Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro recently interviewed Grace Community Church Pastor John MacArthur about a wide variety of topics, including American churches, Christian nationalism, the war on American children, and the reason for believing the Gospel. “Many, many churches have lost their sense of transcendence,” MacArthur told Shapiro. “It’s like going to a rock concert. It’s like going to a TED talk. It’s like going to hear somebody tell you you’re really a wonderful person and you can speak your own world into existence. It’s psychological and sociological games, but it lacks transcendence.”

“It lacks the sense of connecting with God, with finding reality in an invisible means of support beyond yourself,” he added.

Regarding Christian nationalism, Shapiro noted that faith leaders are unfairly accused of coming off as political whenever they are addressing moral issues. MacArthur, for his part, explained that it is politicians who have drifted away from just sociological and economic views into morality, The Christian Post reports.

“I grew up in a world where Democrats had a sociological view, they had an economic view; Republicans had a sociological and economic view,” he said. “There was never a moral issue. It was the workforce and the ownership. Those were the two parties. The Republicans were the ones that created the jobs, and the Democrats are the ones that work the jobs, and finding out a balance there was what the political leaders were supposed to achieve.”

MacArthur noted that a more direct political arrangement “went away and early in this century, when politicians began to make their platforms moral — or immoral, from my standpoint. When you start saying it’s pro-LGBTQ, it’s pro-homosexual, it’s pro-abortion, it’s pro-transgender [...], everything has shifted from the economic definitions of the past into these moral issues.”

“So, as a Christian, I’m still talking on a moral level,” he continued. “It just so happens that politicians have stepped into the moral world and created chaos.”

MacArthur recently released his latest book, The War on Children: Providing Refuge for Your Children in a Hostile World. He explained that young people are led into wickedness by the culture without guidance.

The pastor pointed out that the war on children begins with the desire of not wanting to have them in the first place, which ends up in abortion or being corrupted by the world if they are born, which he implied leads to increased levels of mental illness by young people.

“If the child survives, let the culture raise him,” MacArthur said, noting the common parenting approach. “It’s easier for people to take a kid and put him on a drug than it is to turn off the cell phone. It makes no sense. I mean, it’s just one thing after another after another [that] leads to the irresponsibility.”

In similar remarks, MacArthur said in April there is no such thing as mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder is simply “grief,” and that skyrocketing rates of mental illness among children stem from not teaching them personal responsibility.

Later in the interview, Shapiro asked MacArthur how skeptics can be convinced of the Gospel.

“The only faith that makes any sense is faith that has an object that can deliver what you expect,” MacArthur said, adding that many people place their faith in lies.

For instance, he shared that a man recently jumped off the roof of his house because he believed he could fly.

MacArthur shared that reasonable faith should be anchored in facts, citing the veracity of the Gospels as an example because they fulfilled numerous Old Testament prophecies regarding Jesus Christ and that historical reality that many who witnessed Christ’s resurrection were willing to die for it.

Additionally, he encouraged skeptics to read the Bible, contending that it could defend itself.

“Read the Bible. Just read the Bible. It has the ring of truth. It defends itself,” he said. “It’s like a lion. You don’t defend it. You don’t defend the lion. You open the cage and let it out. It’ll be okay. And the Scripture is like that. But it’s like that even morally, there’s something in the heart of people that resonates with biblical morality.”

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