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Welcome to a trip down the rabbit hole of faith and fun with the creator of 'Memes for Jesus'. We laugh our way through some of the internet's most popular Christian memes, shedding light on the depths of meme culture. It's not all fun and games though, as we also dissect the symbolism these memes carry and their cultural implications.
In this ATC Episode:
• We explore the journey of being part of a charismatic church to experiencing a faith rebirth.
• We digest the essence of spiritual fruits and explore how a verse from Peter is the secret ingredient.
• As we tread controversial ground, we share unique church experiences, like believing in a flat Earth theory, and the impact these beliefs have on youth.
• We engage in a thought-provoking discussion about ecumenism in Christianity and how a humble acceptance of Jesus' teachings can transform our faith
Buckle up for an episode that serves a perfect cocktail of humor, faith, and theology. Let's laugh, learn, and grow in faith together!
Connect with Lionel M. Matias;
Instagram: @memelordmonday and @memesforjesus
Website: www.memesforjesus.com
Beliefs espoused by the guests of ATC are not necessarily the beliefs and convictions of ATC.
That said the intent of our podcast is to listen, remain curious and never fear failure In the discovery life giving truth. Many people we ardently disagree with have been our greatest teachers.
I'll tell you what man. You are really, really funny, first of all, and really good at being like Okay, ha, ha, ha ha. So what do you believe about predestination? Yeah boy, that's me. It's like this. He told a funny joke. Now how's your heart doing so? It hats off to you, man. So that's awesome. How'd you get into the memes and all?
Speaker 2:that stuff like that. Yeah, most of what we do in the podcast is just Hearing your story, so we're interested about Matt and Matt man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, the way I got into it. Like memes for jesus is my main page and I say my very loosely, because Michael Schaefer started the page. He's like the godfather of all christian memes, legit dude. He started it like there was other christian meme pages back in 2012, but they had 12 followers and they all sucked. It's so bad. They were really cringy. They were made on like what is it? Microsoft paint?
Speaker 1:And they were just garbage.
Speaker 3:Either that or there was like memes that were very cynical towards christianity and made fun of christianity and jesus and stuff like that. So he created the page when he was 18 years old. It blew up to 700 000 followers on facebook. Long story short, he rebranded. He did it to memes for jesus. He found we knew each other through church friends. I was a minister at the time. He attended my young adults group and one day he was like hey, check your phone and he just made me one of the admins of memes for jesus in 2018, or something like that. He liked my memes and he liked what I had to offer and my, my weird sense of humor, my weird, like you guys mentioned earlier, where I was like one moment I'm like I'm goofy, let's do a kermit impression. And then the next second I'm like what are your thoughts on infralapse, serenism and its effects on the predestinal, the predestinal causation? I like to go in both of those extremes.
Speaker 1:Well, that's an ideological fallacy, man. A lot of people hate infralapse serenism, but I just don't give a crap, I'm just kidding. I just said big words.
Speaker 3:I thought you were like hanging with me.
Speaker 2:I have no idea what you're saying right now. I just said Joey's hanging with me.
Speaker 3:He's hanging with me, let's go, but no, it's cool. I so that's. I got into it and and another. It's been a lot of drama running a large meme page, honestly, like we had to at one point walk away from it and now we're back. And so now, like officially, I Own it because we walked away from it, mike got sick of it. Now we're back. We made a cartoon about all of the drama it's on youtube about all the memes for jesus drama that took place. Now we're in a really great place where we, we own 100 percent of memes for jesus and we get to make all the calls when it comes to memes for jesus, where before we didn't necessarily have that freedom and we, our heart has always been hey, we want to Really bring to light content creators in the christian world and Use our silly meme page to do that, and we that's what we've been doing and we want people to laugh. We want people to all in the same, and this is why, mike, I think like to me, is because when we do like to laugh and we'd like to have fun at the same time, we want to show the sincerity and the depth of christianity within our memes as well. So I can go on one meme. I'll say, yeah, oh man, my brain is so fried from making memes all day I can't even think of a single one. So one meme will be something silly hey, the love of god. And it's like somebody getting punched and flown across the screen. And then the the next one will be like hey, go to church. And it's based. Do you guys know what that means? With some of the based? No no, okay, like I was just like.
Speaker 1:Based, isn't based on something, or just like that's based.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this happens a lot when I go on podcasts. I just use so much gen z terminology because I'm like in that world of.
Speaker 1:They're like me what, what is that based, bro? That's what. Are you a bot? That's I, I'm a young life leader and they've started using the term bot and they're like no, that's guys such a bot. And it's wow, what? Okay, because you've heard of like mpc, like that guy's a mpc, but they've like just shortened that to just bot. Like that dude's a bot, yeah.
Speaker 3:I like that. I like the mpc better. But bot, I can see that catching on for sure. So they just gov and say that but yeah, like when somebody's based, it's like a term where somebody Really believes what they believe and no matter like what people say to them. So being a christian lately is like the red pill. It's like you, you're based in the sense that you don't care what everyone else thinks. It's it's not really cool to be a christian now. It's it's counterculture to be christian and have christian traditional values. And when somebody will say, hey, I want to get married and and before I get married, I want to maintain the traditional sexual ethic of christianity, somebody to be like based, you don't care, you're expressing your, what you believe in a way that's Contrary to culture. And because you really don't care. And the and the symbol of this because every meme has a symbol Is this guy named giga chat have you heard about giga chat.
Speaker 1:I know that.
Speaker 3:I know that big ol.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got that there's different chads.
Speaker 3:I like giga chat the best. It's like a black and white picture of this guy with this enormous chin and he's just like he just doesn't care, he just looks so carefree. And then there's also the, the pictograph kind of like. There's, there's a chat, and then there's the woe jack. The chad is this guy looking sideways with like blonde hair and blue eyes and he's just yes, and that's he's like also a symbol of being based. So there you go. Memology one-on-one.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. I needed that because I really was speechless when you were like, do you gotta know what based is? And I was like I know what the word means, I know how it's used in a sentence. But, no, sir, I do not. So all good, that was. I just love that idea of using it's. It's super interesting to use like silly things and like memes and stuff like that and then be like, okay, I'm gonna use that to spread Christianity or spread Christianity is even a bad word just spread like Jesus to people, huge it's. Ha ha ha. Oh wait, we're talking about Jesus here. Let me read my bible. That's cool man. I love that dude.
Speaker 3:You'd be surprised how many people are in our DM saying hey, just so you know, your memes make me want to go to church now. Or your memes made me want to start reading the bible. That's what it's all about for us. We're like, that's it. But what makes silly, stupid memes all day if it causes at least one person to be like? Let me check out this god thing.
Speaker 1:It sounds awesome. That's really cool.
Speaker 2:What are you? What has it been like for you, matt, personally? You were in a. You said you were in a Like a ministry role, and then you just got made an admin and then we could spend all day just on the world of memes. But I feel like I would lose matt and so like I'm sure you've adapted and and changed over the years, but what, what has that journey been like for you?
Speaker 3:Oh man. So yeah, I started out as a minister I shouldn't say started out. I was when michael and I met. I was an associate pastor of an assembly sub god church and Wanted to be a youth pastor. I just that was just like my, my biggest heart's desire. And the more I did it, the more I realized I was like man, ministry is pretty rough and I'm not sure if I agree 100 with the assembly of god anymore. You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean, don't agree with what they're doing, but see what had happened was.
Speaker 3:Yeah being yeah. I won't and I don't want to disparage my assembly of god brothers and sisters. I I really love them, but I just came to a place in my life where I became more reformed in my theology and I became more, I'll just say, presbyterian, basically, and it caused me to step down from ministry for that reason and there was no other Real reason other than I just didn't want to disgrace my, my position there and I love the church I was working at, I love the people that were there, but I realized that being in ministry and having different views than the views that were carried by the organization I was working with, it was not a good look and it was not a good fit for everyone involved. Step down and became what's called a cage stage Calvinist. Are you familiar with this?
Speaker 1:We had Logan on the podcast, one of our friends and he had to explain to us what the cage stage was, because I grew up Presbyterian but I didn't know cage stage because I never did that. But I did. I probably did cage stage, but in an enlightening of oh man, I'm actually reading the Bible and it's yo. I learned this thing and I'm going to beat you over the head because I know what this verse means and do you Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's another one that's young, angry and reformed, or something like that Young, restless and reformed, like I am.
Speaker 3:I was that guy because I grew up Pentecostal my whole life and not just regular Pentecostal guys like super backflip off the top of the building swinging from the chandeliers Was there any snakes involved?
Speaker 2:That was like the last step.
Speaker 3:That was like the final form.
Speaker 2:We never quite got that far. But everything else, Bro, we've got to get a snake handler on here. That would be good.
Speaker 3:Like it would not have surprised me at one point in my childhood by seeing the password build. You know what, guys? Because I was Spanish Pentecostal. You know what I'm saying, guys.
Speaker 1:I thought that you were just going Going on an ad accent. You know what I'm saying, guys, we got to get a snake in here.
Speaker 3:You know what this service is missing right now. We need some snakes, we need some anacondas in here. We got to start crossing them around and laying here because there's been it Now. Then they start speaking and screaming in Spanish because this mirror says when you touch this snake, you will be free. I don't know it's so bad, they were crazy. I'll give you a story quick. This is how crazy the Spanish Pentecostal church I went to was growing up. Every service, regardless of when the service was, who was there? At the end of every service, everyone was on the floor rolling around, yelling I'm not even joking Slain in the spirit, quote unquote. Even we get to the point where the pastor's wife, who would preach, she would say I'm not going to leave here until everyone's slain in the spirit. We'd be there for literally four hours and everybody would be on the ground. This was normal church for me growing up. One of the times they were doing those altar calls at the end of the service, the head usher, he had a water bottle and he would do all these weird things to people. He would just. I don't know what came over him every time. One time he had a water bottle and he was like receive the spirit and he would pour the water on people. And this one guy, this one guy, he was like, open your mouth. And he poured the water in his mouth and the guy was just choking. He was like is this for real? I'm being dead serious. The guy was pouring water down another man's throat and he was choking on water at the altar and that's when I realized you know what? It's not crazy.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I want to do this for us, that's all for you, for not just deconstructing immediately, yeah, that's all.
Speaker 3:I did deconstruct.
Speaker 1:I know, but just like all the way down and never rebuild.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I definitely became an atheist for a while.
Speaker 1:That's definitely for sure.
Speaker 3:And then I definitely reconstructed afterwards. That's awesome. Did two episodes about that on my podcast, memelord Monday shout out.
Speaker 1:You got to shout it out. I was going to shout it out anyway. Thank you, sir Memelord Monday, listen to it. I did pretty good. I'm just kidding. Really, I thought it was really good. Thanks, man.
Speaker 2:So what was that like? The transition from laying every Sunday everybody's slain in the spirit on the floor to atheists to, or some atheistic bent to reform? What was that like for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot of things happen and I explained this. Like I said, I have episodes that are dedicated to this, really spelling out the journey that I went through from that insane I would even wager to say some of it was traumatic some of the stuff that I went through at a young age in the Pentecostal church I'll say hypercharismatic church, I won't say Pentecostal church, because there's a difference there. But at a certain point I was like, if that's all, god is just rolling around screaming, being hyperemotional, I don't want nothing to do with it and from there I just chose to do whatever I want and then from that point all the moral baggage that was put on me from Christianity just went to the wayside, because I was like the Bible doesn't make sense to me anyway. If that's all God is and that's who he is, I want nothing to do with them. So I just did whatever heck I wanted for a little while and thank God that time was very short and the Lord protected me from any type of other attacks or dumb decisions that I would have made. That I would have regretted in the long term. But it was through God, using amazing people in my life that really just took me under their wing and the Lord guided all of us together because they said they didn't know what the heck they were doing when they were mentoring me because I was just a nutcase. That was like, hey, I'm going to smoke weed, just so you guys know. And these were like pastors. It was a pastor and his wife that took me under the wing and they were just like, okay, we want you to, we just want you to know the goodness of God, just so you know. But I was just a nutcase and so they ministered to me, they let me in their house and, through God, using them, I came to know the goodness of God and I feel that Lord used them to regenerate my heart and cause me to love him more and like, truly desire him, rather than just See. The expectation that was put on me at a young age to be performative, because that's what I've, that's what I came to understand was the major flaw in hyper charismatic the, the Harris hyper charismatic mania was there is an expectation of performance, you have to talk in tongues, you have to be extremely expressive and you have to experience God On a daily basis, at any moment, any given moment. It was like I have a word for you now very unstable, very impulsive and and was missing the fruit of the spirit of self-control big time. And so, mm-hmm, long story short, when I discovered the, the richness of God and scripture, that there were fruits that God produced in the life of a person that was truly committed to him. That really made sense, that that really developed into something that was helpful. That's when I was like, yeah, I want this and I and I love it. I don't know this. Answer your question. I feel like I'm putting you guys sleep. What do you think?
Speaker 1:No, Jared just had a beer, so he gets tired after hey man, Where's mine?
Speaker 3:Oh hey, I'll edit it.
Speaker 1:I'll edit it out. Make sure that you knew that you weren't boring him.
Speaker 2:It was the substances 100% the gluten. I think I'm a prude now Don't believe in that anymore.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, just say the F word right now and you'll be fine.
Speaker 2:No, I'm just kidding, don't tempt me. I Go ahead. Grant, I'm gonna let that ride.
Speaker 1:Cool. I just I Don't know just the idea of fruits of the spirit. I've harped on this a lot, but it's just something that's really impactful and important to me and it's that second Peter verse. I gotta go on it again. It's second Peter one five through seven looked at my leg to remember the verse because it's tattooed on my leg and it's To me it's almost the recipe for fruit, which I think is so cool. And when you bring up like the, the Pentecostal, more hyper charismatic church, the like it says supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, brotherly affection with love. And I think that that's just like builds really nicely because like faith is like All over the place, like I'm putting my faith in God, but like Immediately after that it's virtue. So it's like alright, which is morality, but it's not like hyper morality, it's just like here is the steps that I'm gonna follow in Morality and then it's just it builds off one another in the next one, like self-control, it's just Massive. If you don't have that like, it would be super easy to just be like pouring water down. I just I can't believe that scene. I like pictured it in my head and immediately I was just Did it feel weird like the whole time or was it just like a Like it? It took that to make it feel weird because I know a lot of people like grow up in something like. I grew up in a youth group where the the youth pastor was a flat earther. So like this dude like and he preached. He was like the earth is flat and there's God holding it up, like just God, just boom, like in the like the picture. There's like some picture way back when that has that. And then he Basically like he believed in the Illuminati and he would tell us all about this stuff and the Nephilim and the weird stuff.
Speaker 3:And I was anyone be a youth pastor.
Speaker 2:As long as you're watching the children, I do not care. Just just don't come to me with problems, just keep it.
Speaker 3:I say this as a former youth pastor. I should not have been leaving those kids.
Speaker 1:It is like hey, do you have fluoride in your water? Because the government put it in there to make you dumb. He was a big Alex Jones, massive Alex Jones guy. It didn't feel that weird. Like it yeah, if that makes any sense like it's just like oh yeah, that's just buddy's saying and that's just what I grew up with. And that makes like we were all like that's, that's garbage. Like we weren't like. Yeah, that's totally some people worry. You like had people stay in his house and it was like a weird thing. But we'll harp on that too much. But I truly believe he started like a mini cult, but it is what it is.
Speaker 3:Dude, yeah, no, I know what you're saying. Like I, it wasn't like. There was a lot of stuff that was common that was just straight up weird, I think, and back on it and it might just be repressed in my mind. So some of the stuff that I experienced, yeah, as I look, as I, if I were to really think back, 99% of it it was just off the wall, weird stuff. But I think at that very moment I remember truly feeling like this is a little, that's a little much. This man is choking on water in the front of the church right now and I'm 12 years old and I'm scared. I don't know if I need to be here right now.
Speaker 2:So there's this idea of Weird being wrong as well. Hmm, yeah, to do, to do the whole mat thing where we like go straight to the heart, right, like there's this idea of weird is wrong, which is what the Pharisees oh, you're not gonna wash your hands, like, how could you not wash your hands before you sit on the eat, or how could you eat with it? It feels like a lot of times Jesus does a lot of weird stuff purposefully and I, like Grant and I, label ourselves denominational mutts to some degree. I've said before I'm a, I'm a nine-point Calvinist with Armenian leanings. I don't know, man, just what day is it? Like the absurd trigger right now. Exactly, I Guess what I'm saying is I, I have this love of a lot of denominations and a lot of like historical Christian Leaders and mentors from so many different traditions of the faith, I guess I would say, and Sometimes I feel like we swing hard in the opposite direction of whatever has traumatized us. Yeah so for sure. Yeah, have you ever when I, when I've sat with like the, the, the young, Restless and reformed, or like the I don't even know how to say other than like extremely reformed, like sometimes it's this idea of like spitting on those that just have a, like a genuine Spiritual experience that can't be explained and as though that doesn't have value, and Sometimes the evidence is because it's weird and it's like, ah, there's a lot of stuff that's weird, that doesn't make it untrue, so give me some feedback on that. Yeah, you've touched a lot of, you've touched a lot of weird. And then you're like, okay, I need some settled, not insanity, in my life, but what do you think about that?
Speaker 3:No, that's an excellent point, and this is something that I should probably be more clear about, because I feel like I am more moderate at this point Now. Then I was like coming out of that Cage stage. So when I say cage-stage Calvinism, it's everything must be seen through the lens of the tulip, the five points of Calvinism, and that's how I thought for a couple years, honestly, and I was just really just, I could not see anything else outside of that. Studied more church history, studied more, like you mentioned, there are other denominations and I saw that it there was Christianity actually outside of tulip and I was like what is this?
Speaker 2:and also John Calvin didn't write to all the so right, that's a thing.
Speaker 3:That was, that was written by the Armenians and but yeah, it's, it's. It's definitely a really great point to read. I had to realize myself I am jaded from Hypercares mania and I know a lot of people are, and that's why they swing the pendulum to the other side and, and which I totally affirm, that's what I did, and I've come to the point where maybe I was more hard-nosed Sensationist. Where did I was like those gifts, all of that was goofy and all of that was wrong. That's that's where I came from, where now, if you would really press me on it, I'd be like God can do whatever he wants, and that can look goofy. Sometimes it might look Uncomfortable or it might look awkward. It might look like some dude spitting in some other in the ground and rubbing mud in someone's eye. It might look like that and it might make me uncomfortable. And I think that's what's so great about God is that you you can't come mentalize him and and Turn him into some type of systematic theology that he fits perfectly. I believe in a God, that he is a being, he has a mind and he has total freedom to do whatever in the world he wants, and I think scriptures very clear about that and so coming to grips with the fact that God can in fact do weird stuff and he has done weird, and I have to affirm that in my own life. There's tons of miracles that have been performed in my life, even in even at a very young age, that I have to say, oh yeah, that was definitely God right. And there's other times in my life where God has used the cringy, charismatic preachers To guide me in in areas where I know it only could have been God that guided me. That in that way, as much as I want to resist that because of how I've been tempered and how I've been, how I've had that trauma that I've experienced, I want to resist it, I want to say no. But if I'm honest with myself, to have to say God was the one who did that and there is legitimacy to the stuff that I came from, I just think that more often than not it's weird. Just because it's weird, yeah, and I think that it that's, that's where I've arrived. It's that, yeah, there's, there is a lot of weird, but there's also good to the weird. So that's an excellent point, jared, thank you for not and really valid to Matt.
Speaker 2:We only can speak from our experiences. So to some degree, hey, man, I got a lot in the weird bank account that I just can't like Get rid of. That's valid. It's acceptable to say that. It's just interesting to me sometimes that we baby out with the bathwater. It's oh. So yeah, hey, nothing like God isn't weird. What's that? Have you read the Gospels? Because they're super weird. Yeah and and I just love that we're talking to a man that basically Is invested in an idea that God kind of like is okay with making fun of our silly paradigms. Yes, to some degree it's. I think most of what he does is weird, like in a lot of ways, because if it was perfectly right, like we wouldn't be a part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that makes so much sense to me. Just it makes me think immediately of when he's with the Pharisees and the Pharisees are like you can't heal him on the Sabbath and he's, and then he heals them and they say, hey, by the way, I forgave his sins too, and it's just Mike drop kind of situation. I don't know, that's just such it. There's just no, that's just like everything they thought was true. He's just like completely shifting just everything. Like the Sabbath wasn't made for man, like man, or the other way around. You know what I'm talking about. Like man wasn't made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man. There we go and Just that idea of just like completely shifting that on its head because Pharisees were super Into the oral tradition, oral law, and then Sadducees were like fully invested in the law and they didn't. They were like all the oral traditions. Is it Mishnah Mishka? Something like that. You know I'm talking about. I don't even know. It's like the oral tradition.
Speaker 3:I'm horrible at that stuff, at the original language type stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I just I just read it and I was like that's, that's very interesting for because for some reason I was good flex.
Speaker 2:It's good flex.
Speaker 1:I've read it in a book. If that's a flex of hey, I read this and it's not, I came up with this awesome idea, it's. I read words and here where's it?
Speaker 3:I've read that is a flex man. People don't read anymore.
Speaker 2:You've been on tiktok.
Speaker 3:Have you been on tiktok, Honestly?
Speaker 1:no.
Speaker 2:Here's a weird thought about that. Like to maybe call me and you can speak on. Some matters like this idea of the idea of the one with the most knowledge is the most right. I guess is what's in my mind. And like you can have the most knowledge and be the biggest dick. We've had one explicit. You never know, I didn't, I didn't say what I thought about saying. I'm funny cuz, but like you can, and and I have this like little story metaphor in my brain that just sticks with me as everybody can praise the person in the room, the man that looks the best, has the most knowledge, is the most eloquent, and then there's a two-year-old that says he's mean, and that's more true than the dude. There's being a dick. What's weird about that is sometimes is, oh, I, I love my puritans and like my Augustine and my like the fascinating beauty of the Rightness and the theology of God. And then also, if I'm a, if I'm a mean person, like what, what value does any of that have? And so I just it's funny to me that that God kind of like allows humor to exist as we learn about rightness and that idea. Because I feel like humor is like a pressure release valve, mm-hmm, that you could laugh at yourself. So how in that, in that world, in that idea, matt, like, what is? What is humor done for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's good man. I I Agree to. Like knowledge does puff up and as somebody who likes to read theology and get really deep into the weeds, as I mentioned, I had a time in my life where I was just a toxic jerk and now I have to understand. That's what I was, and I had to listen to the two-year-old in the corner. That's, he's mean. I don't like him because and I think a lot of guys who do go down that path and Aren't putting in that that aren't having somebody remove the blinders for them or aren't listening to the advice of others when they Mistreat others, I think, yeah, it's like they can just turn into the worst people ever and that's why I don't. I Don't necessarily like calling myself a Calvinist anymore, because the those guys like you mentioned before the young, restless and reformed are just the worst. They're the worst people on the internet. They're horrible. I can't stand them. They are so dumb and they're so toxic. And that's the thing I probably thought I was so right because I had read and I could quote Calvin and I could quote Augustine and I could quote what's the other guy dang it Thomas Aquinas, like nobody's business. But then if I, as I look back with now, as I continue to study, I Think about some of the stuff that I said and I'm like yo, you were actually wrong and dumb and loud about it, and so that's what happens. I think that when, when scripture says, knowledge puffs up, I think the humorous side you can look at it Would be like somebody with a huge head and their head is so big that their forehead Literally just engulfs their eyeballs and they're just blind to the fact of how stupid they are, and that's like metaphor. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Their head is just so fat I gotta use that line they're blinded, that they're their forehead. They just get this massive caveman forehead that just folds over their eyeballs and they can't see a single thing and they're just blinded by their own knowledge. Like, there's memes like this I won't take full credit for. Like this there's memes Whoa Jacks, I've heard about work. Whoa Jacks, you about that stuff.
Speaker 1:No, never mind.
Speaker 3:It's these drawings.
Speaker 1:We need to be in meme culture a little bit.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry not prepared for this meme culture is so annoying because there's there's so much to it and this is what I do every day. So, sorry, guys, but there's, there's a whoa jack. It's basically a drawing of a person that you, that people will comment like a photo comment, mocking the person that made the comment above them, so say somebody's, do you know that? Blah, blah, blah. And then somebody will post or comment a picture of a whoa jack with somebody like with their brain like falling out, and that's supposed to be the way you box somebody. It's W O, j, a, c, k, and you can find millions of them. There's so many different drawings. There's a, there's a whoa jack with somebody pretending to be smart and it's they think. You can tell by the image the way that is drawn. They think that they're smart, but their brain is actually leaking over their, out their head and onto their shoulders, and so that's just one. It's just like a way to insult people is by posting these hieroglyphic style memes. But yeah, I, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's where my brain went when you said what did we do? How, how his humor affected me being a meme Lord in the Christian world man just I. Don't know so much energy guys.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, you've got a really fun interview for us, or at least for me. I can't speak for Jared, but I'm just. That, just that humility of, because there's that line too of I don't know. Let me see if I could put this into words, because it's a feeling I feel all the time. It's like when you see somebody prideful and you're like I know that they're prideful and they're like going about Not theology in the wrong way, because I read theology for like fun. I'm not, I don't really care, like I care, but it's just like fun for me to just read and like understand different viewpoints and stuff like that. Yeah, but like I Don't know there's. If you see a guy that's coming in with just a bunch of bunch of pride about all the head knowledge he has, then immediately I get prideful because I'm like, oh, I know how to just destroy this guy. And then it's wait a second. This is Not not in the sense of, oh, I know more than him, but just you can just call him out on his pride. And then you're like, oh, I knew that that existed. So now that I'm prideful because I can point things out like that, and then there's just two sides to that coin of there's the Pharisees and then there's jenoments, big-time sinners, and we're all a little bit of both and it's really hard to. If you kind of get what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's a third side to to be honest, because, as I mentioned, tick tock is just horrible. It's just a breeding ground, honestly, of the worst content I've ever seen in my whole life, and much of it is Christian. Like the Christian content is there. It's just abysmal. However, like there are some amazing content creators on there as well, I won't disparage the entire platform, because I've discovered some of the best Christian philosophers on tick tock that I've ever met, um. But there are Christian content creators out there that are just committing themselves to the dumbest arguments in the name of Christ and making Christians look just so dumb. And in those instances, I think that's when it is good to use the knowledge that you and I grant have acquired to say, hey, you're dumb and you gotta knock their table over, you gotta do some Jesus table flipping on them. And there are times where I think that's very necessary to rebuke in love for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of Christ. And I've actually got a lot of atheist friends on TikTok because of that, because what you'll see is the atheists will do these lives and they just, like a meat grinder, just go through all these Christians on their lives that will join their lives and be like I don't believe in God, and then they'll just roast them with all their knowledge of Graham, oppie and Draper and they're just slamming them with these really great arguments. And all the Christian really has to say on those lives is my grandma was a Christian and so my mom was a Christian, and so that shows that God was in my life before I was even. You know what I'm saying. Like really bad arguments, and the ones that will rise to the top will be these other weirdos that will commit themselves to like. Recently there's this guy who's committing himself to like child marriage in the Bible, and when he was pressed on it by some other atheists on TikTok, they were like so what you're telling me is that, according to the Bible, it's okay for you to sleep with a nine year old. Is that what you're telling me? And he's just so the Bible is the objective standard and he wouldn't answer it. So me and my philosopher friends, they're like stop.
Speaker 1:You stop talking. That hurts. Yeah, you gotta get. I will give you that. That's something that I do really bad at. By the way, just for the record, I will almost go all the way with a bird. I just won't flip the table Like. I just won't like. It's like all right, here's this. And a lot about this podcast is like we don't wanna like debate people and we really wanna like give a space where they can be heard. It doesn't really matter. Like I don't wanna like and I don't think we would get in like a heavy debate. But just, there have been a lot of people in this podcast that like I just feel it, I'm like, okay, it's time to debate, and then I'm like, no, this is not the platform for this. So I just I don't know I'll go probably too far with just like all right, they deserve to be heard, they're people too. They're good and it's, I don't know. Just distinguishing and flip that table is hard for me. I'm definitely on the side of almost just let it go before I'll flip the table, because if I hear it and I'm like the child thing, it's yeah. If you argue that, then you could take the whole Old Testament and you can basically say everybody in the Old Testament did good things exclusively Cause it's never hey, marry a child. It's this guy might have married a child. It's not hey, thou shall marry a child. It's like this person had maybe a child bride in there and there's so many different things that people did in the Old Testament that are not good, very, very much not good. So it's I don't know. It's hard to flip tables for me. I don't wanna talk about the child bride thing. It makes me upset.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it makes me upset.
Speaker 2:No, we're done with this topic.
Speaker 3:And being all angry and I don't feel angered a lot.
Speaker 1:So weird feeling for me.
Speaker 2:I was thinking about this earlier when you were mentioning like the. I don't remember how you described it, but we were talking about the idea and we've even been referring to the idea of like language changing so quickly, like you've used words or language, or we even used the idea of symbology itself, like now, like technically, memes are like a reference point of symbology that you know you're still not. Yeah, harrigos. So what are you like from your perspective, being in a culture that is so rapidly like, producing so much garbage every day and you can't like, to some degree, I've got, I'm about to have four kids, I got three, I'm about to have four under four, like at some point I'm just not in the game anymore, like I can't keep up with the next thing. What do you think about the idea of truth not having a sense of urgency?
Speaker 3:Sorry, I am just reeling for the fact you said four under four.
Speaker 2:My oldest is about to be five, so like I'm about to hit that, five, three, two, one and then whatever that other thing.
Speaker 1:The Wendy's four for four is what that is the.
Speaker 2:Wendy's four the biggie bag.
Speaker 1:You're about to have a $5 biggie bag, but you got a Wendy's four for four. I'm at it. What point did you become Catholic Like?
Speaker 3:yeah.
Speaker 2:Hey man.
Speaker 3:No, my fault.
Speaker 1:See what had happened was no.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, I think to answer your question like how do I keep up with it? When was your question?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the idea of the relevance of truth not having to do with urgency. Does that make sense? Like we talked about flipping tables, like there's some urgency, but then like truth isn't outpaced by silliness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's one thing I've discovered just growing in my faith is the value in ecumenicism, which is a big word for seeing what's fundamentally true with what you believe.
Speaker 1:I just we laughed because somebody said to us on a first comment we ever got on this podcast, by the way, like first feedback other than our friends and stuff like that, but like first feedback was like sounds like you subscribed to the heresy of ecumenism, and I was like I had to Google it and I was like dad, dad, gum it. And I immediately wanted to write an angry response but I wrote tell me more about this instead of fricking. Unity, baby, listen, yeah, keep going on what you were saying. It just we were laughing a little bit. It can be like.
Speaker 3:The thing is that it can be like a four letter word. I think in some instances, ecumenism ecumenism can be bad, but I think at its simplest form it's a good thing. If you're looking for what's truly true and what's truly valuable with the Christian faith, what is fundamental to what you believe, and focusing on that, focusing on the primary and leaving all the secondary issues to charity, I think there's a lot of value in that.
Speaker 1:So our listeners, what is the definition of ecumenism?
Speaker 3:So ecumenism is basically, that is, seeing views from different parties. This is like the simplest explanation of it, if you like. So you have Baptists, you have Pentecostals, you have Presbyterians, you have Catholics, would I say, catholics All of them.
Speaker 1:There's all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's all sorts of different denominations. If you find the unifying beliefs between all the different denominations of Christianity and find what is fundamental to the belief in Christ, I don't think you can go wrong. I think there's a lot of charity in scripture. On the secondary issues, like should a woman be your pastor, Even though the Gospel Coalition for some reason thinks that complementarianism is like a fundamental part of the faith, which is like okay, I have fun with that.
Speaker 1:Is that complementarism or whatever you said? Is that women being passed, women in the ministry?
Speaker 3:yeah, so complementarianism is when you do not believe that women should be in a ministerial role, particularly the role of elder. More specifically, I am complementarian for the record, because that's like the more reformed Presbyterian position, but the alternative being egalitarianism, which is, like, anyone can be a minister, women included. Anyone can fill the role of elder, women included, and I believe there's some churches out there that are doing good for their community in the name of Christ that hold to egalitarianism, even though I'm not egalitarian and I would disagree with them. I wouldn't go as far as to say you're the church of Satan. You're not even a church, Like some people will wile out and go absolutely foam at the mouth. You see that they're not even preaching the Gospel. I think there's room there, I think there's charity that can be said there, and so when it comes to that, like in my memes and I hope this is answering the question that Jared asked three hours ago- I will take that concept.
Speaker 2:This is about a question I asked.
Speaker 3:I'll take the concept of the fact that some people disagree with that and so I'll roast both sides. So one meme I'll say I'll do. There's a picture of the guy who played Moon Knight Oliver. You guys know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:The show Moon Knight.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he's played so many different roles I can't remember the guy's name. He's an amazing actor. Well, he's wearing like a skirt or something and his wife is wearing like a suit, basically, and I just said, and it says in the caption what it looks like when your wife is the senior pastor, or something like that, and so I'll roast the Gallitarians. And then I'll do another one where it's roasting Complementarians, where it'll say something like when your preacher is showing signs of feminism, or something like that. You know what I'm saying. I'll roast both sides of the because I don't feel like it's something that is a gospel issue, like some people will. And I think that's what ecumenism is is the saying not everything's a gospel issue, not everything's a primary issue, and I don't think we should respond to things that with harshness, to things that are not primary issues, that are contrary to primary issues. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, go ahead, you have something to grant.
Speaker 1:No, I was just saying like it couldn't be any closer to. I agree with that 100%.
Speaker 2:I'll even use the example that you gave as a good one, and the guy's name is Oscar Isaac. I think is who you're.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:That's the Moon Knight actor, I think. Oftentimes ecumenism is even referred to as like the spirit of ecumenism, and what occurs to me is there's a fundamental difference in the idea of the purpose of Christ being getting everybody right or drawing hearts near. We just relate to God, the gospel, righteousness, goodness, as though the intent is getting everybody right primarily. And while that may be what takes place, the spirit of ecumenism says I accept that I'm probably not wholly right. That's what I feel it says. So, even to some degree, like TGC or oh, they think this is a fundamental issue. The spirit of ecumenism or to me personally an even better word be the spirit of humility says maybe I'm not the standard and it's acceptable for me to just continue to discover the perfection of Christ. Standard, that's an okay paradigm to enter into any relationship and I don't know, I feel a little preachy right now, but to some degree it's like either you choose that or you pick a corner that you're going to fight to the death in. There's not really an in between. Either you're gonna pick whatever corner you think is most right and you're going to continually cycle through hatred or self doubt, or you just accept that Jesus, christ is most right and I'm just learning. I'm okay with that. Actually, I'm not okay with that. I'm desperate to live that way.
Speaker 3:I can't, so I don't know if that I think that's what Jesus meant, though, when he was like unless you're like a little kid, unless you're like a little child, you're not gonna inherit the kingdom of it. I think that there's a vital aspect of being a Christian that requires you to be so humble in your approach to who God is and your beliefs in God that it's in comparison to being a baby, being a kid hey, I just trust God, that he's good. I think that's like God is good and he's gonna do it for me. He's gonna do whatever I need for me. Yeah, because I'm dumb and he's smart, he big smart, me big dumb.
Speaker 1:I like that. You know what I mean. There's some good theology, at least for me. He big smart, I'm big dumb.
Speaker 2:God is good, I'm not.
Speaker 1:He needs God. God no need me, but create me because he loved me.
Speaker 2:That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 3:I think that's. If you got that, anybody can I think anybody can accept that.
Speaker 2:To me that becomes like you're good instead of, oh, my traumatic, charismatic background. Was this much wrong with this degree of right? Or my reformed anger is this much right with this degree of? I need to grow and he may like, or it's just. I have a compass that directs my heart, which is drawing near the heart of God. I can mourn over the trauma, but I don't have to prove anybody right or prove anybody wrong. I just need to draw near to Jesus, who says he's my friend, and not to trigger anybody Like. There's definitely things that are wrong that you should speak up about and that's acceptable, but I feel like you can do that from a spirit of condemnation so much more easily than you can like, seeking to understand, and I don't know. That was the last line, like early on when you were speaking. I had an unbeliever one time say to me so many people are educated beyond their understanding, and that stuck with me for a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. Something that I don't want to lose, too, is just that there is a place, at least to me, like I used to like rampage on, like denominations are from the devil, and we're so split up and like that sort of thing, which I do think that there is a degree of truth to that. We are split up and that's we could either be like a body that has different parts or we could be like just pointing guns at each other and being like the Presbyterian and like Baptist or that sort of thing, which does happen. But I do. I want to hit on the thing of there is a place for denominations Like. This is something that I heard somebody say. That was, you know, we were talking about church and this and that, and it was just like I go, and I think it was Presbyterian and it was like I go to a Presbyterian church because one, there's community there, just people, and two, I know that they're not gonna and this was PCA and he was like I know that they're not gonna like say anything. That's super out of whack. If that makes any sense, so it does. It is nice to have, especially with the PCA, that has just so much connectivity and so much like value on belief systems and preaching and even infant baptism or whatever. I can disagree with that and that's fine, but it's just. There is a lot of value in different denominations that I didn't like. Just me, when I first came to Christ was, like you know, rampaging on like we need to all be one, and I think that that is true, but I think that it's also. It is really nice to just be like I'm a P, I'm PCA, presbyterian. I don't know what kind of Presbyterian you are, but I'm PCA.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm PCA, presbyterian, and this is what my church believes, and it's easy to figure out because it's just right there, boom yeah, this is what my church believes and this is what we believe. And if you go to a PCA church, that's what they're teaching, which is why Catholics are, I think, do a lot of things right in the sense of they preach. This, blew my mind, is they teach like the same, yeah, like books of the Bible. Throughout, like throughout, everywhere in the world, catholics rock and roll on that. It's like you teach about giving a frickin millions of people are like All right time to give. You preach about going, and it's like millions of people are like All right time to go, time to serve, and it's that is mass. Like they are crushing it with that.
Speaker 3:Like when you talk about unity dude, we really need to learn from Catholic.
Speaker 1:They are rocking and rolling on that and I don't believe everything they believe or what, oh my goodness, do they? Can you imagine if you try to do that in a Protestant denomination? Just any of them?
Speaker 2:I think the Reformation would happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, that's what I was here for. Got 95 thesis and a Pope eight one. I made a meme, made a gigachat meme, where it was like it was like the gigachat posing like this and then had the hammer in his hand and I had the little Martin Luther. It's just one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:You were being so serious and I just I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't, it's just it's cool to me. It's like I really do admire the Catholics that like specifically Roman Catholic, because there is other Catholics just around, around and about.
Speaker 2:But there's the concept in the. There's an old country song, or it's not super old, but it's like if you, if you what? Does it stand for something or fall for anything? There's a?
Speaker 3:I don't listen to country I don't know, yeah, it's fine, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:What is it about?
Speaker 1:you stand for something or you fall for anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, either you stand for something or you'll fall for anything, yeah. I got you. I'm not attributing it to the right author, but to me, like that has become more valuable. In a world that has such inconsistency, Can anybody just be consistent to anything Like? And that's what it means to be based.
Speaker 3:That's what it means.
Speaker 1:to be based Literally, that's what it means when somebody, when you stand for something I'd love to be based.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like it's a good thing it's not a pejorative, it's something like oh, he's based.
Speaker 1:Cause he stands for something.
Speaker 3:He stands for something. That dude stands for something and he doesn't give a crap about what other people think.
Speaker 2:And so that's why you want to be based. Yeah, okay, so didn't. Based also used to mean like being on an acid trip, I know.
Speaker 3:It's very different now.
Speaker 2:Awesome dude.
Speaker 1:I'm it based in the Christian faith.
Speaker 3:Getting based is one thing. Being based Okay, very, very different.
Speaker 2:The title of the episode getting based versus being based.
Speaker 3:Getting based with Matt Mathews.
Speaker 1:Actually not a bad title, I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 2:Being based oh, that's good, All right, good, good, good, full circle there, matt.
Speaker 1:Is there any last. We usually keep it around an hour or so, and I'd like to chat with you after.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wanted to spend a couple minutes talking with you guys after this. But, yeah, I do a lot, honestly, with memes for Jesus. If you want to check us out on Instagram or Facebook, those are our biggest pages. We have almost we have over 900,000 followers total on Instagram and Facebook combined and I like to do a lot of. I like to use that platform to help platform other creators and that's been our big push since day one, and I started a brand new show on our YouTube, so it'd be huge if you guys could subscribe to our YouTube right now. That's our new effort. We started a show called the Christian creator spotlight where, for free, we allow creators to jump on and talk about what they do for five minutes straight, and I was doing something like that on meme Lord Monday. That I think that's how we met, right Grant. Yeah, I was doing something very similar to that. I was doing more coaching actually on meme Lord Monday, but it's essentially the same thing, where I allow people to join the live stream and they talk about what they do for five minutes. So long story short subscribe to meme Lord, oh my gosh. Subscribe to memes for Jesus on YouTube, and if you are a creator, we'd love to help platform you on our show, the Christian creator spotlight. So that's that's our big push right now and I'd love your guys support with them.
Speaker 1:Awesome, that's awesome. Thanks for listening to the across the counter podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars wherever you got this podcast. Thanks, y'all.
