Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh Disagree Over Gay Marriage | Pastor Reacts

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I totally see the logic of Rogan's words here. I get it. Because his starting point is marriage is personal choice.

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It's pursuing what makes us happy and finding somebody else who shares those pursuits. That's marriage.

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Okay? If that's marriage, then yeah. Who cares if a heterosexual couple, a man and a woman, gets married or if a same -sex couple gets married.

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So I totally get the logic behind that. That's why it's so important. It's so imperative that we start a few steps back.

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Because once we do, once we begin identifying our distinctive starting points, both Christian and non -believer, then we can truly understand where we differ.

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There's an illustration here that I think is totally appropriate. And I'm going to share my illustration in just a moment, so stick with me.

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This video was suggested by some of you in the Wise Disciple community, so thank you for that.

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It's Joe Rogan versus Matt Walsh on the issue of same -sex marriage. Was the issue of marriage sufficiently defended by the

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Christian? Let's find out. If this is your first video with me, welcome, welcome. I'm glad that you're here. My name is

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Nate Sala, and I'm the president of Wise Disciple, where we're helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be.

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For the last number of years, I was a pastor at a local church here in Las Vegas, and so I'll be reacting to this video from my perspective as a pastor and a

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Bible teacher. So without further ado, let's just jump right in. I think of marriage as a certain thing, which is the context for procreation, for the building of the nuclear family.

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What about people that get married that don't have kids? Are you opposed to that? What if they get married, they decide, you know what, we don't need kids,

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I'm going to get fixed. You get your tubes tied, let's travel the world. Well, what do you mean, am I opposed to it?

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I mean, I think that every married couple should be open to life. But what if they don't want to?

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Are you opposed to them being married? If marriage is only for procreation and to bond a family together, what about people that are deeply in love that never want to have children?

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So a couple things right off the bat here, okay? First, it is very easy for someone like me or you watching this video to sit here when the spotlight is not on us and go, oh man, they're doing horribly, or oh wow, whatever, you know?

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This person should have said that instead of this or, you know, instead of what they actually said. No, it's an art to sit in the hot seat and take the questions and respond effectively.

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And you really don't know in the moment. You can plan as much as you want. You can prep. But you really don't know in the moment what's going to happen.

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What is going to come out of your mouth? Whether you're simply disagreeing with a friend in more like of an interpersonal interaction or you're on the debate stage during cross -examination.

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I say all of this to say it really does come down to preparation, right? You need to be prepared for these kinds of questions in advance, and I mean like role play these kinds of conversations out, so that whenever it should come up, you're ready to say not just anything, but the most effective thing.

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Having said that, I would not start off with procreation. Procreation, if that's how you lead off, narrows the discussion down way too drastically.

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In other words, you know, the reason that people get married is to produce children. Now, that's not exactly what

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Walsh said, but you see how Rogan zoomed in on that immediately. Because the first thing that Walsh talked about was procreation.

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That's why we shouldn't start off this way. We should start off two steps back and first talk about what marriage is and where we as Christians get this idea from.

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Those two issues should be the starting point for a discussion like this, because that's, I predict, that's the basis of this disagreement.

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Walsh has his own answers to what marriage is and where the idea of marriage comes from, and Rogan has his own answers, and so we need to start there.

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I don't think it's, it's not only procreation, but that is one of the fundamental definitional aspects of it.

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Of course, there's more to marriage just than that. And what about people that are infertile? They fall in love and they realize that they can have babies and they don't really necessarily want to adopt.

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And is that okay for them to be married? Because then you're, by definition, marriage falls into a completely different thing, because then it's a bond of love.

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It's a union of love. Right. But whose definition are we using? Rogan makes it seem like Walsh is using some arbitrary definition here, and the reality is, wait, isn't

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Walsh, he's a Catholic, right? So Walsh, I take it, doesn't make up his own definition of marriage arbitrarily.

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He gets it presumably from the same place that I get it, from the Bible. Why we're not talking about the

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Bible yet, I'm not sure, but hopefully we do, because that's where we need to go to properly understand this issue.

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I mean, that doesn't change the nature of marriage though. It's a little bit like I say that, what's the definition of a woman?

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Well, a woman is someone who by her nature can conceive children in her womb and bear children. And then the response is always, well, what about women who are infertile?

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Does that destroy your definition of woman? And it doesn't, because it's still a woman's nature to bear children.

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Not every woman will, and there will be disease and infertility and old age and all these things that will preclude that, but it's still of her nature to do so.

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And I would say the same thing for marriage. I mean, it is natural in a marriage for procreation to occur.

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It's not always going to happen in reality though, but that's still one of the natural functions of marriage.

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And married couples who can't conceive children, there are other ways to be parents, like adoption, for example.

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If they want to. Yeah, but same -sex couples adopt too though, right? So what are we really appealing to here?

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We need to start somewhere else as Christians when we get into these kinds of conversations.

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We have a totally different starting point than the non -believer. We begin with the existence of God and his word.

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Why? Because God defines marriage. He's defined it, he's designed it for a specific purpose, and he tells us what marriage is for.

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It's in line with his design for humanity. And also, marriage reflects eternal truth. The roles within marriage are a reflection of the

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Trinity, as well as Christ's relationship with his church. The non -believer has no basis for any of this.

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For the non -believer, it's, well, marriage is whatever I say it is. No, it's not. And as soon as you do that, as soon as you speak that way, you make it relative and subjective to individual definitions, then the institution of marriage becomes degraded.

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It becomes further and further defined until it has no significant meaning. If people want to be married and don't want to ever have children, are you opposed to them being married?

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I wouldn't advocate a law that would prevent it. But would it change the definition of what their marriage is to you because they don't want to have a family?

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They just want to have a loving bond? I think this would be a couple that is rejecting one of the fundamental aspects of marriage.

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They should be open to life. I would hope that in the future they would be.

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But isn't that just a personal choice? I mean, you can have a very fulfilling life if you just follow your pursuits and your dreams and your interests and you find someone that shares those interests with you and you share time together.

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It's very fulfilling and loving. And that's Rogan's starting point. His starting point is we start with personal choice and then we pursue whatever makes us happy and then we find someone else who shares the ideas that we think gives us happiness and then that's marriage.

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Meanwhile, we never once learned to submit to our spouses, to self -sacrifice.

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We never learned to submit to God or to the responsibilities inherent in real Christian marriage because once those hardships come in, as they typically do, and the proper response to those hardships is self -sacrifice for the husband, submission for the wife, right?

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And then submission to the Lord, both submitting to the Lord and His sanctification in your life. Well, then the response to that comes amicable divorce, right?

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We have unresolved differences. Why is that? Well, because I refuse to submit and self -sacrifice in the ways that marriage requires of me.

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Okay, then you don't know what marriage is. Again, it would be way better to start off with what marriage really is and what it's really for so that we can truly identify the differences between Christians and non -believers on this issue and so we can at least get a little bit closer to understanding our differences.

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It's a personal choice in that I'm not advocating for like a law that says if you're married, you have to have

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X number of kids. But then why are you opposed to two gay people doing that?

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Well, because again, it's not about choice. It's about what this institution, marriage as an institution, and what is it and what purpose does it serve?

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There you go. Now, let's get into that, all right? And I do not agree with tearing down or changing this definition, especially because the people who have changed the definition haven't come up with a new one.

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So they say, well, that's not what marriage is. So for thousands of years, we said marriage is the procreative union.

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And then we had the other side who came along and said, well... So look, I'm on Walsh's side, okay?

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So don't get me wrong. But to simply talk about marriage in this fashion is to, again, drastically reduce marriage down to something that then sets up the challenge against it coming from the other side.

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Well, marriage is about procreating and raising the next generation. Okay, same -sex couples can adopt children and raise them too, right?

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So where do we go from here? Not a lot of places to go, if that's our stock response.

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You know, the history of the church is replete with a recognition of the teaching of marriage and its theological echoes of God's revelation of himself and his relationship with the church.

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The more that we keep marriage about children, which, don't get me wrong, it is about children, but it's not just about that, because, and Rogan is already pointing this out, what happens when a couple is incapable of having children?

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If marriage is just about making children, then does that disqualify those couples who are incapable of producing them?

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What happens to couples that are past procreating age? You know, their children are grown up and they have their families on their own now, they've moved out.

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What does the older couple do? Are they no longer married? Of course not. That's why we need to understand marriage from a biblical perspective, which is much bigger than what

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Walsh is offering at the moment. We need to do this so that non -believers truly understand where we're coming from.

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By the way, do you think Rogan right now understands the real issue that Christians have with same -sex marriage? Let me know in the comments below,

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I'd love to get your thoughts on that. I don't think he does. I don't think he understands the real issue.

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So I don't really blame him, like, 100 % on his pushback here, I just don't think he sees the broader issue.

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Well, it's not that. Okay, well then, like, what is it exactly? And I know you said, well, it's people who love each other, two people love each other.

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Well, but then why two people? Why do they have to love each other? All these kinds of questions, you get into, what if they're in the same family?

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What if brothers and sisters want to marry? And I know every time that comes up, the advocates for gay marriage will say, well, that's a slippery slope argument, that's a fallacious, but it's actually not.

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It's like, we're trying to get to what do you even think this institution is now, since you've rejected out what we were saying it was.

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And I've never found a compelling definition. And any definition offered, it's like, well, what's even the point then?

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Why do we even need that? Yeah, but what is the Christian definition, though? So we skipped that part.

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We're hearing the other people not give a definition. What was our definition, though? I haven't heard that yet.

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I just don't see how a gay marriage in any way damages a straight marriage.

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I don't see it at all. It doesn't make any sense to me. It just seems to me that people want to be... Look, if you wanted to look at logic, especially in our modern society, which is pretty fucked when it comes to relationships, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 % of all marriages end in divorce anyway.

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They don't make it. I don't know if anything would damage marriage and damage the institution of marriage as the option of divorce.

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I don't think gay people and gay people getting married in any way, shape or form changes a bond that you have with your wife.

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It's just called marriage. It's a human invented thing. If we decide that gay people can get married too,

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I just don't see how it damages anything. Okay. Affirmation time. I totally see the logic of Rogan's words here.

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I get it. Because his starting point is marriage is personal choice.

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It's pursuing what makes us happy and finding somebody else who shares those pursuits. That's marriage.

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Okay. If that's marriage, then yeah. Who cares if a heterosexual couple, a man and a woman, gets married or if a same -sex couple gets married?

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So I totally get the logic behind that. That's why it's so important. It's so imperative that we start a few steps back.

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Because once we do, once we begin identifying our distinctive starting points, both

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Christian and non -believer, then we can truly understand where we differ. There's an illustration here that I think is totally appropriate.

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And I'm going to share my illustration in just a moment. So stick with me. I don't think it tears down the definition of marriage in any way.

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It just opens up the possibility that people who are gay won't be discriminated against. Yeah. I don't think that a gay couple existing directly impacts, you know, there's a gay couple and you know, wherever.

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And I'm with my wife in our house, like obviously there's not. But I'm talking about,

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I'm not talking about on the individual level, I'm talking about on the societal level. I would agree that divorce, especially, you know, there's no fault divorce, rampant divorce.

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I don't think it's as high as 50%. I know that that's often quoted. I'm not sure where that comes from. But it is high.

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It's like, it's too high. Chris Rock has a great joke about that. He said, those are just the people with the courage to get out. It's like how many cowards stay.

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But it's also true that the advocates for what we call now traditional marriage, which

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I just call marriage, but the advocates for traditional marriage put themselves at a disadvantage by allowing, especially in the churches, like allowing this rampant divorce to occur.

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And then you've already sort of given up on some, marriage is supposed to be monogamous and permanent as well as procreative.

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Well, you've given up monogamy and permanence. And so now it's not, that's two of the three legs gone.

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And so now this assault was waged on the procreative part of it. And it was just, it was difficult to withstand it because the institution had already been weakened.

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So I agree with you there. But my answer to that is to try to reinforce what marriage is, not to just give up on it entirely.

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And I still think you're left with this question of like, if marriage is not what

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I'm saying it is, then what, why do we even need it? What's the point? I mean, you're saying it's a, it's a manmade institution, but you're also like the way that you're presenting it, it's a, it's also, it's a totally meaningless institution.

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No, you don't need it at all. No, it's not meaningless because it means something to the people that get married.

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So it's just, it's just a subjective symbolic thing. I mean, what, yeah. So if you're kind of what it is, look, there's a massive responsibility when you're married and when you have children to keep your family together and you raise and keep everybody happy and healthy and there's great reward to that, but it doesn't always work out.

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It's not, it's not a, it's people change. People are fucked up. That doesn't, it doesn't always work.

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And so I don't think it should be outlawed because 50 % of the people fall apart. Just like,

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I don't think it has any effect whatsoever on a straight couple. If a gay couple decides that they want to make it official and that's what it is to them.

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It gives them a feeling that, that they're accepted and appreciated and that they're not discriminated against because they happen to be homosexual.

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Right. And so I just don't think that Rogan is thinking this through. So here's my illustration.

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Imagine if Joe Rogan was an instructor of Brazilian jujitsu and I show up across the street and I break ground on a new facility, a new

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Brazilian jujitsu dojo and the building is going to be bigger and better and all that stuff.

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Right. They call them dojos. Right. I don't know much about jujitsu. Okay. So I break ground.

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I build a new facility right across the street. When it's fully built, I walk over to Rogan's dojo and I'm wearing an instructor outfit and a black belt.

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And I say to Rogan, Hey, just want to introduce myself. I'm also an instructor and a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu.

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As a matter of fact, I got my black belt in three days. What do you think Rogan is going to say?

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If he's feeling gracious, he's probably going to say something like, how the heck did you get your black belt in three days, bro?

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Because he knows that's impossible. And then I would say, well, you know what, at our facility,

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Brazilian jujitsu is based on personal choice and pursuing what makes us happy. And we get together with other people who share our pursuits and look, we do the same things that you do.

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Okay. We're, we're meeting in a dojo. We're wearing the same proper outfits. We even get on mats and we spar, but sparring to us is getting two people on a mat and just, you know, doing what makes them happy.

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So sometimes we spar. We have, we have on the mat, we have hotdog eating contests. Okay. Whoever eats a hundred hotdogs in five minutes or less wins.

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What do you think Rogan is going to say at that point? That's not Brazilian jujitsu, right?

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But then I say, well, who is this hurting? If I want to get together and eat 100 hotdogs in five minutes or less and call that Brazilian jujitsu, who am

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I hurting exactly? You see where this is going? It's not hurting Joe Rogan that people would do this kind of thing, technically.

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By the way, watch out now, now that I've described this particular form of martial art, it's probably going to happen.

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Right? Because that's just where we seem to be as a society right now. Okay. Let's be honest. But the point is, it would be hurting the institution of Brazilian jujitsu, right?

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In terms of what it really is and what it's really for. Nobody's stopping anybody from, from getting together and eating a hundred hotdogs in under five minutes.

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The problem comes in when you try to call it something that it's not. Because the thing that you're using to describe it is a word that stands for an institution that actually means something.

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It actually provides meaning in the institution itself for those who practice within that institution.

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Now, fast forward 10 years, and now let's say there are 50 ,000 new Brazilian jujitsu dojos where people go and they have hotdog eating contests, right?

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What happens if Rogan says, you know what, Nate's not doing real Brazilian jujitsu.

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I am. And then I turn around and I sue Rogan for spreading hate against me and my students.

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And it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court such that Rogan, because the Supreme Court signs with us, now

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Rogan can no longer say that my Brazilian jujitsu is not legitimate. Now Rogan can't even speak in public on these issues.

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He has to stay quiet or be considered someone who's spreading hate. And what if it's more than that?

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What if Rogan wants to preserve the institution that he knows leads to spiritual and physical transformative benefits for its practitioners, and he desires to train up his children in the ways of real

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Brazilian jujitsu, but because I've removed any teaching of real Brazilian jujitsu in all schools and colleges and made it so that nobody can even mention it in social media or online or basically anywhere in the public square, is he really going to think to himself, wow,

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Nate's Brazilian hot dog eating jujitsu has had no effect whatsoever? Of course he's not going to think that.

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What you're articulating to me is the damage that's done by gay marriage to the institution of marriage.

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But how has it done? How has that in any way damaged straight people? Because we are making the institution meaningless.

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But it's not meaningless. It's very meaningful to the people that have it. It's subjective, symbolic, and it's about your own personal feelings.

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Isn't it though? Well, no. I would say that it's not. Well, if it's not subjective and it's not symbolic, it codifies and protects and gives a name to a thing that actually exists, which are, you know, man, woman, couples creating people, creating babies.

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But not always. I'm starting to think that Walsh maybe doesn't understand the theological depths of marriage either.

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I mean, he's had multiple opportunities now to think about the theology of marriage proper, and he just won't talk about it for some reason.

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Okay, maybe he's, and this happens, maybe he's just stuck on one particular strategy. This is my talking point.

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This is what I want the takeaway to be. So he's just going to stick with that. And that's his decision. So maybe he does know about these things.

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But let me just say this. I think we all need to be aware of why Christians revere marriage, what they think it is, where they get this from.

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Even if you disagree at the end of the day, it would just help conversations like these like to be way more effective.

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Right. But again, that's still the nature of the union. But what are the percentage of people today that are married that don't have children?

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I bet it's pretty high amongst heterosexuals. Probably. Probably. Is there something wrong with that?

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I think there is something wrong with that. I think there is something wrong with, you know, getting married and saying, we're just, we don't, we're not gonna have any kids at all.

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But why is there something wrong with that if someone's personal choice, why would that, why is it wrong that two people are like, you know,

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I am deeply committed to work and I don't want to sacrifice any of my career and I don't want to ruin a kid because I'm constantly at the office, but that's where I get deep satisfaction and that's what

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I'm focused on. You hear the, yeah, the focus, you hear it, right? And the woman says, that's great because I don't want children either.

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I really am attached to my interests and my career and what I like to do. That's not damaging your relationship with your wife and your family.

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I don't certainly, I certainly don't think of it as a threat to my marriage or my family. Yeah, it's, uh, it is a personal choice, right?

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But shouldn't people be allowed to make those personal choices? Like, isn't that a fundamental aspect of what it means to be

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American to have that freedom? Well, right. Yeah. But right now we're not talking about what people are allowed to do. I'm not saying that we're talking about marriage, gay marriage.

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Okay. We were just discussing straight couples who choose not to have kids. That's also a personal freedom issue, isn't it?

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Yeah. And I'm not saying that straight couples should be legally required to have kids, but I, you know, if you're asking me, do

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I think it's the right choice to just get married and choose not to have kids ever? I do not think that that's the right choice.

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It might, it's their, it's their choice, but people can make choices that are wrong. And you can disagree. How is it wrong if they have a fulfilling and wonderful life together with that choice?

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If their, their thing is that they just want to have a bond between the two of them to just like take it to the next level, let everybody know, like we are married.

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If I die, my money's going to go to Helen. And if Helen dies, you know, I, you know,

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I'm going to mourn her because she was my wife and now I'll be a widower. Like to some people, that distinction gives them peace and security and makes them feel better about the relationship that they're both so committed that they've legally signed documents that say that they're bound by law and under the eyes of God or whatever you believe in.

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Yeah. They're, they're able to make that choice, but I think you're, you're still rejecting one of the purposes of marriage.

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And in the scenario that you just outlined, you're also deciding to live a really self -centered life.

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You're saying, what if you're not, what if you're working? Okay. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it.

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I got it. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.

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Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.

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In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church because we are members of his body.

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Therefore, now this goes back to Genesis, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

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The bottom line is marriage speaks theology. When a man marries a woman, they are speaking with their actions that God exists and that his design for our lives is good and that we will reflect him through our marriage.

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Does marriage come with certain functions, one of them the production of children? Yes, but marriage cannot be reduced down to that one function.

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It is so much more than that if you take Christianity seriously. That's what's missing in a lot of these kinds of conversations, a fundamental understanding of what marriage is and its purpose, which is marriage is a covenant agreement between God and the man and the woman, the husband and wife, to leave father and mother and become one flesh and to reflect the image of God in marriage.

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Can same -sex couples do that? No. If they are actively pursuing the things that the

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Bible says are antithetical to God and his design for us, no, they can't do that. What's your take on this discussion,

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Christians? Did Walsh do a good job? Did he speak in the most effective way possible on this issue? How do you think

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Rogan did as well in this discussion? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you to the people who suggested that I react to this.

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This wasn't even on my radar and then all of a sudden it was, so thank you for that. I'm usually the last to know about these things.

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If you have more videos, ideas along these lines, keep them coming. Let me know in the comments.

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As always, I sincerely hope that there was something here that blessed you and got you thinking. I'm going to take a break and return soon with more videos.