The Charlie Kirk Show - November 25, 2021


Why Gratitude is a Moral Necessity—Today and Every Day


Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

166.77515

Word count

5,637

Sentence count

464

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Happy Thanksgiving! Today we re talking about the moral need to be thankful, and why Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. We re joined by Pastor David Engelhart of King s Church in New York City to talk about the importance of being thankful.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, happy Thanksgiving.
00:00:02.000 What a wonderful day it is to be alive.
00:00:03.000 I hope you are thankful for a lot, and you should be.
00:00:06.000 We do a whole hour on gratitude, the moral need to be thankful, and we are joined later in this episode by my friend Pastor David Engelhart from King's Church in New York City.
00:00:16.000 If you live in New York City, you guys should all go to King's Church.
00:00:19.000 Wonderful place.
00:00:20.000 Pastor David Engelhart is the man.
00:00:22.000 If you want to email us your thoughts, you can do so freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:26.000 I will see all of you at AmericaFest at tpusa.com slash AMFEST, tpusa.com slash amfest.
00:00:34.000 It's going to be amazing.
00:00:36.000 tpusa.com slash amfest, Tucker Carlson, Kaylee McEnany, Greg Gutfeld, Ted Cruz, Jesse Waters, Candace Owens, Jim Jordan, Donald Trump Jr., Pete Hegseth, Madison Cawthorne, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Rand Paul, Jack Pesobic, Benny Johnson, Kat Kamick, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gates, Louis Gommert, Burgess Owens, Sean Foyt, Sarah Palin, Brandon Tatum, Michael Chandler, Devin Nunez, Byron Donalds, and more.
00:01:01.000 My goodness, Andy Biggs, James O'Keefe, tpusa.com slash AMFEST, Brantley Gilbert, Dustin Lynch, Raylin, and more.
00:01:10.000 December 18, 19, 2021.
00:01:12.000 It's Thanksgiving.
00:01:13.000 We are thankful for you.
00:01:14.000 No advertisers on this episode.
00:01:16.000 Just all of you that support us at charliekirk.com slash support.
00:01:20.000 I want to thank Megan from Michigan.
00:01:21.000 Thank you.
00:01:22.000 Jody from California.
00:01:23.000 Thank you.
00:01:24.000 Remy from Alabama.
00:01:25.000 Thank you.
00:01:25.000 Patricia from Pennsylvania.
00:01:27.000 Andrea from Texas.
00:01:29.000 Lynn from Arizona.
00:01:30.000 Daniel from Missouri.
00:01:32.000 Gary from Texas.
00:01:33.000 Grace from Washington.
00:01:35.000 Veronique from California.
00:01:37.000 Deborah from Alabama.
00:01:39.000 Tricia from Colorado.
00:01:40.000 And Lindsay from New York.
00:01:42.000 CharlieKirk.com slash support.
00:01:44.000 No advertisers this episode.
00:01:46.000 Just you that support us generously and get behind the work we are doing.
00:01:51.000 Thank you.
00:01:53.000 This wonderful Thanksgiving.
00:01:54.000 We have so much to be thankful for.
00:01:56.000 We live in the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.
00:01:58.000 We go through that and more.
00:02:00.000 Buckle up here. 0.99
00:02:01.000 We go.
00:02:02.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:02:04.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:02:06.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:02:09.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:02:13.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:02:14.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:02:15.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
00:02:16.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
00:02:22.000 Turning point USA. 0.65
00:02:23.000 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.
00:02:32.000 That's why we are here.
00:02:34.000 Hello, America.
00:02:36.000 Happy Thanksgiving.
00:02:37.000 I hope you're enjoying your high prices, your congested traffic, your soon-to-be arguments with all of your relatives.
00:02:47.000 Thanksgiving is a wonderful time.
00:02:48.000 I'm going to talk a little bit about why I think Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, because it is.
00:02:55.000 And then I want to play some tape here of just some of the incredible news coverage as well as the pile.
00:03:03.000 I'm going to say, Charlie, what's the pile?
00:03:06.000 I have Connor do this every holiday.
00:03:11.000 July 4th, Memorial Day, Christmas.
00:03:14.000 I say, Connor, go print out the most outrageous takes from liberal media. 0.92
00:03:19.000 The left-wing activist drive-by press.
00:03:21.000 How about this one?
00:03:21.000 Is flying home for the holidays bad for the planet?
00:03:24.000 New York Times.
00:03:27.000 Seattle Times, the violence at the root of our Thanksgiving myth has been hemispheric.
00:03:33.000 Greenmatters.com.
00:03:35.000 Thanksgiving glorifies the abhorrent colonization of indigenous peoples. 1.00
00:03:41.000 I could keep going.
00:03:42.000 Oh, there's one more I really want to read here.
00:03:47.000 This one from NBC.
00:03:49.000 Thanksgiving COVID tips for meals that include unvaccinated guests. 0.82
00:03:52.000 The unwashed.
00:03:53.000 If you're eating pumpkin pie with the unwashed, NBC News has some advice for you.
00:03:58.000 How about this one?
00:04:00.000 Thanksgiving redefined into National Day of Mourning.
00:04:07.000 And it continues.
00:04:09.000 So we'll get into all that through the pile.
00:04:11.000 But I want to talk about what is the philosophical and moral theme of Thanksgiving.
00:04:17.000 It's gratitude.
00:04:19.000 Now, I was on Tim Poole's live stream over the summer with a left-wing YouTuber by the name of Vausch.
00:04:28.000 It was actually a good discussion.
00:04:30.000 And Vausch asked me, he said, Charlie, what should the goal of education be?
00:04:35.000 And I said, the goal should be gratitude.
00:04:38.000 Now, I was ridiculed and attacked from the other side, from the kind of young, self-righteous, narcissistic YouTube class.
00:04:51.000 I guess gamer people, what would you call these people?
00:04:54.000 I don't know.
00:04:55.000 Not against video games.
00:04:56.000 I'm not a huge fan of them, but if you want to play them in your own time, whatever.
00:05:00.000 So, and he said, how could you possibly say the goal is gratitude?
00:05:04.000 Now, I think that there was probably a communication breakdown that they thought that I was saying that the goal of education was learning to say thank you, which is not incorrect.
00:05:15.000 It's just incomplete.
00:05:17.000 No, no, what I was saying is that if you have a citizenry that is unthankful instead of thankful for the nation they live in, then bad politics will follow.
00:05:28.000 Gratitude is necessary to live a happy, full, and complete life.
00:05:36.000 When you are thankful, which is hopefully something we're going to be doing the next couple days, you are appreciative and less likely to want to tear down what came before you.
00:05:49.000 I have diagnosed America as suffering from Alzheimer's.
00:05:54.000 America is currently suffering from Alzheimer's.
00:05:56.000 We do not know our identity, what came before us.
00:06:00.000 We don't know our history, tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson this week.
00:06:05.000 And if you've ever dealt with anyone that has dementia or Alzheimer's with no memory of what came before, what do you get?
00:06:12.000 What is the number one adjective to describe a patient with Alzheimer's?
00:06:18.000 Confusion.
00:06:20.000 And that's where America is today.
00:06:22.000 We are a confused society.
00:06:24.000 We're a chaotic society.
00:06:26.000 We don't know our own pictures on the walls.
00:06:29.000 America is suffering from a form of dementia and Alzheimer's.
00:06:33.000 And because of that, we're inherently getting into a posture of being less thankful.
00:06:41.000 So I'm going to do my best the next couple hours.
00:06:44.000 It's going to be hard.
00:06:46.000 I'm going to try to talk about positive news.
00:06:51.000 Things that we should be thankful for.
00:06:54.000 So I have a website I go to.
00:06:56.000 It's run by a bunch of libertarians, and they're nice.
00:06:58.000 It's called Human Progress.
00:07:01.000 And it's supposed to be this contemplation of all the positive news happening in the world.
00:07:05.000 And like every other story is like, soon we'll be able to put on goggles and transcend our existence.
00:07:10.000 I'm like, okay, I don't like this website very much anymore.
00:07:13.000 So I was trying to look for some positive news.
00:07:15.000 I do have some good news to share.
00:07:17.000 But even if I didn't, we still need to be thankful.
00:07:22.000 Even if I had no good news to share, it's a moral obligation to be thankful in the midst of suffering or tragedy.
00:07:30.000 You see, gratitude slows everything down.
00:07:37.000 See, the Founding Fathers wanted a system.
00:07:39.000 They wanted a framework.
00:07:40.000 They wanted a structure that was deliberate and would check and balance the emotions, the rumors, or the madness of crowds.
00:07:53.000 They wanted to slow things down.
00:07:56.000 You see, and gratitude inherently sobers the masses.
00:08:01.000 It adds context amidst revolutionary fervor.
00:08:06.000 You see, the divide in America, as we have said so many times on this show and on our podcast, is not between Republican or Democrat.
00:08:17.000 It's not between conservative or liberal.
00:08:19.000 Those are important divides.
00:08:20.000 The true divide is between the thankful and the unthankful.
00:08:26.000 The people that are full of gratitude have more appreciation.
00:08:31.000 They have a sobriety around the country towards the country around them.
00:08:36.000 They look at Thomas Jefferson and they say, wow, thank you.
00:08:41.000 You did something pretty awesome.
00:08:44.000 The other side looks at Thomas Jefferson and they say, tear it down.
00:08:47.000 My life is miserable.
00:08:49.000 And I blame him for that.
00:08:51.000 You see, gratitude does not mean you have to self-induce your own existence with hopium.
00:09:00.000 It doesn't mean you have to convince yourself that you're in a better circumstances than you actually are.
00:09:07.000 Instead, gratitude allows you to have context and understand that as long as you have breath in your lungs, you have something to be thankful for.
00:09:18.000 And if you are living in the United States of America, you have more than something.
00:09:21.000 You have a lot to be thankful for.
00:09:23.000 The greatest, most decent, generous nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
00:09:29.000 At the root of every evil worldview, atheism, communism, socialism, is ingratitude.
00:09:40.000 You want to know why the world has fallen apart?
00:09:42.000 Well, it's fallen apart for a lot of reasons.
00:09:45.000 One of those is the lack of a citizenry that stops and is thankful.
00:09:52.000 This is why you see the pile, as I mentioned, that is going after the philosophical and moral roots of Thanksgiving.
00:10:01.000 Dare I say Thanksgiving is a threat to the left?
00:10:04.000 The ethos of it is, of course it is.
00:10:06.000 Now, I'm not saying that every leftist is going to boycott Thanksgiving tomorrow.
00:10:11.000 I'm sure they're going to enjoy pie and turkey.
00:10:13.000 But do you think that the discussion amongst a true leftist tomorrow is going to be one of wonder and adoration and respect and appreciation or one about complaining, one about forming coalitions to change things?
00:10:34.000 Now, trust me, I'm not saying that we don't have to fix anything in this nation.
00:10:38.000 What I am saying, though, is that the awe and wonder of the citizen-led, checked-and-balanced, independent judiciary, consent to the governed system that we live in, granted from God, not by government, is one that every person should be in awe and wonder of tomorrow.
00:10:59.000 And of course, thankful for family, thankful for getting through the last couple years.
00:11:08.000 Every bad idea that is currently being discussed on the international stage, every bad idea that killed over 100 million people was rooted in ingratitude.
00:11:19.000 Do you think Joseph Stalin was a thankful man? 0.95
00:11:22.000 Do you think Mao Cedong was a thankful man?
00:11:26.000 Do you think Benito Mussolini was a thankful man?
00:11:30.000 Ingratitude leads to tragedy.
00:11:33.000 We're going to keep on going into how Thanksgiving started and why it's a moral imperative for us to celebrate it.
00:11:44.000 You don't have to overthink it.
00:11:46.000 Just being thankful actually makes you a happier person.
00:11:49.000 Every single scientific journal shows that.
00:11:51.000 Maybe that's why the Bible reiterates in very clear words that we must give thanks in all circumstances.
00:11:58.000 So here's some good advice for your Thanksgiving.
00:12:01.000 Here's what the Bible says, and then here's what CBS says.
00:12:06.000 So I want you to compare the two.
00:12:08.000 Are you going to have a biblical Thanksgiving or a CBS Thanksgiving?
00:12:08.000 Okay?
00:12:12.000 Okay.
00:12:13.000 Let's start with the biblical Thanksgiving.
00:12:15.000 Do not get drunk on wine.
00:12:16.000 Okay, let's stop with that.
00:12:18.000 I hope you guys follow that.
00:12:19.000 If you don't, you'll pay a price the next morning, which leads to debauchery.
00:12:24.000 Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.
00:12:30.000 Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:12:40.000 Okay, that's a biblical Thanksgiving.
00:12:42.000 Not getting drunk on wine, staying away from debauchery, being filled with the Spirit.
00:12:47.000 What does CBS want?
00:12:48.000 Well, CBS recommends that you need to have Thanksgiving in your garage.
00:12:55.000 And everyone that comes to your house needs a COVID rapid test and then waits for the results before going inside.
00:13:03.000 Play cut 59.
00:13:05.000 But the rapid tests have made this a lot easier.
00:13:08.000 Because whatever people's vaccination status is, we can actually confirm safety on the spot.
00:13:08.000 Right.
00:13:14.000 So if it feels like it's going to be weird, maybe make it kind of fun.
00:13:17.000 Say we're going to start with hors d'oeuvres in the garage.
00:13:20.000 You know, we'll have drinks.
00:13:21.000 We'll do our rapid test.
00:13:23.000 And now come on in, right?
00:13:24.000 You can make it playful, make it fun.
00:13:27.000 These people are serious.
00:13:30.000 I mean, even the hosts laugh.
00:13:32.000 I mean, it's so outrageous.
00:13:34.000 And does anyone want to tell them that the vaccine is not preventing people from not getting the virus?
00:13:38.000 No, but that doesn't matter.
00:13:40.000 They just assume the premise.
00:13:44.000 Let's go to cut.
00:13:46.000 Oh, yeah, cut one.
00:13:48.000 So this Thanksgiving, I encourage all of you to be thankful for the sacrifices that came before you, the nation you live in, the Constitution, the Declaration, the greatest generation, but no.
00:14:02.000 MSNBC, they say that it's really all about genocide and violence.
00:14:07.000 Do you see the divide?
00:14:09.000 The divide versus those that are thankful and unthankful.
00:14:14.000 Play cut one.
00:14:16.000 The truth is, pilgrims did not bring turkey, sweet potato pie, or cranberries to Thanksgiving.
00:14:22.000 They brought nothing of value.
00:14:24.000 But I'm still trying to figure out what indigenous people received of value.
00:14:28.000 Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence. 0.94
00:14:34.000 That genocide and violence is still on the menu.
00:14:37.000 They brought nothing of value.
00:14:38.000 Well, they did bring the Bible.
00:14:42.000 Small detail.
00:14:43.000 They did bring common law.
00:14:46.000 They also brought Newtonian physics.
00:14:50.000 Minor details.
00:14:51.000 Cut 57.
00:14:52.000 He says, we're still waiting for you to match the mythology of Thanksgiving.
00:14:58.000 Play cut 57.
00:14:59.000 They brought channel slavery to Africans and Native people. 0.97
00:15:02.000 That still happens through the prison industrial complex that imprisons the descendants of enslaved Africans.
00:15:08.000 That is the reality of Thanksgiving.
00:15:10.000 Many of us are still waiting for white Americans to bring some value, still waiting for white America to match the mythology of Thanksgiving. 0.63
00:15:18.000 Freedom, justice, equality, reparations for 2.5 billion acres of stolen native land, reparations for 246 years of stolen labor, reparations for stealing native children.
00:15:30.000 Stop the killing.
00:15:32.000 It's still happening.
00:15:33.000 Stop the theft.
00:15:34.000 It's still happening.
00:15:36.000 Return the land. 0.85
00:15:38.000 Sir, this is a Wendy's.
00:15:39.000 I'm not sure what you're saying.
00:15:41.000 Would you like fries or something?
00:15:45.000 Okay, let me just say one thing.
00:15:47.000 People go to jail because they commit crimes, not because the color of their skin. 0.95
00:15:52.000 Okay, blacks are in jail because of chattel slavery. 0.56
00:15:56.000 No, no, people are in jail because they commit crimes. 0.99
00:15:59.000 For example, the terrorist in Waukesha, the black supremacist, anti-Semitic terrorist. 0.98
00:16:07.000 He's not in jail because of the color of his skin. 0.98
00:16:09.000 He's in jail because he ran over six people and killed them and injured probably 40 others.
00:16:13.000 Daryl Brooks.
00:16:17.000 So, this guy, I don't even know this guy's name, Guyasi Ross.
00:16:22.000 Does he strike you as a thankful person?
00:16:25.000 No, I get like Stalin vibes from this guy.
00:16:28.000 I get Robert Mugabe vibes.
00:16:33.000 Stay away from that.
00:16:34.000 The point that we must remember is that America's greatness is directly linked with the ethos and the theme of Thanksgiving.
00:16:47.000 Taking a pause, saying thank you for things you didn't do.
00:16:53.000 So, what does that mean?
00:16:54.000 It means Thanksgiving is a necessarily humble day where you say, I didn't do this all myself, but there's something bigger than me that allows this all to occur.
00:17:06.000 With us right now is a friend of mine and pastor of King's Church in New York City, Pastor David Engelhardt.
00:17:14.000 We're here to talk about Thanksgiving, how the Puritans were not genocidal maniacs, and also the moral imperative to be thankful.
00:17:22.000 David, welcome back.
00:17:23.000 How are you doing?
00:17:24.000 Hey, Charlie, doing good.
00:17:26.000 Good to be on with you.
00:17:26.000 Great to see you.
00:17:27.000 Okay, let's start with what is the true story of Thanksgiving.
00:17:30.000 Tell us about the Puritans.
00:17:31.000 Yeah, so the Puritans were a group of people that they originated in England.
00:17:37.000 And at the time, in the 1600s in England, you were forced to worship.
00:17:43.000 There's no freedom of separation.
00:17:45.000 There's no separation of church and state, right?
00:17:47.000 There's no allowing people to decide what they want to how they want to worship.
00:17:50.000 You must worship the Church of England, which is kind of an offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church.
00:17:57.000 And the separatists, the Puritans, wanted to worship God in their own manner and methods.
00:18:05.000 So they moved to the Netherlands.
00:18:07.000 They actually were indentured servants for seven years just in order to get to the New World, to pay their way kind of early on to get on the ships to get over there.
00:18:18.000 And they, their desire, I mean, they were essentially, they were fleeing the persecution of the Church of England, but they fully expected to go to the New World and set up a city on a hill, which is the famous sermon given by their leader at the time.
00:18:38.000 And that they believed that if they walked in righteousness, if they walked in love and mercy and grace, they spread the gospel that God would bless them and peace would go with them.
00:18:50.000 And then if they ever left those basic elements, that then God would curse them and they would be destroyed.
00:18:56.000 They weren't the first missionaries there, Charlie.
00:18:59.000 There were other, a lot of Jesuit Catholics were moving throughout Huron land and throughout North America spreading the gospel.
00:19:06.000 There was a guy, Father Brabuff, and this Jesuit priest was spreading the gospel.
00:19:13.000 He had a vision of a cross in the sky.
00:19:15.000 Somebody said, How big is the cross?
00:19:16.000 He said, It was large enough to crucify us all.
00:19:19.000 And I know God has called me to go to the new world.
00:19:22.000 He went to the Iroquois and they tortured him because he was preaching the gospel with baptism.
00:19:27.000 They tortured him by pouring boiling water over his body to mock the sacrament of baptism.
00:19:35.000 The father was an amazing man of God.
00:19:38.000 He didn't even cry out because he didn't cry out.
00:19:41.000 They heated up the heads of hatchets and they tied the hatchets around his neck as a glowing kind of chain of red hatchet heads, burning him.
00:19:51.000 He still didn't cry out.
00:19:53.000 He was standing as a representative of God and didn't want to, you know, look cowardly before them.
00:19:58.000 They peeled off his skin and ate it in front of him and he still didn't cry out.
00:20:03.000 And then they tore out his heart and ate it because they wanted the courage that he was walking in.
00:20:08.000 And these were the Christian missionaries, the Jesuits, who are the precursors to the Puritans that were moving throughout this land and attempting to bring the gospel, which is obviously, I mean, to say it's a religion of peace is to actually say it too small.
00:20:24.000 It's the kingdom of heaven to be applied to earth.
00:20:27.000 And the Puritans came in with exactly the same spirit.
00:20:30.000 And by the grace of God, they met Squanto, who had been converted by one of these Jesuit priests.
00:20:37.000 And Squanto, they said, was a gift of God given to them.
00:20:41.000 Squanto loved the Puritans so much that he lived with them after they landed for the rest of his life.
00:20:48.000 They weren't tying up Indians by the feet and dragging them out of the woods and, you know, doing whatever crazy stuff that the Smithsonian and the other liberals say they were doing.
00:20:58.000 They were really establishing a place of peace where they could worship God.
00:21:02.000 And as you know, Charlie, as we both know, the world says the exact opposite.
00:21:08.000 There's a story in the Smithsonian that cites Bernard Bailyn.
00:21:12.000 The Smithsonian says he's the greatest historian in America, like the number one guy.
00:21:20.000 His analysis is, I don't look at their writings.
00:21:22.000 This is what he said.
00:21:23.000 He says, he looked at the quality of their culture, the capacity of their minds and patterns of their emotions.
00:21:30.000 So he didn't read what they said.
00:21:32.000 He didn't look at really what they did.
00:21:34.000 He just said, I'm going to place myself in their mind and then I'm going to extrapolate what I think their mind was, which is Antichrist, apocalypse, devil, all this stuff.
00:21:45.000 And these are the roots of the left's rage.
00:21:49.000 They believed the Puritans were these evil demon people because this historian has said, instead of reading their words, I'm going to go into their minds and derive what I think happened.
00:21:59.000 So instead of looking at what the Indians were actually doing, the indigenous people were actually doing, he looks into the minds of people with an apocalyptic sense and derives all this nonsense.
00:22:10.000 So the whole story has been completely backwards.
00:22:13.000 I highly recommend anyone to read The Light and the Glory by Marshall and have your mind blown by the actual historical documents and statements by the settlers.
00:22:23.000 And so talk, how did the idea of thanksgiving then come to be, of the idea of giving thanks to whom?
00:22:29.000 And then what is, as anyone out there, why should we be thankful?
00:22:35.000 What is the moral case to be full of gratitude?
00:22:39.000 Yeah, I mean, the first point of thankfulness is the Puritans were on a ship and they all thought they were going to die.
00:22:44.000 And so they were like, God, please get us out of here.
00:22:47.000 And God did and then provided them food and all this, these partnership with Squanto and others.
00:22:53.000 And so they were saying they were thanking God.
00:22:56.000 You know, it's a funny thing because secular people, they like to use the terminology thankfulness, but to who?
00:23:02.000 You're thankful to the universe?
00:23:03.000 Well, if you're a naturalist, a mechanist, a materialist, you're thankful to a random spattering of molecules.
00:23:10.000 It doesn't make any sense.
00:23:11.000 Thankfulness actually has to be directed toward a person, right?
00:23:15.000 Or a people group.
00:23:16.000 That's right.
00:23:16.000 Yes.
00:23:17.000 Yeah, or a being in our sense.
00:23:18.000 It's directed specifically towards God.
00:23:20.000 And on that point, Psalm 100 says, enter his gates with thanksgiving in your hearts.
00:23:26.000 The whole idea of even coming, approaching God, this first position of approaching.
00:23:32.000 So in the Old Testament, you have the gates, which leads you into kind of level one of their tabernacle.
00:23:38.000 And then there's like a holy place, a holy of holies, all these different levels.
00:23:42.000 Level one of approaching God at all in the scripture is that you approach God with thanksgiving in your heart.
00:23:49.000 So, you know, for us as believers, thanksgiving is the first and primary position.
00:23:55.000 The opposite, Charlie, as you are fully aware, is the Garden of Eden, where the serpent says to the woman, look, you're deficient.
00:24:02.000 Like the rules that you've been given by God are deficient.
00:24:05.000 You can't even eat the apples of the tree. 0.99
00:24:07.000 You're a deficient creature.
00:24:09.000 If you ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you would be like God. 0.99
00:24:12.000 Your eyes would be open.
00:24:14.000 So the first position is ingratitude for the enemy.
00:24:17.000 The first position for the darkened one is to say, you don't have enough.
00:24:22.000 You're deficient.
00:24:23.000 Someone's withholding something from you. 0.96
00:24:25.000 They're to blame.
00:24:26.000 You're a victim in this.
00:24:27.000 And that's what an amazing bifurcation between a position grateful, approaching the throne and presence of God or the kingdom of heaven where we find peace and life and love.
00:24:37.000 Or the other side of that picture is actually the gateway to our destruction is in gratitude.
00:24:43.000 Well, and so talk more about individually.
00:24:46.000 So some people are going to say, look, I got nothing to be thankful for.
00:24:49.000 Everything's terrible.
00:24:49.000 It's falling apart.
00:24:51.000 Talk about how it's a moral obligation and it's actually good for you.
00:24:57.000 It's actually a blessing to yourself the more thankful you are.
00:25:02.000 Yeah, it's a good lesson for human beings to understand that life, we've talked about this a lot.
00:25:08.000 Life is not a gift, right?
00:25:10.000 Yeah.
00:25:10.000 Talk about how is life not a gift, David?
00:25:12.000 What is it then?
00:25:14.000 It's funny because we're used to Ugwe, Kung Fu Panda saying life is a gift. 0.97
00:25:19.000 In my book, Good Kills, I talk about this idea.
00:25:22.000 Life is not a gift.
00:25:23.000 It's like this, it's actually more akin in the biblical sense to an investment.
00:25:27.000 It's of incredible value and it's been granted to you by God with certain obligations.
00:25:33.000 If you get a gift, I give you a guitar for your birthday, you can put in the closet.
00:25:37.000 You don't have to do anything.
00:25:38.000 Well, and the best example, David, is I say, can you name every Christmas gift you got the last five years?
00:25:43.000 And most people are like, I don't remember what I got for Christmas last year.
00:25:46.000 But you could remember when someone really invested in you.
00:25:49.000 Time, resources.
00:25:51.000 Please continue.
00:25:52.000 Yeah.
00:25:52.000 Or if I invested into your company, you have a duty, a fiduciary duty to use that investment very carefully and you have to make a return.
00:26:03.000 And when God grants us life, he says, I want you to be fruitful and multiply.
00:26:08.000 That's the Genesis mandate, which means I want life to grow.
00:26:12.000 So why are we talking about how, what does this have to do with Thanksgiving?
00:26:16.000 Because our primary position as human beings is to say, thank you, God, for life.
00:26:21.000 I've had a hard life.
00:26:22.000 You know, the scripture says it's better to be a live dog than a dead lion.
00:26:26.000 The idea there is life, even as a dog, is way better than death, where you never experience and live and love.
00:26:35.000 I saw a mom that lost a child recently and she was on this tirade of, God, why would you do this to me? 0.97
00:26:41.000 God, how could you take my son?
00:26:43.000 God, how could you?
00:26:43.000 And I understand the pain.
00:26:45.000 You know, I have kids.
00:26:46.000 They've been through near-death experiences.
00:26:47.000 I understand the shake of the heart of a parent.
00:26:50.000 But I was thinking of this other side, like, but, but also God gave you this gift of this beautiful child for seven, eight, nine, 10, however long it was, that you get to experience and love and this beautiful gift that you would never say, I wish I didn't have, because it's so valuable.
00:27:06.000 So the first position to be thankful on a personal level is that we'd be thankful to God for life itself, that we say, man, this is incredible.
00:27:14.000 Thank you, God, for life.
00:27:15.000 The atheist does the opposite. 0.68
00:27:17.000 They say, God, I look at the world and I see pain and I say, you either don't exist or you're bad because there's pain in the world rather than looking at the foundation of the earth, which is life itself.
00:27:28.000 And pain is sure a part of everybody's life, but it's not the whole.
00:27:32.000 It's not even the majority of.
00:27:34.000 And you said this actually, I don't know if you watched one of these clips before between you were talking.
00:27:38.000 You were saying, honoring father and mother.
00:27:40.000 Yes.
00:27:41.000 Why is that so important?
00:27:43.000 Well, without them, you don't exist.
00:27:45.000 You're not a dead lion. 0.67
00:27:46.000 You're a nothing. 0.99
00:27:47.000 You like, you don't even exist. 0.89
00:27:48.000 So even if you had parents that were painful or abusive or all of that kind of stuff, you still should, for your own sake, say, thank you, mom and dad, that I exist.
00:27:59.000 I agree.
00:27:59.000 There's a great quote about atheism.
00:28:01.000 So I love our listeners.
00:28:03.000 We have the best listeners on the planet.
00:28:04.000 They're so wise.
00:28:05.000 This woman comes up to me. 0.98
00:28:07.000 She says, Charlie, I have a quote for you.
00:28:09.000 I said, what's that?
00:28:10.000 She said, atheism does not get rid of the pain, but it does get rid of hope.
00:28:15.000 I said, that is so beautiful.
00:28:17.000 That's good.
00:28:17.000 I said that you think about it, that atheism doesn't subtract from the pain, but it does get rid of any idea of hope, of eternal reconciliation, of you're here for a purpose and for a reason.
00:28:31.000 I want to read a couple of scriptures as we get back, David, because I think that we need to reinforce to the audience that a thankful nation is a prosperous nation.
00:28:39.000 A thankful nation is a peaceful nation.
00:28:41.000 But when you have ingratitude, you have chaos, you have confusion, you have separation and division.
00:28:47.000 I'm going to read this scripture to you, and I want you to walk us through this.
00:28:52.000 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, be prayer and petition with thanksgiving.
00:28:58.000 Present your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
00:29:05.000 This, of course, is the famous Philippian 4, where there's like three parts of it that people use and they should.
00:29:11.000 You know, whatever is true, whatever is good, whatever is noble, what is right, whatever, you know, you think on these things, and of course, I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
00:29:19.000 What's the significance of that verse?
00:29:20.000 We are called to, in all circumstances, be thankful.
00:29:24.000 Why?
00:29:25.000 Yeah.
00:29:26.000 One of the another parallel scriptures first Thessalonians 5, which says, Rejoice, always pray continually.
00:29:32.000 It's kind of a distillation of the Philippians thought.
00:29:34.000 Give thanks in every circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.
00:29:39.000 And when I talk to church members or friends about what am I supposed to do in life, usually that question comes with worry or anxiety.
00:29:49.000 I'm not sure.
00:29:50.000 I'm confused.
00:29:51.000 I don't know if what I'm going to do is a failure.
00:29:54.000 And it's so hard to move through life with a sense of worry, a sense of fear.
00:29:59.000 It really freezes you up in your actions.
00:30:02.000 But if we follow God's order, which is, hey, you don't know what your purpose is.
00:30:07.000 You don't know what I want you to do.
00:30:08.000 Here's one of the main things I want you to do.
00:30:11.000 Be thankful in every circumstances or in every circumstance.
00:30:15.000 Like, what's my destiny?
00:30:16.000 Well, your first part of your destiny is to be thankful in every circumstance that you've been put in.
00:30:22.000 And part of what that does is it allows us actually to accurately assess the things around us with gratitude and grace and favor.
00:30:30.000 I was thinking about this, Charlie.
00:30:31.000 Even, you know, people that want to change the country, young people that want to see change and all of these revolutions.
00:30:39.000 Yeah, right.
00:30:40.000 Like, where's a better position to do that from frustration, ingratitude, emotional upheaval, or gratitude and confidence and peace to say, actually, we have a really incredible country.
00:30:52.000 We have really a ton of freedoms.
00:30:54.000 And from that place, I can rightly assess the world around me and then be able to accurately move forward.
00:31:00.000 If I'm not listening to God's directive, which is to be grateful in every circumstance, then I'm going, I'm looking at the world really with an incorrect worldview because I'm leaving the first position.
00:31:11.000 And that first position is thankfulness, gratitude.
00:31:14.000 And as we said in the last segment, that life was granted to me and I'm already up.
00:31:20.000 I'm not in the red right now.
00:31:22.000 Like if I'm living and breathing and I'm in the freest country in the world, I'm massively in the black.
00:31:28.000 I have this massive credit to my account.
00:31:31.000 And now I have a fiduciary duty to exercise that credit to bless the world around me and to be a source of life to the world around me.
00:31:39.000 And I think a lot of us, especially in the era of news, headlines, scare tactics, all that kind of stuff, we move forward not with a sense of thankfulness, but even as Christians, a lot of times they're like, I just am praying for the chaos and collapse and horrific stuff.
00:31:54.000 And, you know, Charlie, you say we're not, we don't sell hopium.
00:31:58.000 We don't sell hope and opium together to trick people.
00:32:01.000 We tell them the truth.
00:32:03.000 But even in the truth, on the darkest day, like we said, Proverbs says, it's better to be a live dog than a dead lion because a live dog can still run to the bowl.
00:32:12.000 He can still have a great, he can still enjoy his family.
00:32:15.000 Whatever it is, if we have life, we still have opportunity to turn to God.
00:32:20.000 And then when we turn to God, then he showers us with his blessing.
00:32:23.000 Life is special, but it's an investment, not a gift.
00:32:26.000 You can't do whatever you want with it, basically.
00:32:29.000 Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
00:32:31.000 God gives us a directive, specific orders, specific instruction.
00:32:34.000 Those are laid out in the scripture.
00:32:35.000 The crazy thing is they're not limiting.
00:32:38.000 If we do them, then what he asks us in the Genesis mandate, it happens. 0.86
00:32:42.000 Our life multiplies.
00:32:43.000 Our relationship multiplies.
00:32:44.000 If we do the opposite, our life gets darker and tinier and narrower and more painful.
00:32:50.000 So an anti-thanksgiving spirit is darkness, tininess, less holidays, right?
00:32:55.000 You're in your garage eating cold stuffing.
00:32:58.000 A thankful heart has lots of people over, lots of life, lots of gratitude, not remembering horrific things, but being thankful to mom and dad, even if things weren't perfect and blessing what God gave you to be thankful directly to him as the progenitor of life.
00:33:14.000 It's beautiful.
00:33:15.000 David Engelhart, pastor of King's Church in New York City.
00:33:19.000 Everyone should check it out.
00:33:20.000 We're going to have David back on when his book comes out, Good Kills.
00:33:22.000 I'm writing the forward to it.
00:33:23.000 It's special.
00:33:24.000 David, God bless you.
00:33:24.000 Have a great Thanksgiving.
00:33:25.000 I'm thankful for you.
00:33:27.000 Also thankful to the Lord for putting us together.
00:33:29.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:33:30.000 Email us your thoughts, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:33:34.000 And if you want to support us, you can do so at charliekirk.com slash support.
00:33:39.000 Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
00:33:41.000 God bless.
00:33:44.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.