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Aug. 31, 2017 - The Michael Knowles Show
34:46
Ep. 20 - Are Democrats De-Sanctifying Abortion?

The DNC might be moving away from its sacramental view of abortion. Then, Allie Stuckey, Keri Smith, and Jacob Airey join the Panel of Deplorables to talk "Indigenous Peoples Day," Charlie Hebdo, and how cops only kill black people. Plus, the Mailbag! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Pigs are flying on this chilly day in hell, as Fred Barnes reports in the Wall Street Journal that the Democrat Party may be moving slightly to the right on abortion.
We'll analyze.
Then, Jacob Airy and his eminence Paul Bois are on an all-male panel of deplorables, just to punish me, and we will discuss banana peel microaggressions, Charlie Hebdo's calling Harvey victims Nazis, and how cops only kill black people.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
We're going to have the mailbag today too, so thank you for everybody who sent in a mailbag question.
We have lots of good ones to get to.
What I really want to talk about today is this vote yesterday at the LA City Council to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day.
It was unanimous.
Few things offend me more than renaming Columbus Day.
It is anti-historical.
It is morally idiotic.
It is empty virtue signaling.
It really drives me crazy.
It's ungrateful, but I want to dedicate an entire episode to defending Christopher, so we'll do that closer to Columbus Day.
And today we have to talk about this great abortion story.
Pigs are clearly flying in hell.
So, this is a welcome change, and a pretty unexpected one.
After the 2016 DNC platform position on this issue.
If we can kill all the babies, we can have sex, sex, sex for everyone all the time and use the bodies of our children to keep us alive forever like these sex for everyone all the time and use the bodies of our I'll tell you, I thought even at the time, even at the time, I thought that was an extreme position.
And it moved pretty far after just in 2008, Hillary Clinton had a very different view on abortion.
We can support a woman's right to choose that makes abortion safe, legal, and rare, and reduces the number of abortions.
It's amazing to think that that was just in 2008.
Hillary Clinton said abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, which of course doesn't make any sense.
If abortion is morally similar to murder, then it shouldn't be legal.
And if it's not morally similar to murder, if it's just a procedure to remove a part of your body, then there's no reason that it should be rare.
But classic Clintonian example of saying two things out of different sides of your mouth.
By 2016, not many years later, Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts to the highest bidder and the Democratic Party was cheering them on.
For tissue that you actually take, not just the tissue that first of all, you can't find anything.
Exactly.
Right.
What we can use.
What is intact.
So that's why I'm saying, no, don't lowball.
I want you to be happy.
Well, it's complicated by the fact that our volume is so low, too.
I mean, are you looking at eight and nine new specimens or only second trimester specimens?
It's been years since I've talked about compensation.
So let me just figure out what others are getting.
And if this is in the ballpark, then that's fine.
If it's still low, then we can talk about it.
I want a Lamborghini.
I said I want a Lamborghini.
Those were those undercover Planned Parenthood Sting videos.
I want a Lamborghini.
Don't we all?
Those videos, they are almost cartoonishly evil.
They're really just to the core evil.
It's amazing that some Hollywood screenwriter, if a Hollywood screenwriter had written that and turned it in, well, forget the politics of Hollywood, but if he had turned it in for a movie about this, it would be thrown out for being too on the nose that a woman is going to sell body parts and haggle over the price so that they could make more of a profit.
It sounds like a horror film.
It does.
Actually, it sounds like a horror film.
And so in May, Nancy Pelosi came out and suggested that the Democratic Party would support candidates who weren't strictly in favor of abortion.
If there were some candidate who's a Democrat in all the other ways but is pro-life, they would consider giving them money.
Pelosi wants that big tent, as they call it.
Chuck Schumer came out and said that he's in favor of that big tent.
Even Governor Moonbeam, our own governor here in California, the once and future Governor Jerry Brown, he came out in favor of supporting pro-life candidates, but the former DNC chairman and failed presidential candidate had a less favorable view of that.
Let's cut to Howard Dean for his reaction.
Not happy.
He did not support that move at all.
He said that he would not donate to candidates who were pro-life.
He would not support those candidates.
He wants to keep the Democratic Party pretty small.
Now, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, along with NARAL and all of the other pro-life advocacy organizations, were predictably infuriated.
Here's her reaction.
Help!
Help me!
Come back here.
You're not a human.
Look at me!
No one can see you.
Hold still, you piece of tissue.
Help!
Black lives matter!
Black lives matter!
I thought I was going to make it through that without breaking.
It is amazing that they put her on TV. She's so unlikable.
I don't know why they would ever put her on TV like that.
Now, why are the Democrats doing this?
There are two words.
Donald Trump.
Donald Trump won five states that the Democrats have won for two elections in a row.
Barack Obama won all five of these states twice.
Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Those happen to be states where social issues matter.
And it turns out that if you have just the devil going on TV in support of your candidates, it doesn't play that well in Peoria.
Now, Republicans are basically unified on this issue.
68% of Republicans are pro-life, and that is the same for men and women.
68% of men, 68% of women.
Interestingly, the more educated a Republican is, the more likely he is to support pro-life, the more likely he is to oppose abortion.
71% of college graduates who are Republican are pro-life.
The number dips down a little bit below for postgraduate degrees, but the trend line is obviously in favor of pro-life as Republicans are more educated.
Democrats are totally split on this issue.
Democrat pro-life, according to Gallup, is 32%.
Men are 35%, women are 30%.
So Democrat men are more likely to be pro-life than women.
As Democrats are more educated, that number actually decreases though for pro-life.
And 29% of white Democrats are pro-life, but 39% of black Democrats are pro-life.
So the minority vote that Democrats are always sucking up to and pandering to actually opposes their rigidity on the issue of abortion.
Now, this presents a real problem for Democrats because a lot of their issue in the last election was that they came across as elitist, out of touch with the regular American.
Hillary Clinton wanted to kill coal.
They seemed to toss the issues of the middle class and the lower classes completely out the window to suck up to Hollywood celebrities and to suck up to the latte-sipping limousine liberals.
Did not play well for them, particularly in those five states.
So...
The March for Life has been getting larger every year.
Things have been moving in the direction of pro-life anyway, but the country remains split on it.
This is great for us, for the country and for Republicans in particular, for two reasons.
There's the moral reason.
If the Democrats are supporting pro-life candidates, that means that we'll probably get more pro-life politicians, politicians who are less likely to be extremists on the issue of abortion.
On the political issue, though, it will split Democrats.
So if we can wedge an issue in there with them, then Republicans are more likely to win those elections.
And Republicans generally are more pro-life anyway.
So it's a win-win situation.
To discuss this, we have to bring on our all-male panel of deplorables.
I figure when we're discussing an issue like abortion, it's very important to only talk to men.
So we have Jacob Ayer from The Daily Wire and, of course, his eminence, Paul Bois, to give us his opinion on it.
Jacob, lots of people could take credit here today.
President Trump could take credit.
Those undercover Planned Parenthood video creators could take credit.
Trump's reaching out to new voter demographics.
We could give them some credit.
Who deserves all of the glory for making the Democrats give up or move slightly to the right of their currently sacramental view of abortion?
I honestly think it's actually pro-life Democrats who deserve some credit for this.
I have several friends who they vote, they are in principle Democrats, but they vote Republican because of the life issue.
They can't stand Cecile Richards.
They can't stand Planned Parenthood.
They know the backstory of Margaret Sanger, a radical racist who wanted to exterminate the Negro population.
Her words And I think that they should receive some of the credit because they've been pushing this party in this direction after they left it.
So I really feel that when they voted for Trump, they said, hey, we want our voices to be heard.
And if we have to get Trump elected, we're going to do this.
You bring up a great point in Margaret Sanger.
People should read Woman in the New Race.
That's an essay by her, a book by her, that does sum up this really spooky eugenicist position on abortion.
But yeah, there is a lot of glory to go around on moving Democrats a little bit back to moderation on this issue.
Paul Bois, your eminence.
When did Democrats begin to take this sacramental view of abortion?
It wasn't so long ago that pro-life Democrats were welcome in the party.
Isn't that right?
No, no, no, no, actually not.
The Democrats pretty much adopted abortion into their platforms in 1976 and 1980.
And of course, Mondale was pro-abortion and so was Dukakis.
Jimmy Carter actually, however, expressed several times, even long after his presidency, that he regretted enforcing Roe v.
Wade.
So there was a climate of kind of that big tent, pro-life Democrats are allowed in the party.
And it wasn't really until 1992 at the Democratic Convention when the Clintons disinvited...
Ah, I do remember the Clintons being around in 92.
Yes, yes.
And the Clintons disinvited Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey from speaking at the convention.
And Robert Casey was a big-time pro-life Democrat, and he was a big-time member of the party.
His name, Casey, was the Casey in the famous Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v Casey.
So by having him get disinvited, that was really when the new trend of the abortion litmus test set into the party.
So you blame the Clintons?
It's been that way.
Yeah, it's the Clintons.
And I think them getting defeated is a wonderful thing and it may end that litmus test finally.
I'm happy to blame the Clintons for everything.
That's perfectly fine with me.
We have to move on to much more important issues than the sanctity of life and human dignity.
A Greek life retreat at Ole Miss was canceled this weekend after a banana peel was found in a tree.
A student tossed the perfectly compostable banana peel because he couldn't find a garbage can.
Now, according to the director of Greek life, quote, Many members of our community were hurt, frightened, and upset by what occurred.
A banana peel being tossed into a tree.
And felt it was imperative to provide space immediately to students affected by this incident.
Paul Bois, who is at fault here?
Is it the parents?
Is it the administrators?
Is it the students themselves?
Is it our terrible culture?
Is it the banana peel?
Who do we blame?
Michael, I'm just at a loss here.
I'm just going to go ahead and say it's the banana peel.
It's the only way you're not going to offend somebody.
I mean, really, I typically, on all of these triggering cases, these microaggressions, I find them ridiculous, but I can at least somewhat see the point or the flow of logic that they're making.
This, I'm at a loss.
So I'm going to say it's the banana's fault.
We should just ban all bananas.
They're racist.
No.
I agree.
I've been leading the charge against bananas for years.
I would never blame my favorite fruit.
Jacob, how do we fix the problem of snowflakiness?
It is really fun to make fun of these people.
They're out of their minds if they're triggered because some kid threw away a banana peel.
But how do we fix it?
How do we make students stronger and smarter and less out of their minds?
I think the solution should be we should teach Western culture from a literary perspective.
I mean, if you read a lot of Charles Dickens, the masculine and the feminine characters are all very strong.
But because these faculties...
Placate to these snowflakes.
They're like, oh, well, Dickens, Shakespeare, on and on and on.
They must be racist because they were written by straight white men or whatever.
I have my doubts about Dickens, but sure, come on.
But I'm just saying, if we go back to teaching that literature, we present to them good, moral, strong characters, I think that they can be strong again.
It should go back to teaching what their Western culture is all about.
Then you have to read, though.
It's a real hassle.
Dickens is very pro-Lix.
I'm one of the few millennials who read, I guess.
Absolutely.
You are, Andy.
And that's how it's going to stay.
Yeah, you make me sick.
I don't have time for that stuff.
Okay, we need to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube now.
And I know that what you're waiting for is to hear more of this panel.
I know that you want to get a blessing from His Eminence, Paul Bois.
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The latest cover of the French satire magazine, Charlie Hebdo, reads, God exists.
He drowned all the neo-Nazis in Texas.
The editors at Charlie Hebdo might remember that their stupid magazine would be written in German if it weren't for us.
Paul, surprise, surprise.
Muslim terrorists murdered much of the Charlie Hebdo staff.
The United States is leading the global fight against radical Islam.
But these children over there, these rude people, have decided to attack us.
They've decided to attack regular Americans.
Why won't they give us a break?
And is there any satirical merit to making fun of hurricane victims?
Well, the reason why they won't give us a break, Michael, is because they're leftists at heart.
I mean, I know we want to give them credit and they were attacked and that was a horrible, horrible thing and we all rightly stood alongside them and they were brave enough to criticize Islam when everybody is running away from that issue.
But it doesn't change the fact that they've just been nothing but cruel and merciless towards Christianity and particularly Catholicism and the way they've painted it on their magazine.
And On the issue of whether or not you can do satire on hurricane victims, look, you can do satire on anything so long as it's tactful and it's funny.
I mean, even that stupid political cartoon that was making fun of the hurricane victims at least had a little bit of tact in there.
This is just dead, dead on arrival.
It's not funny.
It's not tactful.
It's akin to the It's also a little ridiculous of them, Jacob.
Do the French have any credibility to call Americans Nazis?
Hitler sneezed and those guys surrendered.
Is there any credibility to their accusations?
No.
Absolutely not.
And I want to make something absolutely clear to Charlie Hebdo.
When you were attacked by radical Muslims, Texas Monthly didn't put a cover mocking France on their publication.
Absolutely not.
And you know what?
750,000 Texans went to World War II and rescued you.
So I don't even want to hear it.
And 22,000 of them died.
My sister, she is literally trapped by a flood of water.
My great-grandmother is in a nursing home, and they're trying to keep the power on so those nursing home living patients don't die.
So shame on you, Charlie Hebdo.
I am disgusted by this.
I'm offended as a Texan, and you should apologize immediately.
This is the first time I've ever seen Jacob Berry angry, and you really got to do a lot to get Jacob Berry angry.
I'm kind of aroused.
Great job, Charlie Hebdo.
You've done the impossible, you rude French dummies.
Okay, that's it.
Oh no, I'm sorry, there is one more story.
Oh my god, there is one more great story we have to cover.
Body cam footage has just surfaced of an incident last year in an Atlanta suburb when a woman pulled over for drunk driving told the officer that she didn't want to get out of her car because she'd seen so many videos of cops killing people.
The officer responded, but you're not black.
Remember, we only shoot black people.
We only kill black people, right?
All the videos you've seen.
Have you seen the black people getting killed?
Maybe not the classiest joke the officer could have made.
Paul, left-wing heads have exploded here.
Is the outrage justified over these comments?
I mean, look, Michael, you know, I'm very, very quick to condemn Snowflakes and all of their phony outrage.
But this is definitely one.
I mean, I know that the officer is joking and clearly is not.
He's clearly joking, right?
I think some people on the Internet are saying that it's an admission that he's making.
Yeah, I could see that, though.
I mean, if I'm a black person and I hear an officer saying, like, we only shoot black people, yeah, I could understand the initial outrage.
Do I think the guy should lose his job?
No, but I'm going to cut some people having outrage, a little bit of slack on this one.
That's fair.
You think the joke crossed the line.
I wondered a little bit.
It is a funny joke though because I think people think that he's joking about black people being killed by the cops.
That's clearly not it.
He's joking about the narrative that is being pushed.
There have been study after study that has come out that has...
I think I've explained away most of the disparities between black people and black suspects being killed by cops and suspects of other ethnicities.
And I think the narrative here is that there is a nationwide epidemic of racist cops looking for the next black person to kill, which is just simply untrue.
And if the joke is about that, I kinda cut him some slack on it.
It seems to me that cops have been under a lot of attack over the last few years.
Nevertheless, not the sort of thing that one should say professionally, and especially not when you're in a position of enforcing violence and coercion.
Jacob, the officer was placed on administrative leave.
Is that too harsh for a joke, or does that punishment fit the crime?
I think in this case the punishment does fit the crime.
I don't think he should be fired.
I don't think that he should be removed as a police officer.
But administrative leave, especially since it was just such, as Paul was talking earlier, it was a joke that lacked tack.
And I agree with you.
It was a little funny.
Lacking a lot of tact.
And I agree with you.
It was a little funny because he was just kind of being sarcastic.
But I still think that, yeah, he's a police officer.
He should honor his badge.
And I think in this case he dishonored it.
So administrative leave, I think, is just right for him.
Two jokes that just simply did not land for people.
You gotta watch your comedy, guys.
Okay, panel, you're out of here.
Jacob, your eminence, thank you very much for coming on.
Now we have to get to the mailbag.
Alright, first question comes from Mike.
Just discovered you here on Daily Wire.
I'm a new subscriber and former leftist.
Thanks for coming on over both to the Daily Wire and to the right.
Love your work, but why the heck is your book not available on Kindle?
You know, there's a big misconception about this.
My book is preloaded on every single Kindle.
What you have to do is you take it out and you make sure that the book is powered off and you can read it cover to cover.
But thank you for your support.
From Tyler.
Hey Michael, would you, Andrew, or Ben be willing to speak at a community college?
And if so, what would be the best way to set up the event?
We would love to do that.
I can only speak for myself, but I love speaking at colleges and would love to come to your college.
So if you want to do that, just tweet at me and I will connect you to the people who handle that and we'll set it up.
It'll be a lot of fun.
From Brandon.
Dearest Michael Trolls.
Best cigar under 50 bucks.
Thanks.
Kind regards.
Finally, a question I care about.
I have been doing this show for a month now, and I haven't gotten a question that I care about nearly as much.
There are a couple...
Categories here.
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The prices vary widely, so if you go to Cuba, the cigars are dirt cheap.
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For the Cuban cigars, I would recommend the Trinidad Vigia, the San Luis Rey Exclusivo Cuba, and the Bolivar Bellicoso Fino.
All tremendous cigars.
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For non-Cubans, I would recommend, which are available anywhere in the United States, I've been smoking them for years and years and years.
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The Padron 1926 Anniversario and 1964 Anniversario are both good.
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It's a little pricey, but it's an excellent cigar.
I love Nat Sherman cigars.
I'm from New York.
It's a New York local tobacconist.
The Timeless series is very good.
If you can get your hands on the Gotham West side, that's my favorite that they put out.
And then, of course, Oliva Series V and Series O are tremendous cigars.
I recommend them.
They're really cheap.
They're like seven or eight bucks a stick, and I couldn't recommend them more.
I've been smoking them since I was a wee little boy.
Next question from David.
Mr.
Knowles, who would you pick to star in a movie adaptation of your number one bestseller?
David is talking, of course, about reasons to vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide.
I recently rewatched Gone with the Wind, and I think I would have to use an actor from that film, specifically The Wind.
The scene that comes to my mind is from American Beauty.
It's that scene where the wind is whipping around and there's a little plastic bag just floating around.
And the kid, he says, this is my greatest work of art.
When I consider all of the reasons to vote for Democrats, that is the picture that I see before me.
And I would love it if a Hollywood director could realize my artistic vision for that film.
From George.
Hi, Mr.
Knowles.
I'm not sure if you saw in the news recently that Iceland is on the path to completely eliminating Down syndrome from its population through prenatal screening and abortion.
I think we actually mentioned this on the show a little bit.
We did.
At least on a panel.
This seems very Nazi-esque to me.
It is.
Especially since people born with Down syndrome can still have a high quality of life.
They can.
How would you argue with someone who thinks this is a good thing?
I would ask them specifically, who would you kill?
Of the people who are alive right now, who have injuries, who are maimed, who have been amputated, who have mental retardation of any variety, I would ask them, which of those people would you kill?
For whom would it be better to be dead than to be alive?
Shut them up and make them realize the flaw in this argument because in Iceland and for other eugenicist arguments here, what they center their arguments around is abortion.
Because of the fiction that if you kill a baby in the womb, it hasn't really lived yet and you're not killing it.
You're just preventing it from ever having life.
But the reason we know that that little baby has Down syndrome in the womb is because it's a little baby that is living that we can run tests on and figure out what their life will look like to some degree after they're born.
So I would make it very clear that you are ending a life.
And if we go down this path, if we say, well, people with Down syndrome, they shouldn't live.
Their life is so poor, which is not true, by the way, but they'll say their life is so poor, it's not worth living for them.
Then you have to ask, well...
Where do we draw that line?
Do we say that people who are born with missing limbs, their quality of life will be too poor?
People who are born with autism, their quality of life will be too poor?
People who are born with a predilection for the common cold, will their life be too poor?
When we determine who has the right to live and who ought to live based on how beautiful they are, how smart they are, or how tall and athletically strong they are, We're going down a really bad path that will end in oblivion and despair.
From Hendrick.
In California, I unfortunately overheard two men discussing the killing of trees, which leads me to the following questions.
If they are distressed about the murder of trees, what do they eat for breakfast?
Do they commit abortion by eating eggs, or do they commit infanticide by eating alfalfa sprouts?
Excellent questions, Hendrick.
I got this a lot with my blank book because environmentalists would yell at me for wasting all of this paper.
You must remind them.
Paper is an organic, renewable resource.
We should use it, we should print out these emails, and that way the tree farms won't just become big parking lots in the middle of Washington State.
This does call to mind my favorite group of political activists.
They are the people who are vegan, they're crunchy, they're vegetarian, but they support abortion.
Those are two things that cannot go together.
They're people who won't eat an egg because chicken life is sacred, but they will kill a second or third trimester human baby because human life is not sacred.
Does not make a whole lot of sense.
Perhaps you should bring that up to them.
Good day, Michael.
Good day, James.
Here in Australia, we're having this same-sex marriage debate, and I was wondering, what are the best secular arguments for and against gay marriage?
P.S., would you ever like to visit Australia?
P.P.S., keep up the great work.
P.S., yes.
P.P.S., thank you very much.
The gay marriage debate, it has been totally...
Wrongly framed on both sides, but in particular on the left.
People view this issue as a civil rights issue.
Who has the right to get married?
Why do some people have the right to get married, but some people don't have the right to get married?
I can marry any woman that I like, any person that I love, but someone who's gay can't marry the person that they love.
This is skipping the first question in this debate, which is, what is marriage?
And that's not necessarily a religious question.
Obviously, religions have quite a lot to say about that, but it's a philosophical question.
It's an historical question.
It's a question that has always had basically one answer for the history of civilization, which is that marriage is a union between one man and women, at least women.
There has been polygamy at various points in our history, but for the vast majority of that history, it's been between one man and one woman.
And so the secular question that you can ask, the philosophic question is, what is marriage?
Why do we think of it as between a man and women or a man and one woman?
Is there something about the complementarity of the sexes that defines marriage?
Is the sexual difference inherent in what marriage is?
Does marriage involve the possibility, the potential to create a family, the atomic unit of society?
If marriage is not about that, if marriage is simply about sexual attraction or emotional attraction, then why on earth would we prevent polygamous couples from being married, polyamorous couples from being married?
Why would we prevent marriages that involve more than 50 people if it's simply about attraction and living together and visiting people in hospitals and any other order of things that could be accomplished simply through contract law?
If the sexes are different, if there are inherent sexual differences, and if those inherent sexual differences play some part in our nature and in our society, then the question of redefining marriage is a perilous one and should be taken very cautiously by It's slanderous
and absolutely absurd.
Next question.
From Lucy.
Hey Michael, you often joke about your Catholic guilt and seem to be ripping into Joel Osteen for his focus on mental positivity.
I hadn't heard of Osteen aside from the time he was on Jimmy Fallon's show, but at first glance, I would say his self-talk style of preaching has both scientific and biblical foundations.
A perhaps cliche but obvious example being Philippians 4:8.
Do you think Christians are supposed to live ashamed?
What's your take on Romans 8:1 and Galatians 5:1?
Cheers, Lucy.
I actually don't mean to rip into Joel Osteen as a figure in the culture or as a book writer or as a TV host.
I do rip into him a little bit as the leader of the largest church in America, but as a figure, I don't think he's necessarily doing anything particularly wrong.
Let's go through those Bible verses that you brought up.
Philippians 4.8 Wonderful advice.
We ought to do it all the time.
Romans 8.1 Also true, Galatians 5.1, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
And Christ himself tells us this in the Gospels.
Follow me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
All of which is absolutely true in Christians, should live joyously and joyfully.
You rarely see a frowning saint.
You see saints who suffer all the time, but they don't seem to be frowning too much because they're filled with joy, even when they're grieving or if they're a little sad.
We certainly shouldn't live ashamed.
We should live in joy in Christ.
And this is the issue with Osteen.
Is that Osteen does not talk about Christ very much in his sermons or on his Twitter account.
He used the word Jesus or Christ 112 times out of over 16,000 tweets.
He doesn't have a cross on his altar in his megachurch.
So practically, go with what works.
If Joel Osteen is giving you practical advice for your life, which is, by the way, what he says he's doing.
He says he's not an evangelist in the traditional sense.
And I give him total credit for honesty.
If that's helping you in a practical way, go with it.
Go with what works.
Theologically, though, I wouldn't focus on you.
A lot of Osteen's books are living your best life now, making the better you, you, you, you.
And a man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package indeed.
What you should do is live joyously looking at Christ, as all of those verses allude to.
So I would make sure that We don't focus on sentimentality here.
I think that's what Osteen kind of goes into a little bit.
Jesus wept.
It's the shortest verse in the New Testament.
Jesus wept, and he wept rightly so.
Your freedom was purchased miraculously at a great cost.
It was purchased at the cost of God the Son being incarnate and dying on the cross, being tortured infinitely, literally dying and then coming back up three days later.
Now, when you think about why he died and the reason for what he died, which is the sin of mankind, I guess that's negative.
That's probably not the most positive thing to think about.
But when you think about it in that way, then the miracle of redemption is much more awesome.
It fills you with greater awe and it fills you with a deeper and truer joy.
So I think we ought to view the world in exactly that way.
We ought to smile just as much as Joel Osteen if that's how the spirit moves us.
But it shouldn't be one that's based on saccharine or sentimentality.
Because as C.S. Lewis points out in The Weight of Glory...
If you look for truth, you might find comfort.
But if you look for comfort, you'll find neither truth nor comfort, only soft soap and wishful thinking, and in the end, despair.
So ground it in something real and look toward Christ for that, rather than toward yourself.
And now, the final question from Greg Michael the Clavanade.
That's a nice nickname.
I'm excited for your new story podcast that you're working on with Andy Millennial.
He's so in touch with our culture.
Isn't he?
He just raps about what all the kids are talking about, like rock and roll and stuff.
But I do have one concern.
Since this takes place in another universe, will this introduce Klavan into a new universe, only to pull him out every week, making a, dare I say, bum bum bum, Klavan-less weekend?
Thank you.
That is a really serious concern.
Thank you for bringing up a philosophical question, a paradox that has plagued Drew and I since we began working on this story podcast, Another Kingdom.
My answer to that is, it's in another universe.
Who cares?
It's not in our universe.
Not my problem.
I don't care.
Thank you for that question.
We'll let you know more when that podcast is about to come out.
Now we are heading into the Clavenless weekend, so batten down the hatches.
Get the MREs and the ammo ready.
We will be back next Monday.
Tune in then.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Have a good weekend.
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