The Matt Walsh Show - July 20, 2018


Ep. 66 - The Secularization of Christianity


Episode Stats


Length

27 minutes

Words per minute

156.3794

Word count

4,356

Sentence count

242

Harmful content

Hate speech

19

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Is it ever okay for a man to cry? Is crying allowed as a man? Is it okay to cry in certain situations, and what are the 7 situations where a man can cry? I'll break it down for you in this episode.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Well, before we begin, I was reading an email earlier this morning from somebody responding
00:00:06.660 to my show yesterday, which was about masculinity, and she says that there's too much macho manly
00:00:14.200 stuff going on in the culture, and it's okay for a man to cry, you know, to show his feminine 0.86
00:00:20.020 side and cry. I like a man who cries, is what she said. And that just got me thinking,
00:00:25.620 and I wanted to stipulate this just kind of as a public service announcement at the top,
00:00:29.540 and it's not related to anything else we're going to talk about. But let me just stipulate
00:00:34.580 one thing about crying. It is generally not okay for a man to cry, except for in the following
00:00:43.800 seven situations. There are seven situations where a man can cry. The first one, death of a loved one.
00:00:51.040 Obviously, crying is okay there. The second one, a major milestone involving your kids, like when
00:00:57.360 your kid is born, when child graduates, that sort of thing. The third thing, during an intense
00:01:04.560 spiritual experience, crying is okay there. The fourth, of course, when you're watching the final
00:01:11.880 scene of Rudy, when they're chanting for Rudy, and he finally comes out, and he makes a tackle,
00:01:18.940 and the tackle is totally irrelevant because the game is basically over. But he's been working for
00:01:23.580 his whole life, and then everyone's cheering, and his dad is there, and then they carry him off the
00:01:28.060 field. You can weep over that as a man. The fifth thing, if you're kicked in the shins by a horse,
00:01:36.620 I think is a good, is a fine crying situation. The sixth thing, if your wife makes you a lasagna,
00:01:46.580 that is just so good that it brings you to tears, that's acceptable. Seven, if you go to somebody's
00:01:56.240 house, and this has happened to me before, you go to somebody's house, and they say, oh, we're having
00:02:02.840 chili, and you say, oh, wow, this makes my day, and then they serve you the bowl of chili, but then you
00:02:09.460 discover that the chili is made with ground turkey and black beans, then it's acceptable actually to
00:02:17.500 throw the hot bowl of chili at the person who served it to you and cry, and that's acceptable
00:02:23.720 not only morally and ethically, but also legally, I believe. That's the law stipulates that. I'm pretty
00:02:28.540 sure in most states. Anyway, those are the seven times, and there are no other times. That's it. Those
00:02:35.540 are the only times when you're allowed to cry as a man, but I can, I can expand on that some other
00:02:40.880 time. I want to respond to something else, actually. As, as I've, as I've mentioned before, I get
00:02:48.400 complaints about the religious content on my show quite a bit. People complain, you know, that I talk
00:02:54.500 about God too much, and there's too much Jesus stuff, especially after I did the last show. I was
00:03:01.320 talking about doubt, and what do you do about religious doubts, and there was a ton of complaints
00:03:06.820 from people about, why are you talking about God again? I don't want to hear this, and it makes sense
00:03:12.780 for them to complain because it is true that I will go into people's homes with a loaded gun and force
00:03:19.820 them under threat of death to watch my show, so it makes sense for them to complain that they don't like
00:03:27.100 the content because they're forced physically to watch it. Now, if I, if I weren't forcing people
00:03:36.060 physically to watch it, it would make no sense at all to complain about my content. It would make sense
00:03:41.540 simply to not watch it and go live your life and do something else, because there are, after all,
00:03:48.260 probably like a hundred thousand different podcasts and shows that I'm not interested in that talk about
00:03:56.380 content that I don't find interesting, but I don't show up to announce, hello, this content doesn't
00:04:02.420 interest me. I am not interested in this content, and I will watch the entire thing and remain here
00:04:09.520 and leave comments letting you know how uninterested I am. I don't do that, but some people follow a
00:04:17.720 different strategy, I guess. Some people are under the impression that everything that happens
00:04:22.980 in the universe must cater to their special interests, and if it doesn't, then they'll
00:04:28.320 complain about it. You know, then they'll barge in and complain. It's kind of like if, it's like
00:04:36.080 when people come, if you watch whatever platform you're watching the show on, and you look at the
00:04:40.120 comments, and there are people complaining, I don't find this interesting. I don't like this.
00:04:45.380 This, this I don't like. That's like if you're walking by somebody's house, and the windows were
00:04:53.580 open, and you could hear what sounded like the people inside playing Scrabble, and so you knocked
00:05:00.200 on the door, and when they answered it, you said, I don't like Scrabble, and they said, okay. Did anyone
00:05:07.120 ask you if you liked it? You weren't even invited to play, so I don't know why, who are you? What are you
00:05:13.240 doing here at my house? I don't like Scrabble. No, I don't like it. That's kind of what happens in the
00:05:20.960 comment section under all my videos, but when I've discussed, and by the way, I have decided to change
00:05:29.860 my policy. This is good news. I will no longer be forcing people at gunpoint to watch or listen. I'm
00:05:37.780 going to stop doing that. I've decided that it's not really in keeping with my Christian convictions. I
00:05:42.380 won't do that anymore, so you are free. Everyone is free to not to do what you want. You don't have
00:05:47.800 to be here if you don't want to be, but when I've discussed before the complaints about the religious
00:05:54.660 content on my show, most of the time I'm focusing on atheists and secular people who criticize me for
00:05:59.800 it. Unfortunately, though, and this really shouldn't be too surprising, it's not only atheists. Very often
00:06:06.480 I hear from Christians who are upset that I'm talking about Christian stuff. For instance,
00:06:13.600 got an email from a guy after that show, whatever it was, two, three days ago, and he said,
00:06:20.340 and I hear this a lot. This is a very common line that you hear. He said, if I wanted to hear about
00:06:27.360 this, I'd go to church. And I didn't ask him, but I'm sure if I, okay, well, when do you go to church?
00:06:33.760 Well, I went in 1987. That's the last time I wanted to hear about this stuff.
00:06:40.240 Now, he says he doesn't want to hear about God and religion all the time. There's a time and place
00:06:49.000 for it, he said, but my own show is not a time or place, he's decided. That's not a time or place.
00:06:56.720 In fact, if he comes in contact with a conversation about religion, then it is immediately not a time
00:07:04.320 and place. It must always happen in places where he cannot hear it. He was saying, I need to separate
00:07:13.140 the religion stuff from everything else, and I shouldn't bring God and religion to everything,
00:07:16.940 and so on and so on. And this, again, is something that I hear a lot from Christians.
00:07:23.120 And, you know, when I hear this, it brings to mind
00:07:26.600 a conversation I had with an atheist a little while ago.
00:07:33.940 And he made a very good point. It's not, it was not the first time I've heard a point like this
00:07:38.520 made by an atheist. But he said, you know, the reason I don't believe in God, or one of the big
00:07:43.540 reasons, is I don't believe that you believers actually believe. How can I be convinced about
00:07:53.320 God if the people trying to convince me aren't convinced themselves? And I asked him what he
00:07:58.840 meant by that, and he said, and I'm paraphrasing now, but he said, if I really believe, if I personally
00:08:06.240 really believe in God, if I really believe that a supernatural force was active in the world and was
00:08:13.280 and this force had made me and made the world and made everything, and this force is watching us
00:08:18.820 now and judging, and when I die, I'll either go to eternal paradise or eternal suffering based on how
00:08:24.080 I live here, and if I really believe that, like, angels and demons are around me and are acting in
00:08:29.840 the world, though, invisibly, and if I believe that all of that stuff exists, angels, devils, hell,
00:08:35.580 heaven, heaven, God, all of that, well, then I would be obsessed with that fact. I'd be obsessed with it.
00:08:45.440 It would be the only thing I ever thought about or talked about. I would live completely differently.
00:08:51.840 I mean, I would live and act and speak and behave as if there were a supernatural force watching over
00:08:58.580 me, but that's not how Christians in this country act. That's not how they talk. That's not how they 1.00
00:09:05.440 carry on, not even close. They mostly just carry on the same as everyone else, which makes it clear
00:09:12.740 that they don't really believe what they say they believe, because if they did, it would be such a
00:09:19.920 significant fact. I thought that was a great point, and by the way, I've heard a similar point made by
00:09:30.300 pro-abortion people in relation to pro-lifers. I've heard pro-abortion people say, if you really
00:09:37.740 believed that babies are being killed, why aren't you acting like it? Why aren't you doing anything about
00:09:44.300 it? I mean, and they'll say, you know, if there was a building down the street where they were
00:09:51.280 killing two-year-olds, I mean, I would, I would really act upon that in a way. I mean, I wouldn't
00:09:59.480 just sit around. And I think that, you know, it's hard for us to hear this, but these are very good
00:10:06.900 points. And we need to face them, because they're right. And this is the consequence of being secularized
00:10:16.080 Christians living in a secularized country. This is the consequence of insisting that God be separated 0.99
00:10:21.260 from normal life and normal discussions. This is the consequence of treating our religion as 0.86
00:10:27.280 something that belongs only in church. The consequence is that nobody believes us, and we
00:10:33.400 don't really believe ourselves. Nobody takes us seriously, and they shouldn't, because we don't
00:10:39.320 take ourselves seriously. We make these extraordinary claims about the nature of life
00:10:46.420 and about what we believe, but then that claim is not reflected in anything else we do.
00:10:56.840 So if you're a Christian saying, I don't like all the Jesus talk, it makes me uncomfortable, 1.00
00:11:00.580 let's talk about something else. Well, the atheists around you, they may agree with you, and they
00:11:05.400 may be happy that you're joining them in their efforts to shut down religious conversations,
00:11:09.880 but they're also laughing at you in their heads, because you're a ridiculous figure. You're a fraud.
00:11:21.000 You are, you're laughable. And they're right to see you that way and to treat you like that.
00:11:27.520 Because what, what are you doing taking their side? They, they believe in a world where there's
00:11:35.220 no God. I mean, it's, it makes sense for them to be saying this stuff, but you, what are you doing?
00:11:42.420 I thought you believe in this force who is, I mean, imagine, imagine that God, imagine that you,
00:11:50.400 you, this is what we talked about in the video a few days ago, but imagine that you did walk outside
00:11:54.860 your house and you could see, you could literally physically see God in the sky. Like he was
00:12:01.560 encompassing. I don't mean that he's living in the sky. I mean, you see this, this, this, this
00:12:07.200 infinitely immense being just hovering over everything, right? And looking right at you,
00:12:17.200 directly at you, would you not be obsessed with that fact? Would you be able to go and talk about
00:12:30.660 something else? And if somebody said to you, Hey, you know, uh, Hey, about that, about God up there,
00:12:38.220 would you say, no, let's not talk about that? No, you wouldn't.
00:12:46.300 But as Christians, we believe that though we can't see him, that is actually literally what's
00:12:52.300 happening. He is there over and above and in and through everything, a personal being looking
00:13:00.280 directly at us. Um, so when we do this thing, we say, ah, you know, I don't want to talk about that.
00:13:09.560 Eh. Well, then we, we come off as frauds and we have no chance of reaching anyone. We don't have a
00:13:19.620 chance. We have no chance of reaching atheists or anything like that because they know that it makes 1.00
00:13:24.220 no sense for someone who believes in God to not want to talk about it. And if you believe in God and
00:13:29.960 you really believe it, then it must be the most relevant thing in your life. And every conversation,
00:13:35.220 everything is tied to this fact. But we have participated as Christians in the secularization
00:13:45.140 of culture. We as Christians have participated in this process of separating God from life. We've not
00:13:50.820 only participated in it, but we've been the driving force of it. We have been facilitators of it. We've been
00:13:58.900 encouraging it. We have made two different camps, two divisions. And so there's the God camp and then 0.63
00:14:06.140 there's the everything else camp. And the God camp is very small. It doesn't get a lot of room to
00:14:10.300 operate. And the everything else camp encompasses most of the rest of the landscape. And, and so that
00:14:16.920 we as Christians can live in this camp over here and we can acknowledge that, that, that camp exists,
00:14:23.240 but it's, that acknowledgement has no bearing on our, on our lives or on our conversations. And we just
00:14:32.100 continue about our life as if that camp doesn't exist, as if it really is completely separate,
00:14:38.240 as if the two things are completely separate. We live atheist lives. And if we acknowledge God's
00:14:46.420 existence at all, it's maybe for a few minutes on Christmas. And then maybe if something happens to us
00:14:52.640 that we really need, we need his help, then we might say, oh God, can you come here for a minute?
00:14:57.320 I need a promotion at work. Yeah, just come here. And okay, thanks for the promotion. Now go back to
00:15:00.880 that. Go back over there. Go, go, go, go, go, go. The point is we've created an environment
00:15:09.140 as Christians. I think we've created an environment where faith in the gospel cannot be preached because
00:15:15.640 effectively, because faith and the gospel must exist in the culture intertwined with everything. That's what
00:15:23.920 faith demands. Considering the claims that it makes about life, it makes claims that if we believe those
00:15:32.000 claims should alter everything we do, think, and say. By its nature, faith has to be all-encompassing. It really
00:15:40.860 is an all-or-nothing proposition. People tell me all the time, it's not all-or-nothing. It's not black 0.69
00:15:45.340 or white. It is. That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what God is, all-or-nothing. He is either
00:15:53.200 all or he is nothing. He cannot be anything in between. But I think we look for that in-between thing
00:16:02.000 where we want to live, where we want to live and operate as if there is no God, yet still say that
00:16:12.300 we believe him. This is pretty unprecedented, I think, in history. For most of the existence of
00:16:22.240 Christianity, for most of Christendom's history, this didn't exist. You didn't have this
00:16:29.140 dichotomy of, well, there's God over here, and then there's life, right? There was none of that.
00:16:36.840 There was just God and faith was a part of everything. It was just, it was ingrained in
00:16:44.280 everything. It was your life. And that made sense. So if you go back to supposedly the dark ages, which
00:16:52.960 were times much more spiritually enlightened than the times we live in now, by the way. So if those were
00:16:58.000 the dark ages, then I don't know what this is now. But if you go back to the dark, the middle ages,
00:17:05.140 the dark ages, what you're going to find is that people, they drew no distinction whatsoever between
00:17:13.360 faith and religion and life. It was all, everything was all together. There was no distinction.
00:17:21.520 They couldn't even conceive of a distinction. There was no, you really didn't have the option to be a
00:17:27.520 secular Christian. You couldn't be that. That was not an option for life. And so, although back in 1.00
00:17:35.500 those days, back in the older times, it would have been harder to live physically, would have been
00:17:40.960 more physically challenging and demanding, certainly. I think spiritually, it was easier. It was easier to
00:17:46.440 be a Christian than, because things just kind of made sense. You lived in a society 0.58
00:17:52.700 where everyone really just acted and operated like they really believed this stuff.
00:18:03.420 And that's what society was. There was no dividing line.
00:18:07.380 And there shouldn't be. I don't know how we as Christians can argue that, yeah, we should keep
00:18:14.780 God out of this. What? How can you? I understand why atheists say it. How could you possibly say that 1.00
00:18:22.680 as a Christian? Keep God out of it. You must know that you can't. It's impossible. And nothing good 1.00
00:18:30.360 can ever come out of keeping God out of anything. Out of anything.
00:18:38.480 This is, again, if we lived 500 years ago, we wouldn't be having, like, it wouldn't be necessary
00:18:44.760 for me to make this point. Everyone would have looked at me like, yeah, of course, what are you
00:18:47.600 talking about? And now I say it, and Christians are disagreeing. Well, yeah, but you know, you can't 1.00
00:18:54.660 involve God in this. It's so ridiculous, so weak, so flimsy, so ridiculous, so stupid.
00:19:05.320 I mean, if you want to be an atheist, just be an atheist. Don't try to turn Christianity into 0.92
00:19:11.680 atheism. By the way, this is why I'm so opposed to anything that hints of secularization in the
00:19:21.760 church. Because we've got, the entire culture is secularized, right? We live in a secular culture.
00:19:29.180 We live in a culture where, as I said, it is not just feasible, but very easy to live as a secular
00:19:40.960 Christian and to separate your faith from everything else you do in your life and to not even really 0.96
00:19:45.940 think about it. It's possible to live that way. That is an option. That never used to be an option
00:19:51.100 for living. Now it is. And most people, that's the option they select, which makes it harder for
00:19:59.100 Christians who want to really live like Christians. It makes it harder for them because there's more of 1.00
00:20:04.900 an effort, just an effort. It requires effort, like every second of the day. And you're going to get
00:20:09.580 pushback, not just from atheists, but from other Christians who mock you and laugh at you for actually
00:20:16.100 taking the religion seriously that they supposedly share with you. But at least in a church,
00:20:24.100 at least you should be able to go to a physical church. And it's a safe haven, and it's an oasis
00:20:34.140 different from all the rest of it. You got secularization everywhere. You should at least be able to go to a
00:20:41.140 church and escape secularization and find a place that is grounded in the reality of God.
00:20:49.140 Um, but that's not what happens in most churches. You should be able to walk into a church
00:20:56.880 and everything about it should be completely different from what you see in the world today.
00:21:03.280 It should be shocking at this, at this point, it should be shocking to walk into a church. Every
00:21:09.780 time you walk in, you should be taken aback. It's like, whoa, this is different.
00:21:15.980 Everything from the architecture to the music, to the dress, to the, certainly to the message being
00:21:20.960 preached, the attitude, the demeanor of the congregants, all of it should appear to be
00:21:26.240 like from a different universe because it is from a different universe. It is from a universe where God
00:21:31.520 exists and rules over all as opposed to the universe that our secular culture tries to live in where
00:21:37.240 God does not exist and is irrelevant. Um, but that's not how it goes. Instead, most churches look and
00:21:45.440 sound and in every way resemble the rest of the culture. Most churches appear to be extensions of
00:21:52.180 secular culture, products of it, rather than windows into something eternal and sacred and, and
00:21:58.920 supernatural. And the effect is that you can go to most churches in America, or many anyway, you can go and
00:22:07.420 you can sit in the church and you can attend the service, you can listen to the music, you can listen to the
00:22:11.480 sermon or the homily, and you can still all the while continue on forgetting about God. The reality of God,
00:22:20.320 even in most churches in America, is not really thrust upon you. You're not really forced to face it. He might be
00:22:26.840 mentioned. But the fact that again, you live in this, uh, in a reality where God is present and looking at
00:22:36.280 you all the time, that you're not really in most churches forced to confront that reality. And the way
00:22:42.940 the church itself operates, it does not appear to be grounded in that reality. Um, just with the, just how
00:22:52.340 casual everything is, there's just no sense of reverence, no sense of anything sacred happening.
00:23:00.540 None of that. Um,
00:23:08.440 instead, it's like people, you know, people just stroll in casually. And I mean, if you really believe,
00:23:17.440 especially at church where church is like the special place where God, I mean, God is present
00:23:23.860 everywhere, but at church, you know, two or three are gathered as scripture says, God is with us. Um,
00:23:30.300 and he is, you're, you're really there. You're really focusing on God more than you, more than what
00:23:35.860 happens in secular culture. And so he's really there in this special sense. I think there should be this
00:23:42.440 just total reverence. And I mean, imagine that you were in church and Jesus himself appeared there
00:23:52.340 physically right in front of you. How would you react? I mean, wouldn't you fall to the floor in just
00:24:02.240 in total reverence to this divine being?
00:24:11.620 Or would you just continue along, which most people do in church, they just sit back and they're
00:24:15.080 chatting and they're just, you know, super casual. The music is nice and secular and kind of casual.
00:24:20.260 A lot of churches now they got the little, uh, they got the donuts and the coffee. They got a coffee
00:24:23.900 shop. People are sitting there sipping their coffee. Is that what you'd be doing? If Jesus appeared
00:24:28.600 right in front of you, we'd just be like, Oh, Hey Jesus. Hey, how's it going?
00:24:32.240 Um, in a, in a secular culture, everything is designed with the intent, I think, of keeping
00:24:42.360 our minds focused on now on, on material things. And it seems now that even churches are designed
00:24:49.060 with that in mind. And it's a big problem. It isn't hard to see how Christianity in the early 0.96
00:24:57.780 days was able to spread so rapidly through pagan cultures while it seems to be fading and dying 0.90
00:25:03.480 in our supposedly sophisticated modern secular culture. Because people back in those times,
00:25:08.320 even in pagan, not just, not just in Christian society, but even pagan people lived in a world
00:25:13.280 where the spiritual and the supernatural and the mystic were all front and center in their daily
00:25:19.220 lives. Everyone had an idea of life as, as this thing that was inexorably tied to something else,
00:25:25.520 something infinite, something beyond it. And so it was just a matter of, for Christians was a matter 0.92
00:25:30.280 of coming into these societies where this, where, where, where spirituality and, and super and
00:25:36.440 supernatural forces, all of that was already taken for granted as, as being, as being real and being
00:25:42.240 part of life. And so you had to just come in and correct their spiritual ideas and kind of redirect
00:25:48.740 them in the right direction. But America today is a spiritual vacuum. There's nothing to build upon.
00:25:54.500 There's no spirituality. There's, there's only, we're just a, we live in a material world and we
00:25:59.800 are material girls as Madonna rightly observed. So I think to bring it all back together, that means
00:26:08.380 that we as Christians, I think have to make a considered effort to keep God and keep our faith at the
00:26:15.740 forefront of our minds and of our conversations and of everything we do. Like, even though it's hard
00:26:21.120 because to live that way is so alien and foreign to most people in our culture, including most
00:26:28.700 Christians. So if you do, you're going to be mocked by them and they're going to look at you like you're
00:26:32.540 a weirdo and you're going to be looked even in, in most churches, that's how they're going to treat
00:26:37.300 you. But I think when we do that, we're not only helping ourselves and our own souls and our own
00:26:44.980 spirituality, but we're helping everyone else because we at least are living as if, and speaking
00:26:56.280 and acting as if we really believe. And so at least there's a, that doesn't mean we're perfect,
00:27:03.060 doesn't mean we're saints. It just means we believe this. And so we're just, we're operating as if we
00:27:09.220 really believe it. And then at least there's a chance, there's, there's, there's, there's a chance
00:27:16.560 of a little bit of that light poking through the darkness and of getting through to people.
00:27:25.460 At least there's a chance. But if we carry on just like them, and if we, if we toss God off to the
00:27:32.560 corner of existence and we don't talk about them and we don't bring them up, there's no chance.
00:27:38.760 All the lost sheep out there, there's no chance of us getting to them because there's no light,
00:27:44.860 right? All right, we'll leave it there. Hope you guys have a great weekend. Godspeed.