The Eric Metaxas Show - Eric at Calvary Chapel

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Eric delivered the sermon at Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, California, and answered the question, "What would Bonhoeffer do today?" emphasizing a key point: Courage is faith in a crisis. 

Folks, welcome to the program. I believe it's Tuesday. I really wouldn't know. I'm off the calendar. Albin, I've decided to go off the grid. When I say off the grid, I don't just mean physically in terms of geographical location, but I'm going off the calendar. I don't recognize days of the week. I don't recognize anything anymore. It's just today. Okay. Well, you're big enough now to do whatever you want with the week. Exactly. I said, when I get big, I'm going off the grid, off the calendrical grid. And that's Gregorian and Julian because I don't. care. That's the kind of power I have right now. I'm mad. I'm drunk with power. Okay, Albin, we got to tell people today we are playing. I preached at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills a week and a half ago. Seems like it can't be just a week and a half. It's amazing. I was with my folks in Connecticut this past weekend. The previous weekend, I was at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, California, Jack Hibbs's Church. We're going to play that sermon. This weekend, I fly to San Jose, which is near San Francisco, San Francisco, California, which is now, I believe, reclaimed by Mexico. Am I getting that right?

I think so. Or can we have to pronounce it like Nicaragua. Oh. San Francisco. San Francisco was the saying who was Francis. He had the animals. And so San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, those places. are all named. It's obvious that Mexico really owns California. They're going to take it over

really soon. They're going to have Gavin Newsom. Listen to this, drawn and quartered. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Yeah. That's the first thing you're going to do. Listen, people want to hear about, you wrote something up about the council culture. The Muppets, I'll let you tell it. Okay. Yeah. In fact, you sounded like a Muppet right there. And it reminded me that, you know, I think it was over what a weekend, Disney put out this whole thing about how the Muppets now have to come with a warning. Okay. So it's kind of like a little bit of censorship there on the Muppets. And instantly, it reminded me of the McCarthy hearings.

It was like the McCarthy hearings all over again. I mean, think about it. First they came for Charlie McCarthy. And Edgar Bergen did not speak out because he was not a puppet. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Albin, I'm sorry. This is too good to just jump in. this is what Martin Niemaller, who was friends with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he wrote the famous poem,

and you are now applying this to what is going on with the Muppets. This is really important, folks. Listen up. Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. And then, then they came for lamb chop, and Sherry Lewis did not speak up because she was not a puppet. Then they came for Kukla and Fran, and Ollie did not speak up even though he was a puppet. No, no, no. Oh, you're right. because Fran Fran did not speak up but she was a, she was

a human being. Hucla Fran and Ollie Ali did not speak up. Please continue. Yes. And now, of course, they've come for Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and all the Muppets, and Jim Henson, he can't speak up because he passed away in 1990.

So there you have it. Wow. And now they're going to come for the rest of us, dummies. So you've got to be, you know. That was funny. That was good, Alvin. That was good. Let's keep that in the show. Okay, they're going to come for Gonzo. They're going to come from Fazi, the bear. They're going to come for all the Muppets.

I want to say this because I tweeted this out the other day and they got a zillion retweets. If you think things are going crazy, folks, that's because they are. But here's the point. They're not really going that crazy because most of us see that things are going crazy. When they're canceling the Muppets, when they're canceling Mike Lindell, when they're canceling me. You just know something ridiculous is happening. It cannot happen in America because we still have a voice and we will use our voice while we have our voice. I have this program. I have social media, but you've got to use your voices. This is part of what I talk about

in the sermon at Chino Hill. So we're going to run that today, both hours. It was the long sermon. We already have it on our YouTube page. If you want to just go there and watch me, deliver it rather than listen to it, but we're going to play it in both hours today. It is a kind of real madness, Albin, that we are experiencing this. I said yesterday, Amazon is no longer carrying my friend Ryan Anderson's book when Harry became Sally. It's about the transgender craziness, right? Well, they, I think they banned Abigail Schreier's book. We had her on this program or some other store banned it. When people are doing this, we need to stand up.

If you don't stand up, ladies and gentlemen, you are part of the problem. You are part of the problem. You must speak. You must act. Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak, is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless.

We are obliged to do something when we see this madness. So when anybody tries to cancel someone else, number one, you need to support the person whom they're trying to cancel. So they've tried to do that, to me, in a number of ways. They've tried to do that horrifically to Mike Lindell. So I will say it on almost every program. Please go to MyPillow.com and MyStore.com and use the code, Eric. We need your support on this program.

Mike Lindell really needs your support. Please go to MyPillow.com and MyStore.com and use the code, Eric. Um, most of my books are available at my store.com. And I want to say that because Amazon is now getting involved in the cancel culture, we need to find alternative venues, uh, for how we can, uh, get our books and other things. So that's why I want to say my book, uh, many of my books are available at my store.com. Use the code Eric. You get a big discount. Also, um, Socrates in the city.com has many of my books available. signed copies. And let's not forget, Albin, this program, we can go, you can get Albin's books and my books. What's the website? It's called shopmetaxis.com. But if you go to metaxis radio.com, right? No, no, no, no, no, no. Whoa, whoa. You're the producer. I think you need to know the website. It's metaxis talk.com. I just had a brain freeze.

It's Metaxistococot.com. It's been that way for one. And you're the producer. Can you imagine how bad it is for the rest of the world? This is getting really true. I know. You can go to shoutmataxis.com. People are just, they're getting fatigued.

But folks, listen, this is no, we're not asking much. Please take, take control of where your dollars go. I've spent like zillions at Amazon and stuff and probably will continue to spend money there because there aren't great alternatives. But when we find other alternatives, maybe we need to send a message to Amazon and do whatever we can. So again, I will say most of my books are available at mypillow.com. You go to mystore.com.

Use the code Eric. You can go to Socrates in the city.com. If you go to shopmetaxis.com, which is just this radio website, metaxis.com, and you can click through to shopmetaxis.com. But honestly, you can get hats. mugs, t-shirts, and my books and Albin's books, you can get them there. We need to speak up. So today, if you listen to my sermon at Chino Hills, which we're running in both hours today,

you'll hear me talk a little bit about this kind of thing. Tomorrow, Albin, we're running my Socrates in the City conversation with Peter Thiel, one of the geniuses entrepreneurs of our time. I spoke to him about, I guess about a year and a half ago at Socrates in the city. and we're going to be running that tomorrow because I will be out of pocket, as they say. I'm going to be down at the TBN studios recording a ton of stuff, so I won't be able to do the program tomorrow. Thursday, we hope to have John Zamirac on the program.

Can I just mention real quick about John, our friend Reverend John Rankin? If you go to Rev.john.com, you can go and you can contribute to help his ministry as well. he's passed away and they're looking for raising funds there as well. He's a great guy. Yeah, his wife and daughter need our help. And so I wanted to publicize that. It's REVJohn rankin.com. Rev.johnrankin.com. We'll be talking to his sons on this program in the weeks ahead. His sons, Chad and Stewart. As we know, Jeremy passed away a year before John did. Really tragic. But God is on his throne. Rev. John Rankin. dot com. So in both hours today, we are airing my sermon at Chino Hills. The first hour is obviously

the first half and the second hour is the second half. And this is just the intro. But I tried to make it Sunday. But I got so damn depressed. Please give a warm welcome to a tremendous man of God and just a wonderful friend and a great, great speaker, as you'll know in a moment. Eric Metaxus. Thank you, Jesus. God bless you. You sit down because this will go to my head, I'm telling you. You don't want that to happen.

I'm insufferable as it is. So what a blessing. Why are there so many of you here? I'm really uncomfortable with this. What's happening? Now, I love the idea that somebody is going to try to sign. I talk very quickly. It's going to be very difficult.

I'm very sorry. I'm going to speak way too fast. Even just to watch what happens over there. I'm going to watch this. I'm a New Yorker. So we New Yorkers speak too fast. I just apologize in advance. There's nothing I can do about it.

There's a few of you here this morning I've noticed. And my wife is, she's going to be at the third service because why get up if you don't have to. Which brings me to the question, why were there so many people at the 7.15 a.m. service. Do you guys understand that? They said to me, oh, when you see the next service, you'll see why we went to the 715. Like, what, it's too crowded and it makes you uncomfortable so you need more room? I don't know, but I was fascinated that people would get up for a 7.15 AM service. And so, thank you for being here.

I feel at home. I would come to this service. I would never go to a 715 service if I was not required to by Pastor Jack. And then he just said, you've got to preach your old services. But I'm just amazed at the number of people here. And I know there are people beyond this room someplace watching. God bless you guys. And you're lucky you didn't come in here because the stench.

I don't know what's going on. But it's just, right? Wow, it's bad. God has spared you. Something's going on. Now, I'm just saying that. I can say anything. What do they know?

What do they know? It's unbelievable. Listen, I always want to start out the most important thing. If I leave you with just one thought as I deliver God's word, it would be that if you go to mypillow.com. No, no, I said, if you go, if you go, if you want to support a violent insurrectionist, you go there. It's a free country.

But the most important thing, I can feel the anointing when I say this, use the code Eric. That's the most important thing. If I don't get struck by lightning, it's because the Lord has a sense of humor also. And it means that he invented humor. But there are a lot of people,

I talked about this a lot lately, that part of what we're facing in like the woke culture, and by the way, the culture's not woke, it's just the cultural leaders who give you the impression that there are more of them than there are. Most Americans are not insane. You've got to understand that, which is why we know it's, right? But a big part of it is the lack of the sense of humor.

And because I'm always joking around, even when I'm not joking around, I've got this kind of humorous edge, I'm half joking and stuff. And so now that I'm the enemy of, you know, like this is, I knew it would happen eventually. But, you know, if they come after you, they quote you, even when you're joking like it was serious, right? Like I will say outrageous things as a joke, but they don't have a sense of humor.

They're like, oh, really? Okay, so we're going to quote it. We're going to quote it. We're living in crazy times. Did you know that? Did you know that the times we're living in are utterly unprecedented? But the good news is the Lord,

he kind of knows what's going on. It's not like we're alone. We have the Lord with us, and if we didn't, we'd be in big trouble. But we do, so we're not. So I want to tell you, I want to talk a little bit about where we are in the culture. I also want to tell you a little bit about myself.

The myself part, I wrote a book which just came out, and I think that's the one that they have here, but it's called Fish Out of Water, A Search for the Meaning of Life. And I want to say that I wrote this book because I wanted something that we can give to people who are not on the same page as we are, theological or politically, just something that we can share something with them without feel like we're gunning for their head. You know what I mean? Like as Christians sometimes, like they come at you

with both barrels and they want to talk about Jesus every second. And there are many people in the world who, if you have that attitude, they're going to run. Now, if people are running from you and running from Jesus and you're part of the reason they're running from Jesus, that's bad. We don't want to be that we want to be sensitive to God. And so I just want to say that I wrote, it's really the story of my life until I had my conversion, dramatic experience around my 25th birthday. The Lord spoke to me in a dream in a way that was utterly miraculous.

Absolutely utterly miraculous. It completely blew my mind, and I knew Jesus is Lord, and it's game over. I'm done. I found the meaning of life. I found the meaning of truth and the final. But you know what? Before that, I was, there were times like a lot of people where you're looking for it,

but you don't know if it even exists. I want to help us understand. There are many people, a lot of times in our minds as believers, we act like either you're saved or you're an atheist-Marxist, right? Most people are not. Most people in America, for example, they're just working hard and they just haven't bumped into what you, by God's grace alone, you happen to be. bump into. And so they're not hostile to it. They don't even know what they think. And we play a big

role in what they think and how we deal with them and so on and so forth. But part of my story of growing up is that my parents were really good people. And they had a respect for God, but they didn't know him the way I know him now. And I thought to myself, it's interesting because you get the impression sometimes that people are in or out and it's black and white. And and whatever. Now we know, you know, if you're not in heaven, you're out. But that doesn't mean that everyone who's not exactly where we are, you know, is working for the devil. Now, that gets complicated. But the reason I say this is because I want to say that I grew up in a community that was a wonderful community. I should actually tell you, my father is Greek from Greece.

My mom is German from Germany. They came over here in the 50s. They met in an English class in New York City. And my English class, I don't mean like Chaucer. I'm talking about, you know, like learn how to speak English. And if you're raised Greek and German, as I was, that means by definition you will be raised Greek. In case you're scoring it home, Greeks know, they can't help it. They know that they're the best ethnicity. And what are they supposed to do, apologize for it? They know they're better.

Like they invented democracy and their language is better and honorably. And look, the Bible, you know, the New Testament's written in Greek. God knows it's the best time. Why would he use Greek? Why? Because it's the Greeks know this. And that's bad that they know that. Because they walk around like, yeah, yeah, we were there first.

We are the ones that, you know, we... So I grew up in that world, okay? Now, the problem, of course, is that if you're raised in the Greek community, you know, you go to the Greek church, I went to the Greek parochial school when I was in Queens, New York. And the problem was my mother was German. so I was not 100% Greek, and you could feel that, right? Like you're hanging out with the Greeks, and they speak Greek at home. We spoke English at home because, you know, my mother didn't speak Greek, my father didn't speak

German, we spoke English. So I always felt a little bit like I didn't belong that much, and I was trying to be more Greek to fit in, right? So when you are growing up in the Greek community, it's actually it's hilarious when you think, this was not some horribly scarring thing, okay? I don't want to pretend like my book is about, you know, I defeated this horrible wound, that I was, you know, my father beat me down. No, I was blessed by my mother and father.

But it is true that I felt like a fish out of water, and that's why the title of the book is Fish Out of Water, because you kind of feel like you're not, you don't really belong quite. You're trying to get in, you're trying to get in. But I had that experience throughout my life. I'll mention a couple of the cases, but the Lord in the dream that I talk about at the end of the book reveals himself to me in a way

where the term fish out of water has a different meaning, and it was so mind-blowing. I don't think I'm going to really tell that to you, but it's just, it was a dream where you just know this is God. This was God. He knows me. He knows the details of my life. He knows the Greek part. He knows the German part. He knows each of us in a way that we don't know ourselves. Even our spouses and our parents that, you know, they know us sometimes better than we know ourselves. But God knows us infinitely better than that. And that's an important thought for us just to think for a second that that is true. Sometimes we think theoretically it's true, but it's actually true. And the Lord in this dream, which is at the end of my book, he reveals this to me.

And that's what blew my mind. It was like, boom, over. I have no doubt. This is God. He's real. But growing up, I grew up in the Greek Orthodox Church, and they didn't really give you the gospel, right? They kind of assumed you're Greek, you're Christian, boom, that's it. You're not a Turk.

You're not a Muslim. You're not an atheist. Come on. You're Greek. That's it. Now, there's a lot of people around the world like that. In my Bonhofer book I read about the Germans, they felt the same thing. We're Lutherans.

We invented Protestantism. Come on. All you have to do is be German. You're Lutheran. You're done. You don't need to do anything about it. It's all about grace, right? Not exactly.

In some ways it is. So the point is that there are a lot of people that they carry around this ethnic pride, and they're proud, but it can go too far. And so growing up in the Greek church, it was like, we're Greek. we're, that's it, we're done. Like, you know, you got baptized, didn't you? You go to church? All right, what do you want? When I was going up in school and when you'd bump into kind of, you know, the born-again world,

and this is why I tell this in the story, because I want people who are not where I am in terms of faith to identify with the character who was me that I remember, you know, looking at the born-again believers who are always talking about Jesus and be like, what is their problem? I go to church. Like, I don't have to talk about it. Do I? Yes. You should talk about it.

If you really believe it, it's not a bad idea to talk about it once in a while. It's only about eternity, so, you know. But there are a lot of people like that. You may know some of them. You probably have relatives and neighbors like that. Like they believe, they say they believe, but come on, they don't want to be a fanatic like you. And that's a realistic point of view. Sometimes we can be very unattractive in how we live or how we portray things.

And there are plenty Christians. We've all met them, and I'm sure some of you, if you're one of them, Would you raise your hand? I'm just curious. Would you... But there are Christians that they're about their Christianity the way my father and others are about being Greek. Like it's their hobby. They, you know, they're wearing first century sandals

because that's more biblical. You know, they're living in that. And you're like, can we like just watch the football game and you could shut up and, like, we could focus on the play? Or do we have to talk about how Jesus related to that play? Some people get really religious. And that's not the same as, living at your faith. We have to understand there's a line. There's a time to be talking about

Jesus. And then there's another time when you can kind of assume Jesus, right? Like if you look at a tree, you know that that tree was invented by the Lord. He invented that tree. The atoms in that tree, the molecules in that tree, are doing what they're doing because the Lord is there. Okay? The electrons would not be going around the nuclei unless the Lord were making that. happened. The Lord is involved in every aspect of that tree, but you don't say, see that, see that, that's a Christian tree. You don't say that. When you eat an apple, the apple was God's idea, right? You eat an apple, you don't go, it's a Christian apple, just so you know. He's got saved in the 60s. You don't get into that because we sometimes, we get very religious, and we forget,

I actually, Chuck Coleson, who was my hero, and then I worked for him, and then he became my friend. And he always, like in every speech, would quote, Abraham Kuiper. He was this Dutch theologian and statesman. And Abraham Kuiper said famously, and I only know this because Chuck said at every speech, he said, Kuiper said that there is not one square inch over all creation over which Jesus Christ, who is sovereign, does not say mine. Every part of creation belongs to the Lord, not just the world. religious part. We've got to think about that. Everything belongs to him. Every good thing. All love

is God's love. If it's real love, it's God's love, even if you don't know it. So I say that because I think about there are many people that we know, and there's a lot of God in their lives, even if they don't acknowledge it, even if they don't know it, and we can still acknowledge it as God. I mean, if you see a husband who is faithful to his wife and is showing her that kind of love, even if he doesn't know it, that's from God. If you see a woman who is beautiful, you say, that beauty is created by God. Whatever you see that is good is from the Lord. And we as the church need to reclaim those things.

And stop saying like, everything's of the devil except my religious corner. That's not true. That's a lie of the devil, actually. Everything that is good is of God. So the love that my parents had for me growing up, they weren't talking about Jesus. They weren't reading the Bible. but I now know, looking back, wow, did God use them to bless me? He did that.

He loved me through them in a way that was beautiful. But they didn't say, like, yeah, it's agape love. Let me tell you about the New Testament, Agape. They didn't know that. Actually, that's not true. My father knows those Greek words, and he'll beat you over the head because it's Greek. Not because it's a New Testament. It's Greek.

Agape, agape. So, but the point is that I look. back and I realized that a big part of my life had to do with the way my parents raised me who were not officially evangelicals, right? But what did they know? They knew, for example, good and evil, because they grew up in Europe, which was they lived through the hell of the war. They had seen evil. They had seen communism. They raised me to hate communism or socialism, whatever it's called. They knew it was evil. And consequently, they knew that freedom and America, is wonderful. They knew that.

Now, what's interesting is a lot of the American kids I grew up with, they had American parents, they didn't really get that. They were kind of like what? Well, it's the big deal. This is like normal. But if you're coming from the other side, you guys, this is not normal. This is far from normal. This freedom you have here? This opportunity?

No, no. There's a reason people are fighting to come here because this is very abnormal. So my mom and dad came here from dark places. Germany, my mother came from not only was war-torn Germany, but after the war, where she lost her father at age 10, she lost her father. My father lost his father at age 10. They had suffered through these things. And my mother, after the war, Germany, the part of Germany where she lived. My family still lives there who was taken over by the Soviets. It became East Germany, became communist. My mother had this propaganda in her high school classes. She said, I couldn't take it. It was horrible. None of us had lived through that. So in America, we think, well, how bad could socialism be? How bad could socialism be? How bad could government control be? It could be very evil. And we need to know that. And that's why we need to speak up very loudly and very courageously now.

But I didn't really need to know that. My parents, they just taught me that because they lived it. I know there's, you know, some people probably from Cuba here. I mean, if you are from those places, you don't need any tutorial on the evil. of communism or socialism or government control, you know that it is the enemy of freedom and it will crush you. It has no respect for you as a human being. Communism is also by definition atheism, okay? And when I say atheism, I'm not trying to put down atheists

because it's a free country. You don't have to believe in God, but I want to tell you, atheist mentality says there's no God. Therefore, what is God? There's no God. There's just power. There's not even good in New York. but she could not wrong.

Freedom is a gift from God. He wants us to be free so we can serve him, so we can preach the gospel, so we can make a lot of money and give money to people who are suffering and struggling. God wants to use us and wants to bless us so we can be a blessing. And that's part of what God has done in America. So that doesn't mean America is, you know, by definition, great because we're great. We're sinners just like everybody else. but the ideas that we've been bequeathed by God through the founders have enabled us

to send the gospel around the world, to send missionaries to send medicine, to send all kinds of stuff around the world. Now, why would we even do that? Because we have an idea as a nation that the idea of John Winthrop, who was preaching in, was it 1630 when he gave the sermon, he's quoting Jesus. He says, we want this concept. in Massachusetts Bay Colony, to be a shining city on a hill.

He's quoting Jesus. He's saying, I want people to look at what we have and to say, I want that. Who are those people? How do they get that? What is that? Jesus has to be a shining city on a hill. Winthrop preaches that sermon, and that has gone through our history. Sometimes people don't get it, but generally we have gotten that idea.

Many presidents have quoted that idea, that we are to be a shining city on a hill. Think about it. We're supposed to exist for others. That's like the church. It's a biblical value, right? That we want people to look at what we have, at our greatness, at our freedom, at our wealth, at all these things and say, I want that. Can I get that? Can I go there? Can we bring some of that over here?

That's the idea. We're blessed to be a blessing. And just as the church, I don't know who said it, the famous idea that the church is the only organization of the world that is primarily in existence for those who are not yet members, right? That's evangelism. We're here to reach. beyond ourselves. And America in many ways has been blessed with that. That's why the Statue of Liberty is facing outward. Think about it. There's the shining torch of liberty facing outward and saying, bring me, you're tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We've said to the

world, if we can accommodate you, we want you to come. We want you to take our ideas and make them your own ideas. We want you to come here and you can become as American as George Washington. It's not about the color of your skin. It's not about your ethnicity. It's not about anything. You buy into this set of ideas. So my mother and father, with their accents, my dad's 93, praise the Lord. My mom, a little younger. She doesn't give her out of her age, but I think she's in her 50s. My parents, you know, and I didn't realize a lot of this until later in life. But my parents, by buying into these ideas and they learn the English language

and they wanted to be Americans that became citizens and so on and so forth and you realize that they are as American as George Washington that's what America is it's not about ethnicity of course not, it's about ideas and these ideas

are beautiful ideas and these kinds of ideas are not normal for the world I want to say that again So growing up, I learned that. My father and mother, I just would hear the stories of their growing up what they went through. And I knew, like, I don't know why I get to be in America, but I am blessed. And so many of my friends, they kind of didn't get that.

Now, when I went to Yale University, in case you didn't know, Yale was woke in 1982, okay? These places have led the world in these bad ideas. And so people say, you're proud you went to Yale? absolutely not. It's like Paul, you know, talking about his credentials and he says these things are dung. These things are horrible,

but if I can use these credentials to impress some people, so maybe they'll listen to what I have to say, that's great. But I know that those things are nothing, that Jesus is everything and these things are nothing.

And in the case of Yale, way less than nothing. Because places like that, now I didn't say, so I grew up in this environment, in a middle America, went to Danbury, Connecticut, moved from New York to Danbury. And by the time I went to Yale,

I had no idea what I'm walking into. I'm walking into a buzzsaw, right? Because I'm raised, I'm working class kid. My parents worked hard. Love America, appreciate things, work hard, you know. And suddenly I'm among the cultural elites, okay, who already have a globalist, socialist mentality operating, right? So I get to Yale and I notice there's real anti-Americanism here.

I've never encountered that. This was during Reagan. And I thought, this is interesting. This is what the movers and the shakers. I grew up in a working class home. This is what they think. And that's where it starts. And that's always where it started.

But it was really far along in the 80s already at Yale. So being somebody who didn't really know what he believed because I didn't really get the gospel and the Bible and all that stuff in church very much, it was a cultural experience. by the time I get to this place, I don't know what's coming. And it really affected me. And I'm sure some of you have kids that you understand what I'm talking about, right? You get affected by your environment, and I was one of them. I just, I didn't become like, you know, a Marxist, but I definitely lost whatever my parents had given me and kind of drifted over into believing that, you know, America is maybe a force for. bad probably and probably communism is not really a bad idea who knows and definitely Christians

are you know crazy and they think they got the they've cornered the market on truth and they're obnoxious and whatever you know all of those ideas that are among elite culture right now which is why you hear it so much because those are the talking heads on TV and in different places that that is the culture elite and they really believe these things and so I'm among these people without really knowing exactly what I believe do I believe Christians? Christianity? I don't know. Did Jesus really rise from the dead? I don't know. I never thought about that. Is the Bible really true? What about this and this and this and this? I gosh, I don't know. Well, by the time I graduated, you can guess, I was extremely confused. I was not, you know, a Marxist atheist, but neither was I any kind of serious Christian with American values. I understood the idea. I was just kind of like everybody else. Now, here's where the problem comes in. At a place like Yale, they've already determined that if you, I mean, the title of the book is Fish Out of Water or Search for the Meaning of Life, right? If you're searching for the meaning of life,

right? The first question is, is there such a thing, right? Is there such a thing? I remember being there and even wondering, is there even such a thing as truth? Is there even such a thing as God? Now, if you know there's God, you can say, God, reveal yourself to me, whatever, but what if you don't even know if there is a God? What if you've been told that people who believe that stuff, they're kind of crazy and they pretend that they know, but you can't know. If you're intellectually honest, there's no way you can know. Well, that was the milieu. And so I didn't even know what I was thinking. And what I didn't know that I know now is that, you know, in the olden days, a long time ago, education was answering the big questions. Who am I? Who is God? What is my

purpose on this earth? What is the meaning of life? The answers are in the scripture. and people would teach those things in various ways. But when you get to the 20th century and then you get to 1980, the elites had already figured it all out. There is no meaning of life. There is no God. It's very depressing, so we're not going to talk about it. So what would they do?

They kind of say, well, first of all, the background is we evolve. Now we know that we evolved out of the primordial soup. There's no God. So we just kind of came into being through random mutations and accidents, and we just got here by accident. Survival of the fittest, your life really has no intrinsic value. You're just an accident.

And you're really no different than a bug or a stone or whatever. You just happen to be here. So life has no meaning. And if life has no meaning, there's no God, it really means that there's no such thing as good or evil. These are constructs that we have come up with. And if that's true, and life literally has no meaning and there's no good and evil and there's no God and we're alone in the universe,

who can really face how bleak that is? It's beyond horrifying. But almost no one ever has the courage to face that. So they talk about it a little bit, but they cannot face the bleakness of life. They can't. They're cowards in a way. Now, there are few people who would, people like Camus or Sart. Not that I'm really familiar with their writings,

but the point is they were not happy about their atheism. They felt like this is not good. What do we do about this, right? Woody Allen is actually like that. I've had a privilege. Actually, not a privilege of meeting him a few times. But there are some people that they've kind of figured this out. They believe what I just said.

And they're looking at it straight. And they're not happy. The only thing they think about is, well, I'm glad I'm not like you crazy people who believe there is a meaning in life because you're really nuts. But they're not happy about it. They know that it's like a nightmare.

and they've got to just deal with it. Well, that's not a bad place to be because most of us aren't like that. So when I was at Yale, they didn't say you evolved out of a primordial soup and there's nothing, right? And then, so that's Darwin. Then Freud says, oh, and by the way,

the sexual impulse, that's behind everything because the species just wants to continue the species. So all those feelings you have, like your love for your spouse or whatever, that's just chemicals that through evolution is kind of steering you around so that you can continue the species. There's no such thing as love.

That's just that transcendent idea. That's just chemicals. This is so depressing. Nobody can face it. So at a place like you, what they do, they say, listen, we're not going to get into that meaning of life stuff. That's the crazy people talk about that, the Christians or whatever. Here's what we're going to talk about.

Just get a good job. Don't think about those big questions because they're depressing. Don't think, put it out of your mind, get a good job, work hard and distract yourself. On the weekends, there's like sports. and alcohol, and in a few decades it'll be over. So just don't think about it. Right?

They don't say that, but that's the clear message. Here's where I went wrong. I was an English major. I wanted to be a writer, so obviously I did not get a good job. I graduated, and it was not good. I was floundering and floating and drifting. Plenty time to think about the meaning of life.

Very bad. And if you graduate college and you float and drift, it's like a Euclidean theorem. There is no way out of this. This has to happen. You will move back in with your parents. That's it. There's no escape.

You float, you drift out of college. You will move back in with your parents. There's no other way. Now, that wouldn't be so bad. But if your parents are working class European immigrants, now you've got a problem. Because they're not going to say, Eric, oh, our son, he's a writer. He's finding himself.

No, no. They're going to be like, Eric, you need to find yourself a job. You need to get out of here. And by the way, you know, my parents are thinking, we worked menial jobs, horrible jobs, two jobs, to send you to Yale. We didn't even get to go to college or live in America. What is happening here?

So in that year, living with my parents, have I told you that it's no fun? Did I tell you that? Did I mention that? Yeah, they'll eat you alive. Like, you'd be like, I don't know what to do with my life. Well, like, we know what to do with your life. We're going to, you know, we're going to hook you up.

I've got a friend who's a painter. He needs some help. And when we're lost, God, he might be doing something behind the scenes because he loves us, right? The Lord kind of maneuvered me away from my Yale friends to move in with my parents to have time to think and have time to be miserable enough that I would be open to thinking maybe he's the solution. Have you ever been that miserable that you're open to Jesus? That is terrible. You don't want to go there.

Thank you.