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We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries, and today I want to point you to their podcast. It's called Culture in Christianity. The Alan Jackson Podcast. What makes it unique is Pastor Alan's biblical perspective. He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're facing today. Gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge Trump in the White House, issues in the church. He doesn't just discuss the problems. In every episode, he gives practical things we can do to make a difference. His guests have incredible expertise and powerful testimonies. They've been great friends. And now you can hear from Charlie in his own words.

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Each episode will make you recognize the power of your faith and how God can use your life to impact our world.

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Today.

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The Culture and Christianity podcast is informative and encouraging. You can find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture. You can find out more about Pastor Alan and the ministry@AlanJackson.com Charlie.

A (11:41)

So the Bible, especially through Jesus teaching, I would say, teaches us to be five things. And this is the Christian case for altruistic, generous, productive, cheerful and loving. Would we agree that we as Christians are called to those five things? That is by no means means an exhaustive list. We could name all the fruits of the spirit, we could name all the other. So we could be here all day. All right, so I picked those five for a particular reason, because I believe all five of those have strong evidence that capitalism reinforces altruistic, generous, productive, cheerful, loving. Altruistic. Well, as we see in the Bible, Jesus says many times, give unto others more than unto yourself. Jesus also talks about many times throughout the Gospels that not to be proclamation. Essentially, when you give, if you are going to be generous, you are going to be altruistic. Do so in private and do so in secret. Generous. Luke 6:34 talks about the generous spirit. Of course, we have Second Corinthians 3:17, which is my favorite verse in the entire Bible, which says what God loves a cheerful giver. It says all throughout the New Testament the capacity and the ability to be generous. And in fact, we are instructed to be generous. We're instructed to give away are fruits of our labor. Now, in order to give away fruits of your labor, you have to have fruits of your labor. You have to make something to give something away. We know through basic economics and basic human history, you're going to try to give a bunch of stuff away. You have to have that stuff which to give. In a socialist system, as Maggie Thatcher famously said, the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money. You deter the entire incentive structure. So you can want to be the most generous person in the world, but eventually you're going to run out of assets to give away. Again, look at Venezuela. I don't think they have very good intentions, but they might be as generous as they want to be. Eventually you're going to run out of stuff that which to give. Which again goes to the third thing which Christ calls us to do, which is to be productive. Jesus Christ talked for Christians to be highly productive people. Now, this might be teaching you don't always get all the time in a traditional Bible class, but look no different than the parable of the talents. One of the most, I think, economically not transferable economically. What's the word I'm looking for relevant parable that Jesus taught us. So the parable of talents for those that do not know. Essentially there were a couple servants under an owner. And the owner gave each one of the servants a talent which could be equivalent of a currency. He gave one talent another one two and another one three. And essentially the person that had one and hid it, did nothing with that talent, hid it under a rock. And essentially the owner said, come back to me in a certain period of time and tell me what you've done with your money. The second person invested it a little bit, made a little bit of multiplication productivity upon that which was given. And the final person made in a huge abundance. He essentially was very productive and multiplied the gift at which he was given. Essentially they come back to the owner and all of them were seeking praise. And the guy that hid the talent thought he was going to get, you know, a lot of kudos from the owner because he was, he guarded it. And the owner essentially said, how dare you that any more than that, it was really condemnation, you know, you did not, you did not multiply. You did nothing with that which was given and the person that multiplied a lot. It's that famous saying that a lot of us say even in the secular world, you hear it that which is those who are given a lot are expected to do a lot. Essentially, those who are given are expected to produce to those who have been given very much as expected. And you see in the parable the talents that Jesus Christ tells us that you have to do something with your life, that sitting around and just doing nothing. And of course that parable has a lot of different applications, has an application to the advancement of the kingdom, trying to convert as many people as you can to Christianity, but also has economic implications. Being productive, being entrepreneurial and being relevant to in an economic system has a lot of different applications as well. Also, finally, cheerful and loving. God loves a cheerful giver, as we see in 2nd Corinthians, as Paul wrote 2nd Corinthians 3:17. And also loving. Jesus Christ talked about the need to be loving. But why do I mention those five things in particular? And I'll get to one other example. Because in a capitalist system, the most economically free countries in the world are the most generous. They look out to their fellow neighbor the most, they are the most productive. And they look and they have the highest engagement of church going rates, so on and so forth. So for example, America last year voluntarily gave away $400 billion to charity. Think about how much money that is. $400 billion away voluntarily to charity. If you go to Europe, they don't even understand the concept of private charity. Government just takes care of everything. There's government programs for this, government services for that. Private charity is a very, very difficult concept for Europeans to wrap their heads around. There's a reason why there is declining church attendance in France and in Germany and Spain or Portugal. There's a reason why the church is not doing very well throughout most of Europe. And the reason is that as a society grows government, it becomes more secular. So from a purely pragmatic standpoint, as you see government get bigger, you see the church, you see Christianity, if you will, become less and less important. Now this is, this comes to a very important point which I hear a lot and we're going to kind of debunk. This is, was Jesus a socialist? Anyone heard this before? Anyone heard this once or twice. We're going to have a fun conversation with this, but before I do, I want to talk about a couple proverbs which I think are very relevant. So not only did Jesus talk about being very productive, but there is another parable which actually does not get talked about very much, which talks about the price system. You might say, what are you talking about the price system? Well, There's a parable. The parable, the vineyard workers. Anyone know this parable? Maybe heard about it. Essentially. It could be applied to a lot of different things. Mind you, the more widely accepted application is the acceptance into the kingdom of heaven. But another application of the parable of the vineyard essentially is there was a guy that owned a vineyard, and he hired a bunch of workers for one denarii, whatever the proper currency was, and they worked, they worked, they worked. He realized there was a lot of work left to be done. And so what do we know? That when you need a lot of work to get done in a condensed period of time, you're willing to pay more to get it done quickly. So he hired more workers for half a day's work for the same currency that he hired someone earlier in the day. And then the guy that's been working all day said, this is not fair. I mean, I've been working all day, and now I'm earning the same as the guy that's coming in at the end. And then the owner finally says, who are you to question? I'm giving you exactly what I'm telling I'm going to give you. In economics, we call that, as, you know, not necessarily price gouging. We call that as paying for what you need when you need it. So if I need to get a building done quickly and I hire a bunch of carpenters, and I need to hire more carpenters, and they have been working on it the whole time, I'm willing to pay more to get it done very quickly. So anyway, you could use that parable to reinforce the price system. So finally, Proverbs 12:11. I love this proverb. Those who work their. Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies have no sense. I love that. And then finally, Proverbs 12:24, Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in forced labor. I can't help but think about how Europe takes the whole month of August when I read that right. These socialist countries, they don't like to work. Work is somehow a diminished thing. It's something that they try to get away from. Yet we see throughout the entire Bible that work is actually an important component. Being productive, giving back in your personal capacity. Now, finally, was Jesus a socialist? This is something that I think is widely misrepresented. And I hear this a lot. In fact, I heard Bernie Sanders, of all people, like the atheist, talk about how all Christians should be. Should be democratic socialists, because Jesus would have been a socialist. And then I Saw another meme by Occupy Democrats, and they're a bunch of dishonest people. Unbelievable. So dishonest. They say, Bernie Sanders, he's a carpenter, he's Jewish, he's starting a movement, he's similar to Jesus. I said, no. If anything's blasphemy, that is blasphemy. Give me a break. I mean, that is just unbelievable. So, wow. I mean, comparing Bernie Sanders to the savior of the world. Wow. So first and foremost, mind you, I'm going to be very, very precise and careful here. First and foremost, in my perspective, and I would guess to most people in this room, Jesus Christ was the savior of the world. He was not really distracted with petty partisan politics. Okay? If Jesus Christ was. And you can scour the four Gospels, and you can scour the letters of Paul, you can scour Acts, not once did Jesus call for a particular political philosophy be implemented. Now, mind you, I want you to put yourselves into the foots of Jesus of Nazareth. You have 12 disciples. You are doing healings. You are converting water to wine. You're feeding the 5,000. How easy would it have been to have started a political movement? Now, mind you, every other secular, and I would say questionably religious leader of the last 4000 years used politics and as a vehicle to ascertain power or religious relevance, Mohammed took over territories and cut people's heads off, okay? Mohammad Gandhi, great guy, was through politics, trying to come about change. Martin Luther King, so on and so forth. Jesus Christ stands alone in history as someone who had disdain for politics, in fact rebelled against it, and arguably had more historic impact than anyone else in the last 4,000 years. That what. That's what first and foremost makes him so unique when it talks about politics. Now, we can talk about some of his teachings here, but first and foremost, Jesus Christ was so focused on the individual, he was anything but talking about what would be best as a collective for governmental policy. Now, you could argue there'd be a lot of different reasons for this, but. But, but Jesus was about the Savior, you, The salvation of you and you and you. And he then taught us a way to live. And then, of course, did not contradict the law of the prophets, but rather fulfilled their prophecy. And he did not talk about what we should do, but he said what you should do and you should. He focused on the individual. Now, socialism is anything but that. Socialism is force. Socialism is not the seeking a better life. Socialism is involuntary central planning and government ownership of property. You can't opt out of socialism. Socialist groups cannot tolerate groups that love freedom, which is anything but what Jesus talked about. Jesus was a lover of just that, of freedom. Now he would be more, I think, inclined to be sympathetic to a system that allowed individual persuasion of a certain viewpoint or perspective or set of principles or ideas than that which was authoritatively pushed down someone's throat. Now the more I would say logical arguments for why Jesus was a socialist was people say, well, he cared for the poor, he wanted to abolish human suffering and he really wanted to help people. All of which I totally and completely agree with. But he talked about people helping people, not government programs helping people. Right? He talked about the individual getting on the road to Samaritan, you know, the Good Samaritan, that I'm going to help that person even though I'm not supposed to, right? In the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus did not say write a letter to Caesar and demand stronger social planning. Jesus did not advocate for single payer health care. Instead he said, when you see someone in need, do everything you can to help that person. Now we go back to what capitalism believes. Isn't that more sympathetic to a viewpoint or an economic model that empowers as many people as possible to make individuals decisions as they see fit? Not one that we have seen pragmatically that like in Europe, diminishes generosity. The that diminishes individual engagement in the community and instead looks to the state for answers.

C (24:03)

We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries and today I want to point you to their podcast. It's called Culture and the Alan Jackson Podcast. What makes it unique is Pastor Alan's biblical perspective. He takes the truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're facing today. Gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge Trump and the White House issues in the church. He doesn't just discuss the problems. In every episode, he gives practical things we can do to make a difference. His guests have incredible expertise and powerful testimonies. They've been great friends and now you can hear from Charlie in his own words.

B (24:37)

Each episode will make you recognize the power of your faith and how God can use your life to impact our world today. The Culture and Christianity podcast is informative and encouraging. You could find it on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture. You can find out more about Pastor Alan and the ministry@AlanJackson.com Charlie.

A (25:06)

Forceful redistribution of wealth by government. Jesus never called for wealth and equality. And we actually have an example of this in Luke 12:13, when someone approaches Jesus and he says, he asks Jesus to sort out his inheritance. And he says, my father just died and my brother is getting all the inheritance. Isn't it fair to divide it up equally? Now, Jesus, being God and being the son of God, could have easily said, absolutely. He could have waved his hand and said, I command you, you must split it equally. And said, what did. He said, who am I to judge who gets what and how you get it? He wasn't worried about material wealth. He was, in fact worried about the love of wealth. We'll get to that in a second, which is very, very important. But he was not worried about the distribution of that wealth. In fact, he kind of rejected it. He shrugged his shoulders. The famous quote that people use is, well, Jesus was very sympathetic to governing bodies. No, the evidence they'll use is render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's? Correct. He kind of shrugged his shoulders and said, pay your taxes, do what you're supposed to do. Not. He did not say, start a political revolution based on my teaching and then forcibly make people believe what they should believe. Instead, he called for we individuals, as Christ followers that are born anew through the Holy Spirit and through his perfect sacrifice, to then use that teaching and instruction to individually. Essentially, I think Jesus and the teaching that we have in the Bible is directly contradictory to that teaching where, well, government must do it. Because if you say that, essentially you're saying, it's not my problem, someone else must take care of it. We're taught the exact opposite through Jesus's teaching and Jesus life. So was Jesus socialist? Well, you also look at other examples. The parable of the towns talked about the workers in the vineyard. We also talk about the Golden Rule. What is the Golden Rule? Anyone? Anyone? What is the Golden Rule? We all know it. Do unto others, right? Do unto others as you would like to have done unto yourself, right? Well, I would make actually a very strong argument that capitalism reinforces the need for a golden rule. And you might say, how on earth is that possible? Well, what is trade? Well, if I want to trade value for value, if I want to make myself and my life better, I'm not going to sell a good or a product or service that I'm not going to buy myself. And because of competition and because of people competing in a marketplace and actually trading goods and services and trading goods and services, you're going to have better goods and services and people treating each other better. And that is why you see throughout the time of human history, goods and services get better. That's why you see in a free market, things get faster, better and cheaper quite quickly and only in the golden rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated. How do you get rich in a socialist country? You lie, you cheat, you steal, and you run for public office, right? That's doing unto others how you don't want to do it unto yourself. You amass as much political power as you possibly can. Now you might say, Charlie, but getting rich is something that Jesus directly talked about against, correct? He did have some very strong teaching about the love of wealth. Now, if you reconcile that with Jesus saying that we must be productive and doing all that we can with what we're called for. I do believe that in the capitalist system there are people that have amassed incredible amounts of wealth that have then given 95, 97% all of it away to charity. They did not love that wealth. They might have enjoyed building a business and helping other people and employing a lot of people. And you talk to those individuals, the worst parts of their career are probably laying people off and firing them and going through lawsuits, all of which are horrible obstacles and barriers to creating a successful business. But those people did not love wealth. There's people with almost no money that love wealth. Think about that. And there's some people with a lot of money. It's the least important thing in their life. So. But Jesus talked about the love of wealth. It's harder for a rich person to get into heaven than what, a camel through the eye of a needle, essentially. Right? Is that the right? Yeah. Okay, you look at the original Greek and armament. Rich essentially means that of which who loves money, not that which who has money. If I remember correctly, it's Jesus Christ who spread the gospel with tax collectors and people that had a lot of money and saying you can do more than just amassing wealth. In fact, one of the gospels was written by a tax collector, Matthew Levi. If Jesus had that much disdain for that which people had wealth, why on earth would he associate with them or offer salvation? That which being said, in a free market system, you have the absolute freedom to have as much or as little wealth as you want. If you believe you could do a lot of good with employing 20,000 people and giving away billions of dollars, look no further than this university that is doing so much good for the advancement of the kingdom of, you know, of Jesus Christ. But a lot of this was contributed by millionaires and billionaires that were very successful in the free enterprise system that voluntarily gave back and now have helped thousands of people better understand Jesus Christ. That's only possible in a free market system, isn't it? Because in order to get what, in order to give away, you must create. The other arguments I hear of why Jesus is a socialist, I think fall flat on their face. You see in first Timothy 6:10, the love of money is the root of all the evil. The key word is love of money. When Paul wrote that letter, it's very important to realize that it's not actually having money. Money is nothing more than what it is a representation of value. It is what you do with that money. Money has no morality as socialists. I would disagree with the socialists. Money doesn't have a conscience. Money doesn't have morality. Money doesn't have a decision. It's what you do with it. It's a utility. So for example, someone that might be an atheist that is worth $8 billion, that has hated Jesus Christ his whole life and hated God in a moment's notice, can turn that $8 billion, that he might have done horrible things to get into good instantaneously. That money is completely transactional. It knows no morality. It just. It's an asset value, it's an asset holder that you can immediately and instantaneously. What am I saying is that there will always be good and evil in the world. And we know this, right? We know this as Christians and God talks about it and throughout the Old Testament and New Testament and how we reconcile and how we deal with these great horrors. Which economic system is that with which can you do the most amount of good with the worst parts of human nature? And that is no, look no further than free market capitalism. So a little bit more about myself then. I'd love to open it up for some questions as I'm a strong, committed evangelical Christian. I believe God wrote a perfect book through the perfect delivery of his son, Jesus Christ. You look at the fulfillment of the prophecies, the authenticity of the gospels, the perfection of the scriptures, you can go through a system of questions. Do you believe there's a God? Yes or no? That's the first question. Then when has God revealed himself throughout human history? Pretty good evidence of that here. And then finally, who if not when, have those prophecies been fulfilled and what evidence do we have for that? If you were to look at a chart of what scriptures in human history have been the most copied and have been the most authenticated, you look at Homer's Odyssey, for example. Anyone you know Homer's Odyssey. Do we spend time in classrooms debating whether or not Homer's Odyssey was really his words and not his words? Of course not. There is over 600,000 times more scriptures and copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You could stack it all the way up the top of the ceiling. The Scriptures versus the Odyssey of Homer. Point being is that there's a ton of evidence to show that as early as AD 60, which is when the first Gospel was written, of course. The Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, and then Matthew in the 80s and then Luke in the 90s, and then John came a little bit after that. These were accounts of eyewitness testimony of the accounts of Jesus. So people say, charlie, why are you a Christian? Why do you actually believe this? This is a bunch of fairy tales, right? This really doesn't exist. And I say all the time, actually I'm an objective Christian, which means I've gone through highly analytical thinking and historical searching. I'm by no means a theological expert. There's a lot of smarter people than that. But people ask me all the time, why do you believe what you believe? So I'm going to entertain me for five minutes, I'll tell you why. So I believe there's a God. And when did God reveal himself throughout human history? And what evidence do we have for that? And that, of course, is in the Bible. We see the law of the prophets. We see God revealing himself through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, first two Kings, all the way through the Old Testament to the major minor prophets. But then finally, you see a fulfillment, that prophecy throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And you see eyewitness account throughout the letters of Paul, and you see the eyewitness account throughout Acts. So you have to ask yourself a series of questions. Those of you that might not be a Christian, or those of you that might be on the fence, first and foremost, who in a. In a 2000 years ago, who in that world would have voluntarily died unless they actually would have believed this stuff? Every single follower of Jesus Christ died at the stake to their very death saying that Jesus Christ was everything that he said he was. He did the miracles that he said. Some were crucified on the cross, some were crucified upside down, some were in the most horrific deaths you could possibly imagine. And there's account after account after account. Paul tells us, and it's reinforced throughout the Gospel of John that there were over 500 eyewitnesses that saw Jesus Christ after his death. There's a great book called the Case For Christ. If you haven't read it, please do. There's a good movie as well. The whole center of this whole book, if you want to debunk this whole thing, is if you can debunk the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's the whole thing. Did Jesus rise from the dead? Yes or no? And that's the whole question. So if you were trying to create a great fiction about Jesus Christ, would you have your first eyewitnesses be women? No. What, are you kidding me? You'd be crazy to do that, right and old and 2000 years ago you would have women be your best expert witness testimony. No. You would have some well to do rich guy that would come up and be very, very credible. No. But they had women. Now why would no one would make that stuff up? That's why. Because it's impossible to conjure that. Secondly, you look at people that even saw Jesus after he was risen from the dead and touched him and saw him. Some of them still couldn't believe what their eyes were showing them until they were actually able to feel the scars on his hands. And that of course, is our friend doubting Thomas, who did not believe it until he actually felt it and saw it. And finally, from a very logical perspective, we have four independently written books. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All within 80 years, 50 years if you count the beginning of the writing of the gospels, of the life of Jesus Christ that from different perspectives reinforce the same story without any contradictions, plus or minus very minor theological inconsistencies. If any of you want to challenge me on that, there's notes I have just in case. But the point being, the point being is that if I was an FBI investigator and I had four different eyewitnesses all saying similar but not different things, that's a pretty clear and convincing case to hold up. To hold up the original thesis which Jesus Christ died and then rose again. The final thing is Paul. I think Paul is one of the greatest arguments for Christianity. Paul was a well to do Jewish Roman. He went around persecuting Christians. He went around persecuting the followers of Jesus Christ. What advantage did this guy have to drop everything on the road to Emmaus and say, oh, actually this guy was right all along. I'm going to drop all my wealth, all my political connections, I'm going to make a bunch of enemies, go to prison eight or nine times, get crucified, you know, upside down, write about it. My whole family gets disbarred, everyone I know, some of them get killed. What advantage on Earth would that guy have to it unless he really believed this stuff? And why would he actually believe it? Well, I believe because it's true. And he then of course wrote the original letters which formed the early church. If you look at why Christianity continues to be under attack, Jesus Christ talks about persecution. It's talked about many times in the scriptures. But if you look at the Bible, no other book has had so much impact in such a short period of time. Despite the enemies trying to destroy it, despite people trying to inauthenticate it. And the more excavation and the more archaeological evidence that we find, the more evidence we find for the Bible. There's only been 2%. 2% of all archaeological sites in the Middle east have been fully excavated. We have 98% left to go. As we search for more, as we search for more, just more and more of this evidence is going to continue to be upheld. Up until the 1930s, people said, oh, a lot of, there's a lot of inconsistencies. And then of course in the 1940s we found the Dead Sea Scrolls which then showed even more reinforce of the biblical authenticity of what we as Christians hold to be true. So as someone who I consider to be a fact based, logical thinker, it's not blind faith to follow Christianity. We're not just walking blindly into this. We appreciate history, we appreciate human behavior. We have logical reasons for why individuals make certain decisions. And you look at it all composed together. You say God wrote a book. God sent a son to save us all from our sins. And that is why I'm a Christian and those of us that are Christians are as well. For more on many of these stories and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.