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April 5, 2018 - The Matt Walsh Show
18:49
Ep. 4 - The Real Reason Christianity Is Declining In America

The problem is not all the atheists in this country. It's the Christians who live like atheists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Thanks for tuning in, everybody.
Welcome to the show.
Just want to say one thing at the outset.
I made the self-destructive decision that I often make, honestly, to read the comments under the video I did a couple days ago.
And somebody said that I look like a generic burglar from an ADT commercial.
And I just thought that was it's kind of true.
I don't know how that's true or what I don't really but yeah, I think he kind of nailed it.
So I only bring that up just just to say that.
The problem with all the insulting that goes on on the internet and in the comment sections of the videos I do and the articles I write is that the insults, there's no imagination, no creativity.
And so it's very rare that I read one and I say, wow, well, you know, well done.
Well done on that insult.
So all I'm saying to the trolls is just step your game up a little bit.
That's all.
Now, I wrote something yesterday on this subject and I want to expand upon it a little bit, elaborate. I was thinking
about the subject after reading another article about the so-called decline of Christianity in
America, and I don't remember where the article was from, but it was pointing out how now today 70%
of America is Christian, and that number is significantly lower than it's ever been
in history.
And I'm going to end with a little bit of a joke.
And that's where the decline, the so-called decline in America is happening, or so they tell us.
But that's not really the problem.
There is a problem.
There's a big problem in American culture and with the church and with Christianity.
Christianity is declining in America, that's for sure.
But the problem is not with the 5% or 10% or 15% or 20% that we've lost over the decades.
The problem is within the 70% that we still have.
We say that 70% of America is Christian, but there's something seriously wrong with our 70%.
If 70% of us were, now that might be a smaller percentage than at any other point in history, but 70% is still a large percentage.
And if 70% of us were really authentically, substantially Christian, well, then our culture would be in pretty fine shape.
We would see that reflected in the culture, wouldn't we?
When we look around, we would see that, okay, wow, we are still a Christian culture with 70% of us Christian.
But we don't see that.
We're not a Christian culture even though we are a Christian population.
So it would seem that a good portion of our 70%, a good portion of we Christians, are not really Christian in any meaningful sense whatsoever.
Here's the reality, I think.
The average American Christian is no different, not substantively different, from the average American atheist or agnostic or secular person.
And this, by the way, is true of most religions.
The average American Jew, I'm sure Ben Shapiro would agree, that the average American Jew is secular, is essentially atheist.
In his belief systems and in the way that he operates.
America is a secular country and secularism is like this disease and it's infected all of us.
It's infected every religion in America.
So then we have to ask this question.
Is it better to be a secular Christian or a secular secular person?
Who is closer to redemption?
Who is easier to save?
Is it the atheist or the Christian who functions as an atheist?
I think a lot of us would tend to say, well, at least the Christian believes, so he's in a better spot.
He doesn't have a lot to worry about.
At least he believes.
But I don't think that's the case.
I think, in fact, If you had to choose between being an atheist who knows he's an atheist or an atheist who thinks he's a Christian, you're better off being the atheist who knows he's an atheist.
In my piece, I illustrated the point with two hypothetical people, Bob and Jim, and I want to bring Bob and Jim back into the conversation because I think they're a helpful framing device for us.
So first, let's think about Bob for a minute.
Bob is not Christian.
Doesn't claim to be.
If he had to pick a label, he'd probably say he's agnostic.
He might say he's spiritual, but not religious.
Something like that.
But it all kind of means the same thing.
He lives a normal life.
He doesn't think very much about these kinds of things.
He's not contemplating eternity or the afterlife most of the time.
He doesn't really think about it.
He doesn't think about the fact that he's a mortal person and he's going to die sooner rather than later.
He doesn't think about that.
He just does what normal people do.
He, you know, he watches porn and he drinks a little too much on the weekends and he watches a lot of TV, spends most of his time, spends most of his days just kind of staring into various screens, whether it's on his phone or his computer.
And that's how he spends his time.
His goal in life is to be comfortable.
He wants pleasure.
That's what he wants.
That's what he craves the most.
And he works a job, but he works just to enrich himself.
Whatever money he has, he spends on himself, or he saves.
He gives very little to charity.
He doesn't really worry about that.
But he's nice to people.
And he won't sacrifice anything for them, but he's nice to them.
He's not going to sacrifice his comfort.
He's not going to put himself out there for other people most of the time, but he's nice to them.
And he's nice to his wife most of the time.
He likes his wife, but he'll leave her.
If his feelings ever fade, he'll leave her.
And he likes his kids too, but if his home life ever becomes too boring or too difficult or not fulfilling enough, he'll leave them also.
So he's a normal person.
He's a nice person.
He's an empty person.
And I think he represents a very large portion of American society.
So then there's Jim.
Jim calls himself a Christian.
He doesn't think very much about what that means.
He believes, vaguely, kind of ambiguously, he believes that something like God probably exists.
He accepts that Jesus Christ died for his sins, but he accepts it passively.
He accepts it as just a fact.
He accepts it like he would accept it if I told him the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Jupiter.
He would just say, oh, okay, yeah, that, that's a thing.
So God and Jesus and religion is just a thing, and he's like, yeah, sure, fine, that.
Yeah, that's true, I guess.
He doesn't believe that the details have any bearing on his life, and he thinks very little about all this stuff.
He doesn't like thinking about it.
He doesn't like talking about it.
He, in fact, is even more hostile to religious discussions than Bob.
He's the kind of Christian, you try to talk to him about Christianity, about the gospel, he gets very uncomfortable.
He doesn't want to talk about it.
He doesn't pray.
His inner life is basically indistinguishable from Bob's, and his external life, what he does, how he spends his time, that is completely indistinguishable.
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, there would be no difference.
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.
There is no difference.
Nothing.
Not even on Sundays anymore.
He's not going to church either.
He's not doing anything.
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.
Now, I think that describes a lot of Christians.
It's a depressing description, but it has to describe them.
Because, I mean, just look around you at society.
Look at the kind of media that people watch.
Look at the billion-dollar porn industry.
Look at the state of marriage and the family.
Clearly, this all can't be the fault.
If you look at our culture and the way that it's structured and set up, it can't all be the fault of the Bobs.
There aren't enough Bobs walking around.
There aren't enough atheists and secular people.
70% of us are still Christians, yet we have created this society.
So there must be a lot of Jims.
I mean, a lot.
And we know that because we've all met Jims, haven't we?
We've all met a lot of Jims.
Maybe we are Jims.
God forbid.
So both Bob and Jim are in a difficult, precarious situation.
Jim, I think, has it worse.
And I'll tell you why.
Jim has the same emptiness and the same indifference, but he has something else.
And it's a problem.
He has a sense of security.
And it's a false sense of security.
He believes that he's saved.
He believes it because he accepts God as a fact.
And maybe he announced vocally at some point that he's a Christian.
He said, I am a Christian!
It kind of reminds me of that scene in The Office.
Right towards the end of When the Office Stopped Being Funny, I think it was season four, the scene in the office where Michael Scott goes bankrupt and he's told that he needs to declare bankruptcy.
So he walks out of his office and just says, I declare bankruptcy in front of the office.
And he had to be told, no, that's not how it works.
Just because you say it doesn't mean anything.
And just because someone says they're a Christian means nothing.
Those are just words.
It's just air coming out.
It's just vocal cord vibrations and air and then going out into the ether.
It doesn't mean anything on its own.
You might as well announce that you're a dolphin.
It doesn't mean anything.
Necessarily.
Bob, on the other hand, is honest about who he is and what he believes.
He knows that he's rejected God.
And so we could pray that maybe he'll be like the prodigal son.
He'll hit rock bottom, he'll find himself sleeping in the mud with the pigs, figuratively speaking, or maybe literally.
And then he'll look around and he'll say, what's happening to my life?
What's going on?
What am I missing?
Something big is missing from my life.
What is it?
And from there, we can hope that hopefully he begins the ascent.
He begins the ascent into hope.
But the problem for Jim, we see the problem for Jim is that he doesn't feel God's absence in his life because he's not honest about the fact that there is an absence.
He's already sleeping in the mud with the pigs, but he doesn't notice.
Or he doesn't care.
See, I think it takes kind of a certain toll on a man It causes real damage to stand in the light of God, to look at God, to accept that He is real, and yet still to turn from Him and reject Him.
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.
The Christian who lives like an atheist has to contort himself, twist himself into pretzels.
And it's going to be harder and harder to untwist himself.
And he's less likely to even try because he believes.
But he doesn't really believe.
I'll tell you what he really does.
He acknowledges.
Jim acknowledges Christ.
He acknowledges the cross, he kind of nods towards it and says, yeah, sure.
He acknowledges.
But that's not belief.
Anyone who thinks they can get to heaven because they've acknowledged a reality is severely misled.
That's not belief.
That's not what Christian belief is.
And so we begin to understand that there has to be a difference between saying, I believe that such and such is true and saying, I believe in.
There's a big difference.
And I think a lot of us are that Christians.
We believe that God is real.
Christ is real.
Christ died.
We believe that.
We believe it as a fact.
We believe it as a reality.
We believe it like we believe that dogs are mammals, and sharks live in the ocean.
But, so fine, we believe that.
But we don't believe in.
The analogy that I used is, imagine you see a bridge over a very deep canyon, And you could say, yeah, I believe that bridge exists.
You can acknowledge the existence of the bridge.
That's the believing that of the bridge.
But if you believe in the bridge, then you'll walk across it.
And if you won't walk across the bridge, it means you don't believe in it.
You don't trust it.
You don't have faith in it.
You won't depend on it.
You're not going to trust it with your life.
I think a lot of us as Christians, we are standing a good distance from the bridge and just pointing to the bridge and saying, there's a bridge.
And we think that's enough.
We think that there's no walking involved.
There's no depending, no trusting, nothing.
It's just pointing and saying, there it is.
But believing in Jesus is submitting to him, following him, loving him.
I really think we could alleviate a lot of the confusion.
If rather than saying, well, a Christian has to believe in Jesus.
That's true.
But then also, I think it may be more accurate and more helpful to say, a Christian has to love Jesus.
You have to love him.
And loving goes far beyond a mere acknowledgement of a fact.
I can acknowledge that my wife exists.
That's good.
I mean, that's a first step, I guess.
But that if I treat her like she doesn't exist, what good is it?
Will my marriage survive?
Does my marriage even exist?
If that's the way that I operate.
So that's what it is.
I think, you know, we believe that we haven't graduated to the in.
And for that reason, I think in the end we end up being even worse than those who don't have that or in.
Far worse, because it's one thing to deny that Christ is real, it's another thing to accept that He's real and then refuse to submit to Him, because that is pride.
I mean, that's the worst thing of all.
That is a willful, conscious rejection.
It's literally what Satan did.
And we know that Satan is not an atheist.
That's the problem we always run into with the Christians who think that all we gotta do is just believe a fact.
Just acknowledge it.
How do you explain Satan?
Why is it Satan?
I mean, it seems, if that's the case, then a great injustice was done to Satan.
Because Satan knows.
He does more than believe.
He knows.
He believes more than any of us.
He knows for a fact.
And yet he's still in hell.
And why is that?
Because he refused to submit.
He knew the fact.
He knew the reality.
He accepted that.
But he didn't love God.
He refused to love.
He refused to believe in Him.
He refused to be in God.
If we're looking at Bob and Jim, I think we would have to admit that Satan is much closer to Jim.
than he is to Bob.
And so, unfortunately, Jim is much closer to him.
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 Jims of modern culture.
All right, guys.
Thanks for watching.
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