Ep. 221 - Beto Comes Out For Third Trimester Abortions
Today on the show, Elizabeth Warren shares her favorite Bible verse. The only problem is that her positions — especially on abortion— completely contradict that verse. Also, Beto comes out for third trimester abortion, which is a required position in the Democrat Party now. Also, a child is groped by a TSA agent. Finally, a kid is accosted by liberals after wearing a MAGA hat to a vigil for the mosque shooting victims. Some conservatives are treating him like a martyr. Personally, I’m tired of the attention seeking trolling on both sides. Date: 03-20-2019
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Elizabeth Warren shares her favorite Bible verse.
The only problem is that her positions, especially on abortion, seem to be completely in contradiction to that verse.
Also, Beto comes out in favor of third trimester abortion, which is a required position on the Democrat Party now.
And we'll talk about the groping of a child by a TSA agent.
And finally, a kid wears a MAGA hat to a vigil for the mosque shooting victims.
Some conservatives are rallying around him, treating him like a victim and a martyr because, you know, some liberals at the vigil were attacking him for it, yelling at him.
Personally, I'm tired of the attention-seeking, trolling behavior on both sides.
And so we'll talk about that today as well on The Matt Wall Show.
You guys, I don't know if you saw this yesterday, Beto O'Rourke apparently inspires enthusiasm from some people.
Too much enthusiasm, I would say.
This guy tweeted this.
Take a look at this.
It's a picture of a woman and Beto, and the woman is staring longingly at Beto, and he's got his arm around her, and the caption says, I hope someday that my wife looks at me the way that this woman is looking at Beto.
By the way, this is my wife.
Take it easy, man.
That's not... You don't... If you want your wife to look at you like that, first of all, this tweet ain't helping matters.
I'll put it that way.
Can you imagine liking a politician so much that you would publicly insinuate that your wife is more attracted to him than to you?
Can you imagine liking... I can't... That's not...
I can't get that into a politician.
I really can't.
Speaking of Beto, I've been wanting to mention this for a couple of days on a more serious note, because it's very instructive.
Beto, at a recent campaign stop, was asked about third trimester abortion.
And the question itself is great.
Obviously asked by a pro-lifer.
And it makes Beto uncomfortable, which is also great.
But his answer is not so great.
So I want you to watch this exchange.
Are you for third trimester abortions or are you going to protect the lives of third trimester babies?
Because, you know, there's really not a medical necessity for abortion.
It's not a medical emergency procedure because typically third trimester abortions take up to three days to have.
So you would, in that sense, if there was an emergency, the doctors would just do a c-section and you don't have to kill the baby in that essence.
So are you for or against third trimester abortions?
So the question is about abortion and reproductive rights, and my answer to you is that that
should be a decision that the woman makes.
I trust her.
Okay so he obviously doesn't want anything to do with the question, which is why it's
fortunate for him that the media would never ask him a question like that.
And they're not going to broach that subject again.
Whoever this was asking the question clearly is not a member of the media, at least not the liberal mainstream media.
But ultimately, he comes out in support of third trimester abortions, of abortions of Abortions that kill fully developed, viable infants shortly before birth.
And the way the question was framed made that clear.
You know, the woman was saying, well, when you've got these abortions of babies that could just be born, you could deliver them via C-section and they would survive.
There's no reason to kill them first.
You could end the pregnancy.
Woman doesn't have to be pregnant anymore, but the baby doesn't have to die.
I mean, what should we do about that?
And Beto says, well, it's the woman's choice.
Now, if this question had been asked 15 years ago...
He probably could have gotten away with saying something like, well, I support a woman's right to choose.
However, there should be common sense regulations, and we want it to be safe, legal, and rare.
Nobody likes abortion.
Sometimes it's necessary, yada, yada, yada.
He could have got away with dancing around the question, but basically coming out against late-term abortions.
But that's not going to fly anymore on the left.
It won't fly in the Democrat Party.
You cannot run for president as a Democrat in modern America if you don't support the killing of viable, healthy, third trimester babies.
You just you can't run if you don't hold that position.
Now, if I were a Democrat voter, which it may surprise you to learn I'm not, but if I were, That fact would disturb me.
It would greatly distress me to realize that lethal injections for infants is now not just an accepted or tolerated position, but a required position in the party that I belong to and vote for and support.
Now, both political parties have, uh, all political parties have throughout history have had people who, um, are members of those parties and they go too far to an extreme on a certain issue one way or another.
Every political party has decided to tolerate certain extreme or uncouth positions because they don't want to alienate that portion of the base.
We all know that's the case.
It's the case in both parties.
These are the deals with the devil that all political parties make.
But what we have to understand here is that the Democrats, they're not just tolerating the extremists in their rank who advocate for abortion through all stages of pregnancy.
That would be bad enough.
But that's not what's happening here.
It's much worse than that.
This, for Democrats, is gospel now.
It is doctrine.
It's something you have to support Or risk charges of heresy.
You need to support it.
It is a basic, fundamental, mainstream, this is like a starting point now for Democrats, is yeah, well obviously you have to be in favor of killing babies in the third trimester, that's just square one.
That's a really disturbing thing.
Now, speaking of heresy, Elizabeth Warren did a CNN town hall the other day, And I guess she was asked about her favorite Bible verse.
And this is interesting, because even though the Democratic Party is the party of Satan, and even though it has embraced Satanism, and it has embraced infanticide, and all of these forms of just the darkest, most debauched evil you can imagine, even in spite of all that, Still, most Democrats feel the need to pretend to be Christian.
We still haven't gotten to the point yet.
Where Democrats will just be honest and say, I don't read the favorite Bible verse.
I don't read what are you talking about?
I don't read the Bible.
I have no idea.
I have no interest in that.
Uh, now eventually we'll be at the, I think within the next maybe 10 years, that's where we'll be.
Uh, that's where the Democrats will be, but they're not there yet.
So when they're asked about their favorite Bible verse, Which is why, even though it's sort of a softball question, if you give that question to Republicans, now that's the kind of question that the media, that the CNN will never ask.
You know, a Republican's never going to be asked that kind of softball question on CNN.
But for Democrats, I actually like the question because They are so awkward about answering it, as you see them try to scramble, like, wait a second, can I think of one Bible verse?
And so it's kind of funny to see.
Here was Warren's answer to that question.
And I'm sure some of you, a lot of you, know this story.
You know, this is the one where the shepherd is dividing the world into the sheep and the goats.
And as we all know, sheep are going to heaven, goats, no, they're not.
And the sheep ask him, Why us?
Why us, Lord?
Why did you pick us?
We look like those guys.
And the shepherd, the Lord, answers back by saying, I was hungry and you gave me food.
I was thirsty and you gave me water.
I was in prison and you visited me.
Naked and you clothed me.
And as much as you have done it unto one of these, the least of thy brethren, you have done it unto me.
And what I hear in that is two things that guide me every day.
The first is there is God.
There is value in every single human being.
Every single human being.
And the second is that we are called to action.
That passage is not about you had a good thought and held on to it.
You sat back and were just a part of it, you know, thought about good things.
It does not say you just didn't hurt anybody and that's good enough.
No.
It says you saw something wrong.
You saw somebody who was thirsty.
You saw somebody who was in prison.
You saw their face.
You saw somebody who was hungry, and it moved you to act.
I believe we are called on to act.
It really is incredible, the cognitive dissonance.
Warren ultimately As you can tell, she's sort of trying to come up with something.
And ultimately, though, she says that her favorite verse has to do with the value of every single human life.
And the obvious answer to that is, yes, but what about the human life in the womb, which clearly you think does not have value?
So there is this, you see this with Democrats a lot, that they, and it seems, you would think at first, it seems almost odd, if you don't understand how Democrats operate, it would seem odd to you, that they actually will jump on any opportunity to extol the virtue of human life and the value of human life.
You would think that they would avoid talking about that because they know That millions of babies have been, 60 million babies have been slaughtered in the womb, and they're perfectly okay with that.
So you'd think that they would try to avoid that subject.
They would try to avoid the subject of the value of human life because the obvious follow-up question is, well, what about all the babies in the womb?
And then they're going to have to explain why, oh yeah, well, except not those.
Um, but they don't avoid talking about the value of human life.
Number one, because, well, she's on CNN and she knows that she will never get that follow up question ever.
Um, but secondly, I think this is just, it's a kind of, uh, intellectual, um, moral defense mechanism, uh, where, you know, if you support the slaughter of millions of babies, And you hold such a debased, awful position on something.
Well, you don't want to admit that to yourself.
Like, you can't admit to yourself that you're the kind of person who's okay with that.
So you have to keep telling yourself that, no, no, no, I value human life.
I value human life.
Human life is special.
Human life is beautiful.
I think that.
Yes, I do.
And so you see Democrats constantly trying to convince themselves of that.
Constantly trying to ignore the massive pile of 60 million dead babies that they supported and facilitated and funded and cheered on as those babies were slaughtered.
They're trying to ignore that, look over it, and insist that, yes, I value human life.
It's really pathetic to see.
While we're on the subject of satanic evil, there's a new show on Hulu, a show aptly named Shrill, about an overweight journalist woman who, I guess, has a lot of sex and does other things.
It's basically just a Lena Dunham show without Lena Dunham.
But there is an episode of this show just released, an episode that was apparently produced with the loving assistance of Planned Parenthood, where the main character goes and has an abortion.
And afterwards, she comes home And she explains to her roommate, I guess she goes to bed and she wakes up the next day and her roommate comes down and asks her, how are you feeling?
And she says, I feel great.
I feel wonderful.
And then she explains that she feels good because she made this decision.
She said, I made this decision only for me.
It was something I did just for me.
And then she says, I feel so effing powerful right now.
Now, this really, this struck me when I watched this clip, because this is literally what a serial killer would say.
I mean, I'm not exaggerating.
That's what a serial killer would say.
They kill because it feels good, and it makes them feel powerful.
That's why, that's exactly the motivation behind serial murder.
And there's also a real, the other thing that struck me about this is, There's a real morbid irony to a woman claiming that she feels powerful after paying someone, likely a man, $400 to kill her baby.
She was exploited.
This is the opposite of power.
She was exploited by this man, by this clinic.
She paid them and then they did this thing to her and to her baby.
And she's saying, I feel powerful.
But yet again, what you find with this, just like with the Democrats saying, Oh, I value human life.
And you have women that get abortions, I feel great, I feel powerful.
Yet again, it's they're trying to convince themselves.
Because of course, they know at the back of their mind, when it comes down to it, they know the opposite is the case.
And women who are honest about it after getting abortions, know that the feeling is really one of total powerlessness.
And certainly you're not going to feel good after something like that.
All right.
Some more video I wanted to play for you.
I have a lot of video clips today.
I think this definitely breaks my video clip record.
This is something that's, let me see here.
I'm sure I have the right thing.
Yeah, this is something that's been making its rounds on social media.
In fact, President Trump tweeted it Retweeted it last night.
It's actually from a year or two ago.
So but for some reason, it just got new life online.
And it's worth talking about it shows an enhanced pat down of a child by the TSA at I think it's DFW airport.
And this kid just for the backstory, this kid, he already went through the scanner.
And he passed that test, but he had, I think, a laptop in his bag that he didn't take out.
He didn't realize he was supposed to take it out.
So, because he had the laptop, they decided they needed to pull him away and do this pat-down.
It's pretty tough to watch, but here it is.
So, we're going to go through the process.
So this guy was very focused on the kids waistband.
I don't know if you noticed.
He kept going back to that.
Really weird.
You have to wonder.
Did you really have to grope the child for two straight minutes in order to figure out that he's not a terrorist?
Did it really not occur to you, maybe within, I don't know, 20 seconds, that this kid's probably not a terrorist?
This is a government agent groping a child because the child is trying to board an airplane.
That is the crime that this child committed.
Now, that's really not the kind of thing that's supposed to happen in a free country.
In any other situation, you would have to commit a crime or be suspected of a crime to be subjected to a search that lengthy and intimate.
In fact, the Bill of Rights would seem to require that you be reasonably suspected of a crime in order for your privacy to be invaded to such an extent.
But is the fact that you're boarding an airplane, is that evidence to justify reasonable suspicion?
Well, let's think about it.
Over the past 30 years, let's say, over the past 30 years, I don't know how many people have boarded airplanes or tried to board airplanes in the United States, but it's certainly billions.
I mean, over 30 years, billions of people in the United States have boarded or attempted to board an airplane.
How many of those people were terrorists?
Well, again, I don't have the exact number.
I don't know if anyone could produce that exact number, but I mean, a couple dozen at most?
Including 9-11?
Basically a handful?
So you've got billions versus a handful.
So, and how many of them have been 12-year-old white boys?
Zero?
Okay, so zero out of billions.
So again, the question is, The fact that this kid is going through security, even though he's got a laptop, does that at all meet the burden of reasonable suspicion that he might be trying to commit a crime, which would then justify his privacy being invaded to that extent?
Which would then justify a government agent reaching his fingers down the kid's pants?
I would say no.
See, that's the problem with the TSA.
We have a government agency setting up shop in our airports and subjecting every person who passes through to the sorts of searches that we usually reserve for inmates in a prison.
But it can't be justified based on the idea that there's some sort of epidemic of terrorists trying to board airplanes, because guess what?
There's no epidemic, and there never was.
Yes, I'm aware of 9-11.
I remember it well.
It was a disastrous event, obviously.
But that one event does not translate into an epidemic.
And at any rate, what reason do we have to assume that the government can do a better job of thwarting the next 9-11. They didn't
thwart the first one.
I got news for you. It's the government's fault that that was allowed to happen. I mean,
it's the fault of the terrorists and the ones who committed the act, first and foremost. But
in terms of the people responsible for stopping something like that from happening,
it's the government that should have stopped that.
And they didn't, and they had plenty of chances to.
It was a failure of government.
I mean, these guys were in the United States, as you know, for years.
They were taking flying lessons.
They were planning this thing, and the government never stopped it.
So this was a failure of government.
This was not a failure of private airport security.
Remember that those guys, they took over an airplane with box cutters.
Well, at the time, it was not illegal to take a box cutter on an airplane because nobody Thought that anyone could take over an airplane with with or it was not illegal to take a to take box cutters onto an airplane because nobody thought that anyone would be able to take over an airplane with box cutter.
So the point is, this was not really a failure of airport security was more a failure of government on many different many different levels.
But then what happens?
Government fails on 9-11, and the result is that the government gets to take more power and now gets to involve itself in airport security, and that really makes no sense.
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be airport security, obviously.
There was airport security prior to 9-11.
What I'm saying is there's no good reason for the government to be in charge of it, and I don't see how they have any constitutional right to take charge of it, even though they did.
By the way, why just airports?
That's what I don't understand.
Why don't we have a TSA at train stations, and bus stations, and cruise ships, shopping malls, sports stadiums, churches, et cetera?
Those are all just as likely, if not more likely, to be targets of terrorists.
Why don't we have TSA agents there?
The point is, when you consider the extremely small likelihood that a terrorist is going to be walking through an airport, and it is a very, very, the chances are very, very slim, and the statistics prove that.
So if those slim chances can justify creating this entire government agency and having the government take over airports and do all this, if it can justify that, then it would just as well be justified anywhere else where people gather or board public transportation or anything else.
Now, I'm not saying that I want to have TSA and all those other places.
But if it can't be justified at the train station, or at a church, or at a ball, you know, at a stadium, if it can't be justified there, then I don't see how you justify it at an airport.
Now, I go to, you know, football stadiums all the time, and you do have security, but it's not government security.
All right, what else?
Last thing before we get to emails.
A couple of days ago, let me play this for you.
A couple of days ago, a university in Toronto, Canada held a vigil for the victims of the New Zealand mosque shooting.
And some guy decided to wear a MAGA hat to the vigil.
And then there were predictable results.
Watch this.
Man, these people don't owe you an explanation.
You just need to leave.
There's some f***ing masses here, Get out of here right now!
Get out! Get out! Get out!
Shame! Shame!
Leave him. Don't touch him. Leave him.
Don't touch him. Leave him.
Okay, let me say that I think it's lame first of all to berate people
who wear the MAGA hat.
There have been plenty of stories about people just wearing the hat
to the store or whatever and then they're accosted by an angry mob.
I think that that's stupid.
I also think that people have the right to wear whatever hat they want to wear.
So, you know, that is definitely the case.
But I also am not stupid.
So I know, and you know, Everyone knows.
We all know that the dude wore that hat to that vigil in order to get a reaction.
That's the only reason he wore it.
We all know that.
There's just no way that a person decided, oh, you know what?
Let me wear this Trump hat to a Canadian vigil for the victims of a racist white mass shooter in New Zealand.
There's just no way that a person innocently just thought, oh, you know, yeah, let me, let me see, what should I wear to that vigil for the mosque shooting?
I'm in Canada.
Oh yeah, a Trump hat.
That's what I should wear.
It's not a political event.
It's not a Trump rally.
It's nothing like that.
No need for political statements.
So that guy wore it for a reason.
He wore the hat because he's a troll and he wanted to get exactly the kind of reaction he got.
And I have no sympathy for the kinds of people who decide that vigils for mass shooting victims are good places for stunts like that.
But you know, I saw this video being passed around on Twitter, mostly by conservatives, Who were saying that, oh, look at those mean leftists attacking that poor man.
He's a martyr.
Stop it already.
I'm so tired of this stupid hat thing.
I really am.
I mean, aren't you tired of the hat thing?
I'm tired of the hat thing.
Can we just stop with the hat thing?
I'm so sick of it.
Yeah, liberals overreact to the hat, that's true.
But I'm also, you got these people who wear the stupid thing because they know they're going to get a reaction and they want a reaction and then they get the reaction that they want and then they go on Twitter, they go on social media, they say, I'm a victim, I'm a martyr.
Look at what happened.
I had no idea that that was going to happen and it did.
Those mean people were yelling at me.
I had no idea they were going to yell at me for wearing a MAGA hat to a Canadian vigil for the victims of a racist white shoot, right?
No clue that that would ever happen!
Never!
And I wore it and they're like, that's so terrible, look at me, I'm a martyr.
And then you've got a bunch of stupid conservatives who go feed right into it and say, oh my gosh, that poor man.
That poor, poor man.
Well, you know, I call them stupid.
They're not stupid.
They know what they're doing.
And that's what annoys me about it.
If it was just stupidity, I wouldn't be as annoyed.
Because people can't help being stupid.
But all the people, you know, the conservatives who buy into this, they know what they're doing.
And so, you know, when I was talking about this yesterday on social media, and there were a bunch of conservatives who told me that, well, how do you know?
You don't know that he was trying to provoke a reaction.
It could have just been, you know, you don't know that.
No, that's not the story here.
The story is those mean liberals.
And I'm just thinking to myself, come on, man, you know that what you're saying is totally bogus.
You know that it's BS.
So why are you saying it?
It's just, I'm tired of the game playing.
I'm really sick of it.
The bad faith demonstrations, the trolling, the self-martyrdom.
Everyone is constantly trying to take every opportunity to get attention and to, you know, be in a viral video and to provoke a reaction.
It's just, the whole thing.
Not to mention, do you really want, I mean, that hat, Is, is a politician's merchandise, uh, which it's fine if you want to wear it, but is that really the thing that we want to, we want to make that our symbol?
Like that's our new cross or something like that's the symbol we're marching under.
That's the symbol we're going to martyr ourselves for and get into altercations over.
Is that, is the president's hat really?
There are better symbols than that, like, you know, a flag.
I mean, okay, that's a symbol that is worth fighting over and for.
A cross is a symbol worth fighting over and for.
The president's hat is not a symbol that I think is worth any of this.
All right.
Let's go to emails.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Josh.
He says, Hi, Matt.
I heard you say bass on your show today when referring to the stringed instrument, but you pronounced it like the fish bass.
Just curious if this is a regional pronunciation or if I and everyone else is saying it wrong.
Josh, I got this email from like 20 people claiming that I called a bass guitar a bass guitar yesterday on my show.
That's the claim that I'm getting from all these people.
And I mean, if I did that, that would certainly be embarrassing and that would make me a total moron.
But I think that you misheard me, Josh.
I don't, you and all these other people go, I don't, I think that's fake news.
I didn't say that.
In fact, we'll check the tape.
In fact, no, we're not, we're not going to check the tape.
Um, we'll, we don't need no reason to check it.
I mean, it's, you don't need to go back and see it.
Let's just assume that I'm not so stupid as to have called a bass guitar, a bass guitar.
I mean, come on.
This is from Sarah.
Hi Matt, I love your show.
I happened to hear yesterday that a baseball player, Mike Trout, staying on the fish theme, a baseball player got a $430 million contract.
That's almost half a billion dollars to play a game.
This seems obscene to me.
I'm all about capitalism and free markets, but isn't it overboard and immoral for society to give people this kind of money to play a game?
What do you think?
Yeah, it's certainly a nice payday, Sarah.
I think we can agree with that.
I would clarify, though, that society is not paying this individual $430 million to play a game.
The Los Angeles Angels are paying him $430 million.
As far as being overboard, well, you know, keep something in mind here.
First of all, that money exists.
It's there.
It's there for the taking.
It's there because people are buying tickets.
They're buying merchandise.
Advertisers are paying.
There are TV contracts and so on.
So it's just it's a very lucrative business is professional sports.
There's a lot of money there.
So someone has to get the money.
Should the owners keep all of it?
Because that's the only other option here.
If we're not going to give in professional baseball, These guys are playing a game.
of hundred million dollar contracts to the to the players, then all that means is that the owners are
keeping more for themselves. And I don't think that that's any more just. Another thing to
remember is that, yeah, these guys are playing a game. That's true. But you know what, most of us
are doing jobs that are not life and death, that are not strictly speaking necessary to humanity.
Thank you.
But most of us probably aren't bringing people the kind of joy and camaraderie and everything that they get from sports.
So it's more than just a game in that way.
I think that sports are... I don't mean to be corny about it, but as I mentioned, I go to football games all the time.
I'm a big Ravens fan.
And So you know, I go to a Ravens game, I go to the stadium.
And for at least for those three hours, right?
We're all just we're all there.
We're just watching a game.
We're not thinking about any of this other stuff.
We're enjoying the game for the game's sake and and we've got this kind of camaraderie.
Yeah, it's a camaraderie over a game fine.
So it doesn't mean a whole lot but still we're all there and you know, you score a touchdown and you're giving a high-five to everyone around you don't even know these people but you're all you got 70,000 people on stadium.
You're all friends for those three hours and because you're all just focused on this game.
And you're having a fun time with it.
And so I think that it is something important that they're providing, I think.
As long as we don't go overboard with it.
There are people who become way too obsessed with sports and their whole life is just watching sports.
It's the only thing they care about.
And I think that that's, you know, they could probably use a little bit more moderation because there is more to life than sports.
But as long as you can keep it in proper perspective, I think that although it is a game, as I said, it is still a valuable thing to people.
And finally, importantly, the fact is that professional athletes are the best in the world at what they do.
They're the best in the entire world.
And if you can be the best in the world at something, even if it's not, even if it's just a game, but if you can be the best in the world at something, at anything, then you'll probably be rich because of it.
I mean, if you're the best, if you have a talent that puts you above everybody else on the planet in that particular area, then you can probably Parlay that into millions of dollars.
So, is it obscene?
No, I don't really think it is, honestly.
This is from Jake.
It says, my four-and-a-half-year-old boy likes to play dolls, house, and kitchen with his little sister.
He also likes to play trucks, dinosaurs, blocks, and Batman with his little sister.
What would the transgender, intersectional, social justice, delusional leftist have to say about that?
Thanks for another great show.
You keep talking, I'll keep listening.
Yeah, well, I don't know.
I guess.
So what?
So your son is really your daughter and your daughter is really your son, I guess is what they would is what they would tell you.
Whereas rational people would say your son is just a normal boy and your daughter is just a normal girl.
From Joe says, I listened to your criticism of the Christian film genre.
I have to say I agree with you 100%.
However, when you mentioned some of the good ones in the genre, you never mentioned the Scorsese film Silence, which came out in 2016, featuring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver.
Beyond being a great Christian film, I would say it was easily one of the best movies of 2016.
Have you seen it?
Did you like it?
If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.
Yeah, I know.
I didn't see the movie.
I read the book.
And I really love the book and I was very moved by it up until the last like 10 pages because I don't want to give anything away, spoiler alert, but I mean the book's been out for 50 years or something so I don't think it is a spoiler.
For me, maybe they changed the ending for the movie but I don't think they did.
For me, it was all ruined by the fact that at the end, after all of that, the priest apostatizes and gives up his faith, and then lives out his life basically in peace, and then dies.
And so that's where the movie ends.
And even that wouldn't be necessarily so bad, because the fact is, people did apostatize in the face of persecution, and so there's nothing wrong with portraying that in a movie.
The book, at least, seems to endorse apostasy, because there's that very strange scene towards the end of the book where the Japanese authorities are trying to get him to apostatize, and they're trying to get him to stomp on a picture of Jesus, if I remember correctly.
And then he has this vision where Jesus is telling him, yes, stomp on it, yes, you know, deny your faith, it's okay.
And Jesus is encouraging him to do it, and then he does, and then he...
Basically faces no repercussions lives out his faith and marries a Japanese woman and so on.
I don't know.
It's just a very it was a great story.
A great reflection on doubt and suffering and everything and then it just goes off the rails.
And so That's my issue with it.
From Leon says, Hi Matt, listening to your discussion of Christian movies, I agree with most of what you say, but here's my question.
Why doesn't the Christian movie industry produce more movies based on the Bible?
I don't mean doing another Jesus movie.
I mean, any of the hundreds of other stories that nobody has made into a film yet, seems like there's a lot of material there.
I couldn't agree more.
I say this all the time.
But here's the problem.
I don't think the Christian movie industry really has the talent available, the acting and writing talent, or the money to do justice to an epic biblical tale.
Now, Hollywood has the talent and the money to do it justice, but they don't have the interest or the theological understanding to do it justice.
And that's why the Bible is not mined for more stories, even though, as you say, there are so many great stories in the Bible.
And any Bible movie will make a gazillion dollars at the box office.
So you would think it's a no brainer, but for some reason, when it comes to Bible movies, you know, we get a Jesus movie every few years.
Uh, we get a Moses movie every few decades.
We've gotten a Noah movie.
Um, and, and that's kind of it's like, those are the stories when there are so many other great stories that, you know, I don't even think the Noah movie I thought was pretty terrible, but.
Even if you were more biblically faithful with the Noah, I just don't see how you make that into a great movie.
I don't think there's a lot of fodder there necessarily for a great movie, but there are stories in the Bible, a lot of them, that would make really interesting.
And not just great movies for Christians or for Jews, but movies that I think anyone could enjoy just because they're interesting stories.
For the reasons I just said, I think Hollywood stays away from it.
As a side note, I also feel the same way about, I was talking about this yesterday, I feel the same way about the Civil War.
I mean, there should be 10 Civil War movies every year.
There are just so many great stories, so many epic battles, so many fascinating characters, so much drama and tragedy and intrigue in the Civil War, but Hollywood basically leaves it alone, doesn't touch it.
Except for a few Civil War movies in the 90s.
And then every once in a while we'll get a movie that's set in the Civil War era, but as far as an actual Civil War movie, no.
We get 600 World War II movies, and many of them are great, but I mean, there's just so much you could do with just a straight Civil War movie.
Or make a movie about the Battle of Antietam.
You take any battle, bull run, I mean, you take any battle.
We've had a Gettysburg movie, but...
Take any of these battles.
Chancellorsville.
I mean, any of these battles, make it into a movie.
It would be a great movie.
But they don't want to do it.
And we know the reason for that is that political correctness won't allow it.
It's the same reason we don't get Bible movies, political correctness.
And I think Hollywood knows that, you know, if they try to make a Civil War movie and make it historically accurate and make it nuanced and mature and interesting, Well, then that's going to require that you don't turn the Confederates into cartoon villains.
You actually have to give them a nuanced, thoughtful treatment.
And also, that's where a lot of the really interesting characters are.
Stonewall Jackson, I think, is one of the most interesting men that the United States has ever produced.
But so if you're going to make a movie, you'd want to capture those kinds of men in an interesting way.
But if you do that, then you're going to have the PC mob coming after you and saying that you're, you know, an apologist for slavery and yada, yada, yada.
So that's why they don't do it.
Finally, this is from David.
Hi Matt, I appreciate your segments about the Bible.
You seem pretty knowledgeable on the subject.
That's an illusion, I assure you.
There is one biblical passage that I've recently found kind of troubling, the more I've thought about it, and I'd love to get your take on it.
Matthew 27, 52 through 54.
I'm sure you know the story, and you know why some people struggle with it, so I won't waste your time explaining that.
What are your thoughts on the passage?
Also, as a related question, Do you think it's okay for Christians to struggle with biblical passages?
Honestly, I would never say this out loud, but I just find this story and a few others in the Bible hard to believe for a number of reasons, but I feel guilty for thinking that.
I'm sure it's a spiritual flaw on my part or lack of faith.
Anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble.
Love your show.
Hi David, let me try to answer your first, or I'll do this in reverse order, so your second question first.
Yes, it's okay for Christians to struggle with the Bible.
No, that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.
It's not a spiritual weakness, I don't think.
In fact, I'd say that maybe the opposite is the case.
The people who don't grapple with these texts, who don't confront the challenges, they are the spiritually and intellectually weak ones.
For instance, a while ago, I remember I was talking to somebody you know, kind of about this.
And I mentioned the struggles I have with some Old Testament passages,
especially the ones where God orders the mass killings of women and children and prescribes slavery.
You know, I mean, there are a bunch.
The scene where he sends bears to maul 42 children to death because they made fun of a guy's bald head,
I mean, to me, seems like a, you know, a bit of an overreaction.
I mean, that's, you know, I think that's the thought almost everyone has when they read that passage, right?
And so I was expressing this, and the person I was talking to basically said, well, what's the problem?
I don't see it.
I've never struggled with that.
What's the problem?
You need to have more faith.
It's in the Bible, so it's okay.
So what's the big deal?
But if you've honestly never struggled with this kind of stuff in the Old Testament, then either you haven't read it, which I think is likely for a lot of these people, Or you have the intellectual curiosity of a jar of mayonnaise.
Or you're not being honest because you think that it's shameful to admit your struggles.
The fact is that anyone who seriously actually reads the Bible and applies their brain to it, and really tries to understand what they're reading, Anyone like that will encounter the obstacles that you've encountered, David, that I've encountered, and you encounter it because you're studying and you're trying to understand it and you're taking it seriously.
It's the people who say, well, no problem.
No, I don't.
What do you mean?
What are you talking about?
I don't see a problem.
Those are the people who are not studying it and they're not taking it seriously.
And so they say, oh, it's just my strong faith.
No, it's not strong faith.
It's the opposite of that.
These people don't even know their own religion, and don't care to know it.
And so, I would say the fact that you're grappling with this, and that you would even send an email like that in the first place... I mean, most Christians, David, they're not sitting around thinking about Matthew 27, 52 through 54.
They probably don't even know what it says, never even... they don't think about it.
The fact that you're sitting there thinking about it is a really good sign.
And it says something about your spiritual and intellectual maturity.
So, okay.
Matthew 27 52 through 54 says and when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice he gave up his spirit and that moment
The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom
The earth shook and rocks split the tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to
life They came out of the tombs and after Jesus's resurrection
They went into the holy city and appeared to many people when the centurion and those with him were guarding Jesus
Okay. Well that part we don't have a problem with so it's really
52 to 50 52 and 53 are the issues here.
The tombs broke open, and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.
They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
Yeah, after reading that email from you yesterday, I was talking about this on Twitter, and I was saying how I also have scratched my head over this passage.
It is a tough one.
But again, it's only tough when you think about it.
If you don't think about it, then there's no problem.
There's never any problem with anything in life if you don't think about it.
But after thinking, the way I see it, the two issues that arise are first theological.
So, this says that a whole bunch of holy people from the past, we assume Old Testament saints, were raised from the dead immediately after the crucifixion.
That's what it says.
They didn't go into the town until after the resurrection, so says Matthew, but they were raised after the crucifixion.
And this is significant because, first of all, what the heck did they do for those two days?
It says that they came out of their tomb, they didn't go into the holy city until two days, so what were they doing in between is an interesting question.
But more importantly, theologically, how does this work?
Because Paul says in Corinthians, I think it is, that Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection.
Well, wouldn't this story make the Old Testament saints the firstfruits of the resurrection?
Because they, according to the text, they were raised first.
And, anyway, doesn't it kind of distract, in some ways, from the miracle of the resurrection?
If Jesus' resurrection was just one of dozens of resurrections that weekend?
It was the last in a series of resurrections, apparently, according to Matthew.
So that's the theological challenge.
The historical challenge is that this would be a momentous occasion.
I mean, many tombs are breaking open, and many people are coming to life, and many people are seeing them walking around the city.
Yet no other gospel writer noticed this, apparently.
Not one of them mentioned it.
No writer of any epistle mentions it.
No historian of that time mentions it or has even heard of it.
It just seems incredible that every gospel writer would make room to mention, for instance, Jesus cursing a fig tree, yet only one takes the time to mention that, hey, by the way, there were a bunch of resurrected dead people walking around Jerusalem.
You know, it is, as you say, hard to believe in some ways.
So, What can we do with the passage?
Well, over the years, Christian scholars have tried a few different moves here.
The first is, well, not the first, but there are some who have tried to interpret it metaphorically and have said, well, maybe this was kind of a literary device that Matthew was using.
But I'm okay with interpreting things metaphorically if the text supports that interpretation, but the text does not support that.
Because why would Matthew drop this weird metaphorical narrative right into the middle of the crucifixion and resurrection story about Jesus?
That just makes no sense at all.
So I think you got to put that to the side.
The other thing people have suggested is that maybe the text was added in later.
I guess there is potentially some textual evidence that maybe that happened.
I don't really know what the evidence is exactly.
I do know that this story in Matthew appears in every complete manuscript of Matthew that we have.
So if there were a few manuscripts of Matthew from way back a long time ago that didn't have that story, Then you could start to think that, yeah, maybe this was added in later.
And we do know that that did happen.
The long ending of Mark, Mark 16, 9 through 20, whatever it was, is, we know, was added in later.
The original Gospel of Mark ends with the women fleeing the tomb and telling no one, and that's the end.
And the original, or not the original, but the earliest manuscripts of Mark, that's how it ends.
The later manuscripts all of a sudden have this next part of that ending where it says that Jesus appeared and he told the disciples that they could drink poison and handle snakes and not be killed.
But pretty much everyone knows that someone later on added that in, which, you know, someone should probably let the Pentecostal snake handlers know about that because those people for years have been handling snakes and getting bit by rattlesnakes and dying because they didn't realize that that story is not original to the gospel.
So there's that.
The story about the woman caught in adultery and early manuscripts of John don't have that story, which doesn't mean that the story isn't true.
It could have been oral tradition that was passed down and then added in by a scribe later on.
There are plenty of scholars who think that's the case.
But the point is, It's not crazy to think that maybe something like that is going on with Matthew.
Maybe it's possible.
The other option, of course, is that it happened exactly as Matthew says it happened.
That doesn't answer why no one else noticed it.
It doesn't solve the theological difficulties that seem to be raised here.
But, maybe that's beyond our understanding.
So, what would I suggest?
I would say keep grappling with it.
Study it.
Think about it.
Pray about it.
And if you come to a better conclusion than what I just rambled off, which wouldn't be hard to do, then send me an email and let me know.
Maybe teach me something about it.
The more you think about it and study it.
I would definitely pursue it.
And don't be afraid of it.
And don't feel shamed.
And don't feel like, oh, I'm being too critical about this passage.
I should just accept it.
No, because I don't think critical is exactly what you're doing here.
I think it's more inquisitive.
And it's good to be inquisitive.
We should be.
All right.
We'll leave it there.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
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