The Sean McDowell Show - Biblical Clarity in Our Secular Times: A Conversation with Natasha Crain

Episode Date: November 10, 2024

How can Christians live faithfully in our present moment? What does it mean to stand strong today? In this video, I talk with Natasha Crain about her latest book FAITHFULLY DIFFERENT. We discuss a range of cultural issues and offer some practical advice for Christians to live out their convictions today. READ: Faithfully Different, by Natasha Crain (https://amzn.to/3irteGB) WATCH: Talking with Your Kids about Jesus (with Natasha Crain): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aru1kpPBeVQ *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/

How can Christians best live in our increasingly secular culture? This is a question a lot of Christians are asking today and looking for guidance. Well, my guest today is a friend of mine. She's written a number of best-selling books, really helping parents pass on their faith to their kids. But with this new book, which is called Faithfully Different, Natasha Crane is kind of taking on a new challenge, which we're going to get into. But first off, Natasha, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. It's great to talk with you.

Let's just jump right into the book because I know every book, there's a story behind it. So what was the story that motivated you to feel like you had to write this book now? Yeah, well, back during all the social unrest in the summer of 2020, I was looking around and I was seeing all the kinds of stuff that was posted on social media. And I started to see a lot of secular ideas that started to creep into the kinds of things that people were saying and the approaches that they were having. And when I say people, I mean fellow believers. And I just started thinking, I really want to write something about this for my blog. And everything I had done up to that point over the last decade was geared toward parents. That was entirely my focus, that I was writing about apologetics to equip parents specifically

to equip their kids. And I tried to stay very narrowly focused on that. So I was a little bit hesitant to start writing about something broader, but I just really felt like some of these things needed to be said. So I wrote this blog post that was called Five Ways That Christians Are Getting Swept Into a Secular Worldview in This Cultural Moment. And that blog post went viral. It was liked and shared over 277,000 times. Wow. And I was getting emails really for weeks, truly for weeks from people who are saying, thank you for writing about this, because it's helping me put my finger on some of these things that are going on that maybe writing more and more, just kind of trying to separate secularism from a biblical worldview with the issues that were

going on that everyone was talking about. And all of those blog posts just blew up bigger than anything I had written before when I was just focused on parents. So I realized at that point that maybe this could be a book, that there should be something that really kind of laid out the difference between secularism broadly and what we as Christians who seek to have a biblical worldview should be believing and how we should be thinking and living our lives. So that's really how it came about. As an author, if I got a post that was shared that many times, that would be about as strong of a confirmation that I need to write a book as possible. In other words, it just means that people are hungry for this. And at this moment, people are looking for a resource. Now, I'm always

curious about a title. And I know it's not always by the author. It's often in partnership with, you know, the publisher, but the title Faithfully Different. Tell us what you're aiming to communicate with that. Yeah, in this case, that actually was the title that I was thinking of that came out of all this. It's interesting because my other books actually came, the title came from publisher first and foremost. But in this case, I really was thinking about the fact that in a lot of ways, I saw that Christians were living more as an extension of the secular culture than as a distinct light to it. And so I started thinking about this idea of difference and what does it mean to be different and how do we be different in a way that's faithful to our calling as Christians? And so just putting those two concepts together, faithfully different, made sense as a great short way of expressing we are

supposed to be different. We shouldn't just be connecting our worldview to everything else we're hearing around us we shouldn't be letting secularism bleed into our own worldview we want to be different but faithfully so so what exactly does that mean and and that's really what the title was getting at well i think it captures it well it's easy to remember it captures this idea of all through scriptures being faithful, but also being different than the world around us. We see this in the Old Testament and you capture that spirit today. Now, you know, I'm a professor, so I got to define my terms. Tell us what you mean by secular since we're using that term a lot and you use it in your book as well.

Really good question because it's used in culture in all different ways. It's also been used historically in different ways. So absolutely have to start with that definition. So I think that the best way to start with it is to recognize that the context most people think of it in is when you talk about a country's political structure, for example. So we think of secular, the United States being a secular country, means that it was founded in a way that we do not, as a country, at the country level, defer to the authority of a given religion or God in public life. So in other words, there's no state-funded

church. There's no Church of England, for example, for the United States. And the United States actually was the first country to be explicitly founded in that way, which I thought was really interesting. I didn't realize that before I was doing the research for this book. And so that doesn't mean, by the way, not to get too off course here, but that doesn't mean that we're not supposed to bring our own individual worldviews to bear on public matters. That's sometimes a misunderstanding. It simply means that as a country, we do not defer to the authority of a given religion or God. Now, taking that to the individual level, individuals also can be secular in their approach to life, meaning that they don't defer to the authority of a given religion or God in their own life. So this is where you really get

this idea of secularism as a worldview. What happens if a person is secular? What happens if they say, no, I do not defer to the authority of Christianity as religion or to Islam or to Mormonism. I don't defer to any of that. Well, when you take away that kind of authority, it's not that you're left with no authority. You're left with the authority of the self. And that's ultimately the tie that functionally binds the worldviews of millions of people it's the authority of the self in terms of determining what is true about reality what is right or wrong or good or bad all of those big questions that is the tie that binds so many people's world views

rather than the authority of god for example for a Christian. God is our ultimate authority on what's true. No matter what we feel, no matter what we think, we're going to go back to God and his word to determine what is true. So a lot of people, when they think secular, they're thinking, oh, it's just this neutral thing. It just means that you're kind of okay with anything. But there are a lot of commonalities amongst people who revert to the authority of the self. And so I tease that out throughout the book. Well, I think that's really helpful to show that there is no sense of neutrality, either that the state takes a position on marriage that either agrees with religion or disagrees with it, or takes a secular view. There's no neutrality and a secular position

is not neutral. You have a quote in the book that jumped out to me I've been thinking about. You said, quote, or you describe, the bleeding of secularism into the worldview of Christians everywhere. Now, I want to talk about what you mean by everywhere. You know my last book was on sexuality, and as I started to research and talk to students, I realized, wow, students have a secular view of identity, a secular view of love, a secular view of love, a secular view of freedom. And I spent the whole first third of that book

trying to dispel the secular view and help students realize, wow, they've adopted ideas, probably more so from the culture than from scripture, and then give them a more biblical view. So that's one narrow example. What do you mean by the bleeding of secularism into the worldview of Christians everywhere? Yeah, well, when we talk about our source of authority, so when I was defining secularism, I was saying, well, for Christians who seek to have a biblical worldview, our authority is God, and we know who he is and who we are, what he wants from us, the relationship that we have. We know all these things from the Bible. That's our source of authority, our source of knowledge on so much about what is true. But when you get to the authority of the self, it doesn't mean that there's no commonality in beliefs between all

these people who are looking to themselves. Actually, there are several things that they're going to have in common. And so the four that I identify as the key tenants of a secular worldview are that feelings are your ultimate guide, which makes sense, right? If the authority is the self, then the only thing you have to go on is what's inside of you, how you feel about things. So the authority is you, feelings are the ultimate guide. The second thing is happiness is the ultimate goal. So whatever is going to make me happy and that subjective determination, that is going to be the goal of life. The third one is that judging is the ultimate sin.

In other words, hey, I'm the authority for me. Who are you to tell me about anything that relates to me? I'm the authority. Judging is the sin. And then finally, God is the ultimate guess. In other words, we have no reason for confidence of knowing anything about this God who may or may not be out there. A lot of times people think secularism and atheism are synonymous, but they're not. Most people who have a secular worldview, who still resort to the authority of the self, they still have some kind of spiritual beliefs.

They still believe something is out there. Maybe they even pray, but ultimately they reject the authoritative revelation of a God. And so they're going to reject anything that looks like the Quran or the Book of Mormon or the Bible, for example. So when I talk about bleeding, to go back to your original question, of the worldviews, when we aren't really clear about what it is to have a biblical worldview, we have a dominant culture around us that is constantly putting these ideas in front of us about feelings being the ultimate guide and happiness being the goal and judging being a sin. And those ideas, if we're not clear about our worldview and we don't understand the nature of a secular worldview, those ideas are going to

trickle straight in to what we believe. And you see this all the time. There are a lot of Christians who think, well, I shouldn't judge, right? That's not my place. That's God's place. That's not really what a Christian, a biblical worldview would say. Of course we are to judge when by judge, we mean discern between what's right and wrong. It's not us making that determination. We're just sharing what God has already said. So you see this all the time with believers that we take on these secular tenets without even realizing it. It's a bleeding into what we believe and how we think and ultimately how we live out our faith. So would you say in this moment, there's anything historically new that Christians

are facing in terms of living out their faith and culture. So what's the same? Obviously, going back to the time of Daniel before Christ came incarnated, they were struggling to live in Babylon. Jeremiah writes about this. The apostles are struggling in the first century. So there's always been this sense where the Christian message is different. There's a tension within culture, and we have to struggle to live it out. So what's the same in continuity with the past,

but what do you think is maybe different in some fashion, if anything, today with Christians trying to faithfully live out their beliefs? Yeah, you're exactly right that we have always had challenges as Christians. There's no doubt about that. So in some sense, nothing is new here that we are going to be a minority in the culture. Jesus said that the world would hate us. He didn't say, eventually, we're all going to agree. We're all going to be Christians in culture. That's nowhere to be found in the Bible, right? So we should expect that. I think what's new specifically for Christians in America, though, is the realization that a lot of values that we culturally had held on to are now being discarded very quickly. And those values, in many cases, were consistent with a biblical worldview, even if not everyone

actually held on to the doctrinal tenets of Christianity. So just to give an example of that, according to the research, over the last 25 years, the percent of people with a biblical worldview has declined by half. Okay, that's a precipitous drop over that time. So it's not that it's super sudden in just the last five years that people are abandoning the doctrinal tenets of Christianity. This has been a long process and much more than before the last five years that people are abandoning the doctrinal tenets of Christianity. This has been a long process and much more than before the last 25 years. That's just an interesting characteristic of more recent time. This has been going on for decades, for hundreds of years, actually, in the United States, going back ever since the founding. You see this falling off over time when you study American history and religious trends. So that's very interesting to see how people who are true followers of Jesus in a biblical sense, that that's been declining over time.

But it wasn't as obvious to us as Christians that this was happening because our culture still hung on to these kinds of values, like the importance of family and the nature of marriage and the sanctity of life. We were still hanging on to these values that were consistent with a biblical worldview. So it was a comfortable place for Christians in America, I think, because we can say, well, you know, in public, we are still kind of considered to be good people in some sense that Christians were trying to do good for the world and that, you know, we, we tried to live and be nice basically. But when you get to a point where now people see Christianity and Christians as the bad guys, and now they're getting rid of the values that were the long hangover of our underlying worldview. Now everything starts to look different and now

it's obvious to a lot of people, whereas it wasn't before. So I think that's ultimately what has changed is now we are realizing that people were not overwhelmingly Christian in our culture. The values have changed. So now we don't even have that in common with culture. And now we've gone from being esteemed somewhat as at least a reasonable good alternative in some people's minds to, oh, you're actually morally bad and you're oppressors. We're going to have to learn how to live with that and to know how to be faithfully different even when people hate us for it. That's a really helpful, nuanced way to approach it because what you're not saying is, oh,

America used to be this great Christian nation, of course, not saying that. And I know you want to distance yourself from that idea. And yet you look at even Martin Luther King Jr. when he was fighting against the racism in his day. Clearly, we saw racism in the church and the culture, so people aren't living out this Christian ethic of loving your neighbor. But he appealed to this Christian ethic as good and as guiding the way we should treat our neighbors of a different race. Today, it's not considered good, what you're saying, is if you actually take biblical teaching seriously. In particular, it's often in areas of sexuality.

You are bigoted. You are hateful. You are the oppressor. That narrative has changed. And that's the heart of the question that reading your book, you're the oppressor. That narrative has changed. And that's the heart of the question that reading your book, you're trying to answer. What does it look like now that Christians are a minority, so to speak, at least Bible believing, faithful Christians are a minority. Now, right away, there's some people tempted to click away. I have a number of non-Christians who will watch my programs. I don't know exactly what some of them are thinking. So let me throw this out there and see how you'd respond.

Some would say, wait a minute, two thirds of Americans still identify as Christians and most people in power, such as in politics, would identify that way too. So how can you, Natasha, say Christians are a religious minority? Yeah, that's an important question. A lot of people do have a misunderstanding

about. So it's important to clarify the data that we're referring to. So if people aren't familiar with the research, you're saying about two-thirds of Americans identify as Christians. Well, that's exactly right. According to the Pew Forum, which is a well-known organization that tracks religious trends in America, and this is at a very large level, just so everyone understands, these aren't tiny little surveys with like 200 people at the local mall. This is on a huge, a huge survey. The religious landscape study is what it's called that they conduct. And in 2019, the most recent one, what they, what they found when you call people up and you give them a list of things, you know, how would you identify yourself? Atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Mormon, Christian, 65% of people say, I'm a

Christian. Okay. So that's where that data comes in where we're saying, well, about two thirds of people identify as Christian, but, and this is a big, but all that tells us, and it's an interesting fact, but all it tells us is how many people claim to be a Christian in some sense, whatever that might mean to them. So one person might say they're Christian just because they kind of generally agree with Christian values. Again, whatever that might mean to them. Somebody else might have grown up in a Christian home, but maybe doesn't have any kind of active faith in Jesus, but it's kind of the closest thing on the list. So, okay, check off the Christian box. There are so many things that someone can mean.

So if we only know how people are self-identifying, it doesn't help us as Christians to really know, well, how are people functioning in culture given what they believe and how they want to live out their faith? So for that, we have to look at other research and there is other research available on what people actually believe. And that comes from Arizona Christian University's Cultural Research Center under Dr. George Barna. And what they have found by asking dozens of questions, so a whole battery of questions, really, about what people believe and how they live, is that when you don't look to how they classify themselves, but you look at how those beliefs actually come together

and what would be considered a functioning biblical worldview, adhering to the basic truths as taught in the Bible and seeking to live accordingly, that number shakes out to more like 6%. 6% of people have a functioning biblical worldview. And amongst 18 to 29 year olds, that's about 2%. And in the church, it's about 21% in evangelical churches. So if you're talking about a biblical worldview, looking to the Bible ultimately as your authority, as the authoritative word of God and the core things that are taught in the Bible, that's really a tiny minority of people in America and also in the church. So yes, in one sense, if your non-believing friends watch this and they say, well, that's ridiculous. Like most

people are Christians and most politicians are Christians. Well, we can say that yes, the majority of people in our country do identify as a Christian in some sense, but words have to mean something, right? And if we're actually looking at this a little bit more closely, then we want to have a better understanding of who actually believes in the core things that the Bible is teaching. And so that's why it's helpful to say Christians with a biblical worldview are in a minority and not just Christians in general. Of course, that doesn't roll off the tongue so easily. So we have to, you have to clarify this a bit, but, but that's really what we're talking about when it comes to this. And the next question from your unbelieving friends is going to be, well, who are you to define a biblical worldview or who are you

to say who gets to be a Christian who doesn't? And that's a common challenge I think that we hear. And in, from that perspective, I just want to say, it's not that I'm saying, oh, somebody else is not a Christian. I'm not claiming anything about their salvation, for example. That's ultimately between them and God. But if we're trying to have a more precise definition of what people have in common, I think that it is really helpful to say, okay, well, here's where a certain group of Christians are taking their truth from, the Bible, and that's going to have a lot of impact on how they see reality. So from that perspective, I'm not even making a truth claim about who should be a Christian or who shouldn't. I'm just clarifying that there are different groups within the larger

group of people who say, I'm a Christian, and it's very helpful to identify what those are, because they do have vastly different views. Whether you're a progressive Christian or you're a Christian who's looking to the Bible as your source of authority, those are very different kinds of perspectives. We even have people describe themselves as new age Christians today. And a few have said they're atheist Christians.

So just identifying by that term doesn't drill down, so to speak, and say what they actually believe. I appreciate the nuance in the book and in your answer, because you're right. We can't, if two-thirds of people say they're Christians, even within the Christian worldview is the idea that many people will say, hey, you know, they will not enter into the kingdom of God, and Jesus is like, I never knew you. So baked within the cake of Christianity is that there will be some people who identify that way and truly are not.

Now, I think somewhere in the middle between that and Barna's definition, which is a pretty nuanced, careful, particular definition, is how many would be saved. I don't know if it's 5% more, 5% less, but the big point you're raising is that we cannot just base America being predominantly shaped by Christians in its thinking because two-thirds of people call themselves Christians. When we drill down on the data and the views of the Scripture, the person of Jesus, the resurrection, the sinfulness of man, you start to see on these basic Christian doctrines, these are not secondary issues. These basic Christian doctrines are very, very different view. Very helpful. So would you use the term, Natasha, persecution to describe

how Christians are being treated in the West and or America? Or would you suggest Christians not use that term? Yeah, I think that's, I actually addressed this in the book where I say a lot of people will hear even this whole concept of how we're in a worldview minority and say, oh, here we go again with the Christian persecution complex. People think that if you make that statement of fact about just the data, that the implication is that you're saying, therefore we are persecuted. So I want to be really clear're saying, therefore we are persecuted. So I want to be really clear and say, when we're talking about being a worldview minority, that's not a victim mentality. It's not saying, oh, look, poor us.

We're now in a worldview minority. It's simply looking at the facts of the data to evaluate where we are as Christians with a biblical worldview in today's culture, so that from a Christian perspective, in-house discussion, we can say, how do we live in light of that? How do we be faithful to our calling as Christians, given what the data shows? We're not victims. This is just the reality of the situation of where we are right now, and we need to know it. But it in no way implies that we are being persecuted in the same sense that you see Christians in Nigeria, for example, who are being killed and churches being burned down and homes being burned down. There is true, deep, physical persecution in the world.

There's no doubt about that. Now, are we encountering hostility in today's culture for our beliefs when we have a biblical worldview? Yes, 100%. And that is increasing and that I believe will continue to increase. That doesn't mean persecution though, in the sense that we see in a lot of other places. So I'm in no way claiming and saying that we're a worldview minority, that we are victims or that we're being persecuted. It's just a statement of fact, given the data

that we've talked about. All things considered, it's still hard to find a place in which there's more freedom than America today, even with all of our issues. And I think you recognize that. Good. Well, let's jump back to your concern is that even within the church, there's this encroaching secular worldview that shapes us much more as a source of authority than, say, scripture would. So maybe spell out for us, and this could be an entire other book or class you teach for someday at Biola, but just kind of simply put, what do you see as the key distinctions between a secular worldview and between a Christian worldview? Yeah, I think when we come back to those four things I mentioned earlier

about feelings being the ultimate guide, happiness being the goal, judging being the sin, and God being the guest, I think that's a pretty good description of what is different versus the biblical view. Because from a biblical perspective, to contrast those things, feelings are not the ultimate guide. We know that the heart is deceitful above all things. So even if I read the Bible and I find things that I don't understand, or maybe I don't like, or maybe I feel shouldn't be the way that they are. If I'm a Christian, who's trusting in the authority of God and what he has revealed in his

word, I'm going to go with what the Bible says, because that's going to be my authority, not the feelings that I might have about it. When it comes to happiness being the ultimate goal, again, happiness is very subjective. My husband, he's the chief operating officer of the Orange County Rescue Mission. He works with homeless people and it's a transitional living program basically that gets people off the streets and gets them back to work through training and getting out of their addictions. And he would be the first person to tell you there are a lot of people you see on the street that maybe you think aren't happy, but they would say they're happy and that's where they want to be. They don't want to have help. They don't want to get help because they say they're happy. So happiness is such a subjective

thing. And for us as Christians with a biblical worldview who want to love the way that God loves, we don't want to leave them there just because they're happy. We want to love them the way that God would love them. We want what God wants for them, not just what makes someone happy. And so that is going to affect everything. If happiness is your goal, you're going to go in a very different life direction than if your goal is to know God, to love God, to love others, and to share God with others. And then judging being the ultimate sin. Once again, that's not the case if you're a Christian with a biblical worldview because, and by the way, I'm not saying condemnation. I'm not using that word in the sense of saying, hey, you're going to hell.

You're not going to be saved. We are not to judge someone's eternal salvation. But when we're talking about discernment, that's a whole other thing. And in our culture today, everyone wants to say, well, you don't judge me. And in fact, using that same example, there are a lot of organizations going out to homeless people who are giving them clean needles because they say this is where love meets the streets. This is a nonjudgmental way to handle homelessness. And that's what they literally say. It's nonjudgmental. But as Christians, if we want the best for them defined by what God wants, then we're going to be okay with judging

that from that perspective and saying, this is not what God would want for you. Let us help you. So it's a different, a completely different perspective that we would have. And then that last pillar of God is the ultimate guest. This is where I think a lot of Christians actually get tripped up because we start to believe the secular viewpoint that, you know, no one can really be sure. So it's kind of, you know, we don't want to be arrogant and claiming we know what's right. So I believe this. You believe that. And especially amongst millennials, you see in surveys that a lot of this kind of attitude comes up or understanding.

I guess attitude sounds a little different there, but their understanding. Sounds like that came from a Gen Xer, actually, just for the record. Yes, exactly. I know. So that's more of their understanding that it's actually arrogant to tell people about your faith and i talk about that data in the last chapter of my book when i talk about evangelizing and sharing the gospel so we've kind of taken on that secular viewpoint that no one can really know better than anyone else so don't be. But the Bible is very clear that we have good reason, really good reason to believe that God exists, that he has revealed who he is and who we are

in the Bible, and that Jesus was God himself who was raised from the dead. There's historical evidence for the resurrection. There's so much evidence for the truth of Christianity. It's evidence that demands a verdict, Sean. I don't know if you've ever considered that, but there is so much evidence. And so when we understand that and when Christians get a better grasp of the evidence and the fact that it exists, we can no longer fall into this God is just a guess. It gives us the conviction of knowing that no, there is a God and we can know him. So all of those things together together I hope that clarifies a little yeah what those what those differences are and they manifest themselves in all kinds of ways and those are really the chapters throughout the book of how that manifests itself

and how we think and about you know discernment the types of Jesus's that we see cancel culture and virtue signaling all those manifestations all go back to those underlying tenets, I think, of secularism. So in secularism, one thing that surprised me you didn't mention is the role of science, because a lot of my secular friends would say, no, I'm not the source, my feelings. There's a source outside of me. It's science that tells us how to deal with different ethical issues tells us about climate change tells us about whatever the topic is science is a source of authority and i understand the weight of that insofar as it goes because science has brought us communication and technology and transportation and we're having this conversation right now because of science

so where would science fit in when many of my naturalist and or secular friends would say, no, it's not just about my feelings. We follow the science. Well, there's a whole other conversation on that phrase specifically. I think that's true. But coming back to, I address science a little bit in the book, in chapter four, where I talk about regaining a supernatural worldview. So I look at it specifically from that perspective of, okay, when you're talking about the existence of God, how much do you get from just science? So I address a little bit, but I understand your bigger question is, but what about science in general? So from the secular worldview perspective, that is going to be for the default epistemology that you're going to come back to and say, well, how do I know anything? And people go back to, well, I know it from science, but very few,

if any people actually live as if that's the case, because we come to all kinds of knowledge all the time that can't be found just from science. So if you say knowledge is the only source of truth, that statement itself cannot be proven from science. And we see this all the time in the ways that we ascertain information about the world from people and their testimonies from the things that they say. We don't personally see the science behind everything. So I think that it's interesting because a lot of there might be, I would say, the very dedicated naturalist,

the atheist who says, no, the natural world is all that there is. The only thing that I can know is what science has discovered. And that is going to be my source of knowledge for everything. But I'd say the vast majority, vast, vast majority of people who have a secular worldview make all kinds of claims and have all kinds of beliefs that don't come from science. If you think about all the social movements, for example, that we see today, and you think about social justice and how passionate, for example, people are about social justice and the claims that are made, those are not claims that come from science.

Those are the claims that come from social theories about the way that people work and how they relate to one another. And there are all kinds of different theories in that way. So it's very interesting because they will also make a lot of moral claims and you can't get these kinds of moral claims from science. Science is a description. It's a methodology that describes the way that the natural world works. But to get from there to social justice movements, just as one example of saying that we have some kind of basis for saying what is just, what is right, what is wrong, that's a big step that you can't make just from the scientific method. So people don't,

they might say that what they're going off of is science but they're not living consistently consistently within that tiny science box because it doesn't fit you can't get that objective morality from the tiny science box there's going to have to be more of it you have a section in your book on progressive Christianity. Now, I'm curious why you included it in a book on being faithfully different in a secular culture and what your concern is with progressive Christianity. Yeah, so in that chapter, I actually make the claim that progressive Christianity is another secular pressure within the church. And the reason that I say that is that the commonality usually between people who would identify themselves as progressive Christians, or maybe don't even identify themselves, but

follow kind of beliefs that are consistent with that, is that they don't look to the Bible as the inspired and authoritative word of God. They usually have an appreciation for the Bible. So it's not to say that they're like, oh, the Bible, that's this ridiculous thing. Usually that's not the case. They believe that it was man's best ideas about God over time, but that we're constantly evolving in our understanding of what's true. And this is not something that we look to to know what is eternal truth, but rather it was just man's inspiration to write about God. This is generally, and that's a generalization, but it's generally how they view the Bible.

So when you look at that, even if you have an appreciation for the Bible in some sense, if you are going to go to the Bible and pick and choose what you're taking from it as, well, this is true and this is true, but this is not true. Who's the authority there? It comes back to the authority of the self. So ultimately I make the case in that chapter that progressive Christians are coming right back to the authority of the self, just like someone with a secular worldview who doesn't believe anything from the Bible would. So it becomes another secular pressure on Christians who want to have a biblical worldview because it's a pressure to actually discard the authority of the Bible. And that's going to have a lot of implications for how you see reality.

And that's why I think that when you look at progressive Christians and progressive Christian churches, everything that they believe and how they seek to live and how they define big concepts like love and justice, it all dovetails with how people who don't identify as any kind of Christian see it. And I think that's because when the authority comes back to you, even if you're picking some stuff from the Bible, you're going to converge with popular consensus over time and what the culture is doing. So progressive Christian churches often look no different than the culture around them, maybe just with a little more appreciation for Jesus as a good moral teacher. Do you see this secular view seeping into both sides of the political arena? And before you answer this, your book is not political. You're not arguing for one political side over the other. So by progressive, you mean it more in a religious sense than you do mean in a political sense. When I think about the self

being authority, I could see this in clearly left-leaning positions when it comes to abortion. It's my body. Do whatever I want. But arguably, you could see it on some right-leaning positions like I want lower taxes because it's my money to do what I want with it. Or gun control. One of my friends who wrote a great book on this, a philosopher, is like, look, sometimes guns can become an idol. Get your government off my guns. We've all seen the bumper sticker. So maybe just clarify what your argument is and how it intersects with politics. And if you see this concern on the left and the right? Yeah, I think that no matter what political affiliation a person has, they can let their worldview be influenced by some very secular ideas. So like you said, you can be someone on the left who is allowing that to happen or someone on the right. But that doesn't mean

that our worldview should not affect our politics. And I think that is often where people get confused. They say, well, you know, Jesus wasn't a whatever, fill in the blank party. Well, no, Jesus wasn't that. But if we are going to have a biblical worldview, there are some things that we need to look at about what's going on in culture. And we should be able to infer what a position would be politically from what the Bible teaches and what we're going to advocate for. So I firmly believe that, for example, with pro-life issues. I think that as a Christian, that is going to inform how

we vote. That's one of many issues. But we can start to, going back to your question, we can start to let secular perspectives fall into our views and start to be convinced that, well, we should just let everyone do their own thing, or everyone needs to have their own choice. The secular country that we're in, again, was never intended to mean that individuals should not bring their worldview to bear on public matters. It only meant that at the federal level that there was no state supported church and that the government itself was not going to defer to that authority. As Christians, we have to bring our worldview to bear so that we can be salt and light in culture and protect, in this particular

example, the lives of the unborn. We should have no hesitancy in that whatsoever. Now, is there going to be a political party that represents the full bundle of good policies and values that come from biblical worldview? No, not at all. I do believe though, and I have no trouble saying that when you look at the full bundle, so to speak, that there will be a time when you look at it and say, okay, one side is going to be more in line with my biblical worldview than the other. And that's not to say, oh, that means that everyone should have the same view on everything, but we have to look at the bigger picture. And just to give a different example on the flip side of that, I feel like immigration is one of those types of issues where you can have Christians who all agree on the

fundamental point that we need to love our neighbor, that we need to care for refugees, that we need to care for those who are struggling in other countries. But different Christians may come to different conclusions about the best policies that will benefit everyone, not just people in this country, but benefit ultimately the people who want to come here. And so that's going to be a policy discussion within people who all share the biblical worldview of caring for our neighbor. Some people might lean to the left in terms of those policies. Some people might lean to the right. That's one that I think that Christians legitimately can disagree on about the best way to handle it. So there's a spectrum of issues there and it's much bigger than just one party or the other, though I do think that there are bundles of issues that we have to consider together. Did I just confuse that even more?

No, no, no. You're bringing great nuance. I really appreciate it as a professor, being very careful with your terms and your explanations. And for example, to make your point in Matthew 22, when they asked Jesus if he should pay taxes, he's like, whose image is on that coin? Give to Caesar that which is Caesar, God's which is God, which begs the question, where is God's image? It's everywhere on all of us. So Caesar has a realm, but God's realm is even bigger, which includes finances and taxes and politics.

Bring our worldview to bear on that. I think we're called to. One of the big ways that people approach a range of issues today is through experience. If I've experienced something, it's true for me. Speak your truth, speak your experience. But you have a line specifically, you say experience doesn't supersede the Bible as a source of knowledge. What do you mean by that? So when we look at a secular worldview, when we consider experience within that, we should see that that makes perfect sense within that worldview bubble, because experience is going to be what you have to rely on if your only authority is the self. And I think that this

is a really important starting point for Christians who are seeking to understand these issues is to start to see when certain statements make consistent sense within a given worldview. And when we look at secularism and we hear people saying, oh, well, this is my truth and I've experienced this, we shouldn't find that all that shocking because when you understand the authority of the self, you look at that and say, okay, yes, I get it. That's what falls into this box over here. And it makes perfect sense. But where Christians need to understand the difference is that we need to be able to look at and say, but that's not consistent with a biblical worldview because ultimately my experiences and my feelings about the things

that I've experienced, they cannot override what God has already revealed to be true in the Bible if I'm presupposing that the Bible is God's work. Now, that's not to say, oh, just have blind faith in the Bible. I'm saying once you have accepted that as your authority, you seek to have a biblical worldview, that trumps everything

when God has already revealed something to be true. So if God reveals himself to have made people in the image of God, for example, but yet gave us free will such that we are claim to have a biblical worldview, that doesn't work because the Bible has already told us that people are not fundamentally good, that we are fundamentally broken, that we are flawed, that we are sinful. So even if in my experience, I think that people are fundamentally good in some sense, I have to go back to see what the Bible says. Our experiences should never supersede what has already been revealed by God, the creator of the universe. So it sounds like the goal is not to experience, not to interpret scripture through our experience, but our experience through scripture. And we're probably a lot better at seeing how other people do that

in a faulty way than seeing it within ourselves, which is where the real challenge comes to see how we import a certain experience onto scripture. Love that point. Let's talk a little bit. This is probably my favorite section in your book because you have a marketing background and you've always been amazing at just marketing things. You have training, you have a knack for it, but you talk about how secular morality is marketed to us. Talk about that. Yeah. So I use this funnel that's been used by marketers for over a hundred years. This is a very well researched tool and framework that marketers use in terms of showing what the process is that a person goes through mentally in order to make some kind of decision for a purchase. So for

example, if you're going to grab a stick of gum at the grocery store or a pack of gum off the grocery aisle, you're not thinking a lot about that. That's just an impulse buy, right? You grab it and you go. But if you're going to buy a car, that's what marketers call a high involvement purchase. You're going to go through a series of mental steps that are going to get you to that product buy-in. And the steps are, number one, you have to be aware of this make and model, whatever it is about the car. So awareness first, and then that has to convert to interest. You have to become interested. Just knowing about it doesn't mean you're interested. So you have to get to that next step of the funnel. Once you're interested, that has to convert to desire to purchase. So just because you're thinking, oh, that's kind of cool, doesn't mean you're now

going to want to buy the car. But then desire isn't enough either. Desire has to convert to the actual purchase. We've all wanted a lot of things and we don't go buy them. So those are the four parts of this funnel that marketers have always used. And it's based on a lot of research in consumer psychology. Well, it was interesting to me over time as I started getting away from my marketing career and started working in ministry and thinking about these things to realize this so much describes how culture tries to get us to buy in to certain ideas about morality. And so I draw that connection in that chapter and saying, there's kind of a moral equivalent to each of these steps in the funnel that we can look at, that if you want to now get moral buy in on certain issues where people maybe in the past have not bought into them, we're going to start with the awareness level. You're going to have to redefine certain terms in order to get everyone

on the same page that this is a good thing, that this is something that everyone should be working toward because people are being harmed, for example. And so that's the first step of getting awareness of your issue out there. But again, awareness isn't enough. Awareness has to turn into interest in helping that get toward the moral buy-in. And so the equivalent of the interest level is really what we see as a push toward normalization, that normal equals good. And I give the example of the Shout Your Abortion movement. And there's this whole hashtag, Shout Your Abortion.

And the woman who started this really wanted to get past any kind of shame that was involved with abortion. And the woman who started this really wanted to get past any kind of shame that was involved with abortion. See, this is a step beyond just awareness. This is now let's turn this into a moral good by showing how normal it is. And so that's the next step in the process. And then the final one comes to celebration. It's not just awareness. It's not just making it into a good through the normalization, but let's now celebrate it. And I talk about the drag queen story, which is very well known, where there are drag queens that go and read the kids in libraries. This is really the celebration step. They've gone all the way through the funnel of awareness of what it would mean to be a drag queen, why this matters, why you should care about it into the normalization. This is out there. This is a good

thing into the celebration. You know, they could, they could promote their cause in all kinds of different ways, but it says a lot to pick kids at a library to read stories because it says, it says to everyone, this is so harmless and this is so good that we're now reading to kids because we should be celebrating where we are. It's now something we're celebrating. And so that is kind of a small overview of what that funnel looks like in terms of the culture. But we see in other cases, you know, now minor attracted persons, maps. This is kind of starting down the funnel. And these are people that traditionally we would have said, okay, they struggle with pedophilia, for example. Well, you don't see big celebratory

displays anywhere for people who struggle with this because it hasn't come through the funnel fully to the celebration point. But they are working at the awareness level to rebrand, so to speak, that it's not, we're not pedophiles. We are minor attracted persons, maps. And so they are working on regenerating that awareness and redefining so that they can get to that next step, which will be the normalization that this is so normal and normal equals good. And the last thing I would say about that, I think is a really important point in that chapter, that because in a secular worldview, you don't have an objective basis for morality. The only way or the closest way that you get to that, any kind of moral standard is by popular consensus. It's the closest thing that you can get to and that's why it becomes so important to market morality because the more you market morality the

more you convince people that this is a morally good position and the more people who agree with you the closer you get to the popular consensus and therefore some kind of proxy for a moral standard of course it's not an objective moral standard because there's no objective moral basis for that in that worldview. But you are seeing that it's a popular consensus, which people then use as the new moral standard. Now, of course, when people are promoting this worldview, they're not thinking, I'm going to destroy the biblical worldview explicitly. They're promoting what they think is good and right and best for society. The difference at the heart of it is how just whether God exists, whether the Bible is a source of authority, the very points that you're indicating.

That's why we see both sides of these debates will say, well, we're loving people. And probably both sides think they do. But one side is right, one side is wrong, and that's only settled at a deeper worldview level. This part of your book is one of my favorites because I try to point out to students and my own kids all the time. I'll even take a little ad. I'll say, do you see the word they use and why they use this word? Do you see the smile on this person's face? Every Netflix movie is marketing certain ideas. TikTok is marketing certain ideas.

Our educational system is marketing certain ideas. And whether or not pedophilia, our culture, ever embraces it or not, that's somewhat of an open question. We see people trying to rebrand it in a way to persuade in that direction, and the wise person sees it for what it is I think that's what you're equipping people to do you have a section on a false Jesus's that concern you I won't walk through all those but maybe mention just one or two the big false Jesus today that you think we need

to identify to be faithfully different I think probably think, I'd have to go back and look exactly, but I probably identify about 10 false Jesuses in that chapter. And I think the one that I probably see the most is what I call the theology light Jesus. And the theology light Jesus is a Jesus who doesn't really care about theology. He doesn't care about all this other stuff that people classify as religion he just cares about how we treat one another it's just purely behavior and i think you see this especially amongst progressive christians and so maybe that's why i feel like i see that the most because there are so many progressive christians today who are promoting that view uh and even

people who don't identify as christian at all a lot of times they think that that is who Jesus was. He was a good moral teacher, right? None of this other stuff really matters. But first of all, we have to understand that even if Jesus did teach that all that matters is your behavior, that's a theology too. So it's not a question of, that's not a question of, did Jesus teach theology or was he theology-like? The question is, what was the theology that he actually taught? What did he teach us about the nature of reality, about God, about who he was? What was he teaching? And if you're only looking at what he taught about behavior and how we treat others, you are missing giant swaths of the gospels. And again, you would have to be just picking and choosing individual things

from the gospels on your own determination in order to get there. And a couple of times, just, I think it's fascinating. If you read the gospel of Mark, for example, if you start reading from the beginning of that and you start looking for, okay, I'm going to go through this with an eye toward finding the Jesus who only really mattered because of what he taught about how to behave, you're going to have to basically go through the entire book because you're just going to read about healing after healing, after miracle, after miracle, all leading up to the confession, Peter's confession of Jesus as the Messiah, where Jesus really hasn't taught much at all. And that whole time, Mark is setting this up to say who Jesus is.

And that's ultimately what Christianity is about, is who Jesus is. It's the person of Jesus. And the gospel is just structured that way. So when you look for what were the teachings in here, you're not getting a social justice kind of Jesus in that sense that people think that he is today. It's all about who Jesus was. So this whole idea that it's only about behavior, you can only get there if one, you don't read the Bible at all,

or two, you read the Bible and you pick out some very individual pieces. Of course, Jesus taught about how we should treat other people, but that's part of a much bigger picture of number one, loving God first and letting that define what it means to love others. So it is an outflow of our underlying worldview and belief system. So what we believe matters. It really does. It's not just how do we live because that's going to be completely subjective unless you're grounding that in something bigger. So theology like Jesus really does not work. It's so interesting you picked that Jesus because just recently I did a video on, I think it was on Instagram. I might throw it up on TikTok, on social media about progressive

Christianity and just basically saying really progressive Christianity has a different view of the person of Jesus, of the scripture, of the sinfulness of man. Like George Yancey argues in his book, One Faith No Longer, these are distinct faiths. And I made that point. And someone came back and said, well, Jesus just said, love your neighbor. Progressives get this better than conservatives. We get all hung up in theology. Like this just happened and I'm engaging in this. I often don't respond to these things, but I was like, I'm going to respond. I said, yeah, Jesus said, love God and love others. But he said, if you love me, you'll obey my commands. What were his commands about how to love our neighbor?

What are his teachings about marriage? This is embedded in a deeper theology. We can't separate it from it. So maybe concern is talk too much theology and don't love enough. That's a fair enough concern, but we can't skip good theology because if we do, we're not really loving our neighbors. That's where I think ultimately we need both. Now, just a couple more for you, and we'll wrap up.

You're doing awesome. One question I want to know is you get to the end, and you talk about equipping Christians to have conversations with people this is dear to my heart because on the channel I have a lot of people on who see the world very differently than I do and I enjoy civil conversations with people so what you give certain questions that Christians should consider before speaking truth either on social media or to somebody in person? What are just some things? You don't have to list out all of them,

but maybe one or two things we should think about before speaking something we think is true. Yeah, I think the first thing is just to ask ourselves, is this something worth speaking up about? And of course, that's going to be subjective. And a lot of times we wonder, well, is it? But I think that a lot of times when people say, well, we don't, we should be less judgmental. What they're really talking about is we shouldn't be so critical of every little thing that people are doing. You know, oh, that person watched this movie. You know,

why did they do that? Or, you know, this person over here that, you know, they had this shirt on with this weird phrase on it. That's just being nitpicky. That's not truly what we're talking about when we're talking about discernment in the bigger picture sense. So sometimes we can get overly concerned about things that we might not need to be concerned about. But then there are other times when it's so important to speak up that we need to be the person who is willing to speak up in culture and say that, yes, the lives of the unborn matter, for example. These are things that we do need to talk about. So that's just one filter to start with. Another one is what is my motivation right now? And this has become,

I think, the most important question for me personally, because because of what I do, I often see things and I'm like, ah, I want to correct this. I want to say something about this. But going back through that filter, it comes back to why do I want to say something about this right now to this individual? What is my motivation? Is it because I truly want to help them to see clearly? Is it because I somehow want to seem like the smart person right now who can correct something? Is it because I'm really annoyed by this person that I know and I want to call them out publicly? We're all human, right? And so you constantly have to check the motivation of your heart to know where is this coming from. And none of us are going to be as

pure as the driven snow. So it shouldn't push us into submission and silence and say, well, I just can't say anything because none of us would ever get to the point of speaking up if that's the truth. So I think that we just have to constantly watch our hearts from that perspective and make sure we're saying things for the right reasons. And then one other thing I would say is to always consider, especially when we think about social media, is this something that I should talk about publicly or privately? So yes, on social media, on Facebook, for example, if someone says something, technically speaking, they're putting this on a public format where they should expect people are going to respond publicly. But I've learned over time that just because you know the person and just because they have put this out publicly doesn't mean they're going to be super excited for you to engage in some kind of conversation about the logical inconsistencies in their worldview that's just not always going to be the case and so even though that format is there a lot of times if we're coming from the right motivation that we want to help bring them to a saving knowledge of god and a knowledge of the truth it could very

well be better to reach out privately over Messenger or whatever platform that you're on and say, hey, I just wanted to have a conversation about that post that you made. I was wondering what you think about this, or could you help me understand better where you're coming from, wherever that conversation is going? So I think that's important because a lot of us do come from that assumption that, well, you're talking about this publicly, so I'm going to talk about it publicly. But a lot of times it's better if you know the person to take that private. And so that's been especially helpful for me to think about personally, because I know I've failed in that area sometimes. Yeah, me too. I've had to delete a lot of tweets and send people notes.

Sorry, that was the most gracious response, but we can get better. We can learn from it. Just the idea of having a filter. For me, sometimes if I just stop, think about it, give myself a little time, it brings amazing clarity to whether I should speak up and if I do speak up, how I should speak up. So I think that section of the book is great. Last question, totally in your wheelhouse,

and I realize we could do a whole nother hour on this, but maybe just one or two things that parents can do. Cause I get this question all the time is it's one thing for parents to say, okay, I understand how I can resist certain ideas coming out of culture, but how do I raise kids? How do I engage them to be faithfully different? Yeah, that's, that's a really big question. So let's start a new show for that one. So yeah, I think that, you know, what I see, let me start with where I think parents go wrong to kind of show where I think we go from there. But I think what a lot of parents do is they identify these hot button issues that people are talking about and that are misleading their kids. And they think that their job or the ultimate problem that they have is just

to pick those issues off, kind of cherry pick, okay, well, we need to talk about this, we need to talk about this, but they're not recognizing how those flow from an underlying iceberg of a whole world view. So maybe you've been raising your kids to know and love the Lord, you take them to church every week, but you're starting to see them drift in terms of the way that they're approaching things and some of the beliefs that they have. Well, don't just pick off that one topic that you heard them talking about. Let's get back to the basics to understand. You know, tell me a little bit more about your thoughts on that.

Do you do you still if you don't know as the parent, do you still believe that the Bible ultimately is God's word? That's a really good starting point question, depending on where you are with your kids. Because if in the past they would have said yes to that, you can't assume that now. Maybe they're starting to say, eh, I don't know. Well, if they don't know, and all you do because you didn't find out the answer to that question is keep pointing back and say, but look at this verse in the Bible. Look here, look here. This is what the Bible says. Well, if they don't really believe the Bible anymore, you're going nowhere with that conversation. You're going to have to dig deeper and come back to you. Okay. So I understand what you're saying with that. So maybe next time you're going to have a conversation about the Bible and dig in more. Maybe they don't even believe in God anymore. And you don't know that there's been that change.

So we have to ask questions to understand where they are and not just pick off those issues. But for kids who are sort of continuing to track in terms of they identify as a Christian, they believe the Bible is God's word, but they're still kind of struggling with these issues. What I think is really helpful is to continually point out what is consistent with different worldviews. What is consistent with secularism when you see it? What is consistent with different worldviews? What is consistent with secularism when you see it? What

is consistent with a biblical worldview? And so a really easy way to do this is to continuously bring them articles, things that you see online. Even if your kids don't have social media, then bring it to them. My kids do not have social media, but I bring them social media. I say, look at this meme that I saw today. How would you respond to that? And what is that consistent with? Bring them an article that's written by somebody with a totally different perspective. Look at it from not just, oh, here's why apologetics speaking, we're right. We believe that we're right and they're wrong. But let's just look at this from the objective outside perspective of saying, okay, well, here's why that's consistent within, for example, an atheistic worldview, because if all

there is, is the natural world, and we're all a product of blind, purposeless chance, this all makes sense within that worldview. We're not even saying who's right or wrong. We're just saying, understand what travels together in terms of worldview claims and the logical implications that flow from that. And I think ultimately that's so helpful because then we get to a point of our kids looking at everything and evaluating it and figuring out, okay, what box does that belong in? Where are there inconsistencies within what people are understanding?

And ultimately that points them back to saying, okay, how do I know what's true? How do I know which of these is true? But understanding those consistencies, I think, has been the most important thing that I've been doing with my kids. That's great. I love that you do that. And the key is that you do it in relationship. I've obviously spent time with you and your husband and met your kids and see that you are relationally pouring into them. Because all the studies show worldview is best passed on when there's love and intimacy and closeness.

And I know you talk about and emphasize that as well. Natasha Crane, you are a rock star. Your book is fantastic. It's called Faithfully Different, your fourth book. I was honored to give an endorsement for it. Just thrilled by it. How else can people follow what you do well my website is Natasha crane comms it's CRA I in and I have a podcast now it's called the Natasha

crane podcast and you can find that also on my website to find links to that from there pick up a copy of faithfully different it's great for individual study, great for group study, great as a gift. And while you're at it, make sure you hit subscribe because we've got some awesome interviews coming up doing the very thing that we're talking about today in the future. And if you've ever thought about getting a degree in apologetics, think about joining us at Biola. We have a fully online master's top-rated program.

We'd love to partner with you to just be a blessing to the church and your family and beyond. Natasha, hang on so I can say thanks, but to the rest of you, we'll see you soon.