The Eric Metaxas Show - David Englehardt

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

David Englehardt, the New York City lawyer and pastor, is back in the studio to talk about his book, "Good Kills: God, Good, and the Sword," and why this sort of "killing" is indeed a good thing.

to the Eric Mattaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. I will be playing the role of Eric Mataxis. I apologize in advance. The real Eric is in jail. I'm talking to my friend David Englehart. He is the author of a new book called Good Kills, God, Good, and the Sword. He's a pastor here in New York City. Welcome to the studio again, my friend David Englehart. Thank you, sir. Good to be here. The last time you were here, we were talking about your book, and we didn't have enough time to continue the conversation, which I thought needed to be continued.

Yeah. So you flew in all the way from downtown Manhattan to Midtown Manhattan. Wall Street. Big deal. Yeah, it is. It is. It's 14th technically midtown? To fly to J.

It's really tough. What? I said it's 14th technically midtown. Is that the demarcation? We're still, actually, you know, it's interesting. I don't know where are we. Wherever we are, we're not way downtown. We're not way downtown.

I mean, this is downtown. I'm Wall Street downtown. You know, compared to some parts of the town. I agree. I agree. You're so far down. Your church is located in Chinatown. Well, technically, it's located in the two bridges, which Chinatown stops at East Broadway,

and then two bridges is the next neighborhood that butts up against East Street. But it's a well-known neighborhood, highly populated, very accessible. Very accessible by Rickshaw. only. Otherwise, it's tough to get to. No, it's interesting because you are a pastor. I want to introduce my audience to you generally if they missed you last time. You're a pastor. You've got a church here in New York City. I spoke at your church a couple of days ago. Yes, yes, you do. And every time I go to your church, I do not get fed because I'm the speaker. So I'm getting nothing. Yeah. But it's just a joy to know that here's another wonderful church in a part of the world where people don't know.

Are there good churches in New York City? Well, I was just in one. And you're a lawyer. Yes. And you've written a book called Good Kills. Now, the title is meant to be provocative, and it is provocative. So let's start there. I know you spoke about this the last time, but just to introduce people to the concept.

Yeah. What do you mean good kills? It's important because it is written to be provocative, but it's also written to remind Christians, believers, people of faith, people that like God, that there are applications of goodness. And it's not just a gentle Jesus with a sheep over his shoulders and the felt, you know, soft blue kind of periwinkle version of him. But that good in all of its, and the fullness of its applications also incorporates doing

really hard things, cutting certain things or peoples or ideas out of your life, out of relationship with you. You know, Jesus said, if you don't hate your dad and mom, then you can't be a follower of me. You know, I don't hear many churches named the dad-hating church of New York City, you know, or these really hard truths that Jesus talked about that have been pushed out of really the faith conversations because we're so desperate to please people and get people in our pews. And I think in part, Eric, in the 80s and 90s, in the churches in America, we saw a lot of this holiness movement. and they were like, yeah, but nobody's coming, so let's just try this new method to get people to show up.

And primary mainstream evangelical churches have been, their main goal has been to fill the pews. If you want to fill the pews, don't ever say any hard things. You know, I had a pastor that I know who used this phrase all the time, grace grows the church. Well, that's true. That's true. It does grow the church. And when Jesus gave out bread and fish and all this loaves and all the jazz people came. but then he complimented that with incredibly hard things to say and the people that really wanted to stay with him stuck around.

And if that balance is missing, then we have an obese, diabetic, cake face stuffing church, which we don't want. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We're not getting judgey here. Yeah, it's a new form of beauty. But a profoundly unhealthy church, maybe that's a good thing.

Hey, who are we to say? No, it's kind of funny because when you say that, I think that those of us of a certain age in the United States, we've seen a lot of that, the quote-unquote, seeker-friendly churches. And there's a good idea there, right? But it can go too far. And I thought there's a great irony.

Imagine like being in China and talking about a seeker-friendly church. It's kind of hilarious, isn't it? Well, maybe the communist state church is seeker-friendly. Don't say anything offensive. Talk about being nice to your neighbor and go home, you know, and bow down to the panda. Is that what, Winnie the Pooh? What do they call him?

I have no idea. I don't know where you were going with that racist joke. But let me say this. When we're talking about these issues of grace or whatever we would talk about. I mean, when we talk about grace in the caricaturized version, we really mean cheap grace. We don't mean real grace. So when you're talking about cheap grace versus actual grace, I always think. of course, anybody would think of Bonhofer's

cost of discipleship, where he makes it clear that grace is costly. And he says some hard things in the cost of discipleship. Like he says that if you want faith, I mean, again, some of this is paradoxical, but he talks about you have to obey first, and then you get faith, which is kind of paradoxical. But he's trying to make a point

that maybe we're too slow to obey God. We're looking for some feeling. Or the key, right? Or the success key, or the prayer of jabez, or whatever it is to bring me prosperity. And that's a cliche that we hear. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So I just need to hear the truth. Well, that's not what Jesus said.

That's a mischaracterization of his quote. He said, first if you obey me, that's where Bonhofer gets it. Then you are my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Oh, Dag. Yeah. That's pretty, talk about a heavy message that we don't ever hear. Right.

There's actually a pattern to knowing the truth. You don't even get to know the truth unless you first obey Jesus. Why are you so full of hate? I love the idea that the title of the book is Good Kills, God, Good, and the Sword, because it is a point that needs to be made today. And I think maybe this is the larger conversation is that people who were, you know, opening these secrets, friendly churches and shrinking from saying harder things. It's not like they don't have a point.

There's a point to be made, but at some point it ceases to be the point. At some point, you do have to sharpen the message. And I feel, as I've been thinking lately about why have so many, to use the cliche, white evangelicals, why have they persisted in this idea that says, We can never be political. And I realize it's because they got stuck in a certain gear. It's not that that gear was never appropriate. Right.

But it was only appropriate for that part of the hill. Yeah. But they got stuck in that gear and they don't know how to get out of it. They've confused that gear with driving. Yeah. So a friend of mine told me in President Trump's last summer, he, this senior pastor of a big church liked a tweet by a famous conservative a pundit about Donald Trump.

And allegedly, he lost 10,000 members of his church for liking a tweet. Now, what are those numbers? What's the Aramaic for Good Riddance? Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Well, the idea was like that the church is so unaware that the pastor has any political leaning at all, or might even potentially be a conservative that as soon as I find out, I bail out of the church. That's insane, which is why the book.

you know, we build this framework based upon God's word. And then we talk about sex, racism, and government, all the fun things to talk about. Those really are the things that churches don't want to talk about these days. They don't want to talk about sex, subcategories, homosexuality, transgenderism, et cetera, et cetera. They don't want to talk about racism other than just like this cliche, don't be racist. They don't want to say, actually, you know, cops aren't out there randomly shooting black people. It's not actually happening, right? They want to avoid that. then they want to really avoid anything that has to do with government or politics at all.

And we don't see Jesus avoiding anything. Actually, the kingdom of God is entirely, I think it's Abraham Kuiper that says there's not one inch of a square world where Jesus does not claim minds. Actually, this is a quote that I happen to know because Chuck Colson used to quote this almost in every speech. And we're talking about the Dutch theologian and statesman, which tells you a lot about where he's coming from, Abraham Kuiper. He would say there's not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus, who is sovereign, does not say mine. Right. And we're going to, we always want to end on a Kuiper quote.

We'll be right back with my friend, David Englehart. The book is Good Kills. Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners, Pete and Seth Talbot, have never made a big deal about. But I think it is a big deal. I really do. They sell the three-week quick start pack for just 19. to anyone struggling from pain like neck, shoulder, back, hip, or knee pain, 1995, about a dollar a day. But what they haven't broadcasted much is that every time they sell a three-week

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who has a new book out, Good Kills, God, Good, and, the sword. It's a funny thing. So many people buy books through Amazon, and Amazon has all these subcategories. So you tell you, you're number one in whatever obscure category no one ever heard of. My Bonhofer book is consistently, number one, in systematic theology. What could be more strange and depressing than that? It's like, I'm kicking Wayne Grudem's behind. Hey, no, it's kind of funny to me. And so your book, or I think, and my Luther book was number one in. Christian popes. Not to be confused with all the other types of popes

that are out there. But I mean, it's so bizarre. So your book, Good Kills, is smashing the competition in what category at this point? Two, but Christian ethics it's been smashing. Oh, Christian social issues and then Christian ethics. But the Christian ethics, it's like me

and then Richard Roar, who's like a Catholic, progressive guy. I think the conservative Catholics despise him and the progressive Catholics obviously, obviously, like him. According to your version of the Christian faith, which I think is my own, is Richard Roar Theologically Orthodox and just iffy in some areas, or is he really problematic? I think he would, I think most people would say he's really fuzzy about all the solid,

the solid issues. So I think he would probably consider himself Orthodox, but he's fuzzy about lots of issues. He wrote a book called Falling Upward that I'd read a couple of years ago, and it was basically a philosophical copy of this kind of second half of life concept. And I know a lot of, you know, I know a lot of Christian progressives that are my age that are leaders, that are thought leaders, that find this guy to be like the monk on the mountain. So in some degree, I want to be the exact opposite of a Richard Rohr, who's obscure, kind of find your own path, kind of wander towards Jesus kind of stuff, and maybe you'll find him in the tree or in the bird.

or you're crashing into the next phase of life. That's funny. And what I'm saying is, no, there are specific boundaries and there are cliffs to fall off. One of the quotes, my buddy John Mark McMillan wrote that song, Oh, How He Loves Us, and he says, if grace is an ocean, we're all sinking. And I say in the book, you know, grace may be an ocean, but there's another body that we should be familiar with,

which is called the Lake of Fire, right? We can sing about oceans of grace, but we must also balance that with lakes, fire because they're both represented in our story. And we can't have just this soft, kind Christianity if we don't forget the hard and sharp parts. Are you body shaming me right now? I just sense judgment. The hard parts. I could, I just, yes. Are you saying that I'm not muscular? What are you saying? What are you saying? It's interesting. This stuff is obviously important to kind of figure out. I often think that people

maybe who are attracted to the fuzziness, as you're putting it, of a Richard Roar. They've been wounded by the church or somehow they have made a caricature of orthodoxy, and they've just said – I mean, it's not like I don't understand where they're coming from, because we've all seen people in the church who have been unpleasantly theological, like overly theological, and they never get the point. So at some point, some people just want to wave them away and say, listen, I can't deal with it. I'm trying to live my life. And so those people often gravitate toward folks like Richard Rohr.

And we have fatherlessness at insane levels, right? At insane levels. So people that don't know father see father as a tyrant often, right? And then they're desperate for male intimacy. They're desperate for the connection to father. They want to reject the structure of father. and then you have, you know, concomitantly, you have homosexuality insane in our culture because we have people that are desperate for father and affection from father

and don't know where to get it and have rejected what seems to them this tyrannical model of father, which is law and justice and order and all of these things, and they find themselves desperately seeking that same sense of structure elsewhere. And some would argue because of our, we're baked in Freud and everything sexual and my identity is now sexual and everything about me is sexual, that manifestation, that cry for father finds itself in sexuality, which is one of the reasons sexuality is a serious part of this book Good Kills, because we need structure around sexuality in order for it to be a blessing

and not a bondage. Okay, so I've read the book, but I don't remember, or at least until you start talking about it, maybe I'll remember it, but talk about what you say in the book about the issue of sexuality. Yeah, so there's a book, there's a, there's a, there's a, a chapter titled sexual anarchy. And I, this phrase just kind of fell into my mind. You and I've talked about this phrase before. Yes, we have. And sexual anarchy is basically this idea. Jesus, in the book of Matthew, sets up how men and women are supposed to come together in the union of marriage and sexuality. Those are God's laws. That's his order for humanity to flourish. It's called

one man, one woman, forever in union that creates family, and flourishing in beauty and da-da-da-da. The breaking of it through divorce, the breaking of it through homosexuality, transgenderism. There's a reverse order that ends in the destruction of identity. And it's really simple. It goes like this.

If sexuality is about the creation of identities, then breaking sexuality will ultimately end in the destruction of identities, and especially the identity of that person that's walking in that sentence. And we see that now in transgenderism. My dad used to say when I was a kid growing up, how horrible would it be to not know if you were a boy or a girl? And I remember as a kid, you know, I was born in the 80s thinking, that's tragic.

It's like it's both tragic and alien. It's so far away. I could never imagine that landing in our culture that a person would say, I don't know if I'm a boy or a girl. Well, now my TikTok and my Instagram and my reels are filled with people that don't know who they are. And so they're creating some fictional, quote unquote, gender, right, because we've destroyed these boundaries. So sexual anarchy is any sexual activity act, meditation, fantasy outside of God's express order, and that destroys ultimately identities. Sodom and Gomorrah, which you talk about in is atheism dead.

Those two cities are about two specific things. fire and water, those are the symbolic names of those places, out of the natural places where they cause blessing. Water in a river is really great. We can fish and drink and it doesn't kill us. Water drowning our houses is not fun. That's a bad day, right? Fire in the fireplace is wonderful. We opened presents and listen to the carpenters.

Roast chestnuts put on turtlenecks and listen to the carpenters and Johnny Mathis, obviously, yeah. Yeah, I'm a Johnny Cash guy, but he's not quite a fireplace. Thank you. Fireplace person. But fire, fire, if you take that fireplace, fire out of that fireplace, and you just say, I'm going to throw it on the couch and see what happens.

Everyone dies. But you've got to draw outside the lines, man. It's kind of funny because, like, yeah, when it comes to fireplaces, like, we get that. But when it comes to sexuality, we don't want to get that. It's interesting. I mean, one of my favorite books in the world is called Chance or the Dance by Thomas Howard passed away year ago.

In fact, I dedicate my new book to Thomas Howard and to John Rank. But in his book, Chance of the Dance, he talks about the sort of holistic Christian idea of the person and of sexuality. And you realize something has happened in, really in the 20th century, Freud is a big part of it, where everything has been atomized. And you no longer believe that the union of male and female in marriage is a picture of Christ united with his bride, the church, this glorious, transcendent, multi-dimensional thing.

We've just reduced it to just, you're an animal, and one animal gets together with another animal, or they can maybe do it by themselves, or they can get together with 12 animals, or they can watch an animal on a video screen. And it's all about this kind of, you know, it's all about achieving physical ecstasy. It's like a sneeze.

It's like you treat it like, snuff, like a snuff box in the 18th century. It really has no meaning. Sex has no meaning, no transcendent meaning. There's no spiritual. And I thought to myself, if that's the case, and if there's no God and we are just, you know, walking around, whatever, that follows perfectly.

The idea that nothing has meaning, so why shouldn't I just, you know, try to have pleasure, whether I get it from drugs or sex or what? It really has nothing to do with this beautiful poetic idea. that God has created us in his image and wants to be he wants us in our lives to mirror the kingdom of heaven and it it's so beautiful but when you take God out of it that's what you're left with that's right and you said earlier like the poets and the artists they reject this God idea but they forget that inside of the God idea there is all of this beauty and mystery and something

incredibly powerful inside the bounds of the fireplace there is spiritual there's a spiritual dimension. There is the union pulses and Ephesians that the union of Christ and the church is more mysterious than any union we have. And that image is the image of man and wife coming together and joining and again, creating brand new entities that are eternal in nature. That's what's so amazing. Creating life. Like it's a picture, only God could invent something this glorious and transcendent. It doesn't just end in a moment of physical ecstasy, but it leads to you. It leads to to life, which leads to more life. I mean, it's an amazing picture. We're talking to the author of Good Kills. David Englehart, we'll be right back.

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anti-science and anti-math. It's bad. And you want to say to them, okay, I get where you're coming from, but do not reject the concept of science. it won't go well for you. Science is meant to bless you and meant to help you discover truth. Yeah. I had a mean science teacher as a junior high. He was mean to me. He didn't like my hair cut.

And so now I hate science for the rest of my life. Science is evil. Evil, I tell you. But it's kind of like that. When people reject God or the church or the Bible, they're sort of doing that. It's the classic example of, you know, you're cutting your nose off to spite your face.

It doesn't make any sense. So I feel like in your book Good Kills, you're trying to lead people back as it were to science. Yeah, and just to apply your analogy in another way, the church has also said, like, we're not going to talk about these issues because they've heard us. Like, we had this Christian coalition in the 80s, and so that kind of went weird. And we elected Bush, and he was like not really a Christian exactly. And so we're going to not do any of these things anymore or talk about any of these issues anymore. We're going to the caves now.

It's time to go to the caves. Yeah, we're going to the caves. We're talking about being nice to your neighbor and inviting somebody over for a potlop. and hoping they have an eternal existence. I want them to have an eternal existence. I want that to happen, but I also want my nation not to be handed over by two lunatic progressives and leftists

that truly hate America. They hate God. My buddy Gabe Finocchio, woke Jesus. He had a great post on Instagram the other day. He said, it's not left or right we're battling. It's theism versus atheism. And even as you referred to before, this sexual anarchy kind of manifestation,

in our culture. This is, I'm living from a place where I believe in natural mechanism that only the laws of nature and biology apply. I'm predetermined as this evolutionary being because I've been created and formed as a part of the lineage of the ooze. I have these certain behaviors. I'm going to act upon them. I can't do anything else. Free will, all this God idea. Those are all stupid. I'm just, I'm just a machine and I want to have machine fun. I want to have machine fun. Can we get that? on a t-shirt album. I want to have machine fun. Machine fun. Book two. It's the next book. Well, it is, well, look, the bottom line is, in order to sustain this way of thinking,

you really have to avoid looking at many things. In other words, if you, if you want to sustain this kind of myopic view of the world, you really have to have to avoid truth because every time you turn around, you're going to bump into something. Yeah. And that's not easy to do, but some people are trying to give it a go. That's true. The avoidance of truth thing is really important. And there's a chapter in the book called Black Lies Gather.

And the whole... Black Lies Gather. Yeah, it sounds awfully... It makes people happy. It's ringing a bell. Black Lies Gather. I don't know. A non-confrontational chapter title.

Yeah. But the idea is that in our churches and in the kingdom of heaven, lies are not allowed in. We can't exist with lies because if God gives us a moral order and that moral order can be distilled in a way to a moral calculation and you place a calculation upon things that are untrue, the product of that calculation will be broken. The moral imperative that we receive from those false facts will be itself skewed and will create or cause more harm by that. So I tell you I was a philosophy undergrad? You didn't have to because I just, I just heard that. You figured it out.

And what you were saying. But a great distillation of morality is an economic calculation. Now, it's a moral economy. I'm obligated to do certain things. But if you tell me lies about the universe and about the world, about governance, about the nature of man, then I will respond poorly. I think one of the issues even about government, and you know this, is that we have a church culture that's like, yeah, the government can solve all our primary problems.

We'll just keep giving them power, decade after decade, just keep giving the federal government more and more power. Like, that goes bad every time for everyone for the history of the world. Do we not remember that? Obviously, people aren't really interested in those kinds of lessons. They want to, I mean, I always think if it's, you know, it's Lucy with the football. Like how many times are you going to fall for that one? Yeah.

But people, evidently, they don't have, I mean, this is why you need cultural memory. I mean, because of my mom and my dad, I know that government. government can be evil, that things can go badly, and you have to be aware that what you have in America is an anomaly. This is not the way the world typically works. That a lot of people have died to have this, so we could have this kind of freedom and this liberty. But a lot of people are, let's be honest, what do you call it? They're ignorant. They are ultimately selfish. They're really choosing not to look beyond the little bubble in which they live, which ultimately is bad because the bubble's going to burst and no more bubble. Now you have to deal with it.

Speaking of mechanism, naturalism, I saw this tweet from USA today, we don't understand pedophilia. We're now scientists are discovering pedophilia is almost wholly determined in the womb. That was the quote. Isn't that sweet? So fun. What does that mean? It basically alleviates guilt or culpability by the actor. Because if I am biologically predetermined, if I am this billiard ball physics creation of the ooze of the primordial soup, then I have to behave this way. I can't do anything about it. Can you imagine? But listen, but it does follow logically.

And this is one of the things John, our friend John Zmirak often writes about this at stream.org, that you have to follow the. You have to figure out where does my worldview lead me. And if it leads you to the idea that maybe child rape is okay, I think you have a problem. We'll be right back. Folks, Eric Matakas here. Somebody just handed me a piece of paper with insane information on it. But I know it's true because the other day I literally got a phone call from Mike Lindell telling me, Eric, you got to check out. And then he tells me about this towel special, right?

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Go to mypillow.com. click on the new radio listener specials, or you can call 800-978-3057. 800-98-3057. Use the code, Eric. I'm talking to David Englehart, the author of Good Kills, God, Good, and the Sword. You mentioned earlier we're living in a time where people tend to turn good things into caricatures, right? So they only talk about the way the church has hurt them or the people. the way people have used the Bible to hurt them or the way somebody who's a man or a father

behaved in a bad way. And they don't, they want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. And it has done just incalculable damage to lives and to the culture. And in your book Good Kills, it strikes me, you're trying to show the other side of this coin. Yeah, that's exactly right. So this one chapter, Black Lives Gather, I, I, I cite a psychological study. I can't remember the name of the lady, psychologist who runs the study. She basically says that if you ask a group of 100 people,

this question, do you remember the time? Like, if you're in the right setting, psychologists are there, do you remember the time that you were kidnapped in the mall? The number of people, I think it's like something like 20%, huge amount of people, are like, yeah, I do remember that time I was kidnapped in the mall. and then they create a story around it.

They create a fictional tale. It's not fictional in their mind. They create super specific details about their kidnapping. This is very disturbing. Yeah, like I was, it was right by the gap. I saw the orange, you know, parachute pants, and then the guy grabbed my arm, like, ultra-specific. Because lies, even in question form, Eric,

can totally distort your memory and your perception of the world. And that's why when you're saying to me, hey, David, good kills, you're trying to show the other side of the story. I'm saying, yeah, if we as a church don't talk about truth and truth in culture, we'll have a whole group of people in the body of Christ that believe huge lies,

and then create fictions to support that body of lies. And so I talk about the black lives gather that whole issue, and people were saying, like, remember the time that the church people were super racist to you? Just the question alone will make 20% of the audience, create a fictional instance that you say, oh, yeah, that one time I was pulled over by a cop and I was going like 75 and a 55 and he gave me a ticket. That was due to racism. I know it. I'm 100% sure that happened. And not only the cops, but like inter-church situations.

That happened at our church, a person said to my wife, you know, you and your husband are racist, your whole family's are racist, your children are racist. And the reason I know is because your daughter Goldie, who you met yesterday. That nasty, cute, five-year-old. I remember her. No, this was the foundation. This was the reason we were racist. Because when I walked into the nursery,

Goldie didn't say hi to me, the black person, but she said hi to a white person. So I know your whole family is racist. It's a relatively disparaging charge these days being called. Yeah, relatively. Actually, that's, I'm actually sorry that you even had to go through that because I know so much of this is happening out there. People are throwing words like that around,

and they have no idea how crazy and how hurtful it can be. Well, it destroyed our church. We had half of our church left. I told you that last time I was on the show. I choose not to remember these things. Well, let me, when you talk about that, I was thinking earlier today as well about when you ask a child, hey, what gender do you want to be?

Yeah. The lie baked into that question. is so evil. Yeah. Because you are saying you have a choice and you need to own the choice. You need to think about this. It's the same thing when you spread, you know, the BLM Marxist mantra, the critical race theory mantra. You're basically spreading racism.

You're causing every single person to look at members of the other race with some kind of suspicion. Does this black person think I am racist? Exactly. Do I, as a black man, should I be aware or, I'm sorry, wary, more wary than I am of the white people around? It creates this division. Yes. It's tremendously damaging. And at its heart, it is promoting, it is promoting racism. There's no, it's inescapable. Yes. But we are living in a culture today, 2022, which is, easily more racist than a few years ago. I mean, it's, it's undeniable because people have been forced to think in these ugly categories.

And wokeism means that I am awakened constantly, consistently, consistently to racism at all times, always around me. That's exactly what it's doing, like, definitionally. And so that same form is the form used by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. He doesn't say, God said, you guys are idiots and he hates you. Ha ha ha, ha, you dummies. have a bite of the apple. He says in question form, did God really say X? And just like you said about, which is insane, do you feel like being a boy or a girl? What do you think? Like that's even a

possibility that I can even choose that. Well, look, let's be honest. If you have a kid in a school or whatever, anybody asking that kind of a question, that is child abuse. I want to be very clear. It's kind of like asking an eight-year-old girl, have you thought about whether your father might be a racist? Yes. Have you thought about whether your father might be a rapist? Right. Have you thought about that? Would you think about that?

I'm not telling you what to think. That's right. Just tell me, do you think your father is a rapist or a racist? Anytime close. That's right. And it is such a sit—I mean, I think we have to use the word satanic. Diabolical. It is truly diabolical.

because there's just a level of subtlety that is, it's just, it's wicked. There's no other way to put it. It's wicked. The King James Version, which is the most fun, says the snake was the subtlest beast of the field. Yes. And that's the genius of Satan and his ways are you don't know you're being deceived. That's the nature of deceit. You don't get to find out, which is why you. you need walls and swords and guardians and all of these kinds of things or else we will think

our dads molested us. You know, have you ever thought of opening up a church because I think you'd be good? But the audio, people who watch Albin, my producer, watched my sermon and he said the audio was Elstinko and you guys need to improve that. Just donate. Because next week, next week it's not going to be me. It's going to be you speaking. And I want people who are listening to this to check you out. We've got one segment left. Where do people find your church? KCNYC.org is the best place. KC, as in King's Church.

KCNYC.org. Dot org. Yeah. And then we're on all the podcast platforms and Instagram and all that just. KCNYC.org. We'll be right back with Pastor David Englehart. Good kills, David Englehart. Do you talk about actual?

killing? I once threw a knife at my brother. We were playing that game. You know the game that boys play? They try to stab each other. Yeah, man. Who hasn't played that game? It was the carnival game like throw it to the side of my head. Yeah. And he kept bobbing. The knife throwing game. That parents love it when their boys play that. He had a humongous welt in the middle of his head because I hit him with the butt of the knife. With the butt of the knife. The buck knife. in the center of the... You're not kidding? No, no. No, this is full...

Okay, I want to kill you on behalf of your parents. I want to kill you right now. A 13-year-old moron mode. Yeah, so I don't talk about that story in the book, although I should have. I do talk about this rejection of capital punishment, which I think it seems to me

that about 70% of the churches in America are just like, yeah, capital punishment is a bad idea because killing is a bad idea. and that's part of the theme of the book. Killing is not a bad idea when you're removing cancer from the body, when you're removing people that are so wicked that you're not just going to... Well, I mean, look, to play devil's advocate, people would say, why would you need to kill them?

In other words, why wouldn't you be able to put them in prison for the rest of their lives so that you're not... You know, in other words, it's not like there's no conversation to have. Yeah, but the biblical idea is that, when we look at the Bible, we look to it, this is what the Westminster Catechism says, for the general equity thereof is the quote. And that means that we look to the civil laws of the Old Testament and say, are these useful to create a paradigm in which to exist as a civil society?

Like the Old Testament laws had 600 approximately laws for the running of that society. Why do we have a billion laws on our books right now? It's literally incalculable the number of laws that we have. Gun laws alone are 20 to 30,000 just on gun ownership and transfer. And I'm talking about state and federal laws, if you stack those up, it's between 20 and 30,000 laws. It's really hard to function in a society with that many laws. So we look to the Old Testament and say, yeah, I think we can function with a lot less laws as a society. And so the history of the West has been to do that and to look at things like capital punishment and say,

this is important and a good, this is a good. The idea of abolition of capital punishment primarily came, primarily from the French Revolution. Why? Because they were chopping everyone's heads off. There was an arbitrary application of judgment without the appropriate context of justice. And when that happens, then the tyranny of the sword reigns. Right now, I would say we have the tyranny of grace reigning or mercy reigning. But on the other side, it's really bloody and really dangerous, and that's why, you know, all of the poets and historians talk about the bloodiness of the French Revolution. Out of that revolution, there was a lot of philosophers saying, hey, this, you know, maybe we should do away with this, like, capital punishment idea because I don't want to be beheaded.

That was, like, why make that decision? Because potentially you're on the chopping block. Robespierre comes up, he's like, I'm going to help save everybody, which is great. and then they decide to stab him five minutes later because there was no consistent application of justice because the moral code had been broken down in that culture. So I do argue very shortly for capital punishment just because it's God's idea. It's not my idea. I'm not arguing for my own ideas. I'm arguing for God's ideas because I think God's ideas help a society flourish. And obviously, it's not, you know, we understand that, uh,

This is a complex issue, but yes, at the end of the day, was God's idea. Well, I hoped we would end on capital punishment, and here we are. The book is Good Kills. Boy, does it kill? Good kills by David Englehart, and people can find you at KCNYC. That's King's Church, KCNYC.org. David Englehart, thank you. Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it.