Daily Wire hosts Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens have brought their simmering feud to the public, seeking to ‘destroy’ each other over a couple of posts that have scripture as their center.
Ever since Hamas murdered 1200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more, Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, has been raging about the terroristic attacks, both against the perpetrators and those who are giving them cover. He, like many in Israel, views the actions against the country as an existential threat that will only be mitigated by Hamas being decisively dismantled. Any collateral damage to civilian life, though seeking to be minimized, is the fault of Hamas, and responsibility must be laid there.
On the other hand, while Owens would likewise decry the worst attack on the Jews since the Holocaust, she’s also an isolationist and contrarian who has been playing the game for a long time. She’s been busy spending the last month engaged in “question asking” – a tactic used to say a lot while insisting she’s saying nothing at all.
In response to Israel’s activities in Gaza, she is not openly condemning them, but the “questions” she is asking makes it clear she sees some sort of moral equivalency and culpability between a dead Israeli that was raped, beheaded, and set on fire by a monstrous zealot, and a dead Gazan who was unfortunately (and occasionally unintentionally) killed in a surgical airstrike. As for whether there should be a cease-fire, if college kids protesting in support of Hamas should be blacklisted, or if the United States should even involve itself in giving aid and support to Israel in the first place, there are “questions” about that too.
The fracas came to a head after Shapiro told a group of students that Owens’ behavior and public statements throughout this conflict had been ‘absolutely disgraceful’- prompting Owens to weaponize scripture by posting a passive-aggressive jab at her employer.
No stranger to her shtick, Shapiro, who discerned that Owens wasn’t merely quoting that particular bible verse for the edification of her soul, utterly unrelated to the fact that her boss, who pays her a lot of money, called her out for her viewpoints and convictions.
Due to her obstreperous nature, Owens is not about to squander an opportunity to engage in some good old-fashioned faux-outrage. Owens feigned offense and purposefully chose to publicly and intentionally misinterpret Shapiro’s post, as if his concern was she was quoting scripture rather than the message she was seeking to convey with the scripture quoted.
It’s all so disingenuous. While Shapiro routinely butchers the bible whenever he seeks to interpret it, Owens has long ago mastered the art of wielding scripture as a weapon, conveniently bringing it out whenever it is the most advantageous and putting it away when it conflicts with her own unscriptural moral values. Her efforts in this instance to paint herself as a Christian being persecuted for her faith by posting are singularly transparent, and will only fool the ones wanting to be fooled.
If a poll asked young conservative Christian men to identify a culturally significant figure that they admire, Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro would undoubtedly be near the top of the list. With Shapiro as its figurehead in the last eight years, the Daily Wire has grown from a small, relatively insignificant niche conservative news outlet to one of the fastest-growing media companies in the United States, boasting more than $100 million annually in revenue and 200+ employees.
If one had a conversation with Ben about his wealth and success, Shapiro would undoubtedly punctuate the conversation with the statement, “and did I mention that my wife is a doctor?” As a well-polished political commentator with bonafide conservative credentials, Ben Shapiro seems to have it all together. Still, in a series of recent Facebook posts, the 39-year-old adherent to Orthodox Judaism delved into the topic of religion, discouraging non-Jews from converting to Judaism, and making the claim that the majority of people on earth will get into heaven without converting to Judaism.
Shapiro’s statements about lawkeeping show the heart and philosophy behind his theology. According to Shapiro, the majority of people on the earth keep a form of gentile law that is derived from the Jewish Talmud, known as the “Seven Laws of Noah”, which, by Shapiro’s standard, makes them basically morally good.
The Jewish theology of Ben Shapiro is nearly indistinguishable from the theology of therapeutic moral deism, which says that people are basically good and as long as they make an effort to live a moral life they will end up in heaven. Interestingly, Shapiro finds the keeping of the 613 commandments of Orthodox Judaism “onerous” but apparently believes that as an Orthodox Jew, he is capable of living up to the standard of the law.
Nearly two millennia ago, another distinguished rich young man approached Jesus with the issue of eternal life on his mind. Like Ben Shapiro, the man held a high view of himself as a lawkeeper and generally good person, but this man wanted Jesus to affirm his personal accomplishments of moral living and law keeping. Matthew recorded the interaction in his Gospel account:
And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Matthew 19:16-22
Jesus recognized that the rich young man who approached him was incapable of keeping the law. The man’s desire to achieve personal holiness through effort, while admirable in the eyes of a moralistic culture, was a fool’s errand because a fallen man is incapable of perfectly keeping the law in its entirety. Jesus pointed out a single obvious weak point in the rich young man’s claim to personal piety, and the entire facade came crashing down. The rich young man loved his wealth and possessions more than he loved God, a form of idolatry. Those things that he loved more than God were his idols. His failure to keep a single point of the law meant that he had failed to keep the whole law, rendering him insufficiently righteous to live eternally with a perfect and holy God. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus punched additional holes in the moralistic worldview, showing how every single person fails to live up to the moral law of God.
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. Matthew 5:21-22
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew 5:27-28
Like the rich young man, Ben Shapiro has all the admiration of the world and signs of materialistic success, but he lacks one thing. That one thing is the ability to perfectly keep the law of God in its entirety. Whether the law is expanded into an extensive list of 613 rules, translated and distilled into 7 basic rules for Gentiles, or boiled down into its most basic form of the two greatest commandments (love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself), there is no hope for Ben Shapiro or any other person who pursues salvation through personal self-righteousness. Whether you are a Harvard Law graduate like Shapiro, or a simple uneducated man, you are incapable of attaining the law of God.
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.James 2:10
Fortunately for Ben Shapiro and every other person in this fallen world, there was one man, Jesus, the Son of God and Messiah who fulfilled the whole law, died, and rose again so that imperfect people, both Jewish and Gentile, can be reconciled to a Holy God. That is the good news of the Gospel. Those who receive the gift of his atoning sacrifice on the cross by grace through faith cannot trust in their own works, because they know that they are sinners in need of salvation. Jesus Christ is the only hope for Ben Shapiro and all sinners, whether Jew or Gentile.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26
In this week’s episode of the Sunday Show, ardent Roman Catholic and conservative commentator Matt Walsh explained to Ben Shapiro that the Protestant Reformation was essentially one big misunderstanding, while also denying faith alone.
Shapiro: From a religious point of view, when you say that the goal is to get to heaven, are you a belief- based person? I mean, is it that you believe in Christ and therefore you go to heaven, or is it a works-based thing? Because obviously, this is sort of a differentiator between Judaism and Christianity in some iterations.
Walsh: Yeah, I think, well, I don’t mean to dismiss like 500 years of fighting between Protestants and Catholics, but I kind of think that, at least between Protestants and Catholics, the works vs. faith dichotomy, it’s kind of a misunderstanding. Because I think we actually generally agree, in that I certainly don’t believe that the whole point of life is just to intellectually assent to the proposition that Jesus Christ is Lord and there is a God.
So people will say that all you have to do is believe in Jesus, all you have to do is believe in God. I definitely don’t believe that. But if we want to talk about faith, you have to put your faith in God. That is more than an intellectual exercise, that is something that you do with your whole life and your whole mind and soul and body; that you’re investing yourself in this belief.
And that includes works, but it’s not as though you know, you give a certain amount to charity, and you help old ladies across the street, you go to heaven, it’s not as simple as that. So it’s kind of a combination between the two.
The way that I see it is, it’s sort of like you know, if God is a bridge into heaven, into the afterlife, you can’t just walk up to the bridge and say, ‘Yes, I believe that the bridge is there. I assent to the existence of the bridge’, and then just go and sit on the other side of the bridge and not cross it. You actually have to trust the bridge and with your own effort, walk across it over the abyss. And so I think it’s sort of- that’s what faith is.
It’s not the first time that Walsh has commented on the split between Protestants and Roman Catholics, having formerly castigating Protestants for celebrating Reformation Day, which is when Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.
For more of this thoughts, Walsh did an hour-long interview with Allie Beth Stuckey in 2019 on “the differing beliefs between Catholics and Protestants, heaven and hell, love and salvation” demonstrating that he doesn’t understand the scriptures, doesn’t know what the gospel is, and that his knowledge of the bible is terminally broken. This is perhaps best seen in his suggestion that because hell is the absence of God and therefore the absence of love, that people who ‘love well’ while on earth are possibly unable to even go to hell, even if they don’t specifically because in Jesus, and therefore will be saved.
Make no mistake, both Ben and Matt are lost and heading to hell, and they need our prayers.
