Ep. 270 skewers the media’s war on Trump, from Chuck Schumer’s absurd Statue of Liberty rant to Pelosi’s hypocritical defense of "violent ideologies," while mocking the Flynn-Russia "nothing burger" frenzy and WSJ’s internal reporting chaos. It contrasts Trump’s pragmatic Netanyahu summit—ditching two-state dogma—with Obama’s strained Israel ties, then blasts GOP cowardice on Obamacare repeal, warning conservatives to act before midterms. Shifting to faith, the host argues Christianity is a heart-based relationship with Jesus, not rigid rules, and defends polygamy as biblically ambiguous while slamming televangelists’ sexual obsession. The episode ends with a philosophical detour on suffering, God’s silence, and Jim Crochy’s guitar—all framed as modern existential puzzles wrapped in holiday nostalgia. [Automatically generated summary]
The Statue of Liberty is weeping over the sad fate of poor, misunderstood terrorists and criminals who are being denied the constitutional rights they would have if they were allowed to stay in our country, which President Donald Trump is trying to prevent, causing the Statue of Liberty to weep even more.
In an emotional press conference before a group of wailing and lamenting journalists, a sobbing Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer barely managed to choke out the news that the Statue of Liberty has been in a state of near emotional collapse ever since the president began his attempts to enforce immigration laws and improve the vetting of refugees.
The sniveling and blubbering Schumer told the keening and whimpering journalists that the statue had been absolutely prostrate with emotion over the White House policies.
She's been drinking heavily and was even rumored to be holding her antidepressants under her enormous tongue and then storing the pills inside her immense copper mattress after the gigantic statues of psychiatric nurses left her room.
Schumer says many of Liberty's gigantic statue friends are afraid she will do something desperate.
And the idea that suicide might deprive New York Harbor of its most famous landmark caused Schumer to drop down onto his stomach, pounding the floor with his fists and kicking it repeatedly with his loafers until he sent up a cry so full of grief that bawling reporters said it was enough to make a stone shed tears if the stone happened to work for the news media and was a moral idiot.
But I repeat myself.
Gigantic statues of psychiatrists have traced the cause of the Statue of Liberty's emotional problems to her compassionate concern for suffering Islamic refugees whose only crime is to believe in a religion that wants all of us dead.
House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi, who was either shrieking in sorrow or speaking in her normal voice, it was difficult to tell, issued a statement saying, quote, this country believes in freedom of religion, and that's true whether your religion worships a god of universal love or a warrior demon god who wants to sacrifice the reason and well-being of mankind to preserve the violent small-minded and vengeful primitivism of the most dysfunctional societies on the planet.
After all, Pelosi added, all religions are a path to truth.
Just because some of those paths are strewn with mutilated corpses is no reason to bar people from our country, unquote.
According to reports from the Home for Mentally Disturbed Gigantic Statues, the Statue of Liberty is also distraught over the fate of innocent Mexicans who are being accused of being criminals simply because they broke the law.
Reports say the Statue of Liberty cries herself to sleep at night, then slips off her pedestal and falls into the harbor, whereupon she wakes to find herself soaking and miserable and bawls like a gigantic copper child.
Lady Liberty, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and other over-emotional women are scheduled to meet next week.
Why The Change In Middle East Policy Matters00:15:09
They say they'll have a good cry together, then go shopping.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is tickety-boo.
Birds are ringing, also singing, hunky-dunky-ducky.
Ship-shaped seat-topsy, the world is a bibby-zing.
It's a wonderful day.
Hoorah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hoorah, hooray.
Oh, hooray, hoorah.
All right, all right.
I just barely managed to get through that, but Cynthia Angulo, what a great job she is doing illustrating these opens.
I mean, they really have written anything, anything that distracts you from me, I think, ups the quality of the show.
So we've got to have some dancing girls and bring them on.
But meanwhile, Cynthia is doing a great job illustrating the openings.
All right.
So the media are now, we have to say are, it's the media is a plural.
The media are now an open war against the president.
It is the media versus the people's choice.
And the media had a good week.
After eight years, eight years of betraying every journalistic principle in order to prop up an incompetent president in the name of his leftist policies and because they wanted the first black president to be a good president rather than a terrible president, which he turned out to be, the media suddenly wakes up and, oh my goodness, I remember we're supposed to be journalists, we're supposed to attack the people in power, and they're after Trump.
And they had a good week.
Michael Flynn quit.
They consider this.
They obviously consider this a scalp.
They love it.
They really got it.
This is after the Ninth Circuit struck down the travel ban executive order.
And yesterday, Andrew Pudzer, Trump's pick for labor secretary, dropped out after he lost Republican backing.
I mean, basically, the Republicans came to Trump and said they're not going to vote for him.
Pudzer had there were rumors that he had abused his wife.
He had hired illegal immigrants, which is, I always get really, everybody hires illegal immigrants.
I mean, if you live in California and you have a gardener, if he's not an illegal immigrant, he's hiring people who are illegal immigrants.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
It's the government's responsibility to keep people out, not people's responsibility not to hire them once they're there.
It's kind of ridiculous.
Anyway, the New York Times, a former newspaper, has a headline today: Journalists, battered and groggy, find a renewed sense of mission.
Okay, they're battered and groggy because they've been asleep for eight years.
You know, after you're sleeping for eight years, it's like, whoa, you know what?
I'm battered and groggy.
I was like, what happened?
Oh, yeah, I passed out eight years ago after Obama was elected.
Here's a little excerpt from this incredible piece of spectacular New York Timesian journalism.
White House misconduct, sensational leaks, battling broadsheets.
The swirling story around President Trump's dealings with Russia is being compared in journalism circles to past blockbusters like Watergate and the Monica Lewinsky scandal with a 21st century twist.
News organizations like the Washington Post, the New York Times, they include themselves in news organizations.
That's a laugh.
And CNN are jousting for scoops.
But instead of sending clerks to grab the early editions from newsstands, editors watch the news unfold on Twitter in real time.
Anonymous sources are driving bombshell stories, but this is reporting from inside our imaginations to tell you what we think is happening, but it's not really happening.
Anonymous sources are driving bombshell stories, but leaks are springing from encrypted iPhone messaging apps rather than from meetings in underground parking garages.
The news cycle begins at sunrise as groggy reporters hear the ping of a presidential tweet and ends sometimes in the overnight hours as newspaper editors tear up front pages scrambled by the latest revelation from Washington.
In consequence and velocity, the political developments of the past four weeks, has it been only four weeks, are jogging memories of momentous journalistic times.
What a pile of stinking crap.
I'm sorry, but that is like a dumpster pulled out.
Instead of having the New York Times deliver to your door, you might just as well have a dumpster come and dump garbage.
You know, the media got one guy, they got a guy, and now Pudzer, I mean, every administration has some of their appointments turned away, so that's not as big a deal, but still.
They smell blood and they're running with every story they can get from Obama hangers-on still in the government who are slipping them information from intelligence agencies that are protecting the big bureaucratic state.
Yesterday, you know, yesterday the Times ran that story that was a true nothing burger about how they had been investigating contacts between people in the Trump campaign and Russia.
They've been doing this for four months.
They found no hint of illegality.
That's the front page.
But of course, you have to get down four or five paragraphs before you get to the fact that there was no hint of any illegality.
Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal, is having an internal battle between people who basically want to support Trump and people who feel that they should be doing this new version of non-news.
And today, obviously, the non-news people won, and they have a story that the U.S. intelligent officials have withheld sensitive intelligence from President Donald Trump because they are concerned it could be leaked or compromised.
In other words, intelligence agencies are not telling Trump what's happening because they're afraid they'll send it to the Russians.
This is according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.
No names, anonymous sources.
I mean, these anonymous sources used to be something you went to only in extremes when you had had the thing confirmed a million times.
But they know they're out to get these guys, and they know also that the White House, the Oval Office, is being run a little chaotically, so they know that there's no one there to battle with them.
It says the officials, the intelligence officials' decision to keep information from Mr. Trump underscores the deep mistrust that has developed between the intelligence community and the president over his team's contacts with the Russian governments.
Okay, and now it says the headline is spies keep intelligence from Donald Trump on leak concerns.
And now a White House official says there is nothing that leads us to believe that this is an accurate account of what is actually happening.
The White House spokesman for the Office of Director of National Intelligence said any suggestion that the U.S. intelligence community is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true.
So the intelligence people deny it.
The White House denies it.
Four unnamed sources confirm it and they run with this on the front page.
I mean, this is war.
This is war.
These guys are out to bring this president down.
So let's look at the real news.
Let's look at what actually happened yesterday, which was, of course, the president met with Benjamin Netanyahu.
And this is important because the United States, the last best hope of freedom on the face of the earth, has two allies on earth, okay?
It has two allies.
And those two allies are not Israel and Britain.
They're conservatives in Israel and conservatives in Britain.
The left in Israel and the left in Britain is just as anti-American as the left is here.
But as long as conservatives are running Britain and running Israel, they are our friends.
Those countries are our friends and our only friends and the only people who will back us when the going gets tough.
These are the people who stand with America.
Look, they have their own interests, and part of their being our friends is acting in their own interest.
But this is a guy that this is a country that we need on our side and has always been on our side until our old friend Barack Obama came.
You've got to just listen to Benjamin Netanyahu.
This is after eight years of, let's set this up.
Let's set this up.
Let's play the CNN clip.
This is what it was like for Netanyahu, our only ally in the Middle East, our only true friend.
Let's not say our only ally.
Our only true friend in the Middle East is Israel, conservative Israel.
This is CNN's report from 2011 on what it was like for him under Obama.
An open mic during last week's G20 summit caught President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy complaining about Israel's prime minister, according to a report by Reuters.
I cannot bear Netanyahu.
He's a liar, said Sarkozy.
Obama, according to a French interpreter who was translating his remarks, replied, you're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you.
The president didn't exactly come to the defense of Netanyahu, whom he most recently saw at the UN in September.
It's not surprising, says Martin Indik, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Clinton and Bush administrations.
It reveals the inner feelings of the president towards Prime Minister Netanyahu.
I don't think it's any secret that these two leaders have not gotten on, basically, from their first meeting on.
And an Oval Office encounter this past May further revealed the frosty relationship between the leaders.
While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines.
Netanyahu essentially lecturing a stern-faced President Obama.
Stern-faced President Obama.
If you couldn't see that if you were not watching but just listening, Obama, the look in Obama's eyes is, you suck.
I hate you.
That is what he might as well have it written on his forehead.
And remember, Obama, look, he cashed this check.
When his administration was coming to an end, he stabbed Israel in the back by letting the U.N. pass a resolution condemning the settlements and basically saying it was illegal for Jews to settle in Jerusalem, which would be funny if it weren't tragic.
Now, I just wanted to play that to compare the look, the look, and you can hear it in his voice.
You don't have to see this, but the look on Netanyahu's face yesterday and the way he's talking about Donald Trump is cut three.
Listen to this.
I've known President Trump for many years.
And to allude to him or to his people, his team, some of whom I've known for many years too.
Can I reveal, Jared, how long we've known you?
Well, he was never small.
He was always big.
He was always tall.
But I've known the president and I've known his family and his team for a long time.
And there is no greater supporter of the Jewish people and the Jewish state than President Donald Trump.
I think we should put that to rest.
It's Uncle Bibi is here, Jared.
He looks like suddenly, he looks like this Jewish troll, you know?
He's like, suddenly just the happiest, the happiest guy on earth.
And this thing with his son, you know, Jared, I've known him since he was a little boy.
I love this.
You know, and this is, and this, remember, is from a president who is about a president who is getting hammered because some of the alt-right, some of that anti-Semitism was coming on the alt-right, who, by the way, you've noticed the alt-right has vanished from the scene.
It's like a trapdoor.
I mean, Milo is still making the rounds, but even Milo is toning it down with this stuff a little bit.
You know, Milo is kind of getting in with the program, I think.
But it was like the alt-right was standing there.
You know, we backed Trump 100%, and then the trapdoor opened.
They were gone.
That was the end.
And now he's back with his pals because half of Trump's family is Jewish.
All right, I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
But come on over to the dailywire.com and listen to the rest.
You could watch the rest if you would subscribe.
but it's only a lousy eight bucks a month.
So on top of this, there was actual real news.
I mean, there was a real change in approach to what's happening in the Middle East.
And this, of course, you know, this is not the big news for the New York Times, which is in this, it's really, they are really in this fever dream that they have got Watergate because of this, you know, story that nobody even really, well, I'll get back to that in a minute.
Nobody even really knows what the story is, but the New York Times has gone into this fever dream, and they represent everybody in the, what they call the mainstream press, which is really the left-wing Democrat press.
You know, they're in this fever dream, so they're not even reporting the real news.
This is the real news.
Trump and Netanyahu are now talking about approaching what is laughingly called the peace process in a new way.
If you listen carefully, what you heard was Netanyahu talking about a regional deal.
And we'll get back to what that means in a minute, but just let's hear what he said.
This is, what is this?
Do I have it on the cut on the two-state?
The two prerequisites of peace, recognition of the Jewish state and Israel's security needs west of the Jordan, they remain pertinent.
We have to look for new ways, new ideas on how to reinstate them and how to move peace forward.
And I believe that the great opportunity for peace comes from a regional approach, from involving our newfound Arab partners in the pursuit of a broader peace and peace with the Palestinians.
And I greatly look forward to discussing this in detail with you, Mr. President, because I think that if we work together, we have a shot.
And we have been discussing that, and it is something that is very different, hasn't been discussed before.
And it's actually a much bigger deal, a much more important deal in a sense.
It would take in many, many countries, and it would cover a very large territory.
What they're talking about is the fact that because Barack Obama sold the farm to Iran and set them up to acquire nuclear weapons, he has upset the balance of power in the Middle East.
And now people see these guys who don't want Islamists to take over their country, don't want to be thrown out, are looking at Israel and thinking, well, you know, they're not as bad as some of the people in Iran and Syria.
So I think that that means that there can be pressure brought to bear outside.
These guys are not Israel's friends, but they are now Israel's allies in fighting the radicalism and terror that is coming out of Iran and out of Syria.
And so that means that there's a different situation on the ground and a different set of priorities and principles and a different array of people that they can negotiate with.
So this means that some of the old ideas have to be thrown out.
And Trump started to talk about this two-state solution, which has been policy for, I don't know, maybe 15, 16 years, maybe a little bit longer.
New Ideas Needed00:12:14
And he says, we'll leave it.
Listen to why.
This is such a good thing that he said, that Trump said.
This was really next to his Supreme Court appointment.
This was really one of the best things he has done so far.
This is cut number four.
So I'm looking at two-state and one state, and I like the one that both parties like.
I'm very happy with the one that both parties like.
I can live with either one.
I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two.
But honestly, if Bibi and if the Palestinians, if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I'm happy with the one they like the best.
As far as the embassy moving to Jerusalem, I'd love to see that happen.
We're looking at it very, very strongly.
We're looking at it with great care, great care, believe me.
And we'll see what happens.
Okay, this is bigly huge because if you walk into a negotiation that you need for American prestige, and this is the way John Kerry did it, this is the way basically the Obama administration did it and the Bush administration did it.
If you walk in and your prestige is resting on getting a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, you will sell your soul to get that deal because your prestige is on the line.
What Trump is saying is my prestige is on the line.
You guys do it.
Work it out.
It's your country.
It's your country's.
You work it out.
I'm putting my support with Israel.
And he's talking about Israel being restrained, and he talked about Israel being flexible.
But he basically said, hey, you know, you guys in the Palestinians are committing terrorism all around the world.
That doesn't get you a state.
You don't run a state, win a state for that.
And Netanyahu made the perfectly good point that when you talk about a two-state solution, what is the other state?
Is the other state Costa Rica, as he said, or is it a state that wants to blow Israel off the face of the earth?
That is not an acceptable two-state solution.
So by leaving it open, by saying you guys settle it and we'll be the brokers, you know, Trump takes himself out of it.
That is good negotiating technique.
And at one point, he turns around to Netanyahu.
This was my favorite part of the whole press conference.
He turns around to Netanyahu and he says he talks about the settlements because the settlements have been a problem and Obama has been condemning the settlements, stop the settlements, all this stuff, the settlements that spread out into conflicted territory.
So that's like once we're planted there, you can't move us.
And Trump says this to Netanyahu and it's a great exchange.
As far as settlements, I'd like to see you hold back on settlements for a little bit.
We'll work something out, but I would like to see a deal be made.
I think a deal will be made.
I know that every president would like to.
Most of them have not started till late because they never thought it was possible.
And it wasn't possible because they didn't do it.
But Bibi and I have known each other a long time.
A smart man, great negotiator.
And I think we're going to make a deal.
It might be a bigger and better deal than people in this room even understand.
That's a possibility.
So let's see what we do.
Let's try it.
It doesn't sound too optimistic, but that's good negotiating.
That's the art of the deal.
I love it.
Netanyahu, seriously, he looked like he was just going to start to do a little dance.
It's the art of the deal.
Well, of course it is.
Of course, it's the art of the deal.
You know, he said, let's try.
Let's try and do it.
But, you know, this is really important stuff.
It really means something.
And, you know, I think I should add: Charles Krauthammer, who is really an expert, he's almost, the guy is almost an official spokesman on these subjects.
He knows so much about the history of the Israeli conflict.
And he pointed out on Fox yesterday that when Trump turned to him and said, Do you want to take it a little easy on the settlements like that?
That's not a mistake.
He's not wrong-footing Netanyahu.
I'll let Krauthammer explain it because he did it so well.
This is Cut Seven.
And I think people misunderstand the settlement issue.
That was Trump doing Netanyahu a favor.
Netanyahu is under pressure from his right wing to hugely expand settlements.
He doesn't want to do it.
He's never been a settlement fanatic.
And what they're going to do, I guarantee you, the administration will end up with an agreement with the Israelis to return to the understanding in a letter that George W. Bush wrote to the Israelis in 2004, in which the settlement issue is dealt in this way: no new settlements, no expansion of the territory on which settlements are located.
However, you can thicken the settlements by adding housing inside.
That was the understanding.
It was abandoned by Obama unilaterally in what was a betrayal of the Israelis.
And that's where I think they're going to end up.
And that will suit both sides and take the settlement issue off the table.
Okay, so our relationship with one of our only two allies on earth, our only two friends on earth, I should say, is reestablished.
A new approach to finding some kind of peace and agreement in the Middle East becomes a regional approach.
The two-state solution is taken off the table as the only solution.
It's not taken off the table, but it's now no longer the only solution.
Big news.
What's the news from the press corps?
Cut number nine.
Here it is.
George, it is astounding.
We have now had four presidential news conferences, and the president, for the most part, has simply avoided calling on people from news organizations, from broadcast networks.
I want to tell you about the open hostility right here in this room.
You know, I'm sitting here kind of in the middle of the pack of a number of journalists, mainstream reporters, if you will.
And there is open anger in here about the fact that the president did not take any real questions about the issue of the day and General Flynn.
And you heard John and you heard others shouting that question only to be ignored.
There are serious questions that this administration has yet to answer on this.
And we didn't get those today because the president, for continually now, has basically called on a number of conservative, very friendly outlets.
This is two democracies, two important democracies in the world.
And basically, the president of the United States is shutting down part of the First Amendment by not taking questions that are going to be anyway antagonistic in this.
And that's all they did.
The press complaining, why didn't he call on us?
Some of them are from MSNBC, which has repeatedly compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.
So it's like, why didn't Adolf Hitler call on us?
Why was Hitler so mean to us?
You know, it was like this complete, complete disarray across the press that they were not being able to ask about what they thought was the Times bombshell report, what I thought was a nothing burger.
You know, and Trump is saying to them, you know what?
You don't establish what the story is.
I'm not going to let you establish what the story is.
And as far as I'm concerned, good for him.
And you know why good for him?
Because listen to what it sounded like when Obama during his first 100 days was being questioned.
This is the New York Times chief White House correspondent asking Obama a question during the first 100 days.
This is cut number 11.
During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office, enchanted you the most about serving in this office, humbled you the most, and troubled you the most?
Let me write this down.
Surprised.
Troubled.
I've got, what was the first one?
Surprise.
Surprised.
Troubled.
Troubled.
Enchanted.
Enchanted.
And humbled.
So a little bit of a difference between the press now and the press with Obama.
And the thing, you know, Trump did address Flynn's resignation.
And let's hear what he had to say about it.
Oh, you got it?
Michael Flynn, General Flynn, is a wonderful man.
I think he's been treated very, very unfairly by the media.
As I call it, the fake media in many cases.
And I think it's really a sad thing that he was treated so badly.
I think in addition to that, from intelligence, papers are being leaked.
Things are being leaked.
It's criminal action, criminal act.
And it's been going on for a long time before me.
But now it's really going on.
And people are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton.
I think it's very, very unfair what's happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated, and the documents and papers that were illegally, I stressed that, illegally leaked.
Very, very unfair.
Okay.
Now, that is one side of the question, and it's perfectly fair for him to talk about that.
There is a question he's not answering, which is why it took so long.
The press didn't fire Michael Flynn.
Trump fired Flynn.
So that's the question that we have theories about this.
My theory is that Flynn wasn't doing a very good job and Pence is doing a very good job and Pence doesn't like Flynn and so Flynn was out.
But there are other perfectly valid theories.
It is worthwhile to ask that.
That's a completely valid thing for the press to want to ask about.
But when you have a press that is screaming insanely that this is Watergate, this is 9-11, this is Pearl Harbor, why should you even talk to them?
Why should they even be allowed in the White House?
I don't understand why a bunch of hysterical children should be allowed to run around the White House asking questions about 9-11 when it's this, you know, there is this open question.
I agree there's an open question.
I think somebody should ask that question.
But how can you let these people, you know, how can you say, Mr. Hitler, could you explain to, you know, it's like, why should you tell, Mr. Hitler, did you commit the 9-11 bombings as if it was Pearl Harbor?
You know, why should you let, why should you even talk to them?
The problem is, the problem is this, okay?
So this was a good week for the press.
I said that at the beginning.
They made Trump look bad.
Trump has a chaotic governing style, and I don't know how much he's going to be able to control that.
I don't know whether he's going to bring that under control.
I think he will.
I have more faith in his ability to learn than other people.
But in Washington and in government, perception can become reality for the simple fact that we have a gutless group in Congress and in the Senate who will not act if they think that Trump is going to lose his power.
Remember, this is a group that's all we heard from these people is, you know, oh, if only we had a Republican president, we'd be passing, repealing Obamacare.
Six times, six times during the Obama administration, they repealed, they passed a bill to repeal Obamacare six times, okay?
And everybody said, well, this is just failure theater.
And they said, no, no, no, not failure theater.
If we had a Republican in the White House, boy, then you'd see how brave we are.
Where's the repeal of Obamacare?
Where's the new tax plan?
You know, less than a month into Barack Obama's first term, he had already signed into law a measure extending health care insurance to 4.1 million more U.S. children, the tremendous $787 billion economic stimulus package, legislation making it easier for employees to challenge wage discrimination.
Where is the Republican Congress?
Well, they're afraid of the press.
They have been afraid of the media all their lives.
They cannot believe that Donald Trump is going to win this war, and we don't know whether he's going to win this war.
So it is really, it really is a lot at stake.
And by the way, if you are a Tea Party or if you're a conservative, even if you have questions about Donald Trump, this is a good time to get in touch with your legislator and say, hey, hey, all this time, you've been jawing and jawing and jawing about repealing Obamacare.
Where are you?
Where are you?
They are doing nothing.
They are doing nothing.
And it really, you know, if they think they're going to get away with it because they think that Trump is going to take a fall and then they won't be connected with him, that's ridiculous.
Relationship With The Spirit00:08:27
They're already connected with him.
He is a Republican.
They're Republicans.
If they don't repeal Obamacare before the midterms, every single one of them is going to be primaried and they're all going to lose, too.
All right.
I have to go back over one last thing.
We've been talking about love all week because it was Valentine's Day week.
And I want to talk a little bit about my personal religious attitude toward sex.
Because every time I talk about this, and I talked about it a little bit yesterday, people get really upset and they say really ugly stuff, you know, like, you're not a real Christian.
You know, I always love when people say that.
It's like, judge not lest you be judged.
You're not a real Christian.
Anyway, it is true that I read the Bible, which I taught myself Greek.
I taught myself Koine Greek so I could read it directly in the direct original language that it was written in.
And I read the Bible and I make sometimes my own decisions on what I see there.
And it is different than other churches.
I do not believe that Christianity is a religion per se.
A religion is a set of rules, a set of rituals.
I believe that can be really helpful.
I do not believe that Christianity can be practiced alone.
I think you have to gather together and discuss the gospels and discuss your faith and what it means and all this stuff.
I think that that's part of it.
But I do not believe that Christianity is essentially a religion.
I believe it is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
And I believe that there is only, the only true relationship with God is through Jesus Christ.
I believe that's how it's done.
That is how, you know, just, look, like, the only way to, you know, build up your muscles is to exercise.
I believe the only way that you can get to a true understanding of God is through Jesus Christ.
So, and that's what I think Christianity is.
That's all I think it is.
I think it is good news.
It's already happened.
The big event has already happened.
It is now a relationship with the person who is in that event.
So in order to establish that relationship, you have to read the Gospels because those are the documents we have about him.
And there is very little talk about sex in the Gospels.
Very, very little.
And when you compare the number of times Jesus mentions sexual matters with the number of times your average minister on television mentions sexual matters and the importance they give it, there is a true disparity.
There is something truly different.
We know one thing, we know that Jesus was really big, really believed in the institution of marriage and really believed it was important.
Let me give you an example of, I've said this before.
You know, I am deeply opposed to polygamy.
I am deeply, deeply opposed to polygamy.
I think polygamy is natural to the human animal, and I think it is very bad for women.
I think it's very bad for men.
I think it should be outlawed.
I do not think there should be polygamy.
There is nothing in the Bible from page one to the last page, there is not one line in the Bible that forbids polygamy, okay?
I'm just telling you.
And the last time I said this, somebody sent me a list of Bible quotes that he thought proved me wrong.
Not one of them proved me wrong.
The one that came closest was one that said that a bishop of the church should only have one wife.
But that basically implies that everybody else is free to go.
So there's a lot of difference between a lot of interpretation that goes on.
What Jesus talked about was he talked about some of the things that pollute people, that come out of their hearts, that pollute people.
Among them was the hilarious Greek word pornea, which I love.
It's where we get pornography, right?
And it means sexual immorality.
And we all know there's such a thing as sexual immorality.
Lewdness, he was also said, polluted people.
And what a lot of evangelicals say as, well, these were the things that he would have believed were sexually immoral.
Therefore, these are the things that are sexually immoral.
But that's a big leap.
That's a big leap.
I mean, things that are sexually immoral can change over time.
As, for instance, I think now, I think it would be immoral to have more than one wife at a time.
But I think that then, back then, there were people who did have more than one wife, and he didn't condemn them.
He didn't say anything to condemn them.
So I really do think that Jesus was saying something.
I think that he wasn't just like blithering.
I think that he was saying something.
And I think the thing that he was saying comes down to there is a life that is not the physical life that is different from the life you think you are living.
Okay?
C.S. Lewis called it zoe, which means life in Greek is spiritual life.
Why does Jesus heal people?
Nobody ever asks themselves that.
Why did he heal people?
And he talked about this all the time.
He would say, if you don't believe in me, believe in my works.
Believe in the healings that I do.
And John sent to ask if he was the Son of God.
He said, well, just tell him the works that I'm doing.
Tell him the way, you know, and he was healing people.
All those people that he healed, they got sick and died.
So what was the point?
Why is that a big deal?
Why is that a big deal?
I think he was showing us that there is a life.
And we all know this.
We all know this in our hearts, that there is a life inside us that is not the life of the flesh, that is not what the flesh demands.
The flesh is a translation of that life into physical terms.
And one of the ways it translates our spirit into physical terms is it translates the spirit, its main motivation, its main motivating force is love.
And the flesh translates that into Eros.
One of the ways that the flesh translates that is into Eros.
If you live your life according to your spirit, according to the desire for love, the connection that comes out of love, you will live a different life than if you live it according to the flesh.
And what the flesh is just this rude interpretation of that.
It is not for me to tell you what that life will look like, okay?
Jesus doesn't.
He doesn't.
You can go through and look at it, and he doesn't.
He tells you that if you enter into the covenant of marriage, that you shouldn't get divorced.
And it was really interesting to me that if you get up in some churches and say, you know what, I'm gay, they will throw you out.
But if you say, you know what, I'm divorced, they'll say, oh, well, we have a program for that, you know?
So it's like these are translations of things that are in the Bible.
They're not necessarily what Jesus said.
When I read what Jesus said, what I read him telling you to do is to live out of the spirit, not out of the flesh.
And that is a different life.
It's going to be a different life than you live now.
When I became a Christian, I started to live a different life.
It changes every day.
I hope and believe it gets closer to living that life of the spirit, that life that we knew more of when we were children.
That's why Jesus says, you know, you have to become like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Our childhood selves haven't been affected yet by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
So don't scream at me because I basically don't tell other people who to have sex with.
Coming to Christ in no way gave me a license to tell other people how to live their sexual lives.
And it didn't give you a license to do that either.
What it gave you the power to do is to start to live in that spiritual way that I think you can only fully do through a relationship with Christ.
So please do that.
And if what that leads you to is a more sexually obstimious life, which I believe it will lead you to that, I do, you know, great.
Good for you.
Good on you, good for you.
It'll be great.
You'll love it.
You know, I myself have been a faithful husband for 40 years.
I'm not answerable to anybody, okay?
I'm answerable to one woman on earth, you know, and that's it.
So the rest of you, you know, like, yes, you're welcome to believe what you believe, but my beliefs are Bible-based, and that is as close as I can come right now to a description of them.
So I just wanted to say that, and I want to end with stuff I like.
Have we ever played Jim Crochy before on Stuff I Like?
Jim Crochy was one of the greatest guitarists I have ever heard, and he was a terrific singer.
And in 1973, at the age of 30, he crashed his plane, the plane that he was flying in, and he died, and it really erased, I think, a tremendous folk rock talent.
But anyway, we'll end with him, and I will see you again.
The Clavenless Weekend is here.
There's nothing I can do about it.
If you have a reason to lose your faith to not believe in God, it is this, that every week the Clavenless weekend comes upon us.
How could a good and gracious God allow this to happen?
I don't know.
But we will gather here again on Monday, those of us who survive.
And I will see you then.
Until then, I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
Christmas Cards Remembered00:00:48
Christmas cards you sent to me.
All that I have are these to remember you.
Memories that come at night.
Take me to another time.
Back to a happy day when I called you mine.
But we sure had a good time when we started way back when Morning walks and bedroom talks Oh, how I loved you then Summer skies and lullabies Nights we couldn't say goodbye.