Today on the show, Joe Biden struggles to respect personal space. Is this a huge scandal we should care about? (No.) Also, a woman gives birth to her son’s child — we’ll look at the lengths people go to get around biology. Finally, should christians cite the Bible when they’re arguing about cultural issues with people who don't believe in the Bible? I say no, and I'll explain why. 04-04-2019
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, Joe Biden struggles to respect personal space.
Is that a huge scandal that we should all care about?
No, but we'll talk about it.
Also, a woman gives birth to her son's child.
We will look at the lengths that people go to in order to get around biology.
And here's something I really want to talk about today.
Should Christians cite the Bible when they're arguing about cultural issues with people who don't believe in the Bible?
I will say no, and I'll explain why today on The Matt Wall Show.
Well, here I am in beautiful Boston, Massachusetts.
Beautiful, except for all the Patriots paraphernalia muddying up the joint.
But except for that, I'll be speaking at Boston University tonight.
And it is at 7 o'clock, and it's free for everyone.
So if you're in the area, you want to come out, I hope to see you there.
It was a little bit of a precarious situation getting here, I have to admit, mainly from the airport to the hotel and the cab ride between those two places.
It was about a 40-minute cab ride because of all the traffic, and I'm pretty sure that my cab driver was talking to himself the whole time.
Now, he could have had an earpiece in and he was talking to someone on the phone.
I don't know.
I didn't see an earpiece.
I couldn't see his left ear that well.
But the thing is, He was talking so quietly, like muttering, that it's just there's no way that someone on the other line would be able to hear him.
And also, he would only say something like every five minutes.
And I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking to me.
And then I thought, well, what kind of phone conversation is that if you're only saying something every five minutes?
But then I remembered that, oh, wait a minute.
That is every phone conversation I've ever had with my wife, where that's kind of how it goes.
Just every five minutes, I just have to mutter two or three words while she stops to take a breath, and I just keep it going that way.
And she carries the rest of the load that way.
So every five minutes, I just throw in a, oh, yeah, really?
Oh, wow.
You know, that kind of thing.
So maybe he was talking to his wife.
I don't know.
Or he was talking to himself.
And yes, I do still take cabs.
I think Uber is sometimes a little bit too slick and clean for me.
I think when you're in a cab, you need to have ripped seats, you need to have the faint smell of body odor, you need to be a little bit afraid that you're about to be ax-murdered.
It's part of the experience.
Call me old school, I don't know.
Alright, so I have Avoided talking about this stupid Joe Biden thing all week, and I'm going to cave now, I guess, finally, and address it.
Joe Biden has a habit, as I'm sure you heard, of invading people's personal space.
And this was kind of treated as a joke, not kind of, it was treated as a joke by everybody, conservatives and liberals, until recently, until he decided that he wanted to maybe get into the presidential race.
And now it's become a thing.
It's a big deal.
And so yesterday he came out with a statement, a video where he addressed his infringements on people's personal space.
Here's the video.
In the coming month, I expect to be talking to you about a whole lot of issues, and I'll always be direct with you.
But today, I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement that I've made to women and some men, and I've made them uncomfortable.
And I always try to be, in my career, I've always tried to make a human connection.
That's my responsibility, I think.
I shake hands, I hug people, I grab men and women by the shoulders and say, you can do this.
And whether they're women, men, young, old, it's the way I've always been.
It's the way I've tried to show I care about them and I'm listening.
And over the years, knowing what I've been through, the things that I've faced, I found that scores, if not hundreds of people have come up to me and reached out for solace and comfort.
Something, anything that may help them get through the tragedy they're going through.
And so it's just who I am.
And I've never thought of politics as cold and antiseptic.
I've always thought about connecting with people.
I don't think he did himself any favors with that video because he just comes across as kind of, frankly, kind of frail and old and out of touch or he doesn't understand the way things are now.
So I think his presidential campaign has pretty much exploded on the runway.
I mean, I don't see, it's just, There really isn't, no matter how he's polling, there's no room for him right now in the Democratic primary, I don't think, especially with all this.
Now, listen, I don't like Joe Biden.
I don't support Joe Biden.
I think Joe Biden will make a bad president.
I disagree with everything that he says, pretty much.
I also think he's way, way too old to be getting into the race.
I think the fact that he's this old and he's putting himself through this and he's humiliating himself this way and groveling and everything is...
Only just shows all the more how desperate he is to have that power, which makes me even more determined that he should not have the power because he wants it so much.
But, and yeah, I think he's way too loose with his interpretation of what qualifies as personal space.
And I say that as someone, especially someone like myself, I have, you know, my personal space boundary is about 30 feet.
And unless you are a close family member, I really don't want you coming any closer than that.
But, to equate his hugging and touching of people, not just women, but men too, to equate that with sexual assault, as I've seen people doing on the left and right, is to cheapen sexual assault.
It is completely ridiculous.
And it is also, it's just a lie, because it's a bad faith argument.
And what I see on social media is a lot of conservatives who are jumping on the train and saying, oh yeah, Joe, acting like they're really offended and worried about Joe, but someone tweeted me yesterday about how they're worried about Joe Biden around our daughter.
Are our daughters safe with Joe Biden?
I mean, first of all, when is your daughter ever going to be around Joe Biden?
Second of all, you're not, you don't really care about it.
You know, you're up at night worried, oh my gosh, Joe Biden is coming, he's coming for my daughter.
No, you're just pretending.
Because you don't like him and he's a Democrat, you are just pretending.
And that's what we call a bad faith argument, and it really annoys me, whether conservatives or liberals do it.
In fact, it annoys me more with conservatives, because these people, I guess I'm supposed to be on their side, and it's, you know, I'm not on board with it.
And they know what they're doing.
They know that if Joe Biden was a Republican, they wouldn't be saying anything about this.
And they know it.
Okay?
It doesn't matter how many pictures.
There could be a million pictures of Donald Trump smelling people's hair, which is weird.
But if there were a million pictures of that, I mean, all these conservatives attacking Joe Biden, none of them would say a word about it.
And they know it!
So, what are we even doing?
And also, I mean, look at this picture here.
Look at this.
Okay.
Now, that's hilarious, first of all.
Imagine what's going through that guy's head right now.
But does anyone think that Joe Biden was trying to do anything sexual there?
I mean, does anyone imagine that Joe Biden is coming onto this guy?
No.
Biden has no concept of personal space with women or men.
And he should have a concept of it.
He should.
I mean, Lord knows, as I said, I cherish my personal space.
I cherish it very much.
But Biden is not a sexual assaulter.
He can't be lumped into that category.
And if you're a conservative and you're doing it, you're operating in bad faith and I wish that you would stop.
Because we don't need to do that.
We don't need to play those games.
We really don't.
With all of these people, Joe Biden included, there are so many good, solid, non-hypocritical, non-bad faith arguments you can make against them that you don't need to do this.
You don't need to pretend and do all the theatrics and act like a fainting, you know, you're some sort of fainting little flower.
Oh my gosh, Joe Biden!
You don't need to do all that.
It's not necessary.
It's like flopping in basketball.
We can win this game without flopping.
You don't need to do that.
All right, so let's move on.
All right, I did the Joe Biden thing.
So, speaking of creepy, The Daily Wire has this report from Amanda, who, as you know, I plagiarize for content on a regular basis.
It says, last week, a 61-year-old woman carrying her own grand... So, okay, hold on.
Let me slow down.
You need to pay close attention to this because it can get confusing.
So, last week, a 61-year-old woman carrying her own granddaughter via a surrogacy pregnancy gave birth in a Nebraska hospital.
Cecil Elledge carried her gay son's daughter to term.
The six-pound baby girl was conceived through in vitro fertilization with her son Matthew's sperm and his husband's sister's eggs.
Um... And...
And then it goes on from there explaining.
Okay, so that's all you need to know.
So it's a woman who carried her son's child, which was conceived with his sperm and his husband's sister's eggs.
So her son had a baby with her husband's sister and she carried the child to term.
Alright, we're caught up now.
That's what's going on, if you're keeping track at home.
It may not shock you to learn that I am not necessarily ready to applaud this kind of arrangement.
In fact, this would seem... How does this not qualify as incestuous?
You're having your son's semen and his husband's sister's eggs implanted inside you And you're carrying your son's baby.
I guess this is the point we take from this.
These are the kinds of extraordinary lengths that two men have to go to in order to have children.
But even then, the two men still cannot really have children.
This baby is not the son's husband's child.
This is the child of the son and his husband's sister.
So when you read in the media reports about how, oh, two gay men had a baby through circuses, well, no, they didn't really have a baby.
They can't.
It's impossible.
That's not what happened here.
Because at the end of the day, you really can't get around nature.
And, you know, that should tell you something about sex and gender, shouldn't it?
That no matter how progressive we get, no matter how much we reject the proper natural order of things, still, when it comes down to it, if you want to make a baby, you need a woman and a man to do it.
So as much as we hear about biological sex being, now it's not just gender that's fluid anymore, remember that, it's biological sex is also a construct.
It doesn't mean anything.
Oh really?
Well then, why is it?
That there is no possible way for two men to have a baby unless they enlist the help of, you know, unless they farm the job out to women to take care of some of the really necessary steps involved.
Why is it?
As much as we want to say that, you know, biological sex, it's not even a thing anymore.
Yeah, but, you know, every single baby that has ever been conceived in the history of the world, or that ever will be conceived, is conceived by a man and a woman.
And you could, man and woman, you could use, you don't have to say man and woman, you could call them whatever you want to call them.
It doesn't matter.
Thing one and thing two, it doesn't, whatever you want to call them, it's just, these are two distinct entities, two different types of people, with different but complementary reproductive systems, and you need that in order to make a baby, which tells you that biological sex is... When you've got to go to those lengths to get around biological sex, that tells you, I think, that biological sex is definitely still a thing, and it matters.
All right.
Moving on again.
One of the bits from my interview with Ben on the Sunday special last week There are a few bits that have gotten a lot of attention.
We've been talking about some of... There's one part where we talked about heaven and hell.
We've been discussing that a lot on the show this week.
But another part of the interview that's gotten a fair amount of attention, especially from Christians, is when we talked about the problems with bringing the Bible into certain political and ideological debates.
So let me Let me play a piece of that clip for you and then we'll talk about it.
When it comes to, you know, you write a lot about politics.
How do you separate out talking about religion from talking about politics?
When should you speak in sort of a religious moral sense and when should you speak in kind of a secular sense when you're trying to make an argument?
Yeah, that's a good question.
It's a balance I am still struggling to strike myself.
I can't say that I always do the best job of it.
But I do know that when it comes to these great moral issues in our society, like abortion, marriage, gender, that we have to be able to engage on those issues without throwing the Bible at people, especially if we're talking to people who don't Believe in the Bible.
Because when you try to go the biblical route, you're talking to someone who doesn't believe in it, well then you've just put an extra step in your way, which is first you have to get them to believe the Bible, which is a whole different conversation, and a pretty difficult one.
So, I think that that's not the route.
Instead, you have to talk about these natural laws, these fundamental moral truths that you have to try to connect with them on.
And also logic and reason.
It's something like, I always cringe when I hear, when the topic is something like transgenderism, and I hear a Christian say, you know, quote Genesis or something and say, well, God, male and female, he created them.
I say, yes, that's true, but we don't even, you don't need to bring Genesis into this.
This is a very basic logical distinction between you got men here, women here, men have penises.
So, you know, you should be able to explain that without quoting Genesis.
And you also give, I think, your listener an easy out, because then they're going to say, oh, you're just tossing the Bible at me, I'm not going to listen to that.
Or they'll say that, well, you know, you only disagree with abortion because you're Christian, or you're only saying that because you're Christian.
When really, no, even if I was not a Christian, I still would say it's not okay to kill babies.
So, quite a few Christians have scolded me for making this point, saying that I'm dismissing the Bible, I'm denying it, I'm rejecting it, what have you.
A guy by the name of Sy Ten Bruggenkate, who is a Christian apologist, you can find him In a lot of YouTube debates and stuff.
He wrote an article attacking me for this segment and for, I guess, the whole interview.
And I guess, apparently, he just doesn't really like me in general.
That's what I'm told.
He's not the only one.
Several people sent me this article on his blog, I guess, telling me that Saiten Bruggenkate is criticizing me again.
So, this isn't the first time.
Anyway, Sai, along with many other Christians, if my emails are any indication, Really do think that you can throw the Bible at anyone in any discussion and it will always be an effective strategy.
So here's part of what he says in his article criticizing.
I'll just read some of it because I think this is kind of representative of This point of view.
He says, imagine if someone were to attack Matt and his family, and Matt pointed a gun at the attacker.
Now imagine that the attacker shouted, I don't believe in your gun.
Does anyone think that Matt would worry about the extra step of getting the attacker to believe that his gun was real?
Would Matt throw down his weapon based on the objection of his attacker?
Of course not.
Yet that is exactly what Mr. Walsh says he would do when arguing with a person who didn't believe in the Bible.
I mean this, that analogy is so Bad on so many levels that I'll get to that in a minute, but that is such a bad analogy.
My goodness.
So anyway, so does anyone... Yeah, that is exactly what Mr. Walsh says he would do when arguing with a person who didn't believe in the Bible.
He would discard his authority.
Surely Ben wouldn't let Matt get away with such a ludicrous position.
Well, of course he would, and does.
Why?
Because Ben holds the exact same position.
On February 6, 2017, in the Q&A session after his talk at Ferris State University, Mr. Shapiro
stated, I never cite to the Bible.
The reason I don't cite to the Bible is because that's an argument from authority.
Okay, you may not believe the authority to which I'm citing.
This is, that was Ben, quote unquote.
He says, this is a terrible understanding of the argument from authority fallacy.
An argument from authority is only fallacious if the authority you are citing is not an actual authority.
That's not true.
It can be fallacious even if it is an authority.
I'll talk about that in a minute.
If Matt and Ben were working on a car and they ran into some problem they could not solve, I'm pretty sure that if Matt cited the service manual for the solution, Ben would not deem doing so to be fallacious.
And then it goes on a little bit later.
Matt states that he always cringes when the topic of transgenderism comes up, and he hears a Christian quote Genesis.
Male and female, he created them.
He says that while this is true, you don't need to bring Genesis into this.
Well, you heard that part.
But he says, well, as Ben knows, you can't even get logic and reason without God.
But even so, if rationality is arbitrary, why should anyone comport to the other person's arbitrary rationality?
He says, Now, Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh are not stupid men.
The fact that they do not see their absurdity is troubling.
Even more troubling is the high percentage of positive comments under the video clip.
This is what happens when you give up the God of the Bible, as both Matt and Ben have done.
Not only in their argumentation, but in their worldviews.
The reason the, quote, gods of Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro can't end abortion is because their gods don't exist.
And then he goes on, you know, saying, implying that I'm a heretic because I'm a Catholic.
And then says that there's so many other problems with what I said.
And basically... Oh, he also says I'm a non-Christian.
Alright.
Okay, so...
I'm not going to get hung up on the particulars here.
Psy says, I worship a false god.
I'm not a Christian.
I'm abandoning the authority of the scriptures, which is all of this.
These are just inflammatory straw men and very disappointing and weak lines of argumentation coming from an apologist.
This is someone who argues for a living, and this is the best they can do.
Which only further convinces me, as I've been convinced for a while, that we need better apologists.
It's a big problem, really, in American Christianity, that we don't have a lot of good apologists.
We have a lot of really bad apologists, who make arguments that are utterly laughable, and get laughed off of every stage they walk onto, because of exactly this kind of thing.
There are a few good ones out there, but we need more good ones.
So what you find here is strawmanning, distortions, abysmal arguments coming from a guy who, as I said, argues for the faith for a living.
The analogy with the gun was really, really, really bad.
He says that when I don't use the Bible to argue with an atheist about abortion on the basis that the atheist doesn't acknowledge the authority of the Bible, so the argument will have no weight with him, it's like if I don't use a gun against an attacker because the attacker doesn't believe in the gun.
Well, the difference there is that the gun is a physical object.
Which shoots physical bullets, and those physical bullets will kill you whether you believe in them or not.
But arguments are not physical things, and trying to persuade someone is not the same as shooting them.
And it tells you all you need to know that Psy here equates persuasion with shooting a guy in the chest.
It's two completely different things.
No, you see, if you're trying to actually persuade someone, if you want to connect with someone and persuade them, then your arguments need to be more than just true.
They need to be convincing to the person you are presenting them to.
You need to connect with them using language they understand.
You need to find the common ground.
That is the basic element of persuasion.
And that's the only way to convince anyone of anything.
You're not going to convince anyone of anything if you're appealing to an authority they don't recognize as an authority.
You may convince yourself of your own piety.
You may convince spectators of your biblical knowledge.
You may impress your friends.
But as for the person you are ostensibly trying to persuade, who apparently is really just a prop for you to show off your piety, as for that person, you have failed them.
Here's a better analogy.
Arguing with an atheist by appealing to the Bible is like arguing with an English-speaking person, but articulating your arguments in Chinese.
Okay?
Your arguments might be true.
I mean, you might be dropping straight, profound knowledge on this, but you might be making the best arguments in the world.
But they can't understand what the hell you're saying.
So it doesn't matter.
You've achieved nothing.
This person can't... I mean, everyone else, again, will be impressed that you know Chinese.
Everyone's gonna say, wow, this guy knows Chinese.
That's a difficult language to learn.
I'm impressed.
Good for you, but that person who you're talking to, you've done nothing for them because they didn't understand what you're saying.
Or it's another analogy, better analogy would be if, and by the way, being able to present a cogent analogy is another important part of persuasion.
So it's like if you're a quantum physicist arguing with someone about science, and you use a bunch of words and concepts and language that nobody outside of your field of expertise could possibly understand.
Again, you may impress people, you may sound super smart, you may be right about what you're saying, but you have not convinced the person you're talking to because they don't understand you.
So, if you're trying to convince a secular person, for instance, that sex is not changeable, that a man can't be a woman just because he wants to be, you can go one of two ways as a Christian.
One, you can appeal to science, to logic, to reason, which are all true, thus godly.
They come from God, right?
Because they are true.
And then you can hopefully connect with him by appealing to those authorities, which he supposedly understands and respects.
Or you could throw the book of Genesis at him.
And honestly, you may as well literally throw the book at him if you're going to start quoting Genesis at that point because it will be just as effective.
Because it is a book he doesn't believe in.
And you're giving him the chance to escape.
I mean, this is the easiest thing in the world.
I mean, you're made in the shade right now in terms of making an argument because this is someone who is claiming that a guy with a penis can be a woman.
I mean, there are so many ways to deal with that.
But if you would pick up, well, it says here in Genesis chapter 1, I mean, you somehow managed to fail in your argument.
It's astounding.
Because you've given this person a chance to escape, to maintain their absurd position by deflecting.
And now, you had their back against the wall.
I mean, there was no escaping the argument.
That you could have made.
But now you've thrown Genesis and you gave them an escape hatch.
Because now what they're gonna do, they're gonna say, oh yeah, well, yeah, but Genesis says that the Earth existed before the rest of the universe, which modern cosmology tells us obviously is not true.
And so now, now that's the argument.
Now you've, gender and all that, that's all gone.
Now you're arguing about biblical cosmology instead.
I'm not saying that the Bible is wrong.
I think that there are ways of understanding that.
You know, that are consistent with scientific truth.
But, that's not the argument.
Now you have to first argue about biblical cosmology, convince them of that, good luck, and then you can get back to transgenderism.
So I don't know, that will only take about four or five years.
It's just awful.
Another example, you're arguing with a secular person about abortion.
You can either try to prove that babies are human, scientifically, and people, and thus killing them is murder, and thus wrong, and you can tell this person that the... So you could do that, you know, that could be your argument.
You say, look, you start with the basic premise that they agree with, murder is wrong, right?
They'll agree with you there.
Great, got it.
Okay, now all you have to do is demonstrate why this is murder, which you do not need the Bible to tell someone that.
So you could do that, or you could tell them that the Bible says murder is wrong, which is an argument that fails on two levels.
Because you haven't actually convinced the person that abortion is murder, and you also haven't convinced them, but you would have to convince them, that the Bible is an authority in the first place.
So you fail on two counts.
The idea that we should never talk about innate fundamental moral truths and scientific truths without quoting the Bible first, even if we're talking to someone who doesn't believe in the Bible, is just so incredibly shallow and childish and foolhardy and counterproductive that I can't even wrap my head around how anyone could actually think this way, but I know that a lot of people do.
Do you really not understand the fact that you will not convince anyone by appealing to an authority that they don't recognize as an authority?
Do you really not understand that in order to appeal to an authority, you first have to establish that authority as an authority, which with respect to the Bible is a whole different conversation and one that will take you a million miles away from the original topic?
And do you not see why that is counterproductive when there are other authorities, truthful authorities, God-ordained authorities, like logic and science, that you could appeal to, in which the other person ostensibly actually does recognize?
But you've decided that it's never okay to have a logical argument or a scientific argument.
Every argument must be a theological argument.
Well, again, that may make you look pious, that may impress your Christian friends, and good for you, but you will never achieve anything.
You will never convince anyone who is not already convinced.
And all you're doing is serving yourself, rather than serving truth and shedding light.
So, good job.
By the way, how would you convince someone that it's raining outside?
What if you go in the house and you tell someone it's raining outside?
And they say, I don't believe you.
Well, what do you do there?
Do you launch into a theological explanation, quoting Bible verses, proving that God made the rain and that God also says don't lie, thus establishing that your claim of it raining is theologically consistent and also you should be trusted because you wouldn't tell a lie because God told you not to?
Or would you just pull up the curtain and point out the window?
Which of those tacks would you take to prove to someone that it's raining?
Oh, well, no, you would just point out the window, right?
Oh, well, then you're a fake Christian!
You fake Christian!
You deny the Bible, heretic!
Come on.
By the way, how do you convince someone who doesn't believe in the Bible that they should believe in it?
Do you tell them that the Bible says they should believe in the Bible?
Is that because... Now, I...
I know that, again, I have heard Christians argue for the authority of the Bible that way, by appealing back to the Bible.
And those Christians, again, have never convinced anyone of anything, ever.
Because that is circular reasoning.
That is a logical fallacy.
You cannot make an argument by just restating your premise in a different form.
If you can't make arguments outside of the Bible, Then it's impossible to ever get anyone to believe the Bible because you're reduced to this kind of circular reasoning.
The Bible should be believed because the Bible says it should be believed.
Yeah, but why should I believe what the Bible says about the fact that we should believe it?
Well, because the Bible says it.
Okay, all right.
Well, let's just go around in circles.
Shouting the Bible says it over and over again will not do anything.
You have to be able to launch a defense of the Bible that goes beyond quoting the Bible.
This is true of any proposition.
If you want to convince anyone of any proposition, you will not do it by repeating the proposition over and over again in different forms.
If you want to convince someone that an elephant is a mammal, which it is, you will not win that argument by just screaming, elephants are mammals because elephants are mammals.
I mean, it's true, what you're saying is true, and what you're arguing for is true.
But somehow you've managed to botch this case.
I mean, there are so many ways you could explain how an elephant is a mammal, but you've decided to just start to just shout that phrase over and over again.
So, this kind of approach is, as I said, it's convincing only to Christians who are already convinced.
And I have, and this is something that I know, that's why I say that there are a lot of very weak apologists.
out there today working, because I think for many of them, their whole shtick is just to convince people who are already convinced.
They're not even really attempting to provide arguments that may be compelling to people on the outside.
And I mean, it's sad.
Especially when I mean, Christianity has such a rich intellectual tradition of brilliant people making brilliant scientific and philosophical cases for things and explaining things.
It's such a rich tradition, and yet, these days, it's been reduced to this.
It's been reduced to, well, men are men because the Bible says so!
That's what it's been reduced to, and I find that really sad.
All right.
Let's see.
Let's go to emails.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
Let's see.
First one is from Vanessa.
Says, Matt, I have such a deep appreciation for your bold approach to the hard questions.
I will admit, I don't necessarily agree with all the points you make, but your ability to articulate your position so well is admirable.
I think the outrage you receive is due to us being a society that is afraid to think about or wrestle with The tough subjects.
We want tidy, outlined answers.
We want to put God in a box that we can label and understand.
As challenging as it is for me to sit with uneasy feelings of not knowing, I feel it is a good practice to sit and reflect and ponder and search.
And it's totally valid to come to the other side and say, I still don't know, but I trust that God does.
Further, I can take my reflections and seek input from others without accepting their views fully nor ripping them to pieces for having a difference of opinion.
It's a lost art, I'm afraid.
It really comes down to knowing that I am, in fact, not God, despite my claims to my kids and husband.
That was a joke.
It was a good joke.
I just didn't deliver it well.
As a stay-at-home mom, homeschooling mom, I appreciate your deep thinking on challenging topics more than you'll ever know.
Your videos accompany me as I prepare dinner for my family each night.
And anyway, I appreciate that.
I won't go on reading all the compliments to me, but thank you, Vanessa, for that.
I really appreciate it.
The thing that interests me with that email is what you said there in the middle, and I agree with you that relates to what I was just talking about, that there is, and this I think is largely a modern phenomenon in Christianity, there is among a lot of people this sort of allergy to deep and difficult questions.
And they just they don't want to deal with them.
They don't want to hear anyone try to deal with them.
All they want is surface level.
And all they want is just pick out a few Bible verses, shout those at the problem and move on.
Don't try to go any deeper than that.
That's all they want for a lot of not everybody, but for a lot of people.
And so I appreciate that you feel differently.
All right.
And yes, we have to There is no shame in being troubled by certain questions.
There's no shame in being troubled by some things you read in the Bible.
There's no shame in any of that.
And I think you have to, it takes intellectual integrity and courage to walk up to those questions and those doubts and to look them in the face and try to deal with them.
All right, this is from Tyler says Matt.
Hi Matt.
Did you did you see the new Joker trailer?
And what did you think of it?
I did see it and I thought it was I am not as I've said before, I'm not a huge fan of superhero movies.
But I've been excited for this project all along, and I don't know, when it was first announced, people doubted it, but this is Joaquin Phoenix playing the Joker.
There's no way it's not awesome.
And I say that about very few movies, because with most movies, there's always a way that it could be screwed up, and usually it is.
But Joaquin Phoenix, in my mind, is the best actor working in Hollywood.
He's certainly the most interesting actor in Hollywood.
And just making him the Joker, it's like a...
You know, it is a match made in heaven.
Or maybe not heaven, but... So I'm looking forward to it.
I think it's going to be really interesting.
This is from Michael, says, hi Matt.
Mike from Phoenix, loved the show today.
Today you said hell is devoid of people that love.
I guess what immediately came to mind was, I bet Hitler loved his family, yet I would like to think he still went to hell.
And vice versa, what about a father that has a child murdered and hates the person who did it, yet loves Christ?
Would he not go to heaven for having hate in his heart for that man?
Also, it was brought up how some Christians believe that you get to heaven just by believing in Christ.
I don't think this is true, because then you could have murderers and rapists that believe in Christ in heaven.
No, I think our Lord meant what he said.
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No one goes to the Father but through me.
It is that Jesus will judge all men's hearts when they die.
He alone will determine who will go to the Father.
So, Yeah, Mike.
Well, first of all, I think there probably are murderers and rapists.
In fact, I'm quite sure that there are murderers and rapists in heaven who repented.
And that is, you know, look at the story of the penitent thief.
Well, we don't know if he was actually a murderer, but he was certainly a criminal.
Repented at the very last moment and was saved.
And I like to think that there are many stories like that.
And I'm sure there are.
I just want to pick out one thing from your email to respond to.
What you said about, well, I'm sure Hitler loved his family.
I don't know.
I mean, I have no idea who Hitler loved, if he loved anyone.
But I would guess that Hitler did not love his family.
And this is an important point, because as we've talked about this over the week, and I have made this point about if someone really has love in their heart, if someone is really a loving person, I don't see how they could go to hell because of the Not just moral complications with that, but also the kind of metaphysical complications.
But a lot of people, as they've been listening to this discussion, they have interpreted me as being sort of a universalist, someone who believes in universal salvation.
Everyone is saved, right?
Because if all you have to do is love someone, then I mean, we're all in.
Now, I would love to think that that's true, first of all.
I don't think it is.
And actually, Let's say that I was right, and who knows if I am.
And, you know, loving people can't go to hell.
That by no means would necessitate that hell is a sparsely populated place.
I think that hell is probably very crowded.
Because I also think that there are a lot of people in this world today and who have lived throughout history who never loved anyone.
In fact, loving someone is a difficult thing to do.
And it takes if we are again talking about agape love, real love, not just emotional effect.
Yeah, affection, anyone can feel affection.
I'm sure Hitler felt affection towards some people in his way.
And everyone feels affection to some degree.
That doesn't mean anything.
But love It is the giving of yourself to another.
It is willing their good.
It is self-sacrifice.
It is an investment of the entire person.
It is transformative.
That's what love is.
And I think, yes, there are a lot of people who never loved anyone, including their own children.
So, by no means do I think that if it's true that loving people can't go to hell, that that means that hell is empty.
I think it means that there are a lot of people who are not loving.
And going back to The Great Divorce, which kind of started all this, that's one of the things that I found really compelling about that book is Lewis was able to illustrate how it is that A seemingly normal, seemingly decent kind of person could be completely devoid of love.
There's one scene where a mother comes up from hell and is sort of at the outskirts of heaven.
And she's demanding that her son, who is in heaven, be essentially kicked out of heaven so he can go back to hell with her.
And as the conversation develops, you see that, well, this woman, she's not a serial killer.
I mean, she wouldn't appear to be some sort of monstrous person.
She would probably seem, if you ran into her on the street, she would seem perfectly normal and polite.
But she is completely devoid of love, even for her own son.
Even to the point where she would rather her son be in hell with her.
Because, for her, it is all about her.
Her son is just a prop.
Her love for her son is all about making herself feel good.
That's all it is.
And I think that's the case for a lot of people.
Alright, let's see.
From Nathan, says Matt, Kind of a personal question, but do you have a favorite passage or story in the Bible that resonates especially with you?
Maybe a verse you can recite from memory?
Well, I just mentioned it.
I always love the story in Luke where Jesus... The story in Luke of the penitent thief.
Luke is the only one, though Matthew is my favorite gospel, Luke is the only one that has the story of the penitent thief.
And I've always found that to be extremely powerful.
It's a very short story, but when you imagine that combination of pain and agony, but then joy that that thief, that condemned person must have felt in that moment, I find it to be really powerful.
And also, it is such a perfect illustration of repentance.
Where, yeah, the thief repented, and he was sorry for what he did, but that didn't mean he was going to escape earthly suffering.
So it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card, repenting.
It's not an easy thing.
Jesus didn't say, okay, you repented well, and then Jesus made him poof away and go to heaven.
No, you still are going to have to die here, and it's going to be painful.
Dying by crucifixion is not a fun thing.
And yet, through that suffering, at the end of it, lies paradise.
I mean, there are so many stories.
That's one that, especially around Easter time, I always think about.
All right, from... Let's see, let me do one more here.
Okay, this one isn't biblical-related.
From Dustin, Dear Matt, I have a weird question.
I saw a tweet thread written by a guy Whose wife was fired from her job because he was on the sex offender registry after getting caught with child porn 13 years ago.
I think this is extremely unjust, but it got me to thinking, punishing the wife is wrong, but should we even still be punishing the man?
If he did his time, why keep him on the registry, whatever happened to forgiveness and rehabilitation?
Yeah, I have no idea what tweet thread this is referring to, so I'm going based only on this.
I think first we should all be able to agree that firing a woman because of a crime that her husband committed a decade ago is unjust.
As for the husband, I do actually think that we should get rid of the sex offender registry.
I think the sex offender registry is a counterproductive concept, and it is unjust, and I'll explain why.
And it's really simple, okay?
For me, it's as simple as this.
If somebody is judged to still be a threat to society, so especially when we're talking about what I guess would be classified as the tier one sex offenders, people who are high risk for reoffending.
Well, no, those people shouldn't be on a sex offender registry because they should be in prison forever.
They should never get out.
In other words, if someone is so dangerous that you feel that the neighbors have to be warned that this person just moved into town and that they can't be allowed within 500 yards of a school or a playground, then that is someone who shouldn't be out of prison.
I mean, that is literally why we have prisons for people like that.
But if someone is not considered a danger, and whoever, whatever the case may be, Someone is judged that they really are not a danger and that they have been rehabilitated or whatever, then again, there's no reason for them to be on the registry.
They should be allowed to return to their life.
So either way, this person is a danger or he's not.
And if he is, then he should be in prison.
And if he's not, then what's the point of the sex offender registry in the first place?
And I don't know anything about this case.
I have heard plenty of cases of people ending up on the sex offender registry, you know, crazy things like someone, you know, has a 19-year-old guy has sexual relations with his 17-year-old girlfriend and ends up on the sex offender registry for 15 years.
I mean, that's obviously crazy.
And unjust.
And I think if you got rid of it and just said, all right, whoever's a danger, they're going to prison, everyone else, we treat them like anyone else.
Because that's what prison is for.
I mean, it's crazy to me, when you look at the sex offender registry in your town, which you should do, you'll see all of these cases where it says, like, high risk offenders.
What is he doing in my name?
You're telling me that there is a high probability that he will sexually abuse someone and yet you let him out?
Alright, so I think the laws need to be changed there.
And we will leave it there on that note.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
And I'll see you tonight at Boston University.
I'm Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show.
Join me next time as I explore the world of the most famous people in the world.
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