Joe Rogan vs. Matt Walsh on Gay Marriage: Pastor Jeff Durbin Reacts
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Pastor Jeff responds to a clip from The Joe Rogan Podcast where Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh try to answer the question 'What is a Marriage?'.
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- 00:00
- Hi, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin, and I'm here today to review and respond to the really well -known discussion fairly recently between Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh.
- 00:11
- And so, Joe and Matt Walsh disagree over gay marriages, where you can find the video on PowerfulJRE.
- 00:18
- And I wanted to start this conversation by talking about really something that I think is really important, and that's that I really enjoy listening to Joe Rogan.
- 00:28
- Obviously, he's not a believer. He has even said some pretty wild things about the
- 00:34
- Bible, things that are actually not true. And it's sort of out of character for him in terms of he seems to be the kind of man who wants to dig into evidences and find out what's actually true, and he's made some pretty audacious claims about Scripture.
- 00:48
- So we're going to deal for a moment here, talking about Joe and Matt Walsh disagreeing over the issue of gay marriage.
- 00:58
- The Joe Rogan Experience. I think of marriage as a certain thing, which is the context for procreation, for the building of the nuclear family.
- 01:11
- 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,
- 01:17
- 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?
- 01:22
- I think that every married couple should be open to life. But what if they don't want to?
- 01:28
- Are you opposed to them being? So it's right to ask the question, why? Why do you think that,
- 01:35
- Matt? And Joe could have reasonably asked the question, like, why do you think that married couples should be open to having children?
- 01:43
- Who really gets to define what marriage actually is? Who created this institution? Is it just humans in history that just sort of decided, you know, we think that marriage should be between, you know, a guy and a girl, a man and a woman, and, you know, it's worked for us pretty well so far, and there's some, you know, positive benefits to marriage, like it's the only way you can propagate the human species, you know, that sort of a thing.
- 02:06
- So as you enter into this discussion, you see the discussion going on between Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh.
- 02:13
- One of the things to notice from a Christian perspective is that Matt Walsh will not stand in the place that, say,
- 02:20
- Jesus stands in terms of a definition of marriage. What is marriage?
- 02:25
- Matt Walsh is famous for asking the question, what is a woman? In this case, the question is, what is a marriage?
- 02:32
- And Matt Walsh says that he believes in Jesus. He is a Roman Catholic, professing
- 02:37
- Roman Catholic, but what he won't do is actually stand on the words of Jesus. And, of course, somebody could come back and say, well,
- 02:44
- Joe Rogan doesn't believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord. He doesn't believe that Jesus is God. And my response to that is, okay,
- 02:52
- I understand that, but that's ultimately irrelevant in terms of the question of what is truth.
- 02:58
- If Jesus is who he claimed to be, if Jesus is God incarnate, if he's
- 03:04
- God in human flesh, then Jesus is the one who created the universe. He created humanity, and Jesus created the institution of marriage.
- 03:13
- So I think that it'd be important for us to actually bring the words of Jesus into this discussion, if Jesus is the one who created the institution of marriage, which is actually the truth, and it is actually what
- 03:24
- Matt Walsh believes. Matt Walsh would affirm that. I'm assuming he would. He would affirm that Jesus Christ is
- 03:29
- God incarnate, because he's Roman Catholic and Trinitarian, and he would affirm that Jesus is the creator, and he's the one who created the institution of marriage.
- 03:37
- But in this social discussion, this discussion about ethical oughts, what ought we to do, and defining marriage,
- 03:45
- Matt Walsh won't actually stand on Scripture. He wants to appeal to sort of neutrality, and let's see where the evidence takes us.
- 03:52
- The problem is, Jesus says, you're either with me or you are against me. There's no neutrality with Jesus.
- 03:59
- Christ is either Lord of all, or he is not Lord at all. And if Jesus is
- 04:04
- Lord of all, and if he's God incarnate, then he has the right, by nature of who he is and what he's done, to define what marriage actually is.
- 04:13
- And so what's really important in this discussion is, if you're talking to an unbeliever, is ask the question, well, you reject
- 04:20
- Scripture. You reject Jesus Christ as God in the flesh. So the question I have to ask of you in this discussion is, how are you able to defend any position at all?
- 04:32
- Because if all of us are simply cosmic accidents and in a different universe, if, like Richard Dawkins says, and it's one of my favorite quotes from Dawkins, there is no good, there is no evil, there is only blind and pitiless indifference.
- 04:47
- If that's actually true, then why are we having this discussion about what ought to be the case? Isn't it just sort of every man for himself?
- 04:54
- I mean, ultimately, isn't the real issue of humanity is that it's red in tooth and claw, and that it's might for right?
- 05:02
- It's whoever ultimately survives and has the power? I mean, how are we talking about moral oughts as though there were some justification to defend you ought to do this or that?
- 05:15
- So this issue in this discussion has Christ and God's Word taken completely out of the picture.
- 05:22
- And the problem with that is, from an epistemological, how do you know something, or a philosophical perspective, we've taken out the foundation.
- 05:32
- What is truth? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the
- 05:37
- Father, but by me. And when God incarnate talked about marriage in Matthew 19, it's really important.
- 05:45
- He defines it. He says in verse four, chapter 19 of Matthew, he says, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
- 06:02
- So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.
- 06:09
- So when Jesus defines marriage, he says from the beginning, you're going to hear in this video that Matt Walsh actually says for thousands of years, we've defined it as humanity as this marriage, one man, one woman, the benefits of procreation and all the rest.
- 06:25
- But the way that Jesus addresses the question of marriage when he's challenged in a question of divorce in his day is he says, have you not read that from the beginning, from the very beginning,
- 06:35
- God created the male and female and that a man shall leave his father and mother. There's another two that were one and he shall cling to his wife, become one flesh.
- 06:45
- What God has joined together, let no man separate. So for Jesus, when Jesus is asked a question about marriage, he goes back to the scriptures and says, have you not read what was spoken by God?
- 06:56
- This is God's word. And God said from the very beginning, he created male and female to bring them together to become one flesh.
- 07:03
- God is the one who created male and female. He defines those positions and he created the institution of marriage.
- 07:10
- The two shall become one flesh. And of course, God says, and be fruitful and multiply.
- 07:16
- So of course, one of the parts, it's not what marriage is just for procreation.
- 07:23
- There's so much more to marriage biblically than that. Male, female, harmonious relationships, the relationships they have to one another, to bless one another, to bless the family, to bless culture and society around them.
- 07:33
- And of course, the benefit of heterosexual marriage, male, female, is that it happens to be the only way you can propagate the human species through male and female sexual union.
- 07:46
- And so the issue here is really an issue of authority. That's the question. Who's in charge of this discussion?
- 07:52
- Is it Joe Rogan? Is he in charge of the discussion and defining things and giving us a definition of the ought?
- 07:59
- Is it Matt Walsh? Is it current modern American society that determines the ought around marriage?
- 08:07
- Is it the last 500 years? Is it the last thousand years? Because if we say that we can define something as an ought, you ought to do this and this is the way it ought to be.
- 08:18
- If we say that we can define it based upon consensus, right? A lot of people have said, then we're going to have a real problem bringing any reformation or change in any place that we're at when we believe that.
- 08:29
- For example, if we say, well, you know, a lot of people believe this and they defined it this way and so that's what's moral.
- 08:39
- Then go back to the days of slavery, there was a lot of people saying that you can enslave our black brothers and sisters, kidnap and enslave them.
- 08:46
- And it was a moral right to do that. And if you say that, well, we have a lot of people who say so, then you can't argue against slavery in the 19th century.
- 08:56
- That's not how they argued against slavery, by the way, the Christian abolitionists argued against slavery on the basis of the authority of the word of God.
- 09:02
- So this is ultimately a question of authority and Matt Walsh in his apologetic methodology, how he engages this with Joe, Matt Walsh won't actually appeal to the authority of God's word and Holy Scripture.
- 09:16
- Although Matt Walsh, if you asked him, do you believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate and that his word is true?
- 09:21
- He would tell you, yes, but he won't stand on that as an epistemological foundation of how do
- 09:26
- I know this is true when he's debating with somebody who's an unbeliever. And again, somebody could say, well, Joe Rogan doesn't believe in Holy Scripture.
- 09:33
- And with regard to the question of what's actually true, it's irrelevant that Joe Rogan doesn't accept it.
- 09:40
- There's lots of things that people in the world today don't accept that are actually true. Their lack of acceptance of something doesn't change the nature of truth.
- 09:49
- It's true whether you like it or not. And so what we shouldn't do as Christians is have this debate divorced from the authority of Scripture, God's word and Jesus Christ.
- 10:00
- Jesus Christ defines what marriage is. He's God. And so he has the ultimate right to define it and to say, this is true about it.
- 10:09
- 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?
- 10:18
- So really important. Marriage is not only about procreation from the
- 10:23
- Christian perspective. It's not just about procreation. Procreation is an aspect of marriage.
- 10:29
- It's an aspect of marriage that, again, we can only propagate the human species with heterosexual marriage, male -female union.
- 10:38
- It doesn't happen any other way. But it's not simply about the propagation of the human species. It's not just about children.
- 10:44
- It's a blessing. It's a call toward the married couple to build the families and to create this new little world and build from that.
- 10:52
- However, what's really important to recognize is that Scripture is plain and very clear, in many ways vividly clear, about human marriage between male and female, not just being about procreation.
- 11:04
- It's actually about enjoyment of one another, pleasure in one another sexually. I was just preaching a sermon yesterday in the book of Proverbs, and God plainly says there in the book of Proverbs that one of the most important aspects of fidelity in a marriage is to actually enjoy with fidelity your spouse and to do it physically and to do it always.
- 11:28
- And so procreation is a blessing, a benefit, a part of the marital institution, but it is not actually the thing, the defining thing.
- 11:38
- It's an aspect of it. I don't think it's, it's not only procreation, but that is one of the fundamental definitional aspects of it.
- 11:48
- 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.
- 11:55
- And they don't really necessarily want to adopt. And is that okay for them to be married? Because then you're, by definition, marriage falls into a completely different thing.
- 12:04
- Because then it's a... Well, Matt was right to point out, well, that's not the only thing that's an aspect of marriage. And then
- 12:09
- Joe brings up the fact that, well, what about somebody that, you know, can't have kids? And we have to recognize that sometimes in this fallen world, people are providentially hindered from being able to have children.
- 12:20
- But the truth is only male -female unions can have children.
- 12:25
- Marriage is not just about procreation, but only male and female sexual relationships can procreate.
- 12:33
- And, of course, a couple, male and female, being hindered, providentially hindered from having children doesn't change the nature of the definition of what marriage is.
- 12:45
- And I just want to make a point here on that. That even the word marriage is about bringing two things or more together in union with each other.
- 12:55
- But those things are different. You can't marry things together that are the same thing.
- 13:00
- That's just the same thing. So, you know, I don't marry in a pot of stew, salt, right?
- 13:08
- In terms of salt with more salt is just salt. It's the same substance. You marry different things together when you are creating something to bring it into union.
- 13:18
- You can't marry something that is the same. And so even definitionally, marriage by definition is not the same thing with the same thing.
- 13:28
- It is multiple things, two things that are different coming together in union with each other.
- 13:35
- It's a bond of love. It's a union of love. Sure. I mean, that doesn't change the nature of marriage, though.
- 13:43
- It's a little bit like I say that what's the definition of a woman? Well, a woman is someone who by her nature can conceive children in her womb and bear children.
- 13:53
- And then the response is always, well, what about women who are infertile? Does that destroy your definition of woman?
- 13:58
- And it doesn't because, you know, it's still a woman's nature to bear children.
- 14:04
- Not every woman will. And there will be disease and infertility and old age and all these things that will preclude that.
- 14:10
- But it's still it's still of her nature to do so. And I would say the same thing for marriage.
- 14:16
- I mean, it's it is natural in a marriage for procreation to occur. It's not always going to happen in reality, though, but that's still that's still one of the natural functions of marriage and marriage.
- 14:28
- And something to point out here in terms of the definition of a woman, God defines male female relationships.
- 14:37
- God embeds the distinctions between male and female into nature itself, into our own biological structure.
- 14:45
- But what a woman is and what a man is, is actually more it's fuller than that in Scripture.
- 14:52
- It's not simply you are your biology, male or female. Of course, that's an aspect of it.
- 14:59
- But in terms of the definition of the role of woman and man, that's something that the Bible is explicit on as well in terms of the differing roles between the male and female relationship.
- 15:10
- And so there's more to the definition of a woman or a man from a biblical perspective.
- 15:16
- It's it's something that comes with an authority. God defines it. God created it. God defines it.
- 15:21
- He says, this is what I call a woman and this is what the woman is made for. These are her gifts.
- 15:27
- This is her beauty and the man. This is what I made him for. And these are his roles and responsibilities. And so biblically speaking, when you use the authority of Scripture, you get more than just the biology that's in front of you.
- 15:39
- And the fact that this is somebody who is capable of having children, that's an aspect of what it means to be a woman.
- 15:45
- But there's more when you use the authority of Scripture in terms of definitions, what ought to be the case with a woman in terms of her roles and the definition and all that she's been made for.
- 15:55
- And so the same thing goes for marriage. God defines it. God created it. God gives it a role.
- 16:01
- God says what it's supposed to do, what it's supposed to look like. And you have to stand there in the authority of Scripture. And again,
- 16:06
- I'll say this again. When you're having this discussion with an atheist or an unbeliever who believes that we live in a universe that's cosmically indifferent and that it's just there's no meaning and no purpose, no order, no creator, creation, distinction.
- 16:20
- The question has to be asked, well, why are we having this debate about what ought to be the case? Your worldview can't justify any ought whatsoever.
- 16:29
- Couples who can't conceive children, there are other ways to be parents, like adoption, for example.
- 16:35
- If they want to. Right. But if people want to be married and don't want to ever have children, are you opposed to them being married?
- 16:43
- Well, I'm not, I'm not, I wouldn't advocate a law that would prevent it. But would it change? No, it's still a marriage because marriage is defined by God as one man, one woman, two becoming one flesh.
- 16:55
- And the issue of having children, procreation is an aspect of marriage, but it's not the entire thing.
- 17:05
- So there are a man and a woman in a union, which is an actual marriage. And depending on their circumstances, if they're just really defiant saying, you know,
- 17:15
- I hate kids or I don't really want kids or I find kids to be a burden, then there are marriage that is face planting.
- 17:21
- They're a marriage that is dealing with a lot of selfishness. They are a marriage that is losing a tremendous gift and a blessing and a privilege.
- 17:30
- And it's still a marriage though. It's still one man, one woman together becoming one flesh. God created the institution, it's still a marriage.
- 17:37
- It's a marriage that is falling short and has a huge lack. If it is the case that you have people who are just being very stubborn, very selfish and saying,
- 17:47
- I don't like kids, I don't want kids, I find them to be a burden and trouble. I'd rather just live my own life and just enjoy myself and seek my own and for the rest of my life.
- 17:59
- And so I would say it's still a marriage. It's a marriage that needs a lot of help. The definition of what their marriage is to you because they don't want to have a family.
- 18:06
- They just want to have a loving bond. I think this would be a couple that is. So I have a loving bond with a lot of the people who are working here.
- 18:15
- I have a loving bond with our technical staff. I have a loving bond with the people who come in here on a regular basis.
- 18:22
- I have a loving bond with my son, with my daughter, with my sons and daughters, my grandkids.
- 18:30
- I have a loving bond with them, but I'm not married to them. So when we say, well, it's just a loving bond, let's call it marriage, where do we stop with that?
- 18:39
- I mean, if you're, if you're going to say that this idea, this institution of marriage is just something that, you know, we create and it's just sort of willy nilly.
- 18:46
- It really has no, no borders around it, no real definition to it other than it's just a loving bond.
- 18:53
- Well, okay. So if I have a loving bond with a friend, my best friend, that's a very loving bond.
- 19:00
- I'm committed to that friend, you know, for life as a good friend, I'm going to be a good faithful friend. I'm going to serve that person.
- 19:07
- I have a loving bond. Is that also a marriage? What if I have a loving bond with multiple women?
- 19:13
- Is polygamy moral? Is polyamory moral? What if I have a loving bond with an animal?
- 19:21
- Let's say I have a loving bond with a cow, a loving bond with some other object.
- 19:27
- Is that also a marriage? And I think we can understand, no, it's not a marriage at all. Rejecting one of the fundamental aspects of marriage and that they should be, they should be open to life.
- 19:41
- I would hope that in the future they would be, but. But isn't that just a. Who says? It's really important because what
- 19:46
- Matt Walsh is saying is true. They need to be open to this gift and this blessing of having children.
- 19:52
- So there's no chastisement here on Matt Walsh for what he's saying there in terms of they should be open.
- 19:58
- But you can ask the question and Joe can rightly ask the question to Matt Walsh there and say, who says?
- 20:05
- You're saying they should be open. Who says? Matt Walsh? Who put
- 20:11
- Matt Walsh in charge? Who put Joe Rogan in charge? Who's in charge here is the question.
- 20:18
- And by what standard are we actually going to engage in this discussion? Where's the foundation?
- 20:23
- Is it just your word versus his word and her word versus his word? Who's in charge here is the question.
- 20:29
- And so Matt Walsh is making a very solid claim. These couples, male and female, that are together in a marriage need to be open to having children.
- 20:36
- Right. Matt's right about that because Matt has been influenced by the scriptures and the Christian worldview.
- 20:41
- But he has to have a foundation. So see, Matt Walsh thinks a lot of the people that he talks to, and he's right, they're standing on sand.
- 20:49
- There's no foundation to what they're saying. They're living in absurdities. And that's, he's right about that. But the problem is, is that when
- 20:56
- Matt Walsh refuses to have this discussion, standing on the authority of Jesus Christ and God's holy word, then
- 21:03
- Matt Walsh is also on sinking sand. He has no foundation either. Personal choice.
- 21:09
- I mean, you can have a very fulfilling life if you just follow your pursuits and your dreams and your, your interests, and you find someone that shares those interests with you and you share time together.
- 21:21
- It's very fulfilling and loving. Yeah. It's a, it's a personal, it's a personal choice and that I'm not. Sounds like a friendship. I mean, it doesn't need to define a friendship there, but is that friendship a marriage?
- 21:32
- The question has to be asked in terms of covenant. What marriage is, is a covenant.
- 21:39
- It's a covenant agreement between male and female to be together. You're making an oath.
- 21:45
- You're swearing a promise that I am yours and you are mine for life. We are our only thing.
- 21:52
- And we're married to each other and to the degree that even the parts fit perfectly, they're made for one another and the two become actually one physically, intimately together as one.
- 22:06
- There's something deeper in marriage, something more beautiful, more profound in marriage from a biblical perspective with the authority of Jesus Christ than just sex, than just kids, than just a mutual bond.
- 22:19
- It is something so much fuller, so much more comprehensive and powerful. And of course you have to, to look at the foundation.
- 22:27
- The reason why is because it's an institution created by God. He defines it. He says what it actually is.
- 22:33
- Not advocating for like a law that says that you, if you're married, you have to have, you have to have X number of kids.
- 22:40
- But then why are you opposed to two gay people doing that? Well, because, because again, it's,
- 22:46
- Because it's not a marriage. Because it's not a marriage. It's two, it's, it's two that are the same coming together.
- 22:54
- That's not two different things coming together and marrying and becoming one. And further, the challenge that has to be brought to that just consistently is because God says that's not a marriage.
- 23:06
- God created the institution of marriage. He has the authority to define it. And we could talk about all the blessings that come from God's institution and the way that God made that union, whether it's more children, whether it's the benefit of the family, whether it's strong structure for the family, whether it, whatever the blessings are, the harmony of the sexual union, the blessings of the sexual union, whatever those, we could talk about all those positive benefits of creating strong and healthy homes, fathers with children, blessing and raising up, all of that.
- 23:35
- We could do that. But fundamentally the issue is ultimately this. When you say, what about a gay couple coming together?
- 23:41
- The issue is because that's not a marriage. Well, who says? Well, because God says. And only with the
- 23:47
- Christian worldview, only with the authority of scripture, can you justify the preconditions necessary to make any kind of intelligible claim about a moral ought.
- 23:59
- What I'm saying is because Matt Walsh refuses to stand on the authority of scripture in this discussion, he's on sinking sand.
- 24:06
- And because, of course, Joe Rogan rejects the authority of scripture, he's on sinking sand because from his perspective, his ancestors were
- 24:16
- African apes. His ancestors were just fish and bacteria in a godless, purposeless universe.
- 24:21
- And there is no good and there is no evil. There's just blind and pitiless indifference. Those aren't my words.
- 24:27
- Those are the words of a famous atheist. And that's what atheism brings you. And so you can't really make any foundation for moral arguments apart from the
- 24:36
- Christian worldview. And Matt Walsh believes in the Christian worldview in terms of God creating the institution of marriage, but he won't argue on the basis of the authority of Jesus Christ.
- 24:47
- 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?
- 24:56
- 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.
- 25:09
- So they say, well, that's not what marriage is. So for thousands of years, we said marriage is the procreative union.
- 25:16
- And then we had the other side that came along and said, well, it's not that. OK, well, then what is it exactly?
- 25:23
- And I know you said, well, it's people. And this is, I think, an example of neutrality, playing neutrality.
- 25:29
- He's not claiming to stand on the definition of marriage as one man, one woman, covenanted together for life because Scripture says.
- 25:37
- So he's saying, well, you know, this is the definition that, you know, thousands of people have used. And, you know,
- 25:44
- I just find it not very satisfying that you're denying it and you won't give me a definition. So he's basically saying,
- 25:50
- I've got a lot of people on my side and the people on my side have defined it this way and you won't give me a definition.
- 25:57
- So I'm going to stick with this position. The problem is, is what if all of this really takes hold in the
- 26:03
- West and this becomes the dominant perspective that marriage is really whatever you want it to be?
- 26:09
- And for a long time, thousands of people believe that marriage is whatever you want it to be. Well, then do they win the argument because they have thousands of people that agree there's more of them than you and they've provided some new definition of marriage?
- 26:24
- If consensus, if we just do this by convention, right?
- 26:29
- If people just sort of get together and they stipulate themselves as to what they think marriage is, if that's the standard, then morality is constantly in flux.
- 26:38
- It's constantly changing with no definitions. It's always evolving. It's always subjective.
- 26:43
- It's always, well, we've got a larger group of people over here that agree with this. And so you'll always have an ever evolving, transforming ethic.
- 26:52
- It's never going to have a fixed position to say that's what it is. And from a
- 26:58
- Christian perspective, in terms of what actually is the truth, Jesus says your word is truth.
- 27:06
- It's the standard. It's the plumb line. It's the measuring rod. It's the thing by which to test everything else.
- 27:12
- Because ultimately, from a Christian perspective, and we shouldn't be shy to say this, foundationally,
- 27:18
- God says. That's how I know. Because God says. People love each other.
- 27:23
- Two people love each other. But then why two people? Why do they have to love each other? You know, all these kinds of questions.
- 27:29
- You get into what if they're in the same family? What if brothers and sisters want to marry? And I know every time that comes up, you know, the advocates for gay marriage will say, well, that's a slippery slope argument.
- 27:38
- That's a fallacious. But it's actually not. 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.
- 27:49
- And I've never found. Who's we? That's an important element here to bring up. Who is we?
- 27:54
- Since you're rejecting what we are saying, well, let's just be honest about it. Let's just go ahead and say it with boldness, right?
- 28:02
- When we say what we say it is, what we're talking about is people that come from the perspective of the authority of Scripture and the biblical worldview.
- 28:09
- That's the ultimate standard, right? God says. And so it'd be good to just go ahead and come right out and say it.
- 28:17
- We Christians, people in the Christian tradition, people appealing to the word of God. We say that it's this because that's really the truth behind this.
- 28:25
- We say. And of course, we talk about Western culture. What is Western culture been influenced by?
- 28:30
- It's been influenced by the Christian worldview and the Christian scriptures. It's the foundation of it all. And it's like Jordan Peterson said when he was on Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson actually made a remark that was pretty profound.
- 28:42
- It's something that's been said lots of times by Christians throughout history. And that's that this is the very foundation of truth.
- 28:48
- It's truer than truth. It's the very precondition necessary for the pursuit of truth at all.
- 28:54
- Found a compelling definition. And any definition offered, it's like, well, what's even the point then?
- 29:01
- Why do we even need this now? I just don't see how a gay marriage in any way damages a straight marriage.
- 29:12
- I don't 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 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 percent of all marriages in a divorce anyway.
- 29:31
- They don't make it. You know, if I don't know if anything would damage marriage and damage the institution of marriage is the option of divorce.
- 29:40
- 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.
- 29:48
- I'd say, first of all, it's because it's not a marriage. God created the institution. He defines the institution. He defines the roles in the institution.
- 29:54
- And so it's important because it's not actually a marriage by definition.
- 30:01
- And when you go further in terms of how does it hurt, how does how does just two people coming together and deciding to just change a word and redefine something, how does it affect things?
- 30:11
- Well, one of the things that has been pointed out even in the podcast is Joe Rogan and Matt Walls talk about the radical definitions in terms of gender.
- 30:21
- People just saying, you know, I know that I look like a man. I'm not a man. I'm a woman. Even though what's right in front of you is biologically a male.
- 30:30
- And the challenge that Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh have to point to is that people demanding compelling that you actually accept the definition.
- 30:38
- I'm going to redefine this and you must accept the redefinition. Now, it's interesting because Joe Rogan, he's a sharp guy.
- 30:45
- He's very sharp. And so he recognizes the problem over there with, say, the people who are saying with gender,
- 30:52
- I think we need to be malleable. We can just redefine it and do what we want. Joe Rogan looks at that and says, no, you can't compel me to accept your definitions.
- 31:00
- And you certainly can't put that into law. They've had that discussion. But in the case of marriage and where Joe is defending gay marriage here, he doesn't have any problem with a gay couple redefining the institution and doing it in law.
- 31:16
- No problem at all. And so you can see the contradiction there between two positions. On the one hand, you can't just redefine this and put it into law and demand people accept that in the law.
- 31:27
- And then he says over here in marriage, but you can do that with marriage because marriage is actually malleable. And the question as to how does this hurt people?
- 31:35
- It's a good question. How does the redefinition of marriage hurt people? There's a number of ways that it hurts people.
- 31:40
- I would say first and foremost, in terms of public morality, if something is wrong, if it is a moral ought that you do it this way and someone does it the other way, then you destroy righteousness in the land.
- 31:54
- So when you were doing something that is immoral, something that is against God's standards, if it is against God's definitions, then you are actually participating in the destruction of righteousness, the destruction of harmony and unity in God's world.
- 32:11
- Here's the point. God didn't make the world that way. And so how does it hurt me? How does it hurt the world?
- 32:17
- In tremendous ways. It hurts the world in tremendous ways in terms of it destroys the institution that God built that creates everything else.
- 32:27
- Harmony and order. That's what God creates. Beauty, harmony, order, truth, beauty, and goodness.
- 32:34
- That's all within the Christian worldview. And when you redefine something that God has created and you act contrary to it, it is destructive and has real world consequences.
- 32:45
- Just listen to the testimonies of people who were children raised within homosexual unions having to grow up without either a mother or a father in that relationship, having father hunger their whole life because they were forced to grow up in a home with two moms and no dad.
- 33:07
- And so, yeah, this whenever we sin, whenever we go against God's order, we always do things and provide destruction to the world.
- 33:15
- And so it does matter when you say, how does it hurt? It hurts the world in terms of destroying righteousness in the world, destroying harmony in the world.
- 33:24
- That's not the way the world is supposed to work. The same thing could be said in terms of the single mom who says,
- 33:31
- I don't need a man. And so she raises the little boy without a father. We all recognize and the statistics demonstrate without question that utter devastation that does to the little boy and the harm that it does to his life being raised up in a home without a father.
- 33:47
- There's destructive consequences to going against God's harmony and God's order. That's not the way that God created the world.
- 33:53
- And so when someone says to me, well, how does it hurt anybody that I'm just doing my own thing over here? It's sinful.
- 33:59
- It destroys. It destroys society, destroys civilization. And if you propagate an idea that is sinful at bottom, it will affect the world around you.
- 34:10
- What do you get when you have a world where, say, you have less heterosexual couples with solid homes having children, if you have less of them and you have a lot of couples over here that cannot actually have children, then you'll see, you'll begin to see the consequences of homosexual unions.
- 34:28
- What do you do with a world where you have little boys and little girls growing up forcibly in a home without either a mother or a father being forced to have two dads or two moms?
- 34:41
- That's just not the way that God created the world. So from the Christian perspective, God created the world.
- 34:46
- He created these institutions. When you violate them, you bring in destruction. People will be hurt.
- 34:53
- It's not just a heterosexual couple that's hurt by the suggestion of homosexual marriage.
- 35:01
- It's children. It's culture and society around us. That's not the way that God made the world.
- 35:06
- You know, you can try to drive your car from the backseat. You could try. You may even, you know, create a contraption with a broomstick and maybe another broomstick where you try to drive down the road from the backseat of the car using the broomstick on the pedals and trying to maneuver the wheel in this way.
- 35:22
- But at some point, you're going to collide with something. Here's why. That's not the way the car was designed to be driven.
- 35:28
- There are consequences down the road. It's just called marriage. It's a human invented thing.
- 35:34
- If we decide that gay people can get married too, I just don't see how it damages anything. There you go. And that's the final, that's the final issue.
- 35:41
- From Joe Rogan's perspective, it's a human invented thing. And so that's the problem here.
- 35:48
- If as humans in a godless universe with no meaning, no purpose, no ultimate foundation for ethics at all, if we say that we can just define something, well then
- 35:58
- Joe Rogan shouldn't have a problem with the transgender person saying, you know,
- 36:04
- I know this is biologically male, but I'm actually not male. I'm female. Joe Rogan, I think, would have a lot of problems and a lot of indignation.
- 36:13
- He's shown it really consistently, actually. When people say something is true that actually isn't the case, you know, from their perspective, their own subjective experience, they say, well,
- 36:26
- I think it's this way and I want it to be this way. Joe Rogan has an indignation for that. He's like, no, no, that's just not true.
- 36:33
- You have to believe what's actually true. And so what's interesting here is you have this moment where, and again,
- 36:38
- I love Joe Rogan, where you have the image of God just, you know, being on full display in terms of the inconsistency of the unbelieving worldview.
- 36:48
- He wants to believe in truth. He wants to believe logic matters, that it's universal, that it's unchanging, that it has to apply to everything, that facts matter, that truth matters, that evidence matters.
- 36:58
- But from his worldview, he can't actually have those things. And so he'll go between two positions of something is ultimate, it has to be the case, you must stand on it, to, well, it doesn't really matter.
- 37:09
- This is just a human institution. We've just decided to call it this, so why don't we just decide to call it something else at another time?
- 37:17
- And so in that way, Joe Rogan displays that he has no foundation for ethics at all.
- 37:24
- If, from his perspective, all of these things are just human inventions, well, then so is morality.
- 37:30
- Morality is just a human invention, and there's no ultimate to it. But Joe Rogan doesn't believe that when it comes to, say, something like child molestation or rape.
- 37:40
- He has a very strong indignation against those sorts of things. And so from his perspective, it's just humans that make this stuff up.
- 37:48
- We can change it as we want, but he doesn't live like that. If somebody steals from Joe Rogan or tries to harm his family, he's going to do the right thing, and he's going to stand up against that sin, that injustice.
- 37:58
- But in his worldview, he doesn't really have a foundation for it. He'll do it because he's made in the image of God, but he has no foundation for it.
- 38:08
- And so I think the problem with the discussion between Matt Walsh and Joe Rogan is there was no foundation on either side.
- 38:16
- There's no foundation on the side of Joe Rogan, because he really has no foundation whatsoever with his rejection of God.
- 38:22
- And there's no foundation for Matt Walsh in terms of this is just Matt Walsh's opinion and the opinion of, you know, maybe a couple thousand years of tradition of humans just inventing this thing from Joe Rogan's perspective.
- 38:34
- So Matt Walsh has no foundation. He won't appeal to the ultimacy of the Word of God. And if you don't have the
- 38:42
- Word of God as your epistemological foundation, you don't have certainty. You don't have any real knowledge. Scripture says, the fear of the
- 38:49
- Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and correction. And I think that's what was missing from this discussion.