The Charlie Kirk Show - The Meaning of Christmas with Pastor David Engelhardt of Kings' Church NYC
Aired: 2021-12-24
Duration: 35:08


=== Forgotten Parts of Christmas (15:00) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:02]  Merry Christmas.
[00:00:02]  If 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]  Maybe you're just running some errands and you wanted to pop on our episode.
[00:00:10]  Well, this episode is with Pastor David Englehart, author of the new book, Good Kills.
[00:00:14]  Make sure you check out a copy and buy a copy of Good Kills by Pastor David Engelhart.
[00:00:19]  He's also the pastor of King's Church, New York City, Manhattan.
[00:00:22]  So, 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.
[00:00:28]  It's beautiful, it's wonderful.
[00:00:29]  And he's also a board member of Turning Point USA.
[00:00:31]  If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, you go to tpusa.com.
[00:00:34]  We talk about the veneration of Mary, Saint Nick, should kids earn Christmas gifts.
[00:00:38]  And 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]  I know I got some people upset about that.
[00:00:50]  And you emailed me all your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:54]  If you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:00:58]  That's charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:01:00]  I want to thank William from Illinois.
[00:01:02]  Thank you for your support.
[00:01:03]  Allie from Kentucky, thank you for your support.
[00:01:05]  You're a wonderful monthly supporter.
[00:01:06]  Thank you.
[00:01:07]  Grace from California.
[00:01:08]  Thank you.
[00:01:09]  Stephen from Pennsylvania.
[00:01:10]  Andre from California.
[00:01:12]  Stephanie from Michigan.
[00:01:14]  Also, I want to thank Debbie from Delaware, Ryan from Tennessee, Timothy from California.
[00:01:20]  I also want to thank Eugenia from New Mexico, Tammy from California, and also Susan from California.
[00:01:26]  If you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
[00:01:30]  That's charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:01:34]  If you want to get behind us and help us out, we deeply appreciate it.
[00:01:38]  Merry Christmas, everybody.
[00:01:39]  Pastor David Engelhart is here to walk you through the entire meaning of Christmas biblically.
[00:01:45]  I think you're going to really enjoy it.
[00:01:46]  Buckle up.
[00:01:47]  Here we go.
[00:01:48]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:01:50]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:01:52]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:55]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:59]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:02:00]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:02:01]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
[00:02:08]  Turning point USA.
[00:02:09]  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.
[00:02:18]  That's why we are here.
[00:02:21]  Hey, everybody.
[00:02:21]  This episode is brought to you by my friends at ExpressVPN.
[00:02:26]  Expressvpn.com/slash Charlie.
[00:02:28]  Secure your device, anonymize your online activity, protect your action online.
[00:02:34]  Expressvpn.com/slash Charlie.
[00:02:38]  Help our show out by also helping yourself protect yourself.
[00:02:42]  Expressvpn.com slash Charlie.
[00:02:48]  With us is Pastor David Engelhart, author of a phenomenal new book, Good Kills.
[00:02:53]  And Pastor David Engelhart is going to tell us what that means.
[00:02:56]  And also, we're going to walk through some Christmas themes with him.
[00:03:00]  David, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:03:03]  Hey, Charlie, thanks.
[00:03:04]  Thanks to be on.
[00:03:05]  Good to be on.
[00:03:06]  Christmas, two days before Christmas.
[00:03:08]  I'm always reminded of the Rush Limbaugh Thanksgiving special.
[00:03:14]  And 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]  And why Santa Claus is a really great idea and some of those ideas.
[00:03:26]  It'll be like Rush's Thanksgiving thing, your version.
[00:03:30]  I love that idea.
[00:03:32]  And kind of reminding our listeners of some of the forgotten parts of Christmas.
[00:03:36]  But first, your book, Good Kills, it is awesome.
[00:03:40]  It has some of the themes that I've talked about on this show.
[00:03:43]  And David, if you saw the hate mail I got over talking about some of the stuff that you talk about.
[00:03:49]  So we'll get into all of that later, but talk a little bit about your book.
[00:03:52]  And then I want to get into the Christmas stuff and then we can go through piece by piece.
[00:03:56]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:58]  Well, the book is really a framework for a Christian or a conservative that likes God.
[00:04:05]  It's those two people.
[00:04:06]  It's an intellectual framework that we build out about morality, about justice, about order, about goodness.
[00:04:13]  And 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]  And then on the balancing charity is you must have justice, which is there is right and wrong.
[00:04:29]  There are debts and obligations.
[00:04:30]  You do owe people.
[00:04:32]  You should get punished for doing wrong things.
[00:04:35]  And those basic ideas, we have to have intention moving forward.
[00:04:38]  Now, the left really loves the kindness, the giving money away, taking taxes and spreading it out.
[00:04:45]  They like that.
[00:04:45]  They don't like justice.
[00:04:46]  They don't like punishment of villains.
[00:04:49]  They don't like the death penalty.
[00:04:50]  They're doing away with all of the hard virtues.
[00:04:53]  And the church has done the same.
[00:04:55]  And the church has stopped talking about repentance, the justice of God, that there's eternal blessing and eternal punishment.
[00:05:03]  You know, there's songs that talk about the ocean of God's grace, but they forget to mention the lake of fire.
[00:05:09]  So I build out this framework and say this framework is really important for the Christian.
[00:05:13]  It's been lost today, and we need to be reminded of it that we do, we are full of the chalice of grace.
[00:05:20]  That's what the Christmas season is all about.
[00:05:22]  But there is a balance.
[00:05:23]  God is not shallow and weak.
[00:05:25]  He's incredibly complex and powerful and amazing.
[00:05:29]  And his complexity is because he's both gracious and just at the same time.
[00:05:35]  And he holds that paradox.
[00:05:37]  And 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]  And that combination must be held in tension.
[00:05:57]  And C.S. Lewis did a beautiful job of painting that picture.
[00:06:02]  So let's talk about Santa.
[00:06:04]  Why is the idea of Santa important?
[00:06:06]  What is the real takeaway of Santa Claus?
[00:06:10]  Now, I know we'll have some Christians that will attack us for even mentioning Santa.
[00:06:14]  You as the pastor can pull that card.
[00:06:16]  Explain why should parents listening right now care about Santa?
[00:06:22]  Well, there's a couple of reasons.
[00:06:23]  But first of all, I preached a message last Sunday night, Charlie, called Santa is Great.
[00:06:28]  And at first, people are like, oh my gosh, Santa is great for a number of reasons.
[00:06:32]  First of all, Santa is great because Saint Nick was a real person.
[00:06:36]  And, 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.
[00:06:49]  He's an amazing person.
[00:06:50]  There 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]  And 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]  We're not going to celebrate specific saints, but let's move it to the 25th.
[00:07:09]  So 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]  But Santa, as Saint Nick, we can say he was a pastor, he loved Jesus, and he was amazing.
[00:07:22]  So he gave gifts to kids.
[00:07:24]  That's one reason to like him.
[00:07:26]  But the symbolic reason is even better because Charlie, you know this.
[00:07:31]  We have such a lack of father, of good, beneficent father.
[00:07:36]  We don't have the good father Christmas in our culture.
[00:07:39]  We have Homer Simpson.
[00:07:41]  We have pathetic, facile dads.
[00:07:43]  Every Hollywood representation is the destruction of father.
[00:07:47]  It'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.
[00:07:56]  And they hate that whole idea.
[00:07:58]  The whole construct of father is hated.
[00:08:00]  So 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]  And that's just, that's just the father element.
[00:08:12]  And also the judging of right and wrong.
[00:08:14]  So 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]  The only person that wanted coal for Christmas is Joe Manchin.
[00:08:34]  So because he loves coal.
[00:08:36]  So the, but, but David, talk about that, right?
[00:08:39]  Yeah, let me, please.
[00:08:40]  Yeah.
[00:08:41]  So it's not just a general good concept.
[00:08:45]  It's actually true that the scripture says that the eyes of the Lord travel around the earth.
[00:08:51]  And it does, the psalm says that when I rise up, you know me.
[00:08:55]  When I lie my head down, you know me.
[00:08:57]  So he, so God, Santa is teaching children a lesson.
[00:09:00]  So we say to our kids, Santa's not real, but he's a really fun story.
[00:09:04]  He was a pastor that died a long time ago, but he's a really fun story.
[00:09:08]  It's fun to talk about.
[00:09:09]  And we sing, he sees you when you're sleeping, you know, because those ideas are good that you are being watched by God at all times.
[00:09:17]  Humans need to know that.
[00:09:19]  They need to think about that.
[00:09:20]  They 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]  And the Santa story is you're kind of always being watched by something greater than you.
[00:09:35]  Yes.
[00:09:36]  Yes.
[00:09:37]  And the real clincher on it is you will be judged.
[00:09:42]  There will be a morning that comes one day where we will discover before God that if you are good or not.
[00:09:49]  Now, 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.
[00:10:00]  Christ was a gift.
[00:10:02]  Life is not a gift.
[00:10:03]  Christ is not a gift.
[00:10:04]  It is a gift.
[00:10:04]  We'll get to that a little bit.
[00:10:06]  I've gotten in a lot of trouble over this whole take, David.
[00:10:09]  You've gotten me in this deep, this the deep waters of Christian philosophy.
[00:10:14]  I just got an email about it right now, actually.
[00:10:17]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:18]  Yeah, people don't understand it.
[00:10:19]  Let me just hit that real quick because it's a very simple point.
[00:10:21]  There is nowhere in the Old Testament that ever says life is a gift.
[00:10:25]  There's not a single scripture that says it.
[00:10:27]  Or the New Testament, right?
[00:10:28]  In the Old Testament, it does, or the New Testament that says life.
[00:10:32]  The New Testament expressly specifies that Christ Jesus is a gratuitous gift of God to us that we can receive his grace and love.
[00:10:41]  But life comes with obligations.
[00:10:43]  And when you receive the gift of Christ, you come into the kingdom, you still have a set of obligations.
[00:10:49]  You're still called to walk in righteousness.
[00:10:51]  You're still called to show your faith by works.
[00:10:53]  That's what the book of James tells us to do.
[00:10:56]  But somebody, somebody, my kids go to a homeschooling co-op here in Manhattan.
[00:11:02]  And there's a family that they don't do any presents.
[00:11:05]  They don't give their kids any presents on Christmas and they don't do Christmas at all.
[00:11:10]  They refuse to celebrate it.
[00:11:11]  They'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.
[00:11:24]  I just think, what an insane idea.
[00:11:25]  The 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]  And that's the, there's a justice side and there's a charity side.
[00:11:40]  And we have to be able to walk in both things.
[00:11:42]  And once one of the things that conservatives get pigeonholed on, oh, you guys all just want law and order, law and order.
[00:11:48]  No, we want both.
[00:11:51]  I've been telling you guys about Relief Factor for quite some time.
[00:11:54]  And truth is, I know millions of people are in fact, 100 million people are in some kind of pain.
[00:11:58]  Look, producer Andrew, he couldn't walk.
[00:12:00]  He was a hobbled individual.
[00:12:02]  He was bedridden in his chair, complaining all the time.
[00:12:06]  And then all of a sudden, we got this call from Relief Factor.
[00:12:09]  They said, hey, we want to partner with your show.
[00:12:10]  We're going to send you some Relief Factor.
[00:12:12]  Producer Andrew got it.
[00:12:13]  He took it, got a little bit better, took some more, got a little bit better.
[00:12:17]  Next thing you know, he's doing the Fallsberry flop like you wouldn't believe.
[00:12:20]  In fact, he might be training for an Iron Man.
[00:12:23]  It's pretty, it's pretty incredible.
[00:12:24]  Now, he says it's thanks to Relief Factor.
[00:12:26]  I ask him all the time, Relief Factor.
[00:12:28]  He says relief factor.com, 100% drug-free supplement.
[00:12:31]  You can get it for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day.
[00:12:33]  So go to relieffactor.com and I'm suggesting you order their three-week quick start to see if we can get you out of pain.
[00:12:39]  And then after that, it's less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day to stay out of pain.
[00:12:42]  So go to relieffactor.com.
[00:12:43]  That is relieffactor.com.
[00:12:45]  I'm telling you, a lot of people are in pain.
[00:12:47]  It's 100% drug-free.
[00:12:48]  Don't go to opioids.
[00:12:49]  Don't go to these other things.
[00:12:50]  Check it out at relieffactor.com.
[00:12:56]  So I do a Hillsdale College partnership.
[00:12:58]  Anyone can check it out, charlieforhillsdale.com.
[00:13:02]  And 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]  And 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.
[00:13:27]  Got a lot of pushback on that.
[00:13:29]  Some parents agreed, most disagreed.
[00:13:31]  They said, you don't know what it's like because you're not a parent.
[00:13:33]  Fair enough.
[00:13:34]  That's fine.
[00:13:35]  But I was raised by parents that would always say, hey, if you don't behave, you're not going to get good gifts.
[00:13:41]  And it worked.
[00:13:42]  David, what does the Bible say?
[00:13:44]  What does your book say about this?
[00:13:46]  Well, we start with this premise that life itself is not a gift.
[00:13:50]  And 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]  And 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]  And people have, you know, there's so many parents right now that are buying gaming computers for their kids.
[00:14:16]  They're sold out all over the place.
[00:14:17]  They're like a thousand bucks a pop.
[00:14:19]  I 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]  We don't understand this concept of earning things.
[00:14:32]  It's kind of left our justice is all about what's owed and what's being owed, right?
[00:14:38]  Exactly.
[00:14:38]  If I owe you something, if I, if I harm you, this is a debt from you.
[00:14:42]  That's right.
[00:14:42]  Justice is all about debt.
[00:14:43]  That'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]  It literally uses the terminology debts because justice is about debts being owed or being not owed.

=== Debt to God for Wasted Life (03:04) ===

[00:15:00]  When we come into the world, God doesn't give us life and say you can do whatever you want with it.
[00:15:06]  He says, I have a specific set of instructions for you.
[00:15:09]  I want you to be fruitful.
[00:15:10]  I want you to multiply.
[00:15:12]  I want you to diminish darkness.
[00:15:13]  I want you to be kind.
[00:15:14]  I want you to be just.
[00:15:15]  I want you to be good.
[00:15:17]  Those are the things.
[00:15:18]  And if you're not those things, then you are in debt to God because you're wasting the life he's given you.
[00:15:24]  Now, Christ comes to us as a gift and it's gratuitous.
[00:15:29]  It's unearned.
[00:15:30]  It's unwarranted.
[00:15:31]  It's because God is so good that he loves his enemies.
[00:15:35]  And 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]  So there's a fundamental baseline that children need to be taught about earning things, about justice, about things being owed.
[00:15:50]  But 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.
[00:15:57]  No, I think that's a balance.
[00:15:59]  Yeah, that's a great balance.
[00:16:00]  I 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?
[00:16:07]  I mean, it's completely unbalanced, right?
[00:16:10]  We 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?
[00:16:21]  It'll shut them up, right?
[00:16:22]  That's right.
[00:16:22]  It'll keep them staring at a screen.
[00:16:24]  Yeah.
[00:16:25]  And then drug addiction and all this kind of stuff.
[00:16:27]  Like, oh, my kid's on heroin, but I still give him all kinds of stuff.
[00:16:31]  Well, why don't you at some point say no?
[00:16:33]  That's right.
[00:16:34]  You're not going to be rewarded for that kind of behavior.
[00:16:36]  That's bad for you.
[00:16:37]  The Bible says if you don't discipline your child, you hate him, right?
[00:16:43]  Yeah, I mean, sorry, you cut out for a sec.
[00:16:44]  That's right.
[00:16:45]  And the question is, how do you balance that in the Christmas season?
[00:16:49]  And that's the other thing is that generosity is going above and beyond and trying to also use this as a season to be magnanimous.
[00:16:58]  Right.
[00:16:59]  And but it's definitely got people thinking.
[00:17:04]  Big tech is monitoring, censoring, and mining and selling your online information.
[00:17:09]  Squadpod is the solution.
[00:17:11]  100% U.S. programmed, owned, and operated.
[00:17:15]  Squadpod is a convenient all-in-one app supporting your private connection with others of your choice.
[00:17:21]  It's a terrific technology and it safely brings together your family, friends, team, club, business, or congregation with squad pods, chat, document sharing, discussion, and televideo capabilities.
[00:17:32]  Squad pod applications are encrypted, protecting your communications and content without annoying advertisements.
[00:17:38]  They do not censor, mine, profile, or sell your information.
[00:17:41]  I haven't gotten to know the SquadBod team, and they are true patriots with a mission dedicated to your privacy, safety, and freedom of speech.
[00:17:47]  Join myself and organizations such as Turning Point USA, nonprofits, and churches by adopting SquadPod as your collaboration platform.
[00:17:54]  Take back control of your privacy by going to squadpod.com/slash Charlie.
[00:17:59]  That is squadpod.com/slash Charlie.
[00:18:04]  Okay.

=== Jesus in the Manger (09:49) ===

[00:18:05]  Number two, the need to revere Mary.
[00:18:09]  What do you mean?
[00:18:11]  Well, yeah, so Mary is a picture of carrying the Christ child.
[00:18:18]  Now, obviously, the Catholic Church likes Mary a lot and they like to spend a lot of time with her.
[00:18:24]  Protestants basically ignore Mary.
[00:18:27]  And I think to their great detriment.
[00:18:29]  Yeah, it's a really bad idea.
[00:18:31]  Why is it a bad idea?
[00:18:32]  Because in Mary, we see a picture of Christ coming into someone, right?
[00:18:38]  And growing and the divinity of God fusing with the carnality of man and Christ being formed inside of a person.
[00:18:48]  Well, that's exactly the Christian walk.
[00:18:51]  That's exactly what it's supposed to be.
[00:18:53]  Romans 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]  And 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]  Paul 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]  And it's because God is divinely changing our nature by the Spirit of God indwelling us.
[00:19:36]  And if the church misses that, they miss the first point of the Christmas story, Charlie.
[00:19:40]  And 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]  And 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.
[00:20:04]  You know, it's Mary's song.
[00:20:06]  And so here's the, here's the pathway, Charlie.
[00:20:09]  God comes and meets with us.
[00:20:10]  He, he, he wakes us up on the inside and starts changing us.
[00:20:14]  And then creativity explodes from us.
[00:20:17]  Like we start singing songs and rejoicing.
[00:20:19]  It's a really incredible concept.
[00:20:21]  And I think it begins the whole Christmas story, that point of the carnation of Christ in the incarnation of Christ inside of us.
[00:20:29]  Well, and it's also a great role model for young women, too.
[00:20:32]  Yes.
[00:20:33]  And I agree with you.
[00:20:35]  I think that I'm not a Catholic, but I have a lot of respect for Catholics.
[00:20:39]  Catholics at times can over-venerate Mary and Protestants almost always under-venerate Mary.
[00:20:44]  That's right.
[00:20:44]  I think that's a really good rule of thumb.
[00:20:47]  No room in the manger.
[00:20:49]  What's the lesson here?
[00:20:51]  This is such a fun story.
[00:20:53]  So there is a song in the 2006 called My Humps by Black Eyes Peace.
[00:21:00]  It's a terrible song.
[00:21:01]  I remember it's a terrible song.
[00:21:02]  Why are you mentioning it?
[00:21:04]  It's terrible.
[00:21:05]  I was talking about camels and camel humps as related to the Christmas story.
[00:21:09]  And I talked about that song just because it's such a piece of trash.
[00:21:12]  And I said that people don't know this, but camels, they can humans go like three to five days without water.
[00:21:21]  You're dead.
[00:21:21]  Camels can't just go six or seven days or six or seven weeks.
[00:21:25]  Camels can go six or seven months without drinking water.
[00:21:29]  Isn't that insane?
[00:21:30]  It says in the wintertime, they can go that long without drinking water.
[00:21:33]  Well, a camel is filled up with its own stuff.
[00:21:36]  Water and fat, that hump on its back is actually a fatty hump that is, it's a food storage piece.
[00:21:42]  And Jesus says that you can't, it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
[00:21:48]  Why did he choose a camel and not a whale?
[00:21:51]  Did they not have whales?
[00:21:52]  Could he not think of a bigger animal?
[00:21:54]  No, because he was specifically talking about an animal that's self-sustained, a being that's full of its own stuff.
[00:22:02]  Why is it harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom?
[00:22:05]  Because they're full of their own stuff, their own life, their own busyness.
[00:22:08]  They have no room in the manger.
[00:22:10]  They have no room in the inn.
[00:22:11]  They have no space for God.
[00:22:13]  They haven't created a place for him.
[00:22:14]  And the Christmas story, one of the things centrally it tells us is it's saying, God saying to man, please make room in your life.
[00:22:22]  I want to come to you.
[00:22:23]  It's my desire to know you, but you've made no room for me.
[00:22:27]  And so Jesus ends up in a manger.
[00:22:31]  And 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]  Those who hunger and thirst will be filled.
[00:22:41]  He says, blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[00:22:45]  Why?
[00:22:46]  Because they have need.
[00:22:48]  I said Sunday, Charlie, and this probably offends some people.
[00:22:50]  I said, the poor in America are not blessed.
[00:22:52]  They're cursed because all their needs are met by the government.
[00:22:55]  So 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.
[00:23:04]  So our poor are not blessed.
[00:23:06]  Our poor are accursed.
[00:23:08]  And 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]  And so Jesus likes us having need and having room in our heart, making room for him.
[00:23:24]  And that's why the manger story is so beautiful.
[00:23:26]  And here's the other thing.
[00:23:28]  Here's the cap on it, Charlie.
[00:23:30]  You know, every picture in the manger, Jesus is like in this hay, this animal feeding spot, right?
[00:23:35]  Is it a trough?
[00:23:36]  It's whatever it is, an ancient animal feed spot.
[00:23:39]  Because Jesus doesn't want us to be filled and fed on the things of this world, but we would actually be fed in our relationship with him.
[00:23:47]  He calls himself the bread of life that comes down from heaven that we may receive.
[00:23:53]  That's what communion is all about, reminding us that taking his body, taking his blood, that's what we need.
[00:24:00]  Relationship with God is the thing that truly brings us fulfillment and life.
[00:24:04]  And so he comes in a meal package.
[00:24:07]  A writer said it's a baby in a dog dish.
[00:24:10]  And it's such a crazy idea, but part of the symbolism is that he wants to fill us.
[00:24:15]  We don't need to be filled with a new car.
[00:24:16]  We don't need to be filled like Tucker says, with just another bump in our paycheck.
[00:24:21]  We need to be filled with God's life.
[00:24:23]  And from that place, the rest of life flows.
[00:24:26]  So, David, that was so beautiful.
[00:24:28]  And also, it means making room for God in your schedule, right?
[00:24:31]  Yes.
[00:24:32]  In your finances, right?
[00:24:33]  In your mental space, right?
[00:24:35]  In your time.
[00:24:36]  Talk about that.
[00:24:37]  Where it's in your physical space, too.
[00:24:39]  Do you have a room in your house that might maybe is more dedicated to God?
[00:24:43]  And maybe you don't have many rooms in your house than do you have a chair, right?
[00:24:47]  Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:24:48]  Yeah, I mean, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all of these things will follow after, you know.
[00:24:55]  What about my food?
[00:24:56]  What about my needs?
[00:24:57]  What about all these things?
[00:24:58]  We 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]  But 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]  I'll resolve them by my own hand, or I'll give you the wisdom to resolve them.
[00:25:14]  And so I actually think, you know, David says, I will awaken the dawn with my praise.
[00:25:19]  I 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.
[00:25:33]  I need more God's word in me.
[00:25:35]  I need more scripture.
[00:25:36]  I need to spend time seeking first.
[00:25:38]  Doesn't mean I don't listen to the Charlie Kirk Show daily, subscribe to the Charlie Curry Show podcast.
[00:25:42]  There you go, David.
[00:25:43]  You know it.
[00:25:45]  But first, I seek God, right?
[00:25:47]  First in the morning, I get in the scripture.
[00:25:49]  And 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]  Jesus said that the Pharisees love to go out on the street corner and proclaim their prayers.
[00:26:04]  And he said, don't do that.
[00:26:06]  Go home, go in your closet, be hidden.
[00:26:08]  And what you do in secret, those prayers you pray in secret, the Lord will reward you openly.
[00:26:12]  So there is also something about place and time.
[00:26:16]  And what better example in the Christmas season of the necessity to make room for God?
[00:26:22]  And there, again, it's kind of cliche in Christian circles, like, oh, Christmas has become too commercialized.
[00:26:29]  And of course, it's totally true, obviously.
[00:26:31]  But 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]  Yeah.
[00:26:42]  Of the connection between heaven and earth.
[00:26:46]  And 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]  Okay, so you sent me another prompt here.
[00:26:57]  Maybe you know it, David, as I'm trying to pull it up.
[00:27:00]  And again, Good Kills by Pastor David Engelhart.
[00:27:02]  The last segment, I'm going to really grill you on the book, David.
[00:27:04]  It's going to be a lot of fun.
[00:27:05]  Yeah.
[00:27:06]  Yeah.
[00:27:08]  The other thing that was just important is just the idea of the, sorry, Martin Luther and the gift giving aspect.
[00:27:19]  So we go back and forth of this because it's a paradoxical idea that life is not a gift, but Christ is a gift.
[00:27:25]  That's hard for people's brains.
[00:27:27]  It makes their brains explode, clearly.
[00:27:30]  But we give gifts in part to say, this is how much God loves you, that he would give the gift of his son.
[00:27:37]  And so gift giving should be a part of our faith.
[00:27:40]  And there are certainly times where kids get too many gifts and it spoils them rotten and it actually corrupts their characters.
[00:27:48]  And there's times in Christianity where Christians that they, their pastors never tell them to repent.
[00:27:54]  They don't tell them to deal with sin.

=== The Need for Repentance (02:47) ===

[00:27:55]  They don't tell them to not.
[00:27:56]  And we're definitely yoked in that bad direction right now.
[00:27:58]  Totally.
[00:27:59]  And so our churches are full of divorces.
[00:28:01]  They're God, which God hates.
[00:28:03]  They're full of porn addictions.
[00:28:04]  They're full of all of the filth that's in the world.
[00:28:06]  Just come on in.
[00:28:07]  We'll just keep telling you how many gifts God wants to give you.
[00:28:10]  That's the negative side of it.
[00:28:12]  And that's why we need to remember, we need to talk about repentance.
[00:28:16]  We need to talk about the cross.
[00:28:17]  We need to talk about these hard truths that then make the gift all the more valuable.
[00:28:21]  We don't throw out the idea of gift giving, right?
[00:28:24]  We do say this is important, but it needs to be held in context.
[00:28:28]  Just 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.
[00:28:40]  It's working really hard.
[00:28:42]  Let it eat whatever it wants.
[00:28:43]  It can literally eat as much as it wants as long as it's treading the grain.
[00:28:47]  And 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]  Paul is talking there about paying pastors, actually.
[00:28:58]  He'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.
[00:29:07]  What do you add of your mind?
[00:29:08]  They're praying and they're at the hospital with you.
[00:29:11]  They're all this kind of stuff.
[00:29:12]  Why would you want them to be in poverty as well?
[00:29:15]  That's a stupid idea.
[00:29:17]  But that's a whole, that's another book.
[00:29:19]  That's another future book.
[00:29:24]  Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
[00:29:25]  Legacy Box is the easiest and safest way to reclaim all the priceless footage you have not seen in years.
[00:29:31]  Send in your legacy box filled with aging VHS tapes, camcorder tapes, film reels, and pictures, and their team will professionally digitize everything by hand.
[00:29:39]  The countdown to Christmas is on and join millions of people who've trusted Legacy Box to safeguard their most recorded moments.
[00:29:47]  Protect your treasure tapes, film reels, and photos from floods, mold, or even the decay of time.
[00:29:52]  We need to future-proof your family's legacy, need to keep you informed, and Legacy Box is in stock and ready to ship.
[00:29:58]  Wrap up your Christmas shopping now.
[00:30:00]  Prices are under $40.
[00:30:02]  They're in stock and ready to ship.
[00:30:03]  And with Christmas just around the corner, there's still time to buy the best Christmas gift ever.
[00:30:07]  Go to legacybox.com slash Kirk to take advantage.
[00:30:10]  That's legacybox.com slash Kirk.
[00:30:13]  LegacyBox.com slash Kirk for an exclusive offer.
[00:30:16]  Check it out.
[00:30:16]  A lot of people at Turning Point USA have used Legacy Box.
[00:30:19]  It's a great product.
[00:30:20]  I could tell you, I used it.
[00:30:22]  Check it out right now.
[00:30:23]  LegacyBox.com slash Kirk.
[00:30:28]  David, so let's talk about, there's this new article.
[00:30:32]  You 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.

=== Sexuality as a Dangerous Gift (04:25) ===

[00:30:42]  Did you see this story?
[00:30:42]  It was almost nothing.
[00:30:43]  Yeah, I saw it.
[00:30:45]  I saw some images from it.
[00:30:46]  It was horrific and deeply disturbing.
[00:30:50]  I showed my boys it actually.
[00:30:52]  And I have a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old.
[00:30:55]  And 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]  You 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]  You can read that in Eric Metaxas' book about atheism.
[00:31:30]  But the idea is the names of the town, one is named Place of Burning.
[00:31:34]  The other one is playing named essentially place of drowning, Gomorrah, Sodom and Gomorrah.
[00:31:40]  These are both good things.
[00:31:41]  They're blessings.
[00:31:42]  Fire and water are blessings.
[00:31:43]  But when fire gets out of the fireplace, it spreads throughout the community or house and kills everyone.
[00:31:50]  When water leaves the banks and boundaries that it's God's intended natural place for it, we all drown and die.
[00:31:57]  And 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]  How do we die?
[00:32:11]  Well, 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]  I mean, that's a really easy way to end a society.
[00:32:18]  I mean, it's not, it doesn't take a brain scientist to figure that out.
[00:32:21]  It 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]  Like that's not, it's not a reality, right?
[00:32:31]  In their fiction.
[00:32:33]  And so sexual anarchy is, I'm throwing out God's order.
[00:32:36]  And when I do that, I think it's a great fun idea.
[00:32:39]  I'm being creative and having fun with my life.
[00:32:41]  I used it, David.
[00:32:41]  You saw how viral that went.
[00:32:43]  Yeah, that was fun.
[00:32:44]  I think you got 50,000 retweets on that phrase.
[00:32:47]  It was trending somewhere because people were so taken back by the phrase.
[00:32:51]  It was beautiful.
[00:32:52]  Yeah, 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]  If 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]  And then it goes into now children getting transgender surgery.
[00:33:14]  No one would have ever imagined that that would have been that would be illegal 30 years ago, Charlie.
[00:33:19]  Unimaginable.
[00:33:19]  It's not just legal.
[00:33:20]  It's subsidized and encouraged in certain situations.
[00:33:24]  And so we have two minutes, Good Kills by David Engelhart.
[00:33:27]  Let's get to the theme of it.
[00:33:29]  So 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]  Yeah, I'm making, no, I'm making a, well, here's my argument.
[00:33:43]  Good must kill that idea.
[00:33:45]  Good must destroy the idea that sexual anarchy is going to make me feel better because it doesn't.
[00:33:51]  Sexual anarchy will destroy you and make you want to kill yourself and commit suicide.
[00:33:56]  It destroys life itself.
[00:33:57]  So if good as the sword doesn't cut off the rotting things, we will all rot.
[00:34:03]  And we as a culture and we as a society must cut off the rotting things or we ourselves will rot.
[00:34:08]  What does that mean?
[00:34:09]  That means different borders, different communities.
[00:34:12]  That means whatever it means.
[00:34:13]  It obviously doesn't mean we want to go around killing people.
[00:34:15]  That's an insane interpretation.
[00:34:17]  The poetic license that I'm using is the sword kills cancer.
[00:34:22]  It takes it away from the body.
[00:34:23]  And we must have ideas that separate us from the milieu of lukewarm vomit that is the philosophy of our current day.
[00:34:32]  Yes, that's right.
[00:34:34]  So Good Kills by David Engelhart.
[00:34:37]  Check it out.
[00:34:37]  David, I love having you on the show.
[00:34:39]  Have a wonderful Christmas.
[00:34:40]  You dove into all these different topics so beautifully.
[00:34:42]  We're going to have to have you come back.
[00:34:43]  And everybody, if you're in New York or traveling through New York, check out the King's Church.
[00:34:48]  They do a great job, truly.
[00:34:50]  Thanks, Charlie.
[00:34:50]  Check it out.
[00:34:51]  You're a good friend, David.
[00:34:52]  God bless you.
[00:34:52]  Thank you.
[00:34:53]  Merry Christmas, everybody.
[00:34:54]  Email us your thoughts as always.
[00:34:55]  Freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:34:57]  Enjoy all the new episodes we are going to be posting.
[00:34:59]  I think you'll love it.
[00:35:00]  God bless you guys.
[00:35:01]  Speak to you soon.
[00:35:04]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.