The Eric Metaxas Show - Spencer Klavan (continued)

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Spencer Klavan continues sharing ideas from his important new book, "How to Save the West"; plus, Ask Metaxas returns!

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. We'll get you from point A to point B. But if you're looking for point C, well, buddy, you're on your own. But if you'll wait right here in just about two minutes, the bus to point C will be coming right by.

And now here's your... Ralph Cramden of the Airways, Eric Mattaxas! Oh, no. Alvin, guess what? No, no, what? Thursday, hour two, we interrupt our regular programming to bring you a segment of Ask Metaxus.

We'll be back with Spencer Claven in a moment, but this is the time of the week where we do ask Metaxus, people write in questions, and we do our best to answer them. What do we got? Okay, here's question number one. Is Socrates in the city now accepting tax deductible donations? We sent out some emails on that.

So I understand why we're getting the question because not everybody is signed up for my emails at at ercommettaxas.com. But yes, we are now accepting tax deductible donations. And we do need help to do Socrates in the city. So please, if you're interested, go to SokhtiastinCity.com. We're doing this in partnership with Capstone Legacy. You can check it out, socratesn't city.com. We have an event coming up March 30th.

I know I've mentioned that. Very excited about that. We will also live stream it. But tax deductible donations are now possible. It's been a few years, but they are now possible again at socratesandcity.com. Thank you. Thank you. Question number two.

Hi, Eric. I've read a number of your books and love your writing. I recently caught an episode of your show which featured the amazing story of Amanda Grace. I was struck with the idea that her testimony and a lengthy discussion of the prophetic would be a great book project for you. What do you think? You know what I think? I've had it with you, people. It's kind of funny.

That's what I think. Like, people keep coming up to me. Like, I've got a great idea for you, how to spend the next two years of your life. And I think, man, I wish I had the time. and the energy because, yeah, Amanda Grace's story is beautiful, but you certainly don't need me to write it. My goodness, I'm sure Amanda Grace can write it or can work with somebody to write it if she can't write herself, but she's really smart. I think she needs to write it. And, but yeah, I think people always have ideas. I laugh now because I think people always have this

idea about, you know, or it's even like when somebody gives me a book and says, read this book. Yeah, I wrote this book, read this book. I'm thinking, so you're telling me, like, take nine hours of your time or 20 hours of your time to read this book. I don't have that time. Albin, you know this better than anybody. And it's funny when somebody tells you to write a book or I've got to write a book, you're talking about months and months and months. So normally, the answer has to be no, but these are good ideas. I just wish I could do them. So I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm going to write a book on the life of Amanda Grace. But it's a nice idea.

Okay. Number three here is there a church that you can recommend that is alive and kicking in Sarasota. Our home church for 30 years was Grace Church in St. Louis. Please help. I'm not familiar with the Sarasota area, so the short answer is no. But we are compiling slowly a list of churches that we would recommend. Grace Church in St. Louis. If you know anybody in the St. Louis area, Grace Church in St. Louis.

If you know anybody in the Toledo, Ohio area, many of you know, I spoke at a church there very recently. There are churches that are really standing heroically. And then there are many churches that are doing just the opposite. And we need to talk about them, too. I saw a horrible clip. The new head of the church, Rick Warren used to be, obviously, for many, many years, decades, the head of Saddleback. But the new head of Saddleback, there's a quote that I want a quote, a clip I watched on Twitter. And it was just diversity, garbage, confused.

I thought, you've got to be kidding me. You've got to be kidding me. People are looking for clarity and truth. So most churches are avoidable at this point. but the question is which ones should we try to send people to? That's a big question. So we're working on that. Okay. Here's another church question. What is your opinion of doing church online instead of in person? A relative of mine and his wife regularly watch a church across the country online multiple times a week instead of attending and being involved in a local church. They also tithe there. If they live near this church, they would attend and have visited once when they were on vacation in the area.

He says that he just does not like the churches in his area and feels that the preaching and worship of this church is exactly what he's been looking for for a long time. I can't help but think this is not quite how God intended for believers to participate. What are your thoughts, Eric? Well, I have genuinely mixed thoughts on this one, because I think if you have this idea that, oh, I'm supposed to go to church on Sunday morning, I used to just say that. Now I think to myself, okay, the church you're going to, are they just playing church? Are they standing heroically and being the church? So as much as I think that being in person with other believers is vital, I can understand why people are watching, you name it. Greg Locke, Jack Hibbs, Rob McCoy, why are they tuned in to those churches?

There's a reason for that. reason is technology has made it possible to have that kind of virtual experience that wasn't possible even a few years ago. But I understand it. This is the free market. People are saying that I want to give my money to a church that is speaking truth. And I wish I could be there. Now, what I would say, actually, is people ought to start home churches. And if you're going to watch stuff, watch it on a big video screen, work it out so that you can have the experience of being with other believers, because that is not unimportant. But I totally understand why people are saying, why am I going to my useless church down the street? They refuse to address the issues that need to be

addressed today by the church. The church ought to, again, this is what I write about in my book, letter to the American church, and it's what I talk about everywhere I go. So I would not denounce people for doing church online. I can understand. that in the crazy times in which we live, that a lot of people are finding solace and support by following teachers and preachers that are speaking the truth heroically. And they are, yes, they're making a sacrifice because it's better to be around people. But this has become a real problem. There are people moving to places to actually be part of churches.

you know, whether it's Cornerstone in Leesburg, Virginia, or there are people saying, I just want to be near a church where I'm hearing the truth. And I want to say, I get that. And part of me is really glad for that, because you've got to be able to get fed the truth during these crazy times. And if it means that whatever church you were going to, if it's not doing that,

I don't know that people should not be supporting that church with their tides. People not, I mean, again, let me be clear, unless God has called you to be an influence in that church to change that church. But for many people, they have tried and they've said that church is not interested in what I have to say. So I always say, yes, if it's possible, you can get fed online, but try to influence your local church. Try to be there. Try to get the pastor to see where you're coming from. I always say, give a copy of my book and say, what do you think of this? What do you make of this?

But if they're not interested in that, I would, you know, shake the dust off my feet and move on. I really think, Albin, that this is a big question. And I just want to be clear that there are more and more churches out there. The one that I was just mentioning a few minutes ago, Grace Church in St. Louis, Brave Church in Englewood, Colorado. These are the kinds of churches that if I had to, to, to, to, to, pick, I would say better that you are watching them and tithing to them or or helping them, then that you should just say, well, I should just be involved in a local church.

I'm, you know, I think that that is an issue. Being someplace in person is is not nothing. But I'd rather have people creating a home church with like-minded believers than be wasting their time in God's money in a church where they're getting nothing. lucky folks for you, we're out of time. And we're going to return to our regular programming right after this break. Don't go away. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis and they have no clue how to fix it.

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Call the toll free number 844-863 Hope 844-8663 Hope. 844-863 Hope. God bless you. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Spencer, Clavin, who I think could be related to Andrew Claven, but we don't know. We're looking into it. You know, it's funny, Spencer, you of course sound a lot like your father. You both have these deep, sonorous voices, and you're both kind of bright, not that bright, but pretty bright. And you write about important things.

And this book, it doesn't get more important. How to Save the West, Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crisis. So let's just continue from where you were a moment ago. I don't remember the actual words you use, but the general idea. Yeah, we were talking about unconscious worship, worshipping without knowing you're worshipping, becoming basically a pagan without realizing. As a side note, I'll say that the voice is the only family heirloom. Every man in my family has the exact same voice.

My grandfather was a radio announcer. And I guess we're just carrying it on. But, you know, so, I mean, this crisis of religion, which is what it is, this, you know, worshipping without knowing you're worshipping. It leads me in the book to simply suggest that Christians, when we do evangelism, we tend, I think, to get very excited about the opportunities that are there, and they are thick on the ground because people are so hungry, so bereft of meeting, of knowledge, we leap into, here's the Nicene Creed, and let's swallow every point, step by

step, right? Let's do the whole thing right now. Now, I would love if everybody believe the Nicene Creed tomorrow, that would be great. But I actually don't think it's the most effective mode of waking people up to this. I think the first step here is just to get people to realize that they are worshipping and then to ask, given that everybody worships, what's worthy of worship? What can I worship that won't enslave me? Because that's what the CDC and the WF and Fauci will do if you put your worship in them, what can I worship that instead will set me free? And the tradition, especially of Jerusalem, here we really are leaning on the scriptures and on the church fathers.

They have lots to say about this that can really help. There's no getting around it. There's no kind of like secularization of this message that I'm putting in the book. Because as we've been discussing, I don't even really think there is such a thing as secularization at all. Well, you're right. It's kind of like when I was writing my book, as atheism dead, I thought to myself, atheism itself is so preposterous. It becomes shocking to me how preposterous it is. It's just absurd. Now, if you say, I'm confused, I'm an agnostic. I have questions. That's another story. But this idea that you can bleach reality, bleach God and spirit out of reality and have anything left is insane. I think it's demonstrably insane. And if we're honest, we deal with that.

And you're saying this, you know, everybody worships something. So folks, like, let's talk about that. Why do you desire ritual? Why do you desire that what are those things? And so I know that's part of what you're getting at in here. But still, you titled the book, How to Save the West. So obviously you believe there is a path forward. If we just can talk to people about this, to get people to be honest.

Some people don't want to be honest about this. Some people really like their scientism and whatever it is that they're clinging to. They're kind of angry about the notion that the West should be saved or could be saved. But you obviously believe it could, and that's what you're writing about. Yeah, I mean, you probably know this better than anybody. Right. Some people are very resistant to this, and I'm sure you've encountered that far more than And I feel like I've encountered it a lot.

So there's definitely that up against us. But really this question, can it be done? Can the West be saved? Kind of leads us into the last section of the book. And that's the crisis of the regime. Because this is the most political one. And politics is about what do we do? How does this, you know, very high abstraction?

How does this translate into reality through what the Greeks might have called phrenesis, right? Practical wisdom. How do you take that abstract truth and translated into action? The way I approach this in the book is to think about the theory of the regime in classical political philosophy as it kind of developed sort of after really in reaction to the Persian war, to the shock of winning the battle against Circusi's armies that set the Athenians off on this quest to understand why is it as Herodotus says that, you know, nations rise and fall, nations that were great in my youth have become small, that were small and made them become great. They examined this question from every possible angle, not just from the historical angle, which they basically were inventing as they went along, but also from the artistic angle in Greek tragedy, Escalis Persians raises exactly these issues, and from the philosophical angle in

texts like Aristotle's politics. And that ends you up with this theory, this idea, which comes to be called anisychosis, the cycle of regimes, which goes basically something like this. there's three forms of rule basically that are fundamental. One is monarchy. One is aristocracy and one is ruled by the many by the people, what we would call democracy. And governments like angels fall farthest when they are noblest. And so when these governments kind of become corrupt, the best kinds become worst in their worst forms.

So this fact, the fact that human beings are flawed, that even when you develop a good system, bad people can kind of destroy it, tear it apart. This provides the motion, the catalyst for the cycle. It's called hubris in this Greek idea, this pride that leads kings to become tyrants, to overtax, to rule for their own benefit. And when tyranny sets in, then you often get an uprising of the aristocracy. The nobles, as they did, for instance, under King John, you know, they rise up and make their demands. If you get an aristocracy that then decays into an oligarchy, cronyism and self-dealing, this is fertile ground for people's uprising for democracy, which then decays into one of my favorite fancy Greek words, Oclocracy, rule by the mob, mob rule or rule by Oclos. All of this is to say, the system that we're living in that our founders established out of recognition of these facts is called the Republic. and it is a perpetual motion machine.

It's designed to put these three things together, to balance their strengths and weaknesses against one another. That's why we talk at all about checks and balances. And that's why the Republic is such a sturdy model, or was such a sturdy model, for instance, in Rome for many hundreds of years. There is a catch, obviously. Nothing human can just live forever. And the thing that brings republics down is class warfare,

is dissension among different groups, especially economic groups, but also social groups, which helps you to understand, I think, helps us as conservatives to understand why we're so irate about identity politics. Why it is that this kind of buzzword is actually more than a buzzword. It's poison. It's poison to our system of government. It's poison to our way of life. It destroys everything good about the way we relate to one another. What's the antidote to this? In Aristotle, the kind of central observation that I draw on in the book is that forming a regime is an act, before it's an act of lawmaking, before it's an act of citizen making or even of education. It's an act of love.

The Greek word philia, political friendship, which is kind of the relationship that obtains between citizens when they do life together in neighborhoods, face-to-face, real-life, person-to-person interaction. That's the thing that holds a republic together. It's the antidote to identity politics. And it's where we discover and enact all of the big ideas that you and I have been talking about here. The recovery of neighbors, neighborhood, neighborliness. It sounds simple because it is, but the simplest things are the profoundest.

And I do believe that in that real life space, in that relationship between human beings, fellow citizens, there is hope. It's not that we're guaranteed to do well. But we're dealing with the tradition, the West, which has survived. many worse crises than ours that has survived, even the rising and falling of great nations. The timescale we're living on, the tradition we're dealing with is so enormous that we have no room or right to despair. What we have is a job, and that's to carry the tradition forward. Well, that is a fact.

Whether we go down with the ship, despair is not an option. Despair is a sin, hopelessness, inaction. Talking to Spencer Claven, the book, How to Save the West, Ancient Wisdom. for five modern crises. Folks, before I forget, we'll be back with plenty more Spencer Claven. Very exciting talking to him. And tomorrow, we're doing a special Socrates in the city version of the program. We're going to air my conversation with James Tour.

We dissecting the city event in Houston back in October. Amazing event. You know, the same material I cover in my book is atheism dead, but to get to talk to the man. So we're going to air that on this program tomorrow. and most important, before I let you go, before we go to the break here, food for the poor, we need you to participate. There are hungry kids in Central America. Food for the poor is a spectacular Christian organization that could take whatever dollars you give them and stretch them so far that it is amazing. $72 given to food for the poor will feed two children,

two nutritious meals a day for one year. That sounds like I made it up. It's true. Food for the poor is amazing. We want you to give to them. We want you to go to metaxisstalk.com. Metaxus, you'll see the banner, and you can give anything you give. You know the drill.

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Again, use code Eric and Save Mypillow.com. Folks, welcome back. Final segment with Spencer Claven, whose new book is How to Save the West, Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crises. Spencer, you're talking about a lot. It's just wonderful stuff, and I am champing at the bit to read the book

because this is deep. There is a lot here. You just mentioned the idea that we had the enemy of, I guess you said, democracy and republics devolve into class warfare. That's the end of that, that's where it goes. That's the trouble. And the idea that, I mean, that's what Marxism is and cultural Marxism. It's about dividing people up and setting them against each other.

And we know that it's pernicious. and that it's happening now. But it's fascinating to me that somehow, you know, more than 2,000 years before Karl Marx was born, the ancient Greeks understood this concept. So which of them talked about this or how did they see it? Because they wouldn't frame it the way Marx or Gramsci would frame it. But how did they frame it? Yeah.

This is something that I don't think is really well. appreciated that you're right, that obviously the words, words like communism weren't abroad in land in the 5th century BC. But they did talk about these questions in a manner that's really recognizable, very close to the kind of stuff you're raising. And the word that was tossed around in antiquity was coinonia, sharing things in common, having things together. And famously, infamously in his republic, Plato has Socrates proposed coinonia sharing of

wives and of property among the elite that everybody should have everything in common and then they'll all be friends and they'll all get along. And it's unclear to what extent this is a tongue-in-cheek proposition. And that's how Davos was started. Yeah, that's right. Just kidding. Go ahead. No, but that's kind of, that's, that's interesting that. So you're saying Plato throws this out there as a concept and where does it go? Yeah, it's Davos's a shareholder stakeholder theory, right? is that if we all have a stake, then we'll manage things better if we do it collectively and through collectivism. Aristotle takes him to task for this and he does so in a revealing way.

He says this kind of coinonia, there is a virtuous kind of coinonia, which we would probably translate as community, right, as getting together. But the reason that communism is not the same thing as community is because, says Aristotle, if you take a little bit of wine, like a drop of wine and you mix it in water, a vat of water, You will not get a vat of wine. What you will get is a vat of very, very, very weak, diluted nothing. You basically still have water. And love is like this.

And so if you dissolve private property, if you share even families in common, you won't end up with a utopia of mutual love. You'll end up with apathy. You'll end up with people who don't actually care. We might call this the tragedy of the commons. You'll end up with the Department of Motor Vehicles in the post office. you precisely exactly that's that of all things it was something that Aristotle would have predicted and and this is kind of how this works this is Aristotle a very effective refutation of of communism I think still today and it helps us to understand for instance why calls for things like

communal child care right let's all share our children together let's abolish the family so often devolve into calls for childlessness let's not have kids at all because it's not worth it why because we're not attached. We're not saying this is mine. You know, there are many, this is my rifle. There are many like it, but this is my own. And dissolving that love is how you weaken the confidence of civilization. Recovering that love by a contrast, thinking at a person to person level in this kind of

non-diluted, concentrated way about our immediate surroundings, our neighborhoods, and then on up through our states into eventually our nation. Okay. So this gets to this concept of how we have. all been taught in recent decades to sneer at the idea of patriotism or any any of the things that are natural, right? I love my family. I love my children. This doesn't mean you can't love other people's children, but there is something baked into this thing we call reality that self, not to be really selfish, but the idea. But the idea, but the idea,

that there is something, it can become greed, it can become a bad thing, but there is a good thing there that I love my village, my tribe, I love my family, I love my country. Coming back, final segment, talking to Spencer Claven, the book, How to Save the West, Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crises. Folks, before I forget, we'll be back with plenty more Spencer Claven. Very exciting talking to him. And tomorrow, we're doing a special Socrates, the city version of the program where we're going to air my conversation with James Tour. We dissecting the city event in Houston back in October. Amazing event.

You know, the same material I cover in my book is atheism dead, but to get to talk to the man. So we're going to air that on this program tomorrow. And most important, before I let you go, before we go to the break here, food for the poor. We need you to participate. There are hungry kids in Central. America. Food for the poor is a spectacular Christian organization that could take whatever dollars you give them and stretch them so far that it is amazing. $72 given to food for the poor will feed two children, two nutritious meals a day for one year. That sounds like I made it up.

It's true. Food for the poor is amazing. We want you to give to them. We want you to go to Metaxis. Talk.com. Metaxas. You'll see the banner, and you can give anything you give. You know the drill. Anything you give. Metaxistalk.com. But we do need your help.

You can also text Eric to 911-999, but we need your help. Thank you. And he said, get rhythm. When you get the blues, come on, get rhythm. When you get the blues, a jumpy rhythm makes you feel so fine. It'll shake all your trouble from your worried. Get a rhythm. In our lifetime's been really warned against where that can go.

But we haven't been warned against where the lack of it can go. And that's kind of what we're talking about. When you talk about globalism or you talk about communism or you talk about having things in common, who is going to clean the bathroom if it's everybody's job? It's no one's job. So we will have filthy bathrooms. Who will care if I don't own this? If this is owned by the state, why?

Why will I take pains to, you know, cut the shrubbery or to weed the garden? Why? This is basic stuff. So what we're talking about, of course, is reality. And that's what I love is that you can never get away from reality. The ancient Greeks were dealing with the same reality. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to create some kind of a government or a society?

And I know that that's what you're doing in your book is you're taking us back to that. to that wisdom. So that's the last part of your book you talk about, you call them regimes. Now, why do you pick that term? Why not, I don't know, societies or empires or what do you mean by that? I think regime is the closest word in English to what in Greek you would call a polytea. And this, of course, comes from polis, the city.

And your politea is kind of the essence of cityness. It's the essence of living communally together, sharing life. We also talk in English about the small sea constitution as compared to the big sea, which is like just the laws. When we talk about love attachments of the kind that you're describing, civic friendship, Burke talks about little platoons. All of this stuff is built. The sinews of it are the regime. They are the kind of daily practice of living together, marrying and being given in marriage, going to the ballgame. These kind of basic ideas fighting over the parent-teacher association.

the school boards, this stuff really matters. It's not just a kind of, you know, a side hustle or an interest of a thing of no interest. It's the core of what we do when we do regimes. Well, it's interesting you mention the little platoons because it's, no matter where you look, these things come up over and over and you see people or societies get them wrong and how it goes wrong. And there is something in reality in the world in which we live because we're human beings. We discover these things over and over and over again and we can drift away and forget about them and hopefully rediscover them. And that's obviously where we are now and why you have written your book with the title, How to Save the West,

because we have, to some extent, very willfully pushed away from a lot of this wisdom that we have had for so many centuries. and we're seeing the fruit of that right now. And we've just touched on that. Just a couple of minutes left. What else can we say that we haven't yet touched on? I'd like to touch, if I may, on that question of despair just once more. Because you're right, the things look really bleak from this perspective. And it's very easy when you start talking in the way we've been talking to feel hopelessness.

as if we've traveled so far from the sources of our ancestral wisdom, we'll never find our way back. But the thing, the beautiful thing about talking in terms of the West, the Western tradition, is that you're actually not talking about something that only works or is useful when it goes well or it's in fashion. You're talking about something that contains strength for living through periods of tremendous sorrow. The Babylonian exile comes immediately to mind. so does the fall of the Roman Republic. And at that fall, when Marcus Cicero, the great Republican statesman, was being hounded out of public life, he said, you know, he had to retreat into the Republic of letters and just write and think about these things because they couldn't exist in the real world in practice. And what's funny about that is in the immediate term, he was right and he was a failure.

The new regime was coming. He was one of its first victims. and none of us would wish Cicero's fate on ourselves or our friends. But given that the world is what it is and Cicero did suffer that fate, it pays to remember that hundreds and hundreds of years later in the 1770s enter a man named John Adams, Kermudgeon, who has spent his whole life pouring over the speeches of none other than Marcus Cicero. Some from his boyhood. He's been thinking about what this guy wrote and said. Gets Up gives the great speech.

in defense of our declaration of independence, sets this country on the road to its genesis. When you're dealing with that kind of time scale, you just simply do not know where you stand in history. You don't know what future generations will pick up the flame that you carry. So all you know is that carrying it will not be in vain. Well said, and I will simply say, since we're out of time, that people like you give me hope.

It's one of the reasons I do this program, is that just having these conversations with folks like you is delightful and does give us hope for the journey. So Spencer Claven, thank you for everything. Thank you for being my guest. And thank you, of course, for the book, How to Save the West. The feeling is entirely mutual, Eric. Thanks so much for having me on. It's been a total pleasure.

Folks, before I forget, we'll be back with plenty more Spencer Claven. Very exciting talking to him. And tomorrow, we're doing a special Socrates in the city version of the program where we're going to air my conversation with James Tour. We did a succorke in the city event in Houston back in October. Amazing event. You know, the same material I cover in my book is atheism dead, but to get to talk to the man. So we're going to air that on this program tomorrow. And most important, before I let you go, before we go to the break here, food for the poor.

we need you to participate. There are hungry kids in Central America. Food for the Poor is a spectacular Christian organization that could take whatever dollars you give them and stretch them so far that it is amazing. $72 given to food for the poor will feed two children, two nutritious meals a day for one year. That sounds like I made it up. It's true. Food for the Poor is amazing. We want you to give to them. We want you to go to metaxisotestalks.com.

Metaxus, you'll see the banner and you can give anything you give. You know the drill. Anything you give. Metaxistalk.com. But we do need your help. You can also text Eric to 911-999, but we need your help. Thank you. Legacy precious metals has a revolutionary new online platform that allows you to invest in real gold and silver online. In a few easy steps, you can open an account online, select your medals of choice, and choose to have them stored in a vault or ship to your door. You have access to a dashboard where you can track your portfolio growth in real time anytime. You'll see transparent pricing on each coin and bar. This puts you in complete control of your money. Gold hedges against inflation and against the volatile stock market. A true diversified portfolio isn't just more stocks and bonds,

but different asset classes. This new platform allows you to make investments in gold and silver, no matter how small or large with a few clicks, visit legacy PM Investments.com to get started. You're going to love this free new tool they've added. LegacyPMinvestments.com. Legacy PM Investments.com. Check it out. Our love is a light. Hey there, folks. Hope you enjoying today's crazy special show. I've been in North Carolina. Albin, that's often where I am.

If you ever want to know, I'm in North Carolina. I spoke last night. I spoke on my book, is atheism dead. Normally I'm speaking on a letter to the American church, wherever I go, I'm speaking a letter to the American church. Last night I spoke on, is atheism dead? And I got two things to say. Several people came up to me in the book signing line and said,

thank you for putting this in your newsletter. Because I get your newsletter, I'm here tonight. I drove like from an hour or two away. Amazing. So if you're not signed up for my newsletter at ericmetaxis.com, I'm traveling all around the country. We try to keep you updated. Socrates in the city events, wherever I'm going to be, please sign up for my newsletter.

And speaking of his atheism dead, because I don't get to talk about that as often. So last night I'm talking about the archaeology chapters in there. And I keep saying to the crowds that I'm talking about, I can't wait to go back to Israel. Writing this book just made me flip out over wanting to get back to actually see what I'm writing about in the book, as atheism dead. So I've mentioned a few times I'm going to Israel next year at least once, at least once. I may have to go back twice because we want to film a TV streaming TV series based on his atheism dead, in which case I'm going to the sites and film it and whatever.

But anyway, if you're interested in going to Israel and why wouldn't you be, of all the places you could visit where Jesus walked, that would be the one. You can go to a website. It's holyland.israel. We recommend that you go to holyland. com Israel. It will reinvigorate your faith. I think most of us need that in more ways than one.

But that's something you can do that would be fun and beautiful. Another thing you can do that would be fun and beautiful is you can help us out in our campaign with food for the poor. there are starving kids who depend genuinely on your generosity. We do a campaign once a year. And this is sort of a big deal because most of us, even going through hard times, are relatively blessed. There are kids and families in Central America. That's where Food for the Poor is focused on right now.

In Central America, that they're starving. We do this campaign because we believe it is our job to do what we can for folks who are suffering like this. And it's just an unmitigated good. It's a beautiful thing. The only question is how, where, that's why we teed it up for you. Food for the Poor, there's reputable as a guest, an amazing Christian organization. There's a number of ways you can give. And I hope everyone listening will feel compelled to do something.

thing, a little thing, whatever you can do. A few dollars helps. If you can give $72, that feeds two children for an entire year. This is how Food for the Poor leverages our funds. That's why I'm pushing everyone to give something because they leverage it so far that it's amazing. I want to hear Food for the Poor's CEO, Ed Rainey. We have a clip. Let's play that. We work in 20 countries in the Caribbean and Latin America and people who have no other resources except the incredible generosity of typically Americans who, you know, time and time again, you know, really just give from the bottom of their heart and through their love for the neighbor. And so this is a faith-based organization. And through our church networks and all these

countries, we're able to get the aid to where it needs to be. Okay. So you can text the word Eric to 911. text the word Eric to 91199. The easiest thing is go to metaxistalk.com and click on the banner. We genuinely need your help. We need your help. Please go to metaxistalk.com. Click on the banner. We're behind.

If you want to call, you can call 844-863 Hope. 844-863 Hope. We need your help. 844-863 Hope. God bless you as you give. Thank you.