Highlight: Responding to "What is a Woman?"

Apologia Studios

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Let's get into the final part of the show today. Let's just respond for a few moments here to Matt Walsh. Matt Walsh got some criticism from people who said, you know, you didn't ground this in the authority of Christ in the

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Word of God. You didn't provide any real foundation yourself. And so while it was a good film, you really missed the mark here because you didn't ground it anywhere.

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You didn't provide any real foundation, no reference point. And that's an important critique because it actually is a very good critique.

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Philosophically speaking, it's a very, very good critique because the truth is that Matt Walsh, if he wants to detach this from the biblical worldview and the authority of Jesus Christ, then he's in the same position as the person with the beard and the long hair and the dress who is just one tribe arguing with another about what should be the case, not what ought to be the case, because an ought is an essential objective truth.

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You ought to do this. It is transcendent. It's above you. It's objective. It's outside of you. It's true whether you like it or not.

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And what this will amount to when you detach it from Christ and his authority is it's, well, what should be the case?

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We should have it male, female. We should have mommies and daddies and mother roles and father roles.

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We should, but not necessarily ought. It's just one tribe arguing with another. Well, and it's pragmatism.

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It's like whatever works, but that's just as subjective as whatever is true for me is true for me.

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It's just a preference. Yeah, it's just a preference. I prefer things that work well in the universe, but that's not grounded in any real reality.

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It's Christless conservatism. It's transformation apart from regeneration, and that's not possible.

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Real transformation is not possible apart from regeneration. Jesus said, you must be born again.

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If there is not a new birth, there is no real transformation. Here's Matt. I agree with the criticism made by Jason Whitlock and the commenter you responded to yesterday.

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Erasing God from the film is a fatal flaw. It's good, but it's good, but hard to recommend as you did not ground your message in scripture.

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Well, yeah, I read Jason's column. He wrote about the film and I texted back and forth with him a little bit about it. I'll be on a show,

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I think, in a couple of days, so we'll talk probably more about this. I just don't agree with the critique at all. Let me respond, first of all, to what you just said.

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Jason didn't say that I erased God, but that's what you're saying, and that's absurd. You cannot erase

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God if you're speaking truth. Any pursuit or defense of truth is not going to erase

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God, as you say, quite the opposite. How do you have truth apart from the one who's the embodiment of truth?

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Right. Now, this is a serious critique. It's an important critique. Philosophically speaking, it's devastating.

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You just said that there can be truth that is divorced from the true God, but God is the truth.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Jesus says,

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I am the way, the truth, and the life. And so, yeah, Matt, you understand that there are truths from scripture, and you would defend those truths.

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I wouldn't deny that you would defend those truths. You acknowledge there are truths from scripture that are out in the world you see around, and there's conformity there.

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You see those things. But the problem is you're talking to a world of people who are still dead in their sins and trespasses.

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The fundamental problem of humanity isn't just that people are mixed up about gender.

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It's that people are hostile to God. It's that people love darkness rather than the light. That's the message of Jesus.

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So, yeah, you can point out observational brute facts about the world to sinful people and say, look, isn't it obvious that one plus one equals two?

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That's built into the system. That's a universal invariant truth. But you're going to be talking to people who actually argue today because of what they've been indoctrinated with that, well, one plus one isn't necessarily two.

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Isn't that just white supremacy? Isn't that just from white colonialism? How do we know one plus one is actually two?

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What if it's four? Now, again, you could press on that and say, nobody builds bridges with that absurdity.

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No one builds bridges with that worldview. But the point is, is that you're talking to people who are rebellious and hostile to natural revelation and the way things are.

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The problem is deeper. It's deeper. It's not that people are basically good and they should be able to work these things out.

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Our reasoning faculties are completely, completely affected by our sins.

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Sin doesn't just affect you morally in terms of the decisions you're making with your genitals and all the rest and how you treat other human beings.

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Sin corrupts your reasoning faculties. You can't think properly. You can't reason. Jesus said to people, he was telling them who he was, who his father was, that he was a son of God, that he's the

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Messiah. He's telling him and telling him and telling him. And in John 10, after he's saying, I'm the good shepherd who lays his life down for the sheep, he says to people who then respond to him, they're like, tell us, stop keeping us in suspense.

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Are you the Messiah? Jesus says to them, I told you. He didn't say, oh shoot.

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I left that part out. I didn't tell you yet. No, they said, tell us, are you the

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Messiah or not? And he says, I told you. And the reason you can't hear me is because you are not of my sheep.

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My sheep hear my voice and they follow me. And so he's telling them truth. He's telling them, telling them, telling them.

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They can't hear because they don't have the ability, because of their sin, because of their rebellion, to actually embrace that truth.

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This is why you need regeneration. This is why it's a special act of the sovereign mercy and grace of God in a sinner's life.

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But the only way that a person is going to see their sin is if they're confronted by it with God's word.

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And that's where the call of the gospel is. Jesus doesn't send people on a mission in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, when he says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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He doesn't send them on a mission to go and preach a Christless conservatism. He doesn't go send people on a mission to just go make the world a better place.

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Apply some of these wise principles to the world, go sell those to the world. No, he tells his disciples to go make disciples and to baptize them and to teach them to obey.

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So Matt, whether you like it or not, even with all the great things about this film, whether you like it or not, if you divorce truth from the one who is the embodiment of truth, you don't have what you're looking for.

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It's always going to be just suspended in midair. And that's the problem. And so the critique of your film, Matt, it was right.