Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1163 | Self-Centered Women’s Ministries Are Making the Church Weak | Guest: Natasha Crain

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Today, we sit down with author and apologist Natasha Crain to discuss her new book, "When Culture Hates You: Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square," and how Christians need to equip themselves to answer whatever questions culture hurls at them. We discuss how parents need to be more active in discipling their children to prepare them for the modern culture. We also ask the question of what having a biblical worldview actually means, and Natasha gives us some insight on how Christians can uphold their biblical principles in an increasingly hostile public square. Share the Arrows 2025 is on October 11 in Dallas, Texas! Go to sharethearrows.com for tickets now! Buy Natasha's new book, "When Culture Hates You: Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square": https://a.co/d/6Qo2Air Buy Allie's new book, "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": https://a.co/d/4COtBxy --- Timecodes: (00:57) Natasha Crain intro (05:00) Answering hard apologetics questions (09:36) Training and discipling kids in the church (13:40) What is a biblical worldview?  (19:10) Maintaining a biblical worldview in the culture (29:44) Should Christians want power?  (40:39) Persevering in the public square --- Today's Sponsors: A’del — Try A'del's hand-crafted, artisan, small-batch cosmetics and use promo code ALLIE 25% off your first time purchase at AdelNaturalCosmetics.com Good Ranchers — Go to GoodRanchers.com and subscribe to any of their boxes (but preferably the Allie Beth Stuckey Box) and get free bacon, ground beef, seed oil free chicken nuggets, or salmon in every order for a year. Plus, you’ll get $40 off when you use my code ALLIE at checkout. Cozy Earth - Go to CozyEarth.com/RELATABLE and use code “RELATABLE” for up to 40% off Cozy Earth's best-selling sheets, towels, pajamas, and more! Masa Chips — Go to MasaChips.com and use promo code ALLIEB for a discount on your first time order of seed oil free tortilla chips! --- Related Episodes: Ep 1162 | SkinnyTok, the iPad Pacifier & Paula White’s New Scam https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1162-skinnytok-the-ipad-pacifier-paula-whites-new-scam/id1359249098?i=1000701152306 Ep 1144 | The Theological Errors of Gentle Parenting | Guest: Abbie Halberstadt https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1144-the-theological-errors-of-gentle-parenting/id1359249098?i=1000694482757 Ep 863 | What Happened to Millennials? | Guest: Dr. George Barna https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-863-what-happened-to-millennials-guest-dr-george-barna/id1359249098?i=1000625997113 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

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If you go to fellowship homelones.com, you'll get $500 of credit at closing. That's fellowship homelones.com slash alley, term supply, see site for details, fellowship home loans, mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers, DBA Fellowship Home Loans, equal housing lender, NMLS, number 819-39-382. Natasha Crane is a mom and an apologist. Her new book is about persevering and advocating for God's definitions of good and right and true in a culture that hates us. She dispels all of the myths that Christians should not be bringing our worldview into the public square. Even as we are called all kinds of crazy names like Christian nationalist, fascist, we have to persevere and keep all.

on persistently advocating for a biblical worldview, not just in obedience to God, but for the good of our neighbor. She makes such a powerful case for this today on today's episode of Relatable. It's brought to by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code Alley at checkout. That's good ranchers.com code Alley. Natasha, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. For those who may not know, can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? Sure. So I've been married for 25 years and I have three kids, three teenagers, two 16 year olds and a 14 year old. Wow. And I've been writing and speaking for about the last 10 years. I've written five books. And my focus is really on equipping Christians with a better understanding of worldviews and apologetics. So you've written five books in the last 10 years. If my math is correct, that's a book every couple years. And you have three teenagers. Can you just tell us how you have had, how do you find the time to do that? It's been hard, actually. It kind of shocks me when I look back at it and think, oh my gosh, I've written five books over those 10 years. And I just found little bits and pieces of time here and there. And I homeschooled for a part of that time for about three years of it. And so flexibility of schedules, that always helps out too. But it's been great. It's been rewarding and challenging at the same time. Yes. And you focus mostly on apologetics. Apologetics when we're talking to our kids, how to equip them for the world. But also this expands.

beyond mothers raising kids. And really you just talk to Christians. Okay, how do we battle this culture that hates Christianity that doesn't believe the things we do? Not only doesn't believe, but is diametrically opposed to many of the things that we believe. So why did you get started talking about that? Yeah, well, when I very first started writing, I started a blog back in 2011. Everyone was blogging at that time. It sounds so quaint now looking back at that.

I know, I know. I did too. I think I probably started one in 2011 as well. It was a big blogging time. And so I had three kids three and under at the time. And I thought, you know, this would be kind of an interesting thing that I could do. Maybe once they go to sleep or, you know, they're taking naps, whatever. And so I started this blog called Christian Mom Thoughts.

I didn't think anything of the name. Christian Mom Boss. Okay. No, Christian Mom Thoughts. Oh, my name's like Christian Mom Boss. I was like, Mom Boss would have been better, actually. I always hate saying Christian Mom Thoughts out loud because it's so lame. It's like the worst name ever.

Okay. I didn't set out to write. I didn't set out to be a writer or anything. But we all had very. Okay, I'll tell you, I will tell you the name of my blog. Because we all had cheesy names for our blog, okay? But now mind you, 2011, I was like 18, 19 years old, okay? It was called Taking the Alleyway.

And it was a blog. It was about, actually, people would read it today. I'd be like this sounds a lot like what I still talk about. It was about like culture and stuff. So I just wanted to relieve you of any embarrassment that you had. Thank you so much. Yes. That's even a little more clever.

though than Christian mom thought so I'm going to give you more credit no I like it it's straightforward you know what you're going to get it was it's like here's what I'm thinking about here how we're going to raise our young kids to know and love the Lord I mean they were so little so I was just writing about things like what we were doing with like songs that they were singing and prayers and things like I really didn't think anything of it but as my blog started to grow I started to have skeptics who would come to my website they would find my blog when people would share my articles on social media and they would say things like you're indoctrinating your kids don't you know there's no evidence for the existence of God, that science has put God out of a job. The Bible's filled with errors and contradictions. I mean, the list went on and on. And I had grown up in a Christian home, and so I had never, you know, really been challenged and I didn't walk away from my faith, like so many of the stories that you hear, but I hadn't really heard these kinds of challenges myself. And certainly no one was bringing them to me proactively in the home or in the church. And so it just kind of set me off onto this long reading journey of trying to figure out what are answers to the questions that I was getting through my blog.

And in that process, I then turned around and made my blog into a place where I was equipping other Christian parents with an understanding of these things, saying, hey, this is what the world is saying. If you're like me, maybe you can't answer these questions, but here's what you need to know. And so over time, the blog grew in popularity and a publisher reached down and said, hey, what if you took 40 of these questions, put them into an easy-to-understand book for Christian parents. And that became my first book, keeping your kids on God's side. That is awesome. You know, not everyone who is met with those kinds of questions and challenges on the internet would have the response to dig deeper into what the answers are and then formulate a response and push back against them. A lot of people would ignore them or maybe they would crumble themselves. So what do you think in your life up until that point had kind of equipped you for that moment that you said, you know what?

I think I can take these questions on. Well, I'm a very type A analytical kind of person. So I have an MBA in marketing and statistics, and that's just kind of like where my mind goes. And I couldn't stand the thought that people were raising objections that I couldn't answer. And yet here I am trying to write my Christian mom thoughts blog, where I was equipping people with some kind of thinking about how they can raise their kids in a Christian home to know and love the Lord. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I can't even answer the same questions that I'm being asked. So my kids are growing up in a completely different world than the one in which I grew up. And so that really spurred me on because I just realized I need to know

more answers. It didn't really make me question my own faith, but it made me want to investigate to say, okay, well, what is the evidence for God's existence? I don't want to just be telling my kids, well, believe in God because I do. I want them to actually understand why there's good reason to believe that Christianity is true. So where did you go? Where did you turn for those answers first? What kind of resources? I think I was just Googling things as they came. So it wasn't like I set out to do a big program or something very structured, like you might find through a university or something like that. It was, I would get a question and then I would go seeking answers to that question. And then I would learn everything that I could about that. Yeah. And then turn around

and use that as an opportunity on my blog to help equip others. I think I really went deep onto the questions in Genesis and evolution first because I especially had a lot of questions that people would raise on that. And that was just something I was completely unprepared to talk about. Yeah. So you basically, use the search engine to find resources, you dug into what do commentaries say, what do you theologians say, what does the Bible say? And you formulated a response based on the premise that God's word is true, right? And that his word and the reality of creation is logically defensible. Right. Right. Absolutely. I wanted to understand all the different perspectives that Christians had also because I quickly found that Christians do have a lot of different disagreements.

And so I tried hard in my first book in keeping your kids on God's side to present eight chapters that just kind of looked at the scriptural and scientific case that people make for and against each of those views. So it was really on my heart to just equip parents with this understanding that they probably weren't going to get from their church in terms of how to disciple their kids and answer these questions. Quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor for the day. and that is Adele Natural Cosmetics. I love Adele Natural Cosmetics. I use their products every day, but I really love most of all the people who own Adele Arlene and her family are the real deal. They are salt of the earth people who love the Lord. They are completely unapologetic about their faith,

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You mentioned that we don't get a lot of those apologetics answers in our churches. Why do you think that is? Oh, that's a big, big question. I think that a lot of times, first of all, pastors are very busy people and they have a lot of things that they have to work on. But a lot of times they think that it's enough that kids are just, coming to church and that they're just being exposed to God in some sense. But I think that when we assume that kids, if they're surrounded by God enough, that they're just going to naturally hang on to their faith. I think that is a very limited and naive understanding. I mean, we know from all

of the research that somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of kids walk away from their faith today by their early 20s. And so surrounding kids by God is not enough to help them internalize who Jesus is and facilitate that relationship. And kids are having so many challenges today from the world that they have to be equipped. I always think of it like a mountain. There's a mountain of faith challenges out there. And if we're just taking them to church every week thinking that's enough, it's like sending them to Mount Everest with just a few jumping jacks of faith.

And we have to do more than that. We have to equip. We have to train. We have to prepare them specifically for what they're going to encounter. And that's where I think that the church is not really preparing kids' day. And overwhelmingly the parents aren't prepared. So parents are the primary disciples of the kids. I'm not saying that the church has to take that over.

It's great when the church comes alongside the parents in those ways. But we have to remember that the parents are the primary disciplesers. And if parents don't have a biblical worldview, if they don't understand the Bible, how are they going to pass that on themselves? So we have a discipleship of the parents' problem, not just a discipleship of the kids' problem. Yes. You know, I realize in church, and I don't say this out of it like a desire to shame,

but as I interact with people that I know have been going to church for a long time, and I hear some of the things that they say or questions that they have that are very clearly answered in scripture, I realize we have obviously a deficit of like sound theology and apologetics knowledge, but we seem to have a problem of discipleship. That, yes, it is possible for someone to attend church their whole life, to sit under sermons, and to know Bible verses and still not know how to answer the culture's questions about Christianity, God, and morality. And you point out in your book, you've got a new book out, when culture hates you,

persevering for the common good as Christians in a hostile public square, that only 4% of Americans hold beliefs consistent with the core truth of the Bible. Well, about 60% of Americans identify as Christians. So we got a problem here. It's a huge problem. And when people hear me on my podcast or they hear me speak, like, I'm always referring to these statistics because I think it's so important that every Christian hears these statistics. When you have 65% of people, according to Pew Research, who are saying, I am a Christian, when they're surveyed,

and only 4% who hold the beliefs consistent with what you would expect that to mean, we have what I would call an authority gap. It's the difference between, well, this is what I say I am, and this is how I'm going to label myself, and those who are seeing all of reality through the truth of what the Bible teaches. that you're looking to the Bible as your authority on truth. And it's no wonder that the culture looks like what it does. I mean, when we hear that statistic, that 65% of people say they're Christians and then we look at what's going on in culture, it doesn't match up, right? I mean, we would not see a culture that looks the way it does today if we actually

has 65% of people being true followers of Jesus who held a biblical worldview. It wouldn't look like this because we would have people out being salt and light and we would be seeing everyone act in a very different way. based on beliefs that were very different than the beliefs that the overwhelming majority of self-identified Christians hold today. Yeah. So let's define our terms, biblical worldview. As you mentioned earlier, Christians have disagreements. And some people might say, well, what you Natasha would call a biblical worldview, maybe someone else doesn't call a biblical worldview. So who are you to say that only 4% of people hold a biblical worldview when maybe it's just your subjective interpretation of what that means? Yeah, well, so a worldview is basically just a step back on the definition for that one.

A worldview is basically how any given individual answers the basic questions about our existence. So where did we come from? Why are we here? Is there any objective meaning to life? What happens after we die? All these questions. So anyone capable of holding beliefs is going to have a worldview, whether they have consciously arrived at that or not.

The question is, does your worldview line up with reality? And so it's not me saying that 4% of people have a biblical world. worldview. This actually comes from researchers at Arizona Christian University's cultural research center under the direction of Dr. George Barnett, and he has been researching worldviews for the last 40 years. So he's kind of the gold standard in worldview research. And so they've done a lot of testing over time in terms of methodologies and measuring a person's worldview. And what they do is instead of saying, well, here's how people identify themselves, they give dozens of questions to people so that they're asking directly about their beliefs. They're asking basic beliefs about

the nature of God and what people believe about the nature of morality, what they believe about heaven and hell, basic beliefs about what the Bible would teach. And then based on that research, they're the ones, the researchers are the ones that take those answers. And if at least 80% of your answers line up with what the Bible teaches on those basic things, not secondary doctrine kinds of things, just clear teachings of scripture right there. Just clear teachings about the nature of God, the nature of man, you know, are people basically good or bad kind of things. And what they find from that research is that as of the most recent worldview inventory survey, 4% of people have a biblical worldview. Basic measures, you know,

and I always tell people, when people want to push back on it, because people do say exactly what you're saying, well, that's just that interpretation. Well, we're just looking at what the Bible teaches. If you're not talking about in times interpretations. We're not talking about secondary and tertiary issues. Just here's what the Bible says about some of these basic tenets. Do you believe that or not? Like you mentioned, are people basically good? There are people who identify as Christians who would say, I don't know. I think they're basically good because, well, we're made by God.

We're children of God, they might say. And so we must be basically good. But that's not what the Bible teaches. Right. And so if you want to say, well, I have a biblical worldview because I believe some things in the Bible, well, someone might say that. But when researchers are trying to get to classifying a biblical worldview, they're trying to get back to, okay, but here's what the Bible teaches. And so do your beliefs line up

with that, not some percent of them? So people, that's just a research definition, basically. But it's interesting because even that example of people being basically good, I mean, the research has found that more than half of Christians will agree to that statement that people are basically good. It's the number one thing that people who would otherwise have a biblical rule of view go awry on. It's the number one thing. They say that people are. are basically good. And it has so many implications for the rest of your theology and for how you see the world around you. So it's not just a small thing. So you should be really concerned as Christians that it's not enough that people are sitting in the church every week. You're not necessarily

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And we've all seen this, that we are told over and over again that if you, as not just a Christian, but a conservative Christian, bring your worldview into the public square, into politics. If you allow what you believe about the Bible to influence your politics, you are a fascist, You are a dictator. You're trying to bring in the handmaid's tale. You are a Christian nationalist. Now, it's interesting because if you're a progressive that uses some decontextualized Bible verse to support your immigration policy or your abortion policy or your socialistic policy, that's not Christian nationalism, that's fine. That's true good Christianity.

It's only when a Christian might say, well, you know, Psalm 139 makes it pretty clear that babies inside the womb. are valuable or made by God. So I don't think that it should be legal to murder them. All of a sudden, that is prohibited in a form of tyranny. So I'm sure you've seen this trend too. Tell us how to make sense of it. Well, there is a huge double standard. I mean, the double standard is really amazing.

I have a chapter in my book in When Culture Hase You about, quote, unquote, dangerous Christian nationalist because that's how we're seeing. And you're not going to be called a Christian nationalist or that being told. that you're dangerous in some way, if you're bringing your progressive views into the public square, even if you say those progressive views come from the Bible, no one is going to hate you for that. But when you hold views that are contrary to the popular moral consensus that are biblically based, and you bring those views to bear on the public square, that's when people are going to say, oh, you want a theocracy, and you are being anti-democratic, and, you know, this is an extreme and

pervasive and theocratic view. But a lot of Christians have actually taken on that narrative. They hear that from the media. It comes from mainstream media a lot. And they take it in and they say, well, I guess I shouldn't be bringing my views in the public square because of separation of church and state. They think that that means that they're somehow limited in a way that no one else is. But Christians have to understand we live in a constitutional democracy. And in a constitutional democracy, it's not somehow anti-democratic or theocratic to bring your views. into the plug square, that's exactly how it's intended to work. Everyone is free to bring their views in. And it's no more intolerant of you to advocate for a policy that is rooted in your

views than it is for someone else to advocate for a policy that's rooted in theirs. This is just how it works. So when people try to silence Christians who have unpopular views, my concern, especially with this book, which is intended for Christians, is to help Christians understand, hey, don't listen to the voices who are trying to silence you, who are saying, oh, there's a culture war. and you need to sit down. That's not how this works. It's not how it works from a civic perspective. It's not how it works from biblical perspective.

We're called to be salt and light in culture. So we have to understand that those voices, they're just trying to silence us. Yeah. There's no reason to take it. Yes. It's the myth of progressive neutrality that progressivism and secularism is neutral.

And that if someone with a progressive secular worldview wants to use their belief system to influence the law, law, that that is somehow what was intended by the founders, that that is actually what real democracy is. And they can impose their subjective beliefs about gender, about when life has value, about justice on me. And I'm expected to abide by that. I'm expected to tolerate that in my child's school and in the law and in the workplace. But I am not allowed to bring my beliefs and my worldview into the public square without it being called tyranny. And I even see those who call themselves

progressive Christians, which is really an oxymoron, but they would say Christians like me, conservative Christians like us, we just want power and we just want wealth because we believe that abortion is wrong, or we believe that a man cannot become a woman and therefore shouldn't be able to enter into women's spaces. But really, it's that we love our neighbors and we believe that God's ways are better, that these are better ideas. that lead to human flourishing that actually protect the most vulnerable. And so we are simply living out our faith in the same way that a secular progressive is living out their faith by trying to tell me that I must call a man she. That's exactly right.

It's all a question of the common good. How do you define the common good? And I spent a lot of time talking about this in my book because I think Christians get very confused on this because we see that there are so many different ideas out there of what is good. people start saying that what we believe is harmful and toxic and that, you know, we're misogynist and we're oppressors. And we have all these insults that are hurled at us because of our ideas about the common good. And then a lot of Christians start going, huh, maybe this is a bad belief. Maybe I,

maybe I am doing something wrong because we have the wrong expectations that people are going to like us. And so we have to get really clear on what it means to advocate for the common good. Just because people have different ideas of what is good doesn't mean there are lots of goods. There is a good and it is defined by God alone. He is the one who sets the standard for the common good. What is objectively good for individuals and therefore what is objectively good for collections of individuals and societies. How do we define that? And so we have to think a lot more about that as Christians so that we don't get trapped by the words that the world uses. Because when the world says you're being harmful and you're being toxic, well, that stings. But at the same time, what the world calls good may be evil

and what the world calls evil may be good. We have to be really clear about what the actual definition is on any of these topics. So when we are arguing for the reality of the gender binary that is fixed at the moment of conception, and we're arguing for that reality to be reflected in policy, say we're at a school board meeting and the school board is debating a policy where, you know, We should be able to, you know, have spaces that are designated for people, you know, based on their self-identity, you know, allowing boys into girls spaces. And obviously we Christians are saying, absolutely not. That doesn't reflect reality. And so we are going to advocate for the policy that protects sex separate spaces.

Is a good defense of our advocacy because God says so? How do we defend Christian policy in an effective and a persuasive way so that those who are not believers could be won over to our position even if they don't have our same perspective on God? That's really good, a very big question. I think that one of the things that we're seeing is that people are starting on the gender issue specifically are starting to come around because of some very pragmatic considerations. So they may not even agree that there is this creator God who has a design for human flourishing that is represented in gender. They might not agree with us on any of that. But when they see a video of a biological male playing in a female sport like volleyball. ball and hurting someone greatly because they were allowed to play in that, then you start to see

people get concerned. Then they start speaking up because from a very practical perspective, they're seeing, wait a second, there are differences, biological differences between males and females. And so a lot of the people who are actually out there advocating right now for getting biological males out of women's sports, they're not necessarily Christians. They're not advocating from a biblical worldview perspective necessarily, they're saying, look what is happening. Women are getting physically injured by males being in these sports. Or look at what happened in this particular school district when biological males were able to use the locker rooms or we're able to go into the bathrooms. And so I think, of course, as Christians, we want to bring everyone to

saving knowledge of the Lord ultimately. But when we're talking about these issues of the common good, we're not always going to be able to point back and say, well, God said so and therefore this has to be the way that things work in this area. We can, because there is a natural law, that there is a common knowledge of some of the basics of reality, we can point to those things and we can advocate in that way and say, these are the things that are happening. And even nonbelievers will look at those things and say, yes, I can see why that is a problem. How can we resolve this so that it's for the good of everyone?

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That's where you can get your tickets today. Share the arrows. It's not about power. I've heard this a lot that conservative Christians want empire. We want power. We want wealth. It's not about that. It's believing that the common good can only be defined by the God who created good, by the God who is good, who is the source of truth and goodness. And if I believe that God's ways are better, of course I want that for my neighbor. I believe in borders because I believe that's better for my neighbor here and also my neighbor's abroad, actually. Like I believe that having law enforcement and having laws that punish crimes, I feel like, not I feel like, I know that that is good for my neighbor. Abortion laws that protect the most vulnerable is they're good for my neighbor. And so it's not about power. It's about wanting what is best as God defines best, which is a good definition of love, by the way. And sometimes, yes, that includes involuntary.

and politics. So when you hear from Christians who they're, maybe they're not progressive, but they're just like, you know what, Jesus' kingdom is not of this world. I don't want to worry myself with politics and culture wars. It's just polarizing and it's hurting my evangelism. What do you say? Well, God shows that he personally cares a lot about the moral health of societies and the righteous functioning of societies. If you read the Old Testament, you can see repeatedly that God is calling out nations for injustice, for not practicing rights, and not just the nation of Israel, but the surrounding pagan nations as well. God cares about how society is function. Yes, he cares about individual salvation. We are to go out and make disciples in that

sense, but that's not the end of the story. We're to be a light in society. So we can look at the example that's set throughout the Old Testament, but then also when we get into the New Testament, we can look at Romans 13, 1 through 5, where Paul talks about how all authority that civil rulers have ultimately comes from God. So sometimes as Christians, we can get so sky of government. We think all government is bad, but it's actually an institution that God gave us. And what is the purpose of that institution? Well, it goes on to say that it's basically to promote what is good and restrain what is evil. So ultimately, if that's God's purpose for government, then we as Christians should feel passionate about helping advocate for laws in our society that actually reflect God's

definition of good. And that's what's so important to understand. Because if we just sit back and say, you know what I'm going to let other people decide I'm going to let other people decide what kinds of laws should be made and enforced in our country well we know the nonbelievers are not going to advocate in the same way with the same definition of good and the same definition of evil so we have to be the ones who are willing to say I'm going to advocate for righteousness according to god's standards and if that involves power that's okay too so to your point you know it's not inherently about power we're not wanting to do these things because we want power first and foremost. But in order to be able to do these things, sometimes that requires power. So power

in and of itself is not inherently wrong. It can be stewarded well or it can be stewarded poorly. What we want is to put in charge of this country people who are going to steward the power well, as well as can be given that we're still in a fallen world. Yeah. And that's such an important point, because actually it's not a debate. You know, some so-called progressive Christians will say, oh, we just don't want power. Christians should want less power and less influence. And that's, you know, what Jesus did. He didn't take over the Roman Empire.

He didn't usurp the Roman Empire. He, you know, laid down his life, which is just not the right comparison when we're talking about the reality of living in a constitutional republic and the reality of policymaking today. But really, both sides, if we're honest, are saying this similar thing, is that we both want power to impose the policies that we think are best. And really, it actually tends to be conservative policy that is resting power away from the government, especially the federal government. We're saying, no, we want the government to have less power. We want more power on the

local level. And actually that we believe in proper distinctions between church authority and familial authority, community authority, and then state and federal authority, as you said, authority, is not inherently bad. It just depends on what it is being used for. And that is where the honest debate really comes in, is which policies best aligned with God's definition of good? And Christians have to know our Bibles to know what those definitions really are, right?

Right. That's exactly right. And it's interesting that you mentioned the spiritualization sometimes of that and say, well, Jesus, you know, he gave up his power. He wasn't looking to take over anything. But it's such, I just have to add on to that, it's such a terrible analogy that so many people bring up because this started with a very well-known pastor who posted this at some point on X about how, you know, Jesus gave up his power on the cross and therefore we should be giving up our power too. Just because Jesus pursued one kind of good, a spiritual good in terms of dying for our sins and the atonement, by giving up power, if that's what you want to call it, I would still argue with that characterization of it. but by giving up power to be on the cross doesn't mean that no one can achieve other kinds of

goods in other ways. It goes without saying that those are just completely not comparable. So, you know, we have to look at the fullness of scripture to understand what we are called to do. And that's why, you know, to your point, we have to understand the Bible because if we don't, we're going to look at individual things like that. And when we see well-known pastors who post something like that, we say, oh, well, I guess, you know, I guess that's it. I guess that because Jesus gave up his power on the cross, I'm supposed to give up power in society. We make really bad conclusions if we don't know the fullness of the Bible. We have to understand the full witness of Scripture if we're going to pursue what's right and what's good for society.

And understanding Christian history. I mean, the history of the church is manifesting this, what has been often seen as a radical worldview of that includes the dignity of all people. And people have heard me say this. and pretty much every speech that I give, and I talk about it a lot on the show. But this book by Owen Bakke called When Children Became People, and he chronicles the history of the church

and how the church and their idea of the Amago Day, which of course is originally the Hebrew concept that goes all the way back to the first chapter of Genesis, but when they evangelized that message and then also had this message of the gospel, that everyone is equally dead and sin apart from Christ. Doesn't matter how rich you are. Doesn't matter your gender.

Doesn't matter your age. And everyone, by grace through faith, can be made alive in him. And then you become brothers and sisters in Christ. And there's no Jew nor Greek, nor slave, nor free, nor male, nor female. That was an amazingly equalizing message that the ancient pagan Roman world did not believe. They believed that it was the logos, your ability for rationality, your ability to reason that gave you value, and they believed it was only the adult free male that had that value. Well, it was Christians living out the truth of scripture, sharing the gospel that changed

how the world saw people, that changed particularly how the world saw previously subjugated people like children. And so children became this underclass of subhuman barbarians in the pagan Roman world to people that were given extra honor and special care because of their vulnerability they were adopted and put in orphanages and given education and food and clothes. That's Christian history, that forged Western civilization, which is based on this fundamental idea that all people are made in the image of God. If Christians from the beginning had said, I have no say in what Nero is doing, I have no opinion about these policies that are in place.

Sure, it's, you know, these policies are incentivizing infanticide and widespread abortion and the subjugation of poor people. But I don't have any business with that. The world would look like tribalism and barbarism. Most things that secularists take for granted today are based on the Christian idea of people having dignity and Christians saying, I'm going to care about politics and culture. That's so well said. And it's amazing how much opportunity we as Christians in America today have to influence the common good in ways that Christians a couple thousand years ago didn't have.

And like you're saying, they're still out there. They were doing exactly what they could do and should have done at the time. And yet we have so much more ability in a legal sense to be able to do this because we live in this constitutional democracy, and Christians are taking that for granted. Christians who become convinced that, oh, we shouldn't be, quote, unquote, political because we've been told so much by nonbelievers that that's a bad thing. And we come to believe this, and it hurts people. It actually harms people when we stay out of it. Because if we're not, again, fighting for the common good, according to God's standards, someone else is going to be fighting good according to their own standards. And people will be harmed by it.

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knowing your biblical authority, it goes without saying that you're going to be more motivated to actually advocate for what's right if you're convinced that the God of the universe has told you to. So if you truly believe that the God who created everything, who sustained everything, who made you, has said that this is what is good and this is what is true. This is what's actually helpful. If you're convinced that you know that because the Bible is God's word, then you're going to be much more motivated to get out and do the things that we're talking about. And so that's why that first letter is so important to know your biblical authority. So many Christians today, like we talked about with those statistics, they don't know their biblical authority. They say they're Christian, but they don't believe what the Bible teaches, whether that's a conscious rejection or not. And so it has to start there. And then the C is for strength.

conviction. So this speaks to, okay, once you know your authority, are you convicted that you understand truly what God is teaching in the Bible? So I give an example in the book of a couple of a Lutheran bishop and an Episcopalian bishop, and they're basically saying that they are fighting for the rights of trans people because they're made in the image of God, their image bears, and they make this whole statement that if you haven't talked about this issue, you haven't studied at all, you might look at that and say, well, I think they're made in the image of God, too. I think that they're image bearers and they deserve dignity. And you start to get confused thinking, well, what should I believe about this as a Christian? What really does the Bible say? And so there are a lot of Christians who would actually say, yes, I believe the Bible is God's word, but they don't have the conviction on the individual issues because they're not sure they fully understand what it teaches on these things. So if we want to strengthen conviction, the C, then we have to actually get educated and equipped. on these individual issues that are so important for the common good today. And then the last one, maintain tenacity, the T, is really about resetting our expectations.

So a lot of Christians today think they have done something wrong if people are upset with them. They immediately think, you know, I've been cut off by a friend or a family member. I have been, I've lost a job. Somebody's mad at me. Whatever the case is, they think they have done something that's a problem biblically because their expectation is that people will always like me. Their expectation is that as long as people think I'm nice, then I must be okay.

But that's the wrong expectation to have. We're not going to have the tenacity to continue. If we know the Bible is God's word, and if we have the conviction on an individual issue, but then we get out there and we start speaking up for truth and immediately get batted down because people don't like us for it, and we think something went wrong. So we have to reset our expectations.

Jesus said, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. So he was warning his disciples before they went out on mission. He didn't give them warm fuzzies and say, hey, this is going to be great, you know. He didn't even say, hey, they might hate you, but just keep doing what you're doing. He actually gave an explanation for why they would be hated by saying if you were of the world. And to be of the world literally means to be under the governing rule of Satan. Scripture is very clear that you are either of Satan or of God.

You're a child of Satan or a child of God. Those who are children of Satan, they want to go their own way. It's their own wills, their own desires. They are slaves to sin. And people who are slaves to sin are always going to hate those who are slaves to righteousness, who are children of God, because the darkness hates the light. The light shines on the works of evil. People are going to hate you for it.

Jesus said as much. You know, some people have said, oh, your title of this book, it's so strong. When culture hates you, that's kind of divisive, right? Like, do we really want people to think that Christians think that, you know, that were hated? I didn't come up with the word. Right. Jesus is the one who said that the world would hate you. Yeah.

So we have to reset our expectations and that's what will help us to maintain tenacity. Yes. Luke 626 says, woe to you when all people speak well of you. I think even Christians, myself included. I will be tempted to take people's opinions of me as an indicator of whether I am doing well. Is my tone right? Is what I'm saying not too offensive? Now, some people might be surprised that I even ever have those thoughts.

But of course, just like anyone in the public square, like no one loves hearing things like, oh, you're just, you know, you're being unloving by having this position or that was too harsh. And of course, I never want to be thought of as too harsh. But the truth is that no matter how nicely you say something, when something is a hard truth, there are going to be people who believe that you're mean. I mean, Stephen was full of grace and power. Jesus was full of grace and truth. Jesus was crucified. Stephen was stone to death. And yet we as Christians still have the temptation to measure our success by how people respond to us. Right. And it's always worth asking ourselves, right? If somebody is upset with me, did I say something in a rude or hurtful way? None of us are

perfect in doing that. So I'm not suggesting that it's never on us. But the message itself is always going to be offensive. This culture ultimately is in deep rebellion against its creator. And it's in rebellion because our culture wants to go its own way. Every individual who is outside of relationship with the Lord wants to go with their own wills and desires. And when you're turning to yourself as the authority on all things for what is right and wrong and good and bad and harmful and helpful, and you're not turning to God as that authority, when somebody else comes along, a Christian comes along and says, you're actually not the boss. You're not the one who gets to determine what is true. That's a deeply offensive message. No one wants to hear that. If you want to be your own

authority and someone tells you, no, it's actually God who determines what is good or bad or harmful or helpful, people are not going to like that. No. I mean, the God of self is very cruel. And we'll ask you to sacrifice all sorts of things on its altar. Next sponsor is Mossa chips. I love my Mossa chips. I love all flavors of my Mossa chips. I don't like any other kind of tortilla chip anymore.

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just want to love people and I just want to share the gospel and that's what I want to focus on and I'm afraid that bringing up these issues is going to actually hinder my evangelism. What do you say to that? Well, I would ask them how they define love because if they're saying I just, quote unquote, just want to love people, which is how a lot of people do say it, then I would want to understand how they frame that concept because when Jesus was asked about the two greatest commandments, he said it's number one, to love God, and number two, to love others. That hierarchy is really important because you can't know how to love others unless you first know what it means to love God. It frames what it means to love other people. And so if we're trying to love people in our own terms, according to what we

think is loving, we're going to get it wrong. We have to go back to what God has said about loving people. And so when we do that, of course that includes evangelism. God wants us to care about people's souls. He cares about people's souls. He wants all people to come to. be a saving knowledge of him, right? So we have to care about that. When we are out here saying, you know, we need to care about advocating for righteousness in the public square. We're not saying that means you shouldn't be witnessing to people. We're not saying that at all. I feel like everyone thinks we can only do one task in the world, but that's not what we're saying. When we're talking about the importance of these things, we're saying, yes, of course we need to evangelize.

That is part of loving others. And we need to advocate for righteousness. in the public square because that is loving people too. Caring about people's lives in the context of the societies in which they live is one of the most loving things that you can do. It's part of loving others. It's not all of how you love others, but it's an important part of how you love others in the context of first loving God. I have heard Christians say, I just don't want any enemies.

I just don't want it. I've heard Christians, true Christians say, I just don't want any enemies. And I'm just not sure how we can read scripture and come to the conclusion that that's ever a possibility for the Christian, especially in such hostile times. Has there been a time where you've been scared yourself in a personal conversation or publicly saying something that's true that's controversial, but you know that God says it's true? And how did you overcome that fear? Well, yes, I think no one wants enemies. I think that's important to start with. Like, none of us like that.

I think a lot of times people assume that if you're out writing and speaking about these kinds of subjects, you must have this really thick skin. And the reality is, I don't at all. Yeah. Every time I speak at a conference, I point this out in the Q&A session because I want people to hear this. I want people to know I don't have a thick skin. I don't like it when people are upset with me or when they think I'm wrong or when

they say mean things. I don't like it. And yet I continue to do what I do because I'm convinced that Christianity is true. And if Christianity is true, that's going to have a lot of implications for my life and how I live. If I fully believe that and have put my trust in Jesus. And so for me, it comes down to conviction. You have to have conviction that Christianity is true. And maybe that comes from my background as an apologist that I have this intense focus on that.

But at the same time, I think that if you had talked to me when I was in my early 20s, I don't just think I know if you had talked to me in college, there's no way. I would have been speaking out about the things that I'm speaking out now. I would have called myself a Christian. I would have said that I believed all the things that are Christians should. But I wouldn't have been speaking out about things because I didn't have the conviction yet that, wow, this is really true. It's the whole picture of the world. And this is the truth about reality.

So I think with conviction comes the desire to speak out. And a lot of Christians today, I was just reading some research about this the other day. I wish I could remember the exact number. But a lot of Christians say that they have a lot of doubts about their faith. And so if you have doubts about your faith, you're not going to put yourself out there to be hated by people. You're not going to put yourself out there to, quote unquote, make enemies. You don't want to lose family members over speaking up. So I think it's a problem of conviction in the church.

And I think that if anyone is listening and thinking, well, I don't know if I have that kind of conviction. Well, then I encourage you to get the conviction. What is it that you're doubting? Do you doubt God's existence? Do you doubt the reliability of scripture? Do you doubt that Jesus was who he said he was? There are answers for all of these things. That's a beautiful thing.

If Christianity's true, has nothing to fear. And if it's not true, you better figure that out soon and walk away from it because there's no point in being a Christian if it's not true. So go out and find the answers to your questions. Get the conviction. It's true. And when you have that, you're going to want to speak out and you still won't want enemies. But you'll have the conviction of knowing that you're doing what you should be doing and you're being obedient to God and you can leave the results to him. Yeah.

I think a lot of people are so scared of being seen as self-righteous or. or as prideful or arrogant. And I see that a lot, especially with women. When a woman says, no, I know what I believe, not because I came up with it, not because I'm super smart, but because this is what God's word says, they will be called arrogant. They'll be called self-righteous. It doesn't matter how much you say, no, it's not my righteousness. It's not my wisdom.

It's God's wisdom and God's righteousness. Being assured of your beliefs and not following it with, well, that's just how I feel. or that's just my opinion or but I don't know that is almost like down upon I think especially among women and I just wonder how much of that is because so many women's Bible studies women's Christian books women's conferences women's you know preschool mom groups are really just focused on the self how you feel making sure that your self-esteem is up making sure that you know that you're beautiful that you're perfect that you're worthy that you're all of these things that you get enough self-care and all of that.

Like so many women's events and resources are focused on women's feelings and women's self-esteem rather than equipping women telling them you, first of all, you need God, you can be a theologian. The Bible has, you know, has the answers that you're seeking and equipping them to be theologians and apologists in their own home. And I think that's why a lot of women are like, they doubt a lot and they're scared to even be confident in God's. because they get shut down when they are.

I think that's so true. I will never forget one of the very first speaking events I ever did. I was just getting started as a speaker and I was invited to come and talk to a local mom's group at a church. And they had me come in about ways that we can help our kids better understand their faith. And so I did a little talk that I had come up with. And I will never forget that when I ended that, the lady came up who had hosted me there. And then she was encouraging everyone to come the next week for the session. The next session that they were going to be focused on was how to do better scrap.

booking with your kids. And I'm not saying we can't talk about scrapbooking at church. Some people are thinking, oh, but that's just fellowship. Okay, there's fellowship. But it was indicative of so much more. I mean, we see this all the time in the church. When you look at the kinds of focuses that we have as women in women's ministries, it's so often like that. And I remember just being very jolted by that thinking, like, this is crazy that, you know, I come in to talk about this really heavy topic. And next week we're scrapbooking. And if you looked at the other topics they were having. It was nothing like what I was talking about. It was very light, very fluffy. And I think that that gets replicated over and over again in the church. And we're

losing opportunities. Every time that you are using that opportunity to talk about scrapbooking, when you could be actually working on the discipleship of women, you're losing something major. And that probably sounds harsh to some people. I know, I know it sounds harsh to, you know, make it sound like, oh, well, we shouldn't just get together. Well, sure, have fellowship opportunities. But when you're getting women together at some kind of weekly event at your church, focus on bringing them deeper in the word, helping them to understand scripture so that they can gain a biblical worldview that then they can pass to their children if they have children. It's so important. Yes. And women can handle it. I mean, because, you know, we are people made in God's image and the Holy Spirit is doing work through our lives too.

and so we need the equipment from God's word. And so I encourage every one of you, whether you're a man or a woman, but especially those of you who are moms out there, get this book when culture hates you, because they don't just hate you. They hate your kids. They hate your grandkids. They hate everyone who bears the name of Christ and all of the values that the Bible teaches us.

And so it's important to know what they are, but even more important to know whose we are and by whose authority we say and advocate for these things. So when culture hates you, persevering for the common good as Christians in a hospital, to Public Square. Natasha, where can people follow you and support you? Well, I have a website, natasha crane.com and crane is C-R-A-I-N, and I have a podcast, the Natasha Crane podcast also, but you can find out all the information about my books and podcasts on my website.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Natasha. Thank you.