Episode 249
WILL SPENCER & FRIENDS - Remembering Charlie Kirk: Faith, Trauma, and Healing in Troubled Times
This week, I hosted a memorial livestream following Charlie Kirk's assassination. I was joined by Cody Lawrence (Spare No Arrows), Hitler Hated Christ, journalist Mikale Olson, and Pastor Darren DePaul.
In this stream, I argued that our nation experienced collective trauma from witnessing graphic violence, identifying four problematic responses: leftists celebrating the death, right-wingers calling for retaliation, conspiracy theorists blaming various actors, and high-level influencers engaging in divisive arguments. And my guests and I discussed challenges with radical ideologies infiltrating conservative Christian spaces and the need for pastoral mentorship.
I concluded that the majority response has been people turning toward faith and spiritual renewal in Charlie Kirk's memory.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Pastoral care is essential during crisis - Pastor Darren emphasized the need for churches to provide real mentorship and life-on-life discipleship rather than just Sunday services.
2. Violent imagery can be traumatizing - The widespread circulation of graphic footage created shock and grief for many Americans unaccustomed to witnessing such violence.
3. Multiple factions are exploiting the tragedy - Various groups are using Kirk's death to advance their own agendas rather than focusing on healing.
4. Cultural Christianity lacks depth - Several of us noted that surface-level Christian identity without genuine faith leads to inconsistent behavior and eventual rebellion.
5. Young men need wisdom and mentorship - Our discussion highlighted how young men's lack of discernment makes them vulnerable to extremist ideologies from various directions.
6. Charlie Kirk's legacy was dialogue over force - We agreed his approach of engaging opponents through conversation rather than violence should be emulated.
CONNECT WITH TPUSA
CONNECT WITH MY GUESTS
Mentioned in this episode:
-- WASSON WATCH COMPANY --
Swiss craftsmanship meets Christian conviction at Wasson Watch Company - where quality timepieces come from a founder who won't bend the knee. EXCLUSIVE promo code WILL10 saves 10%
-- REAL BROTHERHOOD FOR CHRISTIAN MEN --
Tired of fighting your battles alone? I'm starting a facilitated brotherhood for Christian men who want real accountability, not surface-level fellowship. We meet twice monthly on Zoom for honest conversation and mutual growth.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Hello, everybody, and welcome to a special live stream edition of the Will Spencer Podcast.
Speaker B:I'm your host, Will Spencer.
Speaker B:So this is a bit new and unfamiliar for me, but sometime earlier this, early this week, I felt that it was my responsibility and it was necessary to offer some of my thoughts on the death of Charlie Kirk and also his life and legacy.
Speaker B:I don't necessarily think I'm qualified to be the most effective cultural commentator, but last week when I hosted a Twitter space at the inspiration of my good friend Nathan Spearing, I had a number of people tell me that they were very grateful and they were hoping to hear from me.
Speaker B:And so I wouldn't necessarily think that that would be the case that people would want and.
Speaker B:Or need that, but it seems that they do.
Speaker B:And so I have a responsibility, I felt, to my audience and the people who I'm very blessed, who take seriously the things that I had to say.
Speaker B:And I felt that call earlier this week.
Speaker B:And so I thought it'd be appropriate to host this stream and maybe share some of my thoughts and invite some of my friends to join as well.
Speaker B:And they'll be along shortly, probably about 30 minutes from now.
Speaker B:I'll open the doors and let a few friends in and we'll just continue the discussion.
Speaker B:But before I do that, I wanted to offer a few of my own thoughts on the matter.
Speaker B:And so the first thought that I had, the first thought that I had earlier, earlier today regarding why I think this event is having the impact that it has, and I think it's because this has been a.
Speaker B:And I don't like this word, and I'll explain why this has been a traumatic experience for many of the people of America, perhaps all of America and many people all over the world.
Speaker B:Now, what do I mean by trauma?
Speaker B:I personally don't believe that trauma is a thing in the way that it's commonly used.
Speaker B:I believe trauma as we currently understand it, mental, emotional trauma, is a combination of two things.
Speaker B:It is a combination of grief and shock.
Speaker B:So the first thing that happens, we experience the shock of some of the hardest realities of life intruding into our experience.
Speaker B:That can be anything from natural disaster to very serious family conflict, heaven forbid, car accidents and more.
Speaker B:And surely the sudden death, the murder of Charlie Kirk, was a shocking experience, and we'll talk about that in just a moment.
Speaker B:Also, there's a component of grief, and I think it's undeniable that much of America and the world is experiencing very deep grief over this, perhaps in ways for reasons they can't fully understand, but that they are very real.
Speaker B:And so when I say that this has been a traumatic event for many people in America around the world, what I mean is that they're experiencing a combination of shock and grief.
Speaker B:So let's talk.
Speaker B:And I think the powerful element of this and why it's been over a week now, he was murdered at around 12pm Pacific time, I believe Wednesday.
Speaker B:A week ago, that would have been Wednesday the 10th.
Speaker B:And so it's been over a week.
Speaker B:And I think people are still feeling it, very much so, in various ways.
Speaker B:And there's been a good bit of fallout.
Speaker B:There's been a lot of revival and a lot of degeneration that has happened almost hand in hand with each other.
Speaker B:Quite a lot of infighting and argumentation.
Speaker B:So the resonance is still going.
Speaker B:And I've wondered why.
Speaker B:And I think a lot of it has to do with the shock.
Speaker B:This was very much the first time that most everyday average Americans have seen a violent death, a bloody, violent death happen in front of their eyes or the consequences of it in front of their eyes.
Speaker B:We live in a very blessed time to be sheltered from many of the most brutal realities of violence.
Speaker B:In particular, many in America do.
Speaker B:Of course, there are plenty around the world and in the United States who do not.
Speaker B:But most people today are very blessedly sheltered from the kind of realities that first responders, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, hospital workers, doctors see.
Speaker B:Most people never see those things.
Speaker B:And it is a great blessing of our society that we are sheltered from those things.
Speaker B:And suddenly, on Wednesday afternoon last week, that wall, that shelter was shattered by auto playing videos that spread across X and Telegram or whatever platforms, whatever platforms you follow.
Speaker B:That's certainly what happened to me.
Speaker B:I believe I heard that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated by my wife.
Speaker B:My wife said that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated.
Speaker B:I did not hear that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated by my wife.
Speaker B:Let me get my prepositions in the right order.
Speaker B:She was the one who told me, and I think I went immediately to X and instantly videos on Wi Fi, autoplay for me on X.
Speaker B:And there's Charlie Kirk sitting in his chair, speaking on the microphone.
Speaker B:Then suddenly, bang, he's struck by the bullet.
Speaker B:Blood is coming out of his neck, spurting out of his neck.
Speaker B:He falls over.
Speaker B:It was quite gruesome, brutal, violent and sudden.
Speaker B:And I didn't have the chance to click play.
Speaker B:I didn't have the chance to say, yes, okay, I'm ready.
Speaker B:I want to see this.
Speaker B:What happened?
Speaker B:It autoplayed.
Speaker B:It went around on telegram and many chats that I'm in there, same thing.
Speaker B:It was just over and over again.
Speaker B:I would open up a chat there.
Speaker B:It was bang, because it was cut.
Speaker B:And I'm sure I'm not the only person who had that experience of being shown a video so graphic and just in terms of the subject matter, let alone.
Speaker B:Here's a young man, handsome guy, charming, charismatic, energetic.
Speaker B:I don't know anyone who's in their right mind who had a negative impression of Charlie Kirk, because he was just that kind of guy.
Speaker B:And he suddenly just struck down in, you know, the prime of his life.
Speaker B:Not even yet the prime.
Speaker B:The man had not achieved his prime, which says a lot about his.
Speaker B:The lost potential.
Speaker B:And there he is, just gone in an instant.
Speaker B:And of course, there was the interminable period of waiting the hour, two hours or so when reports are flying, he's passed away, he's stabilized, he's taking blood.
Speaker B:Where everyone's.
Speaker B:You know, maybe they're reporting fake news.
Speaker B:Maybe they're getting bad information.
Speaker B:I don't know where we're waiting to see the fate that even if he had pulled through, would have been.
Speaker B:Clearly had been a miracle from God.
Speaker B:As we're all watching the video over and over again, and we're encountering the reality of violence in a way that many hadn't before.
Speaker B:And this is, of course, comes the day after, or a couple days after the Charlotte train stabbing, which was another example, mostly that was censored originally.
Speaker B:And then the uncensored video began making its way around.
Speaker B:Maybe that was Monday, the video started spreading.
Speaker B:And then Tuesday, the uncertain video came out.
Speaker B:And by Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, surely there was the video of the full video of this poor girl.
Speaker B:Forgive me if I mispronounce her name, Irina Zerutskaya, I believe something like that.
Speaker B:This poor girl slumping over and a pool of blood forming on the ground on the bottom of this subway car, quite a lot of bright red blood.
Speaker B:Unmistakable.
Speaker B:And so in a very short period of time, meaning 24, 48 hours, people's walls that had separated them in a very blessed way of brutal violence, knife stabbings, shootings, et cetera.
Speaker B:Shattered.
Speaker B:It just shattered.
Speaker B:Before they even had a chance to say, yes, I'm ready for it, the walls came down.
Speaker B:And I think that accounts for the reason that a lot of people are feeling a grief that they don't understand from a man who they never met.
Speaker B:And his work may not even particularly touch them, depending on how old they are.
Speaker B:And yet they still feel something very significant has been lost.
Speaker B:They felt it, of course, at the stabbing of Irina.
Speaker B:They felt in a very visceral sense how real and violent that was.
Speaker B:And then here comes Charlie Kirk the next day, basically the same thing happening.
Speaker B:And so I think those two events together in such close proximity put everyone into a state of shock again, of trauma, shock and grief.
Speaker B:A real.
Speaker B:Not only did we lose a young immigrant from Ukraine, innocent girl, sitting, minding her own business, we lose.
Speaker B:We didn't know her, didn't meet her, and yet she's sitting innocently, as any of us would do on public transportation.
Speaker B:And within 90 seconds, her life was gone.
Speaker B:In a very real sense, she didn't even know what hit her, I believe.
Speaker B:And then this exact Same thing happens 24 hours later to Charlie Kirk, who many people did know his name, but I think he also did not know what hit him.
Speaker B:And there was a real confrontation with the reality of violence, the sinful, fallen world that we live in.
Speaker B:And I think that was quite a lot for some people as it would be.
Speaker B:And it left people in a state of very real shock, probably mitigated quite a bit by the presence of a screen with our phone or laptop, but nonetheless, there it was.
Speaker B:And it was into that space that the outpouring of grief came.
Speaker B:And I think the outpouring of grief was grief is the other side of praise.
Speaker B:This is something I heard many years ago, and I think it's true.
Speaker B:We only grieve that which we find praiseworthy.
Speaker B:If you have something that doesn't mean much to you, that isn't very valuable to you, and you lose it, you're not going to grieve it.
Speaker B:But we only can grieve the things that the pre praise to the degree that we praise them.
Speaker B:You will only grieve something to the degree that you praise it.
Speaker B:And so, you know, if you lose a ratty old shoebox out of your closet, you know, you're probably not going to grieve the shoebox.
Speaker B:But if the shoebox is full of precious photos of memories that you probably don't think about all that often, mementos, letters, you know, artifacts of a previous time of your life, you will grieve those very much because they are praiseworthy, because you've lost something that you then can't get back.
Speaker B:And so we can only grieve those things which we praise, and we only grieve them to grieve them to the degree that we can praise them.
Speaker B:And I think over the course of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, there were a number of Things that were lost more than just the individuals.
Speaker B:The loss of Irena is, of course, there's an outpouring of grief, but I think what was a part of that was a loss of innocence.
Speaker B:There was a feeling like, oh, that can't possibly happen.
Speaker B:That can't possibly happen to me.
Speaker B:And we watch a young girl for a moment does not seem to have a care in the world, and gone in 90 seconds.
Speaker B:There's a real loss of innocence associated with that.
Speaker B:Am I safe anywhere?
Speaker B:Am I safe to look at my phone and not pay attention?
Speaker B:Situational awareness in major American US Cities is absolutely a thing.
Speaker B:And yet there are all our moments where we all take our eye off the ball.
Speaker B:And certainly I think there was a large outpouring of can we ever take our eye off the ball again if our lives are 90 seconds away from being taken from us?
Speaker B:Excuse me.
Speaker B:So there's a loss of her life, but also the loss of our collective innocence.
Speaker B:And I think with Charlie Kirk, there was very much the same a loss of our collective innocence that you could be sitting, having, engaging in positive, meaningful, sincere dialogue with those you disagree with.
Speaker B:And in a blink of an eye, in a blink of an eye, it can just be gone before you, even before you even know you can be in Jesus's arms.
Speaker B:And it's like, wait, how did I get here?
Speaker B:And then he has to explain to you what took place, perhaps.
Speaker B:And actually, last week on Instagram or this weekend, I saw a reel that someone posted that was one of Charlie's colleagues, you know, assistants, perhaps, was filming him, was recording him as he was showing up to.
Speaker B:To the university, throwing T shirts into the crowd, driving up in the car, and he sees the crowd and just to feel what it was must have been like in that car to not know how close he was to the end of his life and how none of us really ever know that.
Speaker B:And the incident with Charlie Kirk made that very apparent.
Speaker B:Of course, we were supposed to memento mori.
Speaker B:We're supposed to keep our death before our eyes at all times.
Speaker B:And remember that time is short.
Speaker B:None of us know our time.
Speaker B:It's quite difficult to live that way.
Speaker B:We know we should.
Speaker B:It's quite difficult to live that way.
Speaker B:Nonetheless, it's always true.
Speaker B:And then to find that he had actually reached the end of his life without knowing it.
Speaker B:And I think there's a real sense of loss there.
Speaker B:And then on the back half of that loss of innocence, there is the loss of a man who I had no idea how faithful this guy was.
Speaker B:I Had a vaguely.
Speaker B:Charlie Kirk was after my time when I was in university.
Speaker B:Turning Point USA wasn't a thing when I was in college.
Speaker B:So I had never been to a TPUSA event.
Speaker B:Of course I knew who he was.
Speaker B:I had seen his, his tents, I'd seen his videos.
Speaker B:I had seen him sitting out on sunny days and cloudy days and rainy days and cold days, debating with anyone who had passed by, whether it was one guy at a small table, you know, with a tablecloth or a giant, what I think could be fairly called small tent revival.
Speaker B:Which is which of course, what a turning point had grown to.
Speaker B:He was willing to engage people straight on.
Speaker B:And not only that, he was a husband, a father of two, a real family man who lived and embodied his values beginning back when he was 17 years old.
Speaker B:I was listening to his man rampant episode with Doug Wilson and he was talking about how he got into politics when he was 17 and he wanted to start creating change.
Speaker B:And I believe he referenced something, maybe it was like neoconservatism or liberalism or enlightenment liberalism, I don't remember.
Speaker B:But it was a political term that I don't think I knew when I was 17.
Speaker B:I probably didn't even know it when I was like 37.
Speaker B:It's just came a long way later.
Speaker B:And here's a 17 year old kid who gets so dialed into politics and decides that he's going to show up and make a difference.
Speaker B:And he fights for 14 or 15 years, through his whole 20s and prime of his life, holding true to his values and how much his Christian faith became a vocal part of that, particularly over the past few years.
Speaker B:And so here's a man that in a very real sense embodies the best of what many of us hope to be driven, successful, focused, high integrity, passionate, enthusiastic, energetic, charming.
Speaker B:You know, all of these wonderful qualities that were just on a road trip around America, moving the needle for millions of young college students, men and women, and also at the highest level of politics, gone in an instant.
Speaker B:And we recognized the loss of the man.
Speaker B:And so here we are a week or so later and the shock, I think, has largely worn off.
Speaker B:I'm very grateful that I haven't seen too many autoplaying videos over the past few days.
Speaker B:I don't know that I would want to see it again, but I think the grief has now come rushing in and maybe some of the shock is sitting there underneath the surface.
Speaker B:So in this space of a traumatized nation, a nation that has experienced grief and shock, you're having a number of Responses, some of which I documented on, talked about on X, that are deeply counterproductive.
Speaker B:And when I say counterproductive, I don't mean in a political sense.
Speaker B:I don't mean that it's moving against right wing or politics or anything like that.
Speaker B:I mean counterproductive to the healing and growth of the nation and the people of it.
Speaker B:And I listed four of them on Twitter and substack yesterday and I'd like to go over them with you now.
Speaker B:Of course, first you have the radical leftists, the people that are celebrating Charlie Kirk's death.
Speaker B:I don't think it's right to celebrate the death of any opponent.
Speaker B:We're called in scripture not to do that.
Speaker B:Specifically, God desires that all should be saved.
Speaker B:And certainly when someone from the left dies, potentially even in a tragic way, we shouldn't gloat or celebrate.
Speaker B:We should mourn that this soul didn't have the chance to be saved, saved or certainly perhaps was not saved.
Speaker B:And so to see people on the left cheering and celebrating and dismissing the death of Charlie Kirk and saying he deserved it, that has been another shock to many on the right and the left to see their friends doing something that they rightfully find abhorrent.
Speaker B:And so I think that's been very counterproductive.
Speaker B:It has been driving like the grief and the shock that people are already experiencing.
Speaker B:It's already like a.
Speaker B:Wait, you just said what?
Speaker B:Like I've known you just in a hypothetical scenario, I've known you for how many years and this is what you're saying.
Speaker B:And so on top of it, you have this societal fracturing of people who they thought they knew their friends and now they're seeing a truly ugly side of their friends.
Speaker B:They don't know what to do with it.
Speaker B:And so that fallout is occurring.
Speaker B:And I think there has been righteous and unrighteous responses to that, but I think that's added onto it.
Speaker B:You also have the radical right wing guys who are taking Charlie Kirk's death and also the death of Irina Zaruskaya's opportunity to, well, it's time to get real mad and go do a violence.
Speaker B:And now we have license to do it.
Speaker B:You shot first.
Speaker B:And these guys find various false, legitimate, false, so called, legitimate, quote, unquote reasons to go do that.
Speaker B:I don't think there is cause to do that.
Speaker B:And we'll get into why, but they've certainly contributed to raising the temperature quite a bit.
Speaker B:But I think ultimately those two voices, the radical right voice, has died down a bit.
Speaker B:It's shifted some the Radical left voice is still there, and that's going to take a while to unwind.
Speaker B:Jimmy Kimmel being canceled, like literally his show being canceled is a good example of how much more there is for that to unwind.
Speaker B:But what's kind of taken the place of these radical right wings voices are conspiratorial voices, a set of high level influencers who are trying now very forcefully to tie everything to Israel.
Speaker B:That is a very persistent drumbeat that is going on.
Speaker B:It's tied to some of the right wing stuff more so than to the left.
Speaker B:But they're definitely banging the drum, trying to get everyone to think like, oh, this is Israel's fault.
Speaker B:This is Israel's fault.
Speaker B:We're going to craft whatever dots we need to in order to connect them.
Speaker B:And that has been so deeply counterproductive.
Speaker B:I stay out of those influencer wars.
Speaker B:At the highest level, I don't think I need to name names, but certainly to watch the argument that's happening between multimillion influencers.
Speaker B:At the highest level, when you think about it from a position of a nation and a world being in grief and shock, and then you see these opportunists talking about, oh, Israel did it.
Speaker B:And then you see the other opportunities from the other side coming in saying, oh, no, they didn't.
Speaker B:It's like the argument, the family squabble, in a sense, is just making it worse.
Speaker B:And that's been so difficult to take.
Speaker B:It's been so difficult to watch that just to want to tell these people to just shut up, shut up, go away, stop.
Speaker B:I don't understand how in any sense it's being made better.
Speaker B:And look, I don't mean to say that I'm a saintly individual either.
Speaker B:There are probably things that I've said that have contributed to a raising of the temperature.
Speaker B:But someone like me with a relatively small account compared to people with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers, I think there's a very different level of responsibility.
Speaker B:And to see that argument continue to churn and turn over and over and over again is taking us further and further away from what's actually going on.
Speaker B:And then of course, you have this conspiracy voices, not all of which point to Israel, though many of them do, where they're scrutinizing every single aspect of what went on.
Speaker B:This guy tugged his sleeve, this guy touched his nose.
Speaker B:There was this weird thing over here.
Speaker B:What about this?
Speaker B:I don't believe any of this.
Speaker B:Questioning the narrative and the reason why the questioning the narrative bros, the conspira bros are so counterproductive right now is because the only way that we as a nation will begin to heal from this, to overcome our shock and our grief is if you stop shocking us.
Speaker B:And the constant need to put out a gotcha like this is not true.
Speaker B:And this is not true, and this is not true continues to poke at this open wound and, and I think that it's just unnecessary.
Speaker B:First of all, I think they're wrong first of all.
Speaker B:So that's a really important one.
Speaker B:If they were truly unveiling things that I thought were that people needed to know.
Speaker B:But this seems to be a pretty open and shut case of some ex Mormon trans furries putting together an antifa a tran tifa terror cell coordinating to take the life of a relatively soft target.
Speaker B:This is not a man Charlie Kirk did not have.
Speaker B:He did not have Secret Service level security.
Speaker B:He's a private citizen.
Speaker B:He's not a hardened target.
Speaker B:He doesn't have bulletproof glass around him, he doesn't have teams of snipers doing sweeps like Trump did.
Speaker B:And so he was a relatively soft target, unfortunately, easy to get at.
Speaker B:And some guys with very warped and deranged minds decided to do that.
Speaker B:And they are men, by the way, whatever they want to call themselves, they are men.
Speaker B:And so to try and say like, oh, there's this grand conspiracy of other details going on is preventing us from really landing on a narrative of what's true so we can go through the process of a trial, get closure, put it behind us and figure out what do we do now.
Speaker B:And so when you take the radical left wing people who are celebrating, the radical right wing people who want to do a violence and you take the anti Israel conspiracy influencers and that whole sphere and then the conspira bros, the conspirator as I've heard them called.
Speaker B:When you take all those people and then you keep those frames in mind and then you go and you look at X and that's all that I see.
Speaker B:That's really all that I see.
Speaker B:And so you have this deeply traumatized nation, people who have really been suffering vicariously.
Speaker B:And by the way, I think this is also why Erica Kirk's speech was so powerful, is that she channeled within 48 hours or 72 hours.
Speaker B:I think it was Friday night that she spoke.
Speaker B:She was there to show the grief that everyone was feeling in a way that no one else really had.
Speaker B:JD Vance spoke on Monday and I think he really put forth a masculine face on grief.
Speaker B:I thought his speech on Charlie Kirk's show was wonderful.
Speaker B:Especially reciting the Nicene Creed.
Speaker B:But ERICA Kirk, within 72 hours of the event, pulls herself together.
Speaker B:I saw footage of her descending the staircase on Air Force Two with Usha Vance, and her body language just said that she was destroyed.
Speaker B:She couldn't.
Speaker B:I was surprised that she was able to walk.
Speaker B:And so she's able to stand on camera and channel the grief that so many people were feeling.
Speaker B:And I think it was a very healing moment for many people, for good reason.
Speaker B:It was steely resolve.
Speaker B:It was, this will not be the end.
Speaker B:We are going to go forward.
Speaker B:And you have no idea.
Speaker B:What you've created was what people, good people, needed to hear.
Speaker B:Commitment to the vision of Charlie Kirk, which we'll get to that.
Speaker B:And so she was the only one who I've seen.
Speaker B:She and JD Vance are the only ones that I've seen that have really offered any healing, both to men and to women.
Speaker B:And so meanwhile, you have the.
Speaker B:These other four factions that are continuing to stir things up in the most vile form of self interest, the most vile and selfish form of self interest.
Speaker B:And I pray that they stop.
Speaker B:I pray that they all stop.
Speaker B:Because there are literally millions of people in America and around the world who are still suffering from grief and shock for this and for good reason, for the loss of these individual lives who I mentioned.
Speaker B:And also the intrusion of brutal gun and knife violence into their lives and the feeling of lack of safety that they all are feeling.
Speaker B:They feel that, whether rightfully or wrongfully, whether they are personally in danger, it is difficult to say, impossible to say.
Speaker B:It's evaluated on individual level.
Speaker B:And yet one can understand how they might feel that way with such violent events in such close proximity.
Speaker B:And so into this environment of true grief and shock, of these truly praiseworthy things which we've lost, including our innocence.
Speaker B:You have opportunists who are thinking only about themselves.
Speaker B:They're thinking only about their platform, their ideology, their ideas, their worldview, whatever they have to peddle.
Speaker B:And to see the opportunism flood in, to see the selfishness flood in again, at the highest level, we are all subject to the churn and emotions run high.
Speaker B:And it's certainly one thing.
Speaker B:But there are people at the highest level, both that we can see and that we can't, that are pushing this.
Speaker B:And that has been very difficult.
Speaker B:That has been very difficult to watch.
Speaker B:And so coming up this Sunday is the memor service here in.
Speaker B:Here in Phoenix and Glendale, on the other side of town.
Speaker B:And my prayer is that it's in the morning during church so insofar as I know I won't be attending, but I think I have questions about it being during church hours.
Speaker B:However, I also understand that it will be presented as a church service.
Speaker B:And so I can't necessarily argue with that because certainly one of the, the good outcomes of this is that people are turning to faith.
Speaker B:And my hope and my prayer is that this service, which begins at 11 o' clock in the morning, doors open at 8.
Speaker B:I went and I got my beard trimmed today and I was talking to my barber about it and he said they're going to try to be there at 6 and so he's quite far away like I am.
Speaker B:And so it's going to be that kind of day.
Speaker B:But my prayer is that for those who commit to attending this 60,000, 80,000 person stadium with the president, vice president and many Christian worship leaders as well, that it be a worship service of.
Speaker B:And of course, Erica Kirk, that it be a worship service of healing, because that is what we've lacked in the public dialogue so far is a real expression of grief, a real expression of like, hey, this was a lot for a lot of us.
Speaker B:And if you influential people could just like pipe down and stop thinking of yourselves for a few minutes and maybe think about the people you know who follow you or who respect you or who respected you, that might be a better way for us to move forward.
Speaker B:But thankfully we are not only.
Speaker B:We do not only have influencers at any level to thank or to look to, we actually do have God and Jesus Christ.
Speaker B:And the fifth category of person that I believe is the majority, I really do believe it is the majority are people that are now finding a renewal of their faith.
Speaker B:We might call it a revival.
Speaker B:I think the legs of this revival we will see over time.
Speaker B:However, I do feel that quite a bit of it is very genuine that people are asking deeper, harder questions than I think they were ready to precisely because of the shock and the grief.
Speaker B:How do we find meaning in this that is outside of the political warfare?
Speaker B:How do we find meaning in this that is outside of right versus left, radical left versus radical right center presidential campaigns?
Speaker B:How do we make meaning out of this in a way that's sustainable?
Speaker B:And I think people very rightfully have a Holy Spirit inspired instinct, God willing, that's taking them to look beyond themselves and also within themselves to find where is the truth?
Speaker B:And let me return to scripture, let me return to church, let me return to the true answers that found in our society and see what they have to say to me.
Speaker B:And say to me about my life, and maybe I'm really ready to hear those answers for the first time ever or for the first time in a long time for many.
Speaker B:And so I've been very grateful to see that amongst the influencers and the radical left and the radical right and all of that, there's been a very heartfelt spirit of let's do as Charlie did.
Speaker B:Let's ask hard questions, but engage with dialogue and listen.
Speaker B:Let's ask ourselves hard questions.
Speaker B:Let's have the courage to grow.
Speaker B:Let's have the courage to be wrong about things that we thought, and let's have the courage to engage with people that we may disagree with.
Speaker B:And that, I think is the most beautiful aspect of Charlie's legacy.
Speaker B:I'm going to get emotional saying this, so please forgive me, is that he died doing what he loved.
Speaker B:He died doing what he loved.
Speaker B:He died doing what he was best at.
Speaker B:What he was great at was sitting in a tent, engaging people with dialogue respectfully, even if they weren't respectful to him.
Speaker B:How many people were there?
Speaker B:A couple thousand, I think.
Speaker B:Thousands, I think, for sure.
Speaker B:And amplified sound and, you know, it was a far cry from setting up in a quad at a small university on a cloudy day.
Speaker B:It was a beautiful sunny day, you know, late early fall day in Utah and big tent and a giant auditorium.
Speaker B:And he was doing what he was best at.
Speaker B:He was doing what he loved.
Speaker B:And he was being, you know, the.
Speaker B:The best version of himself he could be.
Speaker B:That he had worked to be at a high level of proficiency and committed to the people who are right in front of him.
Speaker B:You are made in the image of God.
Speaker B:And I believe that as God's image bearer, that you can't.
Speaker B:That I can reach you with reason.
Speaker B:That I can reach you by appealing to your humanity.
Speaker B:That I don't have to shut you down, that I don't have to shut you out.
Speaker B:That I don't have to take your life or do violence to you, to silence you.
Speaker B:I believe, or to prove my point, I believe that I can sit and I can speak with you person to person in front of all these people, man to man.
Speaker B:And that together, through asking intelligent questions and giving thoughtful reason answers, that together we can arrive at the truth.
Speaker B:That is a commitment to a way of being in the world.
Speaker B:That is a commitment to a way of being a man that says, I can win your heart, I can win your mind, and I can win your heart, and I can win it to Christ, and I can do it with my presence and with my body and with my spirit.
Speaker B:I don't have to do it with force of arms.
Speaker B:I don't have to do it with the sword.
Speaker B:I can do it with me, with me as the object, as the instrument in God's hands.
Speaker B:And he made that commitment to a way of being a man, to a way of being in the world.
Speaker B:And he was wildly successful with it.
Speaker B:It.
Speaker B:He was wildly successful with it.
Speaker B:And I can't think of anyone in the political sphere who's been as successful committing to a deeply Christian and highly Christian way of being.
Speaker B:And so I think the best way to carry on Charlie's legacy is to be as Charlie was.
Speaker B:To carry on his legacy by being like him.
Speaker B:By not quitting on her fellow Americans, our fellow men and women.
Speaker B:Not quitting on the radical leftist, not quitting on the radical rightist, not quitting on the conspira bros or the Israel people or any of them.
Speaker B:By saying I'm not going to shut you down as much as my flesh may want to.
Speaker B:I will reach you even if I can't reach you.
Speaker B:I can reach the person next to me who likes you or who follows you or agrees with you by maintaining that spirit of dialogue, of reason, of mastery of information and arguments, by getting inside the mind and the worldview of others to know how to free them from their own chains.
Speaker B:That's what Charlie Kirk did from a Christian spirit.
Speaker B:And he was excellent at it.
Speaker B:And he was excellent at it.
Speaker B:And so we lack men and women who are courageous enough to do it at the level that he did it at, with the proficiency that he did it at.
Speaker B:But we only lack that for now.
Speaker B:I don't think we will lack it forever.
Speaker B:And so my exhortation to people listening who have seen, whether it be the radical right, the radical left or all the varieties of conspiracy people or communities that I don't even have visibility into is to look at them through the eyes of compassion and to know that they are making a bad choice or many bad choices for how to respond to a traumatic, a grief and shock driven event.
Speaker B:They're acting out of instinct, they're acting out of fleshly desires to serve self at the expense of others.
Speaker B:And there is another choice that can be made.
Speaker B:How do I serve others at the expense of myself?
Speaker B:And that is the commitment of the Christian life.
Speaker B:How do I serve others at the expense of myself?
Speaker B:That is what Christ came to do is to serve others humanity to serve his people at the expense of himself.
Speaker B:That is what Charlie Kirk did was to serve others at the expense of himself.
Speaker B:And it cost him everything, just like it cost Christ everything.
Speaker B:But that is the commitment that I think we all have to make, that I think in our hearts we feel called to make, that we all.
Speaker B:Certainly, speaking for myself and for many men that I've talked to, of course women feel this as well.
Speaker B:What can I give myself to that will truly serve?
Speaker B:I speak to so many men that are longing for purpose, that are looking for purpose.
Speaker B:But when they talk to me, what they're not saying is, I want to make a billion dollars.
Speaker B:Those guys, they've got other things to do.
Speaker B:They're saying, what can I really give myself to in order to serve?
Speaker B:And so I think as men and women, we feel that call to die to ourself.
Speaker B:What can I give myself that is worth dying to?
Speaker B:Surely our faith, surely our families, surely our vocations, which might not necessarily be our jobs, you know, our careers, our vocations can be very different.
Speaker B:But I think if we can die to self, we can truly serve our nation.
Speaker B:And I think there is an opportunity to do that here, inspired by Charlie Kirk's example.
Speaker B:So again, my encouragement to everyone is to look at what's taken place and to look at what's transpired over the past seven or eight days and of course, grieve it, of course witness the shock and really take in the reality of, of the brutal truth of life.
Speaker B:This is how violent the world is.
Speaker B:We are spared from this in America, but if you lived in Afghanistan, many places in the Middle east, sub Saharan Africa, plenty of places around the world, you would see this and perhaps worse every single day.
Speaker B:And so to take this in and say, this is the fallen world that we live in.
Speaker B:We are sheltered from it, it is a blessing to be so as it breaks through.
Speaker B:However, lead it to show you not how fallen the world is, but to the Savior who saves us, who delivers us from this fallen world.
Speaker B:And what does he ask of us?
Speaker B:He asks us to serve.
Speaker B:He asks us to take up our cross to die, to follow him and die.
Speaker B:And so that's what I see Charlie Kirk doing.
Speaker B:And that is what I see many women, many men and women who should know, failing to do.
Speaker B:And so they can fail.
Speaker B:But we will succeed.
Speaker B:We will succeed.
Speaker B:And I believe you will succeed if you're listening.
Speaker B:And so I encourage you to spend some time in reflection and prayer to understand how can you give yourself to living out Charlie Kirk's mission in your life.
Speaker B:You don't have to start a TPUSA branch.
Speaker B:You don't have to do that.
Speaker B:But certainly there are areas in your life that you can do as Charlie did and perhaps move the needle in ways that are meaningful to you and your family.
Speaker B:You certainly don't have to make all the templates, but take the talents that you have and multiply them in the ways you can.
Speaker B:And that, I think, is the righteous way to live in Charlie's.
Speaker B:To live in Charlie's legacy and to honor his legacy.
Speaker B:And may we all go forward into the corners of our lives and our world to do that.
Speaker B:And let's leave the others behind.
Speaker B:So thank you so much for listening.
Speaker B:I appreciate you letting me give this little rant about how I see things.
Speaker B:I appreciate everyone who's watching, and I'm very grateful for you.
Speaker B:And here we are, a little bit later than expected.
Speaker B:Expected.
Speaker B:But I'd like to bring up to the stage some of my friends who I'm very grateful have joined us.
Speaker B:It looks like we've got Cody Lawrence, Experimental arrows.
Speaker B:I've got.
Speaker B:We've got Hitler hated Christ.
Speaker B:We've got Michael Olson.
Speaker B:And last but not least, we've got Pastor Darren Paul.
Speaker B:Thank you guys so much all for being here for joining us on this on this occasion.
Speaker B:And thanks for your patience while I ran a little bit long with my comments.
Speaker B:But I'm grateful to have this opportunity to speak with all of you today.
Speaker C:It's good to be here.
Speaker B:So I'm going to.
Speaker B:Many people may not know who some of you gentlemen are, so I'm just going to go across the row and just let you guys introduce yourself.
Speaker B:We'll start with Cody and.
Speaker B:And then we'll go with Hitler hated Christ and then Michael and then Darren.
Speaker B:So Cody, just go ahead and give a brief overview of you and who you are and what you do.
Speaker B:Cody, can you hear me?
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker E:I am the host of the Spare no Eras podcast.
Speaker E:I am just a layman who notices things, I guess you could say.
Speaker E:I. I have been particularly.
Speaker E:I take aim at cultural issues and issues specifically within the Christian sphere, but culturally in general, and try to give moral and biblical solutions to those problems and help equip people to deal with those in their families and in their churches and in their lives.
Speaker B:Thank you, Cody.
Speaker B:Hitler hated Christ.
Speaker B:Are you there?
Speaker D:Yep, I'm here.
Speaker D:Can you hear me?
Speaker B:Yes, I can hear you just fine.
Speaker B:You're.
Speaker B:He's.
Speaker B:He's anonymous, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker B:So you just get to hear his voice.
Speaker B:Don't see his face.
Speaker D:Yeah, sorry about that.
Speaker D:You don't have to make me full screen if you don't want, but that's fine.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So I run the.
Speaker D:Run the Twitter account notrguy, and I post a lot of stuff related to, like, World War II history, but also kind of the intersection of politics as well as theology in some of the, like, more dissident.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:Areas online.
Speaker D:And so this Charlie Kirk situation with that has really been pretty impactful and touched a whole lot of different people that I interact with and know personally or through online as well.
Speaker B:Wonderful.
Speaker B:I appreciate.
Speaker B:I appreciate your work as well, Mikal Mikhail.
Speaker C:Yeah, everybody says it differently.
Speaker C:It's fine.
Speaker C:So I'm a journalist.
Speaker C:I've done some writing for.
Speaker C:For Christian Post, not the be, which is the kind of affiliate website to Babylon be, the real news site.
Speaker C:I've also done some writing for the Federalist in the past.
Speaker C:Right now I'm running a YouTube channel.
Speaker C:I'm still writing a little bit for Christian Post and Not the Bee.
Speaker C:And so there's a lot, A lot of things going on.
Speaker C:Starting a new podcast coming up pretty soon.
Speaker C:My whole goal is basically to try and view the political landscape through a biblical lens as much as possible.
Speaker C:So that's kind of the framework that I'm always looking at everything through and, and writing through and all that.
Speaker B:So wonderful.
Speaker B:Grateful for you and for your work.
Speaker B:And then, Pastor Darren.
Speaker A:I'm just a local church pastor, I guess, serve a church in Souderton, Pennsylvania.
Speaker A:Our church is, gosh, well over 200 years old.
Speaker A:We've been through a lot.
Speaker A:I've been in pastoral ministry for about almost 30 years now, so I guess I'm a little bit of an old head.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So just glad to be here and glad to connect Will in person and not through signal as we usually do.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's good to meet you too, sir.
Speaker B:So actually, I'd like to start with you, Pastor Darren.
Speaker B:You're the one working most directly with people with your congregants.
Speaker B:You know, can you share a little bit of what it's been like.
Speaker B:What it's been like on the ground with the people that you've been talking with and, and some of the conversations that, that you've had?
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, I think you.
Speaker A:You touched on quite a bit of it there kind of in your monologue.
Speaker A:Our.
Speaker A:Our congregation skews a little bit older.
Speaker A:I've been here about a year, almost a year and a half and, you know, we've gotten younger this past Sunday, though, coming in and, and even, you know, Wednesday through Sunday after, you know, everything had transpired, you know, people coming by the office, but particularly on Sunday, you know, seeing people and talking to people in our congregation that are in their 80s, 90s, we have I think 100, 101 year old that comes, something like that, just completely devastated over this.
Speaker A:And a lot of them, you know, they knew Charlie's name.
Speaker A:I don't know if they necessarily knew what he stood for other than being maybe a right wing political activist or something like that, but they were completely devastated by it.
Speaker A:And so walking with our congregation, you know, again, 100 something year old folks, followers of Christ, you know, down to children, as you noted again in your monologue, you know, seeing this thing on social media without hitting play, I think for a lot of folks was just quite jarring.
Speaker A:And you know, I am one of the pastors, I know there was a huge dialogue of online, you know, should we talk about it?
Speaker A:Shouldn't we, if, if your church doesn't, you know, you should leave.
Speaker A:I did talk about it and, and also the stabbing of Irena as well and was a shepherding moment for our, our people.
Speaker A:And I, I don't know how you don't talk about it.
Speaker A:I think obviously we can discuss how to, but in, in my context, they needed to hear from, from their shepherd and, and how to navigate seeing a martyr, a Christian martyr essentially on live television.
Speaker A:Something I never thought I would see in my lifetime.
Speaker A:And I'm sure some of our older folks would say the same.
Speaker A:You know, I remember my daughter asking me years ago, you know, dad, do you think we'll ever see.
Speaker A:She's a history buff and you know, do you think we'll ever see, you know, martyrdom in the United States?
Speaker A:And I said not in my lifetime, maybe yours, but not in mine.
Speaker A:And, and, and here we are.
Speaker A:So it, it impacted our people tremendously.
Speaker A:Just like I'm sure it impacted, you know, those that you go to church with and, and, and, and do life with, so to speak.
Speaker B:So yeah, that makes a lot of sense that, yeah, certainly.
Speaker B:And I want to get to this point a little bit later.
Speaker B:The question of, you know, should you leave your church if your pastor didn't mention it?
Speaker B:I know that you had, you had asked on X if we would cover that and I do think we should cover it.
Speaker B:And I think there is absolutely a good pastoral ministry case to bring it up, you know, to men to mention it because people are suffering as a result of it.
Speaker B:And so I definitely want to touch on that.
Speaker B:And so I'm grateful that that you lent that historical perspective like an 80 year old people that are very shook up by it.
Speaker B:And the question of Christian martyrdom is very, very real.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:So actually I want to go to Hitler hated Christ.
Speaker B:And I just wanted to ask, you know, I spoke a bit about the radical right.
Speaker B:I'm not sure if you heard, heard during the monologue that some of their, what shall we say, unappreciated responses to the difficult moments that we've been experiencing.
Speaker B:Can you talk a little bit about what you've seen in that regard maybe since things went down early last week with Irena and then where things are at now?
Speaker D:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker D:So the situation with Irena feels like it's, you know, 100 years ago now with everything that's transpired since last Wednesday.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker D:But one of the primary things that I've sort of noticed is there's definitely a separating of the wheat from the chaff in terms of people's response to this and how willing people are to really try to get their pet issue that they're worried about injected into the conversation.
Speaker D:I see a lot of people that are, that are really talking about Charlie's life, the way he impacted so many people for the Lord, that kind of thing.
Speaker D:But then there's also a whole lot of people that are coming up with all sorts of wild conspiracy theories about Israel at the same time.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker D:So it's really a wild mix.
Speaker D:When I scroll through just my timeline of individuals that I think are being really reflective of Christ and the response and then other people that are, they're shocked by it, but it doesn't seem to have changed, I guess the way they think about the situation.
Speaker D:One of the things I've seen quite a bit is this idea that Charlie Kirk died and he was sort of the last one willing to have dialogue.
Speaker D:And there in mind this is like sort of a nail in the coffin for his belief that we can sort of have arguments about these topics in this country.
Speaker D:And that makes me, that makes me pretty sad to see, just to see, you know, just thinking of how Charlie presented himself and how he really did believe in dialogue with all sorts of people to try to convince them either of Christianity or even just his political opinions.
Speaker D:And so that that sort of sentiment makes me sad.
Speaker D:But most of what I've seen has been rather positive.
Speaker D:There's a lot of people that I know personally who, you know, I didn't think were very political, but I've seen react to this pretty dramatically saying things like, you know, I'm planning You know, I think I'm going to go back to church.
Speaker D:I know I can think of two or three different people who I don't think attend church regularly that have gone to church just because it was such a drastic event.
Speaker D:And they're.
Speaker D:They're probably pretty scared somewhat.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker D:And I think, you know, you touched on it a second ago when you.
Speaker D:When you said this, but also, like the conversation about if Charlie is a Christian martyr.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:Like, what is that defined as?
Speaker D:And I mean, I think given all the information that's come out now, it would seem that he was killed for a belief, not something just like his economic policy, but his belief about biblical sexuality.
Speaker D:And so it's hard to make a case that he's not a Christian martyr on that basis, given the motives that were at play.
Speaker D:But like anything with social media, there's a lot of different perspectives, and you can find some of the worst stuff if you really are looking for it.
Speaker D:But I think overall, the response has been relatively measured and responsible.
Speaker B:I'm happy to hear that.
Speaker B:I mean, the content bubble of the algorithmic bubble of X and other social media platforms can be real, reflecting our own interests back to us rather than what's actually going on.
Speaker B:So my sense is that the majority response has been very positive.
Speaker B:I mean, they're going to fill up Arizona Cardinals Stadium on Sunday, and I'm sure there's going to be thousands of people outside watching as well.
Speaker B:And I think that's the far greater norm than anything else.
Speaker B:Just a quick question, actually.
Speaker B:I want to touch on the martyrdom issue.
Speaker B:If we can, just really quickly, maybe as we go through the list, we can address it as well.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It wasn't specifically for his Christian faith as such, but it was because of an outgrowth of his Christian faith, surely, that he rooted his objection to transgenderism in Scripture, as he rooted many other political positions.
Speaker B:I think it's fair to categorize him under the heading of a Christian martyr.
Speaker B:And I think that there's an emotional weight and gravity to that, that he was.
Speaker B:Based on the videos that I'm seeing, he, at this stage of his career, was more of a Christian evangelist than a politico, even.
Speaker B:And who knows where he would have been a year from now.
Speaker D:Absolutely.
Speaker D:Yeah, I think that's definitely true.
Speaker D:And I mean, you know, like, Frank Turek, the apologist, was right there, you know, 10ft from him when this happened.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker D:And there's a reason he brought him all over the place to field questions.
Speaker D:I mean, he would sort of tag him in when there were biblical questions that came up at these sorts of events.
Speaker D:And.
Speaker D:And he would come up and give a defense of the gospel if Charlie didn't even do it himself.
Speaker D:And he often did.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:And so I think, you know, I don't think that someone isn't a martyr merely when they're killed.
Speaker D:If someone says, hey, are you a Christian?
Speaker D:And you say, yes, and then they kill you.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:I think that if you're in the act of evangelizing, reflecting Christ in that way, and that's like your explicit purpose and value, and then someone kills you because of that.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:Directly because of that.
Speaker D:I don't see how you get around that definition.
Speaker D:And I mean, I can't think of anyone in this country that's happened to in my lifetime, at least not at the level that it has been known about at scale like this.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, someone at Charlie Kirk's level of renown and connections.
Speaker B:I heard that he was.
Speaker B:That Donald Trump regarded Charlie Kirk as his fourth son.
Speaker B:And just because of the influence that Donald Trump had had on Charlie Kirk's life.
Speaker B:And of course, Charlie Kirk, it's pretty widely known at this point that helped get Donald Trump elected through reaching out to young men.
Speaker B:And so there was a very close personal bond there.
Speaker B:And so you have a man who's living at the highest levels of, we might say, material power in the world, openly professing his faith and killed for an outgrowth of his faith.
Speaker B:That's as close to martyrdom as I think you're probably going to get today, given the nature of our culture.
Speaker B:So, Mikhail, one of the things that I've noticed lately is that you've been mixing it up with some of many of the influences.
Speaker B:The highest level I've seen you be retweeted, not necessarily favorably by Matt Walsh, not favorably by others.
Speaker B:And yeah, it shows that they can pay attention to whoever they want, and they seem to be choosing to pay attention to you, praise God.
Speaker B:So you must be.
Speaker B:So you must be striking a nerve somehow.
Speaker B:And first, I guess my first question would be like, what's that like for you?
Speaker B:And second, you know, I spoke.
Speaker B:Please, go ahead, go ahead, run with that.
Speaker C:It's weird.
Speaker C:You know, it's, it's, you know, I've had to name some names.
Speaker C:I've had Candace Owens previously tweet some unfavorable things at me.
Speaker C:I've had Matt Walsh and some others.
Speaker C:And part of it's discouraging in the sense of, like, these are people that, especially working in politics Working with, not with, not the bee Babylon be.
Speaker C:It's like you want to be friends with people, right?
Speaker C:You want to build a network and you want to get along with people as best that you can.
Speaker C:But at some point, you have to draw a line.
Speaker C:And I think we've.
Speaker C:I've been seeing things, especially with a lot of these, you know, very influential conservative pundits that I've been having to draw some firm, firm lines with and do it publicly.
Speaker C:And not because I necessarily need to, but I feel like things don't change unless, you know, especially Christian men make things their own problem.
Speaker C:Like, you kind of have to make something your problem if you want something to change, because it's really easy to have this complicit attitude of like, well, I'm not going to say this or I'm not going to say that because it might upset this person.
Speaker C:And then this isn't going to get me this opportunity and, and so on and so on.
Speaker C:But I think it's just a better.
Speaker C:It's just all around better to say, I'm going to tell the truth and I'm going to do it publicly and openly, and if people don't like it, then so be it, and just kind of let the chips fall where they may.
Speaker C:So that's kind of the strategy I've tried to have.
Speaker B:So from the, from the posture of your.
Speaker B:Of your place there in the Midwest, I believe, must be quite a thing seeing people with worldwide reach being like, I don't, I don't like you, whoever you are.
Speaker C:It's very strange.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's really.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's really strange.
Speaker C:And people in my family are always like, I'm worried about you.
Speaker C:They're going to come after you or do something.
Speaker C:And I'm like, it's fine.
Speaker C:It's probably fine.
Speaker C:But yeah, it's been an interesting experience.
Speaker C:And thankfully, there's been a lot of good people that I've been able to interact with.
Speaker C:And I mean, all of you guys included, people like Seth Dillon, people like Joel Berry, people like James Lindsay, who I've had the opportunity to interact with a lot privately, and they've been a huge encouragement.
Speaker C:It's not just kind of me alone here on the front lines.
Speaker C:You could say there's plenty of other people that are pushing back against some of these.
Speaker C:Some of the bad direction, especially the right is going, which we've kind of alluded to a little bit already in this episode.
Speaker B:So I had a bit to say about how.
Speaker B:How many influencers, probably all of Them at this point are letting me down in this regard when they could be a force for healing.
Speaker B:Maybe speak about that a little bit because you've been closer to that in many ways and monitoring what the direction these people are going, their trajectory over several months or even a year or more at this point.
Speaker B:Talk a little bit about that.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So I think what you're seeing is kind of this, especially in the wake.
Speaker C:I've noticed this with the, you know, after this whole Charlie Kirk tragedy since that's unfolded.
Speaker C:You're seeing, and this is one of the things that I called Matt Walsh out on specifically is you're seeing this kind of.
Speaker C:And we've seen this in like more of the smaller factions, the, you know, American Reform or Right Response Ministries, adjacent coalitions on the so called right, or they want to categorize themselves on the right.
Speaker C:I don't think that's necessarily accurate at this point.
Speaker C:But you, you see this kind of netter philosophy, there's no enemies to the right and you're seeing bigger accounts like Matt Walsh start to adapt that and even quote this concept of a friend enemy distinction, which he said in one of his recent podcasts, pretty much directly quoting Carl Schmidt, the infamous Nazi philosopher.
Speaker C:You guys know who that is.
Speaker C:And I'm sure Hitler Hurdy Christ could, could tell us quite a bit about that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:But nonetheless, you're seeing this and I think it's this response to seeing how evil and wicked the left is up front and they're using it as an opportunity to entrench the right in further tribalism instead of, of like to actually take stock of ourselves morally.
Speaker C:Because when we're confronted with evil, I think that is a perfect moment.
Speaker C:I think God allows us to be confronted with evil, whether it's sin in our own life or seeing evil out in the world as we've experienced over the last couple weeks, as we've been talking about here up close and personal in a way that is very jarring to a lot of people.
Speaker C:I think God allows us to do that not so that we can start pointing the finger at the other side, but so we can actually take stock of ourselves and examine our own hearts.
Speaker C:And that's really the biblical and Christian response to, to evil in the world and confronting it personally.
Speaker C:And so it's sad to see a lot of these people that do claim to be Christians like Matt Walsh kind of have that non reflective response, if that makes sense.
Speaker C:So that's a lot of what I've been seeing.
Speaker B:That's a fantastic way of putting it.
Speaker B:There has been a deep lack of reflection that has been very needed in so many sectors.
Speaker B:And it's almost like, especially watching, like, Candace Owens lately.
Speaker B:Like, girl, go get a mirror.
Speaker B:Like, what is going on over there?
Speaker B:You know, like, I don't think Nick Fuentes is the most reflective guy, but when he's calling out Candace Owens, you're way off the reservation.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's, it's, again, it comes back to, are people actually trying to pay tribute to Charlie Kirk and his family in a respectful manner because it matters to them?
Speaker C:Are they trying to use this as an opportunity to enrich themselves or to love bomb a certain audience?
Speaker C:Like what Nick Fuentes is doing, for example, I believe, to try and kind of get that Charlie Kirk base for himself.
Speaker C:See, I'm one of you.
Speaker C:He's kind of presenting himself.
Speaker C:Violence is wrong.
Speaker C:I'm so sad about what happened.
Speaker C:Even though a couple weeks before he's saying Charlie Kirk is a fraud and he's not a real Christian and this and that.
Speaker C:You know, his followers have been calling for the death of Charlie Kirk for a long time.
Speaker C:This is very much documented, the griper movement.
Speaker C:And so, and I don't know if I'm not accusing Nick Fuentes of specifically saying that, but there's certainly a lot of people within his direct orbit that have been saying things like that.
Speaker C:And he said nothing against that up and, you know, up until now, when it's convenient for him to politically do so.
Speaker C:And so you're just seeing a lot of opportunity, opportunistic strategy with people like this.
Speaker C:And so my, my, my, my thing that I'm really trying to get people to, to understand is kind of just pausing on the emotional response.
Speaker C:It's easy to have the emotional response.
Speaker C:It's easy to try and, you know, grab for answers.
Speaker C:And look, Nick Fuentes, he looks like he's giving us answers.
Speaker C:He looks like a voice of reason right now.
Speaker C:Let's start listening to him.
Speaker C:That's an easy response.
Speaker C:But we have to remember the big picture here of who these people are, what their history is.
Speaker C:Have they actually acknowledged where they've gone wrong in the past?
Speaker C:It would be different if Nick Fuentes came forward and said something like, you know what?
Speaker C:Here's everything I got wrong in the past.
Speaker C:I apologize for this.
Speaker C:This has been a rude awakening for me as to.
Speaker C:I've gone way too far in the radical, you know, neo fascist direction.
Speaker C:Here's what I've said, that's sinful.
Speaker C:I repent of that.
Speaker C:And here's now my new, my new.
Speaker C:That would be a whole different story.
Speaker C:Right, but he's not doing that.
Speaker C:He's, he's just, he's just skipping over that part, the repentance part, and just acting like he's now in step with the mainstream conservative talking points on this stuff.
Speaker C:And I think it's just, he's an opportunist.
Speaker C:He's just trying to get that audience for himself.
Speaker C:He's trying to swoon the Gen Z audience that Charlie Kirk was so influential in.
Speaker C:And you're seeing again this with Candace Owens and many others, of course.
Speaker C:So this is what I was trying to warn Matt Walsh about as he starts to talk about the friend enemy distinction and Netter and this kind of philosophy just to defeat the left as if evil is just over here on the left and there's no evil here on the right and we just have to alienate everybody on the left and then our societal society will be good.
Speaker C:That's just not how human nature works.
Speaker C:It's not a sin works.
Speaker C:Sin is in the heart of each individual and there's sinful people on every side.
Speaker C:So I, I, I just, I'm against that philosophy and that's kind of the main crux of what the message I've been trying to get across lately.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:Right, put your, I think you put your finger right on it.
Speaker B:I want to Cody, I want to go to you real quick.
Speaker B:This is definitely in, in your wheelhouse with trying to inspire men and women, individual content creators, but also many of the anons online young male believers in the church to be a bit more self reflective on themselves, maybe to focus more on doctrine, less on net or less on political gains and more on growth and sanctification.
Speaker B:What has, what's been going on for you through, through all of this?
Speaker B:I, it could just be my content double.
Speaker B:I feel like maybe you've been slightly more quiet than I've seen you in the past, but I could just be missing the good work that you're doing out there.
Speaker B:So what's, what have things been look looking like for you on the ground where you're at?
Speaker E:Yeah, I kind of have been slower putting out content and not saying a lot just because I'm trying to be reflective about what's going on and not make hasty decisions because like Mikhail said, that's a huge problem that's happening on our side.
Speaker E:And you said too that a lot of people calling themselves right wing or calling themselves Christians who should be the voices of reason and calm reflective biblical Truth are getting just as angry and heated as leftists.
Speaker E:And that's the very last thing I want to do.
Speaker E:And I do have opinions for sure, but I'm trying to be slow about those opinions.
Speaker E:But probably one of the biggest takeaways from all of this, other than deep grief, is kind of the shock, like you were saying, Will of.
Speaker E:I mean, I expect the reaction on the left, you know, people I know, they work with, people who are just gleeful about Charlie Kirk getting assassinated and they're like, well, he was pro second Amendment and I'm not.
Speaker E:So he had it coming to him, he deserved it.
Speaker E:That's what you get, stuff like that.
Speaker E:And it's gross, it's disgusting.
Speaker E:But that's kind of what we've come to expect from broadly the left.
Speaker E:And there are quite a few reasonable or more reasonable people on the left who are disgusted by that kind of behavior.
Speaker E:And that's good.
Speaker E:And hopefully they take that as a kind of sign that maybe they should get away from the worldview that they proclaim that's actually enabling all these other people to believe all these evil things.
Speaker E:But the other thing that I'm probably even more disgusted by because that's not surprising to me.
Speaker E:It's not surprising when a fig tree bears figs.
Speaker E:But what is surprising is when people who I used to like and people who I used to associate with and people who I thought were on my team, like Mikael was saying, like Candace Owens and Matt Walsh, and not that all of them are not on our team anymore, but there's definitely this pull that's happening and this influence of absolutely blatant evil ideology that is slithering its way into our own communities.
Speaker E:And I don't like that.
Speaker E:And even like the no enemies to the right thing, I think is a very powerful tool right now because in tragedies, people, they recoil into tribalism, it seems.
Speaker E:And to some extent that's like a reasonable self defense mechanism.
Speaker E:But what's happening now is that I think that is this idea where, well, the right has to stick together that is enabling some very bad actors, like people like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens now and other people to say, oh, hey, I'm one of you guys.
Speaker E:And so therefore you can't say anything bad about me because we have bigger enemies to deal with, even though the worldview that they are now reflecting is identical to the one that the leftists are pushing.
Speaker E:So in a way, I kind of, I agree actually sort of with no enemies to the right, if we properly understand what right is.
Speaker E:But I think we've kind of lost in our culture right now the true values of the right.
Speaker E:I think the vast majority probably nowadays, you know, just like the Republican Party we all recognize is broadly corrupt.
Speaker E:And so I think just people who consider themselves right wing in general, a lot of them have totally lost what true right wing values are.
Speaker E:And these things that are seeping into the community of people that are calling themselves right wing are not right wing values.
Speaker E:Like things like patriotism and small government and personal responsibility and tradition, Christian values.
Speaker E:Those are all right wing values that are being lost whenever we want to rile people up into civil war and completely abandon the biblical principles of loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you and turn the other cheek.
Speaker E:And that's not to say that we can't be angry.
Speaker E:And that's not to say that we can't be violent as a last resort or in self defense.
Speaker E:That's not what I'm saying at all.
Speaker E:I'm not pushing pacifism and I don't think the Bible pushes pacifism either.
Speaker E:But there is a gleeful hatred of violence that is infecting people who at least consider themselves right wing.
Speaker E:And that's actually not a right wing value at all.
Speaker E:That is the opposite of traditional Christian values.
Speaker E:And so I kind of think like we need to.
Speaker E:The people who are saying no enemies to the right, I think are naive in a way because a lot of them are not actually like Matt Walsh, for example.
Speaker E:The fact that he attacked Mikhail the way he did was like, dude, you don't recognize the evil around you.
Speaker E:Where people are calling themselves right wing like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes.
Speaker E:They are, I think, the farthest thing from right wing.
Speaker E:It is embarrassing that people say, ah, those are, those are right wing bad actors.
Speaker E:It's like they're not there pretending to be right wing.
Speaker E:They do not reflect the values of traditional right wing ideology whatsoever.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's been a, that's been a theme that I've been very grateful to learn from you, that ultimately they're progressive, but in, in, in a, in a different way.
Speaker B:But it is still ultimately progressive values just expressing themselves in a, in a, in a different frame we might say.
Speaker B:Yeah, so, so I want to go to Hitler hated Christ quickly.
Speaker B:You know, we're, we're talking about these influencers for the moment that have gone in this new no enemies to the right direction.
Speaker B:And as I watch this happening, and as I've seen it happen even before we get to the level of a Candace Owens or whatever.
Speaker B:Matt Walsh.
Speaker B:It's happened at a lower level, it seems to me, over the past say 18 or so months where people have just, you know, particularly a lot of young men online anons have found their way on this trajectory and many pastors as well have found themselves on this right wing trajectory and they don't seem to want to pump the brakes on it.
Speaker B:And so can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker B:I know that this is a set of subjects that you expert in and you've, if you ask me, you've been receiving due recognition for your expertise lately.
Speaker B:Maybe you could talk a little bit, a little bit about this trajectory and tie it to the larger swing we might be seeing in young men particularly.
Speaker D:Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things with young men, and I think we can even gleam this biblically is that the largest thing that young men lack is wisdom and discernment.
Speaker D:And I think that really ties in very, very well, well with what we see in the political landscape in like very reactionary right wing politics where the idea is I don't care what it is, I just want something to be done right.
Speaker D:Like we don't care if it actually solves the problem in the future or helps reconcile the massively divergent values that people have in this country.
Speaker D:I just want to see something done.
Speaker D:I want to see something happen.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:And I can understand that desire.
Speaker D:And I think that on some level God does put that in young men to sort of balance out maybe some of the apathy of older guys.
Speaker D:I think that some of that may be sort of a biblical impetus.
Speaker D:But what especially older guys need to be doing is taking that and really asking like, okay, so what do we do?
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker D:I mean, I've had conversations with a lot of people about this and when you really go deeper in that conversation and say, okay, what would have prevented this from happening?
Speaker D:And it's like, well, what probably wouldn't have prevented this from happening is if the right all collectively decided that.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker D:Left entirely as an entity wants to murder us all.
Speaker D:That probably wouldn't prevent the radical leftists from feeling like they have some sort of self defense claim to go out and kill right wing influencers.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker D:And, but, but what would have potentially.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:Would have been if there was a, there was a pastor in this shooter's life who recognized that he was getting deeply involved in some of these deeply perverse and pornographic lifestyles and reached out to him.
Speaker D:We have no idea what would have happened if that had occurred.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:We don't Know to what extent that did occur and, and didn't change things, we don't know.
Speaker D:But out of a country of 360 million people, getting one guy that's like, that can do some extreme damage like we've seen.
Speaker D:And so you're not going to solve that, I don't think, by macro policy changes that are based on people's very angry reactions.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:You're going to solve that by pastors and men of God that know people in their lives that they think are taking a wrong turn, that are getting seduced by different ideologies that really sit down with them out of a desire to help that person and talk through things with them.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:But that's not the reaction that most of us have when these sort of tragedies occur.
Speaker D:The reaction is something needs to happen.
Speaker D:Like, we gotta, you know, we need to be more virulent.
Speaker D:Like, if we're more virulent, then we can stop this.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:And I don't think that would work.
Speaker B:But anyway, so, so, so I want to.
Speaker B:I want to kick this to Pastor Darren, you know, who, who is a.
Speaker B:Who is a pastor and who.
Speaker B:Who has presumably work with many young men and older men and young men and older women.
Speaker B:It seems to me there is a very much a need for pastors, faith leaders, elders, father figures to get actively involved in young men's lives.
Speaker B:But perhaps there's a.
Speaker B:There's a.
Speaker B:More, more wheat to harvest than there are laborers.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, I think, I think you're right, Will.
Speaker A:I think.
Speaker A:I mean, here's, here's a great example.
Speaker A:So the pastor that served before me served at our church, EMANUEL Ladies, for 37 years.
Speaker A:Served faithful.
Speaker A:He's well into his 70s now.
Speaker A:He asked me when I started if.
Speaker A:If he could have an office just to hang out in.
Speaker A:And so I gave him an office.
Speaker A:Whatever, it's fine.
Speaker A:Not a big deal.
Speaker A:And he's been a huge blessing to me, huge mentor and all that stuff.
Speaker A:But earlier today, he came into my office and he was sharing a story about a missionary family that we support.
Speaker A:And the husband of this missionary family just tragically passed away earlier in the.
Speaker A:Let's see, it was in the spring, I believe.
Speaker A:Left behind three adopted children, I think, all under the age of 12.
Speaker A:Well, the middle child is rebelling pretty significantly.
Speaker A:We have a mission house at our church where we allow missionaries to stay on furlough.
Speaker A:So she's at our house now with her three kids.
Speaker A:And this middle child was sent to boarding school.
Speaker A:The boarding school kicked her out because of her, you know, acting out in light of her dad's passing in the spring, she doesn't know how to deal with her emotions.
Speaker A:So anyhow, our 70 some year old pastor emeritus is going to be spending time with her three, four times a week over the next several weeks just to be a father figure, to impart the gospel into her life, to help her deal with this anger.
Speaker A:I mean, some of the stuff that she's been acting out in and doing at this boarding school is just.
Speaker A:He shared a few things with me and I kind of gasped with one thing in particular.
Speaker A:And, you know, here's this man who is making himself available to this family and this young girl and I think we need more of that.
Speaker A:I, I do think most Christian people do have more margin in their lives than they think.
Speaker A:I just think they, they feel as though they're ill equipped and I think it takes different points in their lives to shake them up and help them see that they're not.
Speaker A:And we've seen that just even in the last year at our church of, of older women stepping up and helping and mentoring younger moms.
Speaker A:And we have an elder right now who's pretty far along.
Speaker A:He knows he's going to pass soon due to cancer, and he meets every two weeks with a group of young, married, essentially businessmen and is trying to help them, mentor them, to pursue Christians, to love their wives well and to build godly families and homes.
Speaker A:So I hope I'm answering the question.
Speaker A:I am seeing it.
Speaker A:I do think that Charlie's kind of mantra that we've been seeing on social media, I think is happening.
Speaker A:I think folks like Doug Wilson and others, you know, kind of broadcasting that and showing that, and I think even just pastors like myself that are in the trenches, we don't have huge followings, you know, nothing like that, but, but we're just trying to labor faithfully and, and kind of challenge and exhort our people lovingly to, to, to disciple well, so I think it's happening.
Speaker A:Will, I'm answering your question, but I am seeing it.
Speaker A:I do think obviously we need more laborers, but I think there is a subtle shift that I'm noticing over these last several years and I do think a slight wave is coming.
Speaker A:I could be off, but it, but that's what I'm noticing.
Speaker B:So yes, I think, I think you were, I think you were answering, answering the question.
Speaker B:And I think, I think that's, I think that's a good, a good way of approaching it.
Speaker B:I guess the, the, I was, I Was wondering also, like, I guess the, the willingness to actually get like deep and deep in someone's life.
Speaker B:Like, not to just, not to simply just approach it as like, I see you, I see you on Sundays, or you're in my small group group, but like, clearly young man or young woman, you're, you're struggling, whether you're a young man flirting with pornograph, pornographic, violent, extremist ideologies like, like Tyler Robinson or a young, a young woman straying just to say, like, I'm going to get elbows deep into this person's life and, and bring this sheep back.
Speaker B:I think that's, that's the thing I think is needed.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think, you know, I think what churches need to do more of is essentially create kind of shepherding environments where it's not just on the pastor and the elders, but, but actually lay people that are gifted and, and have, you know, the moxie, so to speak, to get, to get into somebody's life and say, hey, like, you know, we're gonna get together.
Speaker A:And I, I'm noticing X, Y and Z about you and, and I want to speak truth in your life.
Speaker A:So, so, you know, you can see change in who you are by the grace of God.
Speaker A:You don't, you don't have to stay where you are.
Speaker A:And I do think, you know, the days of, you know, the big, the big show on Sunday morning and all of that stuff and pretending that that is somehow discipling and changing people's lives is over.
Speaker A:And I do think there is something coming where people in the church are, are getting more and more restless to, to walk alongside of people and see real life change and pulling them out of kind of darkness and what have.
Speaker B:You praise God for that.
Speaker B:I wanna, I wanna kick this over to Cody.
Speaker B:I know that you have a, a bit of a ministerial background.
Speaker B:I don't have it at the tip of mind right now, but I know that you do and that you, you come from a little bit from a big showy or kind of church background, as I recall, and you've found your way into the, the dungeon of Reformed theology.
Speaker B:Just kidding.
Speaker B:But talk a little bit because there is a ministerial aspect to your work as well, of trying to bring men and women out of destructive ideologies and worldviews.
Speaker B:Talk a little bit about the work that you do and what you're seeing just on the ground in your life and maybe in the content that you create, is there this willingness to get involved in people's lives in a way that moves the needle.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker E:First, it seems like a lot of people, just in general, but especially in times of great persecution like our nation is experiencing right now, people want something that feels like it answers their problems.
Speaker E:And typically people would turn to the church for those things.
Speaker E:But it seems like in the past few decades, or we could even say like the past century, I think progressively it's just been getting.
Speaker E:The church has been less and less effective as we go on through American history, but they have found that the church is impotent to actually give them real solutions to their problems.
Speaker E:And that's not to say that the church which offers the salvation of Jesus Christ isn't sufficient for solving their problems.
Speaker E:But I mean, churches who really are preaching the gospel, I think in many cases are not showing, both the pastors and the congregations are not showing that they're living consistently with that faith.
Speaker E:A lot of churches are very politically diverse nowadays.
Speaker E:Initially we were talking about if pastors mention Charlie Kirk or not, and I have a couple of different opinions on that, but we can talk about that later.
Speaker E:But I think people, when they feel like they need something, and that need, I think comes from this innate desire in us that was put in by God to live out our lives in a consistent way.
Speaker E:And when churches who should offer us a consistent living faith offers us the gospel, but it's an empty gospel, it's a gospel where in many cases the churches themselves aren't living out that that faith themselves, even if they might be preaching the word of God, in many cases they just aren't living it out.
Speaker E:I think young people, even if they can't articulate it, and people of any age, they see that and they turn away from the church or they turn towards, in many cases nowadays churches or secular institutions that are offering solutions to their problems that are temporal or are very quick solutions that is not actually going to fix things in the long run and certainly doesn't offer salvation.
Speaker E:So that's a kind of empty solution too.
Speaker E:But instead of being empty at the back end, like I think a lot of churches are, where they offer salvation, they offer something that they offer the gospel of Jesus Christ, which really is effective if you live it out.
Speaker E:But these other things, they seem to offer solutions at the front end, and that's a lot of an easier thing to grasp onto.
Speaker E:And so that's why I think that a lot of especially young men are flocking towards the spiritually dead churches who.
Speaker D:Are.
Speaker E:Willing to stoke their anger and are willing to coddle them like seeker sensitivity, but towards the angry young men.
Speaker E:So I think that's why those churches are becoming more popular right now, even though they are equally as problematic as the churches with that just focus on the big shows.
Speaker E:In a way, both of those are empty.
Speaker E:I've, I've heard something like the, the churches who, who do like the anger, anger porn, that's just fog machines, but for their different brand of theology, it's exactly the same thing.
Speaker E:It's all empty.
Speaker E:And a lot of people, they, they base their whole faith on like, no, we need those fog machines because I want this deep emotional relationship with Jesus Christ, which is a good thing to have.
Speaker E:And that's why I need those fog machines.
Speaker E:And I want to truly enact or truly be a part of God's justice and enacting that justice out in society, which is a good thing.
Speaker E:And so that's why I'm going to go to these churches where the pastors just talk about how evil people are who don't look like me.
Speaker E:And so the problem just proliferates.
Speaker E:And the solution to that is not being interested in just short term solutions obviously, but also focusing on consistent biblical truth.
Speaker E:Like we can have the gospel, but we need to live it out.
Speaker E:And if somebody is living out justice and seemingly biblical truth in some areas of their life, but then they don't have the gospel and they don't have the love, and they don't have all of the rest of the entire council of scripture, then they're still equally as lost as all the other people.
Speaker E:And I think that's where, like you said, pastors need to come in because the pastors need to be shepherding their congregation so that one, they're defended against these ideologies that are coming in and trying to corrupt their church and to equip people to defend themselves against this whenever it's, it comes into play.
Speaker E:But also when somebody goes crazy or whenever there's somebody in somebody's life who is going in a dangerous direction, we even as laymen need to be equipped to go try to save them or try to argue with them and express to them what the truth is.
Speaker E:So there's a huge lack of, I think, biblical truth in general right now in our culture.
Speaker E:And that's due to the failure of pastors.
Speaker E:Ultimately our churches broadly are very bad because our pastors are bad.
Speaker E:And that's creating worse churches and that's creating worse pastors.
Speaker E:And really the only solution to this is revival.
Speaker E:We need to turn to Jesus and we need to repent.
Speaker B:Do you think that some of this also ties to a lot of the interest in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy that maybe I'll upset some of my listeners by asking, but it's the same appeal to versions of emotionalism like, no, I don't want this big showy church with all the laser light shows and non denominationalism and.
Speaker B:And no, I don't like these other reformed churches because maybe they're kind of weird.
Speaker B:But I want tradition, I want church history.
Speaker B:I want beards and incense.
Speaker B:I want to feel like it's holy.
Speaker B:Do you think that's part of it also?
Speaker E:Yeah, that sounds.
Speaker E:You and I talked about this on my podcast before, but yeah, that is all fog machines, all of its fog machines.
Speaker E:And like I said, that's not to say that having emotional worship is a bad thing.
Speaker E:And that's not to say that beards is a bad thing.
Speaker E:And that's not to say that yes, they are right.
Speaker E:And that's not to say that like many of the, I think icons, you know, like idol worship is a bad thing, obviously.
Speaker E:And certain doctrinal elements of Catholic and Orthodoxy I think are dangerous, just like certain false doctrinal elements that's common in the evangelical church is a problem.
Speaker E:But the point is that we need to be putting everything in alignment with scripture.
Speaker E:And when we don't do that, we are failing our churches and our congregations tremendously.
Speaker E:And whenever we don't hold our pastors accountable to these things, we're also failing our churches.
Speaker E:So we can't have disqualified pastors, we can't have idols in our church.
Speaker E:So if you can't use your authority, whatever authority you have in a church to try to make it better.
Speaker E:Yeah, I think you do have to find a better church and buy a better church.
Speaker E:I mean a more biblically consistent church, because ultimately you could have the worst church in the world that has no fellowship, that has.
Speaker E:And I've been to these churches, I have personally participated in these churches that were spiritually dead, but they had an awesome, like multiple tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of like, worship equipment and the fog machines and the lights, that's all cool.
Speaker E:But you can have all of that and you can still have a spiritually dead church that completely lacks fellowship, completely lacks biblical truth, is afraid to say the stuff that needs to be said.
Speaker E:It's all smoke machines, even tradition.
Speaker E:If somebody cares about tradition more than biblical truth, the oldest tradition there is is the word of God that existed before the beginning of time.
Speaker E:And if we're not holding ourselves in alignment to that word of God, I.e.
Speaker E:jesus Christ, then we don't actually care about tradition at all.
Speaker B:Praise God.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:So, Mikhail, I think one of the things that's coming up for me as Cody and all of us are talking about this is that the influencers that we've been talking about, they call themselves Christians.
Speaker B:Suddenly in the past year, Candace Owens has become like Giga Catholic.
Speaker B:Matt Walsh calls himself Catholic.
Speaker B:I think Tucker Carlson has called himself Nick Fuentes.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker B:Tucker Carlson had talked with like Father Josiah Trenum yesterday from the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Speaker B:And so you have all these really big.
Speaker B:And now Russell Brand, I don't know if you guys saw his video with Nick Fuentes today where he's.
Speaker C:I had to keep my comments to myself on that one.
Speaker B:He's shirtless, bro.
Speaker B:He's shirtless, bro.
Speaker C:Put a shirt on, like baptizing people in his underwear.
Speaker C:I don't know if you guys remember that.
Speaker B:Yeah, the Carl Lentz school of evangelism.
Speaker B:So like, so just, you know, what, what's, what is that?
Speaker B:Like you have people who have just like, you know, new, relatively new to the faith or who knows how like their faith may be on shaky foundations and here they are like grandstanding in the name of Christ.
Speaker B:These anti biblical things.
Speaker B:Like, like, what is that like watching and engaging with that?
Speaker C:It's, it's incredibly frustrating.
Speaker C:I know a lot of you guys can relate to that.
Speaker C:Then I'm laughing just because of how absurd it is.
Speaker C:Like, especially, you know, people like Russell, Russell Brand, who's doing crazy stuff and baptizing people in his underwear and doing shirtless streams with a legitimate neo Nazi, Nick Fuentes, and calling himself like the.
Speaker C:A Christian.
Speaker C:Not just a Christian, but like an arbiter of Christian faith in the public square on YouTube and whatever else he's doing.
Speaker C:That's what's most aggravating.
Speaker C:It's not just that they're claiming to be Christians and then also promoting a bunch of things that are not, not biblical at all, but it's the fact that they're doing so on such a big stage.
Speaker C:And it's like the world is looking at them as the representatives of Christianity, of what the Bible teaches.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker C:You know, of, of what, like churches that we go to and we're here screaming from the, you know, from the stands like, no, this is not right.
Speaker C:This is not accurate.
Speaker C:You know, you don't represent us Nick Fuentes.
Speaker C:You don't represent us Russell Brand or whoever it is.
Speaker C:And they certainly don't represent Christ.
Speaker C:And it doesn't take long to look into their philosophy, the theology they believe, especially on the really hardcore.
Speaker C:Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Matt Walsh Catholic side of things that's just unbelievably anti gospel and antithetical to everything that we stand for as Christians.
Speaker C:And it's crazy how that has kind of become mainstream Christian thought in America.
Speaker C:I thought America was predominantly a Protestant country that, that, you know, historically, generally understood and preached and believed the gospel.
Speaker C:And now it's being overrun.
Speaker C:The conservative movement that's supposed to be the Christian movement is being overrun by, you know, Roman Catholicism.
Speaker C:Again, sorry if I'm offending people, but also partially not sorry it's being overrun by Roman Catholicism by a push towards Eastern Orthodoxy like we were talking about before, what Cody was mentioning.
Speaker C:And these movements that kind of wear Christianity and the gospel as a skin suit is really what's happening.
Speaker C:And they use it as a political shield to deflect from criticism or to try and take the moral high ground of some kind and try and get the audience.
Speaker C:It's the same thing we've seen politicians like George Bush do or Bill Clinton where he claims to be a Southern Baptist Christian and all of this, but really what are they doing?
Speaker C:They're just leveraging that identity to try and get votes or try and win something politically.
Speaker C:It's not really about Christianity.
Speaker C:It's not really about Jesus.
Speaker C:And I think the same thing's happening in the media landscape right now.
Speaker C:So talk.
Speaker B:Talk a bit about that because it seems to me that like, a lot of folks are finding their ways into the.
Speaker B:Into the media landscape, that there is a.
Speaker B:There's a. I don't know, it's a Christian wave.
Speaker B:It kind of seems like Christianity has become trendy, let's just put it that way, just in the past.
Speaker E:Christianity, what's the.
Speaker B:Chris?
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Put everything in air quotes.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's the new.
Speaker B:It's the new punk rock.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And like, I guess, insofar as it goes, like, I guess I would rather have people talking about being Christian and being bad at it and maybe not being sincere than open neopagans.
Speaker B:I never know how to.
Speaker B:How to split that difference.
Speaker B:But it does seem like there's a moment that's happening, and I hope so.
Speaker B:I praise.
Speaker B:I think some good will come out of it.
Speaker B:I think I prefer it to the alternative.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's definitely better than just overt, you know, hedonistic leftism that completely rejects the existence of God entirely.
Speaker C:At least there's at least there's some semblance of biblical moral order returning, which is good culturally speaking.
Speaker C:You know, promoting marriage and promoting having kids and families and, and you know, pushing it back against the abortion lobby, excuse me, and pushing back against like, you know, the transgender nonsense that's happening, whatever it might be.
Speaker C:These are all good things that are resulting from this, I guess, cultural Christianity that's becoming popular.
Speaker C:But at the same time that's not going to be long lasting if there's not genuine heart change.
Speaker C:We're not going to have this Christian nation that everyone's screaming about, that everybody seems to want in this Christian nationalism movement.
Speaker C:If there aren't actually, if the nation isn't actually filled with Christians, it's going to be short lived.
Speaker C:It's going to actually, I think, you know, in the short, you know, probably more long term you're going to see a rebellion against Christianity as a result.
Speaker C:It's, it's this kind of concept.
Speaker C:I remember my dad always saying this when me and my brother were kids.
Speaker C:Rules or rules without relationship leads to rebellion.
Speaker C:And so if, if you're not, if your relationship to the religion of Christianity is not rooted in a deep relationship with Jesus, it's going to lead to rebellion.
Speaker C:If not you, your kids, your grandkids, I mean, people that grew up in very strict fundamentalist homes, for example, how many stories have we heard of this happening?
Speaker C:How many stories have we personally seen of this happening?
Speaker C:And so I think this is the, this is going to be the result of this so called cultural Christianity.
Speaker C:Long term it's going to completely backfire if we don't root ourselves in the gospel, which I'm hoping that that starts to happen more.
Speaker C:I'm hoping that this whole Charlie Kirk situation actually wakes people up to that.
Speaker C:People start going to church to pursue Jesus and not just make it about a political affiliation, which I think it often is.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So Pastor Darren, did you want to jump in?
Speaker B:Please, go ahead.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think, I mean I, I think that point is huge in a sense of, I'm a big, I'm a big fan of Francis Schaefer.
Speaker A:I think Will, you know that I've shared that before, but I mean he was hitting that drum, you know, into the 60s, 70s and 80s, you know, coming out of this essentially cultural Christian movement and how, how badly it failed.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker A:And to Miguel's point, like we're, we're seemingly running right back into that and, and some people gleefully, and, and I'm not really sure understand, like I don't really understand why.
Speaker A:You know, it just takes a moment of glancing back over the last 120 years of the American church to see essentially what happened, gosh, what, 50, 60 years ago.
Speaker A:We're right back in it, you know, and again, you know, it goes back to just discipleship.
Speaker A:It goes back to just life on life and not in the weird, you know, talking about the megachurch way or whatever it is, but.
Speaker A:But really getting in the lives of people.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:Yeah, so it just made me think about that.
Speaker A:You know, Schaefer in the, in the great Evangelical disaster was, was smacking that drum and, you know, he said, I, I can't remember obviously off top of my head what chapter it was in, but he essentially says instead of triumphing over our numbers and, and how many people were gaining, maybe we.
Speaker A:The right response is, is looking at how badly we're failing at discipling our people and sending them out into a watching world.
Speaker A:So, yeah, Mikel, the point is well taken for sure.
Speaker A:And I think we're running right back into where we.
Speaker A:We were, you know, into the 70s and 80s where people were.
Speaker A:Were over it.
Speaker A:They were over cultural Christianity.
Speaker A:And I hope we're not doing the same thing again.
Speaker B:Yeah, I, just before, before the stream, I, I came from, I came from a lunch I was having with Dr. Jeffrey Ventrila of Truth Exchange, which is Dr. Peter Jones's ministry.
Speaker B:And so we were talking about some of the rising, you know, literal neopaganism.
Speaker B:Psychedelics has been big part of that.
Speaker B:Yoga, you know, a burning man, of course, is a huge part of that.
Speaker B:And like, it almost feels like the cultural Christianity is a.
Speaker B:Is a reaction to that, but it won't actually have any sticking power over that.
Speaker B:And plus some of the other, like the idolatry of the state, the idolatry of the individual, it's like people are responding to something they feel isn't working and, and they're going enthusiastically into the church.
Speaker B:But are the churches growing in numbers or are they growing in terms of number of redeemed believers?
Speaker B:I guess that will be a question, a real question for the pastoral ministry.
Speaker B:Go ahead, please.
Speaker B:No, please go ahead.
Speaker A:No, I was just saying.
Speaker A:I was agreeing.
Speaker A:You're absolutely right.
Speaker A:And I do think pastors do need to accept that reality.
Speaker A:You know, are we just counting baptisms, you know, and even.
Speaker A:And even numbers and seats, or are we.
Speaker A:And obviously it's in a lot of ways a moving target, you know, but there are certainly markers where we can identify truly changed and redeemed person.
Speaker A:But I think in the craziness of it all in ministry, we sometimes lose sight of that.
Speaker A:That, you know, we've got to pay bills, we've got to do this, that and the other thing.
Speaker A:And, you know, heaven forbid we upset people and they walk out or whatever, but, you know, at the end of the day, we're responsible as pastors, and I don't, you know, who knows who's listening, who's a pastor, but we're responsible for the.
Speaker A:The people that come through those doors and whether or not we're giving them the gospel and challenging them to.
Speaker A:To wholeheartedly follow Christ and grow in the fullness of Him.
Speaker C:Oh, I think you're muted.
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker B:Yeah, here I am.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Pastor DARREN.
Speaker B:So, Christ, I wanted to go to you.
Speaker B:I know you're under a little bit of time pressure, and so I wanted to get your thoughts before we jump off, like, sort of talk about cultural Christianity showing up in a very particular way on, like, the quote unquote.
Speaker B:We'll call them right wing.
Speaker B:It's their own form of cultural Christianity.
Speaker B:But is it Christianity at all?
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So I've kind of changed my mind on a few things related to this, even just in the last year.
Speaker D:And I guess one of the things I've been trying to say or think about more would be using the term nominalism rather than cultural Christianity, just because I feel like I do want to live in a Christian culture.
Speaker D:I do want that.
Speaker D:And as much as it does have downsides, I do think there are some benefits.
Speaker D:And I think on some level, I would prefer to be having an apologetic conversation with somebody who is in agreement with me about a lot of these values, even if they don't really know how it's rooted in Christianity and all of the derivatives of that.
Speaker D:Because then in that conversation I can go, okay, so we agree on things like the immorality of homosexuality and abortion and all these other topics.
Speaker D:Why do you feel that way?
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:Let's walk it back from there and try to apply consistent biblical principles all the way down the pipeline.
Speaker D:Whereas before, I think, when we didn't have so much Christian nominalism and, and a lot of folks were more just atheists, it was a lot harder because you were starting really just on first base.
Speaker D:And we all really learned apologetics in this way to be able to deal with people from first base.
Speaker D:And now we've got people on third, and we have to explain to them what first and second is.
Speaker D:There's downsides to that and the fact that A lot of us aren't really prepared for it, but there's benefits in the fact that I think people are going to be more receptive to Christianity just on that basis.
Speaker D:That's at least kind of what I've seen.
Speaker D:And I had an extended conversation, I guess it was earlier this week with a whole bunch of groipers.
Speaker D:It was like 300 groipers or whatever.
Speaker D:And they were just.
Speaker D:Yeah, well, it was exciting, you know, man, I enjoy those environments.
Speaker D:But anyway, but I was.
Speaker D:Yeah, right.
Speaker B:Where was this?
Speaker B:I'm sorry, I just have to know, like, was it a Twitter space or was it.
Speaker D:It was a Twitter space.
Speaker D:It was a Twitter space with a friend of mine that I know in real life named Jordan B.
Speaker D:And he's like really in the groiper movement.
Speaker D:And I was having sort of extended conversation about how I listened to Nick Fuentes's stream on Thursday night last week and how I felt like there were certain good things that he said, but how he contradicted himself within his monologue.
Speaker D:And I try to explain that.
Speaker D:And I had a lot of people push back on me a lot about that.
Speaker D:But I also got a lot of messages from people who were groipers who were saying, I've never thought about Nick claiming to be a Christian leader while also being pretty vile in his language when referring to his enemies politically and things like this.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker D:And so there's a lot of people out there where they really are motivated to be under a public facing Christian banner and they have some of the derivative morality from that and they don't know why they have it.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:And so just walking back and saying, let's look at the Sermon on the Mount, how do these principles apply?
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:Things like being against homosexuality are all derivative from scripture, but so is keeping your speech pure, right?
Speaker D:So is not dehumanizing people.
Speaker D:Right?
Speaker D:So is like a belief in the universal mago day, like all of those things, how do we apply those things?
Speaker D:Just like we're applying biblical principles on sexuality.
Speaker D:And I feel like a lot of folks are just not really prepared to come at apologetics from that direction because for the, like I said, the longest time we've been dealing with atheists, right?
Speaker D:And not people that profess faith and identify with Christianity, even, even on very controversial issues, but don't, but don't understand some of the foundational axioms of the faith.
Speaker B:You know, that's interesting.
Speaker B:That's something that I had a similar thought that, you know, I found my way into the church and Reformed theology because when everything shut down due to Covid and the Reformed churches were the ones that were open and were speaking out against the political situation.
Speaker B:So it was the politics that initially drew me, but it was the theology that had me stick there.
Speaker B:But that was a self directed, like, I didn't have anyone say, and now Will, I see that you're all fired up about this political situation and now we're going to teach you theology.
Speaker B:It was my own self directed, Holy Spirit directed curiosity that, that led me to that.
Speaker B:So do you find like, like who's going to step in and be like, okay, you're fired up about politics, but now we need to put the foundations under it?
Speaker B:That's sort of what I hear you saying.
Speaker D:Yeah, I think it's anybody that can empathize with the mindset of these guys.
Speaker D:And I think at this stage people like that are few and far between, but I think there's more and more of them that are out there and that's sort of a growing coalition.
Speaker D:And so depending on how we handle this, I think that the Lord can really use that to reach a lot of young guys who are looking to sort of buck against the ills of some of the issues with secularism and modernity.
Speaker D:But we have to figure out how to direct it in the direction of biblical Christianity and not some sort of mutation of it that's out there and may appear carnally more attractive.
Speaker B:I, I want to push on the empathize with the mindset part and maybe not push on it because I, I agree with you and like, it seems like the, the many of the, the highest level influencers that I am aware of, they empathize with the mindset.
Speaker B:And it's like, but there's, it's like Joe Rigney's like toxic empathy, the sin of empathy, where they go to like pull the guy out and the guy pulls him into the water with them.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker B:And I think we've seen that.
Speaker B:It's like, yeah, I will tether, I'll help pull you out, but I'm not coming in there with you.
Speaker B:How do those listening avoid being pulled into that without being like, you're not being empathetic to my concerns?
Speaker B:No, I understand your concerns entirely.
Speaker B:And like, this is the answer.
Speaker B:Look, no, I need you to dive in the mud pit with me.
Speaker B:Like, I'm just not going to do that.
Speaker D:Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker D:I mean, I think, I think it requires you to have a lot of introspection about sort of your motivations as you're reaching out to these guys, I think it requires you to have a pretty good prayer life.
Speaker D:I think there's some people that just like with any type of apologetics, effort or pursuit, there are certain people that God's going to equip for that and then not for other things.
Speaker D:And I think that there are personalities and mindsets that are more or less equipped for that too.
Speaker D:I don't think everybody needs to understand how to witness to groipers.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:But I do think that as time goes on, just like the Christian world learned how to deal with the new atheists and stuff over the course of 10, 15 years, I think we're going to figure this out.
Speaker D:It just takes time.
Speaker D:And because of the Internet and the speed of reactionary politics that moves so much faster than Christians are really able to get a handle on how to deal with it.
Speaker B:So, Cody, this is kind of some of the things that you deal with some apologetics in some way does these communities and maybe evangelism and outreach to them as well.
Speaker B:What do you think about Hitler hated Christ's take?
Speaker E:Yeah, I thought that was fascinating because I first started studying Christianity really when I.
Speaker E:So I grew up a Christian, but I really started digging into it whenever I started getting pushback from people who really respected the new atheists.
Speaker E:And so I watched a lot of William Lane Craig and all the evidentialist apologetics guys.
Speaker E:And so I loved apologetics and I still do.
Speaker E:And my mind has changed quite a bit on apologetics over the years.
Speaker C:But.
Speaker E:But yeah, I think as far as empathy goes, if that's the right word, I completely understand where a lot of these people are coming from.
Speaker E:And I've had conversations with them in real life before.
Speaker E:And one really helpful thing that I found in conversations with them is, at least on X, the vast majority of criticisms that people have against me that aren't calling me slurpees or gay or whatever that are just baseless are things that are total lies.
Speaker E:So they say, like, you attack people for wanting a Christian nation.
Speaker E:And I say I have never once ever attacked anybody for wanting a Christian nation because I want a Christian nation.
Speaker E:And so like all of the criticisms that people have against me are, they're lies.
Speaker E:And so I think one beneficial thing that I've noticed in the very little ground that I sometimes make with this kind of person is to point out that we actually agree on all of the major things that they say that they care about.
Speaker E:Like, I also want a Christian nation, and I also care about biblical justice and I care about all the things that you say you care about, except I think the question is.
Speaker E:And the things that we have to push them on gently, because most of these people, they can't handle if you're too hard on them.
Speaker E:It's like you have to be gentle with these people because if you're too hard on them, they'll just call you the F word or they'll call you gay or something.
Speaker E:So it's like you have to be really gentle with these people because they're highly emotional.
Speaker E:Even though they have this facade of toughness, it's not toughness to act the way that they act.
Speaker E:So if you can manage being gentle enough with these people to actually have a halfway reasonable conversation, I found that pointing out the similarity between your worldview you is valuable.
Speaker E:Saying, I care about all the things that you care about.
Speaker E:But how are we actually going to effectively bring that about?
Speaker E:Are we going to effectively bring about biblical justice by abandoning biblical principles of loving your neighbor and loving your enemy and all the other things that the Bible teaches and use pagan philosophy instead?
Speaker E:Is that how we're going to bring about biblical justice?
Speaker E:Are we going to bring about a Christian nation by completely ignoring what the Bible teaches about kings and how there's no king but Christ and how self governance is the most valuable kind of governance, like governance between us and God and just the obedience of us and God, or are we going to try to force our religion on other people like we're Muslims?
Speaker E:So that is kind of the direction that I usually go in my apologetics with these people.
Speaker E:And sometimes I make leeway and sometimes they just can't handle that and start shouting profanities and stuff like that.
Speaker E:But you also have to be patient with them.
Speaker B:Yeah, I've never had the shouted profanities happen before.
Speaker B:No, just kidding.
Speaker B:It happens all the time.
Speaker B:So I guess.
Speaker B:And I find this, I'll just be honest, I find this very personally convicting because, you know, I see so many wolves amongst the sheep.
Speaker B:And I guess I feel like I could be wrong, but I feel like I've learned to spot them pretty quickly.
Speaker B:And so now I don't really invest the time to do this in apologetics outreach to them.
Speaker B:Now I just hit them with a club, obviously, if they come up with their teeth bared, which happens very often because I've crossed them in some very meaningful ways, challenging their worldviews and revealing it at pretty significant levels.
Speaker B:And so they come up and they growl at me and I. I don't take the posture like, oh, hey, well, let's have an Apollo.
Speaker B:No, it's just like, bang, you're stupid.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker E:And sometimes I do that too.
Speaker B:Okay, good.
Speaker C:I'm not guilty of that.
Speaker C:I've never done that.
Speaker B:In response, all of you are sainted, saintly men.
Speaker B:Well, so, so, like, obviously, Mikhail, like, this is something that you must deal with, like, all the time from some very sharp teeth and some very big wolves.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's.
Speaker C:It can def.
Speaker C:It's definitely a test of like.
Speaker C:And I've definitely failed the test many times, I'm sure, but it's.
Speaker C:It's definitely a test of, of your commitment to actually stick to your principles when people are.
Speaker C:And I'm sure all of you guys have experienced this to some degree or another, when people are lying about you, insulting you, insulting your family, you know, just.
Speaker C:Just literally just making things up out of thin air about you when you challenge them, even if you do so in a respectful manner, that's the response we often get from these groups.
Speaker C:And it can be really frustrating.
Speaker C:But then you, you know, you got to remember, you know, there's verses that talk about Jesus being reviled and him not reviling back and the.
Speaker C:These principles of, of self control that we're supposed to have and loving your neighbor.
Speaker C:And I think this would be a good example of turning the other cheek.
Speaker C:When someone is insulting you and you not insulting them back, you kind of just taking it and responding graciously or not responding at all in a lot of these cases, and not.
Speaker C:Not fanning the flame or feeding, which, again, I'm.
Speaker C:There's been times where I've been so bad at that.
Speaker C:There's been times where I've been stuck in comment sections just going out.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:And I've just kind of learned over time, over this past year that most of the time that's not helpful.
Speaker C:Most of the time it's just better.
Speaker C:If, you know, people are dropping the F bomb at you or calling you a bunch of slurs, just ignore them, move on with your day.
Speaker C:Just keep posting things that are truthful, that hopefully get people to think and reflect, and don't get stuck in the petty mudslinging, which is exactly where a lot of these people want you to be, because that just distracts from the actual position or argument that you're trying to hold.
Speaker B:Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker C:And it's a lot of ad hominem, right?
Speaker C:People jump to ad hominem when they have nothing of value really to say to you, when they don't really have an argument against the thing that you're bringing to the table.
Speaker C:And so they just go right for your character.
Speaker C:They go right for the personal attacks and jabs.
Speaker C:And I think it's just best response is either to respond graciously or just walk away.
Speaker C:You know, don't answer fool who is folly.
Speaker C:I constantly feel like I have that principle, don't answer his fool to his folly running through my head all the time when I'm on Twitter.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And it's just something I constantly have to remind myself.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker B:But yeah, well, I mean, imagine that.
Speaker B:Also, part of it is like, these are people that are polished.
Speaker B:Like, there's.
Speaker B:There's a way in which someone can just kind of, like, spout off, you know, about.
Speaker B:How about, like, just call you a name?
Speaker B:But then there are the really savvy operators on X.
Speaker B:Specifically, like, X is an ecosystem.
Speaker B:Like the jungle and the desert and the oceans are an ecosystem.
Speaker B:X is an ecosystem.
Speaker B:And there are some very savvy predators in the ecosystem and very savvy operators.
Speaker B:Like, I was on a space.
Speaker B:This was probably two years ago, 20, 23.
Speaker B:I was on a space briefly with.
Speaker B:With Nick Fuentes.
Speaker B:I don't remember what it was.
Speaker B:And just in the very brief period of time that he was on the space, he and I never personally interacted.
Speaker B:I think he spoke after me or before me, something like that.
Speaker B:I got the sense that this was a guy who is a very expert operator in this ecosystem.
Speaker B:Like this world that I've now found myself in of being called the world of influencers.
Speaker B:This guy's really good at it.
Speaker B:It's not just that he's.
Speaker B:He has things to say and he has the right message and he has the audience, like, he's well adapted for this ecosystem that he's found himself in.
Speaker B:So there is.
Speaker B:There is a degree that you've probably faced.
Speaker B:Like when you have Matt Walsh coming off the top rope at you.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's like, disorienting.
Speaker C:And especially.
Speaker C:It's not only that, but then because of the amount of followers these people have, if they say something negative about you, you're.
Speaker C:You are literally getting thousands of comments at a time.
Speaker C:I mean, I just experienced that last week with Matt Walsh.
Speaker C:He said something about me.
Speaker C:I think the.
Speaker C:The tweet got, like over a million clicks, and he commented on something of mine.
Speaker C:And then I literally had over a thousand comments, most of them negative, you know, responding to what Matt Walsh was saying about.
Speaker C:And what he was saying about me wasn't accurate to my position.
Speaker C:And so at that point, how am I even supposed to defend myself?
Speaker C:The damage is already done.
Speaker C:And your.
Speaker C:Your notifications are just being blown up with this stuff on a regular basis.
Speaker C:So, I mean, I've since, since that happened, I've deleted.
Speaker C:I don't even have Twitter on my phone anymore.
Speaker C:So I'm just like, I. I just have kind of distance.
Speaker C:It's helped a lot mentally.
Speaker C:It's helped a lot spiritually.
Speaker C:But, you know, I'll hop on every now and then and say some things, but I'm sure.
Speaker C:So I apologize for group chats that I'm in if I'm responding as quickly, but that's usually why.
Speaker C:But that's helped a lot.
Speaker C:It's just learning to disconnect, learning to be gracious with people that are not being so gracious to you and just kind of remembering how Jesus would respond.
Speaker C:That class or that cliche line, what would Jesus do?
Speaker C:I know it's way overused in American culture, but I think that's a good question to ask yourself when facing this kind of stuff.
Speaker B:Rip my mentions, right?
Speaker B:And I have Twitter on my phone.
Speaker B:I don't, I don't have notifications turned on for it.
Speaker B:In fact, I use an app called Opal.
Speaker B:I'll post a link in the show notes that blocks social media up till noon every day and then after 9:00pm so, like, so I have to actively do stuff if I want to get around it during those hours.
Speaker B:So it's in a window that I use it and I don't have notifications turned on.
Speaker B:That's a lifesaver for my mental health for sure.
Speaker B:So we're coming to the end of the stream.
Speaker B:Last few minutes.
Speaker B:I. I've got to run off to dinner, but I want to close and sort of talk a little bit about.
Speaker B:Just give everyone the chance to talk about what they've taken away from Charlie Kirk's life and his legacy and how they plan to go forward.
Speaker B:Seeing the way that his mission landed in the world, seeing the impact that he had, seeing the grief that the world has felt about him.
Speaker B:What are you taking away from that personally?
Speaker B:Maybe in your professional life, in your content creation life, in your personal life?
Speaker B:Like, how has this impacted you?
Speaker B:Maybe.
Speaker B:How did.
Speaker B:How did his work impact you previously as well?
Speaker B:What does the next step to honor Charlie Kirk look like in your lives?
Speaker B:So, Pastor Darren, we'll all start with you and we'll work our way around the horn.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So my wife and I both, both enjoyed watching Charlie Kirk his videos as well as my daughters, mainly my Older daughter, she's a junior in, in college right now.
Speaker A:I don't remember how long it was, probably two, maybe two summers ago.
Speaker A:My wife and I are actually at the dinner table with both of our daughters and we got in a heated, we'll say dialogue over one of Charlie's videos and one of his stances.
Speaker A:And my wife, 9.9 times out of 10 would agree with Charlie on this issue.
Speaker A:She didn't.
Speaker A:And she works in domestic violence, rape crisis.
Speaker A:She works with women that have kind of experienced the worst of the worst.
Speaker A:And you know, she goes to that form essentially in the judicial systems and what have you.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:But one of his points in one of his videos again a couple years ago was, you know, that, that you can pull yourself up and, you know, you can do it.
Speaker A:And you know, I, I agreed with him.
Speaker A:My wife was like, well, some people can't.
Speaker A:And so it started this huge dialogue and it got, it got louder, you know, and, and our, you could just see the, the, like our daughter's faces, like, like, I mean, they were just like, whoa.
Speaker A:And then my oldest one, who's great at just like breaking the tension, she's like, wow, you know, watching my parents fight, this is awesome.
Speaker A:And my wife just stopped and she was like, we're not fighting.
Speaker A:Like, we're having an honest dialogue.
Speaker A:And yeah, it's getting like, heated isn't the right word.
Speaker A:That's, that's not what it was.
Speaker A:But, you know, akin to some of the dialogues Charlie would have, you know, it would be a back and forth in an equal representation, so to speak, of, of words being exchanged.
Speaker A:And I remember what my wife saying to our daughters, like, this is important and this is what your culture is losing.
Speaker A:You know, our culture, Gen X, we still had some of that.
Speaker A:I still have some of that, I think.
Speaker A:So for us and for me, you know, as a father, church leader, whatever, is trying to allow and facilitate, even in my family, these discussions where it's okay to like, debate and dialogue and go at it, like we can disagree and, and walk away collegially, you know, and, and I think that's, that's one of the things I, I was talking to my wife the other day, like, I really admired about Charlie, like, he had all kinds of punches thrown at him from, you know, anyone and everyone.
Speaker A:And I can honestly remember maybe one time where I saw him get, like, angry.
Speaker A:And that was he was up on a panel discussion, I don't know how many years ago it was now maybe a year or two ago.
Speaker A:And I'm blanking what his name.
Speaker A:Chink Chenk Uygur.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Stands up in the crowd and he's yelling at him, and Charlie just goes right at him.
Speaker A:And I'm like, that's the only time I can really remember him being that combative.
Speaker A:I think we need more of that.
Speaker A:You know, this whole hashtag, we are Charlie Kirk.
Speaker A:Like, we need more of that.
Speaker A:And I think it would.
Speaker A:If we can have these kind of more open and dialogues and going back and forth and really wrestling with ideas and really challenging people, I think it'll go a long way.
Speaker A:And so that's, you know, that's kind of what I'm taking away and what my hope is.
Speaker A:Part of what will come out of this is just this kind of, you know, open dialogue again and that there will be, you know, more Charlie Kirks that'll come along in that way that are bright, that are sharp.
Speaker B:That.
Speaker A:And I hate using the word winsome, but are some.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And are able to.
Speaker A:To take a punch and to smile and.
Speaker A:And to just.
Speaker A:Just keep pressing on.
Speaker A:So, I mean, it's a.
Speaker A:It's kind of a real life example, but then also one that I. I hope we'll see, you know, after all of this.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:And I think.
Speaker B:I think Charlie.
Speaker B:Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker A:No, and I think the last thing I'll say is, you know, there's that.
Speaker A:That random verse, you know, that I've gone to and maybe some of y' all have at times too.
Speaker A:It's in.
Speaker A:It's tucked away in First Chronicles, right.
Speaker A:I think of chapter 12, you know, the sons of Issachar knowing the times essentially, and, and leading the Israel Israelites well, and, and using prudence, I think, is.
Speaker A:Is what the.
Speaker A:The Hebrew word would really be translated there.
Speaker A:I think Charlie did that, you know, as.
Speaker A:As a Christian, as a follower of Christ.
Speaker A:I think he.
Speaker A:He was able to identify evil and, and to speak against it.
Speaker A:And, you know, specifically as pastors, I think we get so focused on like, building our churches and, and even for some, building their names while they're pastoring that they lose sight of the evil that's all around and the evil that is even kind of infiltrating their churches and their people.
Speaker A:So I hope we get a little bit better at understanding the times as well, so.
Speaker B:Absolutely, absolutely agree.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think that's was.
Speaker B:I agree.
Speaker B:That was Charlie's spirit as well, is that he understood the times that we were in and, and he knew that with his voice he could reach so many with, with who he was, with himself as, as the instrument.
Speaker B:And I think that that's.
Speaker B:That's true in this age of, of the Internet, and it's true in this age of growing spirituality.
Speaker B:It's true in this disaffected age where all the institutions have failed.
Speaker B:He understood the times that a man or men can step, and women, of course, can step into that gap and make a difference.
Speaker B:So I appreciate that very much.
Speaker B:So let's go to Cody.
Speaker B:What's your takeaway from Charlie Kirk's life and legacy?
Speaker B:Maybe in your personal life, professional life, for your work, wherever seems most critical for you?
Speaker E:Yeah, it struck me a lot harder than I expected it to because I was aware of Charlie Kirk and I'd seen a lot of his videos, but I didn't follow him too closely.
Speaker E:And man, it was horrible.
Speaker E:I was uploading a video about the Irena stabbing as the news broke that he was shot.
Speaker E:And man, it was super shocking.
Speaker E:And probably my biggest takeaway was, or a few takeaways.
Speaker E:One was how death could meet us at any moment.
Speaker E:And so we need to make absolutely sure that we are good with the Lord and living in a way that we are proud of.
Speaker E:And then the other thing is just seeing the reactions that everybody's having on every side, no matter what people call themselves.
Speaker E:I've found that I relate far too much to the groiper type of people than I would like to like.
Speaker E:I.
Speaker E:It is a challenge for me to hate leftist ideology more than I do.
Speaker E:And the.
Speaker E:The very last thing I want to become is like, the people who are riling people up towards violence and the fake pastors calling themselves Christians who are trying to use the death of Charlie Kirk for growing their audience.
Speaker E:And it's disgusting.
Speaker E:And this hatred that I'm feeling for these ideas, I want to be sure to channel it in the right places and not let it turn me into that kind of person and use what I'm feeling for righteousness instead of for my own selfish desires.
Speaker E:I think that's the biggest thing.
Speaker E:And then in general, just honoring the life and death of heroes like Charlie and making sure that.
Speaker E:That we live more like him, where we are unafraid to say the truth and we're unafraid to put ourselves into situations where the vast majority of us, the worst thing that could possibly happen is people call us bad names on the Internet that we'll never meet and that we are not at all in danger of whatsoever.
Speaker E:So how cowardly am I?
Speaker E:Whenever I.
Speaker E:And I've Had a bunch of comments on X myself, and it's horrible.
Speaker E:It doesn't feel good at all to have a bunch of people who are completely unwilling to listen to what you're really saying or be misrepresented or whatever.
Speaker E:It's a horrible feeling.
Speaker E:But people are putting themselves out, literally risking their lives, and we need more people like that and more people like all of you guys, who are willing to say things in the public sphere, even if it's just on the Internet, and say true things and be unafraid of the minor consequences that we might face relative to people like Charlie Kirk.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:The courage of all of us to speak up in the little corners of life that we have and to be brave and to take advantage of that, even when it's difficult, even when we have our mentions blowing up, even when people are saying mean things about us that we're not really designed to handle, but we got to figure it out.
Speaker B:I think that is indeed very important.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:Cody and Mikhail, I'm gonna.
Speaker B:I'm gonna kick it to you to get the.
Speaker B:Get the last word of sorts, like, how is Charlie's life and death and legacy going to impact your life and your mission going forward?
Speaker C:So I think to.
Speaker C:Just to piggyback off of.
Speaker C:I was kind of gonna say pretty much what Cody said, but just to piggyback off of that.
Speaker C:You know, I think it's one thing that it shows.
Speaker C:One thing that's been made really clear is the fact that, you know, if you're a Christian, if you're a conservative who doesn't feel like you have a voice much or, you know, who feels pretty alienated in whatever social circles you're in, your job, your family, even your church or wherever it might be.
Speaker C:I think it's become really clear that, you know, you're not alone in that.
Speaker C:You know what I mean?
Speaker C:And there's been.
Speaker C:There's been more people activated to publicly speak up and tell the truth about a whole manner of different things than I've ever seen in my lifetime in this country in response to this.
Speaker C:And that is incredibly encouraging.
Speaker C:I remember being, you know, at a secular university back in college, and, you know, even before I became.
Speaker C:Even before I got saved, I was going to, you know, I was still a conservative, you could say, politically speaking, I was one of those people that not our Hillary Christ was talking about before of, you know, they had conservative principles.
Speaker C:And I was raised in a Christian home, but I didn't really love Jesus.
Speaker C:Wasn't following him at that time.
Speaker C:But either way, I remember even then starting to speak up about certain things politically at the university I was going to and just getting crickets in classrooms.
Speaker C:Like I was the only one willing to say anything.
Speaker C:And, you know, being isolated at certain times, especially, you know, when things became more contentious with blm at that point, I was.
Speaker C:Wasn't taking classes, but I was still living in the town, the college town I was, you know, I was, I was living in during school.
Speaker C:And so a lot of friends in the area, pretty close to home here.
Speaker C:And I just remember starting to speak up about that publicly and just getting, you know, tons of negative.
Speaker C:Similar to what.
Speaker C:What I'm experiencing now from the.
Speaker C:The what's from the woke.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker C:Getting tons of negative comments, people I knew in person, you know, gossip, calling me a racist, blocking me, like close, at least what I thought were close friends.
Speaker C:And it was really discouraging.
Speaker C:And I'm sure a lot of people saw that happening to me at the time.
Speaker C:And we're like, oh, forget that.
Speaker C:I'm not going to speak up publicly.
Speaker C:I'm not going to talk about this stuff publicly.
Speaker C:If that's the cost, if that's what's going to happen to me, I'm going to be completely ostracized in different ways and demonized.
Speaker C:And it was super discouraging to me back then, but seeing this now, it's like, oh, you, you don't have to be as afraid anymore.
Speaker C:Like, there's so many people now that are going to have your back, that are going to be there speaking up publicly.
Speaker C:There's this huge movement.
Speaker C:I mean, I look at stats like there's now been 54,000 new chapters registered under Turning Point, or at least applications sent into Turning Point.
Speaker C:That's crazy.
Speaker C:That just shows how many people were previously, you know, who believed the same things that we believe, more or less, but who were scared to speak up.
Speaker C:And because of what just happened, because of this tragedy, unfortunately, I mean, it's leading to this immense good where there's so many people that are brave enough to.
Speaker C:To put themselves out there and stand behind others as we're speaking truth in the public square.
Speaker C:And so I think that's something that's super encouraging.
Speaker C:So just encourage me to just get more active and even more than I really am, and especially more active in my local community, because I think it's easy to just kind of take all of that and put it on the Internet with a bunch of strangers you don't actually interact with in your daily life.
Speaker C:But, you know, the real test is taking that and applying it to the.
Speaker C:To your community, to the neighbors, you know, that live next door or, you know, your city hall or in your local church or whatever it might be.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it's really easy to talk a bunch of noise from behind a keyboard, but suddenly when you're confronted with a real person in front of you who's shooting an argument at you, you've never heard before, you know, you can't.
Speaker B:You don't have that.
Speaker B:You don't have that time to really figure out the most polished response.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's like that, Mike.
Speaker C:It's like that famous Mike Tyson quote, Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Speaker C:I think, yeah, that's very true in, in situations like this, but.
Speaker C:But I think that just is a more the reason to study your Bible and to, you know, be able to give an answer for what you believe as we're commanded to do scripturally, so.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker B:May we all have the courage to get punched in the face.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker C:Because it's going to happen.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me on the stream.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Also to Hitler hated Christ as well.
Speaker B:Who had the duck out.
Speaker B:This has been a wonderful, wonderful conversation.
Speaker B:I'm so grateful for all three of you, man.
Speaker B:And Hitler hated Christ as well, for all of your work and your contributions to me and my life and.
Speaker B:And for your friendship as well.
Speaker B:So thank you for joining me and thank you for honoring Charlie Kirk.
Speaker B:And may we all go forward in.
Speaker B:In the light of his legacy for the kingdom.
Speaker B:So thank you so much, gentlemen.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker E:God bless you guys.
Speaker B:God bless you guys.
Speaker B:Sam, Sa.
