Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: We got Jack Wilkie here, Joe Wilkie, Will Harrop joining me for a rare live Think Deeper podcast, a rare midweek Think Deeper podcast. Obviously, there's a lot on everybody's hearts and minds with Charlie Kirk.
The assassination took place in Utah yesterday, September 10th, today, September 11th.
And yeah, so we wanted to get on and share some thoughts about it, but let's go ahead and get into it. Just opening thoughts from you guys about everything that's happened in the last, I don't know, 30 hours or so.
[00:00:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll go first.
I have not in my lifetime had an event hit me the way that this one did yesterday.
I was 2 years old when 9, 11 happened. Don't remember it at all.
Obviously there, you know, there's, there's been significant things that have happened. The COVID shut down. You know, I will always remember, you know, where I was for that. You know, minor stuff like that. I mean, that was major, but, you know, more slow motion. Whereas this, this hits very, very hard.
And we're going to get into here in a minute.
Kind of why this feels different. But as far as opening thoughts goes without saying, you know, my thoughts and my prayers are with his dear wife, his children, the videos that are circulating social media of his children running up to him and hugging him and, you know, the pictures of his just beautiful family as a father of three young kids that I think that's part of why it hit me so hard yesterday. And that's the first thing I did when I got home was go and hug my kids. But so thoughts and prayers to him. He was so beloved. He was so, yeah, just so many connections and so beloved. So beloved by so many. And so my heart goes out to his family.
1 thought I'll give Joe and then I'll hand it to you.
Appreciate everybody joining. Appreciate everybody listening, whether you're joining live or listening after the fact.
We're gonna have a lot to say in this podcast. We're gonna have a lot to unpack.
But I want to kind of get out in front of it and let you know that if you're here looking for a. Let's all come together and kind of hold hands and we need to all be united right and left. And holding hands is the wrong podcast for you. That is, that is not going to be on my mind. I don't want to speak for the other two guys. That's not going to be on their minds either.
It's not the time for that. And we will get into why we believe that Needs to be the case later on. But just to set the stage again, if this is not going to be a Kumbaya session, this is not going to be a. Let's all come together. Two different sides come together in unity.
We're past the time for that.
And there's biblical reasons why. And we'll get to those later. But, Joe, I'll turn the floor over to you. I wanted to say that as we got started.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So we're on vacation and wasn't really planning on seeing you guys. Wasn't planning on recording this week. You guys are going to take it without me.
This is just.
It's so tragic. It's. It's such big news, and I knew we had to cover it immediately. I. I reached out to you guys, like, what are we going to do about it? Because I will do it from. From wherever I may be. I'll. You know, I want to talk about this and really explore. Well, just as you talked about some of the.
I think the righteous anger that comes up is. Needs to be explored, needs to be discussed and. And knowing that that's okay in a time like this. And so it was shocking. I literally was just shaking. I mean, it was for like three hours after I heard the news. You just couldn't really settle down. I couldn't focus, I couldn't think. I couldn't do anything else. All the information streaming in, you're trying to figure out what happened. They caught the guy. It was the wrong guy. I mean, there's so many things, so many reports, the. The things that are coming out, people are cheering in the audience right after it happens, and you're just trying to figure out and get a bearing on what just happened and the, like, horrendous nature of seeing this happen. Basically on live tv, just on social media, to see something like this was so jarring and so shocking that. That, I mean, it's unlike anything else. And I know, fellas, I want to open this up and Jack, get your thoughts on this as well as we bring you back in.
I feel this was different than the Trump assassination attempt, and Trump had two different assassination attempts.
As terrible as that was, watching something like that and seeing the bullet as it got his ear, this felt different. First off, obviously, a death is involved. That is the primary reason. But even before we. We knew that he was dead, there were reports maybe he was gonna make it. It felt very different to me. It felt very jarring. And I'm curious to get your guys. I have some ideas as to why I think that is. What are your guys thoughts as to why that is? I saw that going around. There were multiple people pointing to that. If this feels different, what do you think about this one was so different compared to even like the Trump assassination attempt.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: He's just a normal guy. I mean, yeah, he put himself out there as a political pundit, but he didn't run for office. He wasn't, he wasn't even bombastic. He wasn't a firebrand, obviously. You know, there was a study last year that came out that said over 50% of liberals believed it'd be morally right to take out Trump. It was like 48% said the same about Elon Musk, but not that it justifies it, but like, yeah, of course they would have their, their eyes, their, their sights set on those guys because of, they're trying to stop what they're doing. Charlie Kirk, as I wrote in my article on it today, said he's a 6 foot 5 inch olive branch. That's all he was is went out there and said, come together and talk.
And that, that's supposed to be what everybody wants, right? That's what everybody says they want in this conversation, marketplace of ideas and all that stuff. And, and you have a guy that.
[00:05:40] Speaker C: Exactly what he wanted to do and.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: He gets shot and that what is, what is the only message you can take from that? I guess they don't want to dialogue. Yeah, the dialogue like, and that's one of the things we're going to get to here to Will's point earlier, people who think, all right, well let's just. Next man up, let's go talk to him again.
No, pay attention. You have to understand what just happened.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Read the room.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: The other thing about it compared to the Trump assassination attempt, and Joe's right, obviously Trump stood right back up a few seconds later. It seemed like the danger was taken care of pretty quickly, although it was still fairly jarring.
What's different about the Charlie Kirk assassination, in addition to that, is what specifically he represented in the sense of what he stood for.
I voted for Donald Trump. Overall. I'm a fan of the way that Donald Trump is leading our country and the results that we've seen. But Donald Trump doesn't stand for the same things that I do, necessarily.
Me and Donald Trump do not align on some of the most important things, obviously our faith. And I think he probably would consider himself a believer, but he wouldn't call himself a Christian. So he doesn't act in many cases like a Christian. And so, you know, I didn't feel as though Trump, you know, aligns with me and we stand for the same things or even represent the same things on a large scale. Obviously, some things we do with Charlie, it's very different. We represent almost the exact same thing all the way down to age.
Husband, father, boldly professed Christ, did not have any problem, you know, stating, you know, about his faith and talking about Jesus. And Charlie stood for everything that I stand for. Charlie represented everything that I hope that, you know, I represent when it comes to, as you guys were just speaking to the open dialogue and, you know, hey, let's have a conversation. But also, I'm not going to bend when it comes to truth. I'm going to stand for truth. I'm going to speak truth. And so just to answer the question directly, Joe, about why it feels so different to me, I do think that's a lot of it is again, I, I, I voted for Donald Trump. I, I'm a fan of the way he's leading the country. I don't, we don't stand for the same things entirely. Whereas from everything that I read and see about Charlie Kirk, not, not to mention all the antidotes that have been coming out about just how genuine of a person he was, how kind he was, how much he, how much he really, truly wanted our country to be full of people who got married and had kids and raised a family.
That was his goal. That was the country he was working to build. To make America great again for him was so much more than a presidential slogan. It truly was about building a culture and building a society where families could flourish and where people craved having families. And that's obviously a passion point for all three of us, but a passion point for me as well. That's what he stood for and they killed him for it. And I think that's ultimately what made this feel different than any of the other, obviously, specifically with Trump. But incidences or incidents that have taken place. Joe, what thoughts do you have? To answer your own question, kind of there?
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think that's, that's spot on. Jack's point about the olive branch, to me is the key to this. Trump is a firebrand. Trump is a larger than life political figure. Probably the biggest political figure we've had since maybe fdr, maybe going back to Lincoln. I mean, he is a larger than light figure, even Elon Musk, larger than life. Charlie Kirk is the average guy. Yeah. And yes, he goes out there and speaks. He's a big deal. He's a big Name, you know, like, I understand those things, but, man, to see his wife and kids, he just.
And he was the olive branch. He was the guy trying to come across the aisle, not being the firebrand, but the guy that's willing to speak to the other side. That's why it hits is you realize.
[00:09:23] Speaker C: You could literally name.
I'm sorry, I was going to say you could literally name 10 to 15 more inflammatory conservative pundits. Charlie Kirk, no doubt.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: But you realize in that moment, dialogue is gone. There is no coming together. There is no, you know, with Trump. Yeah, they wanted him dead. There's plenty of people that are. I think, you know, unfortunately, on both sides that people that really didn't like Kamala. We aren't calling for violence the way that they're calling for violence, but in a situation like this, this is morally reprehensible. It is with the Trump thing as well. But it's morally reprehensible to take a guy that is literally trying to just have a dialogue, a respectful dialogue back and forth, and to do destroys everything that America has been built on. And that's what the conclusion comes down to for me is America is gone as we know it. You have a large portion, almost half of the nation, and I know there's plenty of people on that side that aren't cheering this on, but there's plenty of people that are. You have a large portion of a nation that is willing to cheer for when a man is assassinated.
This is not America anymore. Like, this is horrendous. I mean, absolutely horrific that we actually have to live in the same country as people that are willing to do that. That's despicable.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: Just briefly, Jack, and then I'll hand it to you to get us into wherever we want to go next. But for anybody that wants to try to say, you know, the people who are cheering for Kirk's death and kind of dancing on his grave, oh, those are on the fringe. Those are kind of. You know, that's a very small group. That is simply not the case. Go look at the MSNBC anchor that just got fired because he essentially blamed Kirk, Charlie, himself for the assassination. Go look at some of the. The other pundits that have basically been coming out. You're muted, Joe, but basically been coming out and blaming, you know, blaming the rhetoric from Charlie Kirk. Blame. Well, he was pro guns. Now look what happened to. Like, this is not just some thing that lunatics on TikTok are saying. This is what political pundits on msnbc, on places like this this is what they're saying. And so you can try to say that, oh, it's on the fringe and people aren't actually celebrating.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: It's.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: Yes, they are objectively, like, go look up the stories on the Internet. You will see these are very large voices, large scale voices, basically saying, yeah, you know, it's unfortunate, but he kind of had it coming is basically what they're saying. And that's, that's exactly what why this is not a let's all hold hands and come together moment, Jack.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Amen to all of it. The we got a comment here on the live stream and we got one of the messages as well, asking, what do we do about it now, that's something we certainly want to get to. So stay tuned for the end. And as I said earlier, if you can't catch the whole livestream, it will be up on the podcast feed tonight. But it's a really good question, so we'll push that off for a little bit. But getting into the response, there's a few different angles we want to look at it of the way Christians have responded.
I posted about it. I think we're over. Between the three posts, we're pushing 150, 200 comments. And there's just a lot of immediately people rush in with both sides. Ism.
Both sides. Well, both sides, we all got to tone down the rhetoric. And both sides did this. Both sides have been violent. Both sides. And I had a couple people quote to me while a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband were shot earlier this year by a right winger. A. That's highly disputed. The guy said that he was not, you know, that that's not true. You know, he was in contact with Governor Walz. I don't know if that's true or not, but, I mean, it's disputed whether or not this was from the right. But the other thing is, you don't see one person on the right celebrating. They got.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's horrendous. It's terrible.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, we all can just stand up immediately condemn it.
Not only are they not condemning it, they're celebrating it. They're partying. The, you know, the video of the TMZ staff cheering when the news came in. I mean, like, this is ugly. As Joe said, somebody in the crowd 20ft away from where the man's neck just got blown off, jumping up and cheering like.
And you want to come at me and say, you know, let's not, let's not talk about who's at fault here. It's not left or right.
No, absolutely not. You have to be able to name the evil. You can't fix the evil if you don't name the evil. You know, when. When Jonah got sent to Nineveh, he didn't go, you know, we've all got problems, because why is that important? If you can't name it evil, people will take it as a pass to keep going.
They're gonna, you know, if you say both sides, that gives them a cover because they don't care about the truth. You have to put them in the spotlight and say, are you okay with this? And people in the center who are coming at me saying, well, you know, both sides, both sides. What you're. What they just said is, shut up or we'll shoot you.
And if we shoot you, we're going to cheer your death. And the people in the middle go, well, hold on, let's hear everybody out.
No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And so this both sidesism has to stop if we're going to make headway on this.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: It's just the fact that we can have. And I'll tell you where this is really coming from. I'm sorry to say there's a lot of Christians that I see on Facebook, a lot of preachers. It is a horrible response. I keep using that word, but, I mean, you just run out of synonyms for this.
A response from largely a preacher class that doesn't want to take people off, doesn't want to take off the left. The people that are voting on the left side of things, the liberals in their congregation. And so we kind of have to play both sides at this point.
If you are on the left and you have been voting for those policies, I have a tough time viewing that as a Christian response. They are pro abortion, they're pro lgbtq. And a large portion of the people on this side are pushing these things or are celebrating these things or at least going, well, it happens on both sides. No, this needs to be condemned across the board. If somebody on the right did it, it should be absolutely condemned. And it was. We're not celebrating what happened to the Minnesota lawmakers. It's terrible not celebrating those things. It needs to be disavowed across the board. And if you can't stand there and disavow it, then you have no place with Christ. If you can't look at somebody who is just shot and with absolute disgust, or if you're trying to make this a well happens on both sides, or, well, you know, both sides are at fault, you Are the problem.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: The both side. You're exactly right, Joe. The both sides kind of overarching view of. Because people do it. This is not the first issue, obviously, that people have done it with. People do it with, you know, smaller issues. But, you know, you see this, the both sidesism of, well, you know, both sides have problems. If that is your approach, that is one of the weakest and most cowardly ways to address this that I personally have seen. And Joe's exactly right is see a lot of people on social media, I'm friends with, you know, quite a few people in the, in the church and appreciate all these comments that we've got coming in. Jack, I don't know if you want to shout those out here in just a second, but this is not the time to both sides. It. This is not the time to say, well, you know, Republicans and Democrats, they both have one side just tried to and successfully did shoot and kill the other. And this is what we're getting. You get on social media and anybody who comes out and you got literally people asking like, hey, am I allowed to be angry about this? And the both sides. Ism preachers are saying, yeah, no, not really. You know, this is something we all just need to.
The violence on both sides needs to stop. And this is where I am such a firm believer that you cannot preach the generic at the expense of the specific. Jack, I'll hand it to you next, but that's what I really wanted to get across here is this. When you both sides it. And when you try to say, well, you know, bad on this side, there's bad on that side. And Christians, we just need to rise above it all. What you're not doing is calling out specifically the issue. You're not specifically calling out the sin. That's why people might say, well, he called it cowardly. Yes, that's why it's cowardly. It is because you're not going to call it out. You're not willing to say you can't vote in this way. You can't. Because that's the other thing about the whole unity thing.
There are certain people, we cannot be unified. And that's part of it. There are certain people, we cannot be unified.
When Paul was talking about unity in First Corinthians 1, the main thing he was addressing First Corinthians 1 was, hey, don't. Don't divide over who baptized you, because it's not that important. In fact, it's not important at all.
What he wasn't saying is, hey, people who have completely different ideological values than you. People who completely see the world differently than you people who spit in the face of God, spit in the face of family, people who outright reject everything that you stand for. Yeah, go have unity with them. That's not what he was saying. And there are so many, again, preachers, people in the church who are going to get on and already have gotten on social media and post unity verses and how we as Christians need to love each other and love it, that is. This is not the time for this. It's just not the time for. We can't misunderstand unity in this way. To say again, somebody who actively is voting for an ideology that wants to silence the opposition by putting a bullet in their neck. We cannot be unified with that person. And this is what I mean about the specific. It's time we get specific. The time of the generic, the time of just making blatant or I should say just kind of overarching statements of high minded spirituality and not naming certain things. The time for that is gone. These people cannot stand us. And if we are going to. And when I say us, I mean faithful Christians, family loving people who want conservative values in the nation, they hate us. And so for us to say, well, you know, there's problems on both sides. It is just the most cowardly, weak minded thing I've ever seen. And yet we're seeing it from, from the main voices in the pulpits. And that's what's so scary, Jack.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if one side is committing 90% of the divide and the other side has 10% and going, well, we both have problems here, I mean, that might be technically true. I mean, I'm not 100% happy with the right.
Everybody has those complaints. On the other hand, saying, well, both sides, you're making it sound like 50, 50. It's just not 50, 50. And it's kind of the same thing. I've got to say, well, you know, there's been a lot of hateful words from the right, mean tweets and things like that. Like they shot the guy, he died in front of his wife and kids. And you're going, well, you guys said some mean words and you're, you're enabling the violence, you're enabling the wickedness. When you do that kind of thing for fear of the people in your pews. I had somebody tell me, oh, so you want, you know, people who voted this way out of your pews, if they're cheering on or if they're excusing political assassinations. Yeah. They're in sin and they need to be told get right or stop. Okay. And that we don't have the backbone to do that. And the other thing you brought up there will the. Well, just let's not be divisive. They just shot a guy. Why are you calling me divisive for saying they shot a guy? They shot him. The divide already happened. What are we doing? I mean, like you just see, I read the insanity that people have in not seeing what's going on here.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: Somebody used the phrase leave room for discussion. Yeah, leave room for discussion. Charlie Kirk. No room for discussion on this.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Charlie Kirk was Mr. Room for Discussion and they shot him. You have to, you have to use that information and do something with it.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: Most interests are useless at this point. They're useless because if you need somebody to take a strong stand on something, they're going to leave. And if you know, you're, you're trying to appease everybody while we're seeing how that's going as our numbers continue to dwindle and dwindle. Do you know why Charlie Kirk was a big deal? Because he said the things that the people in the pulpit wouldn't. He said the things the centrists would not say while they're trying to both sides this and well, you know, he said some pretty tough stuff. It's like nobody deserves to be shot. Nobody deserves to die for going out and saying whatever they're going to say. I mean there's all sorts of crazy stuff that's said out there. You don't deserve to be shot right there in front of everybody for that to be the case. And so to me it comes down to what exactly is your purpose if you are trying to play both sides. If you were trying to stand from the pulpit and well, you know, there's people on both sides. You are serving zero point for anything. You got to take a side, take one or the other. Because trying to bring, bring us together in times of unity. Light and dark don't go together. We know this from first, John. Good and evil have no part together. This is evil that we're staring in the face. And this is why again, the Charlie Kirk's of the world are so important. The guys that are willing to call this out, man, there is a massive, massive problem with this country that we can't just call it out.
[00:21:20] Speaker C: Well, let's put it in another light here. Again I said at the start of the episode, I was 2 in 9. 11 happened. I don't remember it, but I've read about, of course, talked to people. The patriotic spirit that really just flourished after 9 11.
Did you imagine if a political commentator got on and was basically like. Or a social media. So a preacher got on, was like, well, you know, Americans and Muslims, we both have problems and we really need to make sure that we just all rise against this level of violence.
And again, maybe there were people saying that that's not the sense that I get or well, take it back.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: President Bush said, well, it's a religion of peace as New York City lay in rubble. But yeah, I mean that's, that's sure why we're here.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: But you know, go to, go to, you know, another, any horrific example. You don't think of the Holocaust. You think, you know, if somebody said, well, you know, Nazis and non Nazis, we all have issues and let's all just come together. It's ridiculous. And once again, I think what this comes down to is whether or not you're willing to admit that, that people on the left. And again, I'm going to say it, people who are voting on the left have a different worldview than somebody who is, should be following scripture, than somebody who is a Christian. They see the world differently. There's an ideological difference. That's what it comes down to. Are you willing to admit it or not? Again, I would have, you know, if anybody were to say after 9 11, again, I'm sure some people did. President Bush included. Hey, you know, Muslims and Americans, we all have issues that we, you know, we can't really say that one side's worse than the other. Yes, we can. We absolutely can say that. And that's, that's where we're at today. And the fact that so many people are afraid to say that is why we're in the situation that we're in with the church. To Joe's point. To Joe's point.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: I got a really good message from a guy on substack and he shared a different article that somebody else had written on the situation. And it was a Presbyterian guy talking about how to build and you know, what the church should do in response to this. And he said it was really good. And I'm kind of disappointed the churches of Christ don't have this kind of thing.
It hurts my heart to say it, but he's exactly right. All I'm seeing from most of the Church of Christ preachers on my feed is, well, let's not cause issues here. Let's just preach the gospel. Which means let's do this.
Because by gospel, the Gospel touches this kind of thing. And when you tell the world the gospel isn't interested in this kind of thing, you're telling them the gospel is just this like totally abstract thing that doesn't actually impact their lives or things like that. And so it's really discouraging that within the churches of Christ there is not a sense of we've got to build something that will prevent things like this from happening again. I mean Christianity has to be the backbone of, of whatever America builds in response to this. And when you've got people basically saying no, that's, that's not our job. And you've got a good note here on the outline Will, about these guys want to over spiritualize everything that that quote about. You're so focused on the next world that you're no good in this one. It's really true. It really comes down to when we talk about the gospel and just preach the gospel. Well, why does that answer this? Is it just escapism? Is it just, well now people know where they're going to go when they die? Well that's really good. But, but what about confronting evil in the world? Does God not care about that? And that's kind of the answer you're getting.
[00:24:22] Speaker C: Well, I read a post that literally said rather than using this and being divisive, let's, you know, we should all be going to seek and save the lost.
One of the more tone deaf sentences and spiritually immature sentences that I read over the course of social media over the last 48 hours and I've read a lot because what this is what a quote like that and Jack, to kind of to your point, the over spiritualization, the every single thing is about evangelism. You know, here's what that's ignoring. Joe spoke to this a second ago.
Why was Charlie Kirk so popular? Why was Charlie Kirk someone that Gen Z specifically my demographic, you know, 18 to 29, 30 year olds, somebody that they listened to and respected, might not have always agreed with, but they listened to and they respected him. And in fact, you know, this is not, we're not here to discuss necessarily the events that took place or the conspiracies that are arising. I'm just going to say seemed to be, it did not seem to be haphazard. It did not seem to be a deranged lunatic firing off a shot there. It was a clean shot. It seemed to be professional. And I'll leave it at that. Let's say that that was the case. Why do you think Charlie Kirk was the Target Again, there are 10 to 15 conservative political pundits that are far more inflammatory than, than Charlie Kirk. Because the youth listened to Charlie Kirk, because Gen Z boys specifically, but also females listened to Charlie Kirk. He was having a Prof.
On young people. Why? Because he was addressing real issues. His response to everything as a very faithful believer in Christ was not, none of this stuff matters. Go preach the gospel. That was not his response. His response to stuff was not, you know, let's not use this as a time to be divisive. Let's all, let's just go evangelize and preach the gospel because of the lost. And Charlie Kirk was impacting young people. And the statement that I just said a second ago that I read on somebody's Facebook, this is why we're losing young people. This is why Gen Z males and Gen Z females are walking away from the church. Because we look at stuff like that and you're like, okay, so you really don't have any clue how to address cultural issues. All you know is, and I hope it goes without saying, I believe we should seek and save the lost. I believe that evangelism is obviously something that is commissioned to us by God. But you know what's part of evangelism?
Raising faithful kids. As I've said a billion times on this podcast, you know what goes into evangelism? Creating a culture and a community that is in favor of godly principles and is in favor of conservative biblical values. That's part of evangelism as well. And it all comes down to me about, again, why, why Charlie Kirk? Because young people listen to him. Because young people, he had an impact on young people who said, you know what, I might not agree with him, but you know, he's somebody who's worth listening to and respecting. And again, not to get conspiracy theorists here, but I think that's why he was silenced, is because more so than, you know, Shapiro or whoever, other people, young people listen to him. And for us to over spiritualize it to the point for us to over spiritualize everything is to ignore how many young men, how many 24 year old and 18 year old men and women, of course, watch the video of Charlie Kirk's neck getting blown out and our response is all we gotta do is go seek and save the lost.
That's not. They, they are going to see the video on their timeline for the next, for the next three weeks and that's the best response we have for them.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: And you want to tell them you see this evil in the world and hey, don't pay attention to that. Pay attention to the gospel. What does that say about the gospel? It can't address the evil in the world.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Well, I just saw this great post. Josh Dawes said the Gospel Center, TGC Gospel Coalition type studied that the culture war is a distraction from the gospel. Yet my timeline is filled with video after video of Charlie Kirk sharing the gospel.
[00:28:00] Speaker C: Here.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: He made fighting the culture war a platform for the gospel. Which way, Christian man? And then Willie Rice retweeted and said, this is spot on. I've heard repeatedly that we can't be culture warriors and gospel missionaries at the same time. Charlie shared the gospel with more people in 31 years than most pastors will in 31 lifetimes, man. I mean, those are great points of light. He did it while going out and meeting people where they're at, while engaging culture. He brought people to the real evils of the world and spoke to the Savior that can save them from that.
That's how we're supposed to be as Christians, is to engage the culture, engage people where they are with the things that matter to them and point them to a better way, point them to Christ saving them from these things. And instead we'd like to, you know, well, we're all kind of in the same boat and there's not really any real evil in the world. And we're not. And you can look back in history and look back to a time with like Hitler, you know, where you see real evil in the world.
People had a much bigger appreciation for that, for the evil that was out there than they do these days, where we're not easily confronted with real evil. At least in my lifetime, up until recently, where you're seeing the trans agenda and you're seeing the, you know, this type of situation with the political violence and things like that, we're starting to see real evil. We have to have something to combat it. And we do. We have the gospel. But if you're not willing to point out the real evil and get in the muck and mire, you're not much good.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: This has been a game to these people for too long. And this man. We've been sounding the alarm on this podcast for almost four years. And I've been writing on it for 15 years. Brad here at Focus Press been writing on the same thing saying, church, wake up. It's all theory to them. And when something like this happens, you see how woefully in equipped they are to take their theory. Their theory just doesn't align with the real world. And it's like we're in the real world and you have to wake up and be able to apply these things and understand why a guy's head just got blown off and why above it all ism, just preach the gospel. Don't take sides. All those things. We need to have a Tim Keller and Andy Stanley book burning party. Just make every preacher bring them and say, throw them away. Because what those guys did was appease people who held on to sinful views so they wouldn't leave. So their churches got bigger and guys read their stuff and thought, this is brilliant. We should stay above all this Third Wayism they call it. You know, it's not left nor right. But no, no, no, no, we're going to do the right thing. Not. Not kind of get into this. Avoiding the conflict. No, it's walking right into the conflict. Like Paul did at Mars Hill, like Peter did at Pentecost, like Peter did in the next chapter in acts, like Acts 8. I mean, over the book of Acts is nothing but confrontation. And we've got people thinking like the confrontation is evil. Well, again, look what Charlie Kirk accomplished by confrontation. Loving confrontation, as Francis schaeffer taught us 50 years ago. Loving confrontation, but confrontation nonetheless.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Yeah, you look at the church, though, and how we've responded to the other tests along the way. This is just the recent one that we failed. We failed the tests of husbands and wives and hierarchy within the home, Patriot patriarchy and such. We failed that test. The public school and homeschool debate. We failed that test. You know, a lot of. And Jack, I saw, I think you tweeted on this, a lot of the people that are coming out and just cheering this Charlie Kirk death are public school teachers. I mean, we have been very vocal on this podcast of get your kids out of the public school. But we got the both ways, you know, well, we can't really say which one's better. We got that with roles in the home. We've got that with the modesty debate. Well, you know, the guys need to do this and so we can't really call out the women. I mean, we failed so many times as a church along the way of multiple of these things. There's a bazillion one examples of ways that we just try to stay down the center. We try to do the Andy Stanley type stuff or the Tim Keller where we just don't want to have to push anybody into a box because that's really scary and we're going to lose some people. And you know, the guy whose Wife runs over him, may get offended and leave if we call that out. And so we just don't. We don't. And now we get to something that's so in your face. We're watching his neck get blown out is so in your face, so horrific and disturbing. And even in the midst of something like that, they go, well, you know, they're both sides. We got to hear out both sides. If that doesn't do it, my fear is nothing will. There is nothing that's going to take place in the culture that if you can't see that video.
And I think pastors, as terrible as it is, I think pastors, preachers, people like the, the clergy, preachers specifically in church Christ, need to watch that video and understand what just took place and understand what everybody in, in their church is seeing, witnessing, watching and knowing, asking questions. How do we navigate this? What do we do going forward? They should be forced to have to sit in this and engage with what just took place and the whole above it all ism. And, you know, we don't have to, you know, let's just play both sides. The centrists, man, that will radicalize you in a real hurry when you're watching something like that take place. And they've got to start coming out of their ivory towers and meeting people where they are.
[00:32:39] Speaker C: Right? And that was my, kind of, my point a second ago with the young people, is no wonder young people aren't listening to any of these people anymore. But kind of the irony about a lot of this, especially as you talk about the both sides and really the kind of above it all thing that we got into just a second ago with, we shouldn't really dirty ourselves with these cultural issues and engaging in these discussions.
Why, once again, just to honor the man.
This is why Charlie Kirk was so effective. It's because he didn't have that approach. He didn't have that mentality of, you know, we don't need to get down into these nitty gritty details. And he had the opposite approach. He said, hey, you know, he would go to campuses and say, you fully believe in transgenderism. I don't. Let's talk about it. I'm going to smoke you in a verbal debate. I'm. My rhetoric is going to talk circles around you, but still, I'm going to engage in this issue. I'm not going to say, well, this is beneath me as a, as a Christian. I really should only be concerned with, you know, sending money to missionaries. No. And that's, once again, that's Kind of the irony in all this is the above it all ism that so many people within the church kind of have.
Charlie Kirk exemplified the exact opposite of that and man the the tributes to him that are. That are going out today. As somebody who was willing to openly engage in all these things, but somebody who was not afraid of you think Charlie Kirk had probably more tough conversations with people as far as challenging situations and once again challenging kind of dirty feeling conversations about transgenderism and truth standing for truth then all three of us combined. I would say certainly. And certainly so many other people. And the above it all ism thought kind of mentality is kind of seems to be what is prevailing in so much of this. And I don't know. That's the irony in it is that he's being kind of held up and honored as somebody who did not subscribe to the above it all ism. And yet that's what so many people's responses are.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Yeah, we're getting a lot of great comments here. Sorry, I'm managing that a little bit. And so I'm gonna read some of those out and toward the end of the stream here, we've got a few more things to hit.
We appreciate all those. This is great to see. We don't, as we said earlier, we don't do a live very often. So appreciate you guys joining us and commenting.
The Minnesota shooting was brought up and we addressed that in the first five minutes.
Misrepresented facts on that coming up once again. So yeah, that's. That's a real fun one. But yeah, and that's kind of the thing is you got one thing in that direction and it's not even what it's. It's a misrepresentation. It's very dubious as to even if it was right on left violence, in fact, very good reason to believe it wasn't. And. But if it was like proves the point A. Yeah, that's the issue with it is nobody's celebrating it. That is the major difference here. There is no jumping up and cheering when you heard that lawmakers on the left got shot. And so one of the things we need to talk about is biblically to respond to this righteous anger that concept here because I think there's this idea that we're supposed to be stoic. And I've seen we talked about a lot of the both sides ism and above it all ism. One of the other things is hey everybody, don't get into the hateful rhetoric. Don't get into the Being angry.
No, you got to read your Psalms, man. I don't know how many times I have had to pound the desk in this podcast to say, read your Old Testament. It didn't go away. And the thing where you put the Sermon on the Mount against the Old Testament, love your enemies, turn the other cheek. All of those things have to not contradict, Lord. Shatter their teeth, Lord. Make it as if, you know, worse than if they had never been born. And all of those things that are prayed in the Psalms, you know, Psalm 139, I hate those who hate you, Lord.
He wasn't sinning when he said those things. It's okay to say those things. There's a time and a place to say those things. And this gets so out of hand that people just kind of think we're supposed to see a husband and father get shot to death on camera and go, boy, that's a shame. All right, come back on Sunday where we're gonna. No, no, no, no, no. If you are not righteously angry, I don't even know what to say to you. Like, where are you? Where's your head?
[00:36:51] Speaker A: You look at the seven abominations, right? In Proverbs and the proverbs and Psalms both deal with this. Of being able to recognize evil as it is and either stay far away from it, or God shatter them upon the rocks. You know, there's so many things I posted about this on my Facebook of. Of there being. There's a bazillion and one. Different ones that are. That are out there. Psalms. I shouldn't say bazillion, 150 Psalms, but Psalm 58, 10 and 11. The entirety of Psalm 58 is impregnated, but it says the righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. And men will say, surely there is a reward for the righteous. Surely there is a God who judges on earth. Now, this is. This is the Psalms. This is the psalmist. This is David talking about these things saying the righteous will wash their. Or God will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked, like.
And the righteous are going to rejoice at that. To see. We're not calling for political violence. We're not calling for things like that. But there is a time and place for the government and those to get involved. That's Romans 13. To get involved and to punish this wickedness, to punish those that are against God, that are doing all of these. This wicked behavior. There's a time and place for that. And that has to be said that the Psalms and also in the New Testament, as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. That's Romans 12, right after that, it assumes we're not always going to be at peace with all men. And what do we do about that? The government has been given, it's an arm, an extension of God, to be able to go out and to punish people like this. They deserve punishment. We deserve to be angry at these things. It doesn't mean that we have to go out. And again, we're not calling for violence or things like that. But for those that kind of stand back and, well, we're above the anger. Anger is an emotion from God. Anger is not wrong. Jesus was not wrong when he flipped the tables of the temple because people were doing things against God. These things are not wrong. And so if you want to call Jesus out for being wrong, being sinful, for being angry, woe to you scribes and Pharisees. That's a problem. We need to be able to call this out where we see it. There's multiple biblical examples. Paul himself, all the way from David and before to Jesus to Paul and beyond.
Read Revelation. You don't think that God and Jesus with his eyes of fire, you don't see that there's emotion involved here, that he's going to rain destruction on his enemies. Come on, live in the real world and realize the Bible is full of destruction against God's enemies. Going back to Sodom and Gomorrah, going back to the flood. This is the way God deals with, with wicked people. And, and what we should be praying for God to deal with wicked people is destroy them, shatter their teeth. If they don't turn to the gospel, if they can't come around to the save life, saving blood of Christ and turn to the gospel, then, yes, put a stop to them, shatter their teeth, do whatever it takes. I think it's okay to pray in Purgatory. Psalms.
[00:39:19] Speaker C: You saw this in. What was that, 2022, 2021, when Roe v. Wade got overturned, kind of something very similar of many of us were, you know, getting on social media and celebrating and obviously the ruling that took place, and there were quite a few people that were trying to shout it down, saying, okay, now, you know, we shouldn't gloat, we shouldn't really be celebrating this. This is, you know, there's a lot of people hurting right now.
And, you know, the point, not original to me, but was like, yeah, the people that are hurting are the Ones who are in favor of killing their children in the womb. I'm pretty sure I'm okay with them hurting. And that's what, you know, again, just to use that as an illustration or as an example, very, very similarly, you have the, you know, the, with the transgender, with the transgender doctors, people who are openly advocating for young children to be able to change their gender and have these reconstructive surgeries and have their, you know, take hormone, you know, puberty blockers and take hormones, all these things.
I am going to be rooting for those people's destruction. And that's. That's what the Bible teaches. This is where this. Jack wrote very well on this in his article. I don't want to ste his point. I'll let you speak to it more, Jack, if you'd like to. But this is where our obsession with, or our kind of over emphasis of like the Sermon on the Mount and love your enemies and our misapplication, misinterpretation and misapplication of that really negatively affects us in situations like this. Because when Jesus is saying on the Sermon on the Mount, love your enemies and turn the other cheek, there is a strong difference being made between the enemy, like your kind of personal enemies, like differences you have with people, whether it be just disagreements or squabbles and stuff, as opposed to the enemies of God and the enemies of righteousness. There can absolutely be overlap there. But when Jesus was saying turn the other cheek and once again, love your enemies, he wasn't talking about the enemies of God. Joe, you read a psalm. The one that always sticks out to me is Psalm 5. And somebody says, you know, well, you know, should we be rooting for this or should we be, you know, cheering for their destruction?
Psalm 5, verse 4. For you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity. You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak falsehood. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
It says, the Lord abhors and the Lord hates those people.
That's some pretty strong language. That's some. And keep in mind, who's it talking about? Bloodthirsty, wicked enemies of him. And so that's just the point I wanted to make here. When we're talking about righteous anger, can we be righteously angry? Of course. In fact, to one of y' all said a second ago, if you're not righteously angry. There's a serious problem if you're not righteously angry about what happened yesterday.
I even tweeted this. You are the problem with the church if you are not righteously angry. If you do not see what took place yesterday as an attack on Christ, on his values, once again, on conservative values, on family values. If you don't see that as an attack on. On those things, on your ideology and your worldview, then you don't have that ideology and you don't have that worldview. We should be enraged and we should root for their destruction. That's exactly what we see in the Psalms. That's exactly what we see, you know, really, throughout you. Jesus overturning the tables, like righteous indignation, righteous anger, specifically at the enemies of God is what the Bible teaches. Jack, you got a thought?
[00:42:38] Speaker B: It looks like more than that. If your first response at something like this is to turn around and shush the people who get angry about it, you're even worse. Honestly, like, get out of the way. You are the problem. You like that you can see some of this. And rather than getting mad at the people who did the shooting and cheered on the shooting, your first thought is, boy, I sure hope nobody says anything mean about those.
Shut up. Genuinely sit down and get out of the way. If you don't have the backbone to take a stand, whatever, but get out of the way. Stop trying to stop the people who have a problem with it, who still have their. Their backbone, who still see and can call evil evil. I mean that those people, to me more than anything, are the. The people who will hold your hands back and let somebody punch you in the face.
[00:43:25] Speaker C: I want to point out a comment that we got from. From Dustin kind of speaks to some of this. He says there's nothing wrong with admitting that this happens against both sides. There's equally nothing wrong with noting that it is far more prevalent from one side against the other. It is not equally common in both directions.
That is the point. And that is something that I have stated on for different issues on so many podcasts. We've got to stop pretending that stuff is equal. It's just not. Somebody who says I want to get married and have children versus somebody who says I want to travel the world and if I get married, maybe if I have kids, sure, maybe I don't really care. Those two things are not the same. And we got to stop pretending that they are. A faithful Christian marriage, Christian parents who raised three faithful children to be faithful disciples, and a Christian marriage couple. Who goes one for three, two kids off the deep end, one sort of attends church. Those two situations are not the same and we got to stop treating them as such. That's what kind of Dustin. And so. So obviously the exact same application here. Are there people who are whack jobs on the right? Of course there are. Are there people who are whack jobs on the left? Far more. And that's the point here. We can't go to it and say, well, you know, they're basically the same. It's similar to the both sides point, but the equal, the false equivalency is what really frustrates me because I see it in the minor issues, but it's being amplified here. So I appreciate that. First thought there from Dustin.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Can we stomach difficult realities? That's really what it comes down to.
Can we stomach difficult realities? Are we allowed to. And I see Dr. Brad here, I want to see a difference. You know, nobody's burning down cities the way that back in with George Floyd and going back to 2020 and some of the political violence. But we have to be able to stomach these difficult realities. It goes back to this, this Ukrainian woman. I don't even know fully how to pronounce the name, you know, because I read it and don't.
[00:45:10] Speaker C: Irena is I think how.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go.
But you see this, and this just took place what, three, four days ago previously where there was a man and, you know, he just stabs her and said, I got that white girl. And we got to be able to stomach harstrues that there is true racism out in the world and we can't necessarily call it out because it's on one side and not on the other. Allegedly. We have to be able to call out harsh realities and deal with the difficult truths and people aren't willing to do it. And it goes to the preacher class. They're not really willing to dig into the harsh truths that arise in moments like this because they know it's going to be polarizing. People are going to be on both sides and they might offend people. We have to call that out that there are some inconvenient and harsh truths to reality out there that might change people's lives and we're just willing to call it out.
[00:45:57] Speaker C: Well, the.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: In.
[00:45:58] Speaker C: In this instance, Joe, because you're exactly right that we need to be able to say the harsh, harsh truth. Here's the harsh truth because people. Oh, is are you telling me it's a sin if I vote Democrat? Here's the harsh truth that needs to be said, the political left, the Democratic Party, supports multiple positions that are in complete opposition to God's word and his will, as well as condoning not every single person, but overall condoning political violence. Therefore, you should not support them.
That's the harsh truth that needs to be said.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: Well, there's a comment in there about, you know, like, we have these people in our pews. This, to me, is a really big issue is if there's somebody across the church building and they give me a hug and shake my hand every week and greet me, and everybody ideologically aligned with them is cheering that somebody who believes like me just got shot, and. And they look around, they're like, well, I'm not cheering, but I'm still on this side.
[00:46:51] Speaker C: What are we doing?
[00:46:53] Speaker B: You're okay with. With surrounding yourself with the kind of people who want your fellow Christians shot? No, like that. That's the kind of thing we've got to call out. So to Joe's point, bring us to this next point we want to cover about stomaching difficult and difficult realities. That's the first one, is we've got to have conversations to say, no, no, it's not okay. But even on a national level, the death penalty has got to ramp up. I mean, the Charlotte subway train transit stabbing, this one.
It has to happen. I mean, if it goes to public executions like old times, you got to have the stomach for it. And if you don't have the stomach for it, it's okay. Turn your head the other way and know this is what needs to happen. So capital punishment.
Nothing wrong with that. Biblically, it goes all the way back to Genesis 9. That was one of the first commandments when they came off the ark was God told Noah, you take somebody's life, your life's going to be taken by man. The same thing with crackdowns. I'm sorry. There's a lot of people losing their jobs today because they were gloating online, they were spiking the football about Charlie Kirk being shot. And I immediately, of course, people are rushing in.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: We don't want this. No, we do.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: We do.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: These are school teachers. These are healthcare providers. I don't want a healthcare provider that thinks Charlie Kirk should be dead doing my surgery. I don't want them treating my wife in the hospital when she gives birth. I don't want any of those things. Those people don't deserve to be there. And so, again, if you can't stomach the difficult realities of what needs to Happen to drive this kind of thing back again. Mass arrests, the kind of punishments, the consequences of it, again, look the other way. Because these things are going to need to start happening. It's a good thing that they're happening, that justice is coming about. Because for too long people have been allowed to sit back and say things like, you're a Nazi. All Nazis should be shot.
Let's see what happens then when you get shot and they go, oh, wow, that's, you know, the AOCs and Ilhan Omaha's and some of those elected officials.
You know, I'm against this. Why are you against it? You called for it all the way. You know, so many of the time.
[00:48:44] Speaker C: I left the cake and eat it too.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: Right, exactly. You, you led people right to the brink, did everything but put the gun in his hands and then went, oh, boy. Oh, you shouldn't have done that. No, no, no. These things need to start having consequences. And I do not want people running at me with the Constitution, running at me with, well, you know, turn the other cheek.
Yes, I'm supposed to turn the other cheek. Romans 13. Government is not told to turn the other cheek. It's told to drop the sword, bring the sword to bear on these people. And so again, those difficult solutions, that's one of them. And that kind of gets us into some of these comments we want to address as we wrap.
What should we as a people do now?
Rooting for difficult solutions, I think is one of them. I mean, prayer is always going to be one of them. I'll take a couple off the top there, but I'll throw it to you guys. Practical things. What do we do?
[00:49:28] Speaker A: I genuinely think we need to get into local government quite a bit. I think this should radicalize people to say, I need to start thinking about how I can get more involved, politically speaking, where we become mayors of towns, we become representatives, whatever it may be, state representative. We go up to the highest level. I think there needs to be a, you know, from a political level, a ramp up in political involvement from Christians so that we can start having a crackdown on these things, so that we can get people to say, absolutely not. We're not allowing these things. We're not allowing the, the craziness in schools and the drag queen story hours and all the things that radicalize young kids. The gay pride parades that go down where you have people naked walking down the street. No, those people should be put in prison. Like, if that's going to be the case, we have to have people that can stomach harsh Realities that means we have to have Christians in, in government to be able to do it. But I think from a local level, if you're owning a business, I think it's perfectly fine to set these standards of yes, I, I will hold my employees. And this is to Dr. Brad Harris point, I hold my employees to that standard. I'm going to fire you on the spot if I even think that that's the case. People have to start facing real consequences for this. And I would say from an interpersonal level, if you have friends start calling that out, you got to start calling it out and getting used to the conflict between friends. Interpersonal conflict of that is absolutely wrong. It's morally reprehensible for you to cheer that on. And I don't want to be your friend if that's the case. And then they're going, well, you're breaking divisions. What if they come back to the gospel later? Like sometimes the best thing to bring somebody to the truth is to let them hit rock bottom and is to realize everybody's pulled away from me and this hurts because I have a problem. Sometimes that is the solution. And so we have to be willing to break friendships over this and say, and if you're a preacher, get out. If you are applauding this, you repent right now. You come forward and you repent. And we will, you know, we'll restore you to the church. But if you're not, if you're not going to repent and if you hold these beliefs, get out of our church. We have no part of you. Neither does Christ.
[00:51:22] Speaker C: There's a, there's a couple things that, as far as what should we do that I have thoughts that I have thoughts on. The first one is we absolutely should be acknowledging the reprehensible nature of not just this act, but all those who support this act that my dad's got a comment on here. How many congregations even acknowledged it last night? I expect most dodged it with a ten foot pole.
You got people in congregations who weren't dodging.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: 20, 20.
[00:51:46] Speaker C: They weren't dodging the George Floyd stuff. They weren't dodging and they're dodging this. We need to be able to come out and say it. And that's the thing I watched, you know, there's of course a lot of people that are reacting to this, a lot of political commentators that are reacting to this. I watched one and he made an excellent point.
And his point was that though, and so this is my larger point, those who wanted and eventually ended up succeeding in bringing about Charlie Kirk's death, wanted to kill him for one reason. And that's because he spoke the truth and they didn't like it.
They spoke the truth or he spoke the truth and they did not like it.
And so their mental calculation was if we kill Charlie Kirk, truth will stop getting shared, at least to the degree that it was. And so one thing that we can do is that we can stand up and start speaking truth and stop hiding under generic spiritualities. Just, again, just don't worry about all this and just go preach the gospel. That's one thing that we can do is we can stand up and speak the truth. We can address some of these issues. We can, we can. I mean, there's that hashtag going around right now. I am Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk was somebody who stood out against these things. And so that's the first thing that I would say that we can do is stop letting the over spiritualization. The, the, you know, we're not going to get our hands dirty. A kingdom's not of this world. People bully you out of standing for truth and saying things that need to be said. Once again, we got to get out of the land of generics. We've got to be able to start saying, hey, you as a Christian should homeschool your kids. You shouldn't send them to public school. We got to start saying stuff like that. We need to start saying, hey, you man or woman, you shouldn't be wearing that to the beach. We've got to start saying, hey, you know, fornicating couple, you can't take the Lord's Supper here. We're not going to serve the Lord's Supper here to you because we know that you're living together and you're not married. We got to start saying those things. And obviously that's on a smaller church scale level. I fully resonate with Joe's point about the community level and doing some of the things that Charlie Kirk did. You know, once again, at a. From a government perspective, getting into local government and spreading it. But man, going back to the churches, if we're not able to say that stuff that I just said, we're not going to be able to have near the impact that Charlie Kirk did just from a church perspective. And so that would be kind of my main thing that we need to start doing is, man, if this angered you, and I hope that it did get a little dose of that courage, get a little dose of the bravery to stand up and say specific truths. A lot of our pulpit preachers are bullying people out of. So that would be my Jack. I'm sure you've got initial.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean you shared that.
[00:54:13] Speaker C: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:54:14] Speaker B: You're letting them win. If, if we're all bullied into silence that a guy that stood up there, that's what they want. Yeah. Joe brought up earlier, Charlie Kirk was saying things that most pulpits wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole and people flock to him because of it. Stop being afraid of the numbers. Just do the right thing and don't let them silence him. Don't let them get away with that side of it. And so I mean that's part of it to Joe's point about in the community. But really we have to look at what we do when we come together as the church. And this frustrates me so much that this is not it is that again, church is so spiritualized, so gnostic, so out of touch with everything around us. When we come together. It has to be to build, to go out in the community as lights. But also not just picking off individual souls, but changing the culture of the community, building our own culture. And part of that is the specificity in preaching that Will's talking about. You can't have a culture when you just keep it generic. And let's all be nice, build Christian culture and bring that into the community you're in. Network, bring people close together. Because what we need to realize is what I worry happened yesterday is the start of something very dark. We don't need to get into it on a live stream. I don't want to be pulled down by Facebook, whatever. I'm not afraid of saying it, but you all know what I'm saying of what's going to start happening. I'm not wanting to be a part of that. I'm not advocating doing anything crazy. I'm just saying that might be the first of many or the second or third of many. And I'm very worried that it might turn into that. It was that way in the 60s and 70s. History has not documented that very well. The people on that side of things were bombing things like, I mean there's Weather Underground. Look it up. It's not that hard to see. You need to know who's on your side. You need to know if the people in your church are going to be okay with it. If you get Charlie Kirk. You need to know if the people around you are going to take care of your family if something happens to you. If somebody walks into your church building, are they going to be able to defend your family or are you going to be part of that? Like those kind of things of the considerations of how we hunker down together and then go out as a unit to make a difference?
You got to pick up on what I'm saying here. That's the kind of stuff we need to start doing. I, you know, Brad made the point how many churches are going to touch on it on Sunday, sadly and to the point somebody else made. They're going to be up there preaching on instrument, mechanical instruments of worship and water baptism and the same things we've done a million times.
We need to get our doctrinal P's and Q's right. We need to make sure people have their theological positions lined up. And then we need to preach practical. We need to preach, hey, this is the real world and what we're doing with it and how we're going to change it. The Church of Christ has no concept of actually changing the world other than individual evangelism. That's a big part of it, but it's a part of it. And you've got to think bigger than.
[00:56:51] Speaker C: That because practical is what tells you who to vote for. Practical is what gives you the tools to know I can't support that ideology. I've got this gentleman named Abram on here. Abram, I really appreciate you. Listen, I don't agree with your comments, but I do appreciate you listening and tuning in. He makes the point, he says that essentially he disagrees with us that Democrats are celebrating the horrible murder of Charlie Kirk. He says virtually every Democrat leaders condemned this. And of course you can find anyone to say whatever you want. It's just out of touch to portray it like a large percentage of people genuinely feel that way.
[00:57:20] Speaker A: Go look at the House floor.
[00:57:20] Speaker C: Ideology.
[00:57:21] Speaker A: Go look at the House floor.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: Yes, the video, I mean them. Cheering when the news came in. Cheering Go look at Blue sky. The web or the social media where they all, they all, they all siloed themselves over to Blue sky and literally Blue sky had to put out a like, site wide policy, like, guys, tone it down.
[00:57:39] Speaker C: I was gonna say the social media bubble thing. Joe, give your point real fast because you're exactly right about the House floor.
[00:57:42] Speaker A: Lauren Boebert called for a moment of silence in Congress and just for Charlie Kirk. After all this went down, they started laughing and saying.
[00:57:49] Speaker C: They started jeering at him.
[00:57:50] Speaker A: They started jeering at him.
[00:57:51] Speaker C: It's not a social media algorithm bubble. That's ridiculous.
And that's the other thing about it is their ideology supports this their ideology is 100% opposed to us, and it's.
[00:58:04] Speaker B: The party that created this kind of thing.
[00:58:07] Speaker C: And so, yes, we're going to say that you should not support that ideology, and you know it.
So, yes, I wanted to address that comment because I wildly disagree. Again, appreciate the support. Just wildly disagree.
Tobias says anytime you're willing to kill babies and justify it, you're among the most evil that exists. And everything else that they are doing proves this point on a daily basis, and we support that in any way, shape, or form, then you are truly an evil person. I got no disagreements from that at all.
Guys, we are getting close to an hour. To the hour mark. What else, Anything else that you guys want to cover? Obviously, a lot of.
A lot more will be coming out over the next several days. I think the last comment that I would have kind of closing thoughts is, do not. And I said it already, but do not let this silence you, because then they do win. That's exactly everything. If you're somebody who was posting proudly in support of Charlie Kirk and commemorating him, and once again, condolences and thoughts and prayers are with his family. If you're somebody who was supporting him as a person and holding him up, get a little dose of what he stood for and be willing to say those hard things and don't do the equal. Equalization or both sides of, like, well, you know, we can't really say one thing better than the other. Yeah, we can. We can say you need to vote for this party, not the other party. We can say you need to send your kids to, or you need to bring your kids home and not send them to the public school. All these things we've already said. That's kind of the takeaway that. That I would encourage everybody to have from this. And specifically with Tobias, question of what do we do, stand up and say these things. What closing thoughts would you guys have?
[00:59:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't. I don't have much more to add. I think you summed it up very, very well.
These truly are terrible times. So be in prayer for Charlie Kirk, his wife, his family, for his, you know, for everybody, the lies that he touched. Be in prayer for them. Be in prayer, of course, Just be remiss to say for those that were involved in the Evergreen High School shooting, that's very close to our home, where Jack and I came from. There's a school shooting there. Obviously, we want to say prayers for them. Be in prayer for this entire situation on the subway in Charlotte. Like, there's a lot of things Going on in this world, a lot of evil that's taken place and be in prayer that eyes will be open to see the light of Christ in the midst of all of the darkness, in the midst of the evil. So that's the only thing I'd say is these are truly evil times. That means the gospel should shine all the more brightly.
So let's make sure that we are bold enough to say it and to call it out as we see it, because Christ will come through in this moment.
[01:00:21] Speaker B: Absolutely. I'll close by saying, you know, in David's career as king, there's the time they go to battle and some of the guys had to stay back with the baggage and someone out and fought and there was kind of the, you know, decision of, well, who gets the reward, the spoils of battle and all that. And they divided. It wasn't dishonorable to stay with the baggage. If you don't have the stomach for these ideological battles. If it kind of, it's gets ugly to you and all that, that's okay.
Stay back with the bags. Do not hold our hands behind our back while we talk about the evil that we see in this world. Do not turn when a man just got shot in front of his wife and kids and decided to start lecturing the people who are mad about it.
That is our number one problem right now is that so many of our preachers, that was their first response. Their first thought is, what is the left going to think about the right's response, not what is the correct response to this. Those are the guys that have to sit down or get in the fight. Stay back with the bags. Nothing dishonorable about that. Get out of the way, but don't.
[01:01:20] Speaker C: Try to stop us.
[01:01:22] Speaker B: Do not try to hamstring the people who are righteously angry and want what's right, want these things to stop and realize these people want to shoot you too.
If you believe in Jesus Christ and you believe anything the Bible teaches, they want to shoot you too. Stop trying to appease them and be their buddy. So we're going to stop right there. Yes. Love your enemies. Yes. Pray for those who hurt you. Absolutely. We want these people to come to Christ, but if they won't do that, we want them to be stopped. And so you have to remember that as well. So we're going to stop right there. We appreciate all the comments. We had a great turnout for this. As we said, this is a very rare thing our work schedules make it that we usually record at like 6:30 in the morning. So live does not work as well then. But thank you to everyone who did comment and joined in. We do have a comment response episode every single week on the deep end on Focus plus, so you can join us over there. Focus stress.org/ as always, this is Think Deeper podcast. Subscribe on on any podcast platform. But as Joe said, be in prayer for the Kirk family, for the Evergreen folks, for everybody involved, for our country, for our leaders. There's, there's just a lot to pray about and hopefully share the love of Christ. So we're going to leave it right there. Thanks for tuning in.
