00:00:02.000If you're listening to this, it's Christmas Eve and/or Christmas, and maybe you're doing a road trip to see some of your family.
00:00:07.000Maybe you're just running some errands and you wanted to pop on our episode.
00:00:10.000Well, this episode is with Pastor David Englehart, author of the new book, Good Kills.
00:00:14.000Make sure you check out a copy and buy a copy of Good Kills by Pastor David Engelhart.
00:00:19.000He's also the pastor of King's Church, New York City, Manhattan.
00:00:22.000So, if you live in New York or you know someone that lives in New York, you have a son or daughter that lives in New York, make sure they check out David Engelhart's church.
00:00:29.000And he's also a board member of Turning Point USA.
00:00:31.000If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, you go to tpusa.com.
00:00:34.000We talk about the veneration of Mary, Saint Nick, should kids earn Christmas gifts.
00:00:38.000And I know I got some people upset by that, but I think David Engelhart convinced me that there should be a factor of earning, but also some grace when it comes to children getting gifts.
00:00:48.000I know I got some people upset about that.
00:00:50.000And you emailed me all your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:54.000If you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:02:09.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:03:08.000I'm always reminded of the Rush Limbaugh Thanksgiving special.
00:03:14.000And I think you should develop a Charlie Kirk Christmas special where we talk about some of the things we've forgotten, like Mary being really important, right?
00:03:22.000And why Santa Claus is a really great idea and some of those ideas.
00:03:26.000It'll be like Rush's Thanksgiving thing, your version.
00:04:06.000It's an intellectual framework that we build out about morality, about justice, about order, about goodness.
00:04:13.000And the basic premise is that you must have both charity, which is this kind of goodwill, kind intention, graciousness, humility, laughter, joy, all these things.
00:04:24.000And then on the balancing charity is you must have justice, which is there is right and wrong.
00:05:37.000And Good Kills is about remembering that paradox that resonates with all of us somewhere down deep when we see the Narnia, we read the Narnia Chronicles and we see Aslam, the lion who roars and eats the witch and is a warrior, but also very gentle with the children.
00:05:54.000And that combination must be held in tension.
00:05:57.000And C.S. Lewis did a beautiful job of painting that picture.
00:06:23.000But first of all, I preached a message last Sunday night, Charlie, called Santa is Great.
00:06:28.000And at first, people are like, oh my gosh, Santa is great for a number of reasons.
00:06:32.000First of all, Santa is great because Saint Nick was a real person.
00:06:36.000And, you know, church history tells us that he fought for the divinity of Christ at the Council of Nicaea, that he punched Arius in the face at the Council of Nicaea because Arius was diminishing the divinity of Christ.
00:06:50.000There was a Catholic holiday on December, I think 6 was the date, the St. Nicholas Day that they celebrated for hundreds of years.
00:06:57.000And then when Martin Luther came out, he said, we're going to do away with this holiday or this December 6th holiday because we're all saints.
00:07:05.000We're not going to celebrate specific saints, but let's move it to the 25th.
00:07:09.000So for the last 500 years, the church has been celebrating the gift of Christ on this day via Martin Luther's encouragement.
00:07:17.000But Santa, as Saint Nick, we can say he was a pastor, he loved Jesus, and he was amazing.
00:07:43.000Every Hollywood representation is the destruction of father.
00:07:47.000It's actually one of the reasons I think the left hates Rittenhouse so much, because he's doing this basic, fundamental man masculine defense of his own person.
00:07:58.000The whole construct of father is hated.
00:08:00.000So when I see Santa on the Coke bottle, I love it because it says to my children, there are good fathers that are strong and good in the world.
00:08:09.000And that's just, that's just the father element.
00:08:12.000And also the judging of right and wrong.
00:08:14.000So I did a take that the whole idea of naughty or nice, the kind of the monitoring of a children's behavior has some has some moral has some moral currency and justification and like that you might get coal.
00:08:30.000The only person that wanted coal for Christmas is Joe Manchin.
00:09:20.000They need to not, you know, jab their brother or their sister because they're saying that it's that question of like, what would you do if God wasn't watching, right?
00:09:30.000And the Santa story is you're kind of always being watched by something greater than you.
00:09:37.000And the real clincher on it is you will be judged.
00:09:42.000There will be a morning that comes one day where we will discover before God that if you are good or not.
00:09:49.000Now, we as Christians know that if we come through this great gift that is Jesus, that's why we give gifts on Christmas time to say God gave the gift of Jesus, this gratuitous gift we don't deserve.
00:11:11.000They're very strong Christians, but because they discovered that Jesus wasn't born on December 25th, they decided to reject the whole idea of celebrating the birth of Christ on Christmas.
00:11:25.000The whole idea of giving a gift for someone who doesn't deserve it to celebrate that God gave us the gift of Christ is an incredibly good idea.
00:11:36.000And that's the, there's a justice side and there's a charity side.
00:11:40.000And we have to be able to walk in both things.
00:11:42.000And once one of the things that conservatives get pigeonholed on, oh, you guys all just want law and order, law and order.
00:12:56.000So I do a Hillsdale College partnership.
00:12:58.000Anyone can check it out, charlieforhillsdale.com.
00:13:02.000And I said that virtue should be rewarded by parents, such as kids that take Hillsdale online courses, versus playing violent video games or goofing around on TikTok all day long.
00:13:14.000And that your Christmas gifts should be distributed to children based on the, let's say, based on the decisions your children make and also whether or not they're good kids versus bad kids.
00:13:46.000Well, we start with this premise that life itself is not a gift.
00:13:50.000And we have a world that has been so dunked in soft socialism in a welfare state that anybody that's lacking anything is seen as some kind of great moral crisis.
00:14:02.000And the idea, you know, we're the wealthiest country in the history of the world at the wealthiest time of our country.
00:14:10.000And people have, you know, there's so many parents right now that are buying gaming computers for their kids.
00:14:19.000I mean, think about getting a, think about when you were a kid, Charlie, your parent like getting you a thousand dollar just for the heck of it, just getting because you need to, you need to TikTok more or whatever.
00:14:29.000We don't understand this concept of earning things.
00:14:32.000It's kind of left our justice is all about what's owed and what's being owed, right?
00:14:43.000That's why in the Lord's Prayer in Luke chapter 11, it says, you know, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed, and you're him, da-da-da, forgive us our debts as we forgive those who owe us debts.
00:14:55.000It literally uses the terminology debts because justice is about debts being owed or being not owed.
00:15:00.000When we come into the world, God doesn't give us life and say you can do whatever you want with it.
00:15:06.000He says, I have a specific set of instructions for you.
00:15:31.000It's because God is so good that he loves his enemies.
00:15:35.000And we, because we are in debt to him and we do other things than what he tells us, we are enemies of God.
00:15:42.000So there's a fundamental baseline that children need to be taught about earning things, about justice, about things being owed.
00:15:50.000But then there are good times to have moments of our life like God gave us this moment in Christ that is a gratuitous gift, an unwarranted gift.
00:16:00.000I think that the reason I said what I said, and obviously it got people thinking, is that I think, David, you could agree, it's totally out of whack, right?
00:16:10.000We are so into the place of automatic gifts, no matter what, no matter what the kids do, no matter how rude, no matter how awful, it's almost like just get them the latest digital pacifier, right?
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00:18:32.000Because in Mary, we see a picture of Christ coming into someone, right?
00:18:38.000And growing and the divinity of God fusing with the carnality of man and Christ being formed inside of a person.
00:18:48.000Well, that's exactly the Christian walk.
00:18:51.000That's exactly what it's supposed to be.
00:18:53.000Romans chapter five says that the spirit of Christ lives inside of us and it's forming our being, the divinity of God, meeting with our carnality and doing the work of God on the inside of us so that Christ is formed in our lives.
00:19:09.000And to miss that picture is to literally miss, one, this incredible idea of the incarnation, which is mind-boggling that God's divinity would fuse with our mortality, not just in Mary, but somehow mystically in us.
00:19:23.000Paul says this is the most mysterious, the greatest mystery that we have is Christ and the church, the joying of these things.
00:19:30.000And it's because God is divinely changing our nature by the Spirit of God indwelling us.
00:19:36.000And if the church misses that, they miss the first point of the Christmas story, Charlie.
00:19:40.000And so it's frustrating that, you know, to guard from over-veneration of saints, the Protestant church has thrown out even, you know, people like Mary who really represent this incredible thing that she was gracious and humble.
00:19:53.000And then when she's, you know, when it's Mary or her cousin Elizabeth is there with her and the baby leaps in her womb, she starts singing this incredible song.
00:22:31.000And the camel, the camel and the needle is so apt here because Jesus says when he's teaching in his ministry, he says, the hungry will be filled.
00:22:39.000Those who hunger and thirst will be filled.
00:22:41.000He says, blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
00:22:48.000I said Sunday, Charlie, and this probably offends some people.
00:22:50.000I said, the poor in America are not blessed.
00:22:52.000They're cursed because all their needs are met by the government.
00:22:55.000So even in their moral poverty and all of those kinds of things, they have no need or desperation for God because the government has become their God.
00:23:08.000And I think it's a horrific thing when you take people and you meet all of their basic needs, but all of their morality is left to run awry, right?
00:23:18.000And so Jesus likes us having need and having room in our heart, making room for him.
00:23:24.000And that's why the manger story is so beautiful.
00:24:58.000We wake up and we have all this stress in our life, and we usually start running after the most stressful thing and trying to solve that issue.
00:25:04.000But God says, if you seek me first, seek my kingdom first, all of the other things, I will help you resolve them.
00:25:11.000I'll resolve them by my own hand, or I'll give you the wisdom to resolve them.
00:25:14.000And so I actually think, you know, David says, I will awaken the dawn with my praise.
00:25:19.000I really think it's really important for people to, first thing in the morning, seek first the kingdom of God, to spend time with God, to get in their Bible, to read, to get his wisdom and say, you know, I don't need another, just another, you know, a Joe Rogan podcast.
00:25:47.000First in the morning, I get in the scripture.
00:25:49.000And you're right with my finances, I make sure there's a portion of all of my finances, every paycheck that I give to God, that I make room for him in all of these different aspects of our life.
00:26:00.000Jesus said that the Pharisees love to go out on the street corner and proclaim their prayers.
00:26:06.000Go home, go in your closet, be hidden.
00:26:08.000And what you do in secret, those prayers you pray in secret, the Lord will reward you openly.
00:26:12.000So there is also something about place and time.
00:26:16.000And what better example in the Christmas season of the necessity to make room for God?
00:26:22.000And there, again, it's kind of cliche in Christian circles, like, oh, Christmas has become too commercialized.
00:26:29.000And of course, it's totally true, obviously.
00:26:31.000But I also don't think that when given the opportunity, when these churches are filled the next couple of days, our pastors really making that argument of the incarnation, right?
00:26:42.000Of the connection between heaven and earth.
00:26:46.000And that is what Christmas is about, which is the intersection, the meeting point of that, which is the most humble beginnings that one could have.
00:26:56.000Okay, so you sent me another prompt here.
00:26:57.000Maybe you know it, David, as I'm trying to pull it up.
00:27:00.000And again, Good Kills by Pastor David Engelhart.
00:27:02.000The last segment, I'm going to really grill you on the book, David.
00:28:17.000We need to talk about these hard truths that then make the gift all the more valuable.
00:28:21.000We don't throw out the idea of gift giving, right?
00:28:24.000We do say this is important, but it needs to be held in context.
00:28:28.000Just like, you know, if you only get the hard sets, if you only get the whip, if you only like the Bible says about the ox, it says, allow the ox to take off its muzzle while it's treading the grain.
00:28:43.000It can literally eat as much as it wants as long as it's treading the grain.
00:28:47.000And we have, that's the idea of strength, hard work, power, and whatever you want to do, liberty in what you're consuming in this idea.
00:28:55.000Paul is talking there about paying pastors, actually.
00:28:58.000He's saying, if they're working their butts off and your lives are getting changed and they're not a disaster and your finances and your family and everything's turning around, well, then bless them.
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00:30:28.000David, so let's talk about, there's this new article.
00:30:32.000You probably saw it where this person who is a woman who thinks that she's a man gives birth and says that it's the first man ever to give birth.
00:30:52.000And I have a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old.
00:30:55.000And they were equally horrified, if not more horrified, as they should be, as all normal, sane people would be when a woman takes so many, is juiced up with so much testosterone that she has a beard and then pretends she's a man and pretends she's having a male baby as a man.
00:31:17.000You know, yeah, so sexual anarchy, this chapter in the book, Good Kills, basically, we talk, we go through the town of towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, which are historical cities.
00:31:27.000You can read that in Eric Metaxas' book about atheism.
00:31:30.000But the idea is the names of the town, one is named Place of Burning.
00:31:34.000The other one is playing named essentially place of drowning, Gomorrah, Sodom and Gomorrah.
00:31:43.000But when fire gets out of the fireplace, it spreads throughout the community or house and kills everyone.
00:31:50.000When water leaves the banks and boundaries that it's God's intended natural place for it, we all drown and die.
00:31:57.000And the idea is sexuality is a gift from God that he's given us, a dangerous gift, because if it escapes the boundaries that God gave us, then it consumes the entire society and we all die.
00:32:11.000Well, I mean, the real simple way is then when there's only men with men, you don't have any more children.
00:32:15.000I mean, that's a really easy way to end a society.
00:32:18.000I mean, it's not, it doesn't take a brain scientist to figure that out.
00:32:21.000It doesn't take a brain scientist to know that, you know, there's not going to be like a host of surrogates, free will surrogates just having babies for strangers all day long.
00:32:29.000Like that's not, it's not a reality, right?
00:32:52.000Yeah, but the idea is God has an order and it's man and woman are joined in marriage forever and that it becomes incredibly beautiful, deep and complex.
00:33:02.000If you try to do other things with sexuality outside of that very simple order, it's going to go poorly and it's going to continue to deform and destroy.
00:33:10.000And then it goes into now children getting transgender surgery.
00:33:14.000No one would have ever imagined that that would have been that would be illegal 30 years ago, Charlie.
00:33:29.000So some people would say it's the good thing to want to help the transgender person, but you're making the argument that that form of good actually can kill.
00:33:39.000Yeah, I'm making, no, I'm making a, well, here's my argument.