Ep. 234 - I Am A Threat To Your Physical Well-being
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, some students and faculty at Baylor are now saying that I pose a threat to their physical well-being by my presence on their campus. What does that even mean? We’ll try to figure it out. Also, AOC humiliates herself by adopting a fake accent. And Gillette is now celebrating morbid obesity. Is that enlightened and progressive or dangerous and stupid? Date: 04-08-2019
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, some students and faculty at Baylor are now saying that my presence on campus poses a threat to their physical well-being.
What does that even mean?
We'll try to figure it out.
Also, AOC humiliates herself by adopting a fake accent and Gillette is now promoting and celebrating morbid obesity.
Is that enlightened and progressive or is it dangerous and ridiculous?
We'll get to the bottom of that as well today on the Matt Walsh Show.
So I will be flying down to Texas today and then making the drive into Waco in preparation for my speech tomorrow at Baylor, a speech that, as you heard on the show last week, has sparked protests and petitions.
And now, after 2,000 people signed a petition demanding that my speech be canceled, which thankfully it has not been, now a different group of students and staff and faculty have written a letter about the speech that makes some pretty wild claims about
me and about what I plan to say.
So I want to talk about that in a minute. And I also want to talk about many other
interesting things that have happened over the weekend that have nothing to do with me,
thankfully. So we'll get to all of that. But first, hair club.
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Okay, so there was the petition, 2,000 signatures.
There have been people pulling down signs at Baylor for my event.
The local media called me a theocratic fascist.
And all of this, as I think it bears repeating, that all of this is because of a speech that I plan to give about Christian values on a Christian campus.
And now 600 students, staff, and faculty have written and hand-delivered a letter to the president of the university saying, now let me pull this up, I'm not going to read the whole thing, it's a pretty long letter detailing my many high crimes and misdemeanors, but In part, this letter which again was given to the President of the University says, let's see here, we have learned that Baylor University has approved the student group, Baylor Young Americans for Freedom, as an official student group on campus.
As an official student group, Baylor YAF is permitted to apply to host events and speakers in Baylor's facilities and auditoriums, and to apply for funding through the Student Government Fund.
On April 9th, we understand that Baylor YAF has been approved by the University to host Daily Wire commentator and blogger Matt Walsh, who will give a talk on, quote, the war on reality, why the left has set out to redefine life, gender, and marriage in Baylor's McClinton Auditorium.
The flyers for this event, which were also approved by University's Department of Student Activities, contain images that many find inflammatory, associating the LGBTQ community with totalitarian regimes.
Mr. Walsh is openly critical of LGBTQ people.
He also opposes women ministers and the Me Too movement, and he believes that higher education in the United States is quote, overrun by feminists and nihilists.
I did say that.
Mr. Walsh believes that men were put on the earth to have authority over women and that women should never be in a position of authority over men.
I did not say that.
Well, I said part of that, but I'll get to that in a minute.
I did say that.
He has stated that women are very often raunchy, aggressive, and sexually assertive.
I did say that.
And he believes that women athletes have, quote, literally dozens of immutable biological
disadvantages in comparison to men.
I said that as well.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Walsh's university-sanctioned appearance on campus has not gone without
criticism, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so here's the good part.
It says, although some of the undersigned have expressed concerns about the risks that Mr. Walsh's presence on campus poses for students' emotional, psychological, and physical well-being, the purpose of this letter is not a petition to stop Mr. Walsh from visiting Baylor's campus.
Oh, isn't that nice of them?
Now, I asked for Clarification about how exactly my presence on campus could possibly pose a physical threat to anyone but myself, and no one was able to explain it.
That's a pretty serious charge to make about a person.
To say that their very presence in a place could pose a threat to the physical well-being of people.
I would think that if you say that, if you write it down in your letter, it should mean something, right?
If I ask you, oh, what do you mean by that?
You should be able to say, oh, well, this is what I mean.
Only I was not able to get an answer.
Apparently it doesn't mean anything.
It really is ironic, isn't it, that they've got thousands of people protesting me, using inflammatory rhetoric about me, yet I make them feel unsafe?
It is really amazing the ability that some people have to make themselves the victims, even as they're ganging up on one guy and shouting at him, they're the victims, right?
It's really impressive.
But you notice the underhanded tactics here, because in this particular letter, They said, well, yeah, I mean, look, Mr. Walsh is a terrible guy.
He's a bigot.
He poses a threat to the emotional and physical well-being of students.
But we're not saying that you should cancel the speech.
We're just saying, you know, he's a threat to people.
And, oh, by the way, just some people who signed the letter think that he's a threat.
We're not saying that officially.
We're just throwing it out there as a, you know, just something to keep in mind.
So this is clearly a letter meant to shut down the speech without saying, shut down the speech.
Right?
As for the terrible, awful, no good, very bad things they quote me as saying, well, let's see.
They say that I'm critical of LGBTQ people.
Yes, I have criticized LGBTQ people.
They're just people, aren't they?
They're not gods.
You can criticize them.
I mean, we're allowed to crit... I've criticized a lot of straight people in my day as well.
So the very fact that they listed that as a problem, oh, he's criticized LGBTQ people.
Well, of course I have.
I've criticized a lot of people, including myself.
You're not immune from criticism just because you claim to be a member in that acronym.
At least as far as I'm concerned, you're not immune from criticism.
Maybe that's the treatment you get elsewhere in the world, but not from me.
And that, as far as I'm concerned, is just equality.
Right?
So, they say that I oppose women ministers.
Yes, I do.
So did St.
Paul.
So, I feel like I'm in good company.
At least, I should be in good company on a Christian campus.
They say that I oppose the Me Too movement.
Yes, I absolutely do, with pride.
They say that colleges are overrun by feminists and nihilists.
Well, yeah.
And Exhibit A would be the people who signed this letter.
They say that I claimed that men are the head of women.
And that women should never be in a position of authority over men.
Well, that part I didn't say.
I never said that there's no scenario where women should be in the authority over men.
I clearly did not say that because that would obviously mean that I think that there could never be a woman manager at a job or something.
I did not.
I absolutely did not say that.
So that's just false.
In the church, yeah, I think that men are supposed to be in leadership positions in the church, which is in the Bible.
And they say that I claim that men are the head of women.
Well, no, I didn't claim that.
The Bible claims that multiple times very clearly.
Like in 1 Corinthians, for example, it says, But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
Now, this is a Christian school, isn't it?
So, I'm just paraphrasing 1 Corinthians.
The fact that I did that means I'm not welcome on a Christian campus?
Now, we could talk about what exactly that means.
I don't think it means that a woman can never be in a position of authority, and I didn't say that.
But I do think it means something, especially as it pertains to the family, the home, the church.
And that's just right from the Bible.
Um, they said that, uh, that I said women can often be raunchy and sexually aggressive.
Well, again, um, I fail to see what's wrong with my point there.
Men, men can be that way too.
But my point in saying that was that was to point out that, uh, that men are not the only ones.
And that's one of my problems with the Me Too movement.
That it paints this very simplistic scenario where men are always the sexual aggressors and women never are.
But the point that I made is that women can be the sexual aggressors and have been many times.
Look at the public school system.
Look at teachers in the public school system.
Going after 13-year-old boys.
I mean, it happens.
A lot.
Just the facts.
And then they said that I said that women athletes have dozens of biological disadvantages in comparison to men.
Yes, again, absolutely true.
No question.
That's a scientific fact.
So, do I apologize for saying any of that?
No.
No, I don't.
Not even a little bit.
Would I have phrased it differently if I could do it over again?
No, I wouldn't have.
I would phrase it exactly the same way.
Those articles they quoted, if I could write them all over again, I would definitely write them exactly that way.
In fact, I think they were very well-written articles, and I'm quite proud of them.
So, I'm still coming.
Anyway, I'll see you there.
Well, we don't have a lot of time to spend on this, but I'm sure you've already seen it.
And I can't ignore it because it's just so excruciating and uncomfortable and hilarious at the same time.
I want to show you, here's AOC, if you haven't seen it yet.
AOC talking to a group of mostly black people a few days ago.
Here, watch this.
Because this is what organizing looks like.
This is what building power looks like.
This is what changing the country looks like.
It's when we choose to show up and occupy the room and talk about the things that matter most, talking about our future.
You know, Reverend, you bring up a funny anecdote, and I'm proud to be a bartender.
Ain't nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with working retail, folding clothes for other people to buy.
There is nothing wrong with preparing the food that your neighbors will eat.
Oh, oh goodness.
That is, um...
That took me three days to work up the courage to watch, honestly.
To watch that whole clip, it took me three days.
The second-hand embarrassment is so intense that I just couldn't do it.
I got to the, ain't nothing wrong with that line, and I had to turn it off, it was too much.
Here's a good rule of thumb.
If you never use the word ain't in conversation, which I guarantee AOC does not, But you're thinking that you would like to introduce that word into your lexicon?
Well, don't debut it in front of a group of black people or in front of a group of southern white people, because then that's going to come across, rightfully so, as pure grade A pandering, which is what that was.
And of course, as far as pandering goes, nothing will ever beat Hillary Clinton in 2008.
So let's take a quick trip down memory lane.
I don't feel no ways tired.
I come too far from where I started from.
Nobody told me that the road would be easy.
I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me.
Someone actually wrote that, I don't feel no ways tired.
Okay, someone wrote that.
in Clinton's speech for her to read.
It was written down.
There was a line.
Think about that.
That was a line written on a piece of paper in the speech.
I don't feel no ways tired.
And then Clinton had to go over that and see that line and say, oh yeah, they'll love that.
That's a good one.
That's real good.
My Lord.
But here's, I think, the bigger question.
If we can look past the fake accent for a moment, what AOC is saying is, well, there's nothing wrong with driving a bus or working retail or working at a restaurant and so on.
And I agree, there's nothing wrong with that.
But first of all, whoever said that there is something wrong with that?
Who's going around saying there's something wrong with being a bus driver?
Bus drivers are bad!
You bus drivers should be ashamed of yourselves driving buses!
I don't think anyone is saying that.
I've never heard anyone... I've never heard anyone suggest that there's something wrong with driving a bus or working at a restaurant.
That is just a giant straw man.
Because I have to imagine, and I could only imagine because it's not clear from what she said, but She seems here to be targeting conservatives who encourage people to pursue their goals, climb the ladder, and find success.
I can only assume that that's the point that she's trying to make.
And that obviously is nonsense.
It's demeaning to the working class to tell them that driving buses And working retail is their place, right?
And their station in life.
And that they should just be satisfied with it.
Now, it's fine if somebody is satisfied with it.
If somebody is content, you know, doing that, and that's what they want to do for a living, then great.
That's perfectly fine.
Perfectly respectable.
Awesome.
You know?
But there's also nothing wrong with wanting to climb the ladder.
And pursue other opportunities and make more money.
There's nothing wrong with that either.
And messages like you hear from AOC, accent aside, seem to be very close to saying, this is your place, be happy with it.
Because it strikes me that AOC probably is not going to Go to some ritzy fundraiser in the rich part of New York or over in Hollywood or something and give that speech.
Certainly not in that accent, but she's not going to give that speech at all.
So it seems rather demeaning to me, even again if we put aside the accent, that that's her message to a group of minorities.
I think the message should be to everybody, whatever you're doing for a living, as long as it's legal, it's great that you're making a living, you're providing for your family.
There's nothing wrong with doing a working class, blue collar job.
We do need people to work in restaurants and drive buses and do all that kind of stuff.
There's also nothing wrong with pursuing things beyond that.
There's nothing wrong with trying to climb the ladder and make more money.
There's nothing wrong with that either.
And it's good to have goals.
See, that's the crucial difference between the message you often hear from the left to the working class, and the message you often hear from the right to the working class.
Whereas from the left, the message to the working class most of the time seems to be like, this is what you do, be happy with it, that's your life.
Whereas from the right, the message is or should be, this is a great thing, very respectable.
If you want to do something else, if you want to climb, you can do that also.
All right.
Speaking of demeaning, pandering type messages, I want to look at this.
You know, the Razor Company.
They've already embarrassed themselves with that toxic masculinity ad a few months ago.
And now Gillette is going back to the self-humiliation well, focusing this time on women.
And Gillette wants to trumpet body positivity.
So they posted this picture right here.
Take a look at this.
It says, and then if you're listening on SoundCloud or something, the caption says, Go out there and slay the day.
Slay the day.
Which is fine.
Kind of stupid, but fine.
But then there's a photo of a very morbidly obese woman in a bikini at the beach.
And the message is, go out there and slay the day.
And then they followed that up with another message about self-acceptance and body positivity and so on and so forth.
Now, Just to be clear, I don't think that anyone should hate themselves, no matter their physical condition.
I don't think it's okay to bully overweight people or insult them or anything like that.
I do feel bad for people who are very overweight.
But I also don't think that anorexic people should hate themselves.
And I don't think it's okay to bully anorexic people.
And I feel bad for people who are anorexic.
And everyone would agree.
With that, yet everyone would also agree when it comes to anorexia that we shouldn't celebrate it.
And if this was a photo of a skeletally thin woman with her with her rib cage prominently on display looking like she hadn't eaten in three weeks.
And it was go out there and slay the day with her in a bikini, then everyone else, everyone would agree that it's a completely inappropriate and dangerous advertisement.
And, uh, the outrage would be palpable from everybody because it would be an ad that encourages and celebrates self-harm.
So that's the big glaring thing that's missing from body positivity campaigns, if you noticed, is that you never see, you'll see morbidly obese people, but you never see anorexic people in the body positivity campaigns.
Why is that?
Well, because we understand that there's nothing positive about anorexia.
It doesn't mean that if you are anorexic that you're a bad person or anything like that.
It's just, it's a condition That the afflicted person needs to find help for and overcome so that they don't die.
They are hurting themselves.
They're killing themselves.
And if you care about someone and you love them, you're not just going to applaud the fact that they're anorexic.
You're going to encourage them to get help because you care about them.
Well, the same is true of morbid obesity.
A study that was done a few years ago found that the extremely obese have a life expectancy that, on average, is almost 15 years shorter than the standard life expectancy.
15 years.
Think about that.
And that's an average.
So it means that there are a lot of morbidly obese people who die from complications of obesity, you know, 20, 25, 30 years before Before the average life expectancy for most people.
Why is that?
Because the human frame is not meant to carry that kind of weight.
Your bones can't handle it.
Your organs can't handle it.
Your heart, your lungs.
An enormous strain is placed on your entire body by this extra weight.
And your body just can't handle it.
Think about what it means to be morbidly obese.
It means that you're wearing, essentially, a 100-pound coat of lard at all times.
And that's... I'm not being mean about it.
That's not an insult.
It's just... That's the reality.
And it is absolute madness to put this forward as a healthy, normal, beautiful way to live, because it's not.
It's deadly.
And it will kill you.
So, that's all.
It should be possible for us to acknowledge that fact while also acknowledging that people legitimately come in different shapes and sizes and not everyone is capable of being or desires to be or should desire to be a bodybuilder or a supermodel.
It should be possible for us to acknowledge that.
It's okay if you don't have washboard abs.
It's okay if you have some fat.
In fact, Now, there are some people that have great abs just naturally, and we're all very envious of those people.
But probably most people who you look at, if they've got the, you know, just the, that bodybuilder kind of physique, well, it could be that they are bodybuilders or athletes, which is great.
But if you're just a kind of a normal person working a normal job, and you also have the physique of a bodybuilder, it probably means that pretty much your entire life outside of your work, you're just at the gym, which is excessive.
But most of us would acknowledge that, right?
And so then we move away from portraying women in ads and TVs as supermodels all the time.
Now we allow more kind of normal physiques to be seen.
And that's good, I think.
And I'm totally in favor of that.
I also think that what we call overweight these days can be pretty absurd.
Uh, for instance, I looked at one of those BMI calculators online recently, uh, not a very scientific way of doing it, but you know, one of those, uh, find out if you're fat things.
And so I thought, well, I don't know, maybe let me find out if I'm fat.
And it turns out that I am, uh, according to, I really am.
I'm, I'm, uh, I'm a fatty.
Um, I think it said, according to this medical chart that I was looking at, uh, with my height of six foot, It said that my healthy weight range is like, I don't know,
like 160 to 180 or something like that, which I haven't been that light since probably high school.
I'd have to be skin and bones.
As a six foot tall man, to be 160 pounds, you would have to basically be skin and bones.
So, that struck me as kind of ridiculous, and I think there are probably a lot of women, I think women have it worse in that regard, because there are a lot of women, especially once they start having kids, who are normal, perfectly normal, attractive, good-looking women, who, but if they look at one of those charts, they're gonna be told that they're fat.
Because they do have some extra fat on them, as everyone does.
We all are supposed to have fat on us, right?
So you're supposed to have some fat, and sometimes if you, certainly if you listen to the way doctors talk about it sometimes, or if you see one of those charts, it would seem as if you're being told you're not supposed to have any fat on you whatsoever, which would be deadly.
So, we can all acknowledge that.
No problem.
But that doesn't mean that we have to then declare that it's great and awesome and wonderful for a person to be 150 pounds overweight.
So it's possible for us to say, you know, if you're 15 pounds overweight, no big deal.
You know, you're fine.
But just because we say that, it doesn't mean that, well, if you add an extra zero at the end of that, that it's also fine.
I don't know what it is in this society where we seem incapable of drawing these distinctions
and dealing with these kind of obvious nuances.
Where everything, it's sort of all or nothing.
So we say either we have to fat shame everybody and say that you have to have a BMI of 2 or
your fat, so that's one option, or we have to celebrate people who are 5'5 and 350 pounds.
It's like, no, there's a lot of room in between there.
I think that we need to settle somewhere in between.
Thank you.
And certainly, if you are 350 pounds, and five foot whatever, that is a deadly situation, a very unhealthy situation.
And so when we encourage it, and we applaud it, we are not helping The people in that position.
Doesn't seem like the kindest or most generous thing to me.
There's a reason why.
When was the last time you saw an 85-year-old morbidly obese person?
It seems like you never see those kinds of people.
And the reason is that most likely they're going to die before that.
So maybe think about that next time you're considering applauding morbid obesity.
Because what you're applauding for that person is their own early death.
All right, let's go to emails.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
Matt Walshow at gmail.com.
Let's see here.
Hi Matt, this is from Ethan, says, Hi Matt, I want to tell you I really enjoy your podcast and the thought-provoking subjects you cover.
It's unlike anything else on The Daily Wire or anywhere.
I'm sorry for the flack you take for trying to get people to think independently and critically.
I think you do a great job.
Now to my question.
On your show on Friday, you said that a knowledge of Christian doctrine, Christ's divinity, the virgin birth, etc., is not innate but must be taught.
I agree with that take.
I also agree that it's ridiculous to try to convince unbelievers of a certain subject by using the Bible.
But then you also said that knowledge of God, of a creator of some kind, is also innate.
I know most Christians think this, but I'm not sure if I agree.
If knowledge of God is innate, if everyone knows it deep down, why do atheists exist?
And why are there so many different religions?
I'm not sure I follow your logic on this.
Can you explain further?
Yeah, interesting question.
Thanks for asking it.
So, when we talk about the innate knowledge of God, we mean that, as you said, everybody naturally, by their nature, at some level, knows that some sort of higher power, higher force exists.
Clearly, they cannot know innately, automatically, about the particulars of Christian doctrine, But they can know and they do know, they do sense the basic truth that God or gods exist.
So that's the idea here.
Now, I admit that there are some challenges to that viewpoint.
It does raise questions.
Questions that Christians, I think, often make no attempt to deal with or grapple with, which is maybe a constant theme on this show, is I like to try and deal with hard questions that, it seems to me, we in the church often avoid or ignore.
So, on this idea of an innate knowledge of God, here's the challenge to that idea, as far as I see it, and then I'll talk about how I deal with that challenge.
The basic challenge is this.
We each as individuals have only ever experienced the world through our own minds.
We have never experienced even one second of existence in anyone else's mind.
That is a huge limitation.
Think about that limitation.
I don't think we think about it enough, really.
What it means that you've got seven billion, whatever, six and a half billion people on the planet right now.
And all of them are living their own lives, they've got their own stories, they're experiencing life through their own minds.
And you've only ever experienced it through this one little prism in your one little corner of the world.
That's a limitation.
And it means that everything we assume or declare, we do so mostly by extrapolating from our own personal experience.
But I am just one of the 10 billion people who have existed on Earth at some point in history.
How can I possibly know what the experience of reality is like for anyone else?
Just because something seems obvious or innate to me, how could I know that it's innate to anybody else?
There are some who say that I can't know, that nobody can know, no one can really know anything.
We can basically know nothing because we're so limited and constrained by our ego, by our inability to experience anything through anyone else's lens.
Now, I don't go that far, obviously, but it's not a crazy thought.
I mean, it is true, again, that I only know what the world is like through my eyes.
There are some Christians who don't take this problem into account at all.
They probably haven't really thought about it much.
So, they go around saying that knowledge of Christian doctrine is innate.
This is what I've been hearing from Christians over the last few days as we've been talking about this.
That there are Christians who really think that belief in the validity of the Bible is innate.
And that, of course, is just silly kind of arrogance.
Most of the people who have ever existed on earth have not believed in the Bible.
So to claim that it's somehow innate, that we all know deep down that the Bible is true, is just not borne out by any evidence at all.
In fact, even within Christianity, there is no agreement on pretty much any verse.
We can't agree on what any verse in the Bible means.
There's been disputes and arguments over all of it.
But these people who say this, what they really mean is not just that belief in the Bible is innate, but that their particular interpretation is innate.
They are so wise, so holy, so in touch with God, that they have tapped into this innate recognition while almost everyone else who has ever lived has missed it.
Which, again, is just silly arrogance.
So, that is not innate.
But I would say that the evidence suggests that knowledge of God is innate, And that we can come to that conclusion without just assuming that our own experience of the world is everyone else's experience.
Because if that's what you're doing, that is invalid.
That is illegitimate.
That's fallacious.
You can't do that.
But we can observe things outside of ourselves and come to conclusions that way.
And so I come to that conclusion because almost everyone in the world, every civilization, has come up independently with a concept of God.
When the Europeans came here, think about this, when the Europeans came here to the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries, they encountered civilizations that were completely alien to them, completely disconnected, yet they also discovered intensely religious civilizations.
So what are the chances of that?
What are the chances that if knowledge of God is not innate, What are the chances that these civilizations, separated by 3,000 miles of ocean, never in contact with each other at all, exercising no influence over each other, would each come up with that idea independently, randomly?
What are the chances of that?
So we don't need to read people's minds to see this.
We can just look at human history and all civilizations have turned towards this unseen power, which I think is very strong evidence both that the power exists and that knowledge of it is innate.
So that's my, that's how I would deal with that.
Let's see here.
From Scott, says Matt, as a fellow bass angler, I'm hoping you'll consider doing a daily segment on your show about bass fishing.
The folks would love it, trust me.
Think about it.
P.S., follow-up, what's your go-to lure when you can't get a bite on anything else?
Another follow-up, do you have an all-time favorite fishing lake?
Scott, I would love to do a segment every day on bass fishing, but I think that I have to take into account what sort of content other people actually want to hear.
And as a general rule, I don't take that into account at all, which maybe you've noticed.
So I'll just babble on about whatever I find interesting.
But I do have to keep that aspect in the back of my mind.
I feel like if I did 20 minutes on bass fishing every day, that wouldn't be good.
But since you brought it up, as to my go-to lore, you know, well, I mean, I guess I don't have anything too creative.
Just a plastic worm, Texas rig, never fails.
Well, it does fail plenty for me, but it's, it's, I think it's a pretty, pretty, probably my, my highest batting average comes on that.
Also, I like to throw a frog if, if nothing else is hitting.
Favorite fishing spot?
I definitely do have a favorite fishing spot.
I can't tell you about it, unfortunately, because I don't want Anyone to steal my fish.
And also because my in-laws live right at this particular spot.
They live right on the lake.
And I don't want people to go and start harassing them when they find out that I'm, you know, that they're related to me by law.
But it's great.
It's in New England.
I can tell you that.
And it's just, it's a small lake with humongous bass.
And it's a lot of fun.
All right.
Let's see.
From Lee that says, Matt, I'm not going to insult you or call you a heretic.
Thank you for that.
But I will say that you seem very fond of entertaining ideas that are not directly and explicitly from the Bible.
I'm not saying that all such ideas are automatically wrong, but you also don't know if they're right.
Why not just stick with the Bible?
The Bible is God's infallible Word.
Everything we need is in there.
You are treading on dangerous ground.
That's why people get so upset with you.
They aren't attacking you.
They are warning you not to go over a cliff.
Well, Lee, I think I think some of these people definitely are attacking me.
I mean, I'm not crying about it, but when someone sends you an all-caps email calling you a heretic and saying you're going to burn in hell because you're a fake Christian, I think that's an attack, right?
We can agree on that?
But what you just said is not an attack, so I don't appreciate that.
You say it's best not to entertain ideas outside of the Bible.
I have to believe you don't mean exactly what you just said there, because you can't really mean that you think we should never have ideas of any kind That aren't written down in the Bible because that rules out like 90% of the ideas that you probably have on a daily basis.
And it rules out, I don't know, things like the idea behind the polio vaccine and air travel and antibacterial soap.
There are a lot of very good ideas that people have had that are not explicitly outlined in the Bible.
But, I'm going to be fair, and I don't want to strawman you, so I'm going to be fair and assume that you meant theological ideas.
In fact, I got an email a few days ago accusing me of promoting theological concepts, was the phrase they used, from outside the Bible.
So I'm going to assume that you meant something similar to that.
And as far as that goes, yes, I do entertain ideas, as you say, theological ideas, that are not explicitly outlined in the Bible, and that's perfectly okay.
Just because something isn't explicitly outlined in the Bible doesn't mean that it isn't biblical, and I'm going to give you... Okay, let me give you, like, the number one front and center example of this.
Okay, let me give you a theological idea that, as a Christian, you probably accept, but that is definitely not explicitly and directly defined in the Bible.
The Trinity, okay?
If you believe that we can only have ideas, theological ideas, that, as you say, are directly and explicitly explained in the Bible, then you have absolutely ruled out the Trinity.
You can't believe in the Trinity at that point.
You have to deny it.
The word Trinity is nowhere in the Bible.
The concept of the Trinity, as we understand it today, is nowhere explained in anything like explicit terms.
The only candidate for an explicit mention of the Trinity in the Bible is in, as I mentioned this before, the First Epistle of John, which in the KJV does have a pretty direct illustration of the Trinity, but it's pretty roundly recognized by almost everyone today that that verse in First John is an interpolation that was added in later.
The earliest manuscripts of John don't contain it.
So, somebody added that in, and that's why most Bibles don't contain it.
So, take that out, And, as most Bibles have at this point, and you are left inferring the Trinity from indirect and inexplicit references to it.
Does that mean that the Trinity is not biblical?
No, it doesn't mean that at all.
But it does mean that you have to take a deeper look at the text.
You can't always be satisfied with the play-it-safe approach and just stick with the things that are explicitly described.
The Trinity is biblical because there are a lot of verses consistent with it, and that seem to point to it, like in Matthew 28, you know, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
But there are a lot of verses like that, and the baptism, You have Jesus, and then God the Father says, this is my beloved son, and then the Holy Spirit descends like a dove.
So you've got all the persons of the Trinity there.
But if you read that story of the baptism on your own, or if you read that verse from Matthew 28 on your own, without knowing anything about the Trinity, Would you assume, on your own, from those verses, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are a unity of three persons, sharing the same essence, the same nature, and of the same substance?
I mean, would ideas like consubstantial spring to mind from those verses, if you hadn't already been introduced to that concept?
Well, if it would, If you on your own could have come up with that just by reading the plain language of the text, then you are smarter than about 300 years worth of Christians, because it wasn't until the 4th century that the Trinity was made official doctrine.
And before that, there was a debate, and there were different ideas, you know, Adoptionism, Docetism, Arianism, and so on.
And I believe, again, that the Trinity is biblical, but it's not biblical in the sense of being directly, completely, explicitly explained in the Bible.
So, things can be biblical without being directly, completely, explicitly explained in the Bible.
That's my point.
The Trinity as an idea came about, well, I believe it came about ultimately through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but in earthly terms, you know, if you were watching it play out back in the early centuries of the Church, what you would see would be people developing this idea Because they're trying to make sense of what they read in the text.
So, that is a perfectly proper thing for us to do as Christians.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Do you know what else is not explicitly outlined in the Bible?
How about what books should be in the Bible?
Or that the Bible is the infallible Word of God.
Nowhere in the Bible does the Bible say that all of the books in the Bible are the Word of God.
Now, there are individual books that make that claim, but those individual books don't mention the other books.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say, explicitly, that the Gospel of Luke, or 1 John, or the Letter to the Corinthians, should be in the Bible.
It doesn't say that anywhere.
It's just there.
So, if you can only believe what is explicitly outlined in the Bible, then ironically, you can't even believe in the Bible, because the Bible itself doesn't say that.
And the Bible, as I'm sure you know, it's not like Jesus ascended into heaven and he just tossed down the Bible and said, hey, by the way, before I go, here you go, catch, and he tossed the Bible completely, fully complete, and there it was.
No, it was written over centuries, well, if you include If you include the Old Testament, the Bible was written over the course of many centuries, and it was compiled over the course of a period of time, and there was a debate about which books should be in the Bible.
There's still debates today!
Catholics and Protestants don't agree about some of the books in the Bible.
So again, I think your idea of playing it safe actually kind of destroys everything.
And I mean, we could go on personal relationship with Jesus.
That phrase isn't in the Bible.
Nowhere does it say anything about having a personal relationship with Jesus.
It doesn't say it.
It's not in there.
The phrase is not in there.
I mean, there are so many phrases and concepts that we Christians use and talk about and believe in and that are not explicitly outlined in the Bible.
They are inferred from the text in the Bible.
Sometimes inferred correctly, like the Trinity, and then sometimes people infer things incorrectly, come up with bad notions.
So, it seems that God does want us to use our heads, to work through these ideas, and talk about them, and debate them, and try to figure them out.
That's how the Bible came together in the first place.
That's where many of our doctrines came from.
And it's a good and healthy and edifying thing.
So I appreciate what you said there, Lee, but my point is, I guess, that if all Christians throughout history had shared your attitude, then, I mean, we wouldn't have... I don't know what Christianity would be today, but it wouldn't look anything like what it looks like.
All right.
Let's see.
I'll do one more.
I've got to wrap this up.
Let's see.
I've got to find... there was a good... another theological one.
I've done a lot of those.
Maybe we'll save that for later.
We'll save that for tomorrow.
Okay, how about this?
From FK says, Hi Matt, absolutely love the show.
I have a very crucial question.
I need you to rank these 90s bands.
Matchbox 20, Counting Crows, Third Eye Blind, Savage Garden.
That is a great question.
And I love all 90s nostalgia questions.
I love, I don't get nearly enough of them.
And so I appreciate that.
Okay, so as to your question, and I did give this some thought.
First of all, Savage Garden does not belong in that list at all.
So I'm sorry, they gotta toss them out because they had what, like one hit?
They're not in that, they're like a one hit wonder band, right?
So I'm gonna take out Savage Garden and I'm gonna throw in the Goo Goo Dolls.
So, I'll put them into that category and then we'll rank them.
So, I'll go 4 to 1, starting at 4 and then going from worst to best.
Number 4, I would put Third Eye Blind.
They had a lot of hits in the 90s.
I did like them in the 90s, like every person did.
But I find their music kind of unbearable today.
If it comes on the radio or something, if I hear it, it doesn't have a lot of staying power, so I gotta put them at number four.
Then I'll go Goo Goo Dolls.
Again, plenty of hits.
A few songs that, you know, if you're walking through Staples or something and it comes on the intercom, you're gonna say, oh wow, it's the Goo Goo Dolls, I remember this song.
The Goo Goo Dolls also a great, they are a great dentist waiting room band.
I always enjoy when one of their songs comes on at the dentist's office.
So I'll put them at number three.
Then I'll, number two, I'll put Matchbox 20.
And I'm putting them this high mainly because I was in traffic the other day and someone was blasting really loud the song Unwell.
Remember that song?
And I respected, first of all, they were blasting 90s songs proudly at the intersection.
And I also enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane, listening to that song coming from the other person's car.
And I think Matchbox 20 came out with several really solid pop rock songs and they were basically the kings of VH1 back in the 90s.
Basically every other song on VH1 was a Matchbox 20 song for a good probably five or seven years.
And then top of the list I'm going to put Counting Crows.
All of their songs were nonsensical.
None of the lyrics to their songs make any sense whatsoever.
But they were very good, I think, at capturing the mood of the 90s.
Not through words, but just the combination of nonsensical words and the music, it captured a mood.
And so I liked it.
And man, I mean, come on, Mr. Jones.
All I'm saying is that if Mr. Jones comes on the radio, You don't change it.
Nobody changes it when Mr. Jones comes on.
Everyone goes, I remember that song, turn this up.
And that to me is the real measure of a 90s song.
Whenever you hear it, you just, you can't help but sing along.
I try not to sing along because my singing voice causes projectile vomiting to take place among those around me, but I have the urge anyway that I have to suppress whenever that song comes on.
That's how I would rank it, but thank you so much for that question, and I will leave it there.
Godspeed.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, President Trump dumps his head of Homeland Security, Democrats compete to shore up their woke credentials, and the Israeli election is in the homestretch.
