Ep. 240 - The Case Against Ugly Churches
Episode Stats
Summary
It is a great tragedy that the Notre Dame Cathedral burned yesterday, but what is it about the church, and those churches that are like it, that we find so awe-inspiring? You know, why do we get so attached to those kinds of churches anymore? And why don t we build churches like that anymore? Today I want to talk about the need for beauty in the church and why we should start building beautiful churches again. Also, I m going to defend someone I don t usually defend, and I ll answer an email about the Rapture. Is it upon us? Is it even a thing? We ll talk about that today on the Matt Walsh Show.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, it is a great tragedy that the Notre Dame Cathedral burned
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yesterday, but what is it about the church, about that church, and those churches that are like it
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that we find so awe-inspiring? You know, why do we get so attached to those kinds of churches?
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And why don't we build churches like that anymore? Today I want to talk about the need for beauty in
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the church and why we should start building beautiful churches again. Also, today I'm going
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to defend someone I don't usually defend, and I'll answer your emails, including an email about
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the rapture. Is it upon us? Is it even actually a thing? We'll talk about that today on the Matt
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Walsh Show. All right, broadcasting right now from beautiful Daytona Beach, because I got to tell you,
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my job is pretty hard. I have to come to places like Daytona Beach and be here. And I was trying
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to explain this to my wife yesterday. I was telling her that, you know, it's, it's, I said to her, I
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mean, yeah, I, you have to stay back and watch all three kids by yourself, but I have to go to
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the beach. I mean, yuck. It's, it's, I, I envy you personally. I, I, I wouldn't want to be doing
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this, but, uh, but I have to, I mean, I got to make sacrifices for the family, honey. Don't you
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understand that? Um, but I, I am making this enormous sacrifice because I'm giving a talk at
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Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where I'll be giving a lecture on, um, aerospace engineering.
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Actually, it won't be on that subject, although it'd be pretty hilarious if I tried to try, if I tried
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to, if I attempted a lecture on that. Um, it is a free event though. I can tell you that. And, uh,
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because let's be honest, nobody in their right mind would pay to see me. So it's a free event and
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it's open to the public. So I hope that, um, that you'll come out if you're in town now a lot to
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cover today, uh, starting with the, of course, devastating events of yesterday. Uh, but an
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event that I hope will spur, um, positive change. And I want to talk about what that positive change
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slash Walsh. Okay. Starting with, um, unfortunately the bad stuff, Notre Dame cathedral,
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as you no doubt heard was on fire yesterday in Paris. Um, the first day of Holy week,
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a day after Palm Sunday. And this happens, it's a building that went under construction,
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almost 900 years ago, took well over a hundred years to construct, uh, not counting all the
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renovations throughout the centuries. So this is just, I mean, you look at the man hours that went
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into this, including the, the renovations that it's just, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's really
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beyond comprehension. Um, it is, and still is one of the greatest churches ever to be built in the
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world, anywhere in the world in history. And, uh, the sad fact is that a sizable chunk of it is gone
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forever now because of what appears to be an accidental fire, probably related to some of
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the construction that was being done to fix, uh, to renovate, uh, you know, some of the things with
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the church. Um, a sizable chunk of it is gone, but not all. And miraculously, and I do mean that
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literally the bones are still standing. Many of the magnificent stained glass windows are, are,
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are still intact. Um, the two main towers of the church are still there. So it's going to be
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hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars to repair slash rebuild, but, um, it hasn't been
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reduced to ash. It's, it's still there, which is a testament to many things, including the
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architectural prowess of the middle ages. Uh, what building today could withstand, could survive
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an inferno like that? Um, not many of them, I'll tell you that, but ultimately it's a, it's a
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testament to, um, to God, of course, but here's what I want to dwell on for a moment. Um,
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people were, if you watch yesterday and I was watching the, I don't watch cable news a lot
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these days, but, uh, for something like this, I turned it on. I was watching the coverage
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and, and, and by the way, I'll give credit where it's due. Uh, I thought CNN did a great
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job of covering the, the, um, the fire, uh, Cuomo, whatever he, whatever time he's on,
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I turned on CNN at whatever time, I think it was seven o'clock, eight o'clock. And, uh, he did
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his whole show on, on the cathedral burning and I actually watched the entire thing. I thought he
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did a, he just did a really wonderful job. So, um, you know, I don't, don't usually give credit
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to CNN. I'll give him credit there. Um, but if you're watching the, the footage, you see people
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crying in the streets, they're distraught over it. Well, why is that? You know? Well, I would say
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because the cathedral is beautiful, right? And when something beautiful is made and then destroyed,
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we recognize it as a real loss. Uh, nobody would cry if they demolished the parking garage down the
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street. Right. Uh, but they, they do cry over this because one is beautiful and one is not.
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And beauty is important. It's not a small thing. You need beauty in faith and you need it in life
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because beauty speaks to the fundamental longing of the human soul and churches should strive always
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to satisfy that longing. Not, not just with the building, obviously it's, it's more than the
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building, but the building is part of it. The building should be part of it. Every aspect of the
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church experience, including the building itself should be a part of this effort to point people
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towards God, to speak to that, um, to that longing that we have for beauty. You know, I I've, I've told
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the story before, um, about when my wife and I once walked into a mall in Kentucky only to realize that
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it was not a mall because it was actually a mega church. I think I told the, I think I told the story
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on Ben's on the, on the Sunday special, uh, the building looked in every way, like a mall.
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And when I wrote this today, there are people saying, well, how could you have possibly made
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that mistake? I'm telling you the building looked exactly like, um, I mean, I would defy you. If
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you looked at this building, I would define, and you didn't know what it was. I would defy you to
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think anything other than mall. I mean, it looked a hundred percent like a mall. And, um, there was,
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from what we could see, there was nothing on the building. There was no religious paraphernalia.
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We didn't even see anything that said the word church on it. Obviously we saw that,
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that we would have figured it out. Um, so it looked like a ball, a mall. And we walked in
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and once inside the structure, we began to realize our mistake. Um, but it only really fully dawned on
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me when a woman in a, in a neon green t-shirt walked up to, up to us and handed us a program.
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Um, and then we realized, Oh, okay. Now I see what's going on here. Um, and then I found out
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later that this church was built right where a mall once stood. I mean, it used to be a mall
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actually, literally, which was, I guess is part of the confusion for us because it was obviously
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in a mall like area with restaurants and stuff all around and a big parking lot and people were
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walking in and out and just look like a mall. Um, but it wasn't. And I thought about that incident
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yesterday as I watched the Notre Dame cathedral burn because nobody would ever make that mistake
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with the Notre Dame cathedral or a building like it. You look at that building and you know why it's
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there. It is there to, to, it's constructed to worship and glorify God and to help in the
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facilitation of that worship. To even look at the building is to even now after the fire to look
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at it is to have a religious experience because it's beauty brings your mind unwittingly to higher
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things. You can't help, but think of God. When you look at that building, um, it focuses your sights
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upward, both physically and spiritually because it is beautiful. And that's what beautiful things do.
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Now, not every church can look like that. I know that. And maybe no church ever again will.
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Even Notre Dame may never again look exactly like that. And that's just terrible to think about.
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But churches are still being built in this country. Um, and lots of money is being spent
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on building them. So this excuse that I hear from people that, well, we want to spend the money on
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helping the poor instead. Oh, please stop it. You know, just, just stop it. That mega church that I
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walked into, I guarantee that thing costs millions of dollars to build millions. Any church costs money
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to build. And a lot of modern churches are very, very, very expensive. Mega churches are very expensive.
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Okay. So it's not like this. Oh, you know, we're going to tamp down the beauty so we can spend the
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rest on the poor. No, that's not what they're doing. Okay. They're tamping down the beauty because
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they don't want it. And they also want to spend more on fancy light displays and audio visual stuff and
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all that kind of stuff. Um, so it's not like we stopped making beautiful churches to cut costs and give
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it to the poor. And even if that, even if that was the excuse, even if that was true, I would still
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disagree with it. And Jesus disagreed with it too. He rebuked that attitude. Remember when the woman was
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anointing Jesus with the expensive oils and perfumes and Judas is the one who said, uh, well, we could sell
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that stuff and give it to the poor. We should be doing that instead. And, and Jesus rebuked Judas
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and said, you're always going to have the poor with you. The point there is to, to take something
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to spend money. Yes. And energy and time on glorifying God is a, is a good thing.
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And it's a false choice. Anyway, you don't have to choose between glorifying God and beauty and art
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and all of that and helping the poor. You can do both. And in fact, you do help the poor with beauty.
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The poor are people too. And I'm talking about this is a beauty is a fundamental human need that
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everyone, no matter what your socioeconomic status is, shares that need. But we don't even have that
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excuse because we are investing money in our churches, into the buildings, and they could be
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made beautiful, not Notre Dame cathedral level. Beautiful. Yes, but beautiful yet they are not.
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And it's not that we're nowadays, uh, you know, trying to make a beautiful churches and failing.
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Okay. That would be, that would be maybe one thing because it's the thought that counts, I guess.
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But what makes it so insidious is that we're trying really hard to make unbeautiful, bland,
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ugly, profane churches, and we're succeeding. Our houses of worship look like shopping malls and
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prisons and basketball stadiums on purpose. That's an aesthetic choice that's being made.
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So whereas Notre Dame stands out gloriously, um, amid the skyline, modern churches are meant to sort of
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blend in like chameleons or like the, uh, you know, the shy kid at the homecoming dance, who's kind of
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trying to blend into the surroundings. So no one looks at them. And that, and that's what churches
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do. When you look at modern churches, it's like, they're embarrassed to be a church. They don't
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want anyone to know even the names of the churches, you know, cross point or new horizons or something.
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Do you, you know why they choose names like that? Because they don't want you to know at first glance
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that it's a church. They're ashamed of it. And so you hear, you see, you see, you see a church these
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days, you see what it looks like. It has a name like new horizons. And you think, well, what is that?
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Is that like a, is that a, uh, a rehab center for wealthy drug offenders? Was it, what is it?
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And even if you went inside and listened to the sermon that's being delivered,
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you still probably wouldn't know. You still wouldn't be exactly sure. Maybe this is the
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motivational speech that I give, uh, during a rec time or something. Um, and that's the way the
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modern church experience is designed. You know, the church that I attended as a child
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was, uh, was new at the time was newly built. And it was really fascinating to look at this church,
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which you can still go and look at it still stands because it's, it seemed like it was made
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in order to maximize ugliness to the greatest possible degree. Now, old Catholic churches,
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the way they were built was, uh, if you go into a really old church, you'll notice this old Catholic
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church is that they were all built so that everybody in the church, including the priest
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is faced to the tabernacle and the cross. Everybody is faced that direction. Like we're all looking to
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Jesus. We're not looking at each other. We're not looking at the guy up on up there. Cause it's not
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about him. We're all looking up, you know, beyond really. And that's how churches were designed back
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in the, back in the old days. Uh, but a change was made in the design of churches and Catholic
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churches, all churches where now it's all about the guy on stage. It's all about him.
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And we're all, everything is about glorifying him and the band. And it's all about that.
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So this church, you know, back in, uh, when I was a kid,
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the, uh, the way it was designed was they'd put the tabernacle off to the side. Uh, there was very
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little artwork, no stained glass or anything. And it was centered so that everything was, was,
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was directed right at the priest. And then behind him was this absolutely hideous decorative
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organ structure. Like for it's, you know, like a, like a church organ, the, the, the pipes of the
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organ, but they weren't even functional. They're just decorative. And that's what was the, the focal
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point of the, um, of the experience. It's like, if you, if you turn on Joel Osteen sometime, which I
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don't recommend, and what does he have up there on stage with him? It's like a tree or something
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like that, or a globe, right? Just like some mundane, secular kind of vague, ambiguous thing.
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That's what, that's the focus. That's what we're all looking at. God forbid you have a,
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God forbid you have a, a, a, a cross up up there, right? We wouldn't want that.
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Now I have no problem with simple churches. I'm not saying that all churches should be extravagant.
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Far from it. Uh, I really like the unassuming little old church houses that you find when you travel.
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I do a lot of driving across Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Hampshire. And, uh, if you go
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around there up and down the Eastern, you know, East coast, um, you're going to find a lot of these
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little old church houses that were built probably a hundred, 200 years ago. Very simple. Um, very
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unassuming, but beautiful. And they're the kind where you walk in, there's no air conditioning. The
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pews are super uncomfortable. There's no cry room for the fussy child. Uh, there's no bells and
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whistles at all. Sometimes you'd be lucky if you even get a, uh, usually you'll get a sound system,
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but, um, that's pretty much it as far as modern, uh, additions go. And I like those churches because
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there's a real unmistakable charm there and a feeling of connection to the past and to your
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own Christian history that you feel and you experience that you'll never experience in the
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comfortable temperature controlled confines of elevation church or a Lakewood or, or one of
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their cousins. So what I'm saying is simple does not equate to ugly. Mountains are simple. Oak trees
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are simple. Infants are simple. Tiny colonial era churches are simple. They're all simple in
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different ways and they're beautiful in different ways. Modern churches are not simple and they're not
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cheap, but all the money and care and complexity is devoted to keeping the hearts and minds of the
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congregation pointed towards earthly things. And especially, as I said, towards the guy up on the
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pulpit or the stage, I guess, um, delivering his vaguely theological opinions. And that's what it's
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really, that's why everyone is there to listen to the guy's opinions and the band also because,
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well, he wouldn't want any of the pesky artwork or beauty distracting from the solemn business of
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listening to him ramble on. And that's the worst part about the modern trend of intentionally making
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our churches ugly is that it cloaks itself in this guise of self-abdicating humility when really it's
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exactly the opposite. Michelangelo showed humility when he spent four years on his back painting the
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story of the Bible on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Now that's humility. Modern churches show
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extraordinary self-conceit and arrogance, um, when they expend their energy building elaborate but
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hideous sets for their band and their pastor to occupy. That's not humility. Why is it, you know,
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if, um, if one of these modernist behemoth churches were to burn to the ground, as long as nobody was
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inside the building, there aren't going to be any weeping throngs out in the street mourning it. No one's
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really going to care. The insurance, the insurance companies will handle it. And a few days later,
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no one's going to even remember what that big, dumb, ugly thing even looked like. People wept over
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Notre Dame because of the beauty they wept up. They wept over it for the same reason that a patriotic
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American would weep. If, um, you know, I say as a Baltimore native, uh, Fort McHenry, the fortress where
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the, you know, the star spangled banners were waving, um, that inspired the national anthem that Francis
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Scott Key wrote during the, the war of 1812, as he looked at Fort McHenry and the flags waving
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there. Now, if Fort McHenry, which still stands on the harbor in Baltimore, if that burned to the
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ground, uh, you know, as a, as a patriot and a Baltimore native native, I would probably cry over
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that. I would be really upset. Um, why is it not because I idolize the structure, but because I
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revere what it represents and what its presence and its history brings to mind. And that's why
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the beauty of a church is so important. And that's why the, the ugliness of modern churches is such a
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tragedy. And it's why I really hope that the events of the, of this week and what happened
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in Notre Dame might inspire us to once again, reach for the artistic heights that our ancestors
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sought and attained. Now I want to head a few things off at the pass here because I wrote, um,
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I wrote a piece on this subject. And so for the last few hours, especially while I was on the plane,
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cause I didn't have anything better to do. Honestly, I've been fielding responses from
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Christians who really appear to be arguing for ugliness. Like they're arguing in principle for
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ugliness. So my, my radical suggestion, um, that we should make beautiful churches. There are a lot of
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Christians who are, they're against it. They say, no, I don't want beautiful churches. That's the
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terrible thing. I don't, I have no interest in that. It's such a perverse mindset. I mean, I can't,
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I, I just, I, I cannot comprehend it. Um, it's really amazing. And there are objections that I've
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seen are, and there are a few objections. First of all, a few that I've already covered, they say,
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well, we don't want beautiful churches because we're spending the money elsewhere. That's just,
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that's, that's bogus. I'm sorry. That's not true. Um, it's not a valid objection because the ugly
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churches I'm targeting costs money. All churches cost money. If you're going to have a place to
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congregate, it's going to cost you money to build. And a lot of these modern ones cost a lot of money,
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tens and tens of millions of dollars. Uh, we could spend a lot less than that and still make
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beautiful churches. It in principle, it doesn't cost anything. Beauty in principle does not have any
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object or any, uh, inherent cost. Now you do have to pay someone to an artist or something. So it
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will cost you something, but there's no reason why it needs to cost a certain amount. Um,
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so, and then they'll say, well, it's better to have simple churches again, simplicity and beauty
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can go hand in hand. So that's not a response to my point at all. And then they say, and I saw a lot
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of this, um, that, well, the, the buildings mean nothing. They have no value. Uh, physical beauty
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has no value. It doesn't matter at all. In fact, I saw someone say exactly those words that the
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buildings mean nothing. They have no meaning. Now this attitude is called Gnosticism. This is not
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really a Christian attitude. Uh, this is Gnostic. The Gnostics believed that all physical beauty and all
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material existence in general is entirely vain and worthless and even evil. Um, that's what
00:22:28.760
Gnostics believe, but Gnostics, Gnosticism is a heresy and it's been long repudiated by Orthodox
00:22:33.640
Christianity. The true Christian understanding and the more thoughtful sort of philosophically
00:22:38.640
grounded understanding is that beauty is meaningful. Okay. So to say that it means nothing. Now I'm not
00:22:44.840
saying it's the most important thing, but to look at a building like the Notre Dame say, well, that means
00:22:49.120
nothing. Not only is that a Gnostic point of view, but it's just, it's an, it's unhuman. You can't
00:22:55.040
actually feel it. It means nothing really has no value. Um, there, uh, imagine living a life
00:23:06.480
with no beauty at all. If you really think that physical beauty means nothing has no value means
00:23:11.060
nothing at all. Okay. Well, imagine living with no beauty. Imagine living in just a totally bland
00:23:16.860
room and a bland landscape. And there's no beauty to speak of anywhere. Just dreary, mundane
00:23:24.600
ugliness everywhere. And that's some of us, you know, almost do live in a situation like that.
00:23:31.720
But imagine you had no access to physical beauty whatsoever. You would want to kill yourself after
00:23:37.260
a while. I mean, you, you literally would not want to continue living because life would be so bleak
00:23:42.580
and despair inducing. Your existence would just be, would be, would be so, uh, so dreary
00:23:51.260
that you wouldn't even want to live. So beauty is an essential need, an essential human need. It's
00:23:57.860
not nothing. And the other objection I've heard is that, well, beauty is subjective.
00:24:02.860
So who am I to call any church ugly, right? How can I say that? Well, again, here we've got an
00:24:08.020
attitude that is incompatible with Orthodox Christianity and one that displays a deep
00:24:13.040
philosophical ignorance. And, and, and this is, I, you know, what I noticed more and more when,
00:24:17.540
in talking to Christians is that there really is, you know, obviously churches are, are not instilling
00:24:23.720
any kind of philosophical foundation in their congregations whatsoever, because this is just
00:24:28.460
a point of beauty is subject, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is the kind of
00:24:32.620
modernist tripe that Christians have rejected for centuries. And now all of a sudden you have
00:24:38.740
all these Christians saying it, not realizing that they can't say that as a Christian. It's
00:24:43.880
completely incompatible with your faith. Just think about it for two seconds. Um, and it's not a
00:24:50.660
coincidence that every person on the planet that you meet, barring the insane people will say that a
00:24:56.680
mountain range is more beautiful than a puddle of slush on the side of the road after a snowstorm.
00:25:00.840
And, uh, they'll say the Sistine Chapel is more beautiful than a bag of your dog's fecal matter.
00:25:06.240
Everyone arrives at that conclusion, not by coincidence, but by our, our inherent recognition
00:25:13.180
of something objective in beauty. Now I say that it's incompatible with Christianity because God is
00:25:19.840
the source of all beauty. That's the Christian understanding. God is the standard of beauty. God,
00:25:24.600
uh, therefore, if you believe in the Christian God, you really can't believe that beauty is subjective.
00:25:29.860
Now there is a subjective element in how we, uh, perceive it and how it speaks to us. So there are
00:25:38.860
certain things that I can recognize as objectively beautiful, yet they just don't do it for me quite
00:25:47.340
as much as something else. Like I can listen to, uh, you know, a, a symphony, uh, and recognize it.
00:25:55.060
This is beautiful music. Uh, however, it's not something that I would sit and listen to for very
00:26:02.680
long, but it is beautiful. I recognize that. Now, if I were to listen to Mozart or something and say,
00:26:08.640
oh, this is disgusting, this is ew, ew, disgusting. If I were to vomit at the, at the sound of Mozart,
00:26:14.020
well, that, that shows that there's something disordered about me. It does. I don't have to
00:26:18.300
love it. I don't have to, it doesn't have to be my favorite thing, but I should be able to perceive
00:26:24.200
that it is beautiful. And so we all have our own tastes and we all have, you know, some people,
00:26:30.640
uh, you know, love a beach more than a mountain range. You get more of a, of an emotional experience
00:26:38.600
looking at the ocean than you do mountains. And everyone is different in that way. But even if
00:26:42.680
you're that way, you're not going to be grossed out by a mountain range, right? You're going to,
00:26:46.560
you're going to acknowledge and see that it is something beautiful, even if it just doesn't
00:26:51.280
connect with you on the same level. So that's the subjective element in perception, but beauty itself
00:26:57.780
is about the, it's about the, something inherent in, in the thing that we're talking about.
00:27:04.000
Beauty is a, is an objective quality in a thing. Finally, I'm told that, well, it's idol worship to
00:27:10.880
have beautiful churches with, uh, with statues and so on. And this is just silly. Um, do you think that,
00:27:20.660
I mean, idol worship, you think anyone worshiped the Notre Dame cathedral as a God? Do you think
00:27:26.460
anyone was tempted to literally worship the building as a God? Or when someone looks at the
00:27:31.820
Piedra, uh, or, you know, a, a great sculpture by, by one of the Renaissance artists, you think anyone
00:27:38.100
is tempted to worship it? Like they think that it, that the thing itself is God. Now maybe the pagans
00:27:44.120
were, but that's not a temptation that you and I have. When you look at a, at a beautiful ocean
00:27:49.920
panoramic, are you tempted to start worshiping Poseidon? No, you just, you notice that it's beautiful.
00:27:56.180
You love looking at it. It brings your mind to God, to the God, the real God, the same with beauty
00:28:01.900
in a church and Christian symbolism in a church. Now here's what really gets me. These Christians
00:28:06.240
who get all weirded out by statues or stained glass or whatever, um, who can't, apparently can't see
00:28:11.860
the symbolic significance of it. These are the same ones who would have a heart attack if they caught
00:28:17.100
you not standing in front of the flag for the, for the pledge of allegiance. If they, you know,
00:28:21.380
you don't have your hand in your heart, you're standing. If you, if you, if you kneel or you sit,
00:28:24.640
these are, these are the same ones that are practically have a, you know, have a seizure
00:28:28.860
from seeing you do that. And God forbid, if you were to burn a flag in front of them,
00:28:33.340
they would call for the death penalty for you. So they see the value in secular symbols in American
00:28:39.960
symbols, and they don't consider that to be idol worship. Oh, a flag touches the ground. It's,
00:28:45.560
you know, it's, it's blasphemy. So that's not idol worship. And I'm not, I'm not saying that it is,
00:28:50.240
but I don't know how you could say that that's not idol worship, but having a beautiful church
00:28:55.980
and a statue is. So secular symbols are okay, but Christian symbols aren't. Symbols that bring
00:29:02.300
your mind to America are fine, but symbols that bring your mind to God are not fine. I just,
00:29:06.580
I can't understand that mentality makes no sense. It's a irrational mentality. It just is.
00:29:14.100
And if anything is idol worship in those scenarios, it's gotta be the flag thing. And again, I don't
00:29:20.680
think that is, but if one of those is, it's the flag one. Okay. But if you're, if you're able to
00:29:28.000
see that a flag, yes, it is in a, in a utilitarian materialistic sense, it's just a, it's just a
00:29:34.160
cloth, right? It's all it is. But if you're able to see that, yeah, I mean, physically that's what it
00:29:41.580
is, but it stands, it represents, it brings to mind something greater than that. Well, if you can
00:29:46.160
see that with the flag, why can't you see it with art and, and churches and stained glass and statues?
00:29:55.140
Why, why can't you see it there? I just, I don't get it. Um, all right. A couple other things I wanted
00:30:03.740
to mention. One other quick note, uh, related to the Notre Dame, uh, burning. Listen, you know,
00:30:10.420
I'm a, I'm a big critic of Ilhan Omar, the, um, freshman democratic representative. Uh, I'm a
00:30:16.180
critic of hers. I don't, I don't like her. Uh, I, I, and I, I don't agree with pretty much anything
00:30:22.300
she stands for, but she sent out a tweet yesterday about Notre Dame burning. And I'll, I'll read what
00:30:29.660
the tweet said. She said, uh, art and architecture have a unique ability to help us connect across our
00:30:34.560
differences and bring people together in important ways. Thinking of the people of Paris and praying for
00:30:39.560
every first responder trying to save this wonder. Okay. That was her tweet. Ilhan Omar. It's fine.
00:30:45.320
Right. It's fine. And it's the two sentences. It's, it's basically in line with what every other
00:30:49.980
politician said about it on both sides of the spectrum. It's in line with what a lot of people
00:30:54.780
said, uh, with things that I said on Twitter yesterday, it's fine. But of course we live in
00:31:01.860
a culture now where on both sides of the spectrum, we're constantly looking. If there's someone we
00:31:08.680
disagree with and who we think is usually wrong and Omar is usually wrong, well, we're, it's like
00:31:14.980
we're incapable of any kind of, uh, keeping things in perspective. Right? So if we think she's usually
00:31:21.780
wrong, then that means that she has to be wrong about literally everything she says. There has to
00:31:26.200
be something wrong with everything she, every word she speaks, every public statement she makes,
00:31:31.360
there has to be something wrong with all of it. And so we start picking apart every little thing to
00:31:34.700
find things to complain about. And that's what people did with this tweet. They said, well, how
00:31:38.300
art and architecture, it's a church. Why didn't you call it a church? You didn't say anything about
00:31:43.040
Jesus or Christ or God. Come on guys. Come on. If, if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or whoever Republican
00:31:51.960
had sent that exact same tweet, no conservative would be criticizing it and nobody would. There's
00:31:58.060
nothing where it's fine. We don't need to look for something to complain about with every little
00:32:03.340
thing that a person we disagree with says. Now, the reason why she didn't offer up a prayer to
00:32:10.160
Christ is because she's Muslim. And so that's why she's not talking about Jesus Christ. And yeah,
00:32:16.460
she didn't call it a church, but we all know that it's a church. So I don't think we need her to tell
00:32:20.220
us that. Maybe she was assuming that we already know it's a church. And so you don't need to be
00:32:24.460
reminded. Do you actually need her to say, uh, PS, by the way, I am referring to the church,
00:32:29.480
Notre Dame cathedral. You know what she means. I just, that's my response to it because I get the
00:32:37.920
same treatment from the other side. A lot of the times, um, or I'll say something and maybe it's
00:32:43.340
clumsily worded. Maybe it isn't, but people are looking for a reason to pounce. And I, my response
00:32:50.300
a lot of the times is, look, you know what I meant? Just back off, calm down. You know what I'm trying
00:32:56.220
to say. So stop pretending that you don't. Uh, all right. Let's see. I had a bunch of emails. Um,
00:33:09.120
well, I mentioned, okay, I guess I'll go to, I'll go to emails now. Um,
00:33:12.400
mattwallshowatgmail.com, mattwallshowatgmail.com. So I talked briefly yesterday about people who
00:33:18.860
worship their dogs. Now that is a form of idol worship that really does happen in the United
00:33:22.940
States. And my whole point that I made yesterday on the show, well, if you didn't see it was, um,
00:33:28.100
I wasn't insulting dogs or anything like that. I just said, dogs, aren't people. Uh, people are
00:33:33.380
more important. You shouldn't love dogs more than people. That was, that was my whole point.
00:33:37.840
And, uh, as you might expect, of course, it's got some response. Let me, let me just,
00:33:41.560
I'll read one response. Um, said, so he's dear Matt. I have always respected you, but there's
00:33:47.680
something wrong with people who don't like dogs. I have no problem admitting. I prefer dogs to people,
00:33:52.440
a dog has never lied to me or cheated me or bullied me. Dogs are the perfect example of
00:33:57.680
unconditional love. I feel sorry for you that you don't understand that or see it.
00:34:01.160
And so I got a lot of stuff like that. Um, first of all, your dog never lied to you because he
00:34:04.660
doesn't have vocal cords. He's incapable of speech. So that's why he's never told you a lie.
00:34:10.280
Uh, but the other reason why he doesn't do those bad things is because he's not capable of making
00:34:15.560
moral choices. Okay. So when you say, well, dogs never hurt my feelings. Yeah, but that's because dogs are
00:34:21.940
not capable of it. They're intrinsically incapable of making moral choices. It's not like every dog
00:34:28.260
in the world can make a moral choice and just always makes the right one. So that dogs are these
00:34:33.260
angelic saintly beings who are perfectly virtuous. No, that's not the case. They don't assess things on
00:34:41.560
a, on a moral landscape. They don't have access to that sort of thought process. So that's why
00:34:48.680
they don't do those things. Why is it now? There are dogs who hurt people out. Dogs maul people to
00:34:54.600
death. Uh, dogs can rip up your furniture. Dogs can poop on your rug, but why is, why don't we hold
00:35:01.860
dogs legally responsible when they do those things? And, and why is it absurd to get angry at a dog,
00:35:08.440
even if he does chew up your carpet? Uh, why is that? Because he didn't know what he was doing.
00:35:13.720
That's the whole reason. But if you're going to ascribe virtuous motivations to dogs, if you're
00:35:20.660
going to actually claim that dogs are capable of real courage and real self-sacrificing love
00:35:27.380
and, uh, and real virtue, then you, then you would have to say that the dogs who do bad things are
00:35:34.940
actually evil and should be good and should go to prison. They should be, they should face legal
00:35:39.580
penalties. It doesn't make any sense to say, Oh yeah, well they're capable. Yeah. Whenever they
00:35:44.300
do something that appears to be good, well, that's a virtuous choice they made as dogs.
00:35:48.000
But if they do something bad, no, it's not their fault. They're just dogs. You see that it's again,
00:35:51.740
it's irrational. It doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. You've got to have one view of dogs here.
00:35:56.640
It can't be, it can't be both either. They make moral choices or they don't. And the answer is they
00:36:00.940
don't, uh, which is why you can't really give them credit for not doing mean things that people do.
00:36:06.320
And in fact, yes, there are people who do terrible things. That's true. But every time that a person
00:36:14.640
has, has acted kindly towards you, a person has told you the truth, a person has been loyal to you,
00:36:21.700
a person has comforted you, uh, anytime a person has done something good for you. And I guarantee
00:36:26.540
that many people have done good things for you, whoever you are in your life. Those are, those,
00:36:31.380
those acts of goodness and virtue are far more, infinitely more meaningful than anything that
00:36:37.360
any dog has ever done. Because those people that did those good things, they could, they made a
00:36:44.100
choice. They, they knew they had two options and they knew this, they understood and comprehended the
00:36:50.560
sacrifice they were making in, in, in paying you that kindness. And yet they did it anyway. And so it
00:36:56.960
is so much more meaningful. Yeah. People are more complicated because they make choices and they
00:37:01.560
might hurt you and they might do bad things just like you do bad things. By the way, if you say
00:37:06.700
that you like people more than dogs are better than people, you're saying that dogs are better than you
00:37:10.060
too, that you are worse than a dog. And maybe that's all you're really saying. I think maybe it's just a
00:37:14.580
reflection of your opinion of yourself. Um, but regardless, that's just, that's so, uh,
00:37:23.280
it's great that dogs don't hurt your feelings, but you know, a doorknob won't hurt your feelings
00:37:26.980
either. Uh, a tree will never rob a bank. Okay. An, an ant will never, um, bully a kid on a,
00:37:33.580
on a school bus. Okay. So the color blue will never do anything bad to you because all of these
00:37:40.080
things are incapable of, of, of moral evil. All right, let's see. This is from the beardocratic
00:37:48.220
fascist. Greetings, Matt of the Walsh. Just want to know your thoughts on teen beards. I know beards
00:37:54.880
are great, but teen beards look like someone cut the bristles off a toothbrush and glued them onto
00:37:59.160
a bloody face. So what should I tell my young friends? I know it's harsh, but I think they
00:38:03.300
might have to, dare I say, shave. Uh, well, you are no beardocratic fascist. If you would ever tell
00:38:10.460
anyone to shave man or woman, okay, child or adult, uh, listen, yeah, teenage beards are not
00:38:19.760
aesthetically pleasing, but, but you know, you need to experiment with your facial hair. And we,
00:38:23.040
we all went through awkward phases with our facial hair. You experiment, you figure out what works for
00:38:27.840
you, but to ever discourage anyone from expressing their themselves through facial hair, I think is
00:38:37.820
just, it is a, an abomination. And how dare you? This is from Miriam says, huge fan of the podcast.
00:38:44.680
On Monday, you were talking about the alcohol debate in the church and you kept saying miracle.
00:38:48.940
It is pronounced miracle. It hurts my brain to hear you say it wrong. My name is Miriam,
00:38:54.080
meaning that people replace the I with an A all the time. It brings forth a certain anger in me
00:38:58.200
that is only remedied by throwing my phone out the window. Please stop abusing the word miracle,
00:39:03.460
or I might have to go to therapy. Well, well, Miriam, uh, I, who are, who are you to say? Okay.
00:39:11.600
It's in the eye of the beholder here. If I want to say miracle, I'm going to say miracle, Miriam.
00:39:18.460
How are you supposed to say miracle? Is that what people say? I don't know. It might,
00:39:21.460
must be a Baltimore thing. I don't know. Miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle. It's a miracle.
00:39:30.360
Cool. You know, now I've forgotten how to say the word because of you, Miriam. Um, let's see here.
00:39:45.820
Says, uh, Matt, I appreciate your thoughtful perspectives on a variety of issues, including
00:39:51.080
theology. I was genuinely shocked. Genuinely. That's another one you could get on me for
00:39:55.740
pronouncing strangely. Uh, I was genuinely shocked when you said that the rapture is a new teaching
00:40:01.980
that didn't exist for thousands of years after Christ. I had no idea that something I've always
00:40:06.380
assumed was a universally Christian doctrine I've been taught from childhood is even debated. And I
00:40:11.160
was intrigued to hear why you didn't believe it was actually a thing. I was disappointed when you
00:40:15.960
said that the only verse rapture believing people use to support their belief are the Matthew verses.
00:40:20.680
I had literally just read Luke 17 to my kids that morning, uh, which says when the son of man
00:40:25.660
returns, it will be like it was in Noah's day. In these days, um, the people enjoyed banquets and
00:40:31.000
parties and wedding night, uh, right up to the time Noah entered his boat and the flood came and
00:40:34.800
destroyed them all. And the world will be as it was in the days of lot. People went about their daily
00:40:38.980
business, eating and drinking, buying and selling, farming and building until the morning lot left
00:40:43.320
Sodom. Then fire and burning sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. Yes, it will be
00:40:47.700
business as usual, right up to the day when the son of man revealed, um, uh, is revealed on that day.
00:40:55.220
A person out on the deck of a roof must go down into the house to pack a person out in the field
00:41:00.180
must not return home. Remember what happened to lots wife. If you cling to your life, you will lose
00:41:04.480
it. And if you let your life go, you will save it that night. Two people will be asleep in one bed.
00:41:09.240
One will be taken the other left. Two women will be grinding flour together at the middle.
00:41:12.700
One will be taken the other left end of Bible verse. These verses sure make it sound like Jesus
00:41:19.420
is coming is taking is something to watch for. And we are the ones who will be taken.
00:41:24.600
Other verses of, of warning to be alert and watchful also come right to mind without even
00:41:29.980
searching the verses about the bridesmaids whose lamps are empty when the bridegroom comes.
00:41:34.280
I've always assumed those verses refer to being watchful and ready for the coming of Christ.
00:41:38.140
Um, also the verses I've always read as an actual description of the rapture quote, the,
00:41:43.100
the trump shall sound, the trumpet shall sound and the dead in Christ will first rise.
00:41:47.280
Would you mind giving this topic a little more thorough treatment? It felt like you set up
00:41:50.940
a straw man when you said the Matthew verses are the ones only ever used to defend the idea
00:41:54.780
of a rapture. Uh, okay. So I don't think that the Matthew verse, I don't think I said the
00:41:59.060
Matthew verse is the only one used. I think I said it's one of the main ones used. And in
00:42:02.620
fact, uh, you, you use that same one, uh, you used Luke's version of, uh, the Matthew
00:42:09.780
verse, but it's the same verse. Just, you're getting it from two different gospels. It's
00:42:13.880
the same, same thing, uh, phrase a little bit differently. So that's the first thing.
00:42:19.860
Also, I don't, the, the, the, I'm not sure what translation you were giving me there, but
00:42:24.800
you know, this is a translation that uses phrases like business as usual, uh, which is certainly
00:42:30.480
not a phrase that existed in the first century. So I'm not sure what translation you use. There
00:42:34.560
might be a translation problem here as well. Um, what I'll say again is that I think the
00:42:41.300
verse that you quoted there at length clearly refers to the wicked people being taken. It
00:42:48.400
does not refer to, uh, the good people being taken. This is about the damnation of the wicked
00:42:55.780
says when the son of man returns, it will be like it was in Noah's day. And then it goes
00:43:01.880
on from there. So in Noah's day, the people who were taken, taken from the earth through
00:43:08.200
the form of a flood were the wicked ones. So I think that's the point in that verse. Um,
00:43:15.180
what I'll say about some of the other ones you mentioned, uh, I mean, there's one, there's
00:43:19.940
one you didn't even mention. I think it's in Thessalonians that talks about, uh, you know,
00:43:24.220
the righteous ascending and meeting Christ in the clouds. You didn't even mention that
00:43:28.980
one. I'll give you that one. Maybe that, maybe that's probably your best one to pull
00:43:31.960
from, but there again, now I just think that, yes. Now when you, when you're proof texting,
00:43:37.340
when you're, when you're looking for a verse that matches a theological point of view that
00:43:40.700
you already held before even looking at the Bible, you're going to be able to find a verse
00:43:45.600
that will support it. And that's the problem with, with proof texting and looking at things
00:43:49.220
out of context, which I think the rapture is pulled out of context. So yes, that particular
00:43:53.180
verse in Thessalonians that would match up with the rapture, but it's just, you cannot
00:43:59.660
hang this entire idea of the rapture on that one little verse. And that's just, that's an
00:44:06.320
invalid way of looking at the Bible in general. And something else I'll keep in mind here is
00:44:10.040
that, um, the, maybe it seems like semantics, but it's really not. God, we know that heaven
00:44:20.260
does not literally exist in the clouds, right? We, we know that. I mean, children might think
00:44:25.880
of it that way, but we know that if you go up, uh, you're going to find clouds and you're
00:44:30.680
going to eventually leave the atmosphere and you'll be in outer space. Heaven is not literally
00:44:34.360
physically located above us. When we speak about God above and when we look up to pray and all that
00:44:40.500
kind of stuff, that's metaphorical language. So, uh, now maybe there'll be people meeting
00:44:48.080
Jesus in the clouds at the end of time, but that's not really Jesus. What really even would
00:44:53.040
be the point of that? Because heaven is not actually literally in the clouds. So what I'm
00:44:58.260
saying is I would see that as metaphorical language, the same way when Jesus talks about
00:45:02.380
God above and God being above us and in the heavens and so on, which Jesus does talk about,
00:45:07.500
we take that metaphorically because we know that he doesn't, he's not literally up sitting
00:45:11.900
in a cloud, right? Um, now you could say, well, Jesus ascended into heaven and we are led to
00:45:19.680
believe by scripture that there was a physical ascension. Like he actually rose above the people
00:45:24.740
who were witnessing it. And yes, but again, there, um, it's not like Jesus had to physically
00:45:31.800
go up to get into heaven. So if he physically ascended in front of the, uh, the people who
00:45:37.600
witnessed it, then, um, I would say, I would think that that was for their benefit, you know,
00:45:45.460
because of the, the, the symbolic significance of going up above in a spiritual sense.
00:45:54.760
It wasn't something that he didn't have to go that direction to get to heaven. It was just
00:45:58.620
something for the benefit of the rest of us. And we could talk about the ascension and it makes,
00:46:04.420
that makes a lot more sense to us just sort of intuitively than God. I don't know how, I don't
00:46:09.600
know how else you would refer to it. If God just were to, or if Jesus were to just vanish into another
00:46:15.000
realm, into another, uh, into, into, you know, heaven, uh, how would we even refer to that? How would
00:46:21.300
we intuitively conceive of it? So that's what the ascension is for. But at the end of time,
00:46:28.660
I'm not really sure what the point of those theatrics would be. Maybe, maybe that's how it
00:46:32.780
will be. I don't know. But what I'm saying is the overall doctrine of the rapture is a modern
00:46:39.460
invention. It's from the 19th century. And for centuries, Christians read those verses and they
00:46:45.740
had no concept of the rapture as we know it today. Now, just because it's modern doesn't necessarily
00:46:53.000
make it wrong, but it should make you pretty suspicious of it. Why is it that every Christian
00:46:58.880
before that point read the Bible and never noticed that? And now all of a sudden we do.
00:47:07.720
Is it because we have some sort of new insight that's new to us that the Holy Spirit kept hidden
00:47:12.800
from Christians for 18, 19 centuries? Or is it because we've just come up with a new theological
00:47:18.700
concept and we're looking for justification in the Bible? I think it's probably more of the latter.
00:47:26.560
Uh, but that's my opinion. All right, we'll leave it there. Thanks everybody for watching.
00:47:42.800
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of the Andrew Klavan Show. Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
00:47:50.100
burns and no one wants to mention the spate of church desecrations and arson fires that's been
00:47:56.480
sweeping through France all through Lent. We'll talk about it on the Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan.