Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Natasha Crain: ‘When Culture Hates You’ & How Believers Must Persevere
Transcript
- 0:00Hi friends, author, podcaster, and apologist Natasha Crane is with us today.
- 0:06You're in for a treat because she's got a brand new book out called When Culture Hates You.
- 0:11That's next on World View Matters.
- 0:16Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues,
- 0:21discerning current events, defending biblical Christianity.
- 0:26No topic, off limits.
- 0:29And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
- 0:33Today's guest, Natasha Crane, says,
- 0:36being a Christian does not end with a private profession of faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior.
- 0:43It involves publicly advocating for truth and exposing darkness even when culture hates you for it.
- 0:51And in her brand new book, When Culture Hates You,
- 0:54it's a wake-up call to Bible-believing Christians.
- 0:57More importantly, it's a reminder that the definition of the common good should come from God.
- 1:02And that Christians must advocate for righteousness in society accordingly.
- 1:08Natasha Crane also reminds us that our calling will inevitably often overlap with the political process.
- 1:15Thank you.
- 1:17And we shouldn't hesitate to use our influence in the political realm.
- 1:22And I know that's one of the big reasons we love having her on.
- 1:25Natasha Crane, good to see you. Welcome.
- 1:28Thank you so much. Great to see you too.
- 1:30Well, congrats on the brand new book.
- 1:32Number one new release on Amazon and social issues and Christianity.
- 1:36It's doing very, very well.
- 1:37And this is like really brand new.
- 1:39It just came out this month.
- 1:41And you've got Frank Turic that did the foreword.
- 1:44He's been a guest on the program.
- 1:46So thanks for putting this great book out there with a provocative title.
- 1:50What made you decide to do it at this time?
- 1:52Because you could have written about this 10 years ago.
- 1:55You could have waited a little while.
- 1:57So tell us what made you decide to jump into this important topic
- 2:00when cultures hate you as Christians.
- 2:03Yeah, well, I think really the catalyst for this was over the last couple of years
- 2:07as I was getting out and speaking with a lot of Christians at conferences where I'm speaking
- 2:11or speaking engagements or even just online engaging with people.
- 2:14I started hearing from people over and over again that they were being cut off
- 2:19by their friends.
- 2:20They're being cut off by family members.
- 2:22In some cases, they're losing jobs.
- 2:24And there was a sense of dismay about, you know, it's not just that Christians
- 2:28are considered to be wrong about certain things today.
- 2:31There's the sense that we're actually evil.
- 2:33That we're harmful. That we're toxic.
- 2:35That we're oppressors in some sense that we're just these morally terrible people
- 2:40not just intellectually wrong in some way about our beliefs.
- 2:43And so people were experiencing this, like I said, in very personal ways.
- 2:47And I was hearing these stories over and over again.
- 2:50And it was really just tragic.
- 2:52And so that really got me thinking, what do you do when the culture hates you?
- 2:56When the culture has gotten to a point where there are so many people
- 2:59who just resent you and disdain you for what you believe?
- 3:03And so I wanted to help Christians dig into this a bit more and understand
- 3:07why does the culture hate us?
- 3:10Because when you understand the why behind it, then you are better equipped
- 3:14to deal with some of the challenges that we're seeing.
- 3:17You're better able to engage and not just engage, but to be a light in the midst of the hostility.
- 3:22So the book really brings together those two themes of understanding why the culture hates you
- 3:27and how to be a light, even though the culture hates you.
- 3:31It's interesting Natasha in a country like America
- 3:34with founding documents like ours.
- 3:37And with founding fathers, the way we were established as a Christian nation
- 3:42with so much biblical influence of the one true God.
- 3:46And it's interesting that we've arrived at this point.
- 3:49Do you cover that in your book as well as far as how we got here?
- 3:53Well, I do a little bit on different issues in terms of tracing it back over the last century,
- 3:59especially with some of the things on the sexual revolution.
- 4:03But don't necessarily take it all the way back to the founding.
- 4:07Although I talk a lot about what does it mean to live in a constitutional republic?
- 4:11You know, the way that those founding fathers set up this country,
- 4:14what does it look like today for Christians living in this kind of government structure?
- 4:20So yes, it is really interesting to see how far we've come.
- 4:23And a huge part of where we got to today is because we are seeing a decline
- 4:29in the percentage of people who have a biblical worldview in America.
- 4:32As you well know, over the last century, especially the numbers have just gone lower and lower.
- 4:39And as that happens, you're getting more and more away from the kind of country that we had in the beginning,
- 4:46where people at least intellectually ascended to more of the ideas,
- 4:50the doctrinal tenets of Christianity.
- 4:52I think over the course of 1900s, personally, that it looked more like a nominal faith for a lot of Christians.
- 4:57But it still wasn't where culture overwhelmingly was opposed to biblical values.
- 5:02So even if they weren't holding to the core tenets,
- 5:05doctrinal Christianity, they were still kind of going along with the values.
- 5:09Today, that hangover of the values is gone.
- 5:13And so when we have so many fewer people today who are identifying as biblical Christians
- 5:18and living according to a biblical worldview, we're going to see a very different America than the one that we were founded as.
- 5:25Well, with Barnum and all the other research out there over the last many, many years,
- 5:30it's just really established the fact that biblical illiteracy is at an all-time high.
- 5:35It's off the charts. I mean, in the church, there are believers.
- 5:39Christians are professing believers, I guess we should use the word professing sometimes.
- 5:43They don't have a biblical worldview, but they might say we're Christians or they're Christians.
- 5:47I do like the way you broke it down in your book.
- 5:50You have two major parts, number one, part one, understanding the hate,
- 5:54and part two, responding to and persevering through today's most prominent charges.
- 6:00And I love the way you tackled some of those, but I want to share a quote or two.
- 6:05One of them, very simple. It says, in your book, being hated is exactly what Jesus told us to expect
- 6:11if we're going to follow his commands.
- 6:14Silence in exchange for cultural respect is a deal with the devil.
- 6:22There's echoes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, silence in the face of evil is itself evil.
- 6:28He's, of course, a resisted Hitler and was about a one-third of the German pastors over there.
- 6:33He was one of them. That's a very important sentence right there in Atasha.
- 6:40Because a lot of people have chosen silence because they don't want to offend.
- 6:44But as you know, there's nothing in the Bible about that, about we should be quiet.
- 6:49We don't want to ruffle any feathers.
- 6:51And so how did we get so soft in the church?
- 6:54Well, that's a huge question.
- 6:56I mean, we can break that down in a lot of ways.
- 6:58But I would say that one of the biggest misconceptions that we're seeing today in the church is that
- 7:04if you're a Christian, you should be nice in some kind.
- 7:07And by nice people just mean kind of a meek and not upsetting to people.
- 7:12And so they actually think that, you know, if I speak up and I say something and someone is upset with me,
- 7:17if someone's offended by what I say, then I must have done something wrong.
- 7:21That's what Christians tend to believe.
- 7:23And that is really tragic because the gospel's very offensive.
- 7:27At the end of the day, Jesus said, he told us this,
- 7:30if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
- 7:35If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.
- 7:39But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world there for the world hates you.
- 7:44This is so important for us to understand and to process.
- 7:47I think as Christians, because Jesus is basically saying there are two groups of people in the world.
- 7:52If you're of the world, you are under the governing rule of Satan.
- 7:55Scripture makes this very clear.
- 7:57You're either under the governing rule of Satan or you are a child of God.
- 8:01It is you're a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness.
- 8:04And if you're a slave to righteousness, you are going to be shining light on the works of darkness.
- 8:09That's part of what we are called to do as salt and light.
- 8:12And just if you can think of it from the perspective of those who are slaves to sin,
- 8:16they're going to hate those who come along and shine a light on those evil works.
- 8:20Of course they are.
- 8:21But ultimately, it's not Christians that they hate. It's God.
- 8:24It's God that they hate because he's the authority and they're not.
- 8:27And ultimately, people want to go our own way.
- 8:29We know this over and over again from Scripture that everyone wants to go their own way
- 8:33by our very human nature.
- 8:35So when you tell people the gospel and you share with them that hey, you're not actually the authority,
- 8:39that's very offensive.
- 8:41So yes, we have to get away from this idea that if people are happy with us,
- 8:46if they like us, that somehow that means we're doing things right.
- 8:49It's actually the opposite.
- 8:50There would be nothing to hate if we're not saying anything different than what the culture is saying.
- 8:55So at the heart of this book, you talk about the common good a lot.
- 8:59And we hear that, I think, misinterpreted that idea of the common good.
- 9:03And I also want to get to Christian nationalism.
- 9:05But let's start with the common good.
- 9:07How Christians should persevere in advocating for the common good,
- 9:11even when they're hated for it.
- 9:13So explain to us what you mean and what is the right way to understand common good, please.
- 9:20Yeah, this is a really important question because this word has been used in so many different ways.
- 9:24In fact, if there's a website that's called vote common good dot, I think it's a dot com maybe or a dot org.
- 9:30And if you go to it, you'll see that everything they need by the common good is a very progressive position.
- 9:35So people can use this term in a lot of different ways and it has been used in different ways over history.
- 9:40And so I make clear in the book that there it is.
- 9:44I make clear in the book that.
- 9:48That's better.
- 9:49No, I love it.
- 9:50I mean, it's important for people to see that there are different, there are different ideas of the common good.
- 9:54But my point and purpose in the chapter in which I talk about this and lay the foundations for the book is to say that yes,
- 9:59there are going to be all kinds of different ideas of the quote unquote common good.
- 10:03But as Christians, we have to be very clear on the fact that God defines the good.
- 10:08When we're talking about the common good, we're just talking about what is good for the flourishing, the healthy flourishing of society,
- 10:14the lives that we live in common.
- 10:16So in the context of this book, we're talking about the United States as a country, but you could talk about the common good and smart communities as well.
- 10:22But we're talking about good.
- 10:24That is a word that is always going to have a moral connotation to it is inherently tied to a person's worldview.
- 10:31And so anyone can define good in any way.
- 10:34The question is, what's the right way?
- 10:35Is there an objective standard for defining good?
- 10:38And as Christians who believe that the Bible is God's authoritative, inspired work, we need to be clear that this is where we get our understanding of good.
- 10:45It's not what I feel is good or what I think is good or what society feels or thinks is good.
- 10:51If there is a God who is a creator and sustainer of the universe who has given us a book that tells us what is good,
- 10:58clearly that is going to be the definition of good that we need to look to as Christians and not any other definition.
- 11:04Big amen. We've got to define the terms, biblical authority, right?
- 11:09By the way, friends, you can get the book at NatashaCrain.com and also Amazon.com.
- 11:15Make sure to check out that.
- 11:17I'm glad you mentioned standards because there's a quote in your book, Natasha, that says if you use any standards other than God's to define what's just or unjust,
- 11:28you're going to get justice wrong.
- 11:31And now we hear social justice, which the social justice gospel is an apostasy.
- 11:37We hear reproductive justice to defend abortion.
- 11:41We hear all these different ideas that you put a word in front of justice and you don't have justice anymore.
- 11:45Could you speak to that for a moment?
- 11:48Yeah, I think it's important when you back to definitions.
- 11:50So what is justice?
- 11:51Justice is making right that which is wrong.
- 11:54Well, if you're going to talk about right and wrong, that requires some kind of standard for that.
- 11:59So for Christians, it should be about making right that which is wrong, given what God says is the objective standard for determining what is right and wrong.
- 12:08So that would be a biblical view of justice.
- 12:11But just from that definition alone, we should be able to see that justice as a concept depends on what standard you use for determining right and wrong.
- 12:18So if you use any standard other than God's standard, you're going to often get justice wrong.
- 12:23And I say often because in some cases, culture will happen to align with what God would say.
- 12:28So overwhelmingly, it's still a moral good, for example, to serve people in a soup kitchen as a matter of justice.
- 12:34And I give that example in the book, no one's going to hate you for doing that.
- 12:37But a lot of times today, what you see is that culture is using their own definition, their own standard for determining right and wrong.
- 12:44And because they're not using God's standards, they're going to end up with a very bad idea of justice.
- 12:49Even if in their own minds, you know, this is their well meaning, even if they're well intentioned, you can think that you're fighting for justice and actually advocating for great injustices because you started with the wrong standard.
- 13:00And that's how we get atrocious concepts like reproductive justice, which means the right to take an unborn human's life.
- 13:08So can we get back just for a moment before we take a brief pause and talk about this idea that Christians are afraid to talk about these things truth, the exclusivity of the gospels, Jesus, repentance, justice, God's judgment.
- 13:24And these things are almost taboo, unfortunately, in the church.
- 13:29So why should Christians not be afraid to mix faith and politics?
- 13:34And what would you say to believers who think, and I've heard this from pastors, Natasha, oh, I'm just focusing on the gospel.
- 13:43I just want to emphasize the gospel. Everything else will take care of itself. No, it won't.
- 13:48Your people need to be equipped and more, but I want to hear your thoughts on that.
- 13:53Yeah, we've seen and heard a lot of atrocious views. I just use the word atrocious again.
- 13:58There's a lot, there are a lot of atrocities today, right? But we have heard a lot of really horrible ideas about politics over the last year in the election cycle.
- 14:06And so I try to address a lot of those in the book. But again, let's bring it back to a definition.
- 14:10What does it mean? What to engage in the political? What is politics? Politics just means the way that people living in societies make decisions about how they're going to live together.
- 14:20That's it. At the end of the day, a lot of people bring a lot of different baggage into it. But let's just get back to basics and say politics is about making those decisions.
- 14:28So in a constitutional republic, should Christians have the right to bring their views to bear in the public square and advocate for their own views on how people should live together?
- 14:39Of course, every citizen has that right. Every citizen has that opportunity. If you're a Mormon, you have the right to bring your views to bear.
- 14:46Everyone has the right. So now we could also take that further and say, well, as Christians, though, maybe we have the right given where we live, but maybe scripture says we shouldn't.
- 14:56And that's not what we see at all. So when we go back to scripture, what we can look at is that God cares about the moral, healthy, righteous functioning of society.
- 15:04And we see that throughout the Bible. I mean, consider the Old Testament, for example, and how often God is calling out the nations for not practicing righteousness.
- 15:12And that's not just Israel. That's also the pagan nations around. So we see over and over again, those examples. And then, of course, we see in the New Testament in Romans 13, some very direct instruction on the fact that civil rulers are put in place to promote what's good and restrain what is evil.
- 15:30As Christians who live in a Constitutional Republic, where we have the opportunity to influence our governing structure to ward that end to ward God's purposes, according to God's definition, should we do that?
- 15:40Of course, it should be a no-brainer. It really should, but a lot of churches really haven't discipled their people in thinking well about politics. And so it's my hope that this book would be one step toward helping that.
- 15:52Praise God. Friends, again, you can go to NatashaCrane.com.
- 15:56The book when culture hates you is available on Amazon. Number one bestseller already will be right back on World View Matters.
- 16:03Today's show is brought to you by Harbinger's Daily. World News Biblically Understood. Stay informed at Harbinger's Daily.com.
- 16:13Family in Christ. Praise God. Thanks to you. And, of course, thanks to the Lord. Our podcast episodes have been surging. And I've been told we've been averaging a quarter of a million views, listens and downloads per podcast across our various platforms.
- 16:38And that's just, to me, that's astounding. But, praise God. Thanks to you. And thanks to some strategies behind the scenes that they've been trying. And it's not me. And it's all God. And thank you for sharing.
- 16:49So, back to NatashaCrane. By the way, we've got a new YouTube channel. Check that out. World View Matters. David Fiorazo on YouTube. And thanks for sharing our rumble.
- 16:58So, Natasha, let's talk about one of those ideologies now. You use the words destructive. Let me, let me back up a little bit. Promoting systemic changes to accommodate the destructive falsehoods of transgender ideology.
- 17:15I like the way you just flat out. It's a destructive falsehood. So, a quote from the book, non-Christian views of reality are not only wrong, but are often destructive when taken to their natural conclusion in the political domain.
- 17:32So, obviously, Natasha, transgender ideology would be a huge in your face example of that that I never saw coming. Did you see this coming and how did we get here?
- 17:44Well, I didn't necessarily see it coming. The transgender ideology in particular kind of just blossomed. It's seemingly all of a sudden. But in the book, I actually trace it back quite a ways that this has been something that's in the making for quite a while.
- 17:58And of course, you have an entire century of a sexual revolution that leads up to this. So, there are always deeper roots to the things that suddenly come about in our minds, but they're really not so sudden.
- 18:07And I think that this idea that you bring up from the book is one of the most important ones that I hope to communicate to people about the fact that, you know, when we're talking about politics and we're talking about advocating for the common good, it's not because we just want to be right about stuff.
- 18:23It's not because we're just saying, hey, we're Christians and we have the right answers. And so we want to be out there warring with you in some way. I hate the term culture war.
- 18:31Because what it really is, is that out of our love for God and our love for others, we want to advocate for the good of people. That's what it's really about.
- 18:39And when you understand that these wrong ideologies actually hurt people and that it's not just, you know, I'm right and you're wrong about something, but they are actually destructive to people when they're taking to their logical conclusions, then we should be all the more motivated as Christians to stand up for right.
- 18:55What's right, even when it's not people want what people want for themselves. So I think that, you know, in the case of transgender ideology, this is especially something where people who are adhering to that gender ideology, they're thinking that you're actually harming them and that you're hurting them when you prevent children, for example, from taking puberty blockers.
- 19:15They say that this is an attack on their identity and that you're actually trying to do something that's horrible. But from a Christian perspective, sometimes we have to advocate for what's right, even when it's not what people want for themselves.
- 19:28That's a hard thing to do because they are going to hate you for it. But if we know that there is a design for gender that if God made people in a certain way, then we know that it can never be helpful to do something to a person's body to change that design.
- 19:43You can't change the design. You can attempt you, but you're not going to be successful and it's only going to harm people. So we have to get comfortable with knowing that people don't always want what's best for themselves because they don't know what's God's best.
- 19:56I'm glad you mentioned God's design because that's one of the main reasons that this whole thing got so out of whack and there's this spirit of delusion that's rampant in our country and around the world.
- 20:06You remove God as creator, you remove male and female, and then everything that comes along with that marriage, family, civil government, the way a healthy society thrives, and anything goes. And that's where rat and this anything goes culture, ABC culture, right, anything but Christ.
- 20:22So you write about an entire chapter actually on Christian nationalism. I wanted to ask you about this. Member Pastor Jack Hibbs did a prayer in front of Congress, to open Congress last year. He used the J word Jesus. He used the F word father.
- 20:38He prayed it according to the biblical worldview and he was called a Christian nationalist and it was offensive and I'm thinking, that's how the country started out. But anyway, people who are concerned Natasha about Christian nationalism often claim that it's a dangerous threat to democracy. How do you respond to that?
- 21:00Well, anyone's anytime someone says that the first thing you have to ask is, well, what do you mean by Christian nationalism? Because there's really not a standard definition that you can point to. It's just it just kind of erupted as this term and everyone's using it in a different way. So it's not even something to go back and say, now, a hundred years ago, this is what it meant. Let's stick with that. It's not even like that. So we just always have to say, okay, what do we mean by Christian nationalism?
- 21:24So what I talk about in the book is that because there's no standard term, what I did was I went back and I just manually surveyed hundreds of pieces of content from the mainstream media, written content, video content, everything that I could find. And I surveyed the content that was talking about this dangerous Christian nationalism to see what are the examples that they give?
- 21:43Can we back into what they're clearly thinking Christian nationalism is based on what they're talking about since they're not stopping to define it? And what I found is that in the vast majority of cases, when you look at the examples they're given, when you have these headlines like a dangerous pervasive Christian nationalism, is that there are Christians who are advocating for unpopular positions, according to a biblical worldview.
- 22:09That's basically what it is. It has come to be a pejorative term when you're a Christian who is advocating for a quote unquote conservative position, that's not popular.
- 22:21So in other words, if you look at the examples that they'll give in these articles where they're warning people about this dangerous threat of Christians imposing their values on others, you'll see that they're saying that, you know, we are promoting pro-life policies that we are promoting anti-trans legislation, which of course, from a Christian perspective, is pro the good of trans people and pro the good of everyone else, but they see it as anti-trans.
- 22:45So in things related to parental notifications and schools related to children who are trying to socially transition, you see all these examples, and then you realize, wait a second, their idea of Christian nationalism is really just that Christians are bringing their values into the public square.
- 23:01And I think that that is an imposition of values that is in some way, theocratic or anti-democratic. So again, we have to understand our terms.
- 23:10Theocracy is a form of government where you officially recognize some kind of deity. I don't see any examples in the media that I surveyed of the media actually pointing to people saying, hey, we need to recognize Christianity as the official religion of the state.
- 23:27I see no examples of that, but that would be a theocracy. They're just labeling it theocratic if you're bringing a Christian so-called religious worldview into the public square.
- 23:38But that brings me to the next point, which is that that's not anti-democratic either. To be anti-democratic would be that you're trying to get your views in somehow in a way that's not consistent with the current form of government.
- 23:49Those are not the examples they're giving either. So by their own examples, this is not actually accurate in terms of how they're labeling this so-called Christian nationalism.
- 23:59In every matter of public policy, one group is going to be quote unquote imposing their views on another group. That's just the way that policy works.
- 24:07And so it's not anti-democratic. It's not theocratic. It is not some kind of illegal or unjust imposition of values. Christians have every right to bring their worldview to bear in the public square just as much as anyone else.
- 24:21Amen. And we've so lost the meaning and the application of being salt and light influencing our nation and our community, our culture for righteousness.
- 24:31This went by way too fast. Natasha, last question. You ended your book by saying that when you finished writing, you felt the weight of evil in the world more than ever.
- 24:42Talk to us about that. I know what research you have to get into the muck and when you go to your research and sometimes it's just, it's not fun, but it's necessary. Share that experience at the end of your book.
- 24:56Well, I didn't want this to just be another book that talks about the biblical position on various issues. And I do, of course, share what the biblical position is on the issues that I cover, but I really wanted it to reflect the title when culture hates you.
- 25:11I wanted to help Christians understand why the culture does hate you. And so that we can better respond to that, not just, well, here's my view.
- 25:21I want to help people understand the other perspective. So to that end, I immersed myself in reading the content directly from the other side over months. I was reading content that was written by people who, for example, are advocating for the sexual liberation of children who don't believe in this so-called concept of childhood innocence.
- 25:40That they believe that this is a really problematic idea that age is just a social construct. It's a fig, it's a figment of our imaginations and that children are sexual beings, just like anybody else who should be able to experience sexual pleasure.
- 25:53That's what I talk about in chapter 10 of my book, for example, when you start really immersing yourself in the perspective directly of the culture.
- 26:02What you find is that it is a culture and deep rebellion against God. I talk about this in the apple log of just saying it's so clear when you're reading it from their perspective and you're reading that these articles from pro-choice activists, for example, who have no regard for human life whatsoever in the womb.
- 26:20It's just a dark, dark place to be. But I hope that my book will help to shed light on some of these positions so that we can better understand, we can better engage and ultimately to unveil the fruits of darkness that we're seeing and expose them as Ephesians 5-11 says.
- 27:08Persevering for the common good as Christians in a hostile public square, we didn't get here overnight, but Christians have to be engaged, right?
- 27:18So we appreciate your time, NatashaCrane.com, continued good success on the book and whatever you set your hand to, good to see us, so great to have you on the podcast.
- 27:28Thanks so much, it's been great talking with you.
- 27:30Same here Natasha. Alright guys, when culture hates you, we talk about this all the time and we need to know how to respond.
- 27:37Not just to back off or never be silent, that's never the right answer. God bless you and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.