The Matt Walsh Show - April 05, 2018


Ep. 4 - The Real Reason Christianity Is Declining In America

Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Michael Scott Jesus Christ Ben Shapiro
Ep. 3 - College gives seminar on ＂Christian privilege.＂ Here's why that's insane Ep. 5 - The Pro-Abortion Position is Disgusting and Ridiculous, and That’s How it Should Be Treated

Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

145.79

Word count

2,819

Sentence count

307

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Is it better to be a secular Christian or a secular person? Who is closer to redemption: the Christian who functions as an atheist, or the atheist who thinks he's a Christian? Today's episode explores this question, and argues that a good portion of us Christians are not really Christian in any meaningful sense.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Welcome to the show. Just want to say one thing at the outset.
00:00:06.300 I made the self-destructive decision that I often make, honestly, to read the comments
00:00:14.420 under the video I did a couple days ago. And somebody said that I look like a generic burglar
00:00:23.700 from an ADT commercial. And I just thought that it's kind of true. I don't know how that's true or
00:00:32.160 what. I don't really. But yeah, I think he kind of nailed it. So I only bring that up just to say
00:00:37.220 that the problem with all the insulting that goes on on the Internet and in the comment sections of
00:00:44.680 the videos I do and the articles I write is that the insults, there's no imagination, no creativity.
00:00:49.400 And so it's very rare that I read one and I say, wow, well, you know, well done. Well done on that
00:00:55.600 insult. So all I'm saying to the trolls is just step your game up a little bit. That's all. Now,
00:01:02.200 I wrote something yesterday on this subject, and I want to expand upon it a little bit, elaborate.
00:01:11.420 I was thinking about the subject after reading another article about the so-called decline of
00:01:17.300 Christianity in America. And I don't remember where the article is from, but it was pointing out how
00:01:24.200 now today, 70% of America is Christian. And that number is significantly lower than it's ever been
00:01:33.480 in history. And that's where the decline, the so-called decline in America is happening,
00:01:39.240 or so they tell us. But that's not really the problem.
00:01:44.140 There is a problem. There's a big problem in American culture and with the church and with
00:01:49.440 Christianity. Christianity is declining in America, that's for sure. But the problem is not 0.86
00:01:57.300 with the 5 or 10 or 15 or 20% that we've lost over the decades. The problem is within the 70% that we
00:02:05.940 still have. We say that 70% of America is Christian, but there's something seriously wrong 0.99
00:02:13.560 with our 70%. Because if 70% of us were, now that might be a smaller percentage than at any other
00:02:22.860 point in history, but 70% is still a large percentage. And if 70% of us were really authentically,
00:02:31.260 substantially Christian, well, then our culture would be in pretty fine shape. We would see that 0.98
00:02:38.640 reflected in the culture, wouldn't we? When we look around, we would see that, okay, wow,
00:02:44.400 we are still a Christian culture with 70% of us Christian. But we don't see that. We're not a
00:02:53.080 Christian culture, even though we are a Christian population. So it would seem that a good portion of
00:02:59.720 our 70% a good portion of we Christians are not really Christian in any meaningful sense whatsoever.
00:03:09.020 Here's the reality, I think. The average American Christian is no different, not substantively 0.99
00:03:18.360 different, from the average American atheist or agnostic or secular person.
00:03:23.400 And this, by the way, is true of most religions. The average American Jew, I'm sure Ben Shapiro would
00:03:34.540 agree that the average American Jew is secular, is essentially atheist in his belief systems and
00:03:42.100 in the way that he operates. America is a secular country and secularism is like this disease and
00:03:49.940 it's infected all of us. It's infected every religion in America.
00:03:56.980 So then we have to ask this question.
00:04:00.160 Is it better to be a secular Christian or a secular, secular person? 0.94
00:04:07.760 Who is closer to redemption? Who is easier to save? Is it the atheist or the Christian who functions as an atheist? 0.77
00:04:15.800 I think a lot of us would tend to say, well, at least the Christian believes, so he's in a better spot. 0.98
00:04:25.080 He doesn't have a lot to worry about. At least he believes.
00:04:29.060 But I don't think that's the case. I think, in fact,
00:04:32.400 if you had to choose between being an atheist who knows he's an atheist
00:04:37.500 or an atheist who thinks he's a Christian,
00:04:41.220 you're better off being the atheist who knows he's an atheist.
00:04:43.440 In my piece, I illustrated the point with two hypothetical people, Bob and Jim.
00:04:49.660 And I want to bring Bob and Jim back into the conversation
00:04:52.100 because I think they're a helpful framing device for us.
00:04:55.700 So first, let's think about Bob for a minute.
00:04:59.160 Bob is not Christian. 0.99
00:05:03.680 Doesn't claim to be.
00:05:05.680 If he had to pick a label, he'd probably say he's agnostic.
00:05:08.880 He might say he's spiritual but not religious.
00:05:13.820 Something like that.
00:05:14.880 But it all kind of means the same thing.
00:05:16.660 And he lives a normal life.
00:05:18.800 He doesn't think very much about these kinds of things.
00:05:23.020 He's not contemplating eternity or the afterlife most of the time.
00:05:27.940 He doesn't really think about it.
00:05:29.280 He doesn't think about the fact that he's a mortal person
00:05:31.720 and he's going to die sooner rather than later.
00:05:34.680 He doesn't think about that.
00:05:35.560 But he just does what normal people do.
00:05:38.960 He watches porn and he drinks a little too much on the weekends
00:05:43.740 and he watches a lot of TV. 0.83
00:05:45.540 Spends most of his time.
00:05:46.920 Spends most of his days just kind of staring into various screens,
00:05:51.140 whether it's on his phone or his computer.
00:05:54.540 And that's how he spends his time.
00:05:56.580 His goal in life is to be comfortable.
00:05:59.340 He wants pleasure.
00:06:01.260 That's what he wants.
00:06:02.120 That's what he craves the most.
00:06:03.800 And he works a job, but he works just to enrich himself.
00:06:08.100 Whatever money he has, he spends on himself or he saves.
00:06:12.140 He gives very little to charity.
00:06:13.660 He doesn't really worry about that.
00:06:15.460 But he's nice to people.
00:06:16.940 And he won't sacrifice anything for them, but he's nice to them.
00:06:20.800 He's not going to sacrifice his comfort.
00:06:22.760 He's not going to put himself out there for other people most of the time.
00:06:26.240 But he's nice to them.
00:06:28.480 And he's nice to his wife most of the time.
00:06:30.380 He likes his wife, but he'll leave her.
00:06:34.760 If his feelings ever fade, he'll leave her.
00:06:38.620 And he likes his kids, too.
00:06:40.160 But if his home life ever becomes too boring or too difficult or not fulfilling enough,
00:06:46.280 he'll leave them also.
00:06:48.060 So he's a normal person.
00:06:49.340 He's a nice person.
00:06:50.320 He's an empty person.
00:06:52.860 And I think he represents a very large portion of American society.
00:06:58.800 So then there's Jim.
00:07:01.100 Jim calls himself a Christian.
00:07:03.600 He doesn't think very much about what that means.
00:07:06.680 He believes, vaguely, kind of ambiguously, he believes that something like God probably exists.
00:07:12.720 He accepts that Jesus Christ died for his sins.
00:07:16.020 But he accepts it passively.
00:07:17.780 He accepts it as just a fact.
00:07:20.340 He accepts it like he would accept it if I told him the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Jupiter.
00:07:27.040 He would just say, oh, okay, yeah, that.
00:07:29.240 That's a thing.
00:07:31.200 So God and Jesus and religion is just a thing. 0.98
00:07:33.640 And he's like, yeah, sure, fine, that.
00:07:35.960 Yeah, that's true, I guess.
00:07:39.000 He doesn't believe that the details have any bearing on his life.
00:07:43.140 And he thinks very little about all this stuff.
00:07:45.460 He doesn't like thinking about it.
00:07:46.760 He doesn't like talking about it.
00:07:48.080 He, in fact, is even more hostile to religious discussions than Bob.
00:07:54.140 Bob, he's the kind of Christian, you try to talk to him about Christianity, about the gospel.
00:08:01.200 He gets very uncomfortable.
00:08:03.080 He doesn't want to talk about it.
00:08:06.460 He doesn't pray.
00:08:09.160 His inner life is basically indistinguishable from Bob's.
00:08:12.660 And his external life, what he does, how he spends his time, that is completely indistinguishable.
00:08:18.940 If you were to follow Jim around and observe everything he does, now, this will be weird and creepy to do, but in this hypothetical situation, if you were to follow Jim around, observe everything he does, everything he says, just how he spends his time, just everything that he indulges in, you would, there'd be no difference.
00:08:40.100 You would not see any substantial, noticeable difference at all between his life and the life of Bob, the atheist or the agnostic or the spiritual, but not religious.
00:08:51.860 There is no difference, nothing.
00:08:54.980 Not even on the, not even on Sundays anymore.
00:08:56.820 He's not going to church either.
00:08:57.760 He's just, he's not doing anything.
00:08:59.380 He's just living like everybody else lives, but he's a nice person and he's an empty person and he does believe, but there is little to no evidence of that belief to be found anywhere without him or within him.
00:09:18.680 Now, I think that describes a lot of Christians.
00:09:20.820 It's a depressing description, but it has to describe them because, I mean, just, just, just look around you at society.
00:09:32.920 Look at the kind of media that people watch.
00:09:34.960 Look at the billion dollar porn industry.
00:09:36.660 Look at the state of, of, of marriage and the family.
00:09:39.860 Um, clearly this all can't be the fault.
00:09:42.000 If you look at our culture and the way that it's structured and set up, it can't all be the fault, the fault of the bobs. 0.95
00:09:48.680 There aren't enough bobs walking around. 1.00
00:09:50.460 There aren't enough atheists and secular people.
00:09:53.020 70% of us are still Christians, yet we have created this society.
00:09:59.460 So there must be a lot of gyms.
00:10:02.240 I mean, a lot.
00:10:04.560 And we know that because we've all met gyms, haven't we?
00:10:07.640 We've all met a lot of gyms.
00:10:10.160 Maybe we are gyms.
00:10:11.980 God forbid.
00:10:12.760 So both Bob and Jim are in a, in a difficult, precarious situation.
00:10:19.980 Jim, I think, has it worse.
00:10:22.520 And I'll tell you why.
00:10:23.720 Because Jim has the same emptiness and the same indifference, but he has something else.
00:10:33.260 And it's a problem.
00:10:34.340 He has a sense of security.
00:10:35.960 And it's a false sense of security.
00:10:39.500 He believes that he's saved.
00:10:41.740 He believes it because he accepts God as a fact.
00:10:46.660 And maybe he announced vocally at some point that he's a Christian.
00:10:50.160 He said, I am a Christian.
00:10:52.140 It kind of reminds me of that scene in The Office, right towards the end of when The Office stopped being funny.
00:10:58.500 I think it was season four, the scene in The Office where Michael Scott goes bankrupt and he's told he needs to declare bankruptcy.
00:11:07.360 So he walks out of his office and just says, I declare bankruptcy in front of the office.
00:11:13.140 And he had to be told, no, that's not how it works.
00:11:15.300 Just because you say it doesn't mean anything.
00:11:18.360 And just because someone says they're a Christian means nothing.
00:11:21.320 Those are just words.
00:11:22.340 It's just air coming out.
00:11:24.140 It's just vocal cord vibrations and air and then going out into the ether.
00:11:28.820 It doesn't mean anything on its own.
00:11:30.700 You might as well announce that you're a dolphin.
00:11:32.700 It doesn't mean anything necessarily.
00:11:37.700 Bob, on the other hand, is honest about who he is and what he believes.
00:11:41.460 He knows that he's rejected God.
00:11:45.020 And so we could pray that maybe he'll be like the prodigal son.
00:11:49.620 He'll hit rock bottom.
00:11:50.880 He'll find himself sleeping in the mud with the pigs, figuratively speaking, or maybe literally.
00:11:56.080 And then he'll look around and he'll say, what's happening to my life?
00:11:59.180 What's going on?
00:12:00.260 What am I missing?
00:12:01.500 Something big is missing from my life.
00:12:04.200 What is it?
00:12:06.040 And from there, we can hope that hopefully he begins the ascent.
00:12:10.440 He begins the ascent into hope.
00:12:12.600 But the problem for Jim, we see the problem for Jim is that he doesn't feel God's absence in his life
00:12:22.740 because he's not honest about the fact that there is an absence.
00:12:28.440 He's already sleeping in the mud with the pigs, but he doesn't notice or he doesn't care.
00:12:34.120 See, I think it takes kind of a certain toll on a man.
00:12:41.720 It causes real damage to stand in the light of God, to look at God, to accept that he is real,
00:12:53.000 and yet still to turn from him and reject him.
00:12:56.420 There are a lot of defense mechanisms that you have to use, a lot of walls you have to erect in order to make that work.
00:13:07.820 The Christian who lives like an atheist has to contort himself, twist himself into pretzels, 1.00
00:13:13.700 and it's going to be harder and harder to untwist himself, and he's less likely to even try because he believes.
00:13:22.720 But he doesn't really believe.
00:13:24.180 I'll tell you what he really does.
00:13:27.800 He acknowledges.
00:13:30.620 Jim acknowledges Christ.
00:13:36.700 He acknowledges the cross.
00:13:38.620 He kind of nods towards it and says, yeah, sure.
00:13:45.200 He acknowledges.
00:13:47.740 But that's not belief.
00:13:49.060 Anyone who thinks they can get to heaven because they've acknowledged a reality is severely misled.
00:14:01.240 That's not belief.
00:14:02.180 That's not what Christian belief is.
00:14:04.420 And so we begin to understand that there has to be a difference between saying,
00:14:08.840 I believe that such and such is true and saying, I believe in.
00:14:16.580 There's a big difference.
00:14:19.440 And I think a lot of us are that Christians.
00:14:22.780 We believe that God is real.
00:14:25.240 Christ is real.
00:14:25.900 Christ died.
00:14:26.380 We believe that.
00:14:26.940 We believe it as a fact.
00:14:29.400 We believe it as a reality.
00:14:30.500 We believe it like we believe that dogs are mammals and sharks live in the ocean.
00:14:36.060 But so fine.
00:14:38.140 We believe that.
00:14:40.440 But we don't believe in.
00:14:42.120 The analogy that I used is imagine, you know, you see a bridge over a very deep canyon.
00:14:55.820 And you could say, yeah, I believe that bridge exists.
00:14:58.180 You can acknowledge the existence of the bridge.
00:15:03.320 That's the believing that of the bridge.
00:15:05.540 But if you believe in the bridge, then you'll walk across it.
00:15:11.500 And if you won't walk across the bridge, it means you don't believe in it.
00:15:16.160 You don't trust it.
00:15:17.960 You don't have faith in it.
00:15:20.940 You won't depend on it.
00:15:22.280 You're not going to trust it with your life.
00:15:24.600 I think a lot of us as Christians, we are standing a good distance from the bridge and
00:15:30.640 just pointing to the bridge and saying, there's a bridge.
00:15:35.540 And we think that's enough.
00:15:38.880 We think that there's no walking involved.
00:15:41.480 There's no depending, no trusting, nothing.
00:15:44.120 It's just pointing and saying, there it is.
00:15:47.860 But believing in Jesus is submitting to him, following him, loving him.
00:15:54.140 I really think we could alleviate a lot of the confusion.
00:16:01.520 If rather than saying, well, a Christian has to believe in Jesus. 0.86
00:16:05.900 That's true.
00:16:07.320 But then also, I think it may be more accurate and more helpful to say, a Christian has to 1.00
00:16:13.880 love Jesus.
00:16:16.700 You have to love him.
00:16:19.540 And loving goes far beyond a mere acknowledgement of a fact.
00:16:23.440 I can acknowledge that my wife exists.
00:16:28.720 That's good.
00:16:29.600 I mean, that's a first step, I guess.
00:16:34.300 But then if I treat her like she doesn't exist, what good is it?
00:16:41.340 Will my marriage survive?
00:16:42.900 Does my marriage even exist?
00:16:45.320 If that's the way that I operate.
00:16:49.320 So that's what it is.
00:16:50.340 I think, you know, we believe that.
00:16:52.520 We haven't graduated to the in.
00:16:54.520 And for that reason, I think in the end we end up being even worse than those who don't
00:17:02.420 have that or in.
00:17:05.380 Far worse.
00:17:06.240 Because it's one thing to deny that Christ is real.
00:17:10.580 It's another thing to accept that he's real and then refuse to submit to him.
00:17:14.860 Because that is pride.
00:17:16.160 I mean, that's the worst thing of all.
00:17:18.060 That is a willful, conscious rejection.
00:17:25.400 It's literally what Satan did.
00:17:29.540 And we know that Satan is not an atheist.
00:17:34.180 That's the problem we always run into with the Christians who think that all we got to 1.00
00:17:38.120 do is just believe a fact.
00:17:42.260 Just acknowledge it.
00:17:44.280 How do you explain Satan?
00:17:45.160 Why is it Satan?
00:17:46.680 I mean, it seems if that's the case, then a great injustice was done to Satan.
00:17:51.580 Because Satan knows.
00:17:54.060 He does more than believe.
00:17:56.260 He knows.
00:17:57.420 He believes more than any of us.
00:18:00.680 He knows for a fact.
00:18:03.260 And yet he's still in hell.
00:18:04.280 And why is that?
00:18:04.880 Because he refused to submit.
00:18:08.320 He knew the fact.
00:18:09.720 He knew the reality.
00:18:11.100 He accepted that.
00:18:13.820 But he didn't love God.
00:18:14.900 He refused to love.
00:18:16.820 He refused to believe in him.
00:18:18.720 He refused to be in God.
00:18:23.680 And so I think it's, if we're, if we're looking at Bob and Jim, I think it's, I think we would
00:18:29.720 have to admit that Satan is much closer to Jim than he is to Bob.
00:18:34.600 And so unfortunately, Jim is much closer to him.
00:18:36.880 And I know that's an uncomfortable fact to face, but it's one that I think we need to face and think about and consider whether we are the gyms of modern culture.
00:18:47.980 All right, guys.
00:18:49.100 Thanks for watching.
00:18:50.240 Have a great day.
00:18:51.160 And I'll talk to you tomorrow.
00:18:52.080 Bye.
00:18:52.580 Bye.
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