The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 229 - White Guilt On Parade

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, there’s a petition to shut down my speech at Baylor next week. Also, a bunch of white people on Twitter are confessing to their white privilege. It’s absurd but also kind of hilarious. And a pro-life movie earns an R rating. Is this justified or is it a ploy to prevent people from seeing it? (Definitely the latter.) Date: 04-01-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Matt Wall Show, there's a petition to shut down my speech at Baylor University, which is coming up next week. We'll talk about that. Also, a bunch of white people on Twitter were confessing over the weekend to their white privilege. And it's pretty absurd, but also kind of hilarious. So we'll discuss that. And a pro-life movie came out over the weekend, did very well at the box office, but the powers that be are conspiring against it, including giving this movie an R-rating. And we're going to look at at how this movie earned in our rating and whether or not it makes sense. It doesn't make any sense, but we'll get more into that today on the Matt Walls show. So I will be speaking at Baylor University on April 9th.

I'll also be at Boston University on April 4th. That's this Thursday. But the speech at Baylor has a supposedly Christian school, by the way, is attracting some negative attention. There's currently a petition underway to get the speech shut down. So far, over a thousand people have signed it last I saw calling for the cancellation of my event there. And I'm hearing from some students on campus that the outcry is pretty severe on campus. So I could be walking into a bit of a chaotic situation here, but we'll see. Let me just be honest with you about this.

I really take no pleasure in this kind of thing. I know that the impression that people have is that conservatives come to give these talks on campuses, hoping for these kinds of reactions, hoping for the big outcry. And then the conservative enjoys the outcry and loves the publicity and the attention. And really, that's what this is all about, right? It's just about, it's about the publicity and attention. And that may well be the case. In fact, I'm convinced it certainly is the case with some conservative.

conservatives. And I'll admit that there was a time when I did get a kick out of this kind of thing, where, oh, they started a petition against me. Awesome. Right. Well, I really don't feel that way anymore, and I haven't for a long time. I would actually like to just have a rational and thoughtful dialogue. I'm not going to Baylor for that, for this, that, that I would be much happier if there was no petition and none of that. And it was just a normal, calm, rational dialogue. Because that is actually what I'm interested in. I have no interest in the theatrics. I have no interest in a, I have no interest in a Q&A session that really becomes an excuse for one person after another to get up there and call me a bigot and go for the applause line.

And then we go back and forth and somebody puts it on YouTube and blah, blah, blah. blah, blah. That's probably what I'm walking into, but it's not what I want. I'm not going to be scared away by it, but it just becomes a hollow spectacle after a while. And it's just sort of useless. And it's a waste of time. You know, if I go down there and no one is really interested in listening and it just becomes a spectacle, then it's a waste of my time. I would rather not go. it's a waste of everybody's time. Anyone that comes to the speech hoping for irrational dialogue,

it's a waste of their time too. So here's what I'm going to try to try and do with the speech. Originally, my plan was to talk about the left's efforts to redefine life, marriage, and gender, which is why I think in the petition it says that I'm giving an anti-LGBQ presentation and I guess that's why they're calling it that is because I was going to talk about the left's efforts to redefine life, marriage, and gender and then to discuss the effect

that that effort has had on society. I wrote a book on the topic, The Unholy Trinity. So it's just basically that. But I suspect that many of the people in attendance will be of a leftist persuasion and therefore a speech that sort of presupposes the premise that it's to redefine life, marriage, and gender won't be as useful. So maybe I won't do that. That doesn't mean I'm going to avoid these topics. No, no, don't think that for a second. Instead, I think it may be more worthwhile if I were to talk about and explain on a more fundamental level

why these things should not be redefined, so that if you come to the speed, even if you disagree with me, you'll have an opportunity to at least learn why a person might oppose abortion and might believe that biological sex is not subjective and is an immutable, unchangeable characteristic of a person and so on. You can at least find out what it is exactly that you oppose. If you're going to continue opposing it, you might as well know what the argument is that you're against. and I think that you'll discover if you listen with an open mind that what is at the root of this belief system, if we want to call it social conservatism, whatever, what's at the root of it is not actually bigotry. That's not what it's about. It doesn't mean that you'll agree at the end. You don't have to agree.

But you should at least listen so that you know what you're disagreeing with. And so that's what I plan to do. I'm going to tackle these three topics, life, marriage, gender, and just talk about them on a really basic level. Which, as I said, considering that this is supposed to be a Christian school, you know, in an ideal world, it shouldn't be necessary to explain these kinds of things at a Christian school. But I think that it apparently is. So that's what I'm going to do. All right. I signed on to Twitter over the weekend to find that the hashtag my white privilege was trending.

And I discovered, as you would have discovered too, if you got on Twitter over the weekend, that the hashtag my white privilege, it was not a bunch of people making fun of the idea of white privilege. Instead, at least initially, it was a whole gaggle of guilt-ridden white folks solemnly confessing to all of the many ways that they have been benefited from this mysterious racial privilege. So they would talk about a way that they benefited from white privilege and then, you know, hashtag my white privilege. So let me, I'm going to read a couple of these tweets to you, a few of them, just to give you an idea of what these guilt-ridden white folks were tweeted. So one of the tweets says, I got caught stealing multiple times as a teenager and they never called the cops. They just let me go with a warning. Every period, single, period, time, period. Hashtag my white privilege.

Another one says, as a white woman when I get back from the beach, my newly darker tan skin will be praised as making me prettier. It will be used as an opening to ask me about my vacation. No one will criticize me. Hashtag my white privilege. I don't even understand what, so when people compliment you on your tan, that's because of white privilege? Or could it just be that they're being nice and you should just take it at that rather than, you know, implying that they're actually racist? No one will criticize me. Okay, well, who does get criticized for a tan? Are you suggesting that if a black person goes to the beach and comes back and their skin is darker, that people criticize them for it?

they walk into work and people are openly criticizing the shade of their skin. I mean, what? No one will criticize you for your tan. No one criticizes anyone for a tan. What does that even mean? Of course that no one would do that. That's white privilege. All right.

Another one says, got financing to buy a house as a 30-year-old pizza cook. I've never been denied a line of credit, actually. Hashtag my white privilege. Okay. If someone in your exact same financial situation, everything is exactly the same, except that if you had darker skin, you're suggesting that you would not have gotten that line of credit. They would have said, no, we're not going to give it to you because your skin isn't light enough. Another one says, sitting in a swanky hotel lobby using their Wi-Fi all night as a non-paying guest.

Hashtag my white privilege. First of all, what are you doing sitting in a hotel lobby all night using their, using their, using their Wi-Fi? What would be the scenario or that would even come up? I mean, get a room if you're going to be in the hotel all night using their

Wi-Fi. Another one says, I gave birth in a hospital twice and everyone believed my pain and offered relief. Hashtag my white privilege. So giving birth in a hospital. So what part is white privilege?

Giving birth in a hospital? or you got pain medicine when you were giving birth. And that's so if you were a black woman, they wouldn't have given you pain medicine. I'm going to need a citation on that. I mean, that certainly would be rather shocking. But another one says,

called the police in Massachusetts when I lost the key to my bike lock, white firefighters showed up, didn't ask for any ID, proof that the bike was mine, or proof that I lived at that address, and cut the U-Lock off without question. hashtag my white privilege

who why did you call the police because you lost the key to your bike lock uh that's you know that's that's just I don't think that's a white thing

that's a rather absurd reason to call the police that to me just strikes me as a spoiled urbanite thing that's what that is um upper spoiled upper class urban which we'll talk about this in a minute, but that's more of a socioeconomic thing. It would never occur to me if I lost the key to my bike lock to call 911, but that's what she did. And she did that, and the police responded helpfully and nicely, apparently, and so her reaction is to accuse them of racism.

But really nice. Good stuff there. Now, the hashtag has since become mostly just jokes, but thankfully, but such as the fate of all hashtags in the end. A hashtag either fades off early or it lives long enough to see itself become a joke. But initially, this is the kind of thing you were getting. So, and it's all pretty ridiculous. Now, I don't deny that racism. exists. I don't deny that there were certainly a time in our country when white privilege was very definitely a thing, though not a thing necessarily enjoyed by all white people, certainly

not an equal measure. But I think today, much of what we consider white privilege and much of what we chalk up as racial discrimination has a lot more to do with age, gender, and socioeconomic. economic status. I think that's some of the confusion you're seeing with this. For instance, as far as gender goes, there were a whole lot of tweets from white women saying, talking about all the times that they've been pulled over and they haven't gotten a ticket or whatever. Well, I can tell you that every single time I'm pulled over for something, I always end up getting a ticket. Now, I don't get pulled over that often anymore. I'll talk about that minute. But if I get pulled over, I get a ticket. I don't get out of tickets. I've never gotten out of a ticket,

ever. My wife gets out of tickets all the time. So we're both white. So what's really going on there? You see, that's not white privilege. That's female privilege. Especially if you're a young, attractive woman, I don't think it really matters what your race is. You're going to have an easier time dealing with police than you are if you're just an ugly guy like me. Now, So as I said, I think what we've got here is age, gender, and socioeconomic status. So for instance, there were these white people saying things like, you know, I have white privilege because I've never been stopped by the cops for no reason. I have white privilege because I can walk into a store without people looking at me like I'm going to steal something. I have white privilege because I'm not prejudged at job interviews regardless of my qualifications and so on.

And as I was reading those, I thought to myself, well, wait a minute, all of that has happened to me. Not much anymore, but it did. When I was younger, when I was teenage to early 20s, I was pulled over frequently for dubious reasons. I had my car searched a couple of times. I had sobriety checks, even though I was exhibiting no signs of inebriation because I was not inebriated. as I can remember one I think it was about I was maybe 21 or 22 and I got pulled over and and I had like an hour before had one beer at a restaurant and then I drove home and I was perfectly fine. I was not I wasn't swerving or doing anything crazy. But the cop pulled me out, had me do the whole sobriety checkpoint thing. I passed, you know, got an A plus. I was good to go. So that kind of, even though there was, there was, there was a, there was a. I was. no indication. I think he pulled me over for going like 11 miles over the limit. And then next thing you know, I'm doing the sobriety checkpoint. It didn't appear to be any real reason for it, but that's what happened. And as a teenager, I would definitely be watched suspiciously when I went into stores. In fact, I remember one time specifically, I went into a store, I think it might have been a right aide. And I was walking, you know, towards. towards the back of the store. And I distinctly remember, and I could hear the guy at the register

call back over the radio, intercom, whatever, not the intercom, but, you know, he called back to someone who I assume was in the back of the store, another employee. And he said, watch the guy with the hat. He was telling the other person to keep an eye on me because he was afraid that I was going to shoplift. There were, you know, when I was growing up, there were some restaurants around town and other establishments where my friends and I weren't even allowed to set foot inside after a certain hour. That wasn't a rule that was singling us out specifically, but teens in general. There were places where if you were under the age of 18, you couldn't go in with a group unless you were with an adult after a certain time. But of course, none of this was racial.

This was really about age, and I think to some extent, gender as well. So when you hear how young black males are treated, I think oftentimes the young male part is far more relevant than the skin color part. I think it's young males, young guys who are teenage, early 20s, they're treated a certain way by society and by businesses and by police officers. because certain assumptions are made about them, and not entirely without basis, because young guys tend to do stupid, destructive, dangerous, illegal things. And that's just the reality. And I think that's where a lot of this comes from. Now, these days, I rarely get pulled over, unless I really am speeding, because usually I'm, you know, usually I'm driving my wife and my kids and I'm dressed like a nerd, and we're listening to like the Wiggles soundtrack or something in the car.

And I tend not to attract a lot of attention from police that way. Now, why do you think cops are not so suspicious of me now, but they were when I was 16, 17, 18? Like, why do I hardly ever get pulled over now, but I got pulled over a lot at that age, especially if I was driving in a car with four or five of my friends who were also my age. We tended to get coincidentally pulled over a lot. Why do you think that is? I was white back then too. Okay, this isn't a Michael Jackson situation.

Now, who do you think is more likely to be pulled over? A black man my age who's also driving his kids and his wife around in a minivan, also dressed like a nerd, listening to kids' songs or whatever, coming back from, church or wherever else. Or a 17-year-old black teenager in a car with other teenagers dressed like teens dress, acting like teens act, listening to having the music blasting and all that. Who is more likely to attract attention from police? And in this hypothetical, the race is the same. But I think we all know that the 17-year-old with the other 17-year-olds, he's going to attract more attention because of his age and his gender.

So age and gender are factors. Also, socioeconomic status is a factor. If you're a white person living in a trailer park where half of the residents are on meth, people are going to make unflattering assumptions about you. They shouldn't, but they will. And I know the response to that is people will say, well, well, a white person may be treated unfairly, but it won't be because he's white. well affirmative action seems to blow a hole in that theory but even aside from that where do you think

the term white trash comes from a poor white person who lives in a trailer park is going to be called white trash actual trash his existence is being compared to trash to a heap of garbage so that really seems to not only be discriminatory but discriminatory in a racially specific way What else could you call the term white trash? So there's socioeconomic element to this as well. But when we talk about white privilege, we talk about racism, you see all these tweets. None of those factors are even considered. It's just assumed that it has to always be racial.

And that's what jumps out of you when you read some of these tweets that, or anytime this topic of white privilege comes up, It's just there is automatically an assumption with no evidence, just an assumption that race is the reason. So that woman says that, well, as a white person, I'm able to sit in a hotel lobby and use the Wi-Fi all night. Well, again, that to me seems pretty weird, and I think she should be kicked out because, you know, if you're not a paying customer. But if you're assuming that you're allowed to do that because you're white, then what you're really saying is that, the people working there, whoever's behind the counter, who's not kicking you out, you're just assuming that that person is racist. You're assuming that that person would kick someone out if they were black. And based on what, first, to make such an unflattering, accusatory,

insulting assumption about someone, you better have some evidence for that. But you have no evidence. You have no idea, whoever that person is behind the counter. You have no idea how they would react if you were a different race. You're just assuming, you're just making that up based on nothing. And meanwhile, that person is being nice to you. They're letting you sit there and use the Wi-Fi, and you're sitting there stewing over how racist they are for not kicking you out. It's the same thing with these stories about, oh, the police were being nice to you. They were being helpful. responses to assume that they're racist to say, oh yeah, well, I bet you wouldn't do this if I was black? How do you know that? These are assumptions with no evidence. That's the problem.

If you're going to accuse someone of racism, you need to have some kind of evidence for it. But, of course, no one feels any need for that anymore. All right. The movie unplanned came out this past week. It's the true story of Abby Johnson, the former Plant Parenthood Clinic Director, who left Planned Parenthood and became a pro-life advocate. And the movie shows how this conversion happened. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've heard good things about it. The film did remarkably well at the box office.

I think it finished in like fourth or fifth place for the weekend, which is impressive when you consider the small budget for movies like this. this. And also the fact that various TV stations refuse to run ads for it. And some funky things are happening with social media, with Twitter, apparently it would seem preventing people from following unplanned on Twitter and other anomalies happening as well on social media. So the deck is stacked against the movie, as you might expect with a pro-life movie. And yet it's still being as successful as that. But the most striking way that the powers that be have tried to interfere with this movie and prevent people from seeing it is in the rating. Okay, now this movie was given

an R rating. Why was it given in R rating? Well, Abby Johnson wrote an article explaining the two scenes that earned it in R rating. And it's really only these two scenes. It's not like this movie is filled with profanity or sex or anything, I can pretty much guarantee you there's none of that on either score. But there were two scenes that earned at the R rating, and let me read Abby Johnson's explanation or description of those scenes. And you tell me if you think this earns it, should earn it in R rating. So she says, so why the R rating for two scenes? two scenes that the movie team was determined to recreate accurately at my insistence because they are important for people to see. The first is a CGI recreation of what I saw on the ultrasound screen

when I assisted in the abortion procedure that convinced me of the humanity of the unborn. You will see what I saw, a baby of an ultrasound on an ultrasound screen in black and white 2D. You will see the abortion instrument, which looks like a big straw in real life, and like a dark line on the ultrasound, introduced into the screen. You will see the baby struggle against it. You will see the baby first slowly, then quickly disappear into the instrument as it does what it is designed to do. It is important for you to know that this was a CGI recreation and not footage from a real abortion. But it sure looks like what I saw. I think this scene is so important for teenagers and older children to see because it tells the truth about what our culture keeps trying to insist is a right and a freedom.

No one will be able to see this scene and then say they don't know the truth about abortion. The second scene that was cited as a reason for the R rating is a scene that recreates my awful experience with the abortion pill. Ashley, the actress who plays me, did a fantastic job capturing both my physical pain and my fear. I won't lie to you. The scene does show some blood. In real life, I hemorrhage so badly I thought I was going to die.

The movie captures that without gratuitous or without being gratuitous or gory. I think the producers walked that line well. Okay, so those are the two scenes, and they certainly sound like intense, harrowing, difficult, upsetting scenes. But they're not gory. It sounds like there, she says there's some blood in the second scene with the abortion pill, but it sounds like there's not a whole lot of blood. But see, here's the problem, though. the only way you could possibly justify giving a movie an R-rating, based on the two scenes I described there,

is if you're admitting that abortion is an act of violence against a human being. That's the only way you could justify it. In other words, only a pro-lifer could possibly agree with the R-rating. and I am pro-life and I don't agree with it. But if you're not pro-life, you couldn't possibly agree with that. Because according to non-pro-lifers, and by the way, I think the MPAA, the M-P-A-A, the Motion Picture Association, I don't think that they are stacked with pro-lifers. I could be wrong, but I tend to doubt it.

So what pro-abortion people tell us is that abortion is just, it's just a medical procedure. It's like going to the orthodontist. It's like getting gallbladder surgery. Now, let me ask you, if there was a movie that had no profanity, no sex, no violence, except it did show a gallbladder surgery, do you think that movie would earn an R rating? It might earn PG-13, but even that, who knows, maybe it wouldn't even get that much. So how does that work? if it's just a normal medical procedure, which is what pro-abortion people say,

then how could you possibly give that an R-rating? In fact, you should be, as a pro-abortion person, you should be saying, yes, you should be encouraging people to watch the movie. You should, because, hey, it's just a normal medical, there's nothing upsetting about it. Yeah, go ahead and see it for yourself. It's no big deal. That's how you know, that's how you should know that something is up with the pro-abortion side is because they talk about abortion in these dismissive terms

saying it's no big deal, it's just a medical procedure, or even though they'll even paint it as a positive and joyful and good thing. So they say all of that, but it's so conspicuous that in spite of saying that, they don't want you to see it. That's odd, isn't it? They don't want you to see it. They certainly don't want to give graphic descriptions of it to the women who are seeking abortions.

They don't even want to show ultrasounds. They get very, very upset at the graphic photos of abortion that some pro-lifers will show. But again, what are you upset about? What are you afraid of? That's just a medical procedure. And that's just a clump of cells, right? It's not a person, so what cares?

I mean, if you're pro-abortion, you should be the one showing the graphic photos because they're not even really graphic according to you it is again no big deal so there's there seems to be a bit of a disconnect there somebody wrote into the show last week and made another great point talking about disconnects and contradictions that um you know if if a movie's rated are then that means that under the eight what is it 17 or 18 um that means under the age of uh i think it's under the age of 18 right you know you're You're not allowed to go watch the movie without parental consent. Yet, in most states, you can actually get an abortion under the age of 18 without parental consent.

So you can't watch a movie about it, but you can actually do it. Does that make sense? No, clearly it doesn't. So if you had any doubts at all about this issue and who exactly, which side is being forthright and honest, then just ask yourself, why is it that the depiction of an abortion, which is done as, it seems like it's done as as non-gratuitously as possible, given what it's portraying while at the same time being honest. So why is it that that would earn an R rating? And why is it the pro-abortion people don't want you to be exposed to those kinds of images when they say that it's just a medical procedure? I'm certain. I have on more than one occasion

heard getting an abortion, I've heard it compared to going to the dentist. Well, I am quite certain that if a movie depicted a person going to the dentist, that would not earn it our rating. That wouldn't even get it above G. Okay. So there's something going on here. All right. Let's go to emails. Matt Walshow at gmail.com. Matt wallshow at gmail.com. This is from Nathan says, hi, Matt. On the Sunday special yesterday, you said that all someone has to do is love their spouse to get to heaven. I was shocked to hear this coming from you, as it is heretical. The Bible says that the only way to heaven is through faith in Christ. Your statement is false and dangerous. Yeah, I got several emails like this, so I thought I should

address it. I was on Ben's Sunday special show yesterday. I thought it was a fun conversation, good conversation. And in the course of the conversation, we talked about the afterlife, which actually was just an extension of a conversation we were having off the air before the cameras were rolling. And then they said, just save that for the, for the show. And so we did. We kind of just picked it back up when the cameras were rolling. And he asked me about my ideas of heaven and hell. And so we talked about it from that starting point. At one point, I posed the question, not a statement, really, but a question, can someone who has love in their heart, someone who loves, who truly loves.

Not someone who just has the emotional experience of affection, but someone who really loves. Can that person go to hell? Now, notice, the question I'm asking is, can they go? It's not even do they go, but can they? Is it even possible? Or is hell a place entirely devoid of love? Now, I've always understood hell as a place that is devoid of love. And I think, you know, I don't think anyone would, would disagree with that. That's how it seems like everyone describes hell. It is a, it is a place. We don't know exactly, we can't go into great detail describing it, but it does seem that it would be a place completely devoid of love. There is no love or joy in hell. Now, if love were a place where love, I mean, if hell were a place where love can exist,

then the whole idea of hell is just monstrous and, I think, untenable. If hell is a place where even the loving and virtuous may be tortured for all time, then, well, I just, I find such a thing very difficult to believe. But if we agree that hell is, Hell is a place where love cannot and does not exist by definition. That is what hell is. It is the absence of love and joy. If that's the case, then what about a person who never comes to explicitly believe in Christ for whatever reason, but who really does love their spouse or their child really loves. Again, I'm not talking about emotional affection, which we often

excuse, we often confuse with love. I'm talking about actual love. Can that person go to hell is the question. If so, then we're back at this problem where, well, that means that love exists in hell, and that's not how any of us think of hell. And by the way, if a person with love in their heart can go to hell, then that means that not just love is. existing in hell. But then also other things as well, because think about it, if someone goes to hell and they love their spouse, let's say a man who loves his wife goes to hell. Okay. And then let's say that his wife does not go to hell. Well, the man is still going to love his wife. And not only that, but he's going to find some joy in the fact that his wife is not with him, that his wife is in

eternal paradise. So that means that now you've got love in hell, you've got joy in hell, and you've got selflessness in hell. And it's all happening inside a person who, you know, it starts to seem is pretty out of place in that environment, right? A person who has this selfless, joyful love in their heart, well, what are they doing there? And again, how can they even be there. Now, I'm not the first person to ask this question or to try to deal with it. C.S. Lewis, as I mentioned on the backstage special, C.S. Lewis dealt with this. And that's the great divorce, the book Great Divorce, which I mentioned on the show, really deals with this a lot. And his solution to the problem was he basically said that if you have love in your heart,

any amount of love for anyone, then God can take the embers of that love and he can fan them and ignite them. So he can work with it. Even if you come to him just with those little embers, he can work with that. He can take that. He can do something there.

The people in hell are the people utterly devoid of any love, any virtue, anything. They've got nothing going on. It's complete emptiness, and God has nothing to work with, and so they're in hell. But if there's just that little spark, that little spark of love, then not only is that something God can work with, but that spark, it just can't be in hell. It can't go there. And that's what Great Divorce is really all about.

And there are all these scenes in the book, The Great Divorce, where you've got... these conversations between a person who's coming from hell. And in the book, you know, you've got, the people in hell have this opportunity. And it's obviously all very allegorical and poetic and everything. He's not suggesting that this is literally how the afterlife works. But in the book, you've got these souls in hell who essentially take a bus to the outer rim of heaven. and then someone that they knew from their physical life who is in heaven comes out to meet them

and essentially tries to convince them to come to heaven but in almost every case the person even though their heaven is being open up to them they decline it and they say I don't no I don't they come up with reasons why they don't want to go to heaven and the reason why they decline the invitation in every case is because they have no love. They're hearing these descriptions of what it's like to be in a place

full of love and selflessness, and it just doesn't appeal to them. They don't want that. So, again, clearly not a literal description of how the afterlife works, but it's just dealing with the concepts of, well, what does this mean? And we all say that people who go to hell choose it. Well, how does that work? Why would anyone choose it? How does it work to actually choose hell?

and that's what C.S. Lewis is trying to deal with. I think it makes a lot of sense. So, yes, the Bible says that we only go to heaven through Jesus, but that means that Jesus decides who goes. So who are we to say what criteria he makes, he uses to make that determination? And if you think that the only criteria is just the intellectual acknowledgement of Christ's lordship,

that the only thing you need to do is go, oh, yeah, yeah, Jesus is God, sure. And you get to go to heaven. and everyone who fails to make that statement doesn't go, then you believe in a scenario where there are a lot of really terrible, awful people who happen to believe in Jesus in heaven and a lot of virtuous loving people

who happen not to in hell. By the way, along with every single baby who's ever died because none of them believe in Jesus. I find that vision of the afterlife to be completely demented, frankly, and I don't accept it, and I don't think it's biblical. And let's also remember that if God is love, which I believe he is,

then anyone who loves loves God, even if they don't know it. All love is love for God, even if you don't know that's what you're doing. So if somebody loves God without knowing it, is God going to eternally hold that against them? Or is he going to take that and work with it and set it right? That's the question.

Let's see here. This is from Phil, saw you on the Sunday, especially yesterday, you were talking about homosexuality and sexual abuse in the priesthood. What do you think of priests marrying? Do pastors marrying solve the problem in the churches? That's an interesting question. That's one I've been thinking about wrestling with. If you'd ask me three years ago about the idea of priest marrying, I would have said absolutely not. It's a crazy idea. And still today, I don't think it would solve the problem, as it were. But it would maybe address. the problem, partly, for this reason, that there are a lot of decent men with sexual appetites that are in line with Christian teaching, but who would never want to be priests

simply because they also want the companionship of a woman, which is a perfectly healthy and good desire to have. So the church is losing out on a lot of good men who have all of the qualities you want in a priest, except for the fact that they don't want to be alone and celibate for their whole life. They've got everything else going. They just don't want that, which is perfectly understandable. They want the love and affection of a woman. So maybe it's not a good idea, you know, on second thought, to reject all of those men. Maybe it's not a good idea to rule all those guys out. And there's also something to be said for the fact that celibacy is a really, really, really, really difficult thing.

But for a priest to break his celibacy vows is considered a grave sin. It's like adultery, basically. So we've set up this dynamic where a priest has to either have superhuman self-control to be celibate his entire life, or he's going to fall into grave sin and serious scandal. And so those are the two options, basically. right now. Either you're going to have a superhuman priest, or he's going to fall into grave sin and scandal. Whereas if you let priest marry, then you're expecting them to have just sort of normal self-control. In marriage, you need self-control too, but not superhuman. You don't need to be a

superhuman to remain faithful to your wife. But you do need to have some self-control. The problem with ruling out the guys who have just normal self-control, maybe not superhuman self-control, control is that you end up with a priesthood populated by some superhuman men, but then also a lot of men who are not superhuman, so then they fall into deep sin and then they fall deeper and deeper by the minute. And so you end up almost with this dichotomy where a priest is either going to be a saint or Satan. There's kind of like no room in between, but there should be. maybe it's okay to have priests who are normal, just normal, you know, they have normal desires, they want to be with a woman, and maybe they should be allowed to fulfill those desires

in a way that is moral and biblical in the context of a marriage. So, you know, I think that's the argument you can make for it. As I said, I just think there are a lot of decent good, good, men who the Catholic Church is losing, they're losing out on because there are a whole lot, I'm telling you, there are just a whole lot of guys who would certainly be priests, if not for that one little thing, which is not so little. All right. We'll see.

We'll do one more. This is from Brendan. Says, hey, Matt, big fan. In fact, lately I think I might enjoy your show. more than the Ben Shapiro show, although I don't tell him I said that. Well, I just put it out there. I know you sometimes like to answer questions outside of politics.

So I have a football question for you. Do you think teams punt too often in the NFL? Does it make any sense to you that teams ever put punt on fourth and two on their own 40? It seems to me that teams should be more statistically minded when weighing their fourth down options instead of instinctively sending out the punt unit. Thought maybe you'd have an opinion on this as your team has one of the best punters in the league. Also, as a Browns fan, I'm wondering what fans of the other AFC North teams are thinking or dreading about the Browns this year. P.S., can I get a shout out to Christendom College?

Yeah, shout out to Christendom. Actually, I have two of my siblings went to Christendom, so great school. Yeah, I think I've talked about this before in the show with punters. I totally agree with you. In fact, I think it would make a lot of sense to just have a policy as a head coach in the NFL. that you're never going to punt once you get past your own, say, 35-yard line. Once you're past your own 35, never punt.

As you say, it doesn't make sense statistically. When you punt the ball, now fourth down is still a down. That's a down where you have the ball and you can do whatever you want with it. You could try to score. Every time you have the ball, it's an opportunity to score.

Well, when you punt, there's basically zero chance of scoring unless there's a fumble or something on the return. and you're just giving the ball back. You're saying, all right, you can have it. I think that only in the most extreme circumstances in a football game should you ever willingly give the ball back to your opponent. I think that's the basic principle.

I know that it seems unorthodox because we're so used to people punting. But the game has changed a lot also over the years. And so I think this goes back. Punting may have made sense, you know, 25, 30 years ago. But now, especially with these high-powered offenses and these quarterbacks who can basically make any throw on the field, to willingly give the ball back to your opponent, I think should happen a lot less often than it does. As for the Browns, I think they put together a good team, but the thing about the NFL, it's one of the reasons why I like the NFL, is that it's very hard to buy a championship team. I know they do it in the NBA all the time, but in the NFL, it's difficult to do. And there have been many teams that have gone out in free agency,

spent a whole lot of money getting all these high-powered, fancy free agents, and then they win four games in the season. Because just because you get all the pieces together on paper, that doesn't mean it's going to come together on the field. So maybe if you're a Browns fan, you could have a little bit of optimism. I wouldn't try to take that from you after so many years of misery. but also there's reason for caution. All right, we'll leave it there.

Thanks for the football question, you know. I always enjoy those. And I'll talk to you tomorrow. God's speed. Today on the Ben Shapiro show, creepiness finally comes back to haunt Uncle Joe Biden. That's today on the Ben Shapiro show.