Matt Walsh warns complacent Christians: Tolerance and acceptance are not biblical virtues

Conservative Christian commentator Matt Walsh is condemning complacent Christians in America, saying that, in some cases, Christians are called to be intolerant.

Walsh, a nationally known podcast host and writer for the conservative online website The Daily Wire, is warning that many Christians in America today are constructing their own religion based on cherrypicked ideas from the Bible that support their agenda of tolerance and inclusion.

Walsh released his second book earlier this month titled Church of Cowards: A Wake-Up Call to Complacent Christians.

He told The Christian Post that the book offers his “diagnosis of the problem that most Christians recognize in our culture.”

“If you look at the statistics, we know that the number of Christians is declining while the number of secular atheists is going up,” Walsh told CP in a recent phone interview.

“I think we also know that the problem is even worse than the numbers suggest. If you were to talk to the professed Christians [in the U.S.], a startling percentage of them don’t actually believe in some of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith.”

A 2017 survey from the American Culture and Faith Institute shows that only about one in 10 Americans hold a biblical worldview even though nearly half of them claim to lead a Christian life. Among millennials, only four percent have a biblical worldview.

Various factors can play a role in a person's faith and worldview formation. According to Walsh, those include parents, the church, education and culture.

“And that's a problem because the culture itself is so aggressively hostile to Christian faith and very determined to, especially with kids, convert them into secularism and relativism,” Walsh argued.

“That's an enormous problem because you've got so many Christians who don't really know what their faith professes or what their faith even is. And if you don't know what you believe in, exactly, then you’re not going to be able to maintain those beliefs.”

At a time when there is increasing societal and political pressure for people to be accepting of the same-sex relationships and LGBT lifestyles, Walsh said that Christians with a superficial understanding of the Gospel are picking out things from the Bible that they like and “confirm what they already want to believe.”

“They kind of construct their own religion for themselves based on this amalgamation of out-of-context verses. And that's a big problem because the Bible is so long and vast and diverse,” he explained.

“It's not even really a book. It's a library of books. And there's so much in it, that if you're going to go in and throw context to the wind, you can find anything you want. You can find justification for anything. I think that's how a lot of people are approaching the Bible."

Walsh feels that Christians in the West need to “reclaim our warrior spirit” and their “willingness and eagerness to fight back against sin and corruption and evil that we see in our society.”

“I think Christianity has always been a warrior faith. If you go back to the Gospels, now Jesus is often portrayed as being this peacenik-hippie type of figure. But again, if you actually go and read the Bible, particularly the Gospels, you'll find that’s not who Jesus was,” Walsh explained.

“Jesus is obviously loving. But in that love, He confronts sin and you find that in the Gospels. He resists the tide of the culture that He was in back 2,000 years ago. And we need to follow that model and we need to be willing to do that.”

“It's not that we're confronting and fighting back against evil in spite of the fact that we're supposed to be loving; it's because we love that we do those things,” he said.

As some denominations over the past decade have affirmed homosexuality, Walsh believes that it is impossible to defend homosexuality in Scripture.

“The greater issue is just the misrepresentation of what you find in the Gospel. A good example would be things like ‘tolerance and acceptance’ are now presented in the church as virtues, even biblical virtues,” Walsh warned. “They're not virtues at all. There's nothing wrong necessarily with tolerating. It depends on what you're tolerating. But there is nothing virtuous about it.”

He warned that some churches are teaching that tolerance is the “ultimate virtue” and synonymous with "compassion" and "love."

“To be intolerant of something is thought of automatically as bigotry,” he noted. “The worst thing you can ever be is intolerant. But it's just not the case. We should be intolerant of bad things and intolerant of things that harm people. We should be intolerant with children in our culture. We should be intolerant of sin within ourselves and in the world.”

“So I think we think we're called to intolerance in many cases. Compassion is virtuous, but the version of compassion that is preached so often is something synonymous with acceptance and tolerance. Compassion actually means co-suffering. That's the etymology of the world of the word, which means that you're suffering alongside somebody and taking on their sufferings to alleviate that burden. Christ is the ultimate example of that. [Compassion] is a much more active and sacrificial thing than how it is often portrayed.”

According to Walsh, churches need to be bolder in addressing the problems in the culture today and need to focus more on calling people to repentance and self-sacrifice.

"We have to stop being afraid of preaching that message," he said. "It may scare some people away. But the people who are scared away aren't really Christian anyway. If they don't want to hear the Christian message, they are not Christian. But for everybody else, this is what they want. This is what they are searching for. I think we have to provide that in the Church."

He's about love, grace and fellowship. No rules, judgment and condemnation.

That is pure heresy. Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep my commandments."

1 Corinthians 7:19 says, "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters."

1 Corinthians 14:37 says, "If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord."

1 John 2:3 says, "Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments."

1 John 2:4 says, "He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him."

1 John 3:24 says, "Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us."

1 John 5:2 says, "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments."

We Christians have died to the Law, but if you love God, you will keep the New Testaments commands.

Stripes don't have to be with a whip, but if you willfully sin after you are saved, there remains NO sacrifice for sin and punishment should be expected.

Heb 10:25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

Heb 10:26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,

Heb 10:27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.

Heb 10:28 Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Heb 10:29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?

Heb 10:30 For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. And again, "The Lord will judge His people."

Heb 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

How about getting a disease and dying? How about losing all your money? How about a family breakup? I don't know the punishment He will chose, but you can't willfully sin and just walk off grinning. The 4th Commandment says to keep the Sabbath holy. I could print off 7 pages of verses telling believers to observe the Sabbath Day. A pope changed the day to Sunday to attract pagan sun god worshipers. He forbade Christians from observing the Leviticus 23 Feasts and changed the calendar to the Roman calendar.

If you willfully commit adultery after you are saved, do you think God will approve of what you did? How about murder? If we will have to answer for every idle word we speak, what do you think He will think about willful sin? You probably have read the 10 Commandments at sometime in your life. You should know to not worship idols, not to make graven images of any god, but billions worship statues and portraits, finger bones of men, or just a image on a piece of toast.

I'm just reading the verses and explaining what was said. Too many churches preach Grace" will protect them and they never repent and keep doing what God has PLAINLY told them not to do. Grace means Jesus saved you from the second death and you belong to Jesus because you have been bought with a price. You skip the White throne Judgement, but you will be Judged for your works. If my father told me to take out the trash and I refused, should I expect nothing to happen? Many people pray and then wonder why their prayers go unanswered.

Jesus told us that when we get to the wedding feast to sit at a lower spot at the table and He may move us up. If you sit at a higher place He may move you lower in front of everybody. All of us think we are better than we are and He has given us the Word to tell us what to expect. You have a lifetime to repent. We go to church on Sunday because a man changed God's Word. God made it plain what He wanted.

God said He created the universe in 6 days and rested on the seventh. Do you believe it took billions of years? He repeated this same statement in Exodus 20 and Peter confirmed it in 2 Peter 3:8 that there would be 6000 years of history and then Jesus would return for our day of rest and He would rule and reign for 1000 years with a rod of iron. We are told that we will be required to worship on the Sabbath and celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem or we will receive no rain and suffer with plagues in Zechariah. God told us what to do, yet we ignore what He said. He is patient and long suffering, but Judgement is coming for everyone. Is God going to point out to you this conversation that chuckles reminded you that the Sabbath is the 7th day and we are to keep it holy and you reply, "Well I didn't think you were serious!" Israel didn't observe the Sabbath for the land for 490 years and were given over to the Babylonians for 70 years so God could get His 70 Sabbaths back.

Mat 18:21 Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?"

Mat 18:22 Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

There is a limit before God acts, but He will act. Read the parable right after Mat 18:22. We owe everything to God yet we abuse His Grace. Most of us read the Bible as talking to non Christians, but in fact, He is speaking to servants and virgins. The High Priest can only marry a virgin from His own country, so He is talking about the church. Servants do what their Master tells them to do, a non-believer doesn't care. There are foolish virgins spoken of in Mat 25. Who are they? They are church members that live the way they see fit and don't follow God with their hearts. When you read "The Kingdom of God is like",...Pay attention to what the theme is because He is usually talking to "servants". Many "servants" aren't really servants and end up weeping and gnashing their teeth. If God tells you to keep the Sabbath Holy and you say I'll observe whatever day I choose, are you really a servant? I have the same reaction to this as people claiming to be Christians and approving of abortion and gay marriage. We all pretty much know what the Bible says, yet we pick and choose what we will follow. We deserve much more punishment than we are getting. Was 9-11 the result of 60 million abortions? was it from allowing sodomy? Was it forbidding school children from praying? Where do we get these kids shooting other kids in school? The 10 Commandments have been removed, prayer is forbidden and Bibles are confiscated. For every action there is an opposite reaction. Could this be the "stripes" Scriptures mention?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.