The Eric Metaxas Show - David Engelhardt

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

David Engelhardt joins to discuss the Super Bowl and it become something of a religion itself 

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Folks, welcome back. We are now officially in hour two. Don't let that frighten you. It's just like hour one. But it's after hour one, technically. But I'm talking to my friend David Englehart. David, we're talking about a lot of, you know, current events, kind of where we are in the culture. And I think part of what has to happen, I see.

a lot of folks on the right going wrong, right? In other words, it's like you're given this false choice between woke lunacy on the left and this kind of different kind of lunacy on the right. God is in neither place. And so you see figures on the right who, all you say, they're in the same side as we are because they're against the woke this or they're going to get. But then you realize, No, no, no. In some cases, they're flirting with anti-Semitism. In some cases, they are, you know, like, you know, Jughead, Andrew Tate, kind of this chest beating hyper-masculinity, which is childish. He should be beat down. He should be smacked in the face by an elder. Like, hey, grow up. You're a pig. You're not an example of manhood. You're a child. But a lot of young men are flocking to his message because they think, oh, it's not woke. we need to sort that out and we need to offer what's God's idea of what is a man. What's God's idea of how we behave? What's God's idea of a golden age of America?

You know, that's, yeah. Yeah, I think what happens. I think the hierarchy of moral order gets co-opted. And I think that's one of the devil's best strategies is to co-opt the hierarchy of moral order and say these are the things that are morally important. important. Like, I'm happy to trade you DEI for sexual liberty. And we're not going to call it sexual liberty. We're just going to call it liberty. And I'm just going to scream liberty all the time. And we're going to allow, you know, a corrupted stream of influence to shut out the real

hierarchical moral voice. And so, you know, the basic, the basic hierarchical moral voice for a society is protection against violence first and then second sexual ethic. We see this a lot of places. We see this even in the Pauline injunction in the book of Acts to the early church. He's like, no food strangled to idol, no witchcraft, no sexual immorality. That's all. If you look at with the longer Westminster Catechism says, we know that the civil and ceremonial laws have been consumed by Christ, but we still look to them for the genuine, excuse me, general equity thereof.

That means we look to them to get our wisdom about what's happening now. And what we primarily see is protection against coercion of violence one to another. And those are really important thing. But the sexual ethic is in the center of the preservation of the society. And so whether it's Belichick or the homosexual conservative people, I keep seeing it on my Twitter feed, these homosexual guys saying, aren't I a great conservative? Why would you ever want to kick me out?

And I think they feel the tide change and they're trying to establish their order. The other thing is like Candace Owens' insanity. I saw a post from her, and I don't know who was a repost, just yesterday, that said, no Jewish people died in 9-11. Not one Jewish person died because they have a secret phone line. Wait, wait. Candace Owen posted that? You're kidding me.

You're kidding. You're kidding. You're kidding. I'll send it to you. Tell me you're kidding. Stop it. I will. I'll send it to you.

Stop it. You're kidding. They have a secret, they have a secret star of David phone line. They all phoned each other in the morning and said, hey, guys, nobody go in today because they're going to blow up the business. buildings. We don't want to tell the cops, let the goys die, whatever they're crazy, lunatic idea was. And then I have to actually, like a sane person, go look it up. And the facts are, no, 400 to 500 Jews in the tower, approximately of the 3,000 died were Jewish, because

it's New York City and a lot of Jewish people lived here. Okay, let me, I want to go, I want to talk about that for a minute, Candace Owens for a minute. But before that, I want to go back to the gay thing. This is tricky. folks. We've got to, this is why we need clarity, right? We need clarity. We're always given a false choice by the world. Now, if you're not a Jesus-free Christian, you don't know what I mean by the world. When the Bible talks about the world, we're talking about not God's kingdom, but the world. The world out there will always offer you false choices. The devil, you know, who's the prince of this world will offer you a false choice over here on the left, or if you're not going to go

for that, he'll give you a false choice over here on the right. God's will is different. And so it's kind of like, here's the woke thing over here. Oh, you don't like that. We'll give you hypersexualized heterosexuality over here. Same thing with the gay thing, which I mentioned earlier in the program. We're supposed to, you know, be careful about all this stuff, right? So biblically, when we're talking about a biblical sexual ethic, God created sex for a man and his wife, period, in a lifelong marriage, ideally to have a family. So any sex outside of that is wrong. It doesn't matter if it's gay sex. It doesn't matter whatever it is, that's not God's will.

And we need to be clear about this. Now, on the other hand, it doesn't mean that you can't have political allies or friends with whom you disagree. on stuff. So there are people, whether it's Brandon Strach or Scott Pressler or whatever, I love these guys. I don't agree with their sexual ethic, but they're not born again believers. They don't get that. So we have to be able to navigate this complex stuff, right? You don't say, like, well, I'm not going to talk to my neighbor because he's sleeping with his girlfriend. Like, we know that if you love God, sex is inside marriage between a man and a woman, but it doesn't mean you can't be friends with somebody and love them

and appreciate them where they are without agreeing with that. So all this stuff, it's gotten complicated because the culture has been very, very confusing. Yeah, that's true. It reminds me of a conversation with Dave Rubin backstage a couple of years ago at one of Charlie Kirk's events. And I had a great time talking about conservatism and Thomas Sowell. economic philosophy and all that kind of stuff. And I said, hey, listen, I have this book called Good Kills, and, you know, there's a chapter

called Sexual Anarchy. I'd love for you to read it. I said, you probably will hate it, but I would love for you to read it. And he said, great, please send it over. I mean, and that has to be the baseline. We've been on our tales for so long in the last 15 years. You can't, you couldn't even say, I believe that homosexual acts are sinful. That's wisdom.

That's like, you're not even a little. allowed to make that statement. I think probably still in some environments, you couldn't say that. What we want to be able to say in response, without being, you know, taking out the torches and lighting the crosses on fire, we want to say, Jesus loves you. He died for your sins. You're a sinner just like everyone that hasn't accepted his sacrifice. Please come to him and rectify your life and it'll get way better. Like you'll discover his beautiful order for family and lineage and all of these kind of really complex, beautiful things that he has in store for you when you walk into his way. And so I think that is part of that hierarchy, Eric.

And let's go back to the Candace thing, unless we have to take a break. Do we need to take a raise? I want to go back to the Candace Doan thing, but I want to say part of the reason that people can't speak strongly against the Rainbow Pride lunacy is because they are sexually compromised in a head. heterosexual way, right? Yes. We need to make the radical point that the Bible says all sex outside of a real marriage between a man and a woman for life is not God's will. So I'm not saying when I tell a man, you can't sleep with another man, because I'm going to tell a man you can't sleep with your girlfriend. If you want to do what God wants, but many in the church have winked at.

that sin, and we kind of think, at least it's not this. No, heterosexual sin, fornication, adultery is responsible for the breakdown of the family for the destruction of American culture. And we have kind of looked the other way. We've allowed no fault divorce. And so we have to clean our own house. Christians have to get serious about what does the Bible teach about marriage. If I just walk away from my wife, we weren't getting. along and I gave her a good settlement and I'm going to move away now and I'm going to find somebody younger who I like better now. That's, that's, the Bible calls that adultery. Is the church willing to deal with that? A lot of Christian leaders are not willing to deal with that. And I just want to

say, if I miss something, let me know. Let me know. If I miss something, I'm wrong, let me know. We'll be right back talking to Pastor David Englehart. So you're putting money away, saving for the future, for retirement, for your family. You're doing what you're supposed to. do, right? Well, what if I told you that your 401k, IRA, and other investments are probably paying for gambling, abortion, and LGBT causes? Inspire Advisors can tell you where your profits are really coming from. Do what I did. Go to InspireAdvisors.com and order your free customized impact report and find out. Inspire is a recognized leader in faith-based investing. They can empower you to put your money where your values are. They stand by their biblical values donating 50% of their profits to Christian ministries each year.

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I don't know where we've been. Could you tell me where we're? again and Jesus is my only friend No one else knows who I... Welcome back talking to my friend and pastor David Englehart who pastors the King's Church in Manhattan, New York City, the King's Church.

Okay, David, so I've been saying a lot here. You can respond. Yeah, I mean, sexual anarchy is this term that I came to me one day, I'm sure it had a source, but chapter 8 of my book Good Kills is titled Sexual Anarchy. Charlie Kirk started using it. It went, the phrase went viral, the term sexual anarchy went viral a couple years ago when Charlie started using it.

And I was so proud that like one of my coined, I felt like C.S. Lewis just for like a few seconds that a coined phrase made it to the hashtag section of Twitter. But all the responses on Twitter at the time were saying, like, we love this idea of sex. actual anarchy because it was, you know, the tide had not yet shifted. But this is, this term coins exactly what you're saying, Eric. It's like every pattern outside of God's protective enclave for the incredible gift of sexuality is anarchic. It rejects his law and order and says, I'm going to do things my own way. And it brings chaos and destruction onto a society. Will Durant, secular atheist, genius historian. He's got this incredible quote. He says,

sexuality is like a river of fire. If it's not boarded and banked on every corner, it will consume both the individual and the society. And he's writing that in the 1950s with his wife, Ariel Durant. And he's looking at the history of all of the nations of the world. Literally, you know, this is in his book, the lessons of history after he had written tomes.

about the world. As a secular person, he said, if you take the gift of sexuality and you take it outside of the marriage bounds, it always destroys the whole society. I mean, it's super easy for us to see right now when we can point to the glorification of transgender surgery and all those kind of things a few months ago,

but you are a million percent right. This is still like, you can't exalt Belichick. Like, you have to go back to the foundation, and repair and reset at the foundational level, not, oh, great, we're not doing transgender surgery on children anymore. We're good now. Let's just like update our Facebook policy. That's not enough.

And that's what we're saying. It's not enough. And that's the hope of for America right now is that the church would really become the church and that we would lead the way and be bold in declaring these things. And we declare them with love. We declare them with love because we know. if you're a real Christian, and many so-called Christians are not real Christians because they delight in pointing out the sins of others. But if you're aware of your own sin and of what Jesus did

to deliver you from your own sinfulness, then there's going to be some humility there. And I've talked about it in my book, the book about my life, A Fish Out of Water. I talk about my own sin, my own participation in the evil of murdering an unborn child. If you're aware of your own sin, it is so grievous to you that you don't take any delight in pointing out the sin. It's a different thing because you're aware of God's grace toward you. And so I think that, you know, I don't know where it is in the scripture, but it talks about repentance starts in the house of God. the church has to repent. It has to repent of its sloppy is a nice word, view of sexuality. And by the way, if you're teaching young men and women the truth about God's view of sexuality

and you're holding them to that standard, you are blessing them like crazy. You're blessing them. You're blessing them. You're not keeping them from having fun. You are blessing them. but we've had a whole culture that has been leading everyone and especially the young astray. And, you know, it's like that's where we've been as a culture. And the Super Bowl halftime shows going back 30, 40 years, I've been so sexualized. That is not who we want to be, folks. That is not, that's kind of the baseline of the culture. You think of, you know, when I think of America in the 40s, you think of Frank Capra films.

Now, America was not perfect in the 40s, far from it. But I'm saying, but these baselines, that there is a God. God to revere him. We're to be proud of our country. We're to be family men. You know, most men, you know, you try to find a wife, be a family man. Now, if you can't do that, it's not about condemning you. But the point is, most men can, but they don't or they don't want to. And that used to be the standard that you'd be like, okay, I'm a man now, I guess. I'm 18. I need to, you know, ask God to send me. the woman that he has for me so I can have a family and I can support that family and sacrifice for them. There's something so beautiful and ennobling there and it will make you the man God wants

you to be. But that conversation has gone totally gone out of the culture and we've got a lot of, you know, men in their, you know, late 30s that are still acting like they're 18. And that's just not healthy. And it's not good for those young men. Yeah. You know, part of the answer here is because We're talking about repentance as it's directed towards a culture. We're talking about an economic response. We see more American ads and like this kind of surface level issue. And then an opportunity for real golden age, real change, real repentance, real actual revolution. So we can have a whole generation or a couple of generations of righteousness.

And the answer is, you know, the Pharisees and Sadducees come to John the Baptist while he's out in the wilderness. and he's saying, look, the kingdom of heaven is coming. The Messiah is going to come. It's going to be amazing. There's going to be incredible opportunities. And the Pharisees, because they're the church people, they show up to kind of see what's happening. And he says, like, what do you think you're going to dodge the judgment of God? You're going to dodge the wrath of God.

And then he says this, bear fruit in keeping with repentance, right? The axe has already laid to the tree of the old system. I didn't know this until I was researching for my message last Sunday. The Essians who were living out in the wilderness, the same place John lived, had an end-times eschatology that they believed the end of the world was at their time, 2,000, you know, whatever, 180 years ago. They were reading the Old Testament prophets from an eschatological perspective that the world is about to end. And they were right. That age, that covenantal age was about to come to an end. And John was saying, and there's a brand new world that's. coming. And so the Pharisees and the saddicies show up. And John says, look, guys, like,

you can partake in this world too. Your dirt bags, by the way, P.S. You've been breaking things. But if you actually repent for real and bear fruit and keeping with repentance, you can be a part of this wheat and chaff thing where you can be a part of the true kernel of God's kingdom. And so you're right, Eric, it has to start with the House of God. 100%. And to be clear, the Essines way back, who were living in Kumram, Q-U-M-R-A-M. Yeah, they were, what were they pointing to? They were pointing to Jesus, whether they knew it or didn't.

They had some sense that something's going to change. We're entering a new world. And when Jesus comes into the world, it's the dawn of a new age. And that's by design, that God designed that. And so we are now living in that age. I mean, you know, wherever you want to date it, in some ways you could say, 70 AD is another, you know, touch point, the destruction of the temple. Oh, my goodness.

The destruction of the temple. You can't even imagine. I write about it in my book, Is Atheism Dead? The splendor of the temple, you can understand how they were freaked out when Jesus said, all this is going to be coming down, not one stone will. But if you could see the temple, it was so magnificent. that it would have been seen as blasphemous and insane to make that statement. And they thought this is the locus of everything.

God appears in the Holy of Holies, but it's this big. And Jesus is announcing a new age. And of course, 40 years later, that's exactly what happens. I mean, wow. If you, you know, if you didn't believe in God or didn't believe in Jesus, like, what do you make of that? That he makes that statement. Everybody's angry and, like, that's insane. It actually happens.

Who could even dream, frankly, that it could happen? Who could dream that could have? How's it going to happen? Just look at the buildings. It happened. Yeah, it's wild. It would be like somebody from Zimbabwe standing at the base of the World Trade Center right now, today. And then another guy being like, yeah, it's going to be torn down.

There's not going to be one stone left standing. And he's like, are you out of your mind? Do you see the magnitude? It was one of the wonders of the world at the time. It's just incredible. that's why if you actually believe in God and look at what Jesus said, it's very hard to not believe that he is actually God, Daniel chapter 7, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, as prophesied in the Old Testament.

And that's why the gospel is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, because the Greeks don't believe in God. That's all silly. We're atheists, we're sophisticated atheists. But the Jews believe in God and believe in his promises. And so when you see a guy that says these specific promises, fulfills the promises and then declares the new promises, and they all come true. It's very hard.

You just have to fall over that rock. You can't intellectually deal with it. You have to just let it go by you. And so what do we do? We look at the Word of God like it's actually the Word of God, and then we apply those things to our church. And that's how we get back to that repentance and capturing the cultural moment, doing things like church discipline, which I had never seen in my entire life. I mean, God bless. When we come back, going to a break, we come back, I want to talk about this, because this is a bit of one, folks.

And David Englehart is the author of an extraordinary book. The title is Good Kills. Good Kills. Highly recommended. We'll be right back. I'm talking to David Englehart. Pastor David Englehart. So, David, you were just talking about church discipline.

You're a pastor. Have you had to deal with this where you see something going out of your church? You know, because that's always been a mystery to me, because I'm not a pastor. Yeah. I mean, this is a very present issue. I don't know if you saw Bethel Church just put out a letter on Sean Bolt. Allegedly, they were harvesting information from people and then saying these are prophecies. Oh, no, no. And a bunch of other. Keith Genton and I spoke about this. I guess maybe it was two weeks ago about certain prophetic voices. And again, people are skeptical enough about the prophetic, oh, give me a break, whatever.

I think a lot of things are very real and beautiful. Right. Then you find out that there's somebody like Sean Bolt who really has been a fraud, and you think you have got to be kidding. How can you, how could you, you know, like I, I'm speechless, but so you were just talking about that specifically. Church, I mean, the context of church discipline is, in my book Good Kills, I talk about church discipline and the need for church discipline and the sword and repentance. and sin proliferates where the sword doesn't show up, whether it's our homes, our lives, or whatever. If we don't do actual confession and repentance, actually do analysis, you know, the accounting, the doge, the doge process of our own life to see what we're wasting and what we're not accounting for, not using rightly before God.

And this goes back to church discipline. My book Good Kills is going to come out in an audio book at the end of the month, which I'm excited about. But one of the things I talk about is not having grown up seen church discipline, which is if someone's sinning, then you go to that brother and you say, hey, man, like this is pretty crazy, embarrassing and it's sinful. Like, here's the scripture. And here's the example. You shouldn't do this anymore. And then if they keep doing it, you take a couple of other people, a couple of elders, some more mature believers. And if they, same confrontation, if they keep doing it, then you, you, you take a couple of other people, a couple of elders, some more mature believers. And if they, same confrontation, if they keep doing it, then you, then you, bring them before the whole church and publicly excommunicate them. And then, you know, it says you treat them like a tax collector or a heath. You kick them out. You have no more relationship with them. So they will then repent and then come back.

And I'd never seen that before, Eric. And there was a guy that was chasing girls in my church. And I was trying to disciple him. And I had corrected conversations and he had promised he wasn't doing it. And then I was giving reports that he was still doing it. And so I went through the Matthew 18 process. and then I met with him one day. And what are you saying,

just to be clear, what do you mean? I mean, sexual immorality. I mean, he, I mean, actual sexual immorality. He wasn't just like girls. He was picking off women in the church and having,

being sexually immoral with them. I would say sexually immoral with, with women inside and outside of the church, both in his personal case. And so it was a wild thing because he was the guy that really exemplified. that's what we were talking about earlier, very emotional, very sorrowful for his acts, but wasn't doing the work of metanoia, wasn't actually changing his mindset, and then those patterns of behavior that follow thereafter.

And so the sorrowfulness, you know, it says about Esau that he sought repentance with tears, but could not find it. And so I'm glad you're sorrowful, but I want you to actually change your actions too. And that's why church discipline is essential. So I do this public discipline, the guy doesn't show up. he never comes back, but I tell the whole church, some members only meeting after service one day, and I've done this a couple of times with our church,

on serious issues. I don't do it for stupid issues. I don't do it for lights and issues, because I see it biblically patterned when in First Corinthians the guy is having sex with his mother-in-law, and Paul says, are you kidding me? Kick that guy out immediately, right? So I see it for these kind of serious issues.

And after the meeting, I had probably five or six, maybe seven adult women come up to me and say, thank you so much. I've never felt so safe before in a church. And this is the difference between the Mike Bickle stuff or the Sean Bolt stuff or the churches trying to hide these situations and a true process of discipline with elders, with clarity, brings actually safety and protection. So I get the crazy reaction in the Roy's report and all of these kind of reactionaries

because it's a reaction from an environment that has zero discipline in it. And that's the father's job. That's the shoulders whom it falls on. I know, Eric, one of the things I think you and I first talked about on your show is just like coming from a blue-collar family and having parents that actually believed in discipline. What a gift that is, having parents that actually, you know, are not soft, like you can do whatever you want parents, but you're going to walk in order. Well, the church needs that again.

And in order to capture the golden age, we need to recapture repentance and discipline. Yes, repentance and discipline. And again, this is basic stuff. It's basic stuff. It's like saying, like we have a policy in this town. Stealing is wrong. If you steal from a store, you'll be prosecuted. The woke lunacy is where we're well.

We'll kind of look the other way if you don't steal too much. who is blessed in that. It is so sick. And that's, when you look the other way with a lot of this stuff, you know, it's so much grace that it's not grace, folks. That's the irony, right? It's not great. She's grace. And to hold people accountable, it's basic wherever you look.

And, you know, again, we're seeing it now in our government where we're holding people accountable. Like, this is taxpayer money. This is sacred money. People who work their tails off. off are paying taxes. So how do you spend this? You better be able to justify it. You better spend it well.

And we're uncovering deep corruption. It needs to be uncovered, folks. But we see this everywhere. We see this in the church. But this is God's will. This is cleaning out the Augian stables. That's a Hercules reference. Look it up.

Anyway, we'll be right back talking to David Englehart. He's the author of Good Hills, Good Kills is the book I recommend it. David Englehart is my guest. We'll be right back. I'm back talking to David Englehart. David Englehart before I let you talk about your orange soda, Donald Trump analogy. I want to mention quickly our friends at the Herzog Foundation.

Folks, I keep talking about homeschooling, how tremendous it is. I keep talking about quality K-12 Christ-centered education. If we want to make America great again, if we want a golden age of America, We have to restore everything. And part of restoring the culture is restoring education, teaching our kids what is right and good and true. If you are interested in any of this kind of stuff, I highly recommend the Herzog Foundation.

Herzog Foundation.com. Herzog Foundation.com. They're there to help you. Free resources to help you, basically. They're there to help you do all this stuff or to find out about it. Herzog Foundation.com. David Englehart. We're talking about a lot of stuff.

You said you had an orange soda Donald Trump story or something. I just tweeted Doge My Heart, Oh Lord. So I think that's the theme here. Do the audit of my heart. No, I was with Charlie and there was a room where Donald Trump was going to be because he was speaking. I was backstage through walking through. with Charlie Kirk because you're on the board of TPUSA.

Yes, thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, I was at a TPSA event, I think it maybe was the last America Fest. And we were walking through the backstage and they have a very cool Donald Trump room that he's going to go in. And of course, who doesn't want to peek in the Donald Trump room? I expected it to be full of Diet Coke and McDonald's paraphernalia. And so I, you know, I look in the room and there was a lot of orange soda. And so I, you know, I've been very much. I've been drinking more Diet Coke than ever in my life because of the Donald Trump presidency.

But I turned to the gal who was Lauren, who was, you know, who would be events manager. I said, Lauren, what's the... I just want to say, ladies and gentlemen, Diet Coke is not good for you. So I drink it, but I drink very little of it. I just have to say that it is really not good for you. If you're chugging a lot of Diet Coke, I don't recommend it. Donald Trump is, by the way, like he's Superman. You know, he can eat.

horrible food and have more energy. So don't go by him. Anyway, so go ahead. You peek into the room. Go ahead. Yeah, that's right. So there's orange soda everywhere. Anyway, so I say, Lauren, why is there all this orange soda?

And she said, President Trump loves orange soda. And I was like, I thought he was a Diet Coke guy. She said he kind of is, but he really loves secretly loves diet orange soda. And so I'm like looking online. No, no, regular, regular, regular orange soda. Regular, sugary, crappy orange soda. Yes. If you look up his flight with RFK,

he has the McDonald's. In the little cup holder next to him is a 20 ounce of orange soda. And I just thought how hilarious that Donald Trump loves orange soda and how genius that Charlie Kirk and the TPSA team know that and stop the room with orange soda. Why? Because the president is coming. And you want the protection and the blessing of the president.

And that's the whole point here. John the Baptist comes and he says like, get your hearts right. Make way for the Lord. Make a place for him in your heart. Make the room of your heart a place where he wants to live and he wants to be. Fill the cabinets of your heart with orange soda. You know, not physically, but morally, make way and straight the past. Why?

Because we want his protection. and we want his prosperity. We want it for America. We don't want to be broke. We don't want to be giving $20 million to Iraqi Sesame Street anymore. We want actual prosperity for our families, for our nation, and the protection of God over our nation. That's my orange soda anecdote. People who are listening to me talk to you, you've been on the program before.

And again, I recommend your book Good Kills because you, David, and I've said this to you, you're a rare individual in the sense that your faith has real depth. And when I hear you preach, I hear stuff that I'm not hearing other places. And I rejoice in that. It's just thrilling to me to know that God is speaking through people and I get to hear stuff that I didn't think of myself that I haven't heard before. You know, you're doing the work. But God is also.

gifted you in this way. You, you know, you've got a different angle on some of this stuff. Did we, did we touch on anything? Did we miss anything from the Super Bowl? Because it just happened a couple days ago. And I don't know if, if there was anything that you wanted to say about it. Yeah, I just, you know, I think the recap for me on the Super Bowl is, like, when you see Kendrick Lamar, he's got like the red, white and blue team. And then underneath is like this kind of shallow and silly, there's not substantive change. It feels to me, you know, everywhere I look in the world, I'm saying, what is God saying here? It seems to me a perfect picture of the American moment that we're in right now, which is change, which we like,

will take any change we can get, but a shallow change, and we need to push it deeper. I think the answer really is like, you know, when the Tower of Silo falls, the Pharisees say to Jesus, who's sinned, whose fault was it? And Jesus was like, you know what? The real issue here is you need to repent. You need to reform your ways. And I think that's the answer. It's like, the answer is not me just simply pointing out this dumb halftime show

that's just a little bit of change, but not enough. The direction that's the correct biblical directive is like, I have to fast and pray. I have to doge my own heart. I have to see what I'm wasting. I have to see where there's still sin that's entangled in my life. I'm going to turn 44 tomorrow, Eric. And so I'm like, I'm 44. I still have sin that's tangled in my legs every once in a while.

I want to walk in righteousness before God. So he brings me protection of prosperity through the blood of Jesus. But I want to repent myself. I don't want to just point at Kendrick Lamar and say, you should have sang the national anthem. The real answer is that we point the sword of justice, judgment, and repentance inward, and then God's like, great work, and there's a synergy that takes place, and then we have an actual real golden age.

And there's something beautiful about that, because when you see that in others, when you see people earnestly trying to live faithfully before God, it inspires you to do the same. And that's part of the horror of what's been happening, you know, just in the last year or two, with major ministries and major figures being exposed and scandal. It's so nasty. And you kind of think, how did that happen? And it's somehow a culture, I guess, where, you know, it's about protecting the ministry. It's like it becomes a big business.

And so I don't know what happens, but we're seeing judgment, you know, coming to the house of God. And it's ugly at the same time, it's beautiful. And so when we come back, we'll talk more talking to David Englehart. His book is Good Kills. Folks, welcome back talking to David Bengali. David, I didn't ask you this because it's not that relevant to our conversation. But what do I need to do to get you and your lovely wife, Bethany, with or without your three rotten kids, to come on the cruise to the Greek islands, June 6th to 16th.

I'm trying to get all my friends. John Smirak is coming. He'll be on the show tomorrow. Oh, cool. Victoria Jackson is coming. coming, Albin is coming, and a whole bunch of friends that the radio listeners wouldn't know there, but wonderful friends are coming, some family to come. I just think it's going to be just such a blessing.

So I don't know, what do I need to do to twist your arm? I don't know. Well, speaking of twisting my arm and my dirty kids, my son Leon put me in a headlock the other day and I wanted to actually like try it for real on me. And he almost broke my trachea. It hurt to swallow for three days. No, wait a minute. How old is Leone?

I'm proud. I'm so proud. He's 16. And I'm a proud dad. He loves the Lord and he can break tracheas. But I'm really frightened that it went that far. I'm sorry I wasn't there to say. I wish you were there.

No, on the cruise, it's actually going to be our 20th year wedding anniversary this June. And my wife has always wanted to go to Greece. And so I just need to bite the bullet. We just need to find some good preachers to fill in for me when I'm out of town. But I've been to Greece. Oh, I can't because I'll be on the cruise. Yeah, you'll be on the cruise. We can zoom us in at the cruise.

Like, sorry, New York. We're in the Greek Isles here. I've been to Greece before. I was in Macedonia and in Athens, and I had the most incredible heroes of, can we call, do we call them Euros here in America or gyros? What do we do? What? Even I don't know.

There's no right answer. Gyros, just say gyro. Life-changing gyro experience on the streets of Athens and Macedonia. So I'm planning on it. It's in the plans of my heart have been established. Hopefully the Lord fills in the rest and makes it possible. Well, I mean, I tell people it's 10 days, right? So the ship leaves June 6th from Athens and returns on the 16th, right?

So it's everything is included for 10 days. It's kind of amazing. I mean, I'm speaking, I guess, six times on, you know, on one of my, on each of my books. I mean, I've written way more than six books, but I'm speaking, I'm doing six talks on six books. And then there's going to be tons of Q&A. So it's going to be, it's just going to be fun. I'll probably do something with John Smirak. If you come, maybe I can interview you or some crazy thing.

It's going to be fun. And then we're stopping in these amazing places. It's kind of nuts. Like the most excited I am is about Crete. That's the last stop before we get back to Athens because I want to see the Palestine. Are you going to be singing? I assume it's going to be singing on this trip. I hadn't planned to sing, but I might sing.

Well, actually, we have to discuss it. I've been too busy to think about that. But I guess anything's possible. I should mention this also, folks, that if you go on the cruise, which leaves June 6th from Athens and comes back on the 16th, we're doing a pre-cruise add-on in case people say, well, you know what, if I'm taking this much time off, I'll do three days in Athens beforehand. So we're going to be doing a Socrates in the city event in Athens, which incidentally is where Socrates was from before he moved to Chicago. people don't know that. He's originally

for Matthew. So we're doing an event on that's probably June 5th, and then we're doing a tour of Mars Hill and this and that you know, there's kind of a, so if you go to the website, I should mention this because we're done with the show here. The website is erikmetaxis.com slash cruise.

Again, the cruise is the cruise, but then there's this add-on. If anybody wants to do that, you know, get rid of your jet lag up front. So go to ericmetaxis.com, Ericmantaxas.com slash cruise. David Englehart, my friend, thank you so much. Thanks, Eric. Great to be on.