Why Gratitude is a Moral Necessity—Today and Every Day
Happy Thanksgiving! On this special episode for you to listen to as you travel the country, hopefully gathering and connecting with friends and family from everywhere, in spite of Tony Fauci's warnings, Charlie goes through the annual Legacy Media reporting of Thanksgiving hysteria as they seek to 'cancel' arguably the most important holiday for our national ethos and character. He's joined later in the episode by Pastor David Engelhardt of Kings' Church in Manhattan for a biblical discussion of Gratitude and why it's a moral necessity for human fulfillment and overall health & happiness. From The Charlie Kirk Show team, we want everyone listening to know that we're all deeply thankful for your continued support and we hope you enjoy this beautiful holiday with the ones you love. Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Gratitude Prevents Bad Politics00:11:51
Hey everybody, happy Thanksgiving.
What a wonderful day it is to be alive.
I hope you are thankful for a lot, and you should be.
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.
If you live in New York City, you guys should all go to King's Church.
Wonderful place.
Pastor David Engelhart is the man.
If you want to email us your thoughts, you can do so freedom at charliekirk.com.
I will see all of you at AmericaFest at tpusa.com slash AMFEST, tpusa.com slash amfest.
It's going to be amazing.
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.
My goodness, Andy Biggs, James O'Keefe, tpusa.com slash AMFEST, Brantley Gilbert, Dustin Lynch, Raylin, and more.
December 18, 19, 2021.
It's Thanksgiving.
We are thankful for you.
No advertisers on this episode.
Just all of you that support us at charliekirk.com slash support.
I want to thank Megan from Michigan.
Thank you.
Jody from California.
Thank you.
Remy from Alabama.
Thank you.
Patricia from Pennsylvania.
Andrea from Texas.
Lynn from Arizona.
Daniel from Missouri.
Gary from Texas.
Grace from Washington.
Veronique from California.
Deborah from Alabama.
Tricia from Colorado.
And Lindsay from New York.
CharlieKirk.com slash support.
No advertisers this episode.
Just you that support us generously and get behind the work we are doing.
Thank you.
This wonderful Thanksgiving.
We have so much to be thankful for.
We live in the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.
We go through that and more.
Buckle up here.
We go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
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.
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.
That's why we are here.
Hello, America.
Happy Thanksgiving.
I hope you're enjoying your high prices, your congested traffic, your soon-to-be arguments with all of your relatives.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time.
I'm going to talk a little bit about why I think Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, because it is.
And then I want to play some tape here of just some of the incredible news coverage as well as the pile.
I'm going to say, Charlie, what's the pile?
I have Connor do this every holiday.
July 4th, Memorial Day, Christmas.
I say, Connor, go print out the most outrageous takes from liberal media.
The left-wing activist drive-by press.
How about this one?
Is flying home for the holidays bad for the planet?
New York Times.
Seattle Times, the violence at the root of our Thanksgiving myth has been hemispheric.
Greenmatters.com.
Thanksgiving glorifies the abhorrent colonization of indigenous peoples.
I could keep going.
Oh, there's one more I really want to read here.
This one from NBC.
Thanksgiving COVID tips for meals that include unvaccinated guests.
The unwashed.
If you're eating pumpkin pie with the unwashed, NBC News has some advice for you.
How about this one?
Thanksgiving redefined into National Day of Mourning.
And it continues.
So we'll get into all that through the pile.
But I want to talk about what is the philosophical and moral theme of Thanksgiving.
It's gratitude.
Now, I was on Tim Poole's live stream over the summer with a left-wing YouTuber by the name of Vausch.
It was actually a good discussion.
And Vausch asked me, he said, Charlie, what should the goal of education be?
And I said, the goal should be gratitude.
Now, I was ridiculed and attacked from the other side, from the kind of young, self-righteous, narcissistic YouTube class.
I guess gamer people, what would you call these people?
I don't know.
Not against video games.
I'm not a huge fan of them, but if you want to play them in your own time, whatever.
So, and he said, how could you possibly say the goal is gratitude?
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.
It's just incomplete.
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.
Gratitude is necessary to live a happy, full, and complete life.
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.
I have diagnosed America as suffering from Alzheimer's.
America is currently suffering from Alzheimer's.
We do not know our identity, what came before us.
We don't know our history, tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson this week.
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?
What is the number one adjective to describe a patient with Alzheimer's?
Confusion.
And that's where America is today.
We are a confused society.
We're a chaotic society.
We don't know our own pictures on the walls.
America is suffering from a form of dementia and Alzheimer's.
And because of that, we're inherently getting into a posture of being less thankful.
So I'm going to do my best the next couple hours.
It's going to be hard.
I'm going to try to talk about positive news.
Things that we should be thankful for.
So I have a website I go to.
It's run by a bunch of libertarians, and they're nice.
It's called Human Progress.
And it's supposed to be this contemplation of all the positive news happening in the world.
And like every other story is like, soon we'll be able to put on goggles and transcend our existence.
I'm like, okay, I don't like this website very much anymore.
So I was trying to look for some positive news.
I do have some good news to share.
But even if I didn't, we still need to be thankful.
Even if I had no good news to share, it's a moral obligation to be thankful in the midst of suffering or tragedy.
You see, gratitude slows everything down.
See, the Founding Fathers wanted a system.
They wanted a framework.
They wanted a structure that was deliberate and would check and balance the emotions, the rumors, or the madness of crowds.
They wanted to slow things down.
You see, and gratitude inherently sobers the masses.
It adds context amidst revolutionary fervor.
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.
It's not between conservative or liberal.
Those are important divides.
The true divide is between the thankful and the unthankful.
The people that are full of gratitude have more appreciation.
They have a sobriety around the country towards the country around them.
They look at Thomas Jefferson and they say, wow, thank you.
You did something pretty awesome.
The other side looks at Thomas Jefferson and they say, tear it down.
My life is miserable.
And I blame him for that.
You see, gratitude does not mean you have to self-induce your own existence with hopium.
It doesn't mean you have to convince yourself that you're in a better circumstances than you actually are.
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.
And if you are living in the United States of America, you have more than something.
You have a lot to be thankful for.
The greatest, most decent, generous nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
At the root of every evil worldview, atheism, communism, socialism, is ingratitude.
You want to know why the world has fallen apart?
Well, it's fallen apart for a lot of reasons.
One of those is the lack of a citizenry that stops and is thankful.
This is why you see the pile, as I mentioned, that is going after the philosophical and moral roots of Thanksgiving.
Dare I say Thanksgiving is a threat to the left?
The ethos of it is, of course it is.
Now, I'm not saying that every leftist is going to boycott Thanksgiving tomorrow.
I'm sure they're going to enjoy pie and turkey.
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?
Now, trust me, I'm not saying that we don't have to fix anything in this nation.
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.
And of course, thankful for family, thankful for getting through the last couple years.
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.
Do you think Joseph Stalin was a thankful man?
Do you think Mao Cedong was a thankful man?
Do you think Benito Mussolini was a thankful man?
Ingratitude leads to tragedy.
We're going to keep on going into how Thanksgiving started and why it's a moral imperative for us to celebrate it.
You don't have to overthink it.
Just being thankful actually makes you a happier person.
Every single scientific journal shows that.
Ingratitude Leads To Tragedy00:05:40
Maybe that's why the Bible reiterates in very clear words that we must give thanks in all circumstances.
So here's some good advice for your Thanksgiving.
Here's what the Bible says, and then here's what CBS says.
So I want you to compare the two.
Okay?
Are you going to have a biblical Thanksgiving or a CBS Thanksgiving?
Okay.
Let's start with the biblical Thanksgiving.
Do not get drunk on wine.
Okay, let's stop with that.
I hope you guys follow that.
If you don't, you'll pay a price the next morning, which leads to debauchery.
Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.
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.
Okay, that's a biblical Thanksgiving.
Not getting drunk on wine, staying away from debauchery, being filled with the Spirit.
What does CBS want?
Well, CBS recommends that you need to have Thanksgiving in your garage.
And everyone that comes to your house needs a COVID rapid test and then waits for the results before going inside.
Play cut 59.
But the rapid tests have made this a lot easier.
Right.
Because whatever people's vaccination status is, we can actually confirm safety on the spot.
So if it feels like it's going to be weird, maybe make it kind of fun.
Say we're going to start with hors d'oeuvres in the garage.
You know, we'll have drinks.
We'll do our rapid test.
And now come on in, right?
You can make it playful, make it fun.
These people are serious.
I mean, even the hosts laugh.
I mean, it's so outrageous.
And does anyone want to tell them that the vaccine is not preventing people from not getting the virus?
No, but that doesn't matter.
They just assume the premise.
Let's go to cut.
Oh, yeah, cut one.
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.
MSNBC, they say that it's really all about genocide and violence.
Do you see the divide?
The divide versus those that are thankful and unthankful.
Play cut one.
The truth is, pilgrims did not bring turkey, sweet potato pie, or cranberries to Thanksgiving.
They brought nothing of value.
But I'm still trying to figure out what indigenous people received of value.
Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence.
That genocide and violence is still on the menu.
They brought nothing of value.
Well, they did bring the Bible.
Small detail.
They did bring common law.
They also brought Newtonian physics.
Minor details.
Cut 57.
He says, we're still waiting for you to match the mythology of Thanksgiving.
Play cut 57.
They brought channel slavery to Africans and Native people.
That still happens through the prison industrial complex that imprisons the descendants of enslaved Africans.
That is the reality of Thanksgiving.
Many of us are still waiting for white Americans to bring some value, still waiting for white America to match the mythology of Thanksgiving.
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.
Stop the killing.
It's still happening.
Stop the theft.
It's still happening.
Return the land.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
I'm not sure what you're saying.
Would you like fries or something?
Okay, let me just say one thing.
People go to jail because they commit crimes, not because the color of their skin.
Okay, blacks are in jail because of chattel slavery.
No, no, people are in jail because they commit crimes.
For example, the terrorist in Waukesha, the black supremacist, anti-Semitic terrorist.
He's not in jail because of the color of his skin.
He's in jail because he ran over six people and killed them and injured probably 40 others.
Daryl Brooks.
So, this guy, I don't even know this guy's name, Guyasi Ross.
Does he strike you as a thankful person?
No, I get like Stalin vibes from this guy.
I get Robert Mugabe vibes.
Stay away from that.
The point that we must remember is that America's greatness is directly linked with the ethos and the theme of Thanksgiving.
Taking a pause, saying thank you for things you didn't do.
So, what does that mean?
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.
With us right now is a friend of mine and pastor of King's Church in New York City, Pastor David Engelhardt.
We're here to talk about Thanksgiving, how the Puritans were not genocidal maniacs, and also the moral imperative to be thankful.
David, welcome back.
How are you doing?
Hey, Charlie, doing good.
Good to be on with you.
Great to see you.
Okay, let's start with what is the true story of Thanksgiving.
Tell us about the Puritans.
Thanksgiving As Humble Distillation00:15:13
Yeah, so the Puritans were a group of people that they originated in England.
And at the time, in the 1600s in England, you were forced to worship.
There's no freedom of separation.
There's no separation of church and state, right?
There's no allowing people to decide what they want to how they want to worship.
You must worship the Church of England, which is kind of an offshoot of the Roman Catholic Church.
And the separatists, the Puritans, wanted to worship God in their own manner and methods.
So they moved to the Netherlands.
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.
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.
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.
And then if they ever left those basic elements, that then God would curse them and they would be destroyed.
They weren't the first missionaries there, Charlie.
There were other, a lot of Jesuit Catholics were moving throughout Huron land and throughout North America spreading the gospel.
There was a guy, Father Brabuff, and this Jesuit priest was spreading the gospel.
He had a vision of a cross in the sky.
Somebody said, How big is the cross?
He said, It was large enough to crucify us all.
And I know God has called me to go to the new world.
He went to the Iroquois and they tortured him because he was preaching the gospel with baptism.
They tortured him by pouring boiling water over his body to mock the sacrament of baptism.
The father was an amazing man of God.
He didn't even cry out because he didn't cry out.
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.
He still didn't cry out.
He was standing as a representative of God and didn't want to, you know, look cowardly before them.
They peeled off his skin and ate it in front of him and he still didn't cry out.
And then they tore out his heart and ate it because they wanted the courage that he was walking in.
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.
It's the kingdom of heaven to be applied to earth.
And the Puritans came in with exactly the same spirit.
And by the grace of God, they met Squanto, who had been converted by one of these Jesuit priests.
And Squanto, they said, was a gift of God given to them.
Squanto loved the Puritans so much that he lived with them after they landed for the rest of his life.
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.
They were really establishing a place of peace where they could worship God.
And as you know, Charlie, as we both know, the world says the exact opposite.
There's a story in the Smithsonian that cites Bernard Bailyn.
The Smithsonian says he's the greatest historian in America, like the number one guy.
His analysis is, I don't look at their writings.
This is what he said.
He says, he looked at the quality of their culture, the capacity of their minds and patterns of their emotions.
So he didn't read what they said.
He didn't look at really what they did.
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.
And these are the roots of the left's rage.
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.
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.
So the whole story has been completely backwards.
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.
And so talk, how did the idea of thanksgiving then come to be, of the idea of giving thanks to whom?
And then what is, as anyone out there, why should we be thankful?
What is the moral case to be full of gratitude?
Yeah, I mean, the first point of thankfulness is the Puritans were on a ship and they all thought they were going to die.
And so they were like, God, please get us out of here.
And God did and then provided them food and all this, these partnership with Squanto and others.
And so they were saying they were thanking God.
You know, it's a funny thing because secular people, they like to use the terminology thankfulness, but to who?
You're thankful to the universe?
Well, if you're a naturalist, a mechanist, a materialist, you're thankful to a random spattering of molecules.
It doesn't make any sense.
Thankfulness actually has to be directed toward a person, right?
Or a people group.
That's right.
Yes.
Yeah, or a being in our sense.
It's directed specifically towards God.
And on that point, Psalm 100 says, enter his gates with thanksgiving in your hearts.
The whole idea of even coming, approaching God, this first position of approaching.
So in the Old Testament, you have the gates, which leads you into kind of level one of their tabernacle.
And then there's like a holy place, a holy of holies, all these different levels.
Level one of approaching God at all in the scripture is that you approach God with thanksgiving in your heart.
So, you know, for us as believers, thanksgiving is the first and primary position.
The opposite, Charlie, as you are fully aware, is the Garden of Eden, where the serpent says to the woman, look, you're deficient.
Like the rules that you've been given by God are deficient.
You can't even eat the apples of the tree.
You're a deficient creature.
If you ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you would be like God.
Your eyes would be open.
So the first position is ingratitude for the enemy.
The first position for the darkened one is to say, you don't have enough.
You're deficient.
Someone's withholding something from you.
They're to blame.
You're a victim in this.
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.
Or the other side of that picture is actually the gateway to our destruction is in gratitude.
Well, and so talk more about individually.
So some people are going to say, look, I got nothing to be thankful for.
Everything's terrible.
It's falling apart.
Talk about how it's a moral obligation and it's actually good for you.
It's actually a blessing to yourself the more thankful you are.
Yeah, it's a good lesson for human beings to understand that life, we've talked about this a lot.
Life is not a gift, right?
Yeah.
Talk about how is life not a gift, David?
What is it then?
It's funny because we're used to Ugwe, Kung Fu Panda saying life is a gift.
In my book, Good Kills, I talk about this idea.
Life is not a gift.
It's like this, it's actually more akin in the biblical sense to an investment.
It's of incredible value and it's been granted to you by God with certain obligations.
If you get a gift, I give you a guitar for your birthday, you can put in the closet.
You don't have to do anything.
Well, and the best example, David, is I say, can you name every Christmas gift you got the last five years?
And most people are like, I don't remember what I got for Christmas last year.
But you could remember when someone really invested in you.
Time, resources.
Please continue.
Yeah.
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.
And when God grants us life, he says, I want you to be fruitful and multiply.
That's the Genesis mandate, which means I want life to grow.
So why are we talking about how, what does this have to do with Thanksgiving?
Because our primary position as human beings is to say, thank you, God, for life.
I've had a hard life.
You know, the scripture says it's better to be a live dog than a dead lion.
The idea there is life, even as a dog, is way better than death, where you never experience and live and love.
I saw a mom that lost a child recently and she was on this tirade of, God, why would you do this to me?
God, how could you take my son?
God, how could you?
And I understand the pain.
You know, I have kids.
They've been through near-death experiences.
I understand the shake of the heart of a parent.
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.
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.
Thank you, God, for life.
The atheist does the opposite.
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.
And pain is sure a part of everybody's life, but it's not the whole.
It's not even the majority of.
And you said this actually, I don't know if you watched one of these clips before between you were talking.
You were saying, honoring father and mother.
Yes.
Why is that so important?
Well, without them, you don't exist.
You're not a dead lion.
You're a nothing.
You like, you don't even exist.
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.
I agree.
There's a great quote about atheism.
So I love our listeners.
We have the best listeners on the planet.
They're so wise.
This woman comes up to me.
She says, Charlie, I have a quote for you.
I said, what's that?
She said, atheism does not get rid of the pain, but it does get rid of hope.
I said, that is so beautiful.
That's good.
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.
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.
A thankful nation is a peaceful nation.
But when you have ingratitude, you have chaos, you have confusion, you have separation and division.
I'm going to read this scripture to you, and I want you to walk us through this.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, be prayer and petition with thanksgiving.
Present your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
This, of course, is the famous Philippian 4, where there's like three parts of it that people use and they should.
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.
What's the significance of that verse?
We are called to, in all circumstances, be thankful.
Why?
Yeah.
One of the another parallel scriptures first Thessalonians 5, which says, Rejoice, always pray continually.
It's kind of a distillation of the Philippians thought.
Give thanks in every circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.
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.
I'm not sure.
I'm confused.
I don't know if what I'm going to do is a failure.
And it's so hard to move through life with a sense of worry, a sense of fear.
It really freezes you up in your actions.
But if we follow God's order, which is, hey, you don't know what your purpose is.
You don't know what I want you to do.
Here's one of the main things I want you to do.
Be thankful in every circumstances or in every circumstance.
Like, what's my destiny?
Well, your first part of your destiny is to be thankful in every circumstance that you've been put in.
And part of what that does is it allows us actually to accurately assess the things around us with gratitude and grace and favor.
I was thinking about this, Charlie.
Even, you know, people that want to change the country, young people that want to see change and all of these revolutions.
Yeah, right.
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.
We have really a ton of freedoms.
And from that place, I can rightly assess the world around me and then be able to accurately move forward.
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.
And that first position is thankfulness, gratitude.
And as we said in the last segment, that life was granted to me and I'm already up.
I'm not in the red right now.
Like if I'm living and breathing and I'm in the freest country in the world, I'm massively in the black.
I have this massive credit to my account.
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.
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.
And, you know, Charlie, you say we're not, we don't sell hopium.
We don't sell hope and opium together to trick people.
We tell them the truth.
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.
He can still have a great, he can still enjoy his family.
Whatever it is, if we have life, we still have opportunity to turn to God.
And then when we turn to God, then he showers us with his blessing.
Life is special, but it's an investment, not a gift.
You can't do whatever you want with it, basically.
Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
God gives us a directive, specific orders, specific instruction.
Those are laid out in the scripture.
The crazy thing is they're not limiting.
If we do them, then what he asks us in the Genesis mandate, it happens.
Our life multiplies.
Our relationship multiplies.
Life Is An Investment Not Gift00:01:03
If we do the opposite, our life gets darker and tinier and narrower and more painful.
So an anti-thanksgiving spirit is darkness, tininess, less holidays, right?
You're in your garage eating cold stuffing.
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.
It's beautiful.
David Engelhart, pastor of King's Church in New York City.
Everyone should check it out.
We're going to have David back on when his book comes out, Good Kills.
I'm writing the forward to it.
It's special.
David, God bless you.
Have a great Thanksgiving.
I'm thankful for you.
Also thankful to the Lord for putting us together.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your thoughts, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
And if you want to support us, you can do so at charliekirk.com slash support.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.