The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 230 - Am I A Theocratic Fascist?

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

Today on the show, the effort to shut down my speech at Baylor ramps up. Local news is now reporting that I’m a theocratic fascist. Is that label fair? Also, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez says that the minimum wage should be raised because croissants are so expensive. Uh, what? And who struggles more in the school system — boys or girls? That's an important question we will try to address today. Date: 04-02-2019 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, the effort to shut down my speech at Baylor is ramping up with local news down in Waco, now reporting that I am a theocratic fascist. Is that label fair? I will try to clarify today. Also, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bemoans the price of croissants and says that the minimum wage should be raised because croissants are so expensive. I don't understand the connection. We'll try to talk about that. And also, who struggles more in the school system, generally speaking, girls or boys? I think that's an important question that we should try to answer, and we'll do that today on the Matt Walls show.

As I mentioned yesterday, there's a petition to shut down my speech at Baylor next week. April 9th is the day of the speech. The petition has now gathered, I think, 1,700 signatures last I saw. And now there's a second petition to oppose the petition opposing my speech. And that petition also has 1,700 signatures. So we've got a war of the petitions right now. My only hope is that somebody will now start a petition to support the petition, supporting the petition, opposing the petition. And then, of course, just to get things really spicy, I'd like for someone to start a petition, opposing the petition, supporting the petition, supporting the petition, supporting the petition.

And then, you know, we'll just keep it going until the day the speech. That would be a lot of fun. There's some other craziness surrounding the talk that I want to get into. as well as some other topics as well. But first, let's check with our friends from PolicyGenius. It's already April, and that's no fooling. Sorry, that was an ad lib. I won't do that ad lib again because that wasn't very good.

I'll make a note for myself. Time has a habit of getting away from you. That's really the point here. But if you have a mortgage, if you have kids, or anyone depending on your income, you're going to have to spend some of that precious time getting life insurance. And if you need life insurance, but you don't want to spend a lot of time comparing it and going through the whole rigmarole of that, then just give PolicyGenius to try.

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So I would take advantage of it. Once you apply, the PolicyGenius team will handle all the paperwork. They'll handle the red tapes. You don't have to worry about that. And Policy Genius doesn't just make life insurance easy. They also make it easy to find the right home insurance, auto insurance, disability insurance, any kind of insurance you can think of. They're your one-stop shop for financial protection.

So if you need life insurance but you're short on time, head to policygenius.com and compare quotes there. PolicyGenius is easy, saves you money, not to belabor the point, but it's also fast. Policy Genius spend less time comparing life insurance and more time doing literally anything else. In fact, you could with Policy Genius compare life insurance in a time that's much quicker than it took me to even read all that copy. All right, so local media down in Waco did a report last night, apparently, about my Baylor speech. And there are a few funny things about the reports. I want to play, if it's not too self-indulgent, and it is a little bit. But I'm going to play this news report about, well, about me, honestly.

But there's a couple funny points here, so I want you to watch this. A war of words breaks out on social media over a controversial right-wing speaker. Good evening. I'm Tara Merginer. And I'm Gordon Collier. He's scheduled to talk next week on the Baylor campus about traditional family values. News tense, John Carroll joins us with more on this brewing controversy. You're right, Gordon. Matt Walsh. He's a self-proclaimed theocratic fascist, popular blogger, and his official Baylor event scheduled for April the 9th is drawing anger by many in the LGBTQ-plus family.

So one Baylor grad has started a petition online calling for Baylor to cancel Walsh's appearance. They're not trying to stoke controversy, but we figured it might get controversial. Ben Allen is a member of the Baylor Young Americans for Freedom. It's his group who got official approval from Baylor to host Matt Walsh at a free event on campus. Walsh describes himself as having controversial and provocative insights into culture, politics, and religion. This one is supposed to be the LGBTQ rainbow flag with a hammer and sickle on it. But these flyers placed all over campus, adventurers. advertising the event say that Walsh will be speaking on how the left has set out to redefine life,

gender, and marriage. And it's the hammer and sickle over an attempt at the LGBTQ flag that some say is inflammatory. Baylor alum Patrick Hill the 2nd of Austin has started an online petition to urge Baylor to cancel the event. He says, quote, I started the petition to raise awareness about something that I perceive to be blatant and harmful hate speech. My goal is to have our concerns reach Baylor officials so that they could reconsider having Walsh's anti-LGBQ plus message as an official Baylor event. Alan says his group has no doubts the event will go on as planned. And he's going to be coming and we're going to be having a great event.

So you're more than welcome to come, come and see what he's going to be talking about. And he'll definitely be here. And Hill says he's exercising his rights in starting the online petition but doesn't want things to get ugly. He says, quote, my goal is to always speak and act with love and compassion first and foremost, like Christ has taught me too. Now, we also reached out to Baylor, and this is what we received. Quote, as an institution of higher education, we are committed to a thoughtful exchange of ideas and an academic environment that supports inquiry, discourse, and diversity. As a Christian institution,

we have an additional responsibility to appreciate differing opinions and backgrounds in a respectful, loving manner that extends grace, as Christ did. And I also reached out to groups on the Baylor campus who said that Walsh's messages at times target them, and they chose not to speak out on the matter. Reporting live in the studio, John Carroll, KWTX News, 10. First of all, I want to be very clear about this. I don't know who that beardless weirdo is in the picture that you saw there, but it's not me. That picture has been photoshopped. I would never humiliate myself by going around naked face like that. So I just, I, I completely disavow that picture, that beardless picture. Second, and this I'm actually serious about, the ads around campus with the rainbow flag and the,

and the hammer and sickle, I have nothing to do with that. Perhaps people who don't understand how these things work, might be confused on this point, but when a student group invites you to come give a speech on campus, you don't micromanage the flyers they put around campus. You're not, You're not sitting there like, all the flyers. Where are you going to put that one? Are you going to put it in the dorm? Okay. It's just not how it works.

I'm doing five events this month. I have no idea how any of them are advertising. And so that's just the way it is. If I were going to make my own flyers, I wouldn't choose those. But what's done is done. Third, and I also say that to me, the rainbow flag is not some sort of sacred symbol that can't be desecrated. And I don't consider it.

I don't think it's a symbol that symbolizes all people who happen to be homosexual. It is a symbol of the gay lobby. It's a symbol of the LGBT lobby. And that lobby, as I've said many times, and I will say again at Baylor, the LGBT lobby is quite possibly the most vicious bullying organization in the country with the tactics that they use. Third, theocratic fascist. There's evidently a lot of hay being made with the fact that I self-identify as a theocratic fascist, which, yes, it does say that in my Twitter bio. And that fact is not only mentioned in the media report, but there was an article in Baylor student newspaper written by someone who's been pulling down flyers for the event, and he's defending his behavior. And I think the title of the article was why I'm pulling down flyers for. the Matt Walsh event, a Baylor, a creative title like that. And he says, in part in his article

in the student newspaper, he says, here's one reason I pull down the flyers. I respect the integrity of America's governmental systems. Allowing self-described fascists to speak on our campus is not allowing them to exercise their freedom of speech. Rather, it is allowing one whose relationship to freedom is already dubious, a platform to potentially undermine the authority of the U.S. government and constitution. What? So allowing me to speak at Baylor would undermine the authority of the U.S. government and the constitution.

I'm not sure I can quite connect those dots, but, you know, frankly, I didn't read the whole article, so maybe he explains it later on. Why does it say that in my bio? It does say in my Twitter bio that I'm a theoretic fascist. Well, because a few months ago someone sent me a message trying to insult me and the message said, hey, you know, you should put theocratic fascist in your Twitter bio because that's what you are. And I said, okay. And I did. And that's why it's there. That's the whole story. Now, you could interpret it one of two ways. You see theocratic fascist in my Twitter bio. You could

say, well, clearly that's a sarcastic joke, making fun of all the people who call him a fascist and a theocrat without knowing what either of those words mean. So you could interpret it that way. Or you could say, oh, wow, he is literally a theocratic fascist who actually, identifies that way on Twitter completely sincerely with no sarcasm. You could interpret it either way. Which interpretation is correct? Well, obviously the latter. I am literally a theocratic fascist. I do indeed believe that my religious beliefs should be forced on people by the government. And not just the government, but a government headed by me as a dictator. And that's just my opinion, okay? And not just my religious beliefs, but really all of my beliefs. I want everything

I believe to be forced on you by compulsion. For instance, I recently went on a tirade on Twitter against white condiments. I am racist against white condiments. Mayo, cream cheese, ricotta, tartar sauce, ranch dressing. All of it is garbage. All of it is for low IQ people, frankly. And in my theocratic fascist dictatorship, all of those condiments will be confiscated, prohibited, and anyone who is caught with contraband, like, say, ranch dressing, will face execution and a $50 fine. So you see, this is really my whole thing. I just believe that the whole country should be forced by agents of the state to bend to my every whim and to live, speak, and act exactly as I decree on penalty of death. And, you know, that's it. It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal. It's not

Like, it's not anything to overreact about. I just, I happen to believe that everyone should be forced to do what I want them to do. And that's just my view. You know, we all have our political opinions, and that happens to be mine. But I want to say this. Don't worry, because when I complete my takeover of the country, I want to make it very clear. I want to make this very clear. Okay, this is important.

My regime will be extremely corrupt, which means that you can always bribe me. and I'll let you pass on most of the rules. For instance, under normal circumstances, this is a theocratic fascist dictatorship. Remember, so those who don't go to church on Sunday will be burned at the stake. Usually. Now, if you pay me money, I'll probably let it go

because it will be a very morally corrupt regime. I cannot stress that enough. So it's not like my mercy cannot be bought. and that's all. It's like everyone's freaking out about it. Say, oh, you're going to burn us at this stake? Yeah, well, if you pay me, I won't. So what's the big deal here?

And I can only hope that the next media report makes sure to include that I do believe in burning people at the stake for not going to church or for using ranch dressing or for any number of literally hundreds of infractions. And I can only hope that. So I just wanted to make that clarification. All right. Let's see here. A couple of the things to talk about. Joe Biden. I don't actually care about that at all, so I'm going to skip that. Let's talk about croissants instead. I think that's more important. Our friend AOC, Alexandra Cesar Cortez, she tweeted this yesterday. Here's the tweet. Look at this. She says, croissants at LaGuardia are going for $7 a piece. Scared face emoji. Yet some people think getting a whole hour of personal dedicated human labor for 50.

$15 is too expensive. First of all, is there anything more millennial than complaining about the price of croissons at the airport? Could you possibly come up with a more millennial tweet than that? I guess if she was complaining about the price of avocado toast, that would be the more, maybe slightly more millennial. But this is pretty close to the top. Also, wait a second, but didn't AOC tell us

that the world is coming to an end? in part because of air travel and that she wants to ban air travel because of what it's doing to the planet. But now she's at an airport. And rather than being, you know, rather than weeping over all of the carbon emissions, rather than staring out of the big airport windows at all the planes going by and weeping uncontrollably at how these carbon emissions are killing the planet. no, she's in the, she's at the snack bar worried about croissants. So this doesn't make any sense.

And every time I bring this up, people act like it's some kind of cheap tactic. You know, anytime you bring up the fact that, oh, you've got these environmentalists who are still out there flying on planes and driving in cars and everything. And when you bring that up, people act like it's just a gotcha. It's a gotcha thing. Like, yeah, you know, whatever. But no, it's, it's, this is a real point that if you, if you say that air travel is, killing the planet and it should be banned because of it, well, then you can't go on using planes yourself because if you do that, we are going to suspect that you don't really mean it,

that you're not sincere. Because if you were sincere, then this, at the very least, using an airplane should be a source of, of, should be a moral crisis for you, the fact that you're on an airplane taking part in this. I mean, if you ever use an airplane, if you really think that airplanes are killing the planet and you use one, it should be only in extreme circumstances and you should be, as I said, you should really be crying out of guilt the entire time. The fact that you're worried about croissons tells me that you're not actually that concerned about the planet being killed by airplanes, which tells me that you don't really even take yourself seriously. And finally, of course, how much do you think those croissants would

cost if the people putting them into little baggies and handing them to you had to be paid $15 an hour to do so. Assuming this was not a homemade croissant place at the airport, which probably wasn't. I've had many airport croissants in my day because I'm a millennial as well, and I do like croissants, I'll admit. And in almost every case, they are not made at the scene. So, so, If you think that the person who's just taking it out of the little glass case and putting it into the bag and handing it it it. If that job of doing this, you know, that's all it is, to taking it, boom, here, put your card in, you know, and then that's it, here's your receipt. If you think that job should, at a minimum, be paid $15 an hour, then how much do you think those croissons are going to cost you? You know, meanwhile, since we're on the topic of the minimum wage, a bill in Arizona is actually looking at,

to reduce the minimum wage from $11 to $7.25, but only for workers under 22 years of age. And the logic there is that the vast majority of workers between the ages of 16 and 22 don't have any dependents, that most of them are living at home. They're not married. They don't have kids. And so, you know, some of them do have kids, but the vast majority do not, statistically. And so if the minimum wage is a little lower, then you could hire more young people, give more people that work experience, but you don't have to pay them as if they have kids to take care of because almost none of them do. And that makes a lot of sense to me. Though I think the minimum wage should be lowered to zero for everyone. The minimum wage should be

zero because the minimum usefulness for an employee is zero, if not actually in the negative, because an employee could cost you money without, you know, but let's just say for the sake of argument, it's zero. What I mean is there are some workers who simply aren't worth $15 an hour or 11 or 7 or 5. And I'm thinking, and when I say that, I don't mean all of the workers who work customer service

or behind a cash register. My point is I don't want to lump them all. When you talk about $15 minimum wage, you are lumping them all together. You're saying they're saying they're all worth exactly the same. Fifteen dollars. I don't think that. So when I, you know, if I go to Wendy's or something and I see, you know, someone who came to work without their shirt even tucked in, moping around, moving as slow as molasses, scowl on the face, making the whole experience miserable for everybody. everybody, you know, that is someone whose value to the company is simply the fact that they can push a button. And that's it. Because they bring nothing else to the table at all. And there are people like that, that we've all experienced. Not exerting themselves, not trying any.

They are not trying to do anything but just, and even pressing the button, they get wrong. And they do it as slow as they possibly can, almost like they're trying to make a point that they're not going to rush for you. you. And I think their pay should reflect that. I think that's fair. And it should reflect that in part so that the people who go the extra mile and work hard and exert themselves can be paid in a way that reflects that. As I've said before, I think the situation should be, the situation behind any fast food counter should be this, that there are people behind. Behind, that counter making 50 cents an hour, and there should be other people behind that counter who are making $30 an hour. That's what it should be. There should be, because that's how wide

the chasm is between the most on-the-ball employee and the least on-the-ball employee. That's how wide the chasm is. And I think the pay should reflect it. It shouldn't be that everyone who happens to work behind a cash register at a fast food place or at a mall food stand, they all get paid exactly the same because they're not all, they aren't all the same. So people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who want to, you know, raise the minimum wage, they can pretend to be the compassionate ones who are concerned about, you know, making sure people have more money and all that. But really, with the system I'm talking about, the people who really work hard in those jobs could make a lot more money than they do now. And they should.

All right, this is interesting. Jake Tapper's daughter, Alice, has apparently written a book called Raise Your Hand. And the book is encouraging girls to raise their hands in school. And she says there's a problem with girls not participating in school while boys do participate. And so here she is on CNN with her dad promoting the book. I have to tell you, I love the book. Thank you. And I love the story behind.

So just tell us how you came to write this. Well, I started noticing in class that the boys were raising their hands more than the girls. And the girls were just sitting there being silent. And I was scared myself to raise my hand. So I brought this up to my mom because I wanted to know if I was the only one. She told me to go ask my Girl Scout troop. So then I went to my Girl Scout troop to ask them if they've experienced the same and notices, notice that the boys were raising their hands more than the girls.

They said that they also experienced shyness when raising their hands. So I wanted to do something about that. So I had gotten in a meeting with the Girl Scouts Nation's Capitals Council, Lydia Sotomayn, and we discussed what we could do with this information. So I had the idea of making a patch for Girl Scouts to earn. Okay, I think it's great that she, wrote the book. I just want to be clear about that. I think it's great she wrote the book. I'm not criticizing her. The Girl Scout badge thing is great. Good stuff there. I do have to say, though,

my experience, this is what interested me about it. My experience was exactly the opposite of this. Exactly the opposite. As a student and now as a parent. As a student, my memory is that girls were almost always the ones who were raising their hands and participating. And it's usually the boys who, for various different reasons, were not participating, myself included. And I can say with my daughter, who's five years old, she is much more outspoken and wanting to participate in things and answer questions than her five-year-old brother, who himself is not some sort of, you know, shy, shrinking violent. I mean, but he, she's just more like that. So, and I thought this was kind of, uh, sort of accepted by everyone, this fact that girls are the ones who are raising their hands

and participating in school. And usually it's boys who are not. And it's boys who need to be encouraged to participate. So that's what, that's what interests me. I mean, you know, she, she's writing a book, great. Um, but obviously there are some, some publisher who thought, yeah, you know, we need a, we need a book specifically encouraging girls, which, which fine, I mean, you know, all that stuff is good. But I do, every time I see this kind of thing, I think, why don't, why is, why is it that all the encourage, I would get that Alice Tapper would, she's a girl herself, she wants to encourage her female classmates, great. But I would like to see some publishers maybe start publishing books encouraging boys specifically

in school because it seems like they are really the ones who need it most of the time. I mean, I guess there are some girls who are shy and don't participate in struggle. I don't deny that. But generally speaking, I mean, any measurable you look at will show you that it is definitely boys who struggle in the school system as opposed to girls. Boys are the ones who have the most problems. And you can look at that based on dropout rate, boy versus girl, look at, you know, average GPA, look at the ones who normally get suspended.

Look at the ones who are most likely to be diagnosed ADHD. It's just it's boys, boys, boys, boys down the line for those things. Disciplinary problems, usually boys. I mean, just across the board. So I would be interested for any teachers. I know that there are a fair amount of teachers to watch the show. I'll listen to the show. I appreciate that.

What's your experience? As I said, my experience is, it's almost always girls who are the ones who are participating and who seem to really enjoy school and are really, you know, into it, as opposed to boys. And so if you're a teacher, I'd be interested in your experience. Do you find that it's generally girls or boys? And it's not a competition, but I do think it's important because, as I said, there does seem to be a hole in the market here where there's always a ton of stuff encouraging girls. Awesome.

But I really think the guys need some encouragement, too. I really do, especially in school, because I think they're having a tough time, and they have been for a long time. And that tends to be ignored. All right, let's go check the inbox. Matt Wallshow at gmail.com. Matt Wallshow at gmail.com. This is from Brandon. It says, Matt, thank you so much for taking on the heaven, hell question today on your podcast.

I love your response, and I think the believers the world over need to revisit the shallow idea of who is in and who is out. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, Brandon. Your sentiments were not shared by everyone, as I will now demonstrate. From Laura, says, Matt, I enjoy listening to almost everything you speak about, but just cringe when you try to explain things about Christianity. Actually, I want to scream as I listen to your twisted view on many of those things. Please stick to politics or news or sports, et cetera, believe anything related to Christianity or the Bible for others. I really hope your listeners do their own studying and research and don't take you at your word. For example, the Bible explains very clearly how you get to heaven.

It doesn't say that as long as you love, you can go there. I realize that Catholics have a lot of twisted beliefs, as in infant baptism, communion, praying to Mary, etc. So please don't try to convince your listeners that what you believe is biblical. Please warn them that it is your beliefs and not biblical. Thanks, Laura. Well, thank you, Mom, for that, for that instruction from you. I do appreciate it. And thank you for telling me the things that I should talk about and the things that I shouldn't.

you know, that is, Laura, I would tell you, that that is the best way to get me to take you seriously is to start your email with, I am going to tell you the things you're allowed to talk about and the things that you won't. Here are the approved subjects, and this is unapproved. Stop talking about that. Especially when, you know, I've been doing this for five years and talking about faith has been like my main thing, but you're saying, no, don't talk about that anymore. So, again, very much appreciate it. The anti-Catholic stuff at the end, really solid as well. So just you really put that together in a way that's going to make me want to engage with you. I'm being very sarcastic. I just want to make that clear.

But Laura's email is representative. And just so you know, you know, if you do want to engage with someone on theology, it's probably best not to tell them at the start with that they shouldn't be talking about it. And then also to throw in, you know, those nasty little insults at the end. Lars E-mail is representative of many others I received. Here's the interesting thing, though. I posed a question on the show. Can love exist in hell? That was the question.

It's an interesting question, isn't it? That's all. It's a question, something we can talk about. Or is hell a place devoid of love? Can love exist in hell, or is it a place devoid of love? Those seem to be two mutually exclusive possibilities. Now, Laura, like many of the emails I received that were similar in tone, Laura made no attempt to answer that question or engage with it.

She didn't at all. She just said, stop talking about this. And I cannot tell you how much I despise that attitude. Not Laura, I don't despise you, Laura, but that attitude of, I'm not going to engage with what you said. I'm just going to tell you not to talk about it. I really hate that attitude. I think it's a contemptible attitude because we need to be talking about these things. So Laura's approach is just to shout about the Bible,

Oh, the Bible says this without providing any citations whatsoever, just to say the Bible says it, and then Bible says it, you're wrong, shut up. But I imagine that if I had simply stated, hell is. a place devoid of love. If I had just said that, and I just left it there, and I said, you know, hell is a place devoid of love, it's a place separate from love. Hell is a loveless place. If I had said all that, Laura and everyone else listening, everyone would have approved and they would have said, sure, yeah, I wouldn't have gotten any angry emails. Well, it's just when I tried to talk about what that might mean. See, it's easy to just say

something as just a talking point as a slogan and say, oh, there's no love in hell. Right. Okay, well, can we take it a step further and talk about what does that mean exactly? What do we do with that information? Where do we get that idea from? Or do you want to just stay on surface level? Because I think staying on the surface level, I don't see the point in that. I'd like to go deeper and talk about what these things mean. I could sit here all day and just shout Christian slogans at you, but I'm just have no interest in doing that. I want to talk about what does all that stuff mean. So, I say again, hell is either a place where love cannot exist or is a place where even the virtuous and loving may be tormented for all time. One of those answers is correct, right? Hell is devoid of love or does

not? If it is devoid of love, then we get back to my original question. What about someone who didn't come to know God in life, but did come to love as best they can, agape love, real love, not just emotional affection, but really came to love someone, someone else. They did come to love. They were capable of love. They were a loving person. What about someone like that? Will that loving person be cast into the furnace for all time? Can they be? I mean, logically, is it possible for if hell is a place without love, can love even, for lack of the better term, Can love even fit there? Can it exist there?

As I said, a lot of people criticized my thoughts on that. Very few actually attempted to answer the question. Laura says the Bible is clear about who goes to heaven. I find that most of the time when people start a sentence by saying, the Bible is very clear about blank, 95% of the time, that's a good indication that that person has never read the Bible, has never seriously studied it. Because the Bible is clear about some things, yes.

But on many things, the answer you get in the Bible is very complex and dense and sometimes confusing. And that's why theologians and philosophers have been studying it for thousands of years. And that's why, by the way, there are about 50,000 divisions in the church with everyone convinced of the rightness of their theological interpretation. Because actually, maybe it's not quite as simple as Laura here seems to think. I mean, at what point do you look around you and say, well, wow, I mean, all these people have vastly different interpretations of what they read in the Bible. is completely convinced that they're right. And so maybe, you know, we need to go back and look at it again. Maybe it's not quite that simple. Or it could be just that everyone is an idiot except for you. I mean, that's the other possibility. But, you know, I'm not going to make that assumption.

It's true that the Bible never says that loving people can't go to hell. The Bible never says a lot of things. There are a lot of things that we take for granted as being true that the Bible never says. I could sit here all day listing them. For instance, the Bible never says slavery is wrong. In fact, it arguably says the opposite. But we all agree that slavery is wrong, right? Unless you want to argue otherwise. You're not going to find any direct support for that in the Bible. You won't. That's a fact. But you feel confident making that statement. Why is that? As for hell, the Bible actually, through the vast majority of its pages, says nothing about hell.

And when I say the vast majority, through the entire Old Testament, which makes up most of the Bible, in terms of the quantity of pages, there is nothing about hell. Then Jesus comes, and he talks about hell quite a bit. I think he talks about hell more than he talks about heaven. So there's no question that as Christians we believe in that. because Jesus says it. But even when Jesus talks about hell, he uses several different words for it. He and he doesn't at any point say, okay, listen, here's how you go to hell, here's how you go to heaven, here's the fine print, here are all the particulars, I'm going to lay it all out for you. He doesn't do that. He really doesn't do that with hardly any topic at all. He does say this, though, in Matthew chapter 7.

He says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, we did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons of your name and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. And some interpretations have evil doers. Depart from me, you evil doers. So that's what Jesus, let's just look at this again. Jesus says, the ones that are getting kicked out here are the workers of lawlessness, and the ones who go in are the ones who do the will of my father in heaven.

Paul says this in 1st Corinthians. It said, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clinging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all. mysteries and all knowledge. And if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor, give over my body to hardship, that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Then it goes on, love is patient, love is kind. We know that part. It does not envy, it does not boast. I'm not going to skip over it, actually. It's beautiful. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not

easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil. but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Okay. So Jesus says that those who engage in empty acts of religious piety, those who profess faith, may be cast out. Paul says that it's a lack of love. which causes that emptiness. Paul also says that love is greater than faith. Faith is important, but love is greater. So, what about someone then who has no faith, but has the greater thing? What do we do about them? The person who declared faith in Jesus but was empty of love,

a whitewashed tomb, Jesus calls them at another point in scripture, could be sent to hell. what about someone who did not declare faith yet was full of love? I don't know, but it's an interesting question, isn't it? It's definitely a question that if you confront that question and you immediately go, that's stupid, no, then you're not taking it seriously. I don't think you're a serious person, frankly. And if you say the Bible is clear on that, then you haven't read it. The question is more complex than you understand in that case, and the Bible is more

complicated than you realize because I don't think you've seriously studied it. Keep in mind, as I said yesterday, that you cannot love without loving God. There is no such thing as love apart from God, really. Jesus says you only get to heaven through him. That part is clear, but is it possible to get there through him without realizing it. That's the question. I got a lot of email say, well, the Bible's clear. Jesus is the way the truth in life. Well, yeah, it is. But what does that mean, though. What does that consist of? Jesus is the door to eternal life, yes, but right, Jesus decides who goes to heaven. We all go through him. Is it possible for someone who didn't realize they were going to heaven through him to still do so? Is that a determination that Jesus can make? Are you prepared to

say that Jesus cannot make that determination? Are you prepared to declare that he never will and never did? I'm not. So is it possible to love God without being fully conscious of the fact that you are loving him? If God is love, then all love, true love, is of God. I didn't say that love is God. I said, all love is love is of God. All true love is of God. So it seems to me that a person may love with a love that is of God, which is just another way of saying it's actual real love, without being fully cognizant of it. And Jesus, who is the way the truth in the life, may admit someone through those doors

who will be surprised by the fact, and just as there are going to be people who expect to be admitted, but won't be. That's what I see in the text. And that's also, I think, a logical conclusion based on our understanding of hell. And that's when I say, I'm trying to... We can throw verses at each other all day,

but at a certain point, you've got to take the concepts and try to understand them. What does this actually mean? Keep something, one other thing here. If you're of the opinion that only those who consciously affirm Christ can go to heaven and that for some reason, that mental affirmation is all that matters, then as we've talked about before, by that logic, every dead baby is in hell, every single one.

Every Jew who died in the Holocaust is in hell. and many of the Nazis who sent them there are in heaven. Now, Nazism was not a Christian invention by any means. It was an atheist invention, but there's no question about the fact that many individual Nazis were Christian. And bad Christians, evil people, but Christian. So this is the implication of a belief that puts conscious affirmation of Christ as the highest and really only qualification. the problem is that belief not only leads to utterly monstrous conclusions, like the one that I've described here, but it simply doesn't wash with the two verses I just read.

You know, with Jesus there, that to me is the clearest statement in the Bible about how you get to heaven, is that right there, because it's from Jesus's mouth, and he's saying, here it is. But even that, it takes some understanding, you get to look at it in context and everything. So even that isn't quite as simple as it seems. but that's as simple as it gets. I think the problem is some people, they like to overlook what Jesus said on certain matters by finding various quotes in the Pauline epistles and then stitching together kind of a road to get around what Jesus said. But we could do that.

I mean, we can have a verse war like a food fight, fighting back and forth. Oh yeah, well, it says this here. It says that there. Back and forth. Here's my verse. Here's there. We can do that. You know, we can.

Or we can try to come to a more cohesive understanding of the entire text and of our faith. by dealing with these subjects on a deeper level, you know, and so that's what I choose to do. Let's see. I'm trying to see. I got a bunch of emails. I just spent way too much time on that one. From Jonathan, no offense, but after listening to your show today on said topic, I was wondering how much of the New Testament you've read. Jesus tells a literal story of a man that is in hell and looks up and begs Abraham to give him a drop of water. When Abraham refuses, the man selflessly, and I would say lovingly begs for his family to be warned, which is refused. That one story from Jesus himself completely contradicts your entire statement, which I would say is based purely on conjecture since you didn't quote one verse. That being said, keep up the interesting dialogue.

Jonathan, I don't mean to be pedantic, but that was not a literal story. It was a parable that Jesus told. And that's not just my assumption. There's definitely in context a parable. Jesus wasn't saying that this literal thing actually happened, and I'm telling you a biographical story about this guy, Lazarus. It was a parable. So the question is, what are we meant to learn from it? Is that the point that Jesus was trying to make, that a loving guy might go to hell?

No, I think exactly the opposite, actually. That story, I think, completely supports my point of view. How is it that the rich man ended up in hell? What did he do wrong? Was it that he didn't believe in God? No, that was never mentioned. Jesus never said anything about the rich man's faith. He ended up in hell because he was greedy and he was sitting at it.

his table, eating all the food, never feeding Lazarus. He showed no love or generosity to Lazarus. That's why he went to hell in the parable. He was an unloving, greedy person. That's how he ended up there. Never said anything about what he believed, anything about it said nothing about that. He got there because he was a greedy, selfish SOB. And I think that's the point that we get from that. I don't think the point was that he was really a loving guy, because if that's the case, then read the parable again. Well, then how did he end up there? Well, why was he there?

And we can be pretty sure it's not a literal story because I don't think that people in hell are actually carrying on conversations with people in heaven. I don't think it works that way, because in fact, in that parable, it says that there's an unbridgeable chasm between the two, which I think tells us that we're not, if you're in hell, you're not going to be carrying on conversations with the people who are not there. Finally, let's see, this is from Bryce says, Good Afternoon, Matt, your beard is weak, grow a bigger one. Bryce, I have received a lot of vicious hate mail in my day,

but that just is beyond the pale. And you know what it tells me? It tells me that you, Bryce, must not be a beardsman because a true beardsman would never beard shame another beardsman. So I think, Bryce, I think what's happening here is that you are a baby-faced, clean-shaven person, and you are trying to sow discord and division in the bearded community with that email. And I'm not going to fall for it. I just won't. How dare you?

I could grow up a little bit bigger. I think you're right about that. All right. We'll leave it there. Thanks, everybody for watching. Godspeed. Hey, everyone. It's Andrew Claven, host of the Andrew Claven Show. You know, young people have stopped mating.

They've stopped not just having sex, but stopped getting married. They're not having children. It's not a good thing. Does it have anything to do with leftism? You bet it does. I'm Andrew Claven. That's on the Andrew Claven show.