The Matt Walsh Show - Ep.87 - Tolerance is A False Virtue

00:00:00.000 Bishop Morlino of Madison wrote an excellent letter about the abuse scandal, and I wanted to

00:00:06.020 read two paragraphs of it to you and then focus in on two sentences in those two paragraphs. But

00:00:11.680 just to give it the full context, this is what it says in part. It says, it is time to admit that

00:00:17.980 there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking

00:00:22.460 great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord. The Church's teaching is clear that the homosexual

00:00:26.860 inclination is not in itself sinful, but it is intrinsically disordered in a way that renders

00:00:31.240 any man stably afflicted by it unfit to be a priest. And the decision to act upon the disordered

00:00:35.520 inclination is a sin so grave that it cries out to heaven for vengeance, especially when it involves

00:00:39.900 preying upon the young or the vulnerable. Such wickedness should be hated with a perfect hatred.

00:00:45.340 Christian charity itself demands that we should hate wickedness just as we love goodness. But while

00:00:50.520 hating the sin, we must never hate the sinner who was called to conversion, penance, and renewed

00:00:54.160 communion with Christ and His Church through His inexhaustible mercy. At the same time, however,

00:00:58.240 the love and mercy which we are called to have even for the worst of sinners does not exclude

00:01:01.980 holding them accountable for their actions through a punishment proportionate to the gravity of their

00:01:05.820 offense. In fact, a just punishment is an important work of love and mercy because while it serves

00:01:10.500 primarily as retribution for the offense committed, it also offers the guilty party an opportunity to make

00:01:15.800 expiation for his sin in this life if he willingly accepts his punishment, thus sparing him worse

00:01:21.080 punishment in the life to come. Motivated, therefore, by love and concern for souls, I stand with those

00:01:25.600 calling for justice to be done upon the guilty. Now, the most notable thing is how he calls out the

00:01:31.900 homosexual subculture in the Church, and this is a subculture that a lot of people don't want to

00:01:37.540 admit exists. Even people outside of the Church are saying, oh, no, it's got nothing to do with that.

00:01:42.100 Well, you've got people inside the Church in the know who are saying, yes, this exists,

00:01:46.160 it is directly linked to the sex scandals, and it's a big problem. So that's notable. But also

00:01:53.640 very notable is his call to hatred, perfect hatred, as he said. And I think there's a very important

00:02:01.700 truth here. And I think we are, as Christians, as modern people in general, are repelled by the

00:02:09.160 idea of hating. A call to hatred really upsets us. But that's only because we have been indoctrinated

00:02:18.680 into the modern effeminate version of the faith, the version of Christianity that thinks hatred is

00:02:24.900 an objective evil, and it's the one thing we should always fight against as Christians. The version that

00:02:29.880 says hatred cannot be of God because God is love and hatred is love's opposite. And of course, it is true

00:02:36.360 that God is love, but the rest of that equation is completely wrong. It's untrue. Hatred is not the

00:02:44.000 opposite of love. Hatred is really an element of love. Hatred is a part of love, a sign of love.

00:02:51.020 Hatred is love turned militant. Hatred is the ferocious part of love, the aggressive part. Now,

00:03:00.040 there are, of course, bad forms of hatred. Not all hatred is bad, but not all hatred is good,

00:03:09.640 obviously. But we can easily tell if it is a good or bad hatred by looking at what the hatred

00:03:17.860 militates against. Hatred is always opposing something. Well, let's look at what it's opposing.

00:03:24.780 So hatred of a different race of people is bad hatred. It's a disordered hatred because it is

00:03:32.800 hatred directed at human beings, at individuals. But even this, you know, hatred is always attached

00:03:39.540 to love. So even this disordered hatred is attached to a disordered love. And the disordered bad love,

00:03:49.380 in this case, that is attached to racial hatred would be the disordered enthusiasm that you have

00:03:56.360 for your own race. A racist person makes their own race an idol. They elevate it far above where it

00:04:03.740 belongs. And so other races fall below it and are hated. Now, on the other hand, if a loved one has

00:04:10.860 cancer and you hate the cancer, that hatred is linked to your love of the person who's being destroyed by

00:04:17.640 the disease. So it's a good hatred. It's a necessary hatred. And it would be a very sick thing. It'd be

00:04:22.660 a very weird, strange, horrible thing if you didn't hate the cancer of a person who you love or of any

00:04:30.120 person. For a personal example, you know, I can say that as a parent, I have really come to hate

00:04:37.980 a lot of the filth on TV and the internet. Now, I may have disapproved of it before, but now as a parent,

00:04:47.160 I hate it. When I see this stuff on TV, I really deeply hate it because of what it can do to my

00:04:54.240 children and how it can steal their innocence. And so I have a real burning hatred for it

00:04:59.940 that is attached to my love of my kids. So, and we all have that, right? We all,

00:05:08.600 hopefully most of us love our kids. And so there are, there are things in the world that we see

00:05:13.680 could be harmful to our children and we hate those things. It's part of being a parent. It's part,

00:05:19.960 it's part of loving somebody. Love, you know, I think love is something that always seeks to embrace

00:05:28.520 its object while hatred seeks always to annihilate its object. And so those of us who think that we

00:05:37.600 should never hate must therefore believe that there's nothing in the world that deserves to

00:05:43.740 be annihilated. When you hear people say, well, we've got to get rid of all the hatred, no more

00:05:48.840 hatred in the world. I guess they believe that there's nothing in the world that should be hated,

00:05:53.440 nothing in the world that should be destroyed. But I disagree. I think there's plenty to be

00:05:57.420 annihilated, plenty to be destroyed in the world. There are many ugly, terrible, awful, deadly,

00:06:03.140 revolting things in our world. And I think we should have a raw, raging hatred for all of those

00:06:09.280 things. A hatred that stems from our love of those that we embrace and those that we want to protect

00:06:16.400 from those things. And our rawest and most raging hatred of all should be directed at sin.

00:06:23.920 The Bible is pretty clear on this. The Bible speaks repeatedly of this holy and righteous

00:06:31.860 hatred. And it commands us, it doesn't just allow us, but it commands us to have this kind of hatred

00:06:39.460 in our hearts for sin and for evil. Psalm 97, let those who love the Lord hate evil. Proverbs 8.13,

00:06:47.580 to fear the Lord is to hate evil. Romans 12.9, hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Proverbs mentions

00:06:53.600 seven things that God hates himself. And in four places in the Bible, and you heard it referenced

00:06:59.240 in that letter that I read, we're told about sins that are so terrible that they cry out to heaven

00:07:05.960 for vengeance. That's how bad they are. Now, there's a passage in Revelation that I think is

00:07:11.020 really interesting. It says, I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance. I know that

00:07:17.760 you cannot tolerate wicked people. Yet, I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you

00:07:24.180 had at first. Consider how far you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first. If you

00:07:28.740 do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your

00:07:33.800 favor. You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. So, this is what makes it

00:07:42.760 interesting. God is talking to the church in Ephesus, and he can find very few redeeming qualities

00:07:49.120 about them, except for their hatred and their intolerance. Those are the two things he cites

00:07:54.980 positively. Those are the two good things. When he's indicting them for the bad things, he says,

00:08:00.960 well, but at least you have correct hatred and you're intolerant of wickedness. So, that you got going

00:08:05.640 for you. And we tend to look at those as the, well, those are the two things, hatred and intolerance.

00:08:11.280 Those are the worst thing. In this case, God is saying, those are the two best things about you.

00:08:17.120 Because we understand that they are ordered correctly. They're directed in the right direction.

00:08:21.780 So, they're good. And they are the redeeming qualities. You have to wonder what redeeming

00:08:28.520 qualities will God find in the church in America. Because we've also forsaken, we have,

00:08:36.500 we have also forsaken the love we had at first, but neither do we have this hatred for wickedness

00:08:45.880 and this intolerance of wickedness. So, we have none of that going for us. And we tend to believe

00:08:52.440 that, well, yeah, we've got all this bad stuff, but at least we're so tolerant. We are such a tolerant

00:08:59.840 church now. We are so tolerant as Christians. And so, maybe all the bad stuff will be overlooked

00:09:06.580 because of our tolerance. But the opposite is the case. Our tolerance will not compensate for the

00:09:13.100 other sins because our tolerance is one of our greatest sins. Tolerance is never commanded in the

00:09:19.180 Bible because it's not a virtue. It's a false virtue. We should be running hot and cold, as Revelation

00:09:26.000 said. We should love and we should hate. And these things should be properly ordered and

00:09:32.800 properly directed. The only things that we should really tolerate are the things that are morally

00:09:37.800 neutral. And thus, we don't need to be told to tolerate them. So, I can tolerate, for instance,

00:09:45.140 the color of the shirt you're wearing. And I hope you tolerate the color of the shirt that I'm wearing

00:09:49.580 because it's not pink. It's salmon. I tolerate the existence of that tree outside. I tolerate

00:09:55.360 the sky. I tolerate the number seven. I tolerate the color blue. I tolerate the grass. You know,

00:10:03.000 these are many things that I tolerate because they're morally neutral. They just are. It would be

00:10:08.680 very weird for me to have negative feelings about them. They just, they exist. And so, fine,

00:10:13.880 they exist. They, in themselves, they have no moral substance. But, and that's why nobody would ever

00:10:23.360 tell you, well, tolerate the grass. You know, tolerate that thing over there. They wouldn't tell

00:10:29.060 you that. It's the kind of things that people feel the need to tell us we should tolerate that should

00:10:40.020 not be tolerated. People tell us we're told to tolerate people of other races. No, we shouldn't

00:10:47.860 tolerate people of other races. We should love them. People tell us to tolerate opposing ideas.

00:10:57.020 Well, no, we shouldn't tolerate opposing ideas. It really depends on what the idea is. If it's a bad

00:11:01.600 idea, if it's a false idea, if it's a harmful idea, then we should reject it. We shouldn't just,

00:11:06.700 we shouldn't simply tolerate it. We should reject it. If it's a good idea, if it's true, if it's

00:11:10.760 and all that, then we should embrace it. I don't think tolerance really comes into play.

00:11:17.000 We're told to tolerate debauchery and perversion and sin. No, we shouldn't tolerate those things. We

00:11:22.160 should hate them because they're degrading and harmful and they're an offense against God and

00:11:26.220 against man. Things that have some kind of moral significance, good or bad, should provoke

00:11:33.600 something in us stronger than mere tolerance. And if it's a sin, then it should provoke hatred.

00:11:42.560 And it will provoke hatred if we really love God and if we're truly outraged at offenses against him.

00:11:49.860 Now, it'll be stipulated that we should always make sure, it said in the letter that I read,

00:11:58.880 we should always make sure to love the sinner as we hate the sin. And that's obviously a mantra that

00:12:06.280 you hear repeated quite a bit. It's true. We should make sure that we hate the sin and we're not hating

00:12:13.860 the sinner. We shouldn't hate human beings because, as I said, to hate something is to want to destroy it,

00:12:20.060 annihilate it. And we shouldn't have that feeling about, um, uh, a human being. And I guess I should

00:12:27.800 say it's, it's more, maybe it's more than just wanting to destroy something. It's like wanting to

00:12:32.180 damn it, really wanting to send it to hell, which is what we want to do with bad things, with sins,

00:12:37.860 is just damn them to hell down into the darkness. Um, and we should never have that feeling about a

00:12:44.240 person because we should always want people to be saved. We should always want people to,

00:12:49.420 even bad people, to repent and go to heaven. That's, that's the desire we should have for all

00:12:53.180 people. So hate the sin, not the sinner. But there really isn't a conflict here. We hate a sinner's sin

00:13:00.720 because we love him and we love God. The two things are linked. So most of the time, it doesn't even make

00:13:08.700 any sense. It's redundant. It's pointless to tell someone, well, make sure you're not hating the sinner.

00:13:13.320 Well, if I, if I, if I hated the sinner, I wouldn't hate his sin. If, if, if I really hate the sinner,

00:13:22.560 then I probably won't have much urge to hate his sin. In fact, if I really hate the sinner,

00:13:28.520 I'll more likely take pleasure in his sin because it's destroying him and I hate him. And so I like

00:13:33.920 to see him destroyed. Think about it. Think about a time when you have really hated someone,

00:13:38.740 even though we're not supposed to hate people, many of us have committed that sin, I believe. So

00:13:45.360 if it, if, if you've ever, um, if you have ever hated someone before, as wrong as it was,

00:13:53.380 did you feel disappointment? Did you feel sadness when you heard about the bad things that they did?

00:14:01.080 If there's been someone say at work who you hate and, um, but, and then, and then someone else comes

00:14:11.480 up to you and says, and says, oh, well, Hey, guess what? Terrible things. So-and-so did. Do you go,

00:14:17.840 no, no, don't, don't tell me. I don't want to be disappointed in them. Please don't tell me about

00:14:22.460 those things. Um, no, you are, you're amused. You're delighted by the terrible things they do.

00:14:29.920 That's why people enjoy gossiping about those they dislike. And that's what makes gossip so

00:14:34.840 vicious and so awful because it delights in sin. That's the whole point of gossip. Nobody gossips

00:14:39.760 about good things. If it's a good thing, you're, you're, if you're, if you're complimenting someone

00:14:43.420 behind their back, then it's not gossip. Gossip is always negative things and it's almost always,

00:14:48.260 oh, guess what? So-and-so did. Just listen to the terrible things they've done.

00:14:54.960 And it's a hateful conversation. It's hateful of the person and it is delighting in the bad

00:15:01.640 things that, that they did. And I think that's the mistake we make. We say that a gossipy person is

00:15:07.000 judgmental, but that's not true. They aren't making judgments against sin. They're loving sin. The

00:15:13.240 problem isn't that they have too much moral judgment. The problem is that they lack moral judgment

00:15:17.560 entirely. So usually when we really hate someone, we have no temptation, we have no inclination to

00:15:26.840 hate their sin. And usually if we really hate somebody's sin, if we see someone doing something and

00:15:35.000 it's wrong and we really hate the wrong thing, then that is going to come, at least in part, that's going

00:15:42.040 to stem from our respect and love for that person because we just hate to see them doing this thing.

00:15:50.380 And we've all experienced that as well. Think about as parents, especially, I don't have older

00:15:56.340 kids, but especially as your kids get older and they get to the age where they can really do really bad

00:16:00.760 things and they can really hurt you. And think about when you've found out about your kid doing some

00:16:06.980 really bad thing and you absolutely hate what they did. You have a real hatred for what they did,

00:16:12.340 but you have no hatred for them whatsoever. The intensity of your hatred for their actions comes

00:16:18.260 from your love for them because you're so disappointed and hurt that someone that you love would do this

00:16:23.340 thing and you wish you'd do anything if you could go back and erase it so that they never did that thing.

00:16:29.000 I think the temptation to hate the sin and the sinner together at the same time, that only really arises

00:16:39.320 when the sin is so terrible and so horrific and our revulsion against it is so intense that we just

00:16:48.260 have trouble separating the two. And that does happen. I think with the more minor sins, it's different.

00:16:55.600 It's easy to hate a white lie, but not to hate the person who told the white lie. I mean, that's an

00:17:04.180 easy, it's easy to separate those things. It's much more difficult, I think, when it comes to something

00:17:10.660 like child rape. It is in that case, much more difficult to hate the child rape while loving the child

00:17:21.060 rapist. Because that sin is of a certain nature and it's to a certain degree that the militant side

00:17:33.280 of our love takes over, that kind of destroying, annihilating, offensive, protective kind of side

00:17:41.100 of us. And we simply want to destroy everything associated with that sin. Because this sinner has

00:17:48.400 descended so deeply into the darkness that we can barely even recognize his own humanity. And all we

00:17:56.620 want to do is, like I said in my piece yesterday, I wrote on this, is kind of like lob a grenade into

00:18:03.460 that darkness and destroy everything inside of it. That's the inclination that we have. And it's wrong.

00:18:10.580 We should repent of that. You know, even with something like child rape, we should detest the sin with the

00:18:20.500 fire of a thousand sons, but we should not detest the person. Although, like I said, with sins like that, it is

00:18:31.620 really difficult to separate those two. And I have not figured out exactly how to separate them. I'll fully admit

00:18:38.640 that. Probably in every case that I've read about a case like that, my first reaction is just full-on

00:18:45.820 hatred for everything involved. And it's covering everything. I can't target it. You know, it's not

00:18:52.420 a targeted hatred. And so that's something I need to repent of. And that's something I need to work on.

00:18:59.760 But, you know, and I think that's probably the case for a lot of us, right?

00:19:08.020 And we should all work on that. We should never just accept the fact that we're hating another

00:19:11.780 human being, no matter how terrible that human is. But I think we should also be worried

00:19:17.440 about ourselves if we don't experience that temptation at all.

00:19:22.720 Like, when it comes to child rape, if you have no trouble not hating the child rapist,

00:19:31.000 if you have no temptation to even hate them, and it's no problem for you, it's like, yeah,

00:19:35.140 oh, yeah, fine. I don't hate him at all. Well, that could mean that you are saintly and spiritually

00:19:43.480 enlightened and so spiritually mature, and you have grown so much that you can easily separate the two,

00:19:50.600 hate the sin, not the sinner, it's no problem for you. That could be the case, in which case,

00:19:55.060 I admire you. But more likely, and I think for most people in that category, it just means that

00:20:02.200 you're indifferent. That's where it comes from. Maybe a more relevant example is abortion. So

00:20:15.000 I'll talk to Christians sometimes about abortion. Christians who are, I'm talking about Christians who

00:20:19.480 would identify nominally as pro-life. You know, they say that, yeah, they don't support abortion,

00:20:25.720 it's bad, you know, it's murder. So, I mean, they'll pay it lip service. But when you talk to

00:20:32.260 them, it's clear that they have no real anger at all. They don't really feel anything about it.

00:20:39.260 And then they'll go on and they'll launch into a thing about, oh, you know, I don't like how pro-lifers,

00:20:45.280 sometimes they're too hateful and they're mean and all this. And they'll start talking about

00:20:50.580 criticizing the methods that pro-lifers, and if pro-lifers are too aggressive or too hateful in

00:20:56.940 their approach, and they'll be critical of that. They'll say, you know, we got to be more reasonable.

00:21:00.480 We need to blah, blah, blah. And a lot of what they're saying is true. But you realize when

00:21:06.620 you're listening to them, it's easy for them to say that because they have no hatred at all for

00:21:11.040 abortion. They don't have hatred for the people that are getting abortions, which is good. But

00:21:14.920 they also don't have hatred for abortion. They just don't really care that much. They haven't really,

00:21:20.460 they don't feel much about it. And so it's really easy for them to stand off at a distance and say,

00:21:27.980 oh, yeah, don't hate, you know, you got to be more, you're more civil, right? And that's bad.

00:21:36.420 I think if we have to err, it's better to err on the other side.

00:21:42.480 I think if we have, if we have to err, it's better to err on the side of having too much

00:21:48.620 hatred for really evil things than not having enough or really any hatred for it.

00:21:57.980 Because when you get on that side, now you're tumbling very close to indifference. And I think

00:22:04.400 indifference is the most dangerous state for a Christian or really any person to be in.

00:22:10.500 And it seems like it's very hard to climb out of indifference. Because it's a total lack of it's,

00:22:19.480 it's a it is a vacuum. There's nothing there, you feel nothing.

00:22:25.780 And I don't know, what do you do to generate those feelings of love and hatred and everything else?

00:22:31.840 On the other hand, if you look at something like abortion or child rape, and you're so overcome

00:22:38.220 with anger and fury at this awful, terrible thing, and maybe it's a little overboard because it starts

00:22:44.940 bleeding into you're hating people, you know, that's bad. But it's it's better to err on that

00:22:50.400 side, because then at least there's something there to work with. You've got the right general idea. I

00:22:54.700 mean, you you see this evil thing and you hate it, you hate it for the right reasons, because of what

00:22:59.220 it does to innocent people. And that's all good. And now you through prayer and discipline, you just

00:23:04.720 have to figure out how to target that more, and be more and be more restrained in in your response to

00:23:10.340 it. I guess my fear is that in our culture among Christians and people in general, we tend to err much

00:23:20.480 more on the other side towards indifference. And it's because of that, that we have come to see

00:23:28.080 hatred as this objectively terrible thing that we should never ever do. Because a lot of us are never

00:23:34.020 tempted towards it because we simply feel nothing. And that's a bad sign. All right. I'll leave it there.

00:23:42.880 Thanks for watching, everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 21, 2018

Ep.87 - Tolerance is A False Virtue

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