The Sean McDowell Show - Should Christians Engage the Political Realm? Natasha Crain Speaks Out!

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

How can Christians best navigate a culture that seems increasingly against Christian teachings? Should Christians mount up their cultural engagement or step back? Should Christians engage the political sphere or not? Natasha Crain has just released a provocative new book titled, "When Culture Hates You." We discuss how to advocate for the greater good of society in the public sphere. Needless to say, this is a provocative book, and we want to know what you think. Please comment below!READ: When Culture Hates You by Natasha Crain (https://amzn.to/4k2GaBq)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/

Does culture hate Christians? If so, how should Christians best respond? Should Christians engage the political and public arenas or focus on sharing the gospel? We're going to discuss these questions and more with our guests today whom you are familiar with from her writings, from her podcasts, from being a guest on this show at least two or three times before. Natasha Crane has a new book out called, and I haven't gotten a copy yet, but I printed out what you sent me, the PDF, Natasha. It's called When Culture Hates You.

Thoroughly enjoyed it, so interesting. Thanks for coming back to talk about it. Hey, it's a joy. Thanks for having me on. Well, when I interviewed you before, we started with your story, of kind of how you went from blogging homeschool mom to apologist. This feels like another chapter in the book of your life that goes from apologist to kind of entering the public political realm, so to speak.

Tell me the story behind that and why you wrote this book. Yeah, well, it really started in 2020 when everything was changing very rapidly and I had always written specifically about parenting issues before that on my blog. And when I started to see that there were a lot of concerning views that were coming into the church in that time in 2020,

I decided, you know what, I'm gonna stick a toe out there. I'm gonna write about what we're seeing and how the secular worldview is creeping into a biblical worldview, especially on matters related to justice. And so I wrote this article on my blog, it went viral. And I thought, well, maybe I don't have to stay within parenting, maybe some of the stuff that I've been talking about, maybe some of the style I'm using to write and the way I'm explaining things, maybe that's going to resonate with people on some of these cultural issues, too. So I started writing more articles and they went viral too.

And these were the biggest articles I had ever written. And so ultimately that led to me writing my last book, which was called Faithfully Different after having written the three books, specifically for parents before that. And Faithfully Different was about regaining biblical clarity in a secular culture. So that was kind of my foray

into the cultural kinds of issues. And then I started, as I was engaging with people online and at speaking events, conferences, and things like that, I started realizing there's this very pervasive sense that the culture is becoming increasingly hostile to Christians and to Christianity and to biblical values. And people were sharing some very difficult stories with me. People were sharing about how they had been disconnected from their family, literally cut off, where family members are saying, I do not want to ever see you again because of your beliefs as a Christian. People were losing friends in the same way. People were losing jobs, they were having trouble getting jobs because they wouldn't agree to certain ideologies that they were being asked to agree to in the workplace.

And so as I started to see that, I became concerned with, well, how do we better understand this hatred toward Christians or at the very least this hostility in culture? How do we better understand that so we can respond? And at the same time, there's a second part to that, which is how do we not let it push us back into silence? Because a lot of people were saying, you know, I don't I don't want to speak up. They would say, if I'm honest, I know I should say something. I should speak up about truth and I and I should want to talk about my faith with other people, but I don't feel comfortable doing that anymore because of this hostility.

So it's really important that for the title of the book, that the title is When Culture Hates You. That was kind of the impetus for wanting to write this, to address that and to help people understand where that comes from. But the subtitle is Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square. And that's really important that we understand the hostility but not just for some kind of intellectual reason

but so that we can better continue to persevere out of our love for God and our love for others for the good of our society to be salt and light. It's interesting here framed this way because I've received tons of comments and emails and concerns from parents and from others whose family members and friends have completely shut them out. Now my book that I wrote with Tim Muehlhoff and The Stalemate is about engaging people relationally. So sometimes when somebody is shut out, I say, well, it might be because culture and this person hate you and your views,

but you might also be a jerk. You might not be approaching this the way that you should. Is there a way to heal and mend that relationship and lean in relationally? Sometimes there is, sometimes there's not. That's kind of the private personal dimension. Your book is more so like, okay, culturally something is going on that is bleeding down into these relationships. How do we go upstream, so to speak, that's leading into this and engage these ideas on a cultural level.

So with that said, would you say that we live in an anti-Christian culture? And I'm curious because there's a number of books of writers. I've got Rosaria Butterfield's book right here and she says, Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age. Erin Wren has used the term anti-Christian. Would you use that term? Why or why not? That's an interesting question because I don't think that there's kind of an on and off switch that you can use to say, OK, we are now in an anti-Christian culture or here we're not in an anti-Christian culture. Everything's along a spectrum, right?

So it really depends on what someone means when they're talking about that aspect of culture. In the first chapter of the book, I use the example of advocating publicly for a soup kitchen. If you're a Christian who wants to publicly advocate in some way for the local soup kitchen and you're getting out there, you're telling more people about it,

you're in the public eye in some way, no one's gonna hate you for that. No one is going to say, wow, I am really anti-Christian in that way. So it's really important for us to understand what the culture is anti-Christian about. And that's kind of the focus of the beginning of my book of saying, when you hold contrarian values as a group, contrary to the popular moral consensus that we see, when you hold those values and are seeking to influence the culture according to those values, that's when the culture hates you.

So it's a very specific kind of situation that we find ourselves in as Christians. And I compare that to say the Amish or the Haley's Bop Comet cult that we saw a few years ago. When you look at those groups, they held some values that were very contrary to cultures, to cultures values. But at the same time, you didn't see a culture saying, man, I hate those guys. I really hate those guys. People would laugh at them. In the case of the cult, or people would maybe look at the Amish and say, man, they're backwards. And that they're kind of crazy. You know, people might have some kind of negative assessment of them, but they don't necessarily hate them. You have to have two things for people to hate you in today's culture. You have to, number one, hold contrarian values to what is considered in vogue so that the gatekeepers are looking at it

of culture and saying, yeah, that's supposed to what we're trying to progress toward. And you have to actually want to influence the culture around you. So as Christians, we don't have this religion where it's just this private faith where, well, we're just gonna be over here in the corner believing what we believe. Part of what we believe is that we are supposed to be a light in the darkness. So we're supposed to, according to our own beliefs,

take those contrarian values, influence the culture around us. When we do that, that's when the culture will hate you. So no, they don't hate everything about Christians. They don't hate everything When we do that, that's when the culture will hate you. So, no, they don't hate everything about Christians. They don't hate everything that we do or everything we would advocate for. There are a lot of commonalities. You know, everyone still thinks it's a good thing

to work at a soup kitchen, to volunteer at the soup kitchen, to help an old lady across the street. People agree on those things. But when we're talking about wanting to change society according to values that society really hates and despises, then you start getting the kind of resentment that we're seeing today. That's why people start cutting off Christians.

It's not because we're helping out at the local homeless shelter or helping feed people. It's not because of those things. It's because we hold values that are directly opposed to some of those most cherished by culture today, especially when it comes to things like abortion, gender, and sexuality. That's why culture resents us. Okay, so I don't want to put words in your mouth,

but let me frame it in a certain way and then tell me if you agree or disagree. I don't think it's just Christians that culture hates in the way you're framing it. It's probably more conservative Christians. I don't think it's bringing the Bible into politics. I think it's bringing the Bible in to support certain views on politics. So I remember some on the left arguing for same-sex marriage

appealed to the Bible in terms of equality. And I don't remember culture hating them. But if you appeal to the Bible and say, well, marriage is a sexed institution of male and female Then you will get hated on. If you appeal to love your neighbor on a certain view of immigration Everybody cheers. If you appeal to the Bible about the rule of law and justice on a view of immigration Then there's a criticism and maybe a kind of hatred, but certainly a push back on that. So, is your argument that it's not just Christians, it's

conservative Christians using the scripture to support these views that are hated. Does that bring clarity to your point or would you disagree? Yeah, I think that it comes down to that term, I think the contrarian values. So, if you, anyone can call themselves a Christian, right? We know from the data that 65% of Americans say that they are a Christian, but according to the worldview data from Arizona Christian University's Cultural Research Center,

only about 4% of Christians have a biblical worldview, meaning that they're seeing all of reality through the lens of what the Bible teaches. So lots and lots of people will call themselves Christians and actually hold to values that are antithetical to what the Bible teaches. So, for example, if we're talking about something like abortion, I think, I don't know the statistic off the top of my head,

I think it's about 33% of self-identified Christians say that they're pro-choice, for example. Well, it's in the terminology you're using with being a conservative Christian, if we're talking about conservative politically, that the pro-life view is consistent with that conservative position, then yes, I would say that if you're a Christian who is holding views that are consistent with the popular moral consensus, you're a pro-choice Christian, then culture is not going to hate you. They're not going to hate you unless the views that you hold

are contrary to the values that are deemed to be acceptable today. So, yes, I think we do have to distinguish there because people can have all kinds of views of the Bible, they can have all kinds of views of how that applies in the political arena, and call themselves Christians. Culture is not going to hate you. In fact, culture will embrace you as its own if you're a Christian who enjoys progressive values,

who is advocating for progressive values. So yes, I think that that's an important distinction to make that you're bringing up here. That if you're a Christian who holds to the authority of God's word, that's kind of the first step there. If you hold to the authority of God's word and you're holding to values based on that authority that are not consistent with the popular moral consensus,

then culture will hate you. Culture's not hating the mainline churches who are out there waving the pride flags and hosting the drag queen story hours. So in a sense, I would say, yes, you do have to nuance this, that it's not all Christians, but it's when Christians are holding to the authority of the Bible and the values that are consistent with that.

Do you make a distinction between kind of culture from a 30,000 foot view? And you defined it to begin, it's some of the beliefs and ideas that permeate a culture, so to speak, and the individuals within our culture. And I ask that because I think it's obvious that there's this just rejection in the way you're describing it of a biblical view of things like sexuality and other issues that stem from biblical authority. But online aside and online,

whether it's Twitter or other, it's not reality. I don't personally feel hated by most people who see the world differently than I do. I have a number of friends who have different political views than I do. Gnostics, atheists, progressive Christians. There's certainly some that hate me. I was interviewed over Christmas on a story within CNN and obviously, you know, the founder of CNN signs the secular humanist manifesto. Like there's deep differences in the coverage on CNN.

But the reporter was so respectful, represented everything I said accurately. I didn't feel hated at all. So do you make that distinction? If so, what does that look like? Yeah, I talk about in the first chapter, like you're saying, when I'm talking about, well, how do I use the term culture? To say that the culture hates us does not mean that every single person in culture feels the same way. It does not mean that every single person in your life who's not a Christian is going to hate you. It's an overarching, it's become

a colloquial term, sort of when people say culture today, and that's the way in which I'm using it in the book, that culture is the the collective ideas that are considered to be in vogue is the term that I use in the book that is fashionable at any given time. So you're right, not every single person is going to hate you. But what we do see over and over repeating itself is that people and yes, the online world is not necessarily the real world. But there's a very close match in many cases

where people that I hear from will say, I got cut off by my brother forever. He won't talk to me because of something that I posted online. Or, you know, in the case of someone else, I know somebody who was going to have a photo shoot with their photographer for their family photos and their family photographer posted something online

saying that, you know, if you're someone who voted in this way in the election in a conservative way, then don't bother to be friends with me anymore. Just go ahead and end this now. So there is a lot of that that's taking place online. But that's that's kind of in the weeds to answer the bigger question. Yes, when we say that culture hates you, we're not saying every single person does, but it's an overarching movement that we're seeing. And I think we have to go back to what Jesus said in John chapter 15. He said, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, then the world would love you as its own.

But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. And I focus on Jesus's words and talking about what the gospel say about hate in that first chapter, especially for this reason, because I didn't want the book to get off on a foot where people were saying,

but how much does the world hate us? Well, we were told by Jesus that the world would hate us and very importantly in that verse That I just said he says why he says that the world would hate us if we're of the world So we have to ask what does it mean to be of the world according to the Bible to be of the world? Means to be under the governing rule of Satan So you're either under the rule of Satan or you are under the rule of God You're a child of God or you're a child of Satan. The you're either under the rule of Satan, or you are under the rule of God. You're a child of God or you're a child of Satan. The Bible is very clear on that. It sounds almost hyperbolic, right? Like you're a child of Satan. But this is what the Bible teaches. And so if you really dig into the passages on hate and what Jesus is saying,

and how that's worked out through Scripture, what you find is that Christians will be hated for practicing righteousness. Because those who are under the rule of Satan, those who are of the world, as Jesus is saying, they're going to hate when Christians practice righteousness. They're going to hate when the light is shown on the darkness. And that's why Jesus says the world will hate us. Doesn't mean every person in the world, right? But it does mean that when you are a Christian, people are going to hate you when you advocate for what's right because it shines The shines the light in the darkness So I take it back to what Jesus said knowing that that's always going to be a reality for Christians No matter what time period that you're living in but in our particular time period We see that fewer and fewer people are identifying as Christians And so the world in our in at least, the world is becoming

less and less Christian and therefore there are more people who are of the world. More people who will hate us for advocating for what is right. I'm curious if you think there's other groups that culture hates as well and just one for example that a couple of come to mind would be like Mormons or Muslims. I have a friend who's an imam who lives near where I do and he certainly feels like culture hates them. And what's interesting is there's a lot of social issues, pro-life, LGBTQ issues.

I mean, you kind of go down the line and as much as he and I profoundly disagree theologically and biblically historically, we line up on a lot of these issues. Now, do you think culture hates Mormons, hates Muslims? What other groups would you put in that category? Why or why not? This is such an interesting question because I was obviously very focused on my book on Christians, and it was just somebody yesterday on Facebook who brought up the question about Muslims. I hadn't really thought about it too much.

But what I said to him when he is asking the same question is that Muslims are interesting because like you're saying, they do hold a lot of values that would be consistent with what Christians would hold, for example, in the area of LGBT, but they're not known for that. They're not known for advocating publicly in America to a large degree for a variety of reasons on that issue.

And furthermore, because of the overarching critical theory and social justice movement that we have, Muslims are seen as an oppressed group. And so this is a really interesting twist on the whole thing because what they are known oftentimes or recently for advocating for are more the issues related to what's going on in the Middle East. For example, with Palestine. Well, we saw all these protests on the college campus in Columbia a few months ago, right,

where everyone was protesting about the Hamas and in Israeli war and people were shocked to see that there were people who were advocating for Hamas and and and not saying, hey, this is an atrocity that's going on. Well, that's because of the critical theory view that the Palestinian area is an oppressed area and that the Muslims are an oppressed people. And so, because of that, you kind of have these conflicting things in terms of the cultural view. The Muslims are an oppressed group according to the oppressor, oppressed lens that comes down from Marxism.

At the same time, they might privately hold beliefs that would be consistent with a biblical view of sexuality, for example, but they're not known for advocating for that in the public square. They're also a much smaller group in America than Christians are. So when you balance all those things together, I don't think people are hating Muslims

for the same reasons that they're hating Christians. They're, I think, when it came to 20 years ago, when you're talking about 9-11, and you're talking about some of the things that were going on at that time, that might have been a hatred for a different reason. That was around terrorism, right? But when it comes to the issues that we're talking about in this book, they're not hated in the same way.

Mormons also, I think, are less known for advocating publicly for some of the things that we're talking about. Christians, again, 65% of people in America identify as a Christian in some way. So we have kind of this critical mass, basically. And we're also, we have a whole heritage of being a predominantly Christian country.

And so when you have that, we're going to be the ones who are most widely known for supporting the values that we do, even if there are some smaller religious groups who would be consistent with what we believe. Mormons certainly were hated on for supporting Prop 8, which takes us back years ago to an entirely different world when the majority of people in California supported a proposition to keep marriage as a sex institution of a man and a woman. So when they spoke up for that, were hated. They've had their own way of trying to navigate this in Utah and beyond.

But that's a helpful clarification. So another question for you, and you can tell me if you don't think this captures the approach of your book. But within the Christian faith, there's a lot of different models about how Christians should engage culture. So some would be Christ against culture, Christ above culture, Christ in culture, Christ outside of culture. There's all these models that people have engaged

and debated and discussed. And you might say, maybe it's too simplistic, that given the title, When Culture Hates You, feels like a Christ against culture kind of model as a whole. That's not a criticism. That's, I'm placing it. So I don't know if you think that's accurate, but second, if that's the case, you highlight a lot of the areas where historic Christian faith and culture come into conflict. I'm curious if you think there's times that culture gets it right.

So let me unpack this a little bit and then you can come back and tell me things. So for example, you write early in the book, you said according to culture, love means affirmation. It's better to be spiritual than religious. Happiness is the goal of life. You shouldn't be judgmental. It's better to be spiritual than religious. Happiness is the goal of life. You shouldn't be judgmental. I totally agree that these are ideas promoted and pushed in our culture.

But the idea of love, let me read it again, love mean an affirmation. I point that out, I've critiqued that and I say this is a bad idea within culture. But I also think deep down inside in our culture, we see reflections of when they get love right. So you knew it was only a matter of time before I was gonna bring in a superhero example. But if we take it to end game, the final movie in kind of the, you know, after Infinity War, where this 10 years

of Marvel movies have been building, the ultimate hero is Iron Man Man who's a Christ figure who sacrifices his life to save the universe. So here's Marvel, at least half the universe. Here's Marvel. I don't think doing this intentionally but it's written on our hearts that we know love means to sacrifice for another and to give up. And in the story I'm watching this going, am I the only one where this is a myth here, but it happened in history.

This is a great example of how culture gets it right. So do you agree with the way that I frame the book and you agree or disagree with culture getting it right? Give me your thoughts on that. Yeah, well, there's a lot there. In terms with culture getting it right. Give me your thoughts on that. Yeah, well, there's a lot there. In terms of culture getting it right, I think absolutely that there are different times and different issues on which culture will get things right.

I think an obvious one that we see is that culture has an appreciation for justice, the importance of justice. I think overwhelmingly what we're seeing today, this entire push toward, you know, we need to help the oppressed, we need to help the marginalized, we need to make sure that we are making wrong things right. Well, that is a godly principle. God is a god of justice, right?

And so there's this desire to heal the brokenness in the world. The problem is, is that the culture defines justice in a way that is not consistent with God's version of justice because they're using a different standard. And we could have a whole off topic on that. But that's just one example of saying, yes, they understand certain things. And that makes sense to us if we read the Bible, right? In Romans one, it says that people suppress the truth and unrighteousness. That's a moral issue in unrighteousness. I think the day that I recognized the importance

of that word in particular, that verse was really eye opening to me because people are suppressing it out of a moral issue. It's out of unrighteousness. And I think we have to really remember that, that people deep down, according to the Bible itself, they know what's true to a certain degree. And theologians will debate, you know, to what degree, you know, can we know things without the Bible and to what degree without a saving knowledge of Jesus? All of those things are debated, but at the most foundational level, yes,

people absolutely do have an understanding of some basic truths, and that's because God gave it to them as Christians. We should absolutely believe that. So, I think it's helpful to remember that, especially when we're advocating for something like the value of human life and the womb. I do believe that deep down,

people know that that is a human being, but their conscience has just been so closed off by the rhetoric of culture and what's going on, that they suppress the truth on that as well. So I think that there's something to be said there about wanting to draw the truth out of people that they to some degree already know on their own. Culture is going to get some things right, but they're not going to get everything right. Everything right. And we're going to have to know the difference by reading the Bible. To your first question about, you know, is it Christ against culture?

Well, I think that like I said earlier there the Bible very clearly presents that there are just two ways you can go You're either of the world or you're of God So in a sense there is a very stark line that is drawn in the Bible itself when it comes to where you belong to But I don't I don't really like the simplistic models of the Christ above and the Christ against culture, those kinds, because it is so limiting. So I wouldn't necessarily put the book into one of those categories,

other than to say we are distinct, absolutely distinct from the world in that way. Now let's look what the Bible teaches about how we should or should not influence the culture that we're in, given that we are a child of God. And so what I'm trying to do in the book is kind of do a, you know, there's Mere Christianity, obviously, by C.S. Lewis.

This is kind of a mere public influence book. There are lots, there are lots and lots of different models, like you said, of how do we influence the culture or how do we not influence the culture. I'm trying to get down in this book to the nuts and bolts of, look, this is what the Bible teaches at the very basic level. Now let's take it from there.

There are gonna be people who disagree on, you know, this issue or that, or maybe how much of a difference we can make. That's a big one I point out in the book. Your view of eschatology and end times, a lot of people will differ on political involvement, for example, based on whether they think the world's getting better or worse, ultimately. But my point in the book is to say, regardless of where you think the world is going, we're

still called to be salt and light. So yes, Christians are going to disagree on maybe that trajectory, but we shouldn't disagree on what it means to be salt and light in the world. So I'm really just trying to get it back to that foundational level. Well, I think you should have titled your book, Mere Public Influencer. What do you say? I'm kidding.

I would have sold three copies. Not remotely as catchy as When Culture Hates You, which is your marketing background coming in. You've always done that well. So you did use an illustration that I just, I want to focus on for a minute. You said, like there's things in culture of like justice. There's a sense of justice.

And that's because we live in God's world and we're made in God's image. And that's something we want to draw out from people. That illustration you used mirrors one of my favorite examples of like a beach ball, that you push a beach ball underwater and what happens? It wants to pop back up. It takes force and suppression against the laws of gravity

and nature to keep it down. And in many ways, that's what our culture does. But the truth about the differences between men and women, the truth about love being sacrificed, the truth about the need for justice are biblical ideas and they pop up. So while culture can and does hate many ideas that Christians hold,

we see these truths popping up and should draw them out. I totally agree with that approach. Now you said your book is about public influence. So let's shift to that because that's really kind of the heart of your book. You describe Christianity as a public faith. Tell me what you mean by that and why you think or if you think Christians should care about politics in light of that being kind of the intersection of where public ideas are played out.

Yeah, so what I mean by it being a public faith is that it's not something where our faith ends with a private profession of belief in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. And some people treat it that way. The people think that, you know, it's about what I believe, both believers and non-believers treat it like this, that it's about what I believe, I'm just gonna have my beliefs,

you have your beliefs, and we're all going to be fine. Well, that is not what Christianity is. I mean, when we look at what Jesus taught, Jesus said to go and make disciples of all nations, right? Even the process of making disciples means that you're carrying your faith onto someone else. So it can't be just a private faith. Now, some people would say, okay, but that just means sharing your beliefs with someone else so So it can't be just a private faith. Now, some people would

say, okay, but that just means sharing your beliefs with someone else so that they can have their private faith. But we have to look at the rest of scripture. And I've mentioned a few times now, but being salt and light and what Jesus is talking about in Matthew five there, we are called to be salt to preserve a world that otherwise would be entirely under the destructive rule of Satan for as much time as God can work out his purposes. We are called to be light, to shine light and expose the darkness, to expose the evil. So to be salt and light, those are inherently public activities, right? You're not being salt and light. You're not preserving or exposing anything by sitting in your living room.

It's just a fact of what it is. And so to be a Christian doesn't just stop with saying, yes, I believe Jesus is my Lord and Savior. If we love Jesus, we're going to follow his commands. He says that himself. If we love him, then we are going to follow his commands. Well, the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love others. Part of how we love others is by caring about the quality of their lives in the context of the societies in which they live.

And that's what makes this a public faith in some way. Now, the second part of your question there, you asked about how that relates to politics. Was that what you were? Yeah, jump in. So as it relates to politics, that is inevitably going to overlap with the political process in some way. Now, Christians over time throughout history have lived under different forms of government, very different kinds of countries, nations. So it's going to look different at different times. What I'm focused on in this book is what does it look like for Christians to apply what we know from the Bible about what we're called to do and what the Bible says about

government? What does that look like given that we live in a constitutional republic today in America? And so the political process is going to overlap because we have the opportunity in the country in which we live to actually advocate for our values. And so we have a beautiful, wonderful opportunity to be light in this culture because of the governing structure under which we live. And I think the biggest opposition that people have

to even getting involved in politics in the first place is Just based on definitions. So I spent a lot of time in my chapter about when the common good is political talking about well What do we mean by political because if someone says Christian should not be involved in politics ask them What do you mean by politics? That's always the first question, right? because people bring all kinds of baggage to that definition and because people bring all kinds of baggage to that definition. And what I'm treating it as in this book, based on a very, very fundamental definition,

is politics is just the way that people living in communities make decisions on how they're living together. That's it. So, if we look at it from that perspective, there are lots of other conversations to be had around that. But when we start right there, then of course, given what the Bible teaches about being salt and light in society, and the current governing structure under which we live as Americans in this country, given those two things, then yes, of course, we as citizens of this country should want to advocate

for what's right according to God's purposes. So you said we should want to advocate for what's right. I think you said we have the responsibility. Do you think it's a sin for a Christian to not vote? Well, okay, that's a tough one. I don't address that specifically in the book, but I would say it's a mistake. I don't know that I would go so far as to say it's a sin. Those carry different weights in my mind. I think that because we have the opportunity to advocate for what's right, that to not do so because, for example, we don't have the perfect candidate that we're hoping for, we don't like exactly what's on the ballot,

I think to not do that is to not take the opportunity to vote for the better option. So I would say it's a faulty reasoning. I don't think I would call it a sin per se. Yeah, that's a hard one. I've really wrestled with that because we are called to be salt and light and we have the opportunity to do so in America uniquely. Hence, people from around the world want to come to America

more than anywhere else. So I agree that it's a mistake, but I don't know if I can quite get myself to say it's a sin to not do so. I don't have that worked out. Maybe some of you can comment what you think. Attacking doesn't help, but tell us biblically or thoughtfully what you think.

I'd love to know what people think. Is it a sin or is it a mistake to do so? There's so many issues today, Natasha, and we don't have to talk about this, like say, using preferred pronouns. Is it a mistake to do so or is it a sin? That's where some of the debate comes in, a lot of these issues,

but I'd love people to weigh in and tell us if you agree with us on that one. All right, I think maybe my favorite part of your book, because it got me thinking, was page 61 and 62 about, not that you would remember the specific pages. Oh, what did I write there? Okay, here we go.

If you do, I actually hate when somebody interviews me, they're like, this page, this story, tell me. I'm like, I wrote it a year ago. I'm doing my best. Exactly. So I'll flesh out for you. But on those two pages, you asked the question, like, why didn't Jesus more specifically address politics? Now, on one area, broadly speaking, the story that's often used is, you know, give this Caesar that which is Caesar, give to God that which is God.

And of course, the image of Caesar's on the coin. And people are like, stay out of politics. I'm like, wait a minute, God's image is everywhere, so we should actually weigh into everything from a biblical perspective. But you're kind of wrestling with the question of whether Jesus would speak in a politics or not. And let me throw one more piece in here, and then you can tell me what you think.

Is people often ask me, why didn't Jesus explicitly address same-sex marriage? Like, or transgender ideology. And in part, it wasn't the cultural pressing issue, you know, then as it is now. But he clearly sufficiently addressed it. Marriage is a sexed institution. Matthew 19, Mark 7, pornea, which was sexual morality, which we know would have included same-sex sexual behavior,

he calls sin. So he sufficiently addressed it in a way, where we know with clarity what Jesus would have held and believed about same-sex marriage? So got me thinking why didn't he talk more about politics and because he didn't what can we infer today about? Whether or not he would have talked about it Flesh this out for me. I want to know what you think Well, this is a really common reason that Christians give

for not getting involved in politics, either thinking that it's unimportant or it's undesirable in some way for Christians to be involved in politics. But as you're pointing out, there are many, many subjects that Jesus did not explicitly speak to, but that we can infer very well from other parts of the Bible.

So Jesus didn't explicitly speak to home invasion robbery, for example, but we don't say, well, that subject is not important or doesn't matter. Jesus wouldn't care about it, right? We can infer principles about the value of human life, about not stealing. I mean, we get this from other parts of the Bible.

So this wasn't the most pressing issue at the time because Jesus' followers had very, very little opportunity to actually influence the Roman Empire at the time. So his most important mission was to come and to give his life as a ransom for many. We know that, we know that from his own words. So yes, that was predominantly what he was there to do. He did not explicitly give us instructions

on every single thing, that's for sure. Now we can get into a little bit of the history of Christianity after that, but I just want to point out that when we're looking to other parts of the Bible, not just Jesus's explicit words to infer things, we have some very interesting instructions in Romans 13 verses 1 through 7 where Paul is writing about government. This is the longest passage that's probably the most explicit about the purpose of government. And when you look at that, there are really three key points that we can pull out. Number one is that there is no authority except from God.

So I think this is important because a lot of times Christians will say, Oh, I hate government so much or government is such a bad thing. A lot of things the government does is bad. It is wrong. It's stuff. We don't like as Christians However, the institution itself is put in place there under the authority of God So we have to remember that that God's purpose for government is a good purpose And then if you keep reading in those verses 1 through 7 of Romans 13 Then you get the two primary purposes after that So all authority comes from God and then the government, the civil rulers are put in place by God for good, to promote the good and then to

bear the sword as an avenger on God's behalf. So we can summarize that by saying that the governmental institution is a good thing and its purpose is to promote what's good and restrain what's evil. That's the purpose of government. Of course, the tricky part is that we need to support a government who is advocating for what's good according to God's definitions and restraining evil according to God's definitions. When we start getting the definition of what's good

and evil wrong is when we have governments go bad. So the role of government is good, but the execution is not always. So that's outside of Jesus's explicit words. As Christians who trust in the authority of the whole Bible, we can look in many other places also to understand what we should know about the nature of government. And the entire Old Testament, when we're talking about God calling out nations in terms of the

injustices that they are committing, that implies that the government's role is there to do justice in part, that they should be doing what's right and they should be restraining what's evil. So even before you get to Romans 13, you have the whole Old Testament where God is presuming that the government is in a role of doing good and restraining evil.

So we can see these things throughout the whole Bible, including Jesus's words on the Sermon on the Mount like we've been talking about with being salt and white and what does that mean? All of those things together draw this picture. But one of the things that I thought was most interesting in doing the research in terms of the Christian history for this is just to realize that the followers of Jesus had very little opportunity to influence the Roman Empire like I was saying earlier. But then beyond that for the first 300 years after Jesus, we have Christians being persecuted. It's illegal to be a Christian in the Roman Empire. You have all these things going on. So they continue to not have a need to develop a whole political theology. They do not need to figure out how can we best change or

influence the governing structure during this time? That wasn't the case. But then you get to the 300s, and now all of a sudden, not only are they not going to be persecuted, but it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire. So when that happens, when you see that change, and now it brings up all these questions, how do we do this? What does this look like? What does it look like to have some kind of theology of politics?

And that continues. I go on in the book to talk about how that continues all the way through the Reformation and what that starts to look like, the questions that come up at that time when you start separating the church from the state. And it continues to today. So Christians have always had to grapple with these ideas

for some very different reasons, just not so much in the very beginning You are wired like a Academic Natasha. I love that about you and you get interested in something I know you read dozens and dozens and dozens of books like I do if people saw my desk right now There's just piles of like books and it comes through in this book So even if people end up Different with you on some issues,

you make your case and you draw out examples and there's a lot of research behind it that I think is helpful. One more question on Jesus. So you write, here's what you write, page 62. It says, because of this priority and the brevity of his mission, Jesus didn't directly address all kinds of subjects we normally consider important for Christians to care about, given what we know

from the witness of scripture. So child abuse, infanticide, racism, domestic violence. Now, the examples that you give, it's obvious what Jesus would have held about child abuse, infanticide, racism, or domestic violence. For the most part, there's certain... there's a lot of debates about racism, what it is, and how it plays itself out, and how we fix it. I get that, but as a whole, he didn't address those, but it's pretty clear. How do we infer from that that Jesus would have addressed political issues in his mission and ministry?

Because the examples that you give from Romans 13 and 1 Peter about the public role of the government are written to local churches. So churches need to deal with those issues. That might be different from Jesus as an itinerant preacher dealing with those issues. That might be different from Jesus as an itinerant preacher dealing with those issues. So do you think Jesus would have dealt with political issues wherever he lands in his ministry in some fashion or another? Or do you think he would have been more likely to say, you know what, go to your pastor, you work out politics there, I'm preaching the gospel.

Well, given that Jesus is God, and so he's the same as the God of the Old Testament, and in the Old Testament, God was very forthright in calling out the sins of the differing nations and their governing roles. I think that Jesus absolutely would not hesitate to call these things out in our society. If we have murdered 63 million babies since 1973, I'm pretty sure that Jesus would not hesitate to say, Hey, Christians, why are you not speaking up about this? My children are being slaughtered. Why are you not advocating for righteousness? Why are you letting these tiny babies in the womb be oppressed? These are the most helpless of society, you know, and then the Bible, it's often widows and orphans

because those were the most helpless people in the society given the way that the culture was structured. Well, today, if we look at pre-born infants, these children have no one to advocate for them unless we are standing up and we are calling it out. So I think that, you know, it's easy to focus on the Gospels like what Jesus, when he was on earth, would have said or done.

But we also have, like you read in that quote, we have the fullness of scripture to look at. And I think that God, in all the examples that we see, especially in the Old Testament, we see nations being called out all the time. I mean, Daniel, when he was an official in King Nebuchadnezzar's court, he told King Nebuchadnezzar to break off his sins

by practicing righteousness. And so we see many examples of this kind. I don't think we see John the Baptist in the New Testament rebuking Herod, not only for who he married, but also for the sins that he was committing, which we can infer probably has something to do with his rule as well. Most people believe that. So I think that there are lots of examples that we can infer probably has something to do with his rule as well. Most people believe that.

So I think that there are lots of examples that we can see throughout the Bible that if we remember that Jesus is not just Jesus for the Gospels, but Jesus is God and that carries through entire scripture. I think absolutely Jesus would be calling Christians out and would be calling out governments who are promoting true evils today. In the back of your book, you have a real helpful section. I don't know how many it is. Maybe you remember.

You take all these common objections that people have to your thesis. How many are there back here? Eight or ten maybe? And you respond to them? Well, there are five chapters in part two. So each chapter in part two tackles one of the most urgent issues that Christians should know about today. So for example, abortion, transgenderism, sexual liberation of children,

Christian nationalism, and social justice. Did I just duplicate one of those? But in each of those five chapters of part two, at the end of each of those chapters, I give five different common objections that people will hear to those, just to give people here like three or four sentences that you can use to respond.

So these are not all the ways culture hates us This is how I phrase it in the book These are not all the issues on which culture hates us these five chapter issues But they are the five issues that I think are the most urgent for Christians to understand given the resentment that we're that we're receiving today Okay, got it that that makes sense that's really helpful what I earlier is there are certain objections in the back of your book that you address specifically and I'll walk through some of those. We won't get all of them. We won't have time to walk through them. It's really helpful. It's like you anticipate here's what somebody is going to say to your thesis and ideas and you respond to it.

So these chapters that you picked, I can imagine who looks at this and says, why not immigration? Now if somebody's an immigrant or they have immigrants in their community and they're not happy with it for whatever reason, illegal immigrants, they're going to feel like this is the most pressing issue that Christians should address or the war in Israel or other issues. So the metric is not that these are not important and we shouldn't speak up on those. These are the topics you chose which culture

is most likely to say Christians are hated for leaning into biblical authority on that issue. Is that fair? Correct. Okay, got it. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and my hope is that the entire first half of the book, the part one, which is called Understanding the Hate, my hope is that that sets people up

to have a really good mere public policy, like we're talking about, a mere public influence, I should say, understanding so that that can be applied to all kinds of other issues. So there are many, many things that we need to understand how to be salt and light about, not just the five issues that I talk about in part two,

but those are urgent. They're especially generating the kinds of resentment that we see and they kind of make for case studies in those issues. But other studies, other topics like immigration, for example, those are absolutely important issues as well for lack of space in the book to not be able to address each one.

So give me like your Twitter might be impossible. Give me your thoughts. Some people say, Natasha, Christians shouldn't seek power. Jesus gave up power and seeking political influence is to gain power. That's antithetical to the gospel. What would you say?

It's funny that you picked that one out because that is absolutely the one that bothers me the most when I hear people say this. I absolutely hate when people use this objection. So if somebody listening or watching says this, okay, please hear me out on this. Let's understand what power is. So always get back to definitions.

Power is just the ability and the authority to execute a governing role. It can be used well, or it can be used poorly. There's nothing inherently bad about power. Now, I think that power has gotten a really bad rap as a concept because of the critical theory based ideas that have really infiltrated our culture where power is inherently oppressive. So you have all the social binaries, the oppressor and the oppressed groups,

and whoever's in the power, the power zone, the power box, they're gonna be the ones who are oppressive. So power is something people have in their heads as something that's just bad, but power is not inherently bad. Should Christians seek power? Well, why should Christians not seek power and anyone else should? We should seek the power to do good. We should seek power for others who will steward it Well, so going back to Romans 13 if the purpose of government for example is to do what's good Promote the good and restrain the evil then as Christians who believe Hopefully in the right standards of defining good and evil

We should be all the more excited to do what we can to put the right people in power who are going to do the most toward God's purpose of government to promote the good and restrain the evil according to God's definitions. So there's no inherent problem with Christians seeking power. Now the second part of that is that it's the theological twist when people say, well, Jesus gave up power on the cross. Unfortunately, this was a very popular line that was put forth by a very popular pastor. So it's been passed on many times. But if you just think about it logically, just because Jesus didn't achieve one type of good on the cross, our salvation by one particular type of process doesn't mean in any logical way

that we as Christians should not pursue other types of goods by other processes. So there's no logical connection there. A really good way, I think, for people to see this, and I use this in the book, I say apply things to what I call the slavery test. Start it by saying Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because and then fill in the rest of the objection. So Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because Christians shouldn't seek power. No one would agree with that today. I mean, virtually no one would say, yeah, that's true.

We really should not have worked to end slavery because we don't want power. Power is so bad. No, we want power to do good things. We want power to abolish slavery because we recognize that it's an objectively evil institution. So it fails when you start to apply some of these objections in the context of slavery. And I think it helps to open people's eyes to that. But just because Jesus didn't atone for our sins on the cross when he so called gave up power, which is a whole other issue, I don't necessarily agree with him giving up power and that, but even if you wanna say he gave up power in that, he did that to achieve a very specific kind of good,

our salvation that has no inherent relationship with how we should achieve other goods through other processes. And like we've been talking about, the rest of the Bible clearly speaks to our need to achieve other types of goods through other processes. Otherwise, why would God be calling out nations for practicing unrighteousness and needing to show mercy to the oppressed?

The Bible is not against governments, like you said, it supports it. It's against the abuse of governments that wield their power in justly. The Bible is not against authoring the church or the home but the abuse of it so the right use of power rather than the abrogation of power is a biblical view. Now that said of course power sex and money are the three arguably most alluring kind of sins so we've got to be careful and wise there but that the temptation that's there doesn't mean by its nature we should reject it. How about this one?

One of the tensions in the church today, and I don't know that I always navigate this perfectly, is between truth and between unity. How do we balance what we think is biblically true with unity with others who view differently. And some would say political division disrupts unity in the church. What's your take on that one? Well, this is a good one to submit to the slavery test that I just talked about.

So let's try it. Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because it would have disrupted unity in the church. Well, what do we think about that? Absolutely, this issue caused disrupted unity in the church. Well, what do we think about that? Absolutely, this issue caused disunity in the church. When we go back in the 1800s, I mean, you can see that entire denomination split off and were formed over this issue.

It did not promote unity, it caused division. How do we think about that today? I think most people would look at that and say, well, that was the right decision. So the churches that were advocating against slavery because it's an objective evil to treat a human being as property, they were right. And this was this was a God given right that people have to life to not be enslaved by other people. And so the churches who supported the abolition of slavery, they were on the right side of this. We don't look at that and say, man, they should have just, in the sake of unity, kept it all together

and not fought against what was clearly evil. So in the same way today, I think a lot of people will call out for unity. But what they mean by unity is something more like a polite agreement where we sweep controversial issues under the pew. And that's not what the Bible would call us to at all. And I think we see that very clearly in something like slavery.

On the other side of that, sometimes we divide over things that shouldn't be divided over, things that Christians can have different views on. You know, you brought up immigration earlier, and that's an issue that I commonly point to, because you can't get from the Bible a specific immigration policy. You can't say, this is how many people should come into the United States today.

This is how our border should work. You can't get those specific policies out. So Christians who all agree on the value of human life, that we should love our neighbor as ourself, who agree on the value of the so-called foreigner, all of those things we can all have in common and yet disagree on, should 10 people be allowed to come? Should 100,000 people be allowed to come?

What do you do when people arrive here illegally? We're gonna have some different issues. Are we gonna divide whole churches over our disagreements on the specific policy of that? No. Now, if we had some churches saying, we hate immigrants, we hate other people, we like truly xenophobic kinds of churches, that would be worth dividing over because now you're talking about the value of human life,

you're no longer treating people as image bearers of God. Is there a clear black and white definition where we can say, okay, this is the thing you divide over and this is not? I think it's hard to get to that. But I think these kinds of examples maybe suffice to show that there are things worth dividing over. And to be really clear, yes, Jesus prayed for unity in the church. Unity is so important, and we can't overlook that. We don't want to divide over trivial things. But the whole New Testament also speaks to many examples where we are to divide rightly, because the presence of error in the church is the bad thing, not necessarily dividing. When we're dividing over the right things, over false doctrine, for example, that is a good thing. So division is not inherently bad, as many people think it is. Unity is very desirable, but unity only matters when you're united around truth.

Well said. So I think the slave example really clearly makes a point. I can't imagine many people today saying we shouldn't divide over that. Obviously in the past people might have, but today it clearly shows there is an example where we should divide. The difficulty of course gets into what issues we divide over and what issues we don't divide over. So I guess two-part question. I know there's not a thin line, but what's the principle? Is the principle like is this a central doctrine and at the heart of the faith that we divide over or not? Like what would be that principle that you would lean towards? And what about other people who go, Like what would be that principle that you would lean towards? And what about other people who go, no, we should divide on an issue and we differ over

that. Should we have charity towards them? Like what does that look like in your mind? Well, I think it comes back to what we mean by divide. So we'd have to establish, you know, are we talking about we are kicking someone out of a church? Are we talking about a whole church needs to split into two different churches? Are we talking about merely being willing to speak to these issues in the church?

So the issue comes down to that I think in large part and what we're willing to do and When it comes to doctrine, I think that you know there we have very clear guys to work to what clear Doctrine would be in the New Testament around Jesus, the deity of Jesus, what he accomplished on the cross for us, those kinds of things. I mean, first and foremost, we have to be solid on our doctrine and churches should divide over that.

If you have a church that's saying, Jesus is not God, okay, we need to have two different churches because this is just a false gospel, right? But what concerns me especially for purposes of what I'm talking about in this book, is that so many churches don't even want to speak to what is clear biblical truth, because that in and of itself is considered to be divisive amongst the body. They think that in their church, people

are going to have different views. So to give you an example of this, I do something called the Unshaken Conference with Frank Turek and Alisa Childers. And we've done eight of these conferences. We have four more this year, and we address cultural issues. And we address all kinds of different topics in terms of sexuality and social justice and so on. We're gonna start talking more about abortion in the coming year.

When you present, when you go to find churches who are willing to host a conference like this, and they look at the schedule, and they can see that you are going to talk about these so-called divisive topics. There are many large churches, many large churches, that will say well our members have different views on those things. In other words, they don't want to host a conference like that because they don't want to talk about something like a biblical view of gender and sexuality

because people in their congregation have different views. To me, that's a problem. They don't want to divide people in terms of some people getting in disagreements in their church because there are different views on it. I think that we have to take a step back and say, but look, there's, on some of these things, there is a biblical view. And I will defend that in terms of you know being pro-life for example

there is one view of the sanctity of life and When it comes to gender there is one view that comes back to the Bible and gender that I believe is biblically accurate There's one view of sexuality. That's not to say other people don't have other views But there's one view that's consistent with biblical truth and the historic Christian faith. If churches are too afraid that people are going to have some disagreements within their church, if they bring in a conference, or if they speak to these issues and say,

hey, here's what the Bible says, then I think they're being overly afraid of being quote unquote divisive. So on these particular issues, I think that there are some that are really core and central in terms of how you work them out as an outflowing of what the Bible teaches. Those would be the issues that I talk about in the book. There are a lot of other issues, like I said, immigration, where you get into these fuzzier areas. That's something I think Christians should discuss.

I think that there should be more discussions in churches about them, but it's not something worth dividing a whole church over and saying, well, you guys need to go be your own church body. So lots of different issues kind of going in there. I don't know if that answers your question, but... Yeah, that's helpful. So I don't get invited to the churches that are worried about dividing over abortion or LGBTQ issues. I've spoken on those issues a lot. In fact, sometimes take criticism for speaking on those issues too much. And I sometimes say once Christians stop saying

that God is pro-choice, I recently did a review on this on a Christian arguing that you can be, you should be pro-choice because of your Christian faith. I was like, this is egregious and just heresy. And once people stop saying the Bible is fine with same-sex relationships, I'll stop talking about it. But there's not a lot of people doing it, I think, with clarity and I think with kindness.

So I don't get invited to those churches. I'm sure there's plenty that are out there. So there's one concern people not being willing to speak into this. But then you go maybe to the right where there's some people that are just dividing over everything. Unnecessarily so. Do both those concern you? Is that just a separate book? Which one do you see as more concerning today? Well, I think it just depends on the segment of the church that you're talking about.

Absolutely people want to divide over small things. And you know, and I see a lot of the unkindness like you're talking about, especially when you observe conversations going on, like you're talking about, especially when you observe conversations going on online and you're just thinking, I agree with you in your position, but you're saying this the wrong way. This is really just harming people. So yes, absolutely, we can divide in whatever sense

that might be over really wrong things. So yes, I definitely think that that's happening too. It's not my focus for this book. I could probably write another book on that topic too, but this is more about, like I said, the things that we should divide over and what that looks like in the public square. But yes, we can err on both sides for sure.

Fair enough, that would be an interesting book to write in some ways. Things we shouldn't divide over. An internal Christian take on this and people would be so interesting book to write in some ways. Things we shouldn't divide over. An internal Christian take on this. And people would be so divided over the book itself that people would lose their minds. Okay. Exactly. So really just two last questions for you if I can.

So you've laid out a certain, an approach to political engagement from the scriptures. In kind of the broad historic Christian faith, there's a range of different views that Christians might take on political engagement. And I mean to take one maybe extreme example, it would be like the Amish or the Mennonites that are much more disengaged from culture,

don't vote. And yet as far as I understand it, in many cases would hold, you know, kind of core orthodox Christian beliefs. So within the fold of historic Christianity, but a completely different political engagement. I've been speaking at a Friends Church recently and traditionally are, at least historically, kind of as I understand it, if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me on this, but are not in favor of like military engagement and are pacifists. At least there's some other denominations that are.

Do you look at this and go, you know what, within creedal Christianity, as long as we have these core issues in play, maybe life, marriage, Trinity, etc., is it a strength that within the history of the church, there's a range of different views? Or is it kind of a weakness, and we kind of need to get in line with engaging culture in the way that you lay it out? Does that question make sense? Yeah, I think that when you have varied views,

in this case, I think that it's a necessity, out of necessity that you have these varied views because people are going to dialogue over the course of history about how best to do it. in this case, I think that it's a necessity, out of necessity that you have these varied views because people are going to dialogue over the course of history about how best to apply what we do know in the Bible and then apply that to the public arena. So like I talked about earlier,

we have certain basic things that we learned from the Bible about the purpose of government and how God has engaged with nations over time. So we have these, but you can't get anywhere near a complete robust theology of political engagement just from what the Bible teaches. It's the fact, like for many things that we have, right? You have to take what the Bible teaches, you have to know that really well, and then once you go from there, then you have to have the conversations about, okay, well how does this apply to our given point in time?

It's a time and place kind of conversation. There's no way the Bible could have addressed every single time and place throughout history of how things are going to apply, right? And so, like I was saying earlier, those first 300 years, they had no need to come up with a political theology. They were nowhere near influencing the government.

And then all of a sudden, wait a second, now we're the legal religion for the empire here. Now what happens? Now we have a lot of questions. Well, we have to have conversations around how that applies because there's no way to just take what the Bible has already taught and say, well, we're just going to do this because you have to take what the Bible teaches and then you have to apply it. And that's going to take conversation and people are going to come from you have to apply it, and that's gonna take conversation. And people are gonna come from different viewpoints,

and it doesn't mean that every viewpoint is right. I'm not saying that we have this relativism about, you know, our standpoint from which we're speaking, but you're gonna have to have a lot of conversations to best understand how can we apply this today. And sometimes there are multiple good ways to apply things, right? An example I give in the book is when you talk about

Romans 13, you say the government is there to promote the good. Well apply things, right? An example I give in the book is when you talk about Romans 13, you say the government is there to promote the good. Well, yes, it absolutely is, but there are competing goods, right? Should the government provide health care for all? That sounds like a good, right? Should the government provide public education? That is a good, but there is a scarcity of resources. You can't have every good you might theoretically want.

And so people are going to inevitably disagree over the priorities of various goods So there will always be a need for that discussion So I would say it's not inherently good or bad but rather a necessity and out of that necessity We come to some of these views One last question for you, but your book again when culture hates you great endorsements great Coco Jim Daley John Stone Stone Street, and others. You got some really significant names on here,

friends of mine, friends of yours. But here's a question I actually wish more people asked me in an interview. How did researching and writing this book personally affect or shape or change you? That is a good question. Um, I actually speak a little to this in the epilogue to the book, because I said that it left me with a really strong feeling of darkness by the end.

Actually, it was very challenging to me, not so much the first part of the book. So the first half of the book was like everything. I was just dying to get out all the stuff about the, you know, how do we define the common good? And what about when the common good is political? And what about all these common objections to political engagement? All those things, especially given off the season we just came from, were things I was dying to say and get onto paper. So hammer that out.

But then I didn't want this to just be a book about biblical positions on these topics. There are lots of books that address things like abortion and sexuality, for example. I didn't want it to just be another one of those books. I wanted to be very specifically from the perspective of helping people understand why does culture not just disagree with us on these, but actually hate us, resent us for the view that we take on these issues. So in order to do that, I had to really immerse myself in content that was produced by the culture and not just from the bird's

eye perspective of, oh, I'm going to follow these people on social media because I have done that for a long time, but to really get inside the heads of people who truly hated Christianity and hated our views on these things. And as I did that over time, I really felt the weight of the world more than I ever had because I realized how much in rebellion to the creator so many people are. At the end of the day, it's not so much the culture hates us,

but they hate God as the authority. And we have to remember that, that we are the messengers, but ultimately it's God that they hate. They are in rebellion against the Creator because they're under the rule of Satan. They are of the world, just like the Bible says. When you're of the world, you're going to hate those who shine a light in the darkness. Especially that we didn't get a chance to talk about it, but especially the final chapter of the book is something that Christians aren't talking about.

In the final chapter of the book, I talk about how we're called hateful bigots, which lots of people hear about and understand that's associated with LGBT kinds of issues. I didn't wanna write about LGBTQ issues broadly. Instead, I focused on a subset, a subset of activists within that community who are actually advocating for the sexual liberation of children. Not just the acceptance of certain ideas about sexuality,

but the actual liberation to free kids from the constraints that they believe are just social constructs in society about the age limit of engaging in sexual pleasure. I can't explain anything more dark than the content that I immersed myself in to understand what was going on with that. And so how the book affected me, by the end, I realized all the foundational pieces that I really laid down in the first part, how important they actually are to Christians

to understand so that we don't for wrong reasons, logically, theologically, biblically, from a poor understanding of history, from a poor understanding of how our government works, how important is that we get on the right page with those things so that we can advocate against the true evil that is out there in our society. So those foundational pieces are so important for people to understand and to just know that the weight of the world, it can feel like that because it can feel so dark. And I felt like that coming out of writing this book. But at the same time, when you take a step back, you realize what an urgent and incredible opportunity that we have to be light in the darkness. We we are needed in the culture. Yeah, the culture hates you, but we're still called to be out there for our love of God and our love of others.

There's a timeless element to this book in a sense of how we engage the political arena rooted in scripture, but it's also really timely in terms of some of the issues that you mentioned that you unpack in the book. I would imagine some of this, just the darkness and how disturbing it is to dive into this, Some of the timeless work you've done on the resurrection of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, the deity of Christ, is what grounds us in our cultural moment, reminds us we are on the right side of history. And I was reading this morning, in the morning I read with my son,

who's 12, the Gospel John, and we were reading in, I think it was chapter 13, where he's 12, the Gospel John, we're reading in, I think it was chapter 13, where he's like, I am the light of the world, and the darkness has not overcome. Like, I read that with my son this morning, we were just talking about how, you know, our world is gone astray, and Jesus was and still is the light, and there's hope.

We've got to hold on to that. Natasha thoroughly enjoyed your book. I think, you know, if somebody was going to say like an Apologx 101, I'd be like, read Case for Christ or Mere Christianity, like you said, or More Than a Carpenter. But if I was going to say political engagement, this is going to be one of my top books for Christians to read. Now, I'll just throw this out there for you.

If it ever crosses your mind like someone who differs with you on these views, that is a fair person that you would engage, and are like, hey, let's go on Sean's channel and flesh this out a little bit. I think people learn from kind of a give and take, and I like to host those conversations. If someone ever comes to your mind that is a fair, respectful, thoughtful critic, and that interests you, let's talk about having that conversation. that is a fair, respectful, thoughtful critic

and that interests you. Let's talk about having that conversation. But nonetheless, When Culture Hates You is a fantastic book. Really, really well written. Thank you. Always appreciate you coming back on. Now before, folks, you click away and make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot of issues coming up

on some thorny cultural issues, timeless issues like near-death experiences, timely issues like a debate coming up soon on the Bible and LGBTQ relationships, myself and somebody else, a progressive Christian. So make sure you hit subscribe, track what we're doing. If you thought about studying apologetics, we would love to have you at Talbot School of Theology, Biola.

Fully distant or you can take some classes online. Information is below. Natasha, always fun. We'll do it again soon. Thanks for coming on. Thanks so much for having me.