30.000 Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

00:05:33.000 And I think we need to start retaking some ground on this issue.

00:05:38.000 And by the way, if men and women really are different and if men can't become women and vice versa, well, then we need to stand up for eternal truths about the relationship between men and women, of what marriage really means, of what the fundamental political institution is.

00:05:54.000 There is no reason to give that up.

00:05:57.000 We are Christian.

00:05:58.000 Either our faith is true or it's not true.

00:06:02.000 And if it's not true, then as St. Paul tells us, we are most to be pitied.

00:06:06.000 But it is true, okay?

00:06:08.000 And we can know these things revealed by our Lord, and we can know these things from the natural law.

00:06:14.000 And we can know these things using our reason and our moral conscience from the created world.

00:06:18.000 And if we don't have the courage to stand up for the basic nature of our humanity and for the basic political unit, then we're not going to stand up for anything.

00:06:29.000 We might as well close up the churches.

00:06:30.000 We might as well throw it all in and let the liberals run the country.

00:06:34.000 So, Michael, let's get down to the root of it.

00:06:38.000 The trans agenda, the ideology that transgenderism presents itself, is an affront on objective truth, on the logos, on the harmony of existence. 1.00

00:06:52.000 Why does that matter for pastors?

00:06:54.000 Why does that matter for the church?

00:06:56.000 Because I'll be very honest, the church is not the one leading on this cultural conversation.

00:07:02.000 Some of the people that are the loudest on this are people that are kind of indifferent religiously, some of the most eloquent speakers.

00:07:08.000 The church is actually afraid, in my opinion, to contest on this issue.

00:07:14.000 And not all everybody here, there's so many people that are speaking out, but it shouldn't even be a question.

00:07:20.000 And so, what is the agenda?

00:07:21.000 What is the goal of the trans movement, and how is that at odds with Christianity?

00:07:28.000 Obviously, to some degree, we are preaching to the choir here, because if you're in this room, you probably are quite animated by the truth and inspired and have the courage to stand up about it.

00:07:40.000 But we really have to articulate these basic truths.

00:07:43.000 Sometimes the liberals will say, oh, who cares?

00:07:47.000 Who cares if a man wants to put on high heels and call himself Sally? 0.95

00:07:51.000 What's the big deal?

00:07:53.000 And my answer to that is always, You seem to care.

00:07:58.000 You people who are forcing this into our bathrooms and on our sports teams and into our schools, you seem to care a lot.

00:08:04.000 You're devoting a lot of time and energy and resources to getting us to use the wrong pronouns to refer to any of these people.

00:08:11.000 And so you have to ask yourselves why.

00:08:14.000 And especially from your position as pastors, it cuts right to the heart of what you are preaching and what you're talking about.

00:08:23.000 Because our faith is an incarnational faith.

00:08:27.000 The incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ is the pivot of history.

00:08:32.000 Our Lord, the second person of the Trinity, takes on flesh on humanity and dwells among us in a real time and place with a real knee and with hands and with skin and with bones and with flesh.

00:08:46.000 And so the question of transgenderism is, does our identity have anything at all to do with our bodies?

00:08:54.000 Transgenderism says no. 0.80

00:08:56.000 You, Charlie, you're a pretty tall guy, broad-shouldered.

00:08:59.000 You look, you got a nice Adam's apple there.

00:09:00.000 It looks like you're a guy.

00:09:02.000 But according to transgenderism, you might really truly, at some deeper level, be a girl.

00:09:07.000 Well, how is that the case?

00:09:09.000 Because if they were willing to use the language of traditional religion and philosophy, they would say, well, you've got the soul of a woman, even though you've got the body of a man.

00:09:20.000 But then this raises a question that philosophers and theologians have debated for many years, which is, can your soul be a different sex from your body?

00:09:30.000 Does the soul have a sex at all?

00:09:33.000 What is the relationship between the soul and the body?

00:09:35.000 And luckily, we don't need to have some eccentric from the New York Times answer this question for us.

00:09:41.000 We've got good old Uncle Aristotle.

00:09:43.000 We've got Thomas Aquinas.

00:09:44.000 We've got a lot of other smart guys in the meantime.

00:09:47.000 And we know that the soul is the substantial form of the body.

00:09:52.000 That our body is in a way a symbol of our soul.

00:09:55.000 And we're both of these things.

00:09:57.000 And our soul and our body are inextricable while we're here on earth.

00:10:02.000 It doesn't make any sense to say that your soul and your body are sexually in opposition.

00:10:07.000 And your will is completely irrelevant against God's design that he gave you, right?

00:10:13.000 You are declaring war on nature.

00:10:15.000 And with that, you are trying to say that my will is over the design, right?

00:10:21.000 And this is also why the trans movement is so pernicious. 1.00

00:10:24.000 Is that Genesis 1 through 11, which I think most pastors need to talk more about Genesis 1 through 11, which the entire word of God really is based, it is the fulcrum point, right?

00:10:35.000 It is the foundation.

00:10:36.000 Because Genesis 1-1 sets up the whole ballgame.

00:10:39.000 Why are we here?

00:10:40.000 Is our existence an accident or is it purposeful, right?

00:10:43.000 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

00:10:45.000 Genesis 1.26, 1.27.

00:10:47.000 What is a human being?

00:10:48.000 Is a human being an accident of Darwinian evolution?

00:10:50.000 Or is it designed in the image of the divine and the creator?

00:10:53.000 These are the most important questions that we can ask in a culture.

00:10:57.000 The distinctions, Michael, between God and man, man and nature, male and female, between the profane and the holy, good and evil.

00:11:06.000 The distinctions is what the trans movement seeks to destroy. 1.00

00:11:10.000 Because when you do not have distinctions, you have moral and absolute societal chaos.

00:11:15.000 I'm so glad you mentioned the will.

00:11:17.000 That was such a great point.

00:11:19.000 Because the traditional understanding of our human nature, what makes us human, is that we have will and intellect.

00:11:26.000 We have a rational soul.

00:11:28.000 We all have a lower appetite, which is, you know, you want to eat the fifth cookie even though you probably should cut it off because your pants are tight.

00:11:35.000 But you also don't want to eat that fifth cookie because you want to look good and you want to be healthy.

00:11:40.000 Well, what does that mean?

00:11:42.000 It means we have an appetite, a lower will, and we have a rational will.

00:11:46.000 And the rational will is supposed to mediate between the appetite and the divine will.

00:11:50.000 That's how we understand it.

00:11:52.000 For the pro-trans movement, all that intellect stuff, that's out. 1.00

00:11:57.000 All that matters is will.

00:11:59.000 You see this in the satanic musings of Aleister Crowley, the first commandment of Satanism.

00:12:04.000 The only commandment is, do as thou wilt.

00:12:07.000 You see this in the Garden of Eden.

00:12:08.000 What does the serpent say to Eve?

00:12:10.000 He says that ye shall be as gods.

00:12:13.000 Oh, surely you won't die.

00:12:15.000 Ye shall be as gods.

00:12:16.000 George Bernard Shaw, who's a socialist playwright, wrote a line that has been quoted by John F. Kennedy, by his brother Robert Kennedy, and by Democrat politicians ever since.

00:12:25.000 And the line is, some people see things that are, I'll do it in a Kennedy voice.

00:12:30.000 Some people see things that are and say, why?

00:12:33.000 I dream things that never were and say, why not?

00:12:36.000 And this has been quoted by countless liberals ever since.

00:12:40.000 And what they never tell you, that's the only time a Kennedy, it's the only time a Kennedy is going to get applause at a TPUSA conference.

00:12:50.000 But that's the line that they all quote.

00:12:52.000 And what they don't tell you is that that line comes from a play cycle called Back to Methuselah, a modern pentateuch.

00:13:00.000 This was a rewriting of the Bible by Bernard Shaw.

00:13:04.000 And it's actually a line from the serpent in the Garden of Eden tempting Eve.

00:13:08.000 Those are the words of the devil.

00:13:09.000 And so for the liberals, what they insist upon is their will.

00:13:13.000 You see this in Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Wonderland.

00:13:16.000 Humpty Dumpty says that words mean whatever I want them to mean.

00:13:20.000 And Alice says, can words really mean so many different things?

00:13:24.000 And Humpty Dumpty says, the question is, which is to be master?

00:13:29.000 That is all.

00:13:30.000 Does intellect matter?

00:13:32.000 Does truth matter?

00:13:32.000 No.

00:13:33.000 Only the will matters.

00:13:34.000 And so this brings us to a point that I think is really important for pastors to understand, which is you are courageous people.

00:13:43.000 Your presence in this room tells me, you get it.

00:13:45.000 I'm looking at my friend Rob McCoy out there.

00:13:47.000 I know these are people who understand the place we are in the culture and in politics and recognize we need to stand up against the lies and the deceit.

00:13:55.000 So that's wonderful, and you have to keep doing that.

00:13:58.000 But Christians are not called only to act.

00:14:02.000 In fact, we're not called even primarily to act.

00:14:05.000 We are called primarily to interpret.

00:14:08.000 You see this in Luke chapter 10 when our Lord is in the home of Martha and Mary.

00:14:13.000 Martha's going about serving.

00:14:15.000 It's Martha's home. 0.99

00:14:16.000 Martha's gotten the money to keep the roof over everybody's head.

00:14:19.000 She's serving lunch.

00:14:21.000 And Mary is sitting at the feet of our Lord, anointing with oil, listening to the words of our Lord.

00:14:27.000 And Martha complains about this.

00:14:28.000 And Martha says, Hey, Jesus, aren't you going to say something? 1.00

00:14:32.000 There's my sister just sitting there.

00:14:34.000 Meanwhile, I'm putting on this whole party.

00:14:36.000 And our Lord says, your sister has the better part.

00:14:41.000 Your sister Mary has the best part because she is listening to the words of her Lord.

00:14:48.000 And you, Martha, are engaged in the act of life.

00:14:52.000 There's a role for the act of life, but what we're called to is the contemplative life, too, the interpretive life.

00:14:57.000 We're called to see signs.

00:14:59.000 You know, our Lord mocks the Pharisees.

00:15:03.000 He says, you know the signs of the weather, but you don't see the signs of the times.

00:15:07.000 And so to this wicked generation that seeks after these signs and wonders that they don't understand, no sign shall be given except for the sign of Jonah, which I always love.

00:15:16.000 It's like saying, you won't get any prize today except a Ferrari.

00:15:22.000 You won't get any sign except for the sign of the resurrection, the sign of salvation.

00:15:27.000 And that sign is what we have to point toward.

00:15:29.000 You know, we Christians understand that history has happened.

00:15:32.000 It has a meaning.

00:15:32.000 There is truth.

00:15:33.000 We can discern that truth using our reason, using our moral conscience.

00:15:37.000 And then we need to proclaim that truth.

00:15:39.000 And it doesn't matter how many people want to pretend that they're the wrong sex or 57 other different sexes or genders.

00:15:45.000 Your willfulness does not make it so.

00:15:48.000 We will proclaim the truth or we will not proclaim anything at all.

00:15:55.000 And remember, Jesus did not go to the cross willingly.

00:15:59.000 He went obediently.

00:16:00.000 Thy will be done.

00:16:01.000 And by the way, Michael, I want to compliment you.

00:16:03.000 You know the Bible as a Catholic better than almost any Catholic I've come across.

00:16:07.000 Maybe it's because I'm friends with so many Protestants.

00:16:09.000 Yeah, it's because you're hanging around us.

00:16:16.000 So, Michael, I want to emphasize the tyrannical nature in the LGBT because I think it really stands for tyranny. 1.00

00:16:23.000 This is not about live and let live, which temperamentally I think most of us in this room and in the country have a live and let live attitude where we don't want to over-police people's imaginations or delusions.

00:16:33.000 I think it's now triggered a lot of our response because they're in public life.

00:16:38.000 They're taking over corporations.

00:16:40.000 But it's never just about somebody in their own living room thinking they are something they are not.

00:16:45.000 No, no, it's much more than this.

00:16:47.000 It is about, as the great Matt Walsh would go through the four sequent steps, right?

00:16:51.000 First, you must tolerate it, right?

00:16:55.000 I think at first it goes tolerate, then no, tolerate, accept, celebrate, participate, right?

00:17:02.000 Tolerate, accept, celebrate, participate.

00:17:04.000 I always have to relearn it going into June because it just remanifests itself as we go into June, our wonderful Pride Month, everybody, right?

00:17:11.000 What a nationwide disgrace June has become, by the way.

00:17:14.000 I think manifesting is the operative word. 0.52

00:17:16.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:17:17.000 Manifest.

00:17:18.000 But Michael, you and I both, this is, by the way, what we're about to articulate here, this is not a sob story.

00:17:24.000 We're not doing a victimhood thing.

00:17:25.000 I just want to make sure you know honestly what you deal with if you stand for truth.

00:17:29.000 We both get death threats all the time.

00:17:31.000 We cannot show up to college campuses and speak about these issues, violent interruptions, all that stuff.

00:17:37.000 This is not a peaceful movement.

00:17:38.000 This is not a live and let live.

00:17:39.000 This is not about dialogue or middle ground.

00:17:41.000 This is tyrannical.

00:17:42.000 It's totalitarian.

00:17:43.000 It's Bolshevik at its nature.

00:17:45.000 Michael, can you just add something to this?

00:17:47.000 I think it's important for pastors and people that lead churches to know that this is different than most of the other kind of culture war debates that are happening in the country.

00:17:57.000 It is different.

00:17:57.000 And it's different in that we've talked about all sorts of different issues.

00:18:03.000 I'm sure you've all talked about all sorts of different issues.

00:18:05.000 And you can be criticized.

00:18:06.000 But people tend to behave at least somewhat rationally in their criticism.

00:18:11.000 On this issue, they do not.

00:18:13.000 And that's because this issue is premised on irrationality.

00:18:17.000 This issue is premised on the idea that you can never know anything about reality beyond what a delusional person will tell you subjectively.

00:18:26.000 So that's why the behavior becomes increasingly irrational.

00:18:31.000 And it is very dangerous.

00:18:32.000 And do you know, I was burned in effigy a few weeks ago.

00:18:36.000 That was a funnier version of this.

00:18:38.000 You know, some of them are scarier.

00:18:40.000 That one I got a kick out of.

00:18:42.000 Because it actually gets to an important truth about the transgender movement, which is it's about symbols. 0.96

00:18:49.000 It's about the symbols that we use.

00:18:50.000 We're heading into Pride Month.

00:18:51.000 It's the new liberal liturgical calendar that gives a quarter of the year, basically, to strange.

00:18:58.000 It's kind of like a lead-up.

00:18:59.000 I noticed this, Michael.

00:19:00.000 We have like pre-Pride Month, and then we have Pre-Trans Pride Month.

00:19:03.000 It's like Pride Quarter at this point.

00:19:06.000 It is.

00:19:06.000 No joke.

00:19:07.000 June is the Pride Month.

00:19:09.000 October is LGBT History Month.

00:19:12.000 We're in May.

00:19:13.000 Somehow there are rainbows everywhere already.

00:19:14.000 So it goes on and on and on.

00:19:17.000 It's literally more, I mean this non-sarcastically, more lead-up, more pageantry, and more media support than the Christmas season now has in America.

00:19:26.000 That's not an exaggeration.

00:19:27.000 There's no avoiding it because we live in time and space.

00:19:32.000 We live in a society.

00:19:33.000 No man is an island entire of himself.

00:19:35.000 And so we have to agree on certain things.

00:19:39.000 You know, this is why, on certain issues, you can have a conciliatory middle ground.

00:19:44.000 I want low taxes. 1.00

00:19:45.000 The libs want high taxes.

00:19:47.000 Okay, I'll agree to some middle ground of taxes.

00:19:50.000 I want significantly less migration into the country. 0.98

00:19:53.000 The Libs want open borders entirely.

00:19:56.000 Okay, we can agree on some number in the middle, maybe. 1.00

00:19:59.000 Either women have their own bathrooms or they don't. 1.00

00:20:04.000 There's no the minute that one guy says he has the right to go into a woman's bathroom, women just don't have bathrooms anymore. 1.00

00:20:14.000 Women will either have their own sports teams or they won't. 1.00

00:20:17.000 The state necessarily will say something about that. 1.00

00:20:20.000 The culture necessarily will say something about that.

00:20:23.000 Pastors necessarily will say something about that.

00:20:27.000 So we just have to pick a side.

00:20:30.000 If you are lukewarm, you will be spit out.

00:20:34.000 It's inevitable.

00:20:36.000 I mean, it's promised to us.

00:20:39.000 I'm reminded of Dante.

00:20:41.000 I love Dante.

00:20:42.000 Perhaps because I'm Italian.

00:20:44.000 I really love Dante in the Divine Comedy.

00:20:47.000 And in the earliest stages of hell, there are the non-committal people, the lukewarm people.

00:20:54.000 They are people who are so disgusting by their surrender of their reason, by their surrender of their will and their courage, that heaven won't have them, and hell won't have them either.

00:21:06.000 They've been spit out by everybody. 0.99

00:21:08.000 They're not even good enough for hell.

00:21:10.000 And so on these issues that are so fundamental, who are we?

00:21:14.000 What is a man?

00:21:15.000 What is a woman?

00:21:17.000 If we cannot take a stand and enshrine that stand in law, enforce that stand through our civil society, and yes, impose reality on people, then we simply cannot have a society at all. 0.62

00:21:33.000 Revelation 20, the cowards will be the first one judged.

00:21:36.000 I remember that. 0.84

00:21:37.000 And there's a lot of them, unfortunately, out there.

00:21:40.000 And speaking of Dante, this is an interesting wrinkle, though, because I feel as if we're being sold out because the seventh circle of hell, occupied by Cassius, Brutus, and Judas, the trihead of deceit, according to Dante, he believed that the worst thing you could do is to betray.

00:21:59.000 And specifically betray your benefactors in that lowest part.

00:22:03.000 What are we to make of our elites that make a deal with the trans lobby? 0.58

00:22:08.000 As Dante would say, they get to the lowest level of hell.

00:22:11.000 It's happening more and more.

00:22:14.000 Yeah, there are all sorts of political figures who are not merely in the lowest circles of hell, but they're all throughout hell.

00:22:24.000 Some make it to heaven too, so it's not without hope for those of us in public life.

00:22:28.000 But there are a lot of politicians in hell, and there are a lot of prelates and clergy and the popes, the popes in hell that Dante puts.

00:22:36.000 I'm sure the popes didn't like it very much when he wrote about it, but he didn't care.

00:22:40.000 And part of this you see actually explained in Paradise when Dante is speaking to his one illustrious ancestor, a guy named Cacciuida.

00:22:50.000 And Cachaguida goes on and gives Dante political advice.

00:22:53.000 And he says, Dante, you're a partisan.

00:22:57.000 And partisanship is not going to help Dante.

00:22:59.000 He's going to end up being exiled from Florence.

00:23:02.000 But he says, ultimately, you have to be a party of yourself.

00:23:06.000 Un partito di sesteso.

00:23:09.000 You have to be a party of yourself because you're going to stand there before that judgment seat.

00:23:16.000 I mean, and that's going to be on you.

00:23:17.000 And so we come together, we work in coalitions.

00:23:21.000 I loved when you said, folks, we've got to put some minor theological quibbling aside for a second, or we're all going to be quibbling from the gulag.

00:23:28.000 And so we have to work together.

00:23:31.000 We have to cooperate.

00:23:31.000 We have to recognize we're in society and make some priorities here.

00:23:35.000 Ultimately, though, we are going to be before that judgment seat.

00:23:39.000 And there are going to be people who call Lord Lord, and our Lord will say, I did not know you.

00:23:44.000 And so You have to be very careful, and you have to be very courageous, and you have to be very clear about what you think.

00:23:55.000 You know, Christianity is the only political revolution that has ever really mattered. 0.94

00:24:01.000 When our Lord is crucified and is resurrected, that is the final political revolution, because it deprives the tyrants of the one tool they had, which is the subject's fear of death.

00:24:14.000 We don't fear death anymore, okay?

00:24:16.000 They can our political leaders, they might be able to make us scream, but they can't make us lie.

00:24:24.000 Only we can consent to telling a lie.

00:24:26.000 And we shouldn't do it because the consequences of lying, the consequences of saying no to our Lord, to saying no to truth himself, are going to be a hell of a lot greater than the consequences of saying no to some woke apparatchik.

00:24:45.000 So, Michael, let's get down to some action steps, okay?

00:24:49.000 What would success look like?

00:24:52.000 I could comment for a little bit on here.

00:24:56.000 It's Pride Month.

00:24:57.000 How should a pastor talk about it, right?

00:24:59.000 First of all, I hope everyone here does talk about it.

00:25:02.000 It would be my encouragement to you that you give a sermon or a series of sermons talking about how we're basically under imperialistic colonization occupation.

00:25:11.000 I mean, you cannot walk into a major corporation or go to a major social media feed for an entire month without seeing a rainbow, which, by the way, is supposed to be a symbol from the Bible that has been co-opted by, let's just say, a not very good movement.

00:25:27.000 We need to reclaim the rainbow, by the way.

00:25:29.000 It needs to be reclaimed.

00:25:31.000 This is supposed to be a covenant against ultimate destruction, not whatever this is.

00:25:39.000 And think about what the rainbow symbolizes is not merely weird sex stuff, as a lot of us tend to think it is.

00:25:46.000 It symbolizes pride.

00:25:48.000 It symbolizes literally that, yes, not only a sin, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins, what St. Thomas Aquinas called the queen of all vice, which my friend Andrew Clavin points out has now become the vice of all queens, which I think is very, very funny.

00:26:02.000 But it's everywhere, and it's pride.

00:26:04.000 It's the biggest one of all.

00:26:06.000 And so, you know, actually, to Drew's point, to that line, I think this is a really important tactic that pastors can use.

00:26:13.000 I'm not a huge fan of yucking it up from the pulpit.

00:26:16.000 I think we're talking about serious matters.

00:26:18.000 Anything over seven minutes, Michael gets really nervous.

00:26:22.000 That's too long of a homily.

00:26:23.000 Keep it going.

00:26:24.000 You know, I always answer with the homilies.

00:26:28.000 The length really depends on who's giving it, you know, and what they're saying.

00:26:32.000 But I don't think you need to make jokes and yuck it up up there.

00:26:35.000 However, you can have some levity.

00:26:38.000 You can be a little winsome in this.

00:26:40.000 You know, I think what the liberals are betting on is that when we talk about pride, we make it very super serious.

00:26:49.000 These people who think that they're the opposite sex, we need to just be as somber as we possibly can.

00:26:56.000 Or on the other side, they'll expect us to be extraordinarily fire and brimstone, yelling and screaming our heads off.

00:27:02.000 We don't have to do that.

00:27:04.000 We can point out, we don't have to be either of those things.

00:27:07.000 We can point out that if not for all of the suffering that comes as a consequence of sin, sin is absurd.

00:27:16.000 Sin is kind of funny.

00:27:17.000 The idea that a man thinks he's a woman is a funny thing, okay? 1.00

00:27:20.000 And it's very silly. 0.67

00:27:22.000 The idea that men and women are going to engage in all sorts of deviant and bizarre and eccentric sexual sorts of practices. 0.95

00:27:30.000 I think of the Biden administration guy who was stealing women's suitcases and dressing up in leather dog outfits.

00:27:37.000 And obviously, he's committing crimes.

00:27:38.000 He's making people suffer.

00:27:40.000 But it's also in charge of our nuclear arsenal.

00:27:42.000 Yeah, right, right.

00:27:43.000 True.

00:27:44.000 It's somewhat of a high-stakes job.

00:27:46.000 Having your finger near any nuclear material is not great, but it's very funny.

00:27:51.000 And so you can point out, you can say, guys, this is aberrant stuff.

00:27:54.000 One of my favorite phrases, it's sort of an old-timey phrase, but whenever I talk about these issues, I say, you know, so-and-so, he's a little bit light in the loafers.

00:28:03.000 Okay, it's not, you don't need to be totally condemnatory.

00:28:07.000 You don't need to, you say, look, this is a little bit off, okay?

00:28:10.000 If you think you're a man, you think you're a woman.

00:28:12.000 It's a little bit off.

00:28:13.000 We've got to straighten that stuff out.

00:28:14.000 But it's okay.

00:28:15.000 We've got an answer for you.

00:28:16.000 And it's a message of love, and it's a message of truth, and it's a message of beauty.

00:28:20.000 And I promise you, whatever bizarre delusion you've got, where you think you're the 57th gender, you think that will give you a euphoria. 0.93

00:28:28.000 I mean, people will report, actually, that if they go through the transition, it gives them a brief feeling of euphoria and almost kind of an ecstasy.

00:28:36.000 Yes.

00:28:36.000 But that goes away.

00:28:38.000 And so we have data on this.

00:28:40.000 I think social science is pretty much all bunk, but I'm happy to quote it when it serves my argument.

00:28:44.000 And in this case, it does.

00:28:46.000 And in this case, we know from the largest data set on the transgender transition, we know that it does not improve mental health outcomes, anxiety, suicide, depression.

00:28:56.000 In fact, in one case, in the case of anxiety, it would appear to make the condition worse.

00:29:01.000 We know that it's spreading tremendously.

00:29:03.000 We know that the rates of regret, again, according to the largest data set we have on that now, are not 1 or 2%.

00:29:08.000 It's upwards of 30%.

00:29:10.000 We know that this is harming younger and younger children.

00:29:13.000 If you pursue this, you might feel a brief ecstasy or you might not, but you are very likely going to put yourself into a position of a lot of anxiety and sadness and depression.

00:29:24.000 It reminds me of a line from C.S. Lewis.

00:29:26.000 It's a line I come back to a lot.

00:29:28.000 And it's a line I think you can really preach on this issue.

00:29:31.000 If you look for truth, you might find comfort in the end.

00:29:35.000 But if you look for comfort, you will find neither truth nor comfort.

00:29:38.000 Only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

00:29:44.000 Seek the truth above all things.

00:29:45.000 A happy consequence of that is it will bring you joy as well.

00:29:52.000 And to piggyback on that, the church must articulate the good and the true.

00:30:01.000 You do not know a line is crooked unless you have a straight line to compare it to.

00:30:05.000 And the church, on a weekly and daily basis, has to articulate what that straight line is, which is the word of God, which is the logos, which is truth.

00:30:15.000 And, you know, I'm sure we're going to have QA throughout this.

00:30:19.000 And I'm sure some of you say, well, Charlie, how do I deal with one of these people in our congregation?

00:30:23.000 With love and truth.

00:30:24.000 Love them enough to try to get them to escape from the delusion that is currently occupying their body, where they think they have to wage war on their biology, and somehow that's going to liberate them.

00:30:34.000 It will not liberate them.

00:30:35.000 It will further torment them.

00:30:38.000 This is an unclean spirit that's being pushed by pharmacological agents and pharmaceutical companies that are doing such damage to people.

00:30:45.000 And kind of on the idea of the lightheartedness, one of my favorite Tucker Carlson quotes, he's so special.

00:30:53.000 He says, the slogan of the trans movement: anything that a woman can do, a man can do better. 0.74

00:31:00.000 It's the opposite of what we were told growing up.

00:31:03.000 That's the slogan of the trans movement.

00:31:05.000 41 seconds, Michael, final thoughts.

00:31:09.000 Often Christians will quote that Bible verse about the millstones.

00:31:14.000 You know, if you go after the little ones, those millstones ought to be tossed around your neck.

00:31:19.000 And we quote that when we're talking about abortion. 0.79

00:31:22.000 Now we quote that when we talk about abusing children, transing the kids. 1.00

00:31:27.000 But don't forget, that verse from our Lord is not about abusing a child.

00:31:33.000 It's not about punching a child.

00:31:35.000 That verse is about scandal.

00:31:38.000 It's about causing the little ones to stumble, to be a stumbling block and an obstacle and a scandal to them.

00:31:44.000 And so keep in mind, you have an obligation to preach the truth.

00:31:47.000 You have an obligation to care for the people in your congregation.

00:31:51.000 And you as a pastor will have to answer for the people in your congregation, for your flock.

00:31:56.000 So you have that obligation.

00:31:58.000 And you have an obligation furthermore not to cause any of them to stumble.

00:32:04.000 And when you go squishy, and not that you would do this, but when pastors go squishy, when they try to compromise on the truth because they think it will be politically correct or it maybe will make someone feel better briefly in the moment, you could be causing countless members of your flock to stumble.

00:32:21.000 Do not do it.

00:32:22.000 It is not worth it.

00:32:23.000 You speak that truth.

00:32:26.000 You will have no greater reward than that.

00:32:29.000 God bless you, Michael.

00:32:31.000 Thank you so much for watching.

00:32:32.000 Thank you so much.

00:32:35.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:32:37.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:32:40.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

00:32:45.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 28, 2023

Live on Stage at the Pastor's Summit with Michael Knowles

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