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Nov. 24, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
01:31:08
How To Be a Bold Man — LIVE from Generation Church
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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AmericaFest: An Incredible Calling 00:15:13
Hey everybody, happy Friday.
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That's freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with turning pointusa at tpusa.com.
My conversation in Mesa in front of a group of men.
I think you'll really like it.
Buckle up, everybody.
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.
Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
These guys like you.
Wow.
You guys know there's a baseball game on, right?
It's not going well.
So I just tell you.
But it's not.
I mean, you can chuck it.
Oh, man.
Hey, watching it backstage.
Thanks for being with us.
Thank you.
Yeah, man.
You're doing a great job.
Thank you.
Well, a little bit about Charlie.
Those of you guys who don't know him, he was an Eagle Scout at a young age.
Technically, still am.
You don't stop.
Okay, that's a good point.
So those of you that are Eagle Scouts, you know that it's He's the founder of Turning Point USA.
Yeah.
And he is hosted the Charlie Kirk Show.
At one point, he was named to Forbes' 30 under 30 list, which is a crazy.
Has one of the top 10 most engaged Twitter, formerly known as Twitter X accounts.
Sounds so dirty.
Yeah.
I don't have a top 10 X account.
That doesn't.
No.
He's an author, a husband, a father.
And I can tell you this, this is true.
Charlie is a devoted follower of Jesus Christ.
And I know with how much notoriety he has, you might wonder, like, well, what's he really like?
I can just tell you from time with him in private, he's humble, he's kind, he cares about people, and he really does exhibit Jesus and how he carries himself.
So he's a real deal.
I just want to honor you for that.
That's very kind.
Thank you.
Thank you, Rand.
Thank you.
So I was hoping to just kind of start with this.
Could you give us some of the backstory of you going from a young man who was first year college student, I believe, and you ended up starting Turning Point USA at a young age?
Can you just kind of talk about what that was like and what led up to that?
And when did it become clear to you that that was God's calling for your life?
Yeah, again, honored to be here, everybody.
So, yeah, I mean, I started Turning Point USA when I was 18 years old.
Prior to that, in fifth grade, I gave my life to the Lord, most important decision I made in my life.
And we need to talk as men more openly about that and how everything else in life is cool and fine, but that is the most important decision.
And so that really set me on a course to pursue truth.
I believe the center of everything we believe as Christians is the truth, not lies.
And we should seek truth in everything that we do.
And so when I was 18 years old, I wanted to go to West Point, didn't get in, decided to take a gap year.
It's been 11 gap years since then.
We'll see if I go back.
And there's one narrative in the Bible, one story in the Bible that just pops open, which there's really two starts to the Bible.
There's Genesis 1-1 and then Genesis 12-1.
Genesis 12-1 is really the beginning of the Hebrews, right?
Abram, because everything before that, you have Cain and Abel, Noah, and then obviously ends with the city of Babel.
And then there's this guy that comes out of nowhere, Abram.
And basically the first couple of verses is, leave your father's home and go on an adventure.
And that's as close as the story to Turning Point USA.
And I didn't go to Egypt or try to sell my wife to Pharaoh, but that's a separate issue.
So, but, you know, did have narrowly avoided death and thought about changing my name.
But that's separate.
But yeah, no, I went on an adventure, and it's been wild and crazy and unexpected.
And quite honestly, beyond my wildest imagination.
What started as just me with an idea and maybe a couple close friends has turned into the largest movement of its kind, the largest conservative student movement in the country on thousands of high school and college campuses.
Our social media footprint is beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
We have been blessed with incredible graduates.
Candace Owens started with us at Turning Point USA, Brandon Tatum, Ana Paulina, who's a member of Congress, started at Turning Point USA.
We have hundreds of thousands of students that are still part of Turning Point.
We have TPUSA Faith, which is trying to strengthen the American church and kick wokeism out of American Christianity.
So we have a lot going on.
And it's been an amazing 11 years.
And the Lord has had his blessing on us every step of the way.
It's definitely clear.
The Lord's blessing is on it.
I think about those early years.
There was probably a point where you felt like, okay, this is definitely God's calling for me, his purpose for me.
And there's probably a lot of guys in the room who are trying to figure out their purpose.
What was it like for you when it started to crystallize?
Like, God definitely made me for this and is calling me to this.
Yeah, the best answer I have is I first knew what wasn't my purpose.
And my purpose I knew was not to go get a meaningless piece of paper from some, you know, Midwest university.
And that's a controversial thing to believe.
11 years ago, even so to this day, it's kind of built into upper middle class suburban society that if you're a good student, Eagle Scout, you know, get A's, you play football, basketball, you're in honor society, you take AP classes like I did, it's not a matter of if you are going to college, it's where you're going to college.
And for I didn't get into West Point and I was on my own financially of what college I was going to go to.
So I had to borrow the money and it didn't feel right to go study, you know, go borrow $70,000, $80,000 to go study North African lesbian poetry or whatever they do now at these schools.
And so I knew what I didn't want to do.
And somebody gave me some great advice early on, which is, Charlie, you have a couple gifts.
If you enjoy those gifts, even better.
So follow the gifts that you enjoy and then see what God has in store for you.
And so I've always loved speaking.
I love making arguments.
I love learning.
And those are things that I'm better than average at.
And there's some things I'm not so good at.
And so I said, okay, I'll just start speaking and see what happens.
And I learned along the way that I also am kind of a natural entrepreneur.
I like building things.
I like taking risks.
And so, yeah, I just kind of did that along the way.
And it's just been this amazing journey.
But honestly, it's about trial and error and testing what you are doing to God's perfect and pleasing will, which it says very, you know, clearly in the scriptures.
I mean, Philippians 4:10, right?
Whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is beautiful, think on those things, testing those to God's perfect and pleasing will.
And you just have to always do that.
Is what you're doing to the glory of God or to the rebellion of God's law, right?
Constantly comparing that.
And, you know, there's a great quote that Luther had, which is that, you know, someone who makes shoes, who's a Christian, doesn't glorify God by putting a cross in every single shoe, right?
He glorifies God by doing beautiful and excellent things and sharing the gospel where appropriate.
And I think we lose that sometimes.
We feel as if, you know, I'm not glorifying God if I'm a plumber or a welder because I'm not in the ministry.
No, everything is your ministry.
Your life is your ministry, right?
How you build your family, the value you create.
And so, you know, for me personally, I was a little uncomfortable at times because I was told by some Christians, you know, Charlie, you're not doing your highest calling because you're not being a pastor.
You're not running a church.
You know, my now pastor, Rob McCoy, is here in the front row, and he affirmed that actually what I was doing was fighting for God's natural law, fighting for the principles that are laid out in the eternal scriptures that built our civilization.
And, you know, even more importantly, that trying to rescue a generation that is lost in misery and despair and deception that is looking for the truth and only the truth of Jesus Christ can set them free.
And, you know, like all things, and those of you that have built businesses know this, once you get momentum, that's really the key, right?
So going from zero to one is the hardest thing.
Going from one to two is way easier than zero to one.
And going two to four is easier and four to eight.
And then before you know it, you know, what just started as yourself is, you know, we now have 450 employees, right?
And 300,000 donors across the country.
And it's all God that has done that, right?
I'm just saying that.
And then constantly comparing, am I doing, am what I doing is to the glory of God?
And that doesn't mean that you don't make mistakes, you're not sinful, and you don't, you know, are in error off the target.
That's what literally sin means in the scriptures.
But I found that along the way that God was, there were so many God moments, Ryan, so many blessings that would defy reason that I knew that I was on the correct path.
So good.
I have to point out, I too was a West Point reject.
We have that in common.
Yeah.
You still served your country.
And I did not.
You are also serving your country.
We have some West Point grads in the church, but us West Point rejects are just trying to make something of ourselves.
I want to just point out a couple of things that he said, though.
What he felt like his calling was, it aligned with God's word and his gifting.
And he had older, wiser, godly men who affirmed this calling.
And at that intersection, man, when you are at that point, you can have a lot of confidence that you're stepping in a good direction.
You're likely to step into God's will for your life.
Yeah.
And I mean, there's a couple stories that really pop open to me.
My second favorite character of the Bible, I got in so much trouble because I said it was my favorite and I had a revolt.
Jesus is my favorite character for the record.
Okay.
So my second favorite is Moses.
I think he's awesome in so many different ways, right?
And he was living a great life.
He actually got along with his father-in-law, Jethro, which is amazing.
And, you know, he's kind of just chilling out at Midian.
God's like, nope, I'm taking you and you're going to go, you know, lead the most, you know, the group of the least impressive people that I could possibly find, the Hebrews, that are going to complain the entire time and never give you any credit.
And you're going to want to quit and lead them to the promised land.
And this guy was faithful.
And by the way, one of my favorite, Numbers 12 is one of my favorite books, the whole Bible, because he, you know, God is writing through Moses, but I think Moses put this in himself.
And Moses was the meekest man.
Like, yeah, okay, God.
Thanks.
Thanks, Moses.
Right?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
So, okay, hold on a second.
You're so meek that you write that about yourself.
It was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Of course it was.
No, I'm not saying it.
I'm saying that's how you know everything else is true.
So true.
Because anyway, that's a separate issue.
But what I love about the story of Moses is one of obedience and duty and that it was God's call on his life to do something adventurous and something bold.
He was not just a philosopher, not just a leader, but he was an Eved.
And that's an interesting word as men.
So Eved in Hebrew means slave, but it also means servant.
It's interchangeable.
And you think about that, you're like, wow.
So here's a guy who is rescuing people who are slaves who is called a slave to God.
That's incredible, right?
So he's someone that is leading slaves out of slavery, but under, and you could go servant or slave.
It's interchangeable in the Hebrew, right?
But I think it's powerful because he's thought of as the greatest Jew ever to live in traditional Judaism.
It's hard to disagree.
And this is a guy who committed his whole life to God, submitted.
And what's even more amazing is that it did not end the way he thought it would, right?
He didn't get into the promised land, but he played his part.
Maybe for us, we're not, it's not going to end the way we always want it to, but you obediently play your part.
And it might take a Joshua generation to continue it forward.
But you play your role, you do your part, you listen to God, and you trust his plan.
Yeah, so good.
Isn't it ironic that like Paul said, I'm a slave to Christ.
And that's exactly.
The truest freedom comes from voluntarily submitting your life to Christ.
Playing Your Part Obediently 00:08:54
So good.
Now, as a dad, looking back on your childhood and all that you're carrying today, when you think, because we've been talking about marriage in our church recently and fatherhood and parenting, what are some of the things you think your parents did?
No parents are perfect, but what are some of the things that they did that you feel like best prepared you for what now God is using you to do?
Yeah, I mean, my parents were amazing and are amazing.
And they were the opposite of helicopter parents.
Now there's like snowplow parents where they want to remove all obstacles, right?
They were firm.
They were they instilled character, but they came from a very interesting background where they were very bohemian in some ways, if you know what I mean.
They were like, okay, be home at nine.
And that was amazing.
And I think kids are totally missing that.
There was, for those of you that were raised that way, you know exactly what I mean.
There was no cell phones.
It was be home by when it's a little bit after dark.
And there was almost a spirit of self-governance that had to set in where my parents literally sometimes had no idea where I was and I had no idea where I was.
And you had to kind of figure out your way home.
And I talked to some of these parents.
It's deeply unhealthy sometimes.
And honestly, I see where it comes from.
Like, you know, you constantly check in.
I have a daughter now.
You're constantly worried about it.
And I'm not sure what's better, but I know what was good for me.
You know, and I'm not trying to tell you parenting advice.
I just know what worked for me is that my parents were kind of like, okay, if you don't want to go to college, then that's your, that's your choice.
And that's unusual, everybody, right?
Most parents would be like, no, you're going to college.
You're getting the piece of paper.
You're going to get the diploma.
My parents are like, okay, if you want to do that, that's perfectly fine.
But also very high standards.
And they refused to allow me to settle.
And at the same time, if I came home and I had a C, they'd be like, okay, you're going to have to live with that.
It wasn't shame culture.
And it was kind of like, you're going to have to take responsibility for your own actions and you're going to have to figure it out.
And for me, I mean, that really worked.
And so at the same time, they were incredibly present at sporting events, not overly so where it was obnoxious.
You guys know what I mean, but it was never a question of were they supporting me.
That's very, very important, right?
That they were there, that they were watching.
They never interfered, you know, with coaches or any of that stuff.
But it was if I wanted to practice, they were there to help me practice, right?
They were always over the top supportive with anything that I wanted to do to push myself to get better, trainers or pouring into.
I think they struck a pretty amazing balance.
And they're not nearly as political as I am, which is the hilarious part of all this, because it really was, you know, set your own course and do what you want to do.
But yeah, also, and the final thing I'll say is they made a point, and I'll be eternally, you know, in their debt for this.
At second grade, they said, I don't know why they said it, but they said, you need to go to Christian school, right?
And third, fourth, and fifth grade, three years of Christian school in third, fourth, and fifth grade, never went back, changed my entire life.
That's it.
And, you know, you think of we now reach millions of people for the gospel every week, right?
And third, fourth, and fifth grade changed my life and potentially, you know, now the impact of everything that we're doing, you know, through our outreach.
And so something to think about.
Maybe some of you that have young kids, you might say, ah, does it really matter to put them in Christian education?
Maybe, maybe not.
Not everyone that goes to Christian education doesn't stick, right?
But for me, it was what I needed to hear.
It was the most formative years.
And I went to government school after that, you know, sixth, seventh, eighth grade in high school.
And, you know, I didn't lose my faith.
It actually strengthened it.
It's good.
I think a lot of parents are thinking about Christian school right now.
And I just heard Fadi Bochum said, if you give your kids to Caesar, don't be surprised if they come back as Romans.
So I think parents really have to wrestle with that right now.
How are we going to protect our kids from the indoctrination that society wants to force upon them?
I want to ask you about this, Charlie.
So we encourage our church and the men in our church to be bold, to stand up for what's right, to represent the Lord in the world.
But then we know that that brings potential backlash.
Very few people understand that like you do.
As a leader, as a pastor, you know, we understand what it's like to get attacked, unfairly accused, criticized.
But you understand that on another level.
And I know you're not going to whine about it.
Sometimes I'm even concerned about you.
And I'm like, how are you doing?
You're like, I'm fine.
Yeah.
But I think there's a lot of people that are not used to being outspoken and bold in their faith.
And they're worried, like, well, what if I deal with backlash?
What if I deal with criticism?
What if I lose friends?
So, can you talk about all the backlash you face?
Literally, there are people who are constantly criticizing you.
How have you personally fortified?
I would settle for criticizing.
I mean, I'm probably one of the most hated people in the country.
It's not an exaggeration, right?
There's a whole cottage industry dedicated towards trying to put me in jail, hate me.
It's not a joke, right?
There's entire full-time people, both in our government, Washington Post, New York Times, that want to destroy my entire life.
And thank God we have a hedge protection around us, and we're not going to let them win, as long as that's God's will.
And I don't say it as whining.
And I will say, for those of you, here's what I will say with this.
Number one, it gets easier.
When I was first into this, the attacks really, really impacted me.
I wasn't necessarily born this way.
I had a predisposition not to care.
But yeah, when the New York Times used to run a front page story about me, it used to really hurt.
I used to really have normal stuff that most people deal with.
When you have four full-time reporters from the biggest news agencies internationally going to high school kids that you went to high school with, trying to get dirt on you like you're Brett Kavanaugh, right?
That used to really bother you.
Now it's called Tuesday, right?
And so you, like all things, for those of you that run businesses, you know this, the first time you had to fire somebody, it's really hard.
I'm not saying it gets easier, but you develop muscles, right?
And the same thing, by the way, for those of you that might be terrified of public speaking, you know this, right, Ryan?
It's not that it was ever easy.
We might have had a natural gift thing, but it gets easier, right?
And so for those of you that might say, I don't know if I can withstand the attacks, you have to, first of all, you have to understand that it does get easier.
You build up the muscle for it.
You recognize and realize who your true friends actually are.
You make new friends too.
And I mean, call me like an old-fashioned Christian.
I think that your success is actually measured by how much you are persecuted for telling the truth.
And the people that I respect the most in this country are the people that are constantly under barrage and constantly under attack, you know, for telling the truth.
So I'm not whining about it.
I think it's amazing and it's awesome because I think it's a validation of what I am doing is important.
And especially as men, we should not allow, you know, the false and nonsensical criticisms to destabilize us.
I think that when women make that excuse, I actually empathize with them a lot more.
They're far more emotionally driven.
They're far more agreeable.
They're built.
They're built for relationships.
They're built.
I mean, they can't go to the bathroom alone.
Their whole world is about social acceptance and being tied.
It's right.
I mean, the whole thing is about, I want the people around me to like me.
That's why a lot of them are culturally liberal and politically liberal is because they don't want to disagree with the rest of the mobs.
They just go along, right?
And that's why men must lead revolutions for truth because we're less agreeable to nonsense and crap.
It's not to say that women can't be, but it's the male role to lead forth against the lie.
Women are less likely to do that.
And so, but yeah, look, I guess your question was advice or for that.
I mean, at one point, it came out recently that you were one of the accounts that was blacklisted and suppressed on Twitter.
By name, yeah, you were one of the accounts.
First off, did you know that that was happening to you?
Well, I mean, yes, but I was called a conspiracy theory.
It's so funny.
I mean, these people are hilarious.
So I felt like a crazy person.
I was like, Twitter is blacklisting me.
Like, you're a conspiracy theorist.
You're QAnon.
I'm like, no, they are.
I can tell.
And, you know, no one listens.
And then Elon Musk, praise God, buys Twitter and releases.
Big daddy Elon.
Yeah, exactly.
Save the day.
He releases all these documents, and it turns out that there was like a special blacklist with two names on it, Dan Bongino and Charlie Kirk on it, right?
Great company, by the way.
Male and Female Distinctions 00:11:36
I'll take it.
So I love Dan.
He's a man's man.
He's a great person.
Anyway, so yeah, look, I...
It says very in James 1, one of my favorite chapters of the word, first of all, it says, pray for wisdom and God will give it to you generously, but blessed are you who are persecuted.
Jesus specifically said that.
And if you guys want a little bit of a truth, you know, missile for you tonight, if you're not persecuted, you're probably not telling a lot of truth.
And that's good.
If you have an easy life, you're probably being a coward.
Amen.
I endorse that.
So do you feel like you have dealt with spiritual warfare in this world?
Oh, yeah, without a doubt.
And, you know, and especially the last couple of years, and this is something that we as men must realize, you know, the scriptures tell us that Satan or his platoon, because Satan is not ubiquitous, he's not omnipotent, he's not omnipresent, but he does have demons, which are fallen angels that are able to create chaos and discord, especially in the mind.
They have certain vectors that they're able to attach onto.
The first being the flesh.
This is one of the main reasons why the scriptures are so clear about guarding your flesh and guarding against your flesh.
That's why the spiritual discipline of fasting is a superpower against Satan and spiritual activity because it's you consciously saying, my flesh does not dominate me, right?
I'm going to say no to what I think I want.
I'm not going to starve to death.
So one thing for me is fasting at least once a week for 24 hours minimum has been a game changer for me.
But yes, I mean, so, and then also the consumption of pornography and or the wandering eye for a man is the most, is the easiest superhighway for Satan to get into a man to be able to throw them off their marriage, throw them off their job.
We as men must do a much better job of elevating and celebrating how awesome marriage and raising kids is.
And we must do a much better job.
And I loop myself into this.
I say us together.
We must do a much better job of also warning and protecting young men from pornography.
I struggled with pornography at a young age.
And there was not a single church ministry or person that understood that it is the modern day digital heroin.
It is more dangerous than I think anyone realizes.
There is a book by a now deceased secular neuroscientist.
His name is Gary Wilson, Your Brain on Porn.
If there was one book that you, as a father of a son or as a leader in a church, should read and internalize, it is that book.
It will blow your mind to the actual neural pathway changes, how it changes the plasticity nearly permanently of a young man of even 30 minutes of pornography consumption a week.
And if you have sons, they're probably watching a lot more pornography than that.
And it's not a joke, by the way.
I get emails from parents all the time.
Charlie, I know you say my son watched porn.
I thought you were joking, and then I realized they were.
How do I handle it?
And we can go into that if you want.
But if there's just one thing, please do your best to protect your sons or the men in your life from this satanic invasion of the next generation.
And we, and so moms and women are built to help sons and young men from certain attacks.
We as men are far more effective in telling young men to avoid sexual sin than moms or women.
A father figure is far more important and more effective.
And so think about that however you want.
And so anyway, and thankfully I've, you know, broke free of that and all those different things that young men struggle with.
Do we still have that link up on the app?
If you are struggling with pornography, if you open up our church app on the homepage, it just says struggling with porn.
You can join one of our conquer groups.
We'll help you overcome that and get freedom.
I think it's so important, something we've talked about recently.
You text me this article in the summer from The Hill, July 31st.
It said, high school boys are trending conservative.
And the narrative has been that all young people are constantly getting more liberal.
So what's causing this, you think, for high school boys?
Yeah, this is great news, everybody, by the way.
10 years ago, this was not the case.
A majority of high school boys 10 years ago were far, far to the left.
Look, the whole world is against men right now.
And we need to be honest.
This is not about being a victim or whining or complaining, but from the media that we consume to the one-liners that we say to if you think about just an average sitcom, a cartoon sitcom, the father figure is almost always overweight, bumbling, and a moron.
And the man is portrayed as, you know, kind of an afterthought.
And it's the mom or the female that is smart and is the problem solver.
That's just one example of hundreds that I could give.
Not to mention our entire education system is feminized.
We have sperm rates and testosterone rates down 80% over the last 20 years.
And not a single political leader in either party wants to ask the question why.
I mean, instead of a stupid hearing on UFOs, I would rather have a hearing on like, why are testosterone rates down 80%?
Like, that's pretty important, right?
And by the way, you can see it in just how so many, you know, supposed, and don't worry, Ryan, you're exempt from all this.
How many supposed Christian pastors, like they dress like metrosexual women and they talk like women?
And it like the feminization of Christian men is very disturbing to me.
And I won't say any names.
You know who I'm talking about.
We know.
Yeah, exactly.
I know.
But no, but it's a deeper point, though, is that young 14, 15, and 16-year-old men are, you know, lectured about toxic masculinity.
They're told that there's something inherently wrong about being a man and that they see this trans movement, which is from the pit of hell saying that you should change your gender, change your sex.
And they're looking for anything that affirms them as being a man.
And the only bad part about this poll, everybody, is they're actually not looking to the church because the church has been infected by the spirit of Jezebel.
The church has largely become a feminist institution of female pastors and all that stuff.
And I'm not saying I personally don't believe in female pastors, but I'm just saying that we've overplayed our, I don't know if that's the position of this church.
I don't mean to offend you.
I just don't.
I think that allowing the feminization of the American church has been a tragic mistake.
And so where do they go?
Well, they don't go to the church because everything's feminized.
They go to Andrew Tate.
And if you don't know who Andrew Tate is, how many of you guys know who Andrew Tate is, by the way?
Okay, that's actually more than I thought.
That's good.
You should know that Andrew Tate is more popular.
He's an outspoken Muslim online influencer with young men than any Christian.
Joe Rogan is more influential.
And we should ask ourselves the question, why is it that Andrew Tate, who's a kickboxing Muslim, is more popular than any outspoken Christian?
Why is it Joe Rogan, who is a like mushroom LSD taking, you know, jujitsu, UFC commentating, rather salty language communicator, more popular?
By the way, I like Joe Rogan a lot.
I, you know, I don't, I don't agree with him a lot, but I think he's very effective.
And the answer is honestly, they're embracing a, not just an aesthetic, but a line of thinking that empowers 15, 16, and 17, 18-year-old men.
What I'm going after, everybody, is there is a harvest opportunity for young men for the American church and for Christianity, unlike anything we have ever seen before.
And let's lean in.
Let's lean into that.
Yeah.
And that's one of the reasons why about two years ago, we started really emphasizing our men's ministry.
You know, at our church, we do believe that a husband is ahead of his wife, that churches should be primarily led by a man, that men should lead the way spiritually, and that when we follow God's pattern in that way, God blesses it.
But you're right.
Churches have been feminized in many places because men have failed to take the lead.
Yeah.
And so let's talk about this for a second.
Male-female differences fascinate me.
Okay.
And so part of the trans movement is trying to destroy the distinctions that God established in Genesis 1 through 11.
Okay.
So God created separation and order.
And God, in one of the days of creation, God literally organized things.
He didn't create anything new.
He created expanse, right?
He created differences, right?
Differences between night and day, good and evil, holy, profane, man and woman, man and nature, God and nature.
These distinctions keep us free.
But let's talk about the distinctions between male and female.
We're completely different, right?
Women use way too many words, in my opinion.
It takes two hours to say something, right?
You know, for men, it's like, yeah, got it.
You know, it's game over, right?
And it's like, we got it.
I'm actually talking about communication in marriage this Sunday.
So I'm going to help some of you guys with that problem, by the way.
And so this is one of the things.
It's a sidebar, but it's necessary.
This is why I'm so against homosexual marriage, not marriage.
It's glorified narcissism, right?
It's more of the same.
It's men who want more of themselves or women who want more of themselves.
If you're married, you don't get more of yourself.
You get something completely and totally different, and you spend the rest of your life realizing how different you are from women, right?
So homosexuality is nothing more than I am super important.
So I'm in love with myself.
I want to marry the mirror, right?
That's what homosexuality is.
And we need to be more clear in the church about that.
So the distinctions in Genesis 1 through 11 set up the difference between male and female.
And these differences are beautiful and important.
But as a society, we have overemphasized all of the feminine traits and we've de-emphasized all of the masculine traits.
And so feminine traits are obviously compassion and empathy and sympathy and listening.
And those are important.
But if you design a civilization only on the feminine and you have none of the masculine, which is about purpose, grittiness, discipline, self-control, dare I even say courage, you know, vision casting, more macro, well, then your society will collapse.
And so we only teach our young people what happens if a society gets too masculine, right?
You think of Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin.
What happens if a society gets too feminine?
We never even ask that question, right?
You get equally, if not worse, tyranny if a society gets too feminine.
And so here's the best way.
And here's the ultimate red pill for those of you guys that want to try to blow the brain, you know, like if there's a relative on Thanksgiving that says men and women are basically the same or, you know, a man can become a woman, right?
So the easy argument is that men shouldn't compete in female sports.
Like that's the easy one, right?
We all agree it's stupid, it's dumb.
But let me ask you a question.
Why is it that the International Chess Federation made a massive new declaration saying that men, biological men, under no circumstances are allowed to compete in the female division in chess?
They said it's not fair.
Women can't compete.
It's not a muscle mass thing.
It's not a testosterone thing.
It's not a bone density thing.
Now, I'm not saying it's smarter.
It's something so much more simple than that, is that men are better macro thinkers than women, and women are better micro thinkers.
And I'll prove it to you.
I go to any one of you and we sit at a dinner party.
You'll talk about politics or sports or the stock market or the economy.
I sit next to a woman.
She'll be telling me about a conversation she had with somebody at lunch.
Harvard study reinforced this.
They lock a man in the room for 30 minutes, stare at the wall.
What do you think about sports and sex?
Yeah, it's really deep.
Pursuing Truth Over Ideology 00:15:24
Great.
They locked a woman in the...
This is what's fascinating.
What did you think about?
They said, we were replaying conversations we had the last couple days.
To be clear, no man in the history of the species has ever replayed conversations that we've had.
Now, what am I getting at here?
The trans movement blurs those distinctions.
They act like they don't matter.
God made us different and intentionally and unique.
And we platform our whole society as if proud, boss babe, proud to be a woman.
And what if we say, not only is it, you know, good to be a man, what does it mean to be a man?
And it's not sexist, it's not misogynistic.
It's biblical.
And you have a whole generation of young men that are starving for that validation and for that explanation.
And that explains that.
That's good.
Okay.
It's good to be a man.
And thank God for women.
I want to, this is a cultural question that starts out by, I want to just thinking about what happened on October 7th with the attack in Israel, which was done by evil demonic terrorists.
Many Americans have been shocked to see so much support for Hamas coming from organizations that are these progressive organizations like BLM.
And I've been seeing all this rift amongst left-leaning social progressives where half of them are going, how are you guys supporting Hamas, these evil terrorists?
And it seems like it's causing this rift within progressive culture.
Like, what do you think that's going to do to progressives in the years to come here?
It's an important question.
So there's something called intersectionality.
We'll talk about that in just a second.
It's fun to point this out, especially when, you know, I visit college campuses, so you guys don't have to, right?
So I visited over 150.
You're welcome, by the way.
I was just at U of A.
That was interesting.
And ASU, NAU, and I'm going to UCLA next week.
And we do a lot of work there.
So it's always fun.
I get a chuckle when someone is wearing the free Palestine shirt and the gay flag.
It's like, you know, they would literally murder you, right?
So, you know, it's funny.
I used to say that, hey, if you as a gay person would go to Gaza, they'd throw you off of tall buildings, right?
Now they don't have any tall buildings left.
So I don't.
When you mess with the bull, you get the horns.
Is that too soon?
I'm sorry.
Maybe you shouldn't kill Jews, stupid Muslims.
I like that.
I like that.
Where was I?
So, yeah, intersectionality.
So that's fun to point out and it's necessary to point out, right?
But it's a lot deeper than that.
It's about a common enemy, right?
So Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion.
I'll be very honest.
I think we as Christians have not done a good enough job educating our flock on what Islam is.
What does the Bible say about Islam?
Where does it come from?
How is it at odds with the promised Christianity?
How is Allah different than Jesus?
Who is Muhammad?
What did he do?
And, you know, people say I'm Islamophobic or I'm pro-Christian, which by definition means I don't believe in fake religions.
So I just think we have to do a better job, especially now this is kind of center point.
Just what does the Bible say?
What do we believe?
What do they believe?
What do they believe?
What do we believe?
Right.
I think that's really important.
Comparing and contrasting the life of Muhammad, you know, who married a nine-year-old, was a genocidal maniac, and was, you know, sold people into sex slavery with the ministry of Jesus Christ.
I think that's important, but I'm not.
That was one of the hardest things for me as a young pastor.
Anytime I talked about a false religion, I would get Christians in the church who would get upset with me.
And I'm like, you realize that if Jesus is the only way to heaven, then by default, every other religion not only comes from hell, but leads back to hell.
So you have to acknowledge that.
Well, and I don't want to belabor this, but there's so many just simple moral differences between Islam and Christianity.
The theological ones are even easier, but the moral ones are, I mean, just who is Jesus Christ is the most simple one, right?
We believe Jesus Christ is Lord.
At best, they'll think he's a prophet.
But anyway, let's table that.
So Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion.
Progressivism is a religion masquerading as a political ideology.
That's good.
That's good.
And they have in common an ethos of hatred of the great Satan, which is the West.
And you live in what they call the great Satan, which is America.
And they hate America because we were founded on the inerrant word of God and the promises articulated in the word of God.
The book of Deuteronomy was by far the most quoted book in the founding of America by America's founding fathers, by far secular or religious book, by the way.
This idea of charity, defense of the innocent, separation of powers, independent judiciary.
They don't just come ex nihilo out of nothing.
They were an outgrowth of the word of God.
And so what the people of the Palestinian authority and what the leftists have in common is not, you know, the homosexual thing or whatever.
They hate us so much that they're willing to create what they call an intersectional coalition to link arms together to destroy the great Satan.
And it really is a war for the West, is what it is.
And I see it happening on college campuses every single day.
And it's very serious.
I can go as deep as you'd like to go, Ryan, but you know, we as the church built the West, right?
55 out of 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Bible-believing church attending Christians.
We have a Christian inheritance here in the West that we must realize is easily, it's easily taken away if the church does not take its rightful role.
So some people criticize me.
They say, Charlie, you're too political to be speaking in a church.
And I say, well, okay, well, then what do you make of Esther, Mordecai, Daniel, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, and Joseph, who were obviously political figures who are counselors to the king.
And they say, well, we only want to preach the gospel.
And I say, well, is the gospel the red-letter Bible of only things that Jesus said, or is the gospel the entirety of the word of God and the promises of God's story from creation to fall to redemption to salvation to reclamation of everything that God created?
And I don't think we should have a myopic view of the scriptures.
You must have a comprehensive view of the scriptures.
It's either Jesus is the king of your entire life or he's only the king in charge of things that you decide for him for your life.
So Jesus should be in charge of your marriage, entirely your church, in charge of your political decisions, right?
In charge of how you act in every single regard possible, in charge of how you educate your kids.
All these things are super important.
So anyway, the West is under attack from multiple forces.
It's attacked from the Chinese Communist Party, under attack by radical Islamic theocratic fascists.
But let's be honest, the greatest attack is from within.
The greatest attack is a mind virus that we are subsidizing on our university campuses.
We're pumping into our high schools, which I believe is from the pit of hell.
It's where you get ideas that men can give birth, of deconstructionist post-modernist ideology of racial disharmony, of anti-Americanism.
This anti-man is an outgrowth of there.
It's viewing the world through oppressor and oppressed.
And the church is the last line of defense of civilization.
If the church surrenders and does not fight, the civilization that your grandparents fought to preserve and protect will collapse.
And that is not an exaggeration.
That's good.
That's good.
People will criticize pastors for getting political.
And I'm like, you should have told John the Baptist not to call out King Herod.
We need to speak to all Elijah, right?
Yeah, exactly.
It's interesting.
Once in a while, I feel like the devil outkicks his coverage.
and overplays his hand.
And he kind of did that with the Hamas attack.
And then you see BLM supporting it.
And other progressives are going, wait a second.
I don't know if I want to be on this team.
It happened with transing kids.
You know, people in society who weren't even Christians go, that doesn't seem right.
You know, so I think those are opportunities for the church to offer truth and hope and life and the authority of God's word to a world that's saying, this is crazy.
This can't be the way it's supposed to be.
And you just mentioned college.
And I did want to ask you about this.
You wrote a book called The College Scam.
And I know there are some jobs where you have to go to college to be a doctor, to become a lawyer, to become an engineer.
But what, with your experience and all your time on college campuses, what do you think young adults, teens, and parents of kids preparing for the next level of education, what should they know about college today that they might not know?
Yeah, I mean, I will say, I wrote this book and I got in some very spirited debates with secular Jews about a year and a half ago because they, especially very wealthy secular Jews, love them to death.
We agree on a lot of stuff politically, but this was an issue that bothered them.
In secular Jewish society, education is a big deal.
And honestly, God bless them for making a big deal, largely one of the reasons why secular Jewish society is so successful.
But there was a real big debate, right?
Of I was indicting the character and honestly saying bluntly that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Penn, Cornell, and Columbia are at odds with American values and subsidizing Jew hatred.
And I received a lot of disagreement from secular Jews on that.
In the last week, I've received a fair amount of phone calls of, and I don't even delight or rejoice in it.
I mean, they've been very heavy phone calls.
And I mean that.
And my heart goes out to them because I only administered a warning a year and a half.
One family said, Charlie, our family has given $100 million to this Ivy League institution.
And now they are out.
I mean, the Jew hatred is so beyond the pale.
You guys have seen it in the last, I mean, I don't have to read, you know, it has no place in Western or decent society.
And here's what I will say.
That is all but a picture, a taste of how toxic these institutions are.
I do not exaggerate.
I have been accused of exaggeration.
I have been accused of hyperbole.
These institutions hate you.
They hate your values.
They want to take your kids and turn them against you and turn them against the country.
They do not want them to believe in God.
They do not want them to be filled with gratitude or joy or happiness or purpose.
They want them to be bitter and vengeful and then deployed on the rest of us to be weaponized complainers, aka Democrats, until we give them something.
So look, if you send a kid to college, you are playing Russian roulette with their values.
You may never see them again.
Even when I was going to ASU almost 20 years ago, DEI was beginning to be introduced.
I was a dorm leader my senior year.
I got put on probation for speaking out against dorm leader training that portrayed all Christians as bigots, as racist bigots.
I was like, hold up, time out.
And if the ROTC leadership hadn't gone to bathroom me, I might not have graduated.
Wow.
But that was what, 10 years ago?
This was 20 years ago.
And it's only gotten a thousand times worse.
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
And James Lindsey talks about that too in his book on Marxism about how that's part of their playbook to infiltrate the universities and then not like just get it into these kids so that they go out into all the, and it's happening even in Christian universities.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, there are a fair amount of captured Christian schools too.
And so the next question is, Charlie, but then where do I send my kid, right?
I challenge the premise, maybe your kid does not need to go to college at all.
We do need more entrepreneurs and plumbers, electricians and welders.
And I will lovingly challenge some of you.
If some of you are in what would be considered upper middle class society, there is a sense of shame that some parents feel that if your kid becomes a plumber, that you are a failure as a parent.
And you might say, oh, that's not me.
Think about it.
I want you to pray about that.
That's good.
If your kid ends up working with their hands and having to shower before work and after work, would you be proud of that child?
And if you say yes, then you're in the right case.
I could tell you right now that when I go and I give this speech at a church in Scottsdale.
Nope.
We ain't like that in East Mesa.
We got some bubbas out here.
They would rather have the risk of their son becoming a girl than their son having to work construction.
And what's scary is some of these guys who have upper middle class jobs could have their jobs replaced by AI at some point in the next 10 years.
And then they might be thinking, I wish I had learned a trade that I, where it requires working with your hands.
Yeah, the most, the most important, we have education largely wrong in this country.
I think we way overemphasize job preparation.
That's important, but actually still plays into the left's game.
The true spirit of education, which has just vanished and it is so hard to find, Hillsdale College is like the only place that does it, is that you should try to create good people.
You should try to pursue truth.
And that's what liberal arts used to be.
And that's not anymore, which is we're going to study really beautiful things and we're going to ask the most profound questions.
You know, when I was at the University of Arizona talking the other day and we were having dialogue with the students, the amount of very basic questions that used to be widespread at the university, they've never heard.
And I just asked very, are human beings naturally good or naturally not so good?
What is mercy?
What is justice?
What is prudence?
What is courage?
Is there a hierarchy to virtues?
Is there a way that one ought to live?
What does it mean to live the good life?
When should you forgive?
Should we punish the same for stealing a Snicker bar or murdering somebody?
Like you would, their minds were blown and they were captivated.
Because you notice what I was asking is things that studies can't prove those things.
Hear me for a second.
I cringe when sometimes people say, well, studies say.
My rule on studies is very simple.
If it confirms common sense, I believe the study.
If it doesn't confirm common sense, I think the study's wrong.
And I know that, I know you might, but think about it.
I sometimes talk to these kids and they short circuit if they can't have an argument that isn't supported by some sort of scientific consensus.
What if I told you the most important things in the world are things that you must nurture and pursue and think deeply about?
That's what education should be.
That is what classical education is.
I know some of you probably have kids in a classical school where you study Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato and Aquinas and Augustine and the early church fathers.
Living an Honorable Life 00:04:32
And you ask the deep questions that quite honestly built our civilization.
And the final point I'll make is this, is that every founding father was educated like this.
Why don't we still educate our kids now?
So good.
Okay, so I want to give you guys a heads up.
In just a minute, we're going to go to a live Q ⁇ A time.
On the back of your seats, there's a QR code.
If you want to send in a question that way, you can.
But then in order to ask a question live on the mic, right over here to the side, you can line up and ask your question to Charlie.
I'll give you a little heads up.
I told Charlie backstage, I was like, hey, I'm these guys' pastors.
I have to love them and be kind to them, but you're not.
So you can give it to them just both barrels.
And we both know that's where you're at your best.
Yeah, happy to answer any questions.
I prefer not to answer the political stuff.
I do that for three hours a day, literally.
If it's that pressing and you need to ask it, sure.
But I prefer the cultural or religious or church-related stuff.
Whatever you guys want to ask that.
So, and as you guys are getting ready to come and ask questions, I know someone's going to be nervous to be the first one.
So I know in a room full of men, somebody will have the fortitude to go ask the first question.
All right.
Okay, we got a guy.
Let's cheer him on.
While he's getting set, let me ask you one more question while they're getting set.
As you look across the culture and stuff right now, what are you excited about?
Even maybe, I know you don't want to talk too much political stuff, but is there anything even politically that you're like excited about right now?
Yeah, I am excited about the deepening and the strengthening of the remnant.
It is a remnant.
It is a minority.
But the resolve in rooms like this is very promising.
It's good.
Is that it will not break.
And that's what gives me hope.
I have no idea if we're going to win anytime, but regardless of how hard they go after our value system, I know for a fact that there will be a core remnant of believers and patriots that will keep the faith and do the good and beautiful things so that tomorrow can be better.
That's what the fighting spirit in the remnant is greater than I've ever seen.
And let's go.
Hi, Charlie.
I love everything that you do for the country and for us men and actually showing the difference between men and women.
My question is, though, I'm a vet and I'm a disabled vet and I just lost my job.
And my wife is the money earner in the family.
We are, and I know you didn't want to get into the politics of this, but me and my wife are on opposite ends.
She's on the left and I'm on the right.
I do a lot of praying and I do a lot of reading on my Bible app and out of my Bible.
My question to you is: what can I do?
And I just feel like I'm less than a man because I feel so much pressure from my wife to get a part-time job to do other things that I can do to provide for the family.
And I try to do as much as I can around the house.
But as you can see, I'm limited to what I can do.
What can I do?
Do you want to answer that, Ryan?
That's more of a pastor question.
Yeah.
I would just say to you, sir, that God calls husbands to be responsible to provide for their families.
And that does not mean that a man has to earn more money than his wife.
It means having the heart of a provider.
And being a disabled vet, you have nothing to be ashamed of.
You have sacrificed for your country, which is an act of courage.
And it's an honorable thing.
And it's something for you to be proud of.
And it is no way tied to the amount of money that you make on a regular basis.
Although you might not be able to earn more money than her, I would say to you, you can still be the leader of your family in every other area, which is just as important.
You can be the spiritual head of your household and lead your family in the ways of the Lord.
You can be the emotional leader of your household, providing peace and strength and stability to your family.
So do not let your self-worth be tied to a paycheck.
Take great honor.
You should feel joy knowing that you have lived up to what God has called you to do and you've lived in an honorable way.
And so we all commend you for that.
Self-Worth Beyond Paychecks 00:02:56
Thank you.
God bless you.
Hi.
Hi, Charlie.
I'm Isaac.
So I was down in Tucson about two weeks ago at the Federated Republican Women's Biennial Meeting.
And I was talking to one of the state senators from there, Justine Watsack, about ASU, specifically you talking about ASU.
They have insane liberal teachings, of course.
And I saw the pro-Palestine protest back there a few weeks ago after Hamas came in and attacked people.
So my question, I guess, is: if we're not able to regain control of these once great American institutions, would you find it acceptable?
And I guess I asked her the same thing, would you find it acceptable to write them out of the state budget, ASU specifically, write them out of the state budget or I guess somehow kind of shut them down in a way so that they are not able to corrupt young minds?
Yeah, great question.
Yes.
So they should be, it won't happen, but ASU, U of A, NAU, they should be completely defunded by the taxpayers of Arizona.
They should have to support themselves and they should have to raise their own money, figure it out, charge tuition, support themselves no different than Grand Canyon has to support themselves.
So if they're so great, then figure it out.
Now, you might say, but you know, Charlie, where are we supposed to, you know, send our kids?
Imagine what you could do with the money that we're spending at ASU and U of A and N AU in not just tax rebates, you can get rid of the income tax here in Arizona.
You want to talk about a job boom?
Get rid of the income tax.
Okay, you defund the universities here.
You literally are, not only are you able to get rid of the income tax, you get rid of the business income tax and the personal income tax.
It's that simple.
Like you will have, you could phase out the income tax in the state if you did that.
But yeah, Michael Crowe, I think I'm his most hated person right now because I'm leading a charge to defund ASU.
And we are definitely at odds with him.
Thank you.
Mr. Kirk, my name is Pateo de Antonio.
I'm a future journalist.
I'm a student at GCU, and I'm just a kid who wants that paper from college.
So, what's your advice to someone who's your age, whenever you start a turning point to give my fellow college students the gift of truth, both in Jesus and politically?
Yeah, it's a great question.
GCU is under attack right now by the federal government.
It's a real sick thing.
So we have to rally to support them.
Finding Mentors for Truth 00:02:24
My advice: look, love how Christ loved, which is both in truth and grace, and ask questions.
It's the best way to get to the truth.
Do more listening than talking and ask the most important thing.
Why do you believe that?
Where do you get that from?
And then also, there's a great it's so simple, yet it's so deep.
If you want to win people for Christ, if you are an unhappy person, you're probably not a good advertisement for the gospel.
Absolutely right.
Unhappy religious people have done more harm.
And I think it's about 50-50.
I meet a lot of people in church, and I'd say it's about 50-50.
We have a moral obligation to live out the joy of Christ every single day.
That is our great, the greatest act of evangelism is being happy and joyful in a broken world and being unafraid to speak the truth, especially when it comes to political matters.
Because at GCU, it's a predominantly Christian school, and people will be more Christian than not, but they might want to stay around from the political stuff.
And that's where you should ask the questions and try to get them to believe what the Bible says about these things.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Hi, Charlie.
I'm a big fan of your work.
My wife would get everything to be here right now.
But I did want to ask: I grew up in a family that showed no sense of discipline or sacrifice or they say Christian values, but there's no fruit of that.
And unfortunately, at times I find myself falling into that same boat trying to start my family.
My wife and I have been married for three years, going on four now.
But how do I nurture and develop a Christian discipline and a sense of boldness in my family when I've never really had that example?
That's an awesome question, honestly.
So, first and foremost, you need to find two or if you're a member of this church, you're actively involved, find two or three men here that are at least 20 years your senior that you think have their act together and have them constantly be giving you mentorship.
Male mentors changed my life, some that are still living and some that have passed away, where I saw how they acted, I saw how they had their life together, and it totally changed my life to this day.
Cultivating Boldness in Families 00:02:10
So, you have to have, you are the moving average of the five people you spend the most time with, right?
So, one of those is your wife.
So, you better find four good guys around you, right?
So, that's great.
So, you got to find those four people and be those people.
And then you have to trim the bad influences.
Now, honor your mother and father so that you may live long in the land of which you are in.
So, you are biblically commanded to honor your parents, even though the fruit wasn't there, right?
Honor comes from a Hebrew word to treat heavily, to curse, to treat lightly.
So, you must treat your parents heavily.
Take that seriously.
However, you don't have to spend every day with them, right?
So, you must be very careful of the influences and the things you bring into your life.
And then, the thing they'll say for you is, and this works a lot better with men than women, is you need to challenge yourself.
And this is where there's there will be a podcaster and maybe a series of books that really push you, but you're not the best version of yourself that you could be.
None of us as men are.
And that is a that is a language pattern that resonates with us even better than women.
And so, you need to kind of go on that Genesis 12 journey, whatever that might be.
It might be physical fitness, it might be, you know, doing waking up at 4 a.m., you know, that crazy Jocko Woolnick thing.
That stuff is awesome for men and it works.
Setting otherwise like outsider arbitrary limits for yourself as men is unbelievably effective for us because you as men need a destination.
There's a reason why in Peter Pan, they're called the lost boys.
They are without a North Star.
The Greeks had a word for this called telos.
So, when the greatest warrior culture ever created outside of the samurai was the Spartans by far.
And one of the things, the word that was instilled in every Spartan warrior was telos.
We get the word telescope from that in English, which means far out in the distance, that which you are aiming for.
We as men are far more in need of a telos than women are.
Women are in more need of a pathos, which was we get the word pathological from, but more of like emotional connection.
The Greek Concept of Telos 00:02:37
Totally, it's fine.
So, but it's just a coincidence, just silly Greek stuff, right?
What is your telos, right?
And so, that's above the horizon.
And don't set unrealistic goals for yourself.
But then, at times, you need to look at your how am I challenged myself physically, mentally, spiritually, and then even emotionally.
And so, it can be doing something as goofy as I'm not going to eat for three days, I'm going to do cold showers, I'm going to, you know, do what they call a hard 45, whatever that thing is, right?
Work out inside, outside, read for at least 20 minutes a day.
We, as men, thrive on this sort of stuff, and it's lacking, right?
So, that's where you can literally rewire yourself.
And I'll give you some hope too.
You want some hope?
Romans 12:2, one of the great, my one of my favorite verses, it's one of my top 20.
Do not conform to the ways of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
So, the Bible is always true.
Amen.
Guess what?
Neuroscience for the last 100 years used to say that verse is wrong.
They used to say your brain can't change once you're over the age of 15.
Now, neuroscience says, Oh, just kidding, your brain is always changing, and you can teach an old dog new tricks.
In fact, it's changing so much that it actually changes more over the age of 30 than under the age of 30.
Do not conform to the ways of this world, be transformed by the root of your mind.
And it's actually proven by one study: English cab drivers.
So, they decided to go, this is hilarious, right?
So, they decided to go do a bunch of neuroscience scans of English cab drivers, and they found that the hippocampus, which is responsible for navigational direction memory recall, was almost two times bigger and more active in a London cab driver than it was just for a regular person.
And so, if that was true, that either meant that every single one of them were destined to be cab drivers from a young age, and they had an outsized hippocampus from birth, or that something they were doing was actively changing their brain.
And so, if any of you have been to London, it's the worst organized city in the history of the planet, right?
It's like to become a London cab driver, you have to pass a test called the knowledge.
It's insanely hard, right?
Nothing makes sense, and one-way streets, and U-turns, and you know.
And they found that it's so hard that the brain actively changes for these cab drivers.
Why am I telling you this?
You are not captive to the environment that you were brought up in where you say, I didn't see the fruit.
Your mind can change, you can rewire yourself to bigger, better, and brighter stuff.
Brain Changes from Hard Tests 00:15:42
God bless you, man.
Thank you, appreciate it.
Thank you.
Sorry, I didn't mean to get all this stuff.
That's so good.
And I just got to re-emphasize this to anybody who came from a family where there was sin or destruction or hurt or pain.
You can be the person who changes your family tree in future generations if you put your faith in Jesus Christ and devote yourself to following Him.
And I just want to brag on just the fruit of Christianity.
You know, we talk about the truth a lot.
How awesome is it that our value system is so different than Hindu caste system belief?
So, if you, if you came up here and I was a Hindu caste system person, I'd say, sorry, your parents are crummy, you're probably crummy, nothing you can do about it.
Our belief is, no, you could you could break free of that and live a beautiful life for the kingdom, regardless of what you were born into.
Hey, Charlie, I loved your feedback on finding mentors and fasting.
But we got generations here, and I know we got entrepreneurs that would probably love to hear, like, what part did prayer play in starting your business 11 years ago?
And for the business owners, how do you And bring God from the top down in your organization.
Well, thank you.
I pray I'm doing that.
So, look, as far as prayer, prayer is unbelievably important, and you have to make intentional time to pray and to read the word.
If you are leading, whether or not you're leading a big organization, everyone in this room is leading something.
You're leading a family, you're leading a small group, you're leading, you know, a son or daughter, you're leading something.
And if you, as a man, are not leading something, well, then you got to figure that out.
I'll say that as nicely as I can.
You're not fulfilling your purpose.
You're not fulfilling your purpose.
And guess what?
Women want to be led.
Kids want to be led.
We're in the moral chaos that we are in this country because too often men have abdicated that role.
Women feel forced into a role, but they're not always biologically wired to do it.
Am I saying that women can't be leaders?
Of course, I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that men, if they're not leaders, you got some big problems, both societally and in a family.
Okay, so prayer is a big deal.
And then, as far as running a company, 450 employees, you know, starting something from nothing, you know, having to raise, I don't know, $85, $90 million a year, which it's not easy, a big challenge.
We have a great team that helps us.
So look, God is the center of everything that I do, trying to live out the gospel with truth and mercy, compassion.
But also, the best advice I could give is have one or two, preferably one page of standards for your executives, yourself, and your company.
And if you are the leader, you better not just live by those standards.
You must overlive by those standards.
And from my experience, that is one of the best ways to have a healthy company.
So if the standard is to work hard, I'm not saying that I work harder than every single person at Turning Point USA, but I put in the hours.
Let's put it that way, right?
I've traveled 3,150 days in the last decade.
I'm a million miler in every single airline.
You guys know the story, right?
And so I think that's helped.
And so you try to practice what you preach type thing.
But yeah, the final thing I'll say is leadership can be best summarized as judging, as reading people correctly and organizing them effectively.
And so reading people is the key to being a good leader.
Knowing the different character types and organizing them.
Hey, Troy.
Such a surprise seeing you here.
I heard about you coming over.
I just like booked it down here as soon as I could.
Awesome.
Thank you.
But to get straight to the point, I'm a younger person.
And so with this generation that I live in now with a lot of association, a lot of friends, it's crazy seeing how we try to be a person of being a man of the book or being traditional values.
It's having it looked down upon so much by everybody.
And it's hard to be able to teach those values.
And they feel like it's because of my age that I'm not able to actually pass it along or not have that absolute 100% knowledge to defend it.
And so how would I be able to make an impact in that kind of way by still being a younger person, but also wanting to make a change, not in my life, but to help guide people when it comes to, I like inviting them to church, but like what kind of stuff would you recommend for somebody of a younger age in the younger traditions to try to keep those things alive and try to keep them still impactful and meaningful in ways that it can help other people?
That's a beautiful question.
So don't let your age be a limiting factor to your impact.
If I did, I never would have started Turning Point USA at 18, right?
So get rid of that thought pattern that's from the enemy.
Dismiss it, throw it away, right?
And so you just, your age is never a limiting factor to your impact, right?
And I'm glad I had mentors that got that out of me because I used to believe that, right?
In fact, it's your greatest advantage.
Believe it or not, being young can get you into rooms that a 35 or 40 year old would not.
Anyone that runs a business here knows there's a soft spot for a 16, 17, eight-year-old that might want to intern, get advice, get 20 minutes of your time.
You are more than willing sometimes to accommodate an 18-year-old that didn't go to college, that looks hungry and has hustle and has willingness more so than a 40-year-old.
You're like, oh boy, you know, what am I doing here?
So your age is actually an advantage, not an impediment.
So use it to your advantage, right?
I was able to get into rooms that I had no business getting into because I was relentless.
And I think half of it was people felt sorry for me.
No, it's this young guy, you know, he's like not well dressed and he didn't go to college.
Like, sure, I'll, you know, great, it worked.
So just use that to your advantage.
Final thing, I guess I'll say is that, yeah, it's looked down upon, but it's increasingly not so.
There's a thirst and an appetite for the truth right now.
Look, I know that in most social society that's filled with hedonism and degeneracy and hookup culture, that it might be hard to live by the book.
But sin always has a price, right?
And one of the things we don't tell young people is that pleasure comes with a price, and immediate pleasure comes with a heavy price that is not felt immediately, right?
So think about it.
Immediate pleasure, okay, hookup culture of sex.
You might not feel the price immediately, right?
But, you know, when you get the phone call that the person, you know, gave you an STD, you have a price to pay.
Good luck, right?
And so what I'm getting at, though, is that if you are someone that abides by the truth with grace, you're not legalistic about it, you're not self-righteous about it, but you have love and compassion, but standards that you will not negotiate with, that will attract people like a magnet.
People will be drawn towards that.
And then don't be afraid to be a person of influence with people you've grown up with, people that you've gotten to know.
So I hope that speaks to you in some way.
But everywhere you go is a ministry field.
The people you grew up with, ministry field.
Your neighbors, ministry field, your coworkers, ministry field, right?
And God will put you in a place to be a missionary.
Every single one of us are called to be missionaries.
Sometimes the micro, the macro.
You run a business, be unafraid to say Merry Christmas and give a 30-second pitch on your conference call to all of your employees.
Be like, Jesus loves you.
You guys should figure it out.
I hope you go to church for Christmas, right?
I mean, you guys laugh, but like, what's the downside of doing that, right?
So thank you.
Yeah.
And I can just say, like, I became a pastor pretty young, and some of my greatest encouragement came from older saints who were just so excited to see young people doing something that was honoring to God.
We're going to go to a question that was texted in.
I work for a woke company.
They require us to use pronouns and the like.
Do you have any advice for someone that's going to continue to work in that sort of environment?
It's a really important question.
So I want to preface this by saying I'm not giving advice.
What I'm going to say is going to sound like advice because it will be very plainly and bluntly spoken, but I am not one to parachute in and say you should do something abrupt while you have to pay for a mortgage and provide for kids.
Okay.
I want to make sure that that is said because I'm going to say something, you know, pretty blunt.
I would not be able to do that.
I personally would not be able to work for a company that was against my values.
And again, with the proper preface, I will say this.
I have seen more discord at home in marriages and with kids eventually as an overflow of an unhappy work life than I think we ever talk about.
So you have to think about that.
If you are tormented at work, home won't necessarily be a great spot either.
As a leader of the home, you're coming home and you had a bad day because you had to listen to Sally Sumerie, who's obviously a dude in a purple hair wig, you know, tell you that you're using the wrong, you know, and then you're being told you're a racist by this guy.
It's like the whole thing.
So my question for, you know, is if you are able to financially figure it out, you should probably find a company that is in alignment with your values.
And unless, unless you are finding fulfillment in looking at yourself as working for a woke company as a rescue mission to help people that are currently under that captivity, and I'll be very honest, that is very rare.
I am not even that person.
I'm actually more affected by my environment than I realized.
Like when I've moved to Phoenix, I was like, wait, you could see the sun and be happy and you don't have to be in Chicago all the time.
And like, I was like, I'm actually someone, everyone's different, by the way.
Some people thrive under, you know, oppression and darkness and they do better.
Other people do not.
Most people don't, by the way.
Most people are actually feed off their environment.
So anyway, that would be my, that's, there's no advice.
That's just my comment on it.
But here's what I will say.
Final thought.
The breakthrough, the peace, the shalom that I see in my emails of people that leave bad companies and go to righteous ones is hard to even put into words.
The people that have left in bold acts of faith and courage away from woke companies to ones that share their worldview, they say, thank God I trusted you enough to go without a salary for a month to go find a job that didn't make me have to wear a mask, get the vax, and use pronouns that are fake.
Yeah.
And I have to second that.
I appreciate how you phrase that with some gentleness on the front end.
And that's really considerate.
But it is important to think about Augustine said virtue is rightly ordered loves.
And we are commanded, a man should provide for his family.
If he doesn't, he's worse than an unbeliever.
But one of the top 10 commandments is you shall not lie.
No, that's exactly right.
So if you're willing to lie in order to, quote, provide for your family, then you are compromising something that is very serious to God.
And really what you need to do is probably take a step of trust in God, quit that job and trust him to provide one for you where you don't have to break one of the 10 commandments in order to work there.
Hey, Charlie, as someone dating one of your employees and been following you since before you started Turning Point, it's really awesome to see you here tonight.
You knew me in high school.
We had a lot of fun handing out the pocketbook constitutions last night as well.
So that was nice.
My question for you is something I heard you say both at San Jose, I think last month, and then at Amfest last year.
And I think a lot of the young men in this room could use those words.
You talk a lot about what young men can do to lead their families and provide.
And I think one of the points that I really liked about it was get married.
Yes.
You're big on that and start a family.
Do the hard and choose your heart.
So I just wanted to give you a chance to kind of talk about that a little bit, but just to hear you talk about it again, because you say it much better than I just did.
Well, first of all, thank you.
And thank you for listening.
It really means a lot.
Yeah, so I, I mean, I speak to a lot of young people and it's the most depressed, most suicidal, most alcohol-addicted, and most drug-addicted generation in history.
And they're wondering why.
Well, they've had more ease, comfort, pleasure, dopamine on demand than any generation in history.
Turns out they want to kill themselves a lot.
Something's not working.
And the church is largely silent.
Again, not this church, but the American church is largely silent on these issues.
One of the things that is missing from many of their lives is a fulfilling partner to be with.
So it comes from every direction.
Some of the young men say, oh, I don't need a lifelong partner.
I could just have as much sex as I want.
And I don't need to attach myself to anybody.
And the young ladies are somewhat of a different thing.
They want free sex with no obligation.
And just so we're clear, hookup culture is bad for everybody.
It's far worse for women than it is men, okay?
It's bad for men and women.
It is far worse.
It's not even close.
Okay.
It creates neurotic women that are very, very hard to heal.
Literally, no further than the, there's spiritual aspects to this, but women bind and bond literally neurochemically with a man after they have sex with them.
So if they have like 30 or 40 sexual partners, they're in like 40 different directions of like irreconciled emotional attachments that men tend to not have that issue as much.
It's a real thing.
But so it's very simple, though.
It's that the easy thing actually makes us miserable.
That is modernity.
If you wanted to make the bumper sticker of the country you live in and your kids are being raised in, is the easy thing is making you miserable.
The cell phone is making you miserable.
Hulu and Netflix is making you miserable.
Gossiping is making you miserable.
Drinking is making you miserable.
Doing weed is making you miserable.
Watching porn is making you miserable.
And one of the things that we are commanded to do, get married and have kids, is very hard.
But not only is it awesome, it is necessary, fulfilling, and it's not talked about in positive terms to a lot of young people.
They look at it as an impediment and a burden and maybe something that they'll attach onto their lifestyle later on as a temporary thing and get divorced if it doesn't work out.
And what a time for us as Christians and believers and men to lean in and talk about this eternal covenant that God gives us that we ought to do, not just that we get to do.
And then to have kids.
I mean, we need to have way more kids in this civilization.
You know, some of you guys might say, I'm tapped out.
No, no, no, have another couple of kids, right?
We are on the verge of a population collapse right now.
We are having less kids than ever before.
They're looked at as a burden, as a nuisance, and as something that is not, you know, platformed or something, not as something that is elevated.
And yeah, the final thing I'll say is that, you know, we don't have to overthink this.
You know, we act as if because we have the fruits of modernity, you know, Wi-Fi, Twitter, cross-country flights, that we have to kind of like redesign society.
It turns out that the simple things that have been true for thousands of years in the scriptures are actually the things that are right in front of us that we're denying.
And I will say that, you know, with young men, there's a serious crisis and there's the lost boys and all that.
Solving Problems as Entrepreneurs 00:05:14
But for those of you that with daughters, I really hope you communicate to them that not only is it okay, but they probably should get married earlier than later.
And one of these saddest realities is we have more single young women in their 30s than married single young women in their 30s.
And the lurch leftward in the American urban areas, especially here in Phoenix, are 30-something year-old women with college degrees and cats.
And, you know, they have, you know, they watch Emily in Paris and they have a degree from USC and they drink a lot of Chardonnay and benzodiazepins.
Like, why won't men love me?
It's like, yeah, I mean, you should have got married when you were in your early 20s.
And they're like, that's not fair.
Okay, well, I don't know what to tell you, right?
Life is not Netflix, okay?
And again, they end up complaining a lot, become super bitter and hardened and run out of eggs, and then they blame us.
And so, which is exactly one of the reasons why I can't stand Taylor Swift.
She's a terrible role model, right?
Which is, I mean, my entire, no, I mean it is that is what an awful role model for young women, right?
Whole career bashing on men.
She's obviously mentally unstable.
She can't hold on to any relationship.
She fills out concerts of disgruntled and angry women.
I know some of you are like, my wife went to the concert.
Okay, great, sure.
Okay, there's exceptions to every rule.
Right.
So, and I get these emails all the time.
My wife is a big Taylor Swift fan.
Like, you got some serious problems, man.
So, that's a separate issue.
But anyway, not to belabor the point is that for young women, that's a terrible role model, right?
It's a terrible role model to have a 33, soon to be 34-year-old pop star who's worth billions of dollars, who, you know, who has like gratuitous premarital sex and is, you know, debate, you know, dating a vaccine shield who calls himself an NFL football player, you know, that, you know, that's a platform for young women.
Like, actually, no, like maybe you should get married in your early 20s and have lots of children because that's what you biologically really want to do.
And you want a culture that gives you permission to do the thing that the Bible tells you to do.
So that's a long-winded response to if we actually just told people to get married at a younger age, we'd have a much better society.
Yeah, that's good.
Let's go to another text-in question.
It's, I mean, getting married is what God made you to do.
And if you care about conservative values, people who get married and have kids develop conservative values because they realize, oh, wait, the way the world actually is matters more than ideas that abstractions.
Yeah.
I'm very successful in my industry, and I feel like I want to start my own company in my industry.
However, I'm the sole provider for my family with a wife and four kids.
What advice do you have for me going into this uncertain and shaky economy?
Yeah, it's a great question.
So, number one, there's never a good time to start a business.
So, climate is a bad, bad excuse not to start a business.
So, I guess I'm an entrepreneur and so I give advice to entrepreneurs every so often, you know, because we build something from nothing.
And if I use environment or climate as a reason to start or not start turning point USA, it never would have happened.
I think there's been like three years where people said the economy wasn't risky or uncertain, right?
So, if you want to start a business, that's a bad reason not to do it.
But, but you have to know your own financial situation.
Look, here's the thing: you start a business from nothing, you're probably not going to earn any money for the first two years unless you have an angel investor and you carve a salary for yourself from the beginning, okay?
Or you have a ridiculously generous bank that's not going to come out right now and allow you to carve money out for yourself to pay yourself for a startup business.
That's number one.
Number two, though, is if you're not willing to bet on yourself and you're even asking the question, then it's probably not a good idea for you to start that business.
So, being an entrepreneur is basically betting on yourself, right?
I believe that I will be able to outwork the competition and solve a problem.
An entrepreneur is very simple: I find a problem and I want to solve it, and I want to charge people because I can solve the problem better than somebody else.
That's what an entrepreneur is, right?
So, you find a problem that people have.
For example, you know, the Uber guy, you know, okay, wow, tax is too expensive.
What if we democratize this at an app and we could charge people to do it?
You find a problem, you solve it.
That's what entrepreneurs do.
But, yeah, look, and then final, finally, I just want to make sure that everyone that knows this, if you have four kids and then you want to start a business, there will be a cost.
And you will spend, if you want to really be a hard driver, that will mean less time with your kids.
There is no way around it.
There is no way to sugarcoat it.
Being a founder, starter, entrepreneur at a high level and four kids, something will have to be trimmed, right?
At some point, you'll have to say no.
And you might be okay with that, but I just want to make sure that everyone understands that it is seemingly from the outside glamorous to start a business from nothing.
But there's nothing quite like an 11-year overnight success story, right?
Where you have to pain and labor and fire people, hire people.
You know, I've done 285 red-eye flights, not fun, right?
Where you're just destroyed the next day and you have to give speeches and all that sort of stuff.
So, if you're willing to do that, great.
Your Moment to Be Bold 00:04:22
I will say this.
Now that I have a daughter, I would not start Turning Point USA now that I have a daughter.
It was uniquely for a period of life where I didn't have a girlfriend, didn't have a daughter.
I needed to be able to work 20-hour days for five years straight.
Listen, guys, I wish we could get more questions, but the heart can only endure what the bladder can take.
Right?
We would go all night.
And I want to just take a minute to address you guys who might have come tonight because you love Charlie and we love you, Charlie.
Honestly, we're really thankful for you.
Sorry if I was too direct, but I mean, I'm not really sorry, but I mean.
But I do just want to take a moment to do, because I know we probably have some guys that might have come out tonight because you're a fan of Charlie's and you love the conservative values that he stands for.
But I do want to speak to those of you who aren't yet followers of Jesus that he's fighting for, the truth that he's pushing, the justice that he's seeking.
Those are all things that are ultimately rooted in Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.
So I just want to take a minute to do this.
I'm going to ask everybody just to bow their heads for a minute in the moment of prayer.
And if you're not yet a follower of Jesus, but in this moment, you say, hey, there's so much crazy stuff going on in the world.
I don't know how to make sense of it.
You need to know that you'll never have peace or any sense of purpose or direction until you choose to follow Christ and surrender your life to him.
He is the one who died on the cross to pay the price for your sins so that you could be forgiven and live guilt-free.
He's the one who conquered death by rising again, proving he is the Son of God.
And he offers you a simple invitation.
He said, if you'll put your trust in me to save you, if you'll honor me as your Lord, and if you'll follow me to the best of your ability, I will save you from sin.
I'll adopt you into the family of God, and I'll give you the gift of eternal life.
And for someone here right now, this could be your moment.
Maybe you're watching online and you'd say, that's me.
I've been looking for answers.
I've been looking for hope and for truth.
It's Jesus.
And so in this moment, if that's you, I just want you to pray this prayer with me.
I'm just going to lead you in this prayer and you can repeat it wherever you're at.
And if you mean it, God will hear you and he'll respond to you.
So whoever that is, pray this with me and just say, God, I confess that I've sinned against you and I need your forgiveness.
I'm putting my trust in Jesus, that he is your son, that he died on the cross for my sins and that he rose again, defeating death.
I thank you for always loving me.
I ask you to lead me from this day forward.
I'm putting all my hope in you.
And if that's you, just keep your heads bowed for a minute.
If that's you, just as a way of responding physically, I'm going to ask you to raise your hand up to God just to be bold.
If you just prayed that prayer right now with me, just raise your hand up high.
That's awesome.
In the back, in the front, over here, over here, over here, there, multiple hands.
Anybody else, don't be embarrassed of that.
It's the best decision you ever made in your life.
Raise your hand up high.
All right.
Hey, guys, let's give a hand for those dudes who just made that decision.
Praise God.
And if that's you on your way out, we have tables with orange Bibles on it, and someone will help you in your new journey of faith.
We want to help you in that.
But otherwise, can we just give a hand to Charlie, everybody?
Yeah.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you, guys.
Just really quick.
We have a big event coming up at the Phoenix Convention Center, December 16th to the 19th.
Tucker Carlson will be there, Candace Owens.
It's called America Fest.
We'd love to have you guys attend.
And finally, my favorite word in the English language is earn.
We'd love a chance to earn to become your daily or weekly podcast or news source.
So there's a link that you guys can follow on your phone.
If you would do it, it really helps us out and is a way for you guys to support us.
But God bless you, Ryan.
You're doing a great job.
Thank you guys so much.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.
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