Is it racist and Islamophobic to acknowledge the importance of the Notre Dame cathedral to western civilization? I can’t believe we need to have this conversation, but we will. Also, the State's Attorney in the Smollett case admits that Smollett lied to cops. And someone emails with a question about speaking in tongues: gift of the holy spirit or nonsensical gibberish? We’ll discuss.. Date: 04-17-2019
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, is it racist and Islamophobic to acknowledge the importance of the Notre Dame Cathedral to Western civilization?
I can't believe we have to have this conversation, but we will.
Also, the state's attorney in the Smollett case admits that Smollett lied to cops, and someone emails me with a question about speaking in tongues.
Is it a gift of the Holy Spirit, or is it these days mostly just nonsensical gibberish?
we will discuss today on the Matt Wall Show.
Well I had a great time speaking at Embry-Riddle University here in Daytona last night.
It's an aeronautics university, so a number of the students are going to be commercial airline pilots.
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And it turns out, by the way, in case you were worried about this also, it turns out that it's probably not likely that a plane will accidentally go too high and end up in outer space.
So that if you were, it's good to hear and I'm sure you were worried about it as well and so you don't have to worry about that.
So overall it was a good experience.
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Okay, well, the Washington Post has humiliated itself yet again, this time coming after Ben, for tweeting that the Notre Dame Cathedral is a monument to Western civilization.
That's what Ben Shapiro, by the way, said on his Twitter while the fire was going on.
He said that it's a monument to Western civilization, the cathedral is, and to Judeo-Christian heritage, I think was the phrase.
Now this, according to Talia Levin at the Post, is a racist dog whistle, and it's Islamophobic, and it's incitement, and it's, you know, potentially encouraging violence.
So she wrote a whole article about all the so-called far-right people stoking violence over the I haven't really seen anyone stoke violence over the cathedral burning.
It's all white, you know, because when you say Judeo-Christian values, you're essentially
a neo-Nazi, right?
Because that's what Nazis would do.
They really cared about Judeo-Christian values, didn't they?
Now, meanwhile, I haven't really seen anyone stoke violence over the cathedral burning.
Certainly not Ben, but I haven't really seen anyone do it.
But this criticism has been repeated by a lot of people on the left and in the media.
It seems that somehow, against all odds, we, on the right, have become the real villains here with the cathedral being on fire.
Now, it doesn't appear that there are any actual villains in this case.
It seems like it was just an accident.
That's where all the evidence points.
But I don't know, how did this turn into a thing about the far right?
Like, what did we do?
We were just sad about it.
That's all.
Are we allowed to be sad about this building being partially destroyed?
Now, let's just go through a few points here.
First of all, of course, Ben is right.
the cathedral is a monument to and of and by Western civilization.
It's also, of course, a monument to God, a monument to the Catholic faith, but these
are not mutually exclusive categories.
It's all of those things, all at once.
The cathedral is a monument to Western civilization in the same way that you might say that in
a slightly different way the World Trade Centers in New York were a monument to America.
A lot of people around 9-11 said that sort of thing, and it was true.
Now, it's not the only thing that the World Trade Center was, but in a sense it was also that.
That's the significance of it.
That's the significance that the World Trade Center had to the United States, and this is the significance that the Notre Dame Cathedral had to Western civilization.
And that's why I think, by the way, the parallels that are drawn between the cathedral and 9-11 make some kind of sense.
Now, certainly 9-11 and what happened this week Completely different things, especially with the human cost.
You know, 3,000 people died on 9-11.
Fortunately, nobody was killed with the cathedral, thank God.
But just in the symbolism and the experience of seeing those buildings destroyed, in terms of the buildings, that's where you find that parallel.
So, there's nothing wrong with pointing that out.
And there's nothing wrong with talking about Western civilization.
You know, we're told now that to discuss Western civilization, to extol Western civilization, to express any gratitude or feelings of warmth for Western civilization and what it means, that is all racist now.
Like, you're not allowed to do that.
And that's obviously completely absurd.
And it should go without saying that all the people who are, you know, Who feel that we're not allowed to talk about the virtues and the glory of Western civilization.
All the people who make that claim, they're all in the West.
Right?
These are people who are also in Western civilization.
Living off the fat of the land.
Enjoying the fruits of being in Western civilization.
And it's only because they're so spoiled And because they are, you know, living such a comfortable life thanks to the civilization they happen to be born into.
It's only because of that that they can afford to sit back and be critical about things like this.
And that's, of course, the great irony to it.
Second point is the other thing that I guess upset folks on the left and got us accused of being Islamophobic is that when the fire was happening, there were some people who thought that it seemed suspicious and were wondering if maybe this was intentional.
Okay?
It's not Islamophobic.
It's not racist or stoking violence or conspiracy theories.
It was a perfectly valid thing to think and question to ask.
Now, again, it appears, according to all available evidence, that it was just an accident.
But at the time, it's the first day of Holy Week, right after Palm Sunday.
This is a 900-year-old building, one of the most significant buildings in all of Christendom,
that's now on fire, burning.
There have been other attacks on churches in France in the past, so it's just, of course people are going to wonder that.
There's nothing wrong with wondering that.
And this idea that you're not even allowed to think that is just, of course, absurd.
Especially because every single person who turned on the news and saw the coverage, everyone must have, for at least a moment, thought the same thing.
Like, what's going on here?
And that's perfectly okay.
Okay, a quick update here on Jussie Smollett.
And then I'm going to get to emails a lot earlier than I usually do, because there are a bunch of interesting ones.
It's going to be some fascinating conversations.
I want to leave time for it.
But first...
This, according to Fox News, reading from an article on Fox News, it says, Cook County State Attorney Kim Fox described Empire actor Jussie Smollett as a, quote, washed up celeb who lied to the cops in text messages released Tuesday by her office in response to a public records request by the Chicago Tribune.
Fox compared Smollett's case to her office's pending indictments against R. Kelly.
She said in text messages to Joseph Magatz, Magatz?
I'm gonna figure out how to pronounce that guy's name eventually.
Her top assistant, she said, quote, pedophile with four victims, 10 counts, washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16 counts.
Just because we can charge something doesn't mean we should.
And then she continued, on a case eligible for deferred prosecution, I think it's indicative of something we should be looking at generally.
Okay, so we have her.
Now, there are a bunch of other text messages.
I'm not going to go through all of them, but you should go and check out the reports on these text messages because it raises a few questions.
One of those questions is, well, I thought she recused herself from the case, but she seemed to still be involved and expressing her opinions about the way things should be handled, right?
So it raises that question.
But also, of course, right there, she's acknowledging that she knows that he lied.
Yet he was still let off the hook.
So, if there's any notion left in anyone's head that Jussie Smollett was let go because he's innocent, or because they uncovered some evidence that seemed to vindicate him, now it was clear all along that that's not the case.
But you can look at these text messages.
This is the woman who made that call, even though she recused herself and shouldn't have been making any calls at all.
But she acknowledges right there that he lied to cops.
So that's all.
And his career should be destroyed based on that.
He should not be working in Hollywood ever again.
I don't know if that's actually how it's going to work out, but it's clear.
Everyone involved in the situation that looked at it, including the people who decided to let him off the hook, even they, everyone acknowledges he's guilty.
Everyone knows it.
And they let him go anyway.
So it seems like there's some real corruption going on there.
Go to my email inbox right now, because like I said, there are a bunch of interesting ones.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
MattWalshow at gmail.com.
So, let's see here.
This is from Riley, says, you mentioned on your show yesterday how people were criticizing Ilhan Omar for her tweet about the burning down of Notre Dame.
I agreed with you that it was not something worth attacking her over.
I think she's a vile woman, but I didn't see a problem with that particular tweet.
Why have conservative critics come down so hard on her over this, despite the fact that the many, many other
reasons to criticize her?
I find this counterproductive and damaging to the conservative message.
Well, I agree with you, Riley.
That's why I made that point yesterday.
I think for whatever reason, these days, it's just that there's very little discernment, right?
So we're constantly engaging in this overly simplistic thinking all the time.
So the calculation is that Omar is bad, therefore everything she says is bad, therefore everything she says deserves criticism, and so therefore whatever she happens to say, we have to look at it and find a reason to criticize.
But the discerning mind will say, okay, I disagree with so much of what this woman says, So much of it is deserving of criticism, but not all of it.
In fact, as a human being, she is capable of saying reasonable things and even good things.
And on those occasions, I should not criticize at a minimum.
And perhaps, indeed, maybe I should even give her credit on those occasions.
But that little slight nuance in thinking is apparently too difficult for a lot of us to muster.
And that's what I've noticed.
It's a big problem now that so many people struggle to To have any kind of nuanced thoughts.
They're not capable of any nuances in thinking whatsoever.
Everything has to be as simplistic and black and white as possible.
And that's the thought process here.
And I think it's pretty damaging.
From David says, on a recent podcast you mentioned that Joel Osteen has a globe as the center focus of his stage.
Are you just jealous that his globe is bigger than your globes?
Not jealous of that.
I'm not jealous.
This is from Jake says, dictator overlord Matt Walsh.
Big fan of your show.
Never really been into political podcasts, but you always bring a strong and convincing and typically entertaining argument for Christian values in the political sphere.
Plus, I figured if you're going to be a merciless fascist dictator of the universe in the near future, I might as well get to know where you stand on a lot of these issues.
That's good thinking.
I have a million questions I'd love to ask, but I'll stick to a single question for the sake of brevity.
I'm a born and raised Lutheran from Michigan, and we don't really talk about spiritual gifts much.
When I say spiritual gifts, I'm referring specifically to supernatural powers that some churches believe God grants Christians to help them, either worshiping Him or ministering to others.
The most interesting one to me is speaking in tongues.
And also the interpretation of tongues, a supernatural language that we can't understand, but God can.
If you had asked me a couple of years ago, I would have said that gifts like speaking in tongues and prophecy don't exist anymore and that speaking in tongues probably never existed.
However, after memorizing 1 Corinthians last year, I said one Corinthians.
I take my biblical cues from Donald Trump on that.
After memorizing 1 Corinthians last year and becoming involved with some friends in a non-denominational church, I've started to question my existing belief.
1 Corinthians 12 through 14, particularly 14, seems to suggest that speaking in tongues was a real thing at Paul's time and may still have a place in the church today.
If that were true, that would suggest that nearly all Lutheran, Catholic, etc.
churches are neglecting this gift in their congregation by not making room for it in their services.
I'm still skeptical, but I'm trying to understand what's going on when friends of mine tell me they speak in tongues occasionally at church.
They say they're driven by the Spirit and can't control it when it happens, but they consider it a wonderful worship experience.
Your humble servant, Jake.
Okay, well Jake, I thank you for addressing me correctly, and because you did that, I promise that when I am dictator, I will execute you last.
So you have my As for speaking in tongues, yes, we are clearly told that this was a gift enjoyed by the apostles and some early disciples.
Though at Pentecost, there's a discussion to be had about whether the miracle was in the disciples speaking foreign languages or in the hearers hearing their own language.
Despite whatever the disciples happen to be saying, I think the Church Fathers were split on that, about like, was the miracle in the speaking or in the hearing?
But in any case, speaking in tongues, however it worked, it did happen back then, and it served a very clear purpose, and I certainly would never rule out the possibility of someone in the intervening years or in modern times having the same gift, so I'm not saying that it's impossible, right?
Who am I to say that God can't or won't perform a certain miracle?
Speaking in gibberish is not speaking in tongues.
And I'm not aware of any modern cases of someone at a Pentecostal church suddenly speaking in Punjabi or something like that, or even French or any language.
Now, if that happens, that's a miracle for sure.
If someone who's never heard or certainly never taken the time to learn a foreign language suddenly starts speaking it fluently, Then, okay, you've got a miracle on your hands, and that is speaking in tongues.
But gibberish is just gibberish, and that's almost always what's going on when modern people speak in tongues.
Now, I'm told anecdotal stories of people breaking into real foreign languages or speaking in gibberish that some foreigner present hears as their own language.
Now, if those anecdotes are true, then great.
But the vast, vast, vast majority of these cases these days are just nonsense.
In fact, Linguistic experts have studied the gibberish of those who are speaking in tongues in modern churches, and they found that it's not any kind of language whatsoever.
It's not even that it's not a known human language, but that it doesn't follow the structure of any language.
It's just not a language.
It's the same few sounds repeated over and over again.
Okay, it really is.
It's just like a toddler babbling.
It's nothing.
The point being that a linguistic expert could hear a language that they've never encountered before, and they might not understand it, but they could recognize it as a language because they know how languages are structured.
But glossolalia in the modern church, which, speaking in tongues, that's the technical term for it, In most cases, it seems it's nonsense.
It's simply nonsense.
What would be the point of it anyway?
Why would God miraculously give people the power to speak nonsense that nobody around them can understand?
It seems that there's no function other than the aggrantizement of the person doing it.
In fact, these tongue speakers are having the exact opposite effect of those who spoke in tongues in the early church.
Back then, people who witnessed it were amazed and stunned and were converted, right?
But these days, anyone who is not inside that particular clique of Christianity, where speaking in tongues is a regular thing, Everyone else outside of it, they look at it in embarrassment, and unbelievers walk away with a worse impression of Christianity than they had before.
So it has the exact opposite effect.
Before it was about evangelizing to non-believers and people who, you know, speak other languages.
Now it just makes everyone laugh and walk away.
So again, what's the point?
Why would God miraculously instill in people the ability to babble nonsensically?
Is that a miracle?
I could do it.
I'm not going to.
I could do it right now.
So it's not a miracle if I could just do it.
If anyone can do it at any point of their own free will and power, then it's not a miracle.
And there's no reason to think that it's a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Though, again, I'm not claiming that speaking in tongues couldn't happen today or doesn't.
I'm just addressing the vast majority of such alleged cases where it's simply nonsensical.
And, you know, these gifts of the Holy Spirit, these kind of really If they're real, it's a really dramatic, miraculous gift of speaking in tongues.
Now, it's not a smorgasbord buffet where just anyone is supposed to be able to do it.
Speaking in tongues, if you read in the Gospel and in Acts, it was a particular gift that was given to a certain small number of people for a reason.
That was not just for you to be impressed by them.
Or for them, or for those people themselves to feel holy, or to feel in touch with God.
It was not the point.
It was a specifical... Oh my gosh.
Specifical.
That's what I just said.
See, now I'm speaking in tongues.
I am now speaking in tongues.
I have been reduced to gibberish.
It was a miracle!
Hallelujah!
So, look, it's a specifical thing, alright?
Speaking in tongues is a specific gift that was given, could still be given, but now we treat it as just this thing open to everybody.
Anyone can do it.
And as if the Holy Spirit is like Oprah, right?
You speak in tongues, and you can speak in tongues, and you can speak in tongues.
And meanwhile, no one can understand what anyone is saying.
So, no, I don't.
I mean, look, it's the same thing with, you know, We've got entire churches of people falling over and overcome by the Holy Spirit.
I'm not saying that all these people are faking.
I think some of them are faking.
I think there's also kind of peer pressure, where if you're in a church like that and everyone's doing it, then you feel like you have to do it too.
Which is another indication this is not from the Holy Spirit, okay?
Because the Holy Spirit is not going to Put you in a situation where you feel peer pressured to pretend that you have miraculous gifts, right?
So, you know, I think there's peer pressure.
I think there's, I think there's, I think there is some faking.
But I also think there's, there's the power of persuasion, right?
Think about, I'm just gonna adjust my microphone here.
I'm just, I'm a mess today, guys, really.
Think about hypnotists, okay?
Now, do we believe that hypnotists have magical powers?
Yet a hypnotist can get people to do all kinds of crazy things.
Is it because they have magical powers?
No.
It's just the power of persuasion.
You're convincing someone that you have the power to make them.
So I'm gonna ring this bell and you're gonna bark like a dog.
Okay?
That's not... If you are not susceptible and willing to be persuaded, no one can hypnotize you.
It's not like with a hypnotist.
It's like something from the cartoons where they wave a watch in front of your face and then your eyes turn into little spirals and you turn into a zombie that will do whatever they say.
No.
If you go into a hypnotist and you're skeptical and you're like, this is stupid, then it's not going to work because you are not open to persuasion.
But if you're open to being persuaded and being influenced and you're caught up in the moment, Then you're going to feel like you were really hypnotized.
And so that's, I think, what is going on most of the time.
It's essentially like hypnosis, which, again, is not of the Holy Spirit.
This is from Ken says, Hey Matt, it became clear to me in your response to the woman's email about the rapture doctrine that you are not going to buy into it no matter how much scriptural basis there might be for it.
And this seems to be because if it wasn't known in the first century or soon thereafter, it can never be known.
I would point out to you that it was the Catholic Church that held the geocentric theory of the cosmos as sacred truth for over 1,200 years based on their, quote, infallible, unquote, interpretation of the same scriptures that you and I have, and even put people to death who questioned it.
Then Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and Galileo came along to show this doctrine to be an error.
Oh, shoot.
How can that be?
It was believed for 1,200 years.
It must have been right.
Oh, I know.
Our astronomers are lying to us, and the sun really does orbit the Earth.
As I recall, the whole Reformation was based on the assumption that serious issues regarding the nature of salvation had arisen over the previous 1,200 years that needed to be put to light.
But hey, what do I know about all this?
But then you said that Paul's description of the Son of Man in 1 Thessalonians was metaphorical.
You asked, why would Jesus need such theatrics, is how you put it.
I wonder how much else of the Bible you consider metaphorical.
If this is metaphorical, how much else in Scripture is metaphorical?
Maybe Jesus really didn't mean that hell was real, for example.
Maybe he meant that hell was just a metaphor for suffering in this life as a result of the unforgiven sin.
Maybe heaven itself is a metaphor, since we can't point to it, as you so aptly point out.
But, just so we are clear about where Paul got this metaphorical picture of Jesus being theatrical, here is the Lord Jesus Christ himself describing his return in Matthew 24.
So if anyone tells you there he is out in the wilderness, do not go out, or here he is in the inner rooms.
Do not believe it.
For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.
Immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light.
The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and glory.
Now that you have mentioned it, it sounds really theatrical to me, too.
Notice that Jesus says specifically that people will see him as he comes on the clouds.
Must be imaginary clouds.
By the way, 1 Thessalonians is an exact representation of what Jesus has said here.
I never thought of this.
Maybe Paul was thinking that Jesus was just being extra hyperbolic, probably to scare people into thinking, into keeping watch, as that woman's email said, though for what event, who can really say?
Certainly not for the rapture when God's elect will be gathered, etc., etc.
One more question.
If 1 Thessalonians and the following is metaphorical, what is the metaphor for?
Okay, Ken.
First of all, I do appreciate the sarcasm.
The sarcasm dripping all over that email.
And as someone who speaks sarcasm, I do appreciate that.
So I thank you for speaking in my tongue with that.
And maybe you were spurred on by the Holy Spirit.
Can sarcasm be a gift of the Holy Spirit?
I mean, I don't know.
As for the The geocentric theory, you're right that most Christians were mistaken on that point, not just Catholics, but most people across the world and throughout history were mistaken on that point for a very long time.
And, you know, understandably so.
Science had not progressed yet to the point Where, you know, most people would be convinced that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
But what changed everyone's mind, and the Church's mind, was the science, right?
In other words, it wasn't that someone had made an innovative new theological discovery in the text of the Bible, but that someone had made an absolutely undeniable scientific discovery.
So, the Earth revolves around the Sun.
It just does.
That's the reality.
There's no way around it, pun intended.
And so Christians had no choice but to go back and reassess those verses, which seemed to them to indicate geocentricism, but now that they could see that, well, geocentricism is wrong, clearly, it just is, so you have to go back, look at those verses again, you must have been wrong about them.
That's how that worked.
That in my mind is totally different from someone 18 or 19 centuries later discovering some heretofore unknown doctrine in the text of the Bible itself, and not based on any external discovery or anything like that, but just based on their own subjective reading of the scripture, which is what happened with the modern idea of the rapture.
And what I'm Disagreeing with is that modern idea that the good people are beamed up to heaven everyone else is stuck on earth for a bit Etc that whole scene which has become so elaborate and specific But which nobody for 18 or 19 centuries of Christianity knew anything about and which was supposedly discovered in the text after nearly 2,000 years And yes, I have an issue with that I do I mean
Is it possible that someone 18 or 19 centuries later could just discover something through the plain reading of the text that no one else noticed?
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's something I'm going to be highly skeptical of, yeah.
Now, I already said that though I'm not... I said I'm not sitting here and saying That the end of the world will not involve some people being up in the sky or whatever else.
Maybe it will.
I don't know.
My whole point is, I'm not getting into elaborate and super specific predictions about what exactly the end of the world will look like.
I'm not doing that.
Or when it will come, or any of that, based on highly metaphorical texts in the Bible.
I think it's bad practice to do that.
Christians have been doing that for a long time, and they keep getting it wrong over and over and over again.
Oh, the end is coming now.
The end is coming now.
The end is coming now.
Oh, it's the last day.
It's coming.
It's any minute now.
Over and over again for 2,000 years, Christians have been saying that.
At what point do we stop and just admit, look, I have no idea when the world's going to end.
I have no idea what it's going to look like.
And that's it.
And why does it matter?
Why do you even need to know?
Why get attached to this specific vision of what the end of the world is going to look like?
You're probably going to be dead before it happens anyway, and so will I. And I say probably because every Christian in history up until now has died, up until our generation has died before the end.
So, I mean, odds are we're going to be the same.
There's no reason to assume otherwise.
There were many Christians in history who had much better reason to assume the end was coming for them than we do.
As I said, the Black Plague wiped out whatever the percentage was of Europeans.
But a huge percentage of Europe was wiped off the map in a few years because of the
Black Plague.
And people back then thought, well, this has got to be the end of the world.
Everyone's dying and this has to be the end.
But it wasn't.
It wasn't.
And we don't have anything like the Black Plague.
We've got our challenges.
We've got nothing like that.
So I just don't get it.
And when you read Daniel, when you read Revelation, yes, those texts are heavily metaphorical.
Of course they are.
No one knows exactly what they're saying or what they mean or what picture they're really painting in a literal sense.
Nobody knows that.
That's why people have been debating these texts for 2,000 years.
And anyone who says, oh, I've got the, oh, I got it.
No, no, no, I know.
I finally figured it out, guys.
Anytime someone does that, yes, I would be very skeptical of that.
I would be.
What makes you so special?
That should be your question to that person.
OK, so for 2,000 years, no one knew exactly what Revelation was saying.
You figured it out?
What makes you so special?
So you're the one, huh?
So you've got the special line with God that nobody else had?
Maybe you do, but I'm going to be skeptical of that claim.
Now, you mentioned the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.
Is that a metaphorical statement?
Yes!
Obviously you would agree that there's some element of metaphor or poetry in that image, right?
I mean, heaven doesn't literally have clouds.
Heaven is not literally in the clouds.
Right, Ken?
I mean, you would agree.
When you look up in the sky, you see the clouds.
Heaven isn't literally there.
They're not sitting, actually, on the clouds.
So, clouds of heaven, obviously, is metaphorical language.
Heaven doesn't have clouds, in the sense that we know of them.
And that's metaphorical language, which is fine.
Why is it metaphorical language?
Well, because we just don't have the words or the concepts for what heaven is or what it looks like for someone to cross from that dimension into ours.
So we use words like descend and ascend and clouds.
Yes, even the word heaven is metaphorical.
Now, the word heaven is metaphorical, which isn't to say that heaven doesn't exist.
I'm saying the concept that the word heaven grasps for is beyond our grasp.
And so we are left with these kinds of words and ideas to approximate it.
Now the word heaven, when you say heaven, heavens, that denotes, you follow the etymology of that language, that denotes literally the sky.
So yes, that is a metaphorical word.
We say that heaven is up there, right?
The big man upstairs.
Well, he's not upstairs.
It's not really up there.
It's not a physical location situated above us.
Therefore, you don't literally have to ascend physically to it, but you do ascend spiritually.
But again, all of these concepts are beyond our understanding, so we are left with this kind of language.
We hear that Christ ascended into heaven.
Well, as I said, I believe that He did literally go up in the sky, but that was for the benefit of those watching, because they wouldn't have understood what they were watching if Christ had traversed from this dimension to the other in any other way.
You know, it had to be done in a physical way so that people could wrap their heads around it and describe it later and talk about it, and we could kind of understand what was happening.
So the whole idea of a rapture, people going into the sky.
Well, where are they going?
Do you think heaven is actually up near the moon somewhere?
So they have to literally fly in the sky to get to it?
Why would people need to fly into the sky to get to heaven?
There was a point in Christ's ascension, the physical representation of a spiritual reality that we can't grasp.
So I get that.
But this modern idea of the rapture, it seems like people flying into the sky would be just, what, to show off to the poor saps who are left behind?
So, who knows?
Maybe that is what it will look like.
I don't know.
But there are some issues there.
That's all.
And just one other point here.
I don't know why people get so afraid of this word metaphor or metaphorical.
Yes, there's a lot of metaphorical language in the Bible.
That doesn't mean that it's not true.
It doesn't mean that it's a lie.
It doesn't mean that it's fake.
It's not what metaphorical means.
It just means that there's Maybe, maybe when you, often when you hear the word metaphorical, you could probably usually substitute poetic or something instead, a word like that.
It's just, using simply language that we can get our heads around to describe something, a reality that we can't really get our heads around.
And so we're left, we have to use some kind of language to describe it.
And so, this is the language that we use.
I don't get it.
I don't understand why people recoil at the notion of metaphor in the Bible.
Yes, of course there's a lot of metaphor.
Are you going to deny that Revelation is metaphor?
There's a lot of metaphor?
Or do you think that there's literally going to be chariots and stuff and actual real horses coming out of the sky and things like that?
I mean, maybe that's what will happen, but I don't think that's what the book of Revelation is trying to tell us.
That we should be looking out for real horses, right?
I think it's a metaphor for something.
So, alright.
From Stu in Hawaii, says...
Hi Matt, I'm just listening to your show today.
When you talk about the devastating fire in Notre Dame, what the church and its beauty represents, and beauty as a fundamental human need, I could not agree more.
I grew up in South America, specifically in Venezuela, but I've lived in the United States for over half my life.
I grew up Catholic and always remember as kids going to church on Sunday with my grandmother and feeling peaceful and surrounded by beauty and faith inside my community small church.
When I moved to the U.S.
as a young adult, I was unimpressed by the ugliness of some churches that looked like a fancier version of a warehouse or a shopping mall.
It seems so obvious that some churches were more like a business instead of a place of worship.
At one point I went to a Christian church for a while because it was close to home, out of curiosity, but the whole scene to me was too over the top with a band playing on stage non-stop, a pastor with headsets, people dancing euphoric on stage.
It looked like a show to me and I simply couldn't handle it.
Nowadays, when I go to church, occasionally I go to a small Catholic church nearby that reminds me of my childhood's church.
It's simple but tastefully decorated, peaceful, and where I can focus on myself, God, and what I'm there for instead of feeling like I'm watching a performance.
I wish all churches made more effort in building slash creating beautiful architecture that inspire us and help us all reflect in God's beauty and the wonders that surround us.
Thank you for all you do and keep up the good work.
So that's interesting, Stu, because you seem to be, if I followed you here, you're saying that, so you're not really a regular churchgoer, but even as someone who doesn't go to church regularly, when you do go to church, what you're looking for is a church.
You're looking for a churchy church experience, right?
For lack of a better term.
And, you know, I hear that a lot, actually, from people.
And this, I think, is one of the problems with the secularization of modern worship, with the ugliness of the church buildings, and just the way you're talking about where it turns into the modern church experience is supposed to look like some sort of Broadway show or something.
The problem is that You know, if somebody wants that.
They don't have to go to church for it.
Like, if you want that, you can go to a motivational seminar at your local hotel conference room, or you could go to an actual rock concert.
I mean, if that's all you want, if you're looking for that kind of just experience of watching a show or simply being motivated in an earthly sense, or even just having fellowship with people around you.
I mean, there are so many other ways you can get that, that all of a sudden, the church serves no purpose.
So, when you turn your church service into that, it serves no purpose anymore.
You might as well just close up shop, because what are you even doing?
You're not giving anyone anything that they can't get plenty of other places.
And you know something?
They could get a better version of it somewhere else.
Like, if you want to turn your church service into a rock concert, here's the thing, it's not going to be a better rock concert than what I could find if I went to a real rock concert.
I've been to plenty of real rock concerts with super talented musicians who know how to put on a show.
And so if I want that, I can go to that.
And as I said, if I want a motivational seminar type of thing, I can go to someone who can give me that.
I can read a self-help book.
If I just want a fellowship with my fellow man, then I can go to the pub with some friends and have a beer.
And these are all fine things to do.
But the church has to offer something different, something that you can't get those other places.
And so when you go into an actual church that looks like a church and feels like a church and everything is very orthodox and religious and focused on religion and there's religious art and imagery and everything, then you've created a whole experience that is totally different from an experience that someone can get somewhere else.
So, at a minimum, you've given people a reason to come because you are offering them something different.
So you don't, look, here's what you don't want.
You don't want to be like the Burger King that sets up shop right next to the McDonald's, right?
Because, you know, I'm only going to Burger King if I'm driving through town and I'm on the road and there are no other options and I'm like, okay, I guess I gotta go to Burger King.
Crap.
But, if I'm looking for fast food and there's a McDonald's right there, I'll just go to McDonald's because when it comes to fast food, at the end of the day, McDonald's, they do it the best.
They, you know, just across the board, they've got it down.
They know what they're doing.
So, if you're going to set up a restaurant next to McDonald's, set up a completely different kind of restaurant so that you would give someone a reason.
They might say, okay, you know what?
I don't actually want fast food at all.
Here's a different thing.
I'll go there.
I'll check that out.
I think a lot of churches have just turned into Burger Kings, basically.
They've turned into Burger Kings to the world's McDonald's.
And that's why they're dying.
All right, finally, this is from...
This is from Matt.
It says, hi Matt, nice name by the way.
I have a lot of free time, so I find myself delving into conspiracy theories online quite
often.
So, biggest interest, aliens, Mandela effect, I don't even know what the Mandela effect
is, and shared trips with hallucinogens.
So naturally, I have a theological question for you.
If we were hypothetically contacted by sentient extraterrestrials, how does that impact Christian doctrine?
Past here, you don't have to read on the show.
Well, I am going to read it on the show if you don't mind.
My thoughts on this take a basic logical approach, since I believe the ability to reason is the next greatest gift received by Adam, second only to free will.
So my logic goes that God definitely wouldn't create sentient life on two different planets, leaving one blind to the gospel without means of salvation, as it would be obviously cruel.
So from that one supposition, I reason that there are either 1.
No aliens out there, or 2.
Aliens that are identical to humans.
the religion of which functions only for them, sort of similarly to Jews and Christians,
since God created us in his image, it would stand to reason he wouldn't create others
in different images, or there are all sorts of sentient aliens out there and there is
no God.
The last option scares me, by the way, and the anxiety it causes drives me to do more
UFO research.
Okay, well, hi, Matt.
First of all, I appreciate that you admitted that you have a lot of time on your hands.
And I really mean that sincerely, because I feel like we live in a culture where everyone is constantly pretending that they're busy, and they're so busy, they have so much to do, they're so tired, they never sleep, they never eat, you know, everyone's constant.
They're so stressed.
Meanwhile, all of us actually have a ton of free time, which is why we're online and watching Netflix and stuff all the time.
So, the fact that you would just admit that, I think is great.
Now, let me put your mind at rest here a bit.
I don't think there's any reason to conclude that the existence of sentient aliens would disprove God.
In fact, I think it would make the case for God even stronger.
Because think about it.
There are 100 billion galaxies in the universe.
The known universe.
100 billion galaxies.
Galaxies!
Okay?
There are 100 billion of them.
Just try to wrap your head around that.
You can't.
There are something like a hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion solar systems in each galaxy.
And then, so multiply that and then multiply, you know, however many planets on average are around any given star.
You start doing the math, you see that we are just one infinitesimal speck of dust orbiting a slightly bigger speck of dust.
I mean, our sun is bigger than some other suns out there, some other stars.
But it is not even close to the biggest star, or the biggest class of stars.
There are stars that you could fit like a billion of our suns
into some of the other stars that are out there.
So, we're just one speck of dust orbiting another speck of dust in a little tiny solar system in a relatively unimpressive galaxy.
What are the chances, when you look at the entire scope of things, that all the rest of it is empty?
Nothing but emptiness and then just us.
I think there's almost no chance of that, mathematically speaking.
Does that disprove God?
No.
Because think about this.
One of the most commonly cited, and I think best, even Hitchens said that this was a good argument for God, is the fine-tuning argument.
The idea that the universe is improbably calibrated to make life possible.
Well, and it is, right?
But if the universe is teeming with life, That would seem to underscore the fact that, wow, the universe really is finally tuned for life.
I mean, it's so big and somehow all this life popped up everywhere.
I think that that would speak even more profoundly to the existence of God.
If, however, the universe is completely dead, except for just one little speck of dust, Then it becomes a lot harder to say that this massive, gargantuan, almost completely dead thing is finally tuned for life.
In fact, I think at that point, the argument loses all of its force.
It would be kind of absurd, really, to say that a universe that is totally dead, except for this one tiny, barely perceptible corner of it, to say that that's finally tuned for life, it just... I mean...
I think the phrase finely tuned there would start to lose its meaning.
Now, that wouldn't disprove God either, but it would significantly mitigate one of our best arguments for God.
So I wouldn't be afraid at all of the prospect of sentient beings being out there.
I think they are, and I don't think it has any effect.
On faith, except possibly a positive effect.
How does it work with their own salvation history and everything?
Well, I have no idea.
I mean, I just don't know.
It's also possible, other option here is that there's a ton of life out there, but no other intelligent life.
You said sentient, you know, we talk about what that means exactly.
I think there's probably a lot of intelligent life out there, too.
But you don't have to worry about it.
And I wouldn't bother studying it too much, honestly.
Although, if it interests you, go for it.
But I can tell you this.
There have never been any aliens on Earth.
And there never will be.
I hate to say.
I would love if they came.
It'd be awesome.
But it never has happened.
It never will happen.
We will never encounter life out there in the universe, because the distances are just too great.
It's simply, you can't, I don't think it's possible to traverse these distances.
I think it's just physically impossible.
The closest star to us, I think, is like four light years away.
Well, as I mentioned on the show a couple days ago, a light year is like 5 trillion miles.
So we're talking about something that's 20 or 25 trillion miles away.
And that's the closest star to us, which is just right next door.
And it's quite possible there's no life there.
But even if there was life right next door to us, I think we would never find it.
We would never know about it.
Because going across 20 trillion miles of interstellar space, we just... Even if you're going at the speed of light, it would take you four years to do.
And we don't even have the technology for people to survive in a spaceship for four years.
You know, with the radiation and all that.
So anyway... So, I wouldn't...
Worried too much about it.
We're never going to know.
It's an interesting thing to think about, though, and speculate about.
But I don't think it affects our religion one way or another, really, honestly.
So I'll leave it there.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
Rolling Stone Magazine celebrates the burning of Notre Dame as an act of liberation.
Meanwhile, Library Journal condemns libraries as tools of white supremacy, and anti-white Democrats only want to nominate a white guy.
