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| So there's a couple of things from this past weekend that I wanted to talk about. | |
| And if it's not too late by now, hopefully it's not. | |
| NPR published an article about the Pope and about this story last week that the Pope allegedly denied the existence of hell, which, you know, we'll talk about that some other time. | |
| That's a story in and of itself. | |
| But, you know, it's a big story. | |
| I mean, it's a big story in the world of Christianity and religion. | |
| So you would think NPR being this respectable news, well, I don't respect them, but some people respect them apparently. | |
| So being this respectable news organization, you would think they would You know, go and find a reporter who knows, like, something about Christianity. | |
| Really, you'd think they'd go and find their expert Christianity reporter, their religion expert. | |
| And maybe they did. | |
| Maybe they went and they found the person at NPR who knows absolutely the most about Christianity, and that person wrote this article about the Pope, And the last, and remember this article would have had to been, it was written by someone and then, and then it would have had to pass through a few levels of there'd be an editor. | |
| And then, I mean, there are probably a couple of levels before it even gets to the website. | |
| So. | |
| Gets through all these levels and the articles fine until you get to the end, the last sentence, this is what the last sentence says. | |
| Okay. | |
| The last sentence is Easter. | |
| The day celebrating the idea that Jesus did not die and go to hell or purgatory or anywhere at all, but rather arose into heaven, is on Sunday. | |
| What? | |
| What? | |
| Let's just try to unpack this here for a minute. | |
| And we'll start with the fact that that's just a horribly written sentence. | |
| That that sentence in and of itself is an abomination. | |
| It is a disgrace to sentences because it's, you could have just said Easter's on Sunday and most people, that's enough. | |
| You really didn't have to even say that because everybody knows what Easter is. | |
| Uh, so you, you probably didn't even need to include that line, but then if you're going to write in the middle of Easter and is on Sunday, you're going to include this whole definition of Easter. | |
| You maybe want to make sure that it's the right definition. | |
| Maybe check Wikipedia, or even the Bible is a book that came out recently, and I heard it's a pretty good reference for these things. | |
| But more to the point, first of all, most Christians do believe that Jesus Christ descended into hell. | |
| It's right there in the creed. | |
| Second, Jesus did not rise... I know you know this, but in case there are any NPR reporters watching, Jesus Christ did not rise into heaven. | |
| He did not ascend into heaven on Easter. | |
| He ascended into heaven 40 days after Easter. | |
| And in the meanwhile, he was here on earth. | |
| This is basic Christianity. | |
| I mean, basic, basic. | |
| And the reporter of NPR, allegedly a respected news outlet, the reporter tasked with covering a big religious story, did not know why Christians celebrate Easter. | |
| I mean, good Lord. | |
| And then next, so that was the one thing. | |
| And then, I think it was on the same day, you had Chuck Todd, Another respected journalist, and he tweeted on Good Friday. | |
| This was his tweet. | |
| He said, I'm a bit hokey when it comes to Good Friday. | |
| I don't mean disrespect to the religious aspect of the day, but I love the idea of reminding folks that any day can become good. | |
| All it takes is a little selflessness on our part. | |
| Works every time. | |
| See, hokey is not the word I would use, Chuck. | |
| There are many words that I could use to describe that tweet. | |
| I wouldn't use most of those words because I'm a Christian. | |
| And because I'm a Christian, I know that we call it Good Friday because Jesus died a horrific, horrible, gruesome death that day. | |
| And that's only good because he redeemed mankind through his death and resurrection. | |
| But not because it was actually good in the sense that you mean it, Chuck. | |
| I can just imagine Chuck Todd falling into a wormhole or something and then ending up 2,000 years ago and strolling up to Calvary and just looking around and, you know, like, say, why all the glum faces, folks? | |
| I mean, just remember, just have a positive attitude and everything will be fine. | |
| Of course, I say that I know, you know, I say, well, I know what Good Friday is because I'm a Christian, but really you shouldn't need to be a Christian at all to know what Good Friday is or to know what Easter is, because this is basic cultural literacy that these people who work for these elite media outlets do not possess. | |
| Christianity, I don't care how you feel about Christianity, it's one of the biggest, it is, I'm sorry, it is the biggest religion in the world. | |
| The biggest religion in the history of the world, the biggest in America by a long shot, and it's been the number one driving force in our civilization for centuries. | |
| Though it is less so now than it used to be, admittedly. | |
| All in all, as an educated person, if you want to be an educated person, if you want to be an intelligent person, if you want to understand how the world works, You have to possess a basic knowledge and understanding of Christianity, whether you believe in it or not. | |
| I mean, every, you know, if you want to understand anything about Art over the last 2,000 years, literature, government, philosophy, yes, even science. | |
| Okay? | |
| If you want to really understand the genesis and the history and the meaning and the substance behind all of those things, you got to know something about Christianity. | |
| Because Christianity has been the driving force and the substance of all of those things for centuries. | |
| And you know, this is why, in case anyone was wondering, this is why they used to teach the Bible in public school. | |
| That doesn't mean that you were required to believe in the Bible in public school, but for a long time in public school, in secular school, you were taught the Bible. | |
| You read the Bible in public school. | |
| And that makes a lot of sense because the Bible, I mean, it's only the most influential piece of literature ever written hands down and nothing else even comes close to it. | |
| So if you're going to study influential literature in school, it kind of doesn't make sense to skip over the number one. | |
| I mean, that is a huge mountain to just, to just jump over and pretend it's not even there. | |
| It's like if you were studying mountains and you never even acknowledged Everest. | |
| That's what it's like. | |
| It's like if. | |
| Through a kid's entire time in school, and they study different, you know, geological formations, they study mountains, but they never, it's just Everest, we're gonna pretend Everest doesn't exist. | |
| The Bible is the Mount Everest of literature, of books. | |
| And that's not my subjective determination, that's not just I'm saying it because I believe in it, that's just what it is, historically speaking. | |
| But our PC society has decided that it's too triggering, it's too upsetting for the little atheist children to be exposed to this book that shaped the world, so they ignore it and they read The Hunger Games or Harry Potter instead. | |
| That's what they read instead of acknowledging the Bible. | |
| And there's a quote, it's either from Chesterton or Lewis, I can't remember which one. | |
| Where I think it was Chesterton who said that an atheist can never be too careful in his reading. | |
| Whereas if you're a Christian, you can read whatever you want. | |
| But as an atheist, you have to try really hard to protect that vulnerable worldview that you've created. | |
| It's a very fragile thing. | |
| And so you have to be very careful not to read things like the Bible. | |
| Because if you do that, everything may start falling apart. | |
| And I think that that, you know, that's basically how our society operates. | |
| And what do you end up with? | |
| When we all kind of just ignore, you know, when people who aren't Christian make no effort to understand what Christianity is, what we end up with is a society with a lot of people who hate Christianity, but do not understand Christianity. | |
| They don't know what it is. | |
| They don't know what it means. | |
| They don't know what it teaches, but they despise it, and they look down on anyone who believes in it, even though they don't understand it. | |
| And I don't need Chuck Todd or NPR to prove that point. | |
| You know, we see this. | |
| Any Christian... Okay, let's just take two examples that any Christian who, you know, has gotten into debates, especially online, has encountered these two things. | |
| Which I think kind of encapsulate this issue of the people who hate Christianity the most are the ones who know the least about it. | |
| So two pieces of evidence that I'll submit to prove my point. | |
| First, you have the secular person who kind of sneers and scoffs and he says, uh, he says, Oh, so you believe, you believe that there's an invisible, invisible, magical sky genie up in the clouds. | |
| That's what you believe. | |
| Yeah. | |
| You believe in the invisible sky man, huh? | |
| And then they look at each other and they give each other high fives and say, Oh, did you hear what I just said about the invisible sky, man? | |
| Yeah. | |
| That was a clever one. | |
| Yeah. | |
| You never heard that one before. | |
| Did you really got them on that one? | |
| No, I don't believe in the invisible sky, man. | |
| Nobody believes that. | |
| Okay? | |
| That's like if I told you about the sun and you said, oh, so you believe there's a giant candle floating in the sky? | |
| You hear this guy? | |
| He thinks there's like a giant Yankee candle just hovering in the sky. | |
| No, that's not what I said. | |
| That's not what I said at all. | |
| That's what you're saying. | |
| That's your understanding of this. | |
| You're showing your own ignorance. | |
| You should be embarrassed. | |
| No, there isn't any adult Christian who believes that God is literally in the clouds. | |
| Okay, you see, that's just an illustration that people use, that artists have used, that poets have used, that writers have used. | |
| It's an illustration. | |
| It's a metaphor. | |
| It's just a way of communicating or physically manifesting an idea that transcends the physical realm. | |
| So that's what that is. | |
| It's the same thing how we talk about, you know, we love somebody with our heart, but we all know that our heart just pumps blood. | |
| There's not love actually located in our heart. | |
| We know that. | |
| Maybe you don't know that, but we do. | |
| And Christians don't think that God is magic either. | |
| You know, they believe that God is a first mover, the first mover, the first cause who transcends our physical dimension. | |
| And who created it, and who sustains it, and who animates it. | |
| And this belief bears no relation whatsoever to the one that you pretend that we hold. | |
| None. | |
| You could disagree with the belief, but you can't disagree with the belief if you don't understand it. | |
| And so what I find with, you know, atheism in modern America has become very lazy. | |
| And to be fair, Christianity has become very lazy too. | |
| There are a lot of lazy Christians who don't understand their own beliefs. | |
| And that's part of the problem here. | |
| That there's a lot of biblically illiterate people in the world, including Christians. | |
| But atheism is also very lazy. | |
| Maybe lazier now than it used to be. | |
| And so you just have a lot of really lazy atheists running around saying, oh yeah, magical sky genie. | |
| Just spending all their energy shouting at people for holding beliefs that nobody actually holds. | |
| Here's another example. | |
| I think a little bit more common. | |
| You have the secular person who skims through Leviticus or Exodus, or rather they skim through a blog written by someone who has skimmed through one of those things. | |
| And then they demand to know why Christians eat shellfish and why we wear mixed fibers and why we cut our beards. | |
| And they'll say, oh, so you think it's wrong for gays to marry? | |
| But what about you? | |
| Look at you. | |
| You have tattoos. | |
| Look what Leviticus says about that. | |
| Again, they try to hold us to the standards of the old law because they don't understand this extremely basic foundational doctrine of Christianity that distinguishes between the old and new law. | |
| This is not just like some Christians do. | |
| This is basic, fundamental Christianity that if you are a Christian, you must believe. | |
| Again, they show how they have disdain for something that they do not even slightly understand. | |
| You see, Christianity is hated in our culture because our culture doesn't understand it. | |
| So it's actually not even true to say that Christianity is hated. | |
| People hate what they perceive Christianity to be. | |
| It's certainly possible for a person to study Christianity, understand it basically, and then reject it. | |
| You can do that. | |
| But it's not possible for an intelligent, rational person to study it, understand it, and then treat it as something just ridiculous, and childish, and inane, and stupid. | |
| That you can't do if you're a smart person. | |
| Because anyone with that attitude, which is the majority of American atheists, and even some Christians, Anyone with that attitude reveals themselves to be uninformed and unintelligent. | |
| This is a belief system that has been believed and accepted and embraced by not only billions of people across the world, But also some of the most, some of the greatest geniuses in the history of mankind, whether we're talking about Aquinas or Augustine or Da Vinci, you know, or Michelangelo, Shakespeare. | |
| I mean, going down the list, some of the greatest geniuses ever to exist on planet Earth have not only been Christians, but devout Christians. | |
| No, that doesn't prove that Christianity is correct all by itself, but it does prove that if you're a serious person, this is something you take seriously. | |
| You don't just say, yeah, whatever. | |
| No, see, you're not allowed to do that with a belief system held by Thomas Aquinas, if you're a smart person. | |
| If you're a smart person, you say, wow, this is a towering genius. | |
| I mean, I should look into what he's saying, right? | |
| I mean, I should at least listen. | |
| But if you're ignorant, if you're foolish, if you're childish, if you're unintelligent, or more so if you're an intellectual coward, that's when you take, when you look at this belief, again, billions of people hold it, they're out there, millions of people have died for this belief, some of the smartest people in the history of the world, I mean, our civilization was founded on this belief, and you have to be very, very, frankly, stupid, to look at that and just say, pfft, whatever, Again, I'm not saying that if you decide you don't believe, that means that you're stupid. | |
| I'm saying if you have that attitude of just, I don't even care. | |
| I'm not even going to look at it. | |
| It's something that you need to take seriously. | |
| And then when you look at the history of Christianity, there's even more reason to take it seriously. | |
| When you look at the fact that Christianity was born in violent oppression, has endured it relentlessly ever since. | |
| Its founder was this obscure carpenter who was brutally executed only three years into his public ministry, and its early apostles and evangelists were these really unimpressive, average men who carried this carpenter's message in defiance of government authorities and religious leaders and an empire, and they died for it? | |
| And its disciples embraced this new way of life that would only lead to suffering and poverty and death. | |
| There was nothing else promised. | |
| They weren't promised riches. | |
| They weren't promised new land. | |
| They weren't promised anything but suffering, poverty, and death. | |
| And for 300 years, that's all it gave them was suffering, poverty, and death. | |
| And yet it flourished. | |
| And it conquered. | |
| And it triumphed. | |
| And millions and millions of people saw something in the religion worth dying for. | |
| And no, that does not prove that it's true. | |
| But it does prove that you should look at it and take it seriously and say to yourself, I want to understand this thing. | |
| Maybe all of those people are wrong, but there's no way I can arrive at that conclusion until I have taken the time to understand it. | |
| A lot of people in our culture just are not willing to do that. | |
| And so in lieu of understanding, they just say, why understand it when I can hate it? | |
| And I just think that's very foolish. | |
| And then if you understand it, you, you, um, avoid some of the embarrassment that poor Chuck Todd and the poor lady at NPR have suffered over the last few days. | |
| All right. | |
| Thanks for watching everybody and hope you have a great day. |