← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 473: Why the Imagination Still Matters | Andrew Klavan, The Kingdom of Cain
01:01:35
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- [00:01]
Andrew Klavan
If you're a Christian, imagine what life would be like if you didn't have access to or had never even seen a Bible in your own language. For many people around the world, that is their reality. CREW has missionaries in almost every country and they're seeing people's lives changed. Thousands of men, women and children are coming to faith, but simply don't have access to a Bible of their own. In parts of Africa, CREW missionaries have to share one Bible between several people. In Europe, teens are asking for more Bibles than we can provide. In enclosed nations, this good news is spreading at an astonishing rate, but they need more physical Bibles to keep up with the growth. People are searching for truth and finding answers in God's word. That's why I love partnering with Crew. With just $24 a month, you can give three people the gift of God's word every month. And as a thank you, crew will provide 12 meals to those in need. And you'll receive a free copy of my book until the street lights come on. To give, text our H o u r to 71326 or visit give. Org our h o u r that's h o u r to 71326 message and data rates may apply US addresses only. Your monthly gift can truly make a massive impact.
- [01:16]
Jenny Urich
Are you ready?
- [01:17]
Andrew Klavan
Yes, I am.
- [01:18]
Jenny Urich
Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Urich.
- [01:22]
Andrew Klavan
I almost will get emotional.
- [01:24]
Jenny Urich
Andrew Clavin is here. Welcome.
- [01:28]
Andrew Klavan
Thank you, Jenny. It's nice to meet you.
- [01:30]
Jenny Urich
It is so nice to meet you. I want to try and say I'm a super fan, but I actually, I have three of the books.
- [01:35]
Andrew Klavan
Oh, wow.
- [01:36]
Jenny Urich
And I know you've written so many books, but I've read the Great Good Thing, When Christmas Comes, the Truth and Beauty, some of your more recent ones. And then I've just gotten to read the Kingdom of Cain, which is a book about murder and the imagination.
- [01:49]
Andrew Klavan
Yes, it is.
- [01:51]
Jenny Urich
I have to tell you a story before we kick it off. I had a situation like, a couple years back where I just was really down and things online often get really messy. And there was like, this mob that had come after me about pretty much just that. We're a Christian family. But it was like you've had this person on your podcast and that person has all once talked to that person and that person believes this. It was the chain of things.
- [02:14]
Andrew Klavan
Yeah.
- [02:15]
Jenny Urich
And I was really discouraged, like, almost to the point of quitting. And I was packing up some orders. We have a small shop that we operate out of our home. And I was listening to one of your podcasts, and you started to talk about how everybody reaps what they sow. Like, no one is out of that, like, spiritual law, basically. And it really changed my life. I would say that I'm here because of that.
- [02:37]
Andrew Klavan
Wow. Wow. That's something that really is moving to me. I thank you for telling me that. You know, it's a. I've been just thinking about this because I talk to young people a lot, and it's hard to tell them that sometimes the choices that you make that seem to set you back are the choices that make you. It's very difficult because everybody wants to succeed. Everybody wants that next. You know, those likes and the hits and the money and all that stuff. And having worked in. In a lot of businesses where people sacrifice their souls for success, I have looked into those people's eyes, and I can tell you you do not want those eyes. Do the thing that you know is right, and you will get there on your own. You know, it's. And it's. And the thing about that thing you're saying about people online, it is a graceless place. It is the opposite. It's the opposite of heaven. It's a place where nobody gets forgiven for anything. And anything you do, any little thing you do that disagrees with everybody makes you evil. It is just absurd. And it's no way to live, and it's no way to think. And I'm glad. I'm glad if I said something that pulled you out of that.
- [03:39]
Jenny Urich
Yeah. I mean, I attribute sitting here right now. I mean, obviously your podcast is way bigger, but we've Got a top 10 parenting podcast in the country. And I would attribute that to you, to that moment when I felt like folding my cards. And I was listening to your show, and it was just a reminder that no one is outside of the consequences of what they do. And when you're reminded of that, you also are more compassionate. Because I'm like, well, I've done things, you know, that type of thing. So I just wanted to start off by saying I'm a huge fan and a huge thank you to what you do and to what you put out in the world. You give, like, a different way of looking at things. And for me, I'm like, it gives me a lot to think about and to ponder. I love your show so much. It's called the Andrew Clavin Show. You have written so many books, and your books have been made into films starring Clint Eastwood. I mean, you have Done so much. When it came through, it was like, andrew Clavin is a possibility. I was like, is it the Andrew Clavin?
- [04:30]
Andrew Klavan
And it was even yesterday.
- [04:32]
Jenny Urich
I was like, is this the right. Is it gonna be like the Andrew Clavin? And it is.
- [04:37]
Andrew Klavan
Well, I can guarantee I'm an Andrew.
- [04:39]
Jenny Urich
Clavin, but in my mind, the Andrew Cleveland. So I've read several of your books. They are so inspiring. I wanted to kick off just because this is the 1000 Hours Outside podcast about your childhood, because you had this childhood and you wrote so beautifully about it. In the great good thing about playing outdoors when you were a kid. It's a great good thing. It says, we all played at being heroes. Cowboys, soldiers, Superman, knights in armor, secret gang of good guy thieves. We acted out of courage. We did duels with sticks. We donned plastic army helmets and toy storm or cowboy hats, dodging each other in and out among the tree trunks. We were heroes even in our quiet hours. You wrote you love and you still love games and puzzles. Do you think you will be the same person that you are today with all the creativity and all the imagination and all of these books that you have written, without a childhood like that?
- [05:28]
Andrew Klavan
Oh, wow. No, I mean, one of the things that always struck me is, is that, you know, there's a. A poem that says, in dreams begin responsibilities. I'm sorry. It's the name of a short story by a poet. In dreams begin responsibility. And because I had so many daydreams, and because I played out those daydreams in my play with my friends, I held myself to account for acts of cowardice or for acts that were ignoble. And of course, as you say in your life, especially when you're a kid and you don't know any better, you do a lot of ignoble things, and you do a lot of things that you wish you hadn't done later on. But I always held myself to account for that. And because of that, I think that really shaped me and made me into a kind of person that I could at least live with. Even though we all know we're so short of the target we want to hit, at least I think those dreams and those games actually made me aspire to something inside myself that was better than I was. And I'm really grateful for having that experience because I think that the imagination has become muted by so much stuff pouring into it and not enough time to exercise it out in the world. And I think it really is shaping. Yeah.
- [06:39]
Jenny Urich
You wrote if there had been Video games. When I was a child, I would have grown up without ever seeing the light of day.
- [06:46]
Andrew Klavan
Yes. Because I love games. I still love. I still. I do these puzzles. My wife looks at me like, what are you doing? But I still love things like that. And I'll still play an occasional video game. I don't have a lot of time. But when I first saw a video game is Pong. When I first saw Po, I thought it was like that stone in 2001 that comes down. All the monkeys worship it. I just thought, this is the greatest thing ever. But by then, I was already, you know, an adult, a young adult. And so I'm really happy that those things didn't exist when I was a kid, because I don't know how I would have kept from getting addicted to them. You know, the games that I played were baseball and touch football and things that you played outdoors and as I said, playing knights and soldiers in the open air. And I don't know if I would have done that if I'd had the ability to just play them online, just moving my fingers around.
- [07:33]
Jenny Urich
Because you also talked about being in your imagination, daydreaming, that this was a huge part of your childhood, that you were even. Even maybe to the extreme. You're like, I was daydreaming, and maybe daydreaming too much. But you would talk about how you would hope that when you walk to school, you would be by yourself. Like, you're trying to get the timing right. So you're like, I don't want to walk with that person so that I can do my daydreams. But I would imagine that most kids these days are not daydreaming hardly at all, because when they walk to school, they're on their phones, or when they're on the bus, they're on their phones. And I know you've got grandkids. This is a tricky time to raise kids. And I was very inspired reading about your childhood. What advice would you give to a mom or to a dad raising kids today about the importance of maybe having some more of that space so that kids can daydream it and have an imagination and play?
- [08:20]
Andrew Klavan
Well, I'll tell you, I was just recently sitting on a plane, and the guy in front of me, and he was not a kid. He was a grown man, was going through his. Whatever it was, social media and looking at pictures for the plane ride was like two hours long, and all he did was look at pictures of dogs and animals doing strange things and pretty girls in skimpy Outfits. And I just thought, wow, this is actually like being dead, you know, I mean, it's like I would rather sit and stare into space than look at these absolutely meaningless images for hour after hour. And so the first thing I would say, and I think this is becoming kind of common knowledge, is I think, you know, you have to keep your kids off those machines. You have got to be there for that. You know, people always say that kids get lost in video games. I played video games with my son and we played for a half hour every day sitting shoulder to shoulder, talking to each other. And then we stopped. You know, I mean, that was the way it worked. And I think you've got to keep control of those machines, even when they start telling you that they are being, you know, excluded in schools and all that. And you've got to. You are the bulwark against the peer group that is going to suck them into these soul killing machines. And, you know, I think they're wonderful. I think it's wonderful that we have this technology, but if we're not in charge of the technology and the technology is in charge of us, will be destroyed. And that is that simple. You know, you just. It just is a choice. And you got to make that choice for your kids until they learn to make it for themselves.
- [09:41]
Jenny Urich
Let me hit one more thing on the outdoors before we move on. It was so cool to read. Like, this is your faith memoir.
- [09:47]
Andrew Klavan
Yes.
- [09:47]
Jenny Urich
The great good thing is your faith memoir. And then this new book is about your faith and how you were able to find God in the literature of darkness. The book about murder and the imagination, which is such a great way to word it. But your faith memoir includes this time of outdoors, and it even included a mystic fondness for trees. So here you are in your faith memoir, but you're talking about the maple tree that you had in your backyard, and you would talk about the apple tree that you would climb and just hang out in there for hours. Do you still have a mystic fondness for trees?
- [10:16]
Andrew Klavan
Oh, I do. I've spent a lot of my time in the woods, and which is interesting because I have no sense of direction, so I get lost very easily. And I've learned to keep track of myself in the forest. I've been in the lost in the forest at night, and I love the forest and I don't know why. I've just always felt at home in the woods and interesting. And I talk about this in my memoir. One of the things I've always loved is looking up through branches at the sky. And just yesterday, Jenny, I was reading a book in which the image of branches up against the sky was used as a metaphor for particularity in oneness. So the fact that we're all individuals and yet we're all part of this greater being, this greater creation, and I thought, maybe that's what it is. I've just always loved the patterns that branches make against the sky. And I can still do it today, just sit and stare at trees. And I just. I don't. I really can't explain why I feel so close to home when I'm in the woods. I think it's probably because I just haven't evolved into a fully human state. But. But there it is.
- [11:16]
Jenny Urich
I loved reading about it. And you talk about beauty, and I think there's so much beauty in nature. So part of your whole faith journey. So my. We're a Jewish family, a Christian Jewish family, and my mom came to faith when she was just at the end of high school. So it was really cool to read about your path to faith, your journey to faith, which happened in your late 40s. You already said your wife is an atheist, and you're agnostic. And you have these different things that you grew up with. Like, your mom believed this, and your dad believed that. It's all these different things. And it was so interesting because it was books and, like, education and these different philosophers, and you're reading all these different things that fed into your faith journey. And that was so incredible because for your childhood, you were like, a faker basically, right? Like, you're in school, but you're. You're daydreaming. So you spent a very long time faking it. But then at some point, you had a shift into, like, no, this could really educate me. And you really got into the books. Can you talk about that?
- [12:12]
Andrew Klavan
Yeah. No, I. I was a con man. I. I mean, I had this talent for writing, and I could write my way out of almost anything. I mean, I remember writing in college, writing an essay on a poem that I didn't even know whether it was by a William Blake who was both a poem and a visual artist. I didn't know whether it was a picture or a poem I was writing about, and I had to just bluff my way through, and I got a B minus on it, which for me was a tremendous triumph. But, yeah, I got through most of school not without reading anything, because I've enjoyed reading, and I wanted to read the books I wanted to read. I just didn't want to read what they were assigning to me. But when I was in university, which is something I hated school and I was in university, and I bought all the books, and I never read them, and I never did my homework, but I bought the books. And then slowly I began to read some of them. And I found books that I really loved. And I especially loved the Romantic poets, which is what my book, the Truth and Beauty is about. And there were certain novelists who I'd been told were too difficult for me to understand. I thought, no, I get this completely. And I got out of school and I realized that I had wasted my time there. I mean, I had spent it doing other things that might have been fun. And there were. That was my misspent youth and all that. But I really did not know the things that I wanted to know. I mean, I've always been a kind of a completist. And as a writer, I feel you should really know the literature. You should really know what literature has shaped you and formed you. And so I stacked up all these books that I had bought in college and never wrote read. And I just started to go through them. And as I read them, you know, I think it took me about 15 years. Because, of course, as I would read one, I would think, oh, this book is based on another book. And then I would go out and buy that book and read it. And I just was reading this kind of network, a kind of honeycomb of books getting bigger and bigger. And I remember at the age of about close to 40, I remember walking out of a pharmacy in London and just for some reason, suddenly thinking, you know what? I have an education now. I now know things. And I can speak with a kind of authority about certain subjects. Literature and the history of literature and the history of thought. And I can actually start to say things that before I would never have made bold to say. And I now understand what traditions I'm writing in. And when I make a reference, I kind of know not just the next thing over, but what that refers to and so on. And that was a very liberating experience because up until that time, I always felt a little bit like a fake. I mean, I made a pledge when I got out of college. I will never pretend to read something I haven't read ever again. Never, ever. If I haven't read it, I'll just say I haven't read it. And that made me want to read even more because I never wanted to be in a position where someone would say, have you read this? And I have to say, I've never heard of that, you know, so I've become kind of a completist about that. And it really transformed my life in such a great way, especially in regards to my work, because it also centered me on the thing that mattered to me, which is I've always thought of my job as to tell the truth beautifully. That's my job. And there are moments in your life when somebody offers you money to lie. I mean, when you do what I do, they offer you money to do something garbagey or dishonest. And sometimes that's fine. You don't want to. You don't want to mind writing some kind of thing that's just dopey entertainment. I like adopey entertainment as well as the next guy. But you don't want to lie and you don't want to make things bad and you don't want to make things trashy just to get attention. And because I had those examples, I think that really helped me kind of center myself on what I was doing. I mean, to this day, I love to read. I'm a very poor reader, very slow reader. I do everything but move my lips when I read. It's work for me, but I just. I love it. And it's one of the best parts of my day that I always put aside time to do that.
- [15:50]
Jenny Urich
Wow. People will be so. If they haven't read your stuff yet, they'll be so inspired to read more because all of the books they talk about, all the books that have inspired you and informed you, and so I just love that. But I got chills in the part where you wrote in your early 40s, you felt like you finally earned the right to an opinion against all, all odds. I had managed to get an education. That part gave me chills. And you go through all of these different books. And so in the Kingdom of Cain, there is just this foundational literature that changed you, and it changed your view on the world and it changed your view on faith. Can you talk about how so many of these stories have a gospel theme to them?
- [16:26]
Andrew Klavan
Yeah. Well, I will say two things. I mean, one thing is talking about William Blake, the great mystic poet. He said the Bible is the great code of art. And that is certainly in the West. That is literally true. You almost cannot understand any book book being written after the resurrection of Christ without reference to the gospel. But I will go further than that. And this is something that I've been working out. And this is what I want to write my next book about, that Art, Creating Art, which. And I Believe literature is an art, is an exchange of spirit. It's the movement of the spirit through the human person. Any writer who is honest with you, who is a writer, who's a real writer and is honest with you, will tell you you don't really create what you create. It kind of passes through you. And that means that it is an exchange with the spirit and an expression of the spirit through you as it is molded through your personal existence. I don't believe you can even understand literature without thinking about God. And this is one of the most fascinating things, because if you like me, if you read a lot of criticism and a lot of people writing about it, for the last hundred years, maybe critics have been trying to understand Shakespeare and Dickens and all these people without really making reference to God. One of the greatest Shakespeare experts in our country, guy named Steven Greenblatt, is an absolute atheist who occasionally tries to say things about Shakespeare, whom he knows better than I do, and I love Shakespeare, but he knows him so well. But he'll say something and I'll think, that's just not what Shakespeare was thinking. You can see if you follow his work closely, what Shakespeare is doing is he's seeing the world through a Christian lens. And you can't really understand him without knowing that. And I don't know what. Nobody knows what Shakespeare believed, but I think that you can't understand his work until you start to understand the deeper meanings of Christianity. And the reason I think this is true is because I don't believe in God because I think it makes you a good person. I don't believe in God because I think it makes you happy. I don't believe in God for any reason. There's one reason I believe in God. It's the same reason I believe in gravity, because I believe it's there. And I think that if you live in a world that is not the world, you're not going to be happy. You know, you can't see. You can't see gravity. But if you live as if there's no gravity, you're not going to be that happy. And I think the same thing is true of God. Therefore, when you read a book, it's not that it's preaching at you. It's simply showing you one person's experience of the world as the spirit comes through him. And I think that the more of those experiences you collect, the bigger your vision is and the more of creation you have inside you. And I think that's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
- [18:58]
Jenny Urich
Wow. So you read the Bible many Many.
- [19:01]
Andrew Klavan
Times, yes, and every day.
- [19:03]
Jenny Urich
But when you first read it. Yeah, it was for the sake of becoming a better writer. You wrote. I had no religious motives in reading the New Testament. I just wanted to be a better writer. Christian symbolism was everywhere in the writing that you admired and you had to hide it from your dad.
- [19:18]
Andrew Klavan
Like a sad but funny story is that, you know, I loved tough guy novels when I was a kid and I think I was looking for sort of models of manhood. And all of the books had kind of Arthurian themes. They all had themes of questing and of, you know, finding the, the Holy Grail and all this stuff. And so I started to think, well, what is King Arthur about? And so I started to read the Arthurian myths and I love those. And all of them, of course, are centered around Christianity. They're very Christian stories. And so I thought, well, you know, I ought to read some of this Christianity stuff because I was a Jew in a Jewish household and we didn't have a New Testament. So I went out and bought a New Testament and I'm 15 years old and I closed the door and I, you know, to read. And I open up to Luke because it had the Christmas story in it and I knew that obviously the Christmas story. And so I'm lying there reading the Gospel According to Luke. And my father who had. We had a kind of difficult relationship and he had a sort of hostility toward me and didn't like it that I did things on my own and was off, had my own opinions and all this stuff. He barged in on me and found me reading the gospel according to St. Luke. And the thing that makes this funny is that of course I'm a 15 year old boy. He could have walked in on me reading a lot worse than that. He could have walked in me reading all kinds of pornography which would not have disturbed him as much as finding me reading the book of what he considered to be the enemy because of the long terrible history of European Christian antisemitism. And so a lot of Jews of his age just looked on Christians as the enemy because of the history of anti Semitism in the church in Europe. And he let go on me. He started screaming at me, like his nose an inch from my nose, screaming at me about how if I ever thought of converting, he would disown me, he would cut me out of his will and all this stuff. I was going like, what on earth is this? You know, so it was kind of hilarious. But I was always a very stubborn guy and it was not going to stop me from doing what I was doing, which was educating myself and what, what I found to be a kind of core to all the literature I loved. And so my relationship to the gospels for most of my life, certainly all of my young life, was strictly literary. It was that somehow what was in this book was affecting every reader that I loved. And these were, you know, I just, just like I would go to a play and a guy would die with his arms flung open and you would realize, oh, he's a Christ figure for some reason. And that tells you something about this play. And like all of that stuff, I just wanted to know it. I just wanted to understand it. And that's kind of what drew me in in the first place.
- [21:53]
Jenny Urich
And it was a Thomas Nelson Bible, which is so cool because you, then you end up becoming a writer. With Thomas Nelson I'm like, what a thing.
- [22:00]
Andrew Klavan
What?
- [22:00]
Jenny Urich
God is so cool like that. You know those little things that come back around?
- [22:04]
Andrew Klavan
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Jenny Urich
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Andrew Klavan
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- [25:58]
Jenny Urich
So in talking about this new book, the Kingdom of Cain, you're talking about more of this literature that you've read and you wrote about crime and punishment. How crime and punishment changed Your life, you wrote, such an absolute moral order implied the reality of God. It confirmed the truth of the cross of Christ. Once I accepted the axiom of morality, there was no way around the existence of God. Can you elaborate on that?
- [26:22]
Andrew Klavan
Yeah, I mean, when I was in university, now it's 100 years ago, but when I was in. In college, it was the first. The first wave of that moral relativism was sort of seeping up through the cracks, and people were telling you there was no moral reality. It was just, you know, as Hamlet at one point says, nothing's either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. And then there are still many people who believe this, that moral reality is a fiction that we just make up among ourselves. I was talking to Jonathan Haidt, the famous evolutionary psychologist, and he was basically saying that to me. And I said, come on, do you really believe that? And he sort of said he did, but I could tell he doesn't in his heart, you know, I said, if you landed on a planet that was all Nazis and there was nobody there who wasn't a Nazi, the Nazis would still be wrong, you know. And I think that what happened when I read Crime and Punishment the first time, I was 19 years old. And this is Dostoevsky's famous novel about a guy who decides that he's superior to other people, and therefore he can commit a murder, and somehow he won't be touched by the moral consequences of that. And in this murder, he sets out to kill a pawnbroker woman who he's in debt to, but her mentally disabled sister is there, and he has to kill her too, as a witness. And in this scene, which is one of the most pitiful scenes in all of literature, I read that I'm 19 years old, and I thought, there is no world in which this is right. There is no world in which this is forgivable, in which it's understandable, in which there's an excuse for it. And that's why I'm sure Dostoevsky created it. There is no world in which this is okay. And then after that, I was now kind of shielded from that moral relativism that was becoming the popular philosophical default. And so as I was writing my early novels, they were always about, how do you know what's real and what's not real? How do you know? How can you ever tell? And they always had no answer to them. They kind of went in circles. And it was only when I stopped and thought, look, this is what I believe. I clearly believe that there is A good and a bad. After that, reason simply took me to God. And reason took me to God actually, at a fairly young age, around 30. But I was so unhappy in my early 30s. In my late 20s, I really had a complete breakdown. I was so unhappy that I was too proud to believe in God because I thought, well, if you believe in God now, it's just because it's a crutch. It's just because you're unhappy. So it took me a long time to accept my reasoning, even though at some point I realized that if you believe in morality, you have to believe in a moral order. If there's a moral order, then there is a mind that is moral. You know, the trees aren't moral. Wind isn't moral. They do bad and good things, but not in the same way as somebody who chooses to do those things. And so it's inescapable. I believe it's inescapable. Once you believe that morality is real and not a fiction that we share, and everybody secretly believes that, whether they've talked themselves out of it or not. Once you believe that, you realize there is a God. And then the wonderful thing about that is life makes more sense. You no longer have to concoct these elaborate circular theories to get you out of the conclusion, you know, and so.
- [29:26]
Jenny Urich
Murder is clearly wrong. Everybody knows that it's clearly wrong. And you go through this book, it was so interesting. That's what I talk about. Like with your podcast, you can sit in life, your whole life, and listen to these different sermons and things, and you get things out of them. But then you come at things from such a different perspective, and you talk about how, you know, you're a guy who writes about murders, and you spend hours of your time, you know, talking about and writing about and thinking about murders, and people have even given you a hard time for that, that people say, well, how can you call yourself a Christian and write about such horrible things? Or you make your living exploiting the worst of what's in human nature. But the point is, is that these are proof of God. The fact that these murders are so wrong, and everybody knows that they're so wrong. This is that proof of morality like you're talking about. So you choose these three murders to talk about. And then you go, I mean, I was like, this is so brilliant. I never heard of. I mean, I'd heard of some of them, but then even, like all of the literature and movies and art that have been created inspired by these different kind of crazy murders, and you Know what that means and how they tie together. Was it hard to pick the ones you chose?
- [30:36]
Andrew Klavan
You know, they came to me by themselves, but once they came to me, I realized that they reflected on a lot of things that are, are very much in the news today. I mean, things like gender confusion and disbelief. Unbelief, you know, what are the ramifications of not believing? Because one of the things about any philosophy is it has ramifications. And if you live long enough, those ramifications will become manifest in your life. You know, so if you don't believe in God, that will lead you to certain places, and if you do, that will lead you to other places, because philosophies have a logic to them. And so the murders that I ended up choosing were murders. For instance, there was a murderer named la Senaire in 19th century France who basically said, society is evil and therefore I'm striking back against the injustices of the world by committing murder. Well, this is a very famous way of thinking, not just for murderers, but also for radical political people who think, oh yes, the world is so bad that I can kill the people that I disagree with. And it is a, an actual reaction to disbelief, to unbelief, that you now acquire the right to kill and other people's reality also ceases to be manifest to you. One of the things I point out very early in the book because I wanted to make sure when I said that murder is evil, that I had a definition of what that meant to me. And I point out that if you were going to have a moral code, you have to believe two things. One is you have to believe that everybody else's reality is just, inner reality is just as real to them as it is to you. And the second thing you have to believe is that there is a God who cares about both of you equally, you know, who thinks that both of you are precious. And the reason you have to believe in that is if you don't believe in that, who cares whether the other person's reality is real or not? You know, I mean, this is another kind of station. On my way to conversion was reading the evil philosopher, the Marquis de Sade, whom we get the word sadism from. And he basically believed that no, there is no God. And therefore if it gives you pleasure to hurt somebody else, why not, why not do it? That's what nature does. Nature destroys things. Why shouldn't you destroy things? And then the stronger person becomes even stronger and the weaker person is extinguished and, and his books are pornography, sadistic pornography interspersed with philosophy. And when I was an atheist, I went through a period when I was an atheist, and I read him and I thought, this is the only atheist I've ever read whose logic holds together. He is right. This is the right way to go if you don't believe in God. And I thought, that's hell. You know, that's obviously hell to live like that. And it convinced me not to be an atheist. I didn't become a believer at that point, but it convinced me. No, I have to think this through. I have to stop this nonsense, because I do not believe that that is a good thing. I think that that is a hellish thing. So each murder reveals that in a different way. It reveals it in a new way. And so the murders that I pick reveal it in ways that are very much present with us now. And I think this sort of envy and superiority, because one of the murders is the killing of Abel by Cain. And that, you know, expresses a kind of envy and a. A desire for being at the other person's expense that I think is also very much with us today. The idea that the only way to make me rich is for you to be poor and for me to crush you on my way to the top and all that stuff. So each one of them is very much. Could be a headline today, even though it took place at another time.
- [34:11]
Jenny Urich
One of the things that you talked about was other people's reality. And I had never heard of this film. So you're talking about books, but you're also talking about film. All of these works of art. I never heard of this. Called the Zone of Interest, which is such a great title.
- [34:24]
Andrew Klavan
Yes.
- [34:25]
Jenny Urich
So in talking about other people's reality, can you talk about that film? I thought it was interesting because you said we're all kind of doing this.
- [34:31]
Andrew Klavan
Yes, well, it's very recent. It's only a year or two old. It's a German film. It's based on a novel by Martin Amos, was a very fine novelist who only recently died. It's based on a true story about a man and his family who ran a Nazi death camp and had a house that was right next door. And so they're living this lovely family life, or apparently, lovely family.
- [34:56]
Jenny Urich
It's like a parsonage.
- [34:58]
Andrew Klavan
Yes, it's like. Exactly, exactly. And in the background in the film, you never see what's going on, but you hear the gunshots and the screams and the pleading and the death. You hear it in the very distance and you see how it seeps into the family life. And slowly corrupts their lives. And the evil is not escapable. It's all there. And the thing that's kind of occurred to me, and it's never occurred to me quite this way before, but I mean, it's something I've been aware of, is that we all kind of live like that. We live in an evil world. We live in a world of injustice. We live in a world that is full of terrible things and terrible people doing terrible things and even people that we love who do terrible things and believe terrible things things. And we don't spend our time shaking our fist at it or denying ourselves the pleasure of life. And I don't believe we're meant to. I believe we're meant to live and to take pleasure in life and to take pleasure in one another, but in doing that, we understand that we live in a sinful world. And I think, you know, I think every honest Christian comes to this moment when he starts to understand that. And one of the things I've noticed about Christians is that's a crisis in their lives that they sometimes don't see coming. They become bitter. They begin to believe that these are the end of days, which maybe they are, but we have no way of knowing. And they begin to believe that they have to express their guilt all the time for all the things that are going on. But that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says rejoice. And it doesn't say rejoice when everything's okay. It doesn't say rejoice when all the evil is gone. It says, rejoice evermore. Rejoice now. Rejoice. And so in order to do that, you have to find the beauty in life. And one of the things that I think I'm writing about in the Kingdom of Cain is the way artists take this evil. And by a spiritual impulse, even if they don't recognize it, they transform it into something beautiful, which is a work of art. So there could be no evil, no evil uglier than the murder in Crime and Punishment. But Crime and Punishment is a beautiful book. Macbeth is a great play about evil, but it's such a beautiful play, and it will change your life if you let it. And art transforms everything it touches into a kind of beauty. And so that's kind of what the book is about, how we can live, learn from these works of art, to transform the world that we see into beauty with inside us, so that we have something to share with the person next to us that is also beautiful and given to rejoicing Right.
- [37:19]
Jenny Urich
So you talk about these murders, and then the counterpoint are these three passages. That's such a great title of a book, the three passages that have deepened your relationship with Jesus Christ. You're talking about communion and different things. Art and beauty. So one of the parts you talked about in Crime and Punishment that really stuck out to me was when you were talking about there was, like, a kid and there was a wolf nearby, and he was terrified. And you wrote the father, Surf, was working at the plow. So this kid is alone, but only the workers out. You know, out in the field. And the worker stops his work and goes to comfort him. And the wording says the encounter was isolated and perhaps only God saw. And I felt like you have written about moments like that in your other books. Like, you talk about it just reminded me of, like, the importance of small. Those little, small things. So you talked about a story, your own story, where you had. You were out of, like, down and out, basically. You're out of town, you can't get home. You don't have money for a bus, and you get really sick. Like, you're so sick. And some random person on a bus gives you aspirins. That's like the man that was in the field. And I felt like, the same way about. And I don't know if it's gonna be. Is it Mina?
- [38:31]
Andrew Klavan
Minna. Mina.
- [38:31]
Jenny Urich
Mina is Minna. But also, there's a Maya. It was, like, the coolest thing. So I read this book, When Christmas Comes. I read this first.
- [38:41]
Andrew Klavan
Yes.
- [38:41]
Jenny Urich
Before I read the Great Good Thing. And then I picked up the Great Good Thing, and I was like, I already know all of these characters. It was a really, really cool order to read those books. But you talked about Minna and how she just was living her ordinary life. But you came over Christmas and how much that really impacted you. So can you talk about that? It's like a theme of how we may never know, like, the small, small things that we do.
- [39:08]
Andrew Klavan
Yeah. Yeah.
- [39:09]
Jenny Urich
Just helping a child who's scared of a wolf or giving somebody some aspirin that you don't know on a bus ride, how that can really impact another person and we don't even know.
- [39:16]
Andrew Klavan
You know, I'm not very good at quoting things because my memory is not that. Not that it was never that good. And. But there is a line in Wordsworth about the best things in your life are these unrecognized little acts of kindness. And I know in my. In my life that the things that I look Back on fondest of the times when somebody has said to me, wow, you really did something for me. And I did. And I was like, I did. I don't remember doing that, but I just did. And that's a wonderful thing. When I wrote my memoir, the Great Good Thing, I have to tell you, I had this tremendously weird and almost embarrassing experience that when I wrote the situation of my life down, when I wrote the story of my life down, Christ appeared in human form again and again, speaking to me through people. And so often their names were things like Christina or Christus or Krista. And it was so obvious. I was sitting there going like, how did I not see this? How did, how did I live my life and not see that Christ was speaking to me through human beings all the time? And at moments when had he appeared himself, I would not have believed him because I was not a non believer. But when he spoke to me through someone that I could. Would refer to like a baseball player or, or a friend or a nurse who came in at the right moment, or this man who sat down next to me on a bus, you know, and just covered me up with my own overcoat and started feeding me aspirin until my fever broke and then got off the bus and disappeared. You know, it's like it was so obvious that, like I said, I was embarrassed that, that it had happened without my knowing. But since I've written that book, I see it all the time. And once you start to see it, you can't unsee it that, that God sends us people who do incredible things even without knowing it, even sometimes for their own good. They, they don't do it because they like you. They do it because they want something from you or something, but. And yet they're being used in that moment. And if you see that, you start to see. The spirit is so active in the world that like I said, it's almost embarrassing that we're blind to it, but apparently that's part of the plan. So I think we have to keep our eyes open. And yeah, so I think that this is something that. I think those little things that you do, especially when nobody's watching, especially when nobody will remember, are the things that come back to you in the same way that the things that keep you up at night are those moments when you fail somebody that you don't show up. And it just seemed in that moment that something else was so important. A dollar bill or an opportunity or something, or just getting some sleep, whatever it is that you missed the opportunity and you try. I find as life goes on, I try harder and harder not to do that.
- [42:07]
Jenny Urich
To talk about, you know, being out in a field and using the phrase, like, maybe only God sees this, which would be the truth, right? This guy on the bus, I mean, who knows? Who knows who he was? Maybe he'll read your book and be like, that was me, or whatever. But it's in a book. Because literally in a book, he had aspirins, and he. And he helped you out and Minna. So you talk about Minna now. This is like. It's in both books. That's what I'm talking about. It was so cool to read the books and the similarities, because you're talking about how you're. You grew up with your mom. She was kind of obsessed with being, like a socialite or she. She was interested in how she appeared. And it's a good mom. You wrote Great mom. But then Minna was someone who came and helped because you had these twin younger brothers. And she comes in your life and she helps. And she was a Christian, and you wrote this. I thought this was such a big thing. So she's just living her everyday life. It wasn't like she was doing anything extraordinary. But she allowed you to come to their house. And you're there sometimes at Christmas, and you're there for the train with the whistle and the smoke, and you're there for the things that they put on the windows and the cooking and the banter and all of these other things that you hadn't been exposed to. But they were very simple things. And you wrote this. When I came to struggle with the idea of being baptized, when I asked myself how Jesus had first entered my consciousness, it was Christmas. I remembered that first Christmas at Minna's house. So you end up getting baptized. You talk about how baptism matters. Here's my question. Do you think that Minna knows or knew? I'm not sure if she's still alive.
- [43:39]
Andrew Klavan
I don't know. She's not. Or if she is. I mean, I lost touch with her because she became incapable of communicating. She got so old. But so I'm sure she's. She's passed on. I. I pray for her every. Every single day. And I believe. I believe she's one of the two people in my life who I absolutely know is with God. And, you know, I talk a lot about motherhood in this feminist age because I feel that it's been degraded. And I feel that feminists. Because feminism isn't feminism, all these things are Political, you know, they just become political. They don't actually become, oh, we want to help women. They're really about a political point of view. And I feel that feminists have taught people to say that they're just a mob. And one of the things I write about, both in the, in the kingdom of Cain and also in the truth and Beauty, is that motherhood is not just a physical act. You know, it's obvious. It's, it is provably now, physically provably a spiritual act of making somebody into an individual. And I don't know of anything more important than this. And my mom was a showed up and she was a nice person. You know, she showed up, she did all the mom things, but she was a very withdrawn person. And so there wasn't a lot of that mom thing that every kid is so hungry for and desperate for. And a lot of that came from Minna, who was a warm, garrulous, absolutely, you know, energized human being who gave me and gives me still a sort of individuality and a sense of being loved. That is how you become a person. You know, I, I, I Some women get so angry at me for this journey. I, I, but so, but then there are others who thank me for it because I see women where I work and in other places and they have a baby and they come back to work like two months later. And I just want to say to him, go home. Like not, not just for your kid, but for you. You know, this is like, I understand and I listen. My wife was a mom, a wonderful mom. And her kids rise up and call her blessed. And we all kind of circle around her like planets around the sun. But I understand. It can be boring, it can be messy, it can be annoying. Children sometimes you want to strangle them. All that stuff is true. And yet I do not know. First of all, I don't know anything that's worth doing that isn't hard. And secondly, I don't know anything that anyone does that has any kind of. It gets even close to being as important as that little action, you know, that action of creating souls.
- [46:18]
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- [50:04]
And I understand we give. You know, I used to make jokes when I worked in Hollywood. I used to say, we pay people in this town a quarter of a million dollars a week to pretend to be police officers who make $60,000 a year. You know, and that, that's the world. That is the world that Jesus was telling us about. It is a world in which we give awards to people who pretend to be other people or who build stuff. And, you know, all that stuff is beautiful. I love that we have technology and we invent stuff, but what on earth is more important than inventing a human being? You know, it's such a spiritual act beyond the, you know, we always think of the pregnancy and all this stuff. And of course that's. That has its own beauty and difficulty, but. But that act of mothering somebody is just a remarkable thing. I was talking recently to a woman I like very much who has many, many children. In the middle of the conversation, the phone rang and it was her, her kid. There's one of her many, many children. And she said to me, oh, excuse me, I have to mother for a minute. And I just thought that is the best excuse for cutting off a conversation I've ever heard. You know, it's like that, that if she said, I have to go earn a dollar, I would have thought, ah, you know, they're talking to me. But I. I really feel when you're talking about Minnow, when you're talking about sort of the b. My mother was like a binary star, that she kind of revolved around my real mother. And somehow from the two of them, I got. Got what I needed. And I think that it is part of God. You know, our stories are not written by ourselves, they're written by God. And part of the way God wrote the story of my life, that. That is very connected to my first introduction to Christ through her. She was a. A Christian in every sense of that word. And I write it in the book about how there was a creepy, to me creepy picture of Jesus over the bed when I stayed over her house. And yet when I woke up in the. In the morning, I thought, it's not that creepy. It actually made me feel kind of safe in the night. And that was a positive thing that I came back to when I found Christ.
- [51:58]
Jenny Urich
In fact, it really is meaningful. I highly recommend reading those two books and reading them together because you just get such a sense of how that warmth and it was just the way she lived. It wasn't anything special.
- [52:08]
Andrew Klavan
Yes, yes.
- [52:09]
Jenny Urich
But how it affected you so much. And you wrote, I don't think it had ever occurred to me that Minna was a Christian. I don't think I would have had any clear conception of what that actually meant. But she was, she was a true Christian. You, later on in the book, you use the phrase a living sermon. I thought, oh, you know, that's how I want. That's what I want. To be remembered as a living servant. You wrote this. And I thought this was so beautiful. God had given me the pieces of the puzzle one by one until I could assemble them myself into the picture of that face. You're talking about the picture of Jesus that had watched over me on my first Christmas Eve. So you just had the time, you had the time to dive into it and to really piece that together. And I found that was really heartwarming and just a beautiful reminder that these small things that you do, you don't know how they're going to affect somebody else. It wasn't anything that was really over the top. And then I was curious. Andrew is interesting to read about. Like your, you talk about your dad and how he was like an anti mentor. I mean, he was kind of, you know, trying to like subvert the things that were going on. He just sort of like had this rub about him and it was. It was hard to get along. And then you, you talked about a lot of things and you were very gracious about it. You were like, you know, he wanted to be this and he and he couldn't be and all of these different things. You talk about your mom, a stone atheist. Her mother was too. And nobody brought any God into your home at all. We didn't say grace before meals. We were not told to pray in times of hardship. I have heard of this. It's some sort of a program where they bring babies into the public schools because no one's empathetic anymore.
- [53:42]
Andrew Klavan
Wow.
- [53:43]
Jenny Urich
So they'll Bring. They'll, like, hire out babies, basically, for nine months, the whole school year, the mom will bring the baby in, and they put. Once a month, they put the baby in the carpet, and the kids have to try and be quiet. Or. What is the. What does it seem like the baby's feeling? And there was a story where one time they lost the baby. So, like, the thing ends like, well, where's the baby? Nobody can find the baby. And there was this, like. It was like middle school, middle school age boy was over in the corner rocking the baby. So they find the boy with the baby. And it was a boy that had gone through just. I mean, at a horrible upbringing, really, really bad situation. And he asked the teacher, he said, if nobody has ever loved you, can you still be a good father?
- [54:25]
Andrew Klavan
Wow.
- [54:26]
Jenny Urich
I was like, that's really deep. And I think that's a really deep question. And I felt like in reading your books, that's sort of what I wondered. It was like, well, where was it? Through the literature? Like, how did you learn to be a good father?
- [54:40]
Andrew Klavan
Well, I think, you know, it is funny. I think, you know, I was loved. I think my father did love me. I think he was like all of us, he was broken inside. And he was a comedian, and all comedians are. You know, he's a professional comedian. All comedians are deeply angry people. I mean, there's not a single one of them who's not. And he had this anger inside him, and it came out in a lot of different ways. But. But I think I was loved and I had that inside me. I. I do remember when my daughter, my first child was born. My great fear, and I think a lot of people have this fear, is that I would. Would not be a better father than my father. And I remember the baby was born, and I held the baby and I thought, no, that's too low a bar. I'll be better than that. I'll be better than that, you know, And I. And I don't know. I think that obviously I did get love, and I did get love from Minna as well as from my parents. And I think because artists, like comedians, like everybody else, they're particular kind of people. And one of the things an artist is, he is an engine of creation and has to protect himself. And I learned very early on that I had to protect who I was and what I did. And I think that gave me a sense, an empathic sense, that I had to make sure, even as I guided my children to let them be who they were. And I think that. That was really helpful because I think a father has a lot of power in a house and should have a lot of power, and he's the head of the household. But at the same time, you want to make sure that the guardrails you're putting on your children are moral guardrails and not personality guardrails. They're not saying, if you're an artist, you don't want to tell them not to be a plumber or not to be a carpenter or whatever they want to be, but you want to make sure that they do that in an honest way. That's what you're there for. So I think that was really helpful to me, in my own sense of the moral order was really helpful to me. And I don't know. I hope I was a good father. You'd have to ask my children, actually. So it's like, that's the thing. They actually get to judge. So we'll find out.
- [56:42]
Jenny Urich
You talk so much in these books about joy. I want people to know that. That, you know, you go, you come at it, you talk about the joy of your joy. I thought this was incredibly compelling. I thought, maybe I want to print this out and put it in my. My fridge. You were talking about your own family and you wrote, it should have been so much fun. We had everything. A roof over our heads and food to eat. An intact family. A father working at a job he enjoyed for good money. A fortunate life. Our house should have been filled with gratitude and charity and rejoicing. Yeah, it was convicting to me. I thought I got. I gotta make sure that we do not miss that. I mean, it really matters. And you talk so much about, like, the brevity of life and, you know, from our first cry to our last one. Life is little more than letting go. A long goodbye and just rejoicing. I'm feeling the joy of my joy. And after you found faith, I mean, everything just looks different to you. These are so good. Of course you know that. Of course you know, but my goodness, I just. I leave feeling so inspired. And it just gives me all of these things to think about. And then it's like an offshoot to all of these other books. In films, I usually let myself get one book based off of. So I don't have too many books. I'll let myself pick one, and I'm gonna read the Silence of the Lambs. I didn't even know that that was a novel. I just knew about the movie.
- [57:58]
Andrew Klavan
It's scary. That's a scary book. I gotta say, it's scary.
- [58:01]
Jenny Urich
Okay.
- [58:01]
Andrew Klavan
Yeah, it's really. I mean, really scary. But it's a very well written thriller. It's probably one of the best thrillers of our lifetime. And, and it's view of. It's really well written about women. And it's also the villain who's. Ha. Can. Hannibal Lecter, who we all know now is a great. Is a great villain, I have to say. And it's. I, I thought. I think it's a great thriller. Very exciting, very compelling.
- [58:26]
Jenny Urich
Yeah, I'm excited to read it. Can I wrap it up here? How can someone be certain about their faith? Or how are you certain about your faith?
- [58:32]
Andrew Klavan
You write this.
- [58:33]
Jenny Urich
This. Did I seriously believe that a carpenter rose from the dead on Easter?
- [58:39]
Andrew Klavan
No. Well, you know, there's that wonderful line in Mark. I think of the. The soldier who says, lord, I believe, help my unbelief, you know, And I think, I think we all feel that way a little bit. I don't think there's anybody who doesn't have doubts. But I think the doubts are part of faith. You know, I think that doubts are the way that. That friction. Everything is created by contraries, you know, and dark doubt creates that friction with your belief that helps you move forward and ask questions. And I don't think God wants you to not ask questions. I think he wants you to. He loves you. He wants you to be just. Just like a good father doesn't want you. You know, I don't want my kids to worship. Worship me or even admire me without thinking, you know, wait a minute. Did you do this? Right? Did you do that? You know, they have that, that right and I. That's an important thing. And, you know, in my case, they'll find failures. And with God, you don't. But you still find questions that are very difficult to answer. And, you know, one of the things I have to tell you that I'm really proud of in the Kingdom of Cain is I think the final 30 pages may be the best pages I ever wrote. And they're kind of meditation on why art can tell us something about our doubts about God. And how can God let so much evil happen? And how, how can God allow evil? And those are hard philosophical questions that no one has ever answered satisfactorily. But I think that art really does provide an answer to that, that you can see how artists make beauty out of ugliness. And what on earth will God be doing, you know, when. With all of the ugliness in life. But I think that, you know, at this point, it took me so long to accept God, so long to get baptized, that I went down every wrong road. And so now, at least when I start to drift down one of those roads, I can think, oh, yeah, I've been there before. I know how that ends. I don't have to go down that any. Any longer. And so there are moments, I think, like all of us, when I think, lord, I believe, help my unbelief. But most of the time, when I clear away my own anxieties and worries, all that stuff that we bring to life, that is completely unnecessary, you know, worrying about things you can't do anything about, worrying about things that don't really matter that much. When I clear that away, I do find this kind of still beautiful love that's. That created the world and is still inhabiting the world and certainly inhabits my life. And, you know, I don't pretend certainly to be any kind of a saint or any kind of a, you know, any kind of elevated person at all. I'm just an ordinary person. But I do experience the love of God and do believe very deeply in the love of God and also cry out a ton sometimes, help my unbelief. And I think that that's all part of that relationship, you know.
- [61:18]
Jenny Urich
Andrew. Wow. I love the part at the end about art. I don't believe in proofs of God. Proofs are human things based in the logic of materiality. But it seems to me what we know as beauty must be the expression of God's very nature. And then you had this part where you said, what beauty can God not carve out of this sorrowful world? What a book. It is called the Kingdom of Finding God in the Literature of Darkness by the Andrew Clavin about the art of murder and the practice of creation. It marries together so well. It makes you think about so many different things. Do you still write four hours every day?
- [61:52]
Andrew Klavan
Oh, yes, I write every day.
- [61:54]
Jenny Urich
Every day. What did you write about today?
- [61:57]
Andrew Klavan
I'm writing this. The Christmas book that you read is the start of a mystery series, and I'm now on the sixth book, and so I'm writing the sixth book.
- [62:05]
Jenny Urich
Oh, my goodness. It's absolutely incredible. This has been such the honor of my life. I sit here because of you, because of the words you share, your faithfulness to share truth and beautiful truth and the things that you write. We always end our show very quickly with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood? That was outside.
- [62:21]
Andrew Klavan
That was outside.
- [62:22]
Jenny Urich
Yeah.
- [62:22]
Andrew Klavan
You mean out in the open air.
- [62:24]
Jenny Urich
Yeah. Outside.
- [62:25]
Andrew Klavan
Oh, gosh. Oh, it was. Had to be. We would play this game called Pylon in my backyard is one of my favorite memories. And I just ride my bike down my neighborhood street and shout, pylon. And all the boys would come out and we would take a football and put it in the middle of my yard and just beat the living jeepers out of one another. And whoever came out, whichever individual came out with the ball and made it to the other side, would score. And I just used to love that game. That's off the top of my head. That's a favorite memory that comes to mind. Wow.
- [62:56]
Jenny Urich
Pylon. Andrew, thank you so much for being here and huge congratulations on the Kingdom of King.
- [63:01]
Andrew Klavan
What? Well, that was great. It's. Well, it's so rare that I meet an interviewer who's actually read my books. I'm very flattered.
- [63:08]
Jenny Urich
I. I was kind of overwhelmed because I. I was like, I. I started to take notes, and I got to 10 pages. I was like, I can't. I thought. I didn't even take any notes about the truth and beauty because I thought, well, what am I going to do?
- [63:20]
Andrew Klavan
Wow.
- [63:21]
Jenny Urich
I'm not going to get there anymore. I'm such a huge fan of what you put out into the world, and I'll make sure that this goes up the week the book launches.
- [63:27]
Andrew Klavan
Thanks, Gene. Thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate it. Ugh. Spam calls. Sound familiar? Introducing line two. Get a second phone number right on your existing phone.
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Jenny Urich
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Andrew Klavan
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Jenny Urich
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Andrew Klavan
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Jenny Urich
The app Store today.
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Andrew Klavan
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Jenny Urich
The app Store and get your shopping.
- [64:32]
Andrew Klavan
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