The Eric Metaxas Show - Bonhoeffer Film (Encore)

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Chris interviews Eric on the process of writing the book Bonhoeffer and seeing Angel Studio's film on the man.

Folks, today's election day, if you haven't voted, go vote. Stop listening to this program. In the meantime, we're going to run a wonderful encore. Chris Heimes interviews me about my Bonhofer book. Very exciting. Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to listen to a man of grace, sophistication, integrity, and whimsy? Well, so are we.

But until such a man shows up, please welcome Eric Ma, Texas. Hey there, folks. is a very special, I can use the word special, a very special edition of the Eric Metaxus show, because the Bonhoeffer movie is coming out, or maybe it's already out, and we thought, you know, maybe I should let my friend, at least we've been friends up until now, Chris Himes, interview me about Bonhoeffer. So, Chris, yes, hello. No pressure, but.

Well, here we go. you got? I feel like this is like that movie Parent Trap, you know, where the kid and the child they trade places or the parent and the child trade places. Exactly like that. It's like that. I get to be the, usually I'm running around saying who's going to be on the show, are they ready?

And today it's I and you. Yeah. So this is very special. I'm not normally in this position of answering the questions, but the Bonhofer thing, it's fascinating because the film Films coming out November 22nd.

November 22nd. So it's taken years and years to make the film. The producers were inspired by my Bonhoeffer book making the film. That was a perfect setup to my first question for you, which is, how do you feel knowing that the book that you work so hard on inspired in some way the attention to this character that is now the subject of the Angel Studios? film. Like, how does that feel for you? Is that surreal? Are you sad that, and then I have a follow-up, are you upset that you weren't cast in the film in a supporting role, perhaps, as a good German, you know, something?

I wanted to be cast as Hitler's brother. Well, I know. People think I'm joking. I'm going to bring that up later. That's not a joke. That's true. But it didn't work out. But I do, I want to talk about that in the course of the conversation. But let's just be clear. I never, ever ever ever. ever had an ambition to write a biography. I just, I always say that I'm far too self-centered to want to spend that much time talking about some other person, right? Usually gets a huge laugh. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. But honestly, I never had an ambition to write a biography. And if you had asked me, you know, when I was in college, I knew I wanted to be a writer after

college I wanted it. But if you'd ever ask me, do you think you'll ever write a biography? I would have said emphatically, no. It may be sometime in the course of my whole life, maybe I'll end up writing one or something, but it was not on my horizon. Right. So without getting into it, I wrote the biography of Wilberforce called Amazing Grace, and that's itself an extraordinary story. But I never thought I'd write that book. So I wrote that book, and everywhere I went, people kind of thought, oh, Eric's found his

genre or his mitye. he's now going to write biographies, and they said, who are you going to write about next? Who are you going to write about next? Some people correctly asked about whom. Yes, that would be correct. And I thought, I never meant to write a biography. I certainly don't know that I'll write too, but if I ever did write another biography,

I would write it about Dietrich Bonhofer because I knew enough about his story. I didn't know much, but I knew enough to think that he's worthy of a biography. Obviously, at some point I was persuaded, it, nah, why don't you take a crack at it? And the reason I wrote it is not just because his is such an extraordinary story, but because no one, in my opinion, had told it properly. There were books, I mean, his best friend, Abrahard Badega, wrote an 1,100-page brick.

The paperback literally weighs five pounds. Wow. It's not readable. It's amazing. It's like a research book. But I thought his story is so amazing. somebody needs to just tell the story. And there really isn't such a book. So that's why I thought, well, okay, let me take a crack at it. And without going into that whole story, it was a very, very difficult experience. I won't get into why, but it was very, very tough.

And all I could think of was I would like to move on with my life. I want to put this to bed, let it get published, and let me just do something else. I never dreamt, ever, never dreamt that it would be any kind of a success. It was an agony to write, an agony to get published. I talk about that in my miracles book. I tell the story, agony. And I just wanted to be done. And so it came out in April of 2010. And I think two months later, Chuck Colson, for whom I'd worked and whom I revere,

said to me in an evening. that everywhere I go, people are talking about your Bonhofer book. I thought, you've got to be kidding. Like, wherever I go, nobody's talking about the Bonhofer. What world are you in, you know? But from when I heard that, more and more and more, I kind of got this idea that somehow it has struck a nerve. And so I was genuinely mystified.

I'm not being falsely humbled. I was really mystified. I thought, well, I'm glad that's nice. but it kind of kept going and kept going. I was on Glenn Beck. And so pretty soon afterward, people were talking about, you do see this being a movie. Right.

And I thought, yeah, in your dreams. So my wife, Tiffany, as you know, helped out a little bit with, she has a journalism background, helped out with the footnote part of the book, where you had pulled in footnotes and she had resource, or reference things. This is many, many years ago. Yeah, many, many years ago. But she read the book, and when she finished it and read the storyline about the fiancé,

she said, this has to be a movie. The love story part of it as a woman, and I think this is part of the mystery of the success is why, she says, why you saw women all over beaches, in some case you would run into them, some of them reading the books. You know, you had some pictures on vacation. By the way, Louisiana doesn't know about all over beaches. all the women I run into on beaches.

I know, I know. So I don't want to, we'll just cut that out. If you don't mind, just cut that out and post. But no, seriously, I got to be. But that was the phenomenon thing of like, it was, in some cases, a beach read, which you wouldn't think of. Yeah. You know, you wouldn't think Bonhofer book Beach Read, but that's what it was.

The first time I knew that it had kind of, like, hit another level was no joke. Duck Dynasty had just come out. And somebody told me that they did, like, they went on a trip to hold. Hawaii, the Duck Dynasty family, with whom I'm now friends, right? But that they, in 2011 or something like that, they went on a trip to Hawaii, and I think Willie's wife was reading your Bonhoeffer book at the pool or something like that. I thought, what the hell? What is going on?

Now, to be clear, the film is not officially based on my book. But there is no doubt that the producers, the Kampuruses, were inspired to make a film from reading my book. So, no, I never really dreamt that that could happen. But, of course, I'm thrilled because the story of Bonhoeffer's story, because I want to lead people to Jesus. If you encounter the figure of Bonhofer, it is such a rare expression of faith in life, in action.

It's such a powerful expression of Christian faith that it cannot help but make you want to fall in love with the God with whom Bonhoeffer had fallen in love. It's inevitable that when you encounter the life of Bonhofer, you're led toward God, toward truth, toward courage. So, you know, it's gratifying, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, I don't know you don't want to go into it too much, but the writing process for you. I know you use words like agony and hellish because it is a Greek word. Agony.

It is hard and it has been hard for you. I know that doing that is challenging and difficult, but you're burdened with this, you know, bringing, it's almost like a birth, right? You were burdened with this birthing this story that sort of went on to have a life of its own. And it's painful. But what do you want to share maybe in short, I know we only have a little bit of time left, but like, how would you describe that for people out there who probably have a misconduct? The writing process? Yeah, because some people probably think it's glamorous. You have some, like, you know.

Right. People who aren't writers, picture like, oh, you're sitting outside a cabin by a lake in the, you know, in the mountains or something like that. And you've got your cup of postum, and you're just being, you're just being inspired to write. To me, I've never had that experience. Writing is much more like, you see that pile of rocks. Like, we need you to move them over there. like you've got just a few hours and, you know, it's pure work. So anyway, I know we're at a time for this segment.

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D-I-X.com. Neutrametics.com. Use the code Eric for 15% off. Again, Nutrametics, N-U-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-X. Newtrametics.com, use the code Eric for 15% off. Welcome back. If you're just tuning in, Chris Himes, my producer and friend is interviewing me about my Bonhofer book. So you just asked me about the writing process. It is hard. It is very hard work. and I think why do people glamorize it? I think since the romantic period, right? So for about 200 years, we have this idea, which is a false idea, that art is self-expression, that it's all about, I'm going to tap into something and I'm going to express myself and whatever.

And that's garbage. That's nonsense. It's not about self-expression. It's about communicating. it's, you know, or it's like doing a painting. It is work. Right, or sculpture where you start with a block of marble and you have to chip away at it.

It's hard work. And I can certainly say, at least in my experience, it's very hard. It's very hard. So whatever, you know, a lot of good things are worth the effort. Yeah. So I have to tell you, I, you know, in preparation for this interview, I've spent many minutes on it.

You prepared? Many minutes. Many minutes. Why? I asked the robots out there. It used to be about the kids. You know, what do the kids want? Now it's all about algorithms and robots. Right. So I asked the robots out there for some questions, some lighthearted, some serious. And you know what? The robot was a little snarky, I feel like. I don't know. I did. I did. To quote unquote prepare. Yes, to get some questions. Okay. I don't consider that preparation. Well, here we go. So some are a little bit lighthearted and some are a little more serious. But one of the lighthearted questions was, which I thought was okay.

If you could invite Bonhoeffer to a dinner party today, which modern historical figures would you see in between, and how do you think he would handle the small talk? Okay, my first response is, shut up, robot. I don't talk to you. This is what I'm saying. But I thought you should know that robots... Yeah, that's really lame.

I'd rather... You've thought of your own lame questions. Well, I like that one. I think it... I won't really answer that because I think that one of the things that happened to me in writing the Bonhofer book, I alluded to this earlier, you cannot help but falling in love with him. He is such a magnificent human being. And there's something painful about that. I spent so much time with him. And one of the reasons

that I stand behind the book the way I do is because it's mostly Bonhoffer. It's not me really writing about him. using his journals, his diaries, his letters. And you can't help, if you read my book, you can't help but get close to him as a person, which is interesting because I think one of the reasons people didn't, people were confused about him kind of until my book came out, is because they would read Bonhofer himself.

And Bonhofer is not a compelling writer. He's incredibly brilliant. I mean, super genius. But his writing is very dense, very theological, very difficult. And when you actually get to know him as a person, which I did in the course of writing it, and which people do in the course of reading my book, you really do, you sort of fall in love with him. But it's a little painful because he can't call him up on the phone. And so when I finished writing the book,

I really I had to push it away. I just thought it's just too painful in a sense. Like I miss him. I feel like I know him. I look forward to seeing him in heaven. But it really is it's interesting.

But I also think there's a temptation to hagiography where you make him out to be some superhuman or something like that. And you know, he wasn't. I mean he was an extraordinary human being. There's just no doubt about it. But he was a person, and that's what's to me so compelling about him.

Was there anything that you didn't put in the book that was sort of cut out that people might be surprised to hear about? Is there anything I didn't put in the book? Yeah. Was there any of that? Absolutely not. Really? I put, I mean, that's one thing. I pride myself in all my books. If it's interesting or important, I'm putting it in there. If it's funny, I'm definitely putting it in there. But no, I wanted, I mean, this gets back to why I wrote the book. There was no, to my mind, definitive book on Bonhoeffer. I could sort of say the same thing about my Luther biography. There wasn't one, I mean, the Roland Bainton one was definitive, but it came out in 1950. That's 70 years ago. And there wasn't a book that had everything. There were

some books they would kind of talk about this aspect of Bonhoeffer or that aspect. But I thought, I want soup to nuts. I want the whole story. And I think, Part of the reason some of the previous books on Bonhoeffer failed to me is because they assumed, oh, you know all about World War II history or you know all about the church struggle in Germany. Most people don't know about that stuff. Most people in this generation don't know about that stuff. So I had to put that in there. I also had to put in, you know, kind of like the setting for the stone. I had to put in what the Nazis were doing. I had to put in what Hitler was doing so that when you're reading about Bonhofer, it kind of stands out against what he was dealing with. So a lot of the previous books kind of assumed that you, oh, you'd know that. So we're just going to focus on Bonhofer.

But so, yeah, so really I don't think I left anything out. And as a result of that, the book is 600 pages long. Yeah, it's very long. But I don't. And there's a shorter version. There's an abridged version. That's right. Is that right?

That's what I heard. I heard of remember about that. For stupid people, they have printed a, and I don't mean that in a mean way. No, I know. I know. You mean it in a, yeah. I read the pop-up book. That's what I started with. And that was very short. I'll tell you the truth. This is true. This is part of the agony I alluded to in the previous segment of writing the book and getting it published. The original publisher, who will remain nameless, insisted that I pretty much cut the book in half. Yeah. Because it was, you know, overseas. That's crazy.

Nobody's going to buy a 600. And they rightly said, yeah, nobody's going to buy a 600 page book. But when I realized what I had, I thought, if you're telling me to trim the fat, I'll trim the fat. But there's like 10 pages or 5 pages of fat. I know, because that's how I write. There's not a lot of fat here to be trimmed. You're telling me to cut meat and bone. I'm not going to do that.

The book is 600 pages because it needs to be 600 pages. And so I stuck by my guns. I got a different publisher. God bless Thomas Nelson and David Mowberg, and they published it as I wrote it. And lo and behold, it sold a million copies. It was the book of the year. It really dramatically outperformed any expectations I had.

But I knew that it needed to be what it was, that I couldn't do a short version of it. Yeah. So trimming the fat on a book, it sounds like you're an author who might fat shame other books. Is that true? Would you say that's accurate? I don't know what you mean.

You know, just another book has too much. Well, no, I mean, the funny thing is, yes, I'm very critical. I mean, I think the reason people read my books is because I'm very harsh critic of all writing. If it's not compelling, why would people read it? People are busy. People have got other things to do. I really do feel like you need to, you know, it should be entertaining. Yeah.

It should be fascinating. It should be. I mean, why would people wade through something? that that's not those things. Now, I don't mean that you want to kind of tart it up. Of course not. But you have to find a story that is all those things, first of all. And then you have to tell the story well. And the biggest compliment that I've gotten over the years, no kidding, is tons of people have come up to me. Usually guys, middle-aged or older guys come up to me and say, like, you know what, I'm not a reader. I don't read books. But I read your whole book. I read the whole thing.

that's to me the greatest compliment. Who was a surprise to you that had read it, somebody that you would never have expected to read it? All kinds of strange, Dan Rather read it. Former Senate leader Harry Reid read it. I mean, people on the left and the right read it. Lots of people read it. I handed a copy to President Obama. Tell us about that story.

because that was part of it. Yeah. Tell us about that Obama story because there's a great photo. Share this. You were at the Men's, or sorry, at the prayer breakfast,

the National Prayer Breakfast. You were the speaker that year. Yeah. And like any good author, you plugged your book at the end of your speech, which was an incredible speech. Nobody else would have done that.

But you hand the book to President Obama. President Obama. Yeah. And then afterwards, well, I was sarcastic as I can be. You were talking about life, actually. Well,

Well, I was, the National Prayer Breakfast was 2012. So, yeah, the book comes out in 2011, and, you know, by 2011, suddenly I'm like the flavor of the year in, you know, certain Christian circles. And I got this invitation to be the speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast. And I thought, I mean, I'm not making this up. I was so stunned. I thought, this isn't right. They're going to ask me, like, to read a scripture or something. Because, you know, previous speakers at the National Prayer breakfast were like Tony Blair, Mother Teresa, Bono,

you know, like, I'm not going to be the speaker. So when I found it, I was actually the speaker, I couldn't believe it. And so, yes, I spoke, it went viral. Like, it really, it was kind of game-changing in my career. And at some point, I was referring to the Bonhofer book because I was talking about Bonhofer. And I said, I was being sarcastic. deliberately cheeky and sarcastic. I know we have to go to a break.

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So, Chris, I was just saying at the prayer breakfast, I was being sarcastic. So here's what I did. I was really like, you know, I can be like a little bit. So to color the story, you're standing behind the day as the podium. I'm at the podium. And two feet away is Obama. And next to him is Biden. Is President Obama. No, no, no, Biden was next. I had breakfast. with Joe Biden. And so I'm speaking, I'm talking about the Bonhofer book, and I say a lot of people have read the book.

And then to be the jerk that I am, I said, in fact, President George W. Bush read my book. And I paused, like you can just feel the uncomfortableness of people, like, uh-oh. And I said, and of course, and we know he's intellectually incurious, you know, which got to laugh because somebody had called him intellectually incurious. And I said, so if he could read the book, You know, I figure maybe this president would want to read the book, too. And so I took it from under the podium, and I handed it to Senator Jeff Sessions, who handed it to the president. And I said, no pressure, Mr. President.

I know you got a lot of time on long flights and, you know, you need something to do. So, you know, have fun. Or something like that. So he holds up the book. And the AP and all the news services took pictures and stuff. And it was just, you know, to use the cliche, it was a surreal experience. But it got a lot of people to read the book. And then afterwards, you got a picture with Obama, and you want to tell them who took your picture?

Oh, my gosh. It's insane. It sounds like I'm making this up. No, it is. It's great, though. I was amazed. I mean, I'm the main speaker at the prayer breakfast. I'm the guy that day with, you know, 3,500 people in the ballroom in the Washington Hilton.

And the other main speaker is the president of the United States. And I thought for sure the White House photographer is going to take a picture of me with the president. I've never gotten a picture with the president before. This is exciting. Never happened. Yeah. So, like, the event's over and the president is leaving or something. Then he decides to kind of go down the line and shake everybody's hand.

I was like, I've got to pull out my phone to take a selfie with President Obama since the White House is not going to take a photo with me. So as the president approaches me, I take my phone out. And Vice President Joe Biden says to me, no, no, no, give me that phone. He says, I'll take it. So this is the avuncular. good side of Joe Biden, and he very generously says, I'll take it a second.

So Joe Biden, the vice president of the United States, takes a picture of me with the president of the United States. And even weirder than that, this is where it gets great. A couple of weeks later, I see online that the White House photographer had taken a beautiful picture of Joe Biden,

the vice president, taking the picture of me with President Obama. It's fantastic. It's the most insane picture ever. It was very meta. And it actually happened. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll have to share that with everyone.

So as I mentioned before, Tiffany, my wife, helped with a little bit of the kind of the research rights side of things. Because you quote a lot of German text and books that you had to get clearances for. So she has a background in journalism and offered to help do some of that grunt work. And at the time, I think there was a little bit of the delay getting approvals. and things like that, and it was all very stressful. And she wrote a note, she just dug up and handed to me earlier this week, that I don't think she had read in a while.

And it was sort of like... I'm afraid. Sometimes wives have these thoughts, and they'll just write it down, or sometimes they'll share them with you, sometimes they won't. And so she wrote this down, and I thought it was really interesting.

This is in 2009. This is like, yeah, this is like, however many years ago that is, I'm bad at math, but a long time ago, and I thought it was very sort of profound and prophetic. She wrote, you know, there's something very frustrating about the, sorry, I can't read that one in church, the word, sorry, one second, doesn't matter. She's basically saying something that's very frustrating

with this process during this time. And then she kind of got, you know, retrospective. Philosophical. Yeah, she wrote, what if people really read this book? What if Christians heard the true gospel and true theology and decided to allow it to change their lives? lives. What if non-Christians read it and saw for the first time, Grace preached from the pages of a book about a modern day matter? What if it made them rethink everything they had settled on believing? Wouldn't that all be worth the extra work? Wouldn't it be worth it? Pretty cool. That's amazing. And I have to say, you know, over the years, many, many people have come up to me and said that the book changed their lives.

And I know that it's not my book that changed their lives, that it's the life of Bonhoeffer that changed their lives. But I've heard it over and over and over the years now. How many years has been 14 years that people have come up to me and said that your book changed my life. And I think to myself, what a privilege. What a holy, holy privilege that God would give you the ability to write a book that could change people's lives. And I think that, again, it's Bonhofer's life that changes our lives. I mean, when you read the life of a saint, when you read something about somebody who's really beautiful, it's so moving, it cannot help but affect you. And that's one of the reasons that I wrote my book Seven Men and Seven Women, because I thought when you hear about the life of somebody who,

who's lived an extraordinary life, it really does affect you. It can't help but affect you. But I've heard that over and over and over again, and I have to say, you know, with the movie coming out, I hope more people will read the book. And because it makes you want to live right. It makes you want to be courageous.

It makes you want not to miss the opportunity to be a Bonhofer in your time, whatever that means, because it means different things for different people. Yeah, talk about the timing of this film. and I guess, you know, it's interesting that the film is coming out now, and it's interesting that the book, it's sort of like God has his own timing, and I know for people like us that are trying to, you know, do what they can,

it can be challenging. They give us the sign we're going to a break. We'll be right back. Okay, so if it's okay with you, we'll do a seven, and that's the end of part one. And if it's okay with you, because there's a lot of, like, moral issues that were brought up last night.

Yeah, yeah. We could talk about that. Okay. So this is the seven, seven-thirty. So, Chris, you were just talking about it. So, Chris, you were just talking about the film. Yeah, the timing of the film and the message of Bonhofer's life. And, yeah.

It's really interesting, I think, you know, if someone had asked you after you wrote the book, you know, 2011, 2012, it'd be really great if someone made a film about the book and, oh, I don't know, a couple of years. Yeah. And here we are in 2024. Yeah. Well, the Camporus is when they started. It was like 2011.

That's right. I know it's been a labor club in a long time. And it took 12, 13 years for them to make the film. Well, I mean, I think it really is an issue of God's timing. I think that when I wrote the book, and people have to believe me, I mean, I had no sense of what I was getting into when I thought I'm going to tell the story, Bonhofer. I didn't know enough to know. what I'm getting into. And in the course of telling his story and ferreting out the facts and really seeing who he really

was and what he really thought, whatever, I noticed some stuff. I thought, this is different than the Bonhofer that's been portrayed in some of these other books. A lot of the academics kind of spun him as a kind of left-leaning agnostic. They were very big about the idea that he's a pacifist, which is not really even true. I mean, the definition of pacifism in the 30s is pretty different than our own day. But the point is that as I was writing the book, I got a sense like, this is a little different than what I expected. And his faith was much more profound than I had thought. I thought at the end of his life he kind of went wobbly or became, I mean, Christopher Hitchens, my gosh.

He was interviewed on Charlie Rose. And Charlie Rose was asking Christopher Hitchens, the famous atheist. about faith? And he goes, well, what about Bonhofer? You know, he was a Christian. And Christopher Hitchens says, he goes, no, no, no, he was a humanist, you know. And I thought, what a load of baloney. Like, he was not a humanist. He was a profound Christian. But that idea was out there that Bonhofer, at the end of his life, kind of slid over into kind of this ethical humanism. And so in the course of writing my book, I realized, wow, they kind of got this wrong. They got this completely wrong. And you don't need to be a theological genius to say.

see that, but I, you know, so anyway, so the book ended up being kind of different than what I thought, but while I was writing the book and writing about Germany during this period and how the evil of the Nazis rose, I had this chilling feeling while I was writing the book, this is happening in America. I don't know how far away it is, but it's happening. Somehow, I wonder whether it will happen in my lifetime. I could sort of smell that what was going on there is happening here. And exactly as the Germans fail to see it, we in America are failing to see it. So very recently, my two most recent books, deal with this issue.

The first is letter to the American Church, and the sequel is Religinalist Christianity, which is a Bonhofer phrase, which I can explain later. there is no doubt in my mind that writing about the story of Bonhoeff and what happened to Germany and the failure of the church to understand that it was their job to stand and speak against the evil, as Bonhoeff was trying to get them to do, that that informed my ability to see what is happening now. And so now I find myself going around the country, and in these two books I mentioned, letter to the American Church and religionless Christianity, trying to make people understand

that exactly what Bonhofer was saying, exactly what he was facing, we are facing now. The inability of Christians to discern the evil and to discern that it's God's will that they stand

strongly, courageously against the evil. And I feel like that's happening right now. So the timing is bizarre to me that the film is coming out now. Right when all this is happening, right when October 7th happened a year ago, that it's, it does, I mean, it always seems like a cliche when people say, oh, it's God's timing. It's God's timing.

There's this idea, I think, you know, we've had people on our show like Jonathan Khan, who's a messianic Jew, and he talks about these old, you know, God's, lowercase G, that are kind of, you know, ancient and they're evil, and they sort of will go away and be dormant and then sort of prop their heads up again. And it's almost like none of this is new. And the evil doesn't, even though it can be defeated at times, you can never kill it entirely. It just goes somewhere else and sort of puts on a different mask and pops up 100 years is nothing for these things, whatever you know, whatever you call it. Thrones, dominions, principalities. It's just, and it seems like it's just coming back for another act.

It's interesting. Well, yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about it. that and and it's it's very it's very well let me put it this way i think that it's god's will that we discern these things it wasn't his will that the german church not discern these things it wasn't god's will but god does allow us to ignore him if we insist on it it's kind of like i think c s lewis says that you know god wants us to say to him thy will be done but if we don't eventually eventually God says to us, okay, thy will be done. Have it your way. And so that's what happened in Germany that Bonhofer tried and tried to get the church to stand against the evil of the Nazis.

And they simply refused to acknowledge that it could get as bad as it got. They just thought that can't happen in Germany. No, no, no. The pendulum swings both ways. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. And they missed the opportunity to do something about it. And so I really do believe he called me to write the Bonhofer book and led me to write, letter to the American Church and religiousness Christianity to sound the alarm to the American Church today, that exactly what the German church missed, you're missing. And there are churches all over this country that they think everything's fine. They don't think it's their business to talk about politics or whatever. They don't want to go there. And I think that that's fundamentally wrong. It's unbiblical, just as it would be unbiblical to say, well, we're not going to take a

position on slavery. That's political. We're just going to preach the gospel. What gospel are you preaching? What God are you worshiping that you could be silent on slavery? What God are you worshiping that you could be silent on the Nazis wanting to demonize and murder millions of Jews? I mean, what kind of God are you worshiping? And so I really feel like we are going through the exact same thing right now. And in retrospect, I believe firmly that God called me to write the Bonhoeffer book for where we are now, for where we are. right now. I know we're out of time. We're going to do a part two. So this ends part one of the Bonhofer conversation. Chris, thank you for using chat GP. Yeah, you're welcome. Well,

to give us. Yeah. All right. So that ends, that ends part one. Hey, folks, before we go for the day, I want to remind everybody that if you have not yet looked into the June cruise that we're doing, I am so excited about this. I cannot tell you. And what I think, too, is like, this is a fun thing for families to do or friends to do, couples, to get other couples. It's just going to be an amazing time of fellowship. And I'm going to be talking almost every night about from my different books doing Q&A, about where do we go from here, what's the future. This is going to be June 6th through 16th. There's all these different levels available.

If you're a zillionaire, and I know there's some, there's like, you know, stuff you can get for like $14,000 per person if you want to go like super, super high end. If you are not a zillionaire, and I know there's some people out there that are not zillionaires, I think it's $3,000 a person. This is 10 days. I mean, honestly, when you see what it is, you're going to at least be tempted to sign up and you'll probably think of friends. and family that might want to know about this. So to do that, go to ericmetaxis.com slash cruise. Ericmetaxis.com slash cruise. And it's not that expensive.

I'm going to be, I'm on the economy. Like, there's in a new economy level where the room is partially submerged, and that's a steel. I know. It's really wet. You can feed the fish. They're fish that swim around you. And that's like 40 bucks a night. Yes.

But you have to shovel coal into the, to make the ship go. There's a special bicycle you have to. No, seriously, like this is, there's a lot of people that when you look into this, you're going to say, I think we could do this. It's reasonable. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's that's the joy. Another thing, tonight, no, tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, I'm doing something called the Bonhoeffer Circle. If you want to join that, I'm going to be, we're going to host a quarterly video call with me answering your questions to talk about, you know, courage in the face of. evil and what do we do now? To join that group, you have to go, I don't have the link here.

Well, go to the Socrates in the city website and to join the Bonhofer Circle, I just want to remind you that there's a lot involved, screenings of the Bonhofer film that's coming out, a lot of stuff. Go to Socrates in the city.com for that. I also want to say that, you know, when you look at the lunacy around us, if you're not thinking about homeschooling your kids or at least getting your kids involved in quality K-12, Christ-centered education, I don't know what you're thinking. We've partnered with our friends at the Herzog Foundation. They're there to help you navigate this. We have to be raising our kids up right. I think you now know. that that's not been happening so much in America. And usually if you send your kids to public schools,

you're sending them into lunatic LGBTQ indoctrination camps. It's really horrifying. And so the Herzog Foundation is there to help. Go to HerzogFoundation.com. Hertzog Foundation.com. They are heroes. HerzogFoundation.com. They also have a website, reed lion.com,

where there's all kinds of stuff. But we want to get everybody who is a thinking person to know about the Herzog Foundation. So check them out. And then before we go for sure, check out our friends at the Heritage Foundation. They are the ones behind the dreaded Project 2025 that Kamala Harris and others are trying to scare people and thinking, Trump is going to enact what's in Project 2025. That would be the greatest thing ever if he did. But it's the Heritage Foundation.

Yeah. But it's the Heritage Foundation that's behind it, not Donald Trump and his campaign. It's the Heritage Foundation that's trying to get the folks on the Trump team to do what they're suggesting in Project 2025. And by God's grace, he will get in and he will do it. If you want to find out what's in that, go to 25truth.com, 25truth.com. Find out what's scaring all of the crazies. 25truth.com. God bless you today.

Eric, can you do one pickup on Bonhofer Circle, say, to find out, To join the Bonhoeffer Circle, go to Ericman, Texas.com slash circle. That's the shortcut.