Point of View March 3, 2025 – Hour 1 : When Culture Hates You

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, Kirby Anderson. The topic today is what to do when culture hates you. We are in a situation in which cultural hostility towards Christians has intensified. So how do we really make our case in the public sphere?

[00:00:32] So often here on Point of View, we want you to know how to articulate a biblical worldview and also to know how to defend a biblical worldview. And that really will be our topic today as we talk with an individual who's been on the program with us many times before. Natasha Crane, who is a speaker, podcaster, author of five books and certainly has been working in this field.

[00:00:55] We've interviewed her in the past on some of her kids' books, talking with your kids about Jesus, about God or even keeping your kids on God's side. Last time we talked with her was about her book Faithfully Different, Regaining Biblical Clarity in a Secular Culture. As well as now this new book, When Culture Hates You, Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square.

[00:01:20] The book is out. It is forwarded by Frank Turek, and she was just recently on his program. Endorsements from a variety of people that we've had on this program, like Jack Hibbs and Greg Kokel and Erwin Lutzer and Andrew Walker and John Stonestreet and Jim Daly and Kirk Cameron, Elisa Childers, to mention just a few of the number of people that have endorsed this book. It is published by Harvest House. We have information about it.

[00:01:47] You can perhaps find it in your local bookstore, but we also have a link to her website, NatashaCrane.com. And of course, you don't even have to remember how to spell all that because it's on our website, PointofView.net. Natasha, welcome back to Point of View. Thanks so much. Great to talk with you again. It's good to see you at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention as well. And I thought we would get right into it because some have already perhaps heard the interview you did with Frank Turek.

[00:02:14] Others may be hearing some that will be coming up, some that you taped, which will be airing later. But when we talk about this, one of the ways you begin, interestingly enough, is to point out that when we look at certain religious groups, and you use, for example, Heaven's Gate, people saw that cult as delusional. Or when they look at Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons or others, they think these people are a little bit annoying.

[00:02:42] Or even when they look at, say, Amish, Mennonite, maybe they're a curiosity. But in every case, you argue, and I think accurately so, the culture doesn't hate them. But there is one group that is hated, and that is the group known as evangelical Christians. Remember a survey that came out a while back which asked professors at major universities, what is the greatest threat to America? You'd think there are all sorts of things they could have listed.

[00:03:10] But evangelical Christians were on the list. So I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Jesus said, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. But I guess that really makes the premise for your book that culture really does hate us. That's right. It's funny because sometimes people have responded to the title and said, well, hate is such a strong word. And my response to that was, well, okay, take it up with Jesus.

[00:03:34] Because like you said, you know, 2,000 years ago, Jesus was warning his disciples that the world would hate them. And so I think it is a fair assessment. The question is, well, what exactly does that mean and look like at any given point in time in a given cultural context? So, you know, you mentioned the opening of the book and how I compared this with the Amish or the Heaven's Gate cult, for example. And what I explained there is that when you look at those groups, those groups have some contrarian values against society.

[00:04:03] But they're not out there advocating to change society with those values. And so culture might have some kind of negative assessment of them, like you mentioned. But they don't hate them in the way that they hate Christians because we, if we're actually living according to what the Bible would tell us, we're actually out there advocating for righteousness in society. We should be. We should be trying to influence the world. So that's why the culture hates us, because we do hold contrarian values.

[00:04:32] But we're also advocating with those values to change society. And that, I think, is really important. One of the booklets we've made available on postmodernism is postmodernism seems very tolerant because you have your views and I have my views. But as soon as you assert that my views are not only good for me but good for you, that's where you start being called intolerant. So that certainly is a key issue.

[00:04:55] And I might just say for our listeners, as we work our way through the book, the first five chapters help us understand the hate. The next five chapters help us to respond to and persevere through some of these very significant issues in the culture. But since the book is entitled When the Culture Hates You, I've talked about the issue of hate, and you've certainly addressed that. The other part is culture. Who or what is culture? Because that's important to understand what we're going to be talking about today, isn't it?

[00:05:25] Right. It is important to understand because that word can be used in so many different ways. If you look it up in the dictionary, you'll see some kind of formal definition about it being the dress and the customs and the language of a given group of people. But if you think about how that term is used in a more colloquial sense, that's the way that I'm using it in this book. But culture basically represents the individuals and the institutions and society that hold the values that are widely considered to be accepted and celebrated today.

[00:05:53] So if somebody says, yeah, today's culture thinks that, you immediately kind of know how that sentence could end. You can think of all kinds of things like feelings are the ultimate guide or happiness is the ultimate goal of life. You can fill in those blanks because you know that culture represents the general sphere of the time. It's what people generally think to be true and is what is acceptable to think in a lot of cases.

[00:06:13] Thank you.

[00:06:43] When others revile you. So certainly that is the case. But it brings us maybe to the next chapter, and that is the issue of common good, because our argument is that we aren't just saying this because we think we're right. We're also saying it because God said it. And more importantly, these biblical ideas lead to human flourishing, don't they? That's exactly right.

[00:07:08] And I think that this is where Christians have a big misunderstanding in a lot of cases where we think, well, there are lots of people's opinions about, you know, what's good for society. So, you know, we have our opinion, but other people have theirs too. So what are we supposed to do about that? We don't want to impose our ideas of the good on others. But that's just a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of Christianity. Christianity is an entire worldview that corresponds with reality. It's the truth of all things.

[00:07:34] And so if that's the case, yes, other people might have different opinions about what is good for society and for individuals. But if those opinions don't line up with what God has objectively said is true and what is objectively good, then those opinions are simply wrong. So as Christians, we have to get really clear on what is actually good in an objective sense so that we can advocate for true righteousness in society. Let's take a break. When we come back, let's get into that because certainly God defines what is the common good.

[00:08:04] And then certainly the common good also involves politics, which, of course, as you point out in your book, this is about more than just politics. But it certainly deals with the idea of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. So we're going to kind of get into this idea of good and common good. And then that gets us into something. And, of course, our good friend Dr. Frank Turek wrote about years ago, and that is legislating morality. Can we really begin to articulate those views? And how do we do so?

[00:08:34] Lots of very helpful ideas that are in this new book, When Culture Hates You. We'll come back and continue our conversation right after this. This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:02] Sean McDowell observes that in a culture that glamorizes sex, chases fame, and shames those who don't fall in line, it takes a rebel to be a Christian. That is why the title of his new book is A Rebel's Manifesto. His book for young Christians focuses on the challenge, the culture, relationships, sexuality, ethics, and cultural engagement. He published much of this in a previous book as ethics being bold in a whatever world. When I did a radio program with him, we talked about the fact that he needed to both update chapters and add new chapters.

[00:09:32] The section on relationships were added because of current problems with loneliness, bullying, and suicide. And a chapter on transgender ideology also needed to be added. You know, we talked about the fact that Sean McDowell will oftentimes role play as an atheist and take questions from Christian students. After he finishes, he asks them to describe how they treated their atheist guests. They often use words like rude, aggressive, and disrespectful.

[00:09:57] And then concludes that if this is how they treated a fellow Christian role playing as an atheist, perhaps they have a lot to learn about better at loving their neighbors. We also spent some time talking about the influence of smartphones and social media. For example, he lists five ways smartphones influence you. It affects, for example, how we access truth. It affects us emotionally and spiritually. It also affects our identities and relationships. This is a book that you should give to your children or grandchildren.

[00:10:25] But I would also encourage you to give a copy to your youth leader. At the end of each chapter are questions that can be used to guide a small group discussion with young people. These are issues they confront, and they need a sound biblical perspective this book provides. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net.

[00:10:53] That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Privileged to have with us today Natasha Crane as we talk about her new book, When Culture Hates You, Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Culture and in a Public Square. It is really important to understand how to be articulate and at the same time gracious.

[00:11:20] But, Natasha, I think it is important to maybe get into this issue. Why do people disagree on what's good? And part of it goes back to a phrase that Francis Schaeffer used to use. People, even well-meaning Christians, oftentimes see the world in bits and pieces. They don't see the totality of a worldview. And a worldview, you say, is a lens through which we should see everything. And as a result, sometimes we even find our fellow Christians say,

[00:11:49] Well, we really don't need to be advocating for the common good in the public square. We just need to be preaching the gospel. But you have a different viewpoint because you believe that the Christian worldview should affect every area of life. That's right. You know, when people say that we should just be preaching the gospel, I always want to ask, Well, how do you define the gospel? Because that's a very limited view of what the gospel is, right?

[00:12:15] You know, when we come to put our trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we love him by following his commands, as he said himself. And so what are those commands? Well, if we think of the two greatest commandments, to love God first and then to love others. Well, to love others necessarily has to be shaped by what it first means to love God. There's a reason for that hierarchy of commandments. So if we're going to love others, that's going to include caring about their lives in the context of the societies in which they live.

[00:12:45] So loving others doesn't just mean that we share the gospel with them. Of course we share the gospel with them. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything else. So it's kind of funny when people say, But we just need to preach the gospel. Yes, we do. Absolutely. That doesn't preclude us from loving others in additional ways that are important for their good and the good of society. And so it's just when we advocate for the common good in society, it's just one part of what it means to love others when we first love God.

[00:13:13] As we read through your book, I'm thinking that it would be good for people to have seen or maybe even also order a copy of Faithfully Different. Because you talk about some of those ideas. Because we really need to articulate these ideas in the public square. Years ago, I met Richard John Newhouse when he wrote the book, The Naked Public Square, which had been stripped of religious values. You quote from Greg Forster, The Contested Public Square. But it does bring us into this very important question.

[00:13:42] Should Christians be political? You say yes. Should Christians impose their views on others? And again, the answer is yes. But you help us understand how to maybe deal with some of the objections that sometimes people have about this idea of articulating a biblical view in the public square. Can you kind of take us through that?

[00:14:04] Yeah, I think one of the first things that's most important when we have the conversation about politics, when you bring the common good into that realm, is to define politics. Because people bring a lot of different baggage to that word. But politics is just the way in which people living in communities make decisions about how they're going to live together. That's all that word means. So when we put it in that context and we think about it that way, if we're Christians and we're citizens of a country that we live in a constitutional republic,

[00:14:32] well, in that form of government, everyone, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, everyone, has a right to bring their views to bear in the public square. So it doesn't matter how you're forming those views or what your motivation is, whether it's a religiously motivated view or anything else. Everyone has the right to bring their view to the public square. Now, as Christians, we have to check that against what the Bible teaches because maybe we have the right in the society in which we live to do something that the Bible would say, hey, don't do that.

[00:14:59] But that's not what we see when we check against the Bible also. So there's no reason for us not to exercise our citizenship in that way. Like you said, one of the most common objections that you'll hear to that is, yeah, well, we can, but we shouldn't be imposing our views on others. But that's just a misunderstanding of the nature of public policy because every public policy is going to impose one group's views on someone else. That's just the nature of public policy, that one view is going to be represented and the other view is not.

[00:15:28] And so we have to understand when people accuse us of imposing our values on others, we're not doing that any more so than anyone else who's advocating for their views in the public square. And when we come back to the common good, as we were talking about before, if Christians understand what's truly good and what's truly evil as opposed to what the world calls those things, of course we should be the ones who are out there advocating for that in the public square. If we don't, who will? Well said.

[00:15:55] One of the arguments or objections, however you want to put it, is that Christians shouldn't be partisan. And this particular piece I'm going to share now, if you'll permit me, I'm going to use in a future commentary because we hear that we shouldn't be partisan. But then you give us a couple of facts and figures. Of American adults who identify as historically black Protestants, 80% are or lean Democrat. Of American adults who identify as Buddhists, 69% are or lean Democrat.

[00:16:23] Of American adults who identify as Jewish, 64% are or lean Democrat. And you give a couple of examples, but researchers have found that more than half of these various religious groups lean Democratic. And we are never actually told that they should be less partisan. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about Buddhists, Jews, Muslims.

[00:16:52] Nobody's ever telling them that they should be less partisan. The only one that we ever seem to hear is that, quote, evangelical Christians should be less partisan because they tend to be a little less on the side of Democrats and more on the side of Republicans. So I thought that was a pretty good argument that sometimes people haven't really thought about. And it illustrates, again, that sometimes these arguments are used only in one direction, aren't they?

[00:17:20] There is very often a double standard when it comes to this, that if there's any sense that you lean conservative or you're advocating for unpopular positions that are usually identified with conservatism, then you are looked down upon. That is considered a toxic view to hold. You know, it's just a matter of statistics that every group is going to lean one way or the other, right?

[00:17:44] Unless you have exactly half of that group believing one thing and half believing the other thing, everyone's going to lean one way or the other. And as you just gave in all of those statistics, almost every other group leans towards the Democratic side. But no one ever says, you know, hey, they're being too partisan. You only get that kind of objection when you're talking about leaning conservatively. As we come to a break, let me just get into what I think is another very insightful test case that you provide, and that is slavery.

[00:18:13] Because let's take some of the arguments that were used against, quote, Christians imposing their views. And number one, Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because, well, that would be imposing your views on others. Or number two, Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because that involves seeking the power to do so. Or number three, Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because getting involved with a political issue harms our witness. How many times have you heard that?

[00:18:41] Number four, Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because it disrupted unity in the church. Or number five, Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because Christians shouldn't have been partisan. You take each one of those five objections and apply it to something else, and you can see, in a sense, the fallacy of some of the objections. Can't you? That's exactly right. I think pretty much everyone today fortunately agrees that slavery was an objectively evil institution.

[00:19:10] Treating people like property is not how we should see the world, given that everyone is an image bearer of God. And so we can see that today. Fortunately, hindsight is 20-20. So when you apply some of these same objections that you hear to getting involved with things like the pro-life issue today, for example, and you start to apply those same objections in the way you just did, I call that the slavery test. Then it starts to make it obvious that this doesn't really hold up, logically speaking.

[00:19:37] You have to say, oh, well, we shouldn't have advocated against slavery because we shouldn't have been seeking power. Well, of course we should have advocated for that. We want the power to do good, right? But so often today people will accuse Christians who are advocating for righteousness in the public square of just wanting power. You're just power hungry. But that doesn't hold up because power is just the authority and the ability to execute a governing role. We should want to execute that in a good way. It needs to be stewarded well and not poorly.

[00:20:05] So I think when you apply those things to slavery like you just did, I think it becomes clear when the objection is not really valid, but really just often an excuse for not getting involved or not getting involved in a conservative, unpopular issue. Let's take a break. But let me, as we go to the break, suggest you go to her website, NatashaCrane.com. First of all, you're going to find that she has great material there on equipping Christians to think biblically in a secular culture.

[00:20:33] There's a place where you can read her blog or listen to the podcast, read this and other books there as well. There's a way in which if you wanted to maybe have her come and speak, I would think she would be an ideal speaker for you and your church and a variety of different venues. So that is all available as well. We also, of course, have information about the book When Culture Hates You, Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square.

[00:21:01] It has been out for about a month, so I think you should be able to find it in your local bookstore. But we have a place for you to get it in paperback or Kindle. I think you'll find that very helpful there as well. And we've covered some of the chapters in the beginning. There's certainly more we could cover. But the second half gets into some of the really contentious issues. So we'll talk about how to apply those principles when we come back right after these important messages.

[00:21:30] Have you ever met a child you knew would do great things? They displayed remarkable imagination, understanding, and a zest for learning. Now imagine someone takes that child and instead of fostering their potential with a real education, they feed them nothing but lies. You know, that scenario isn't so far from reality. From a young age, Americans are fed a consistent stream of distorted facts from the secular indoctrination they receive in many public schools,

[00:21:58] to the biases presented as fact in many colleges and universities, to the barrage of misinformation from the mainstream media and the lack of moral grounding in our society. It's not that Americans aren't capable of understanding the truth. It's that they aren't exposed to it enough. You can expose more Americans to the truth when you give to Point of View, where listeners receive facts, perspective, and biblical truth they don't get from society.

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[00:22:56] You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. Continuing our conversation today with Natasha Crane. Let me just mention again that we have the website linked on our website at pointofview.net, or you can go directly to natashacrane.com.

[00:23:23] But, Natasha, for just a minute, we might talk about some of the resources there. I mentioned the podcast, and one of your more recent podcasts is Does the Culture Hate Christians? And you have a variety of other podcasts that people can follow. There's a blog. There are your books. And there's an opportunity for people to schedule you to speak. But talk about some of the resources that we would love to make available to our listeners. Well, yeah, like you said, I have several books.

[00:23:52] So my first three books are all apologetics books for parents specifically to equip you and get you ready to be able to talk about these kinds of issues with your kids. And so you mentioned them earlier. Keeping Your Kids on God's Side is like an apologetics 101 for Christian parents, followed by talking to their kids about God and talking to their kids about Jesus. And then Faithfully Different was my last book, And Now, When Culture Hates You. And the podcast is called The Natasha Crane Podcast. And again, lots of great resources.

[00:24:19] We have that available, and I would encourage you to do so. Before we get into the specific issues, you do have a chapter on this idea of perseverance. And that's important because we've recognized that kind of one of the themes here at Point of View was the idea of discernment. But I think more and more the other theme seems to be the need for boldness.

[00:24:40] And you have a whole section there on persevering in the public square because it does require for us a little bit of tenacity, maybe a little more boldness, and an understanding that we can't simply step back and assume that people are going to do the right thing if they don't hear from those of us that are trying to articulate a responsible Christian position.

[00:25:06] Right. I think that Christians really need to reset expectations in general. And I talk about that in that chapter that, you know, if you expect that people are going to just look at you and think that you're a nice person or a good person because you've shared God's truth with them, then you're going to be really disappointed when they're actually very angry with you or they actually think that you're a toxic person or a harmful person, as sometimes or very often now is happening in our culture.

[00:25:34] So we have to look back at Jesus' words about, you know, telling his disciples that the world would hate them. And remember, there's a reason he had to say that. You know, these aren't just empty words. The reason is that when we talk about these things, when we are being a light in culture and not just sitting on our hands in our living room, we're actually being a light in the way that we should be. We're exposing the deeds of darkness. And when you're exposing the deeds of darkness, people are not going to like you for that.

[00:25:59] So we need to reset our expectations to understand that the number of people in our society who are Bible-believing Christians, who have a biblical worldview, that number is decreasing and decreasing. And so we're going to see that a lot more people are not going to be friendly to the Christian message. And once we reset those expectations, then we're going to be in a better position to be able to advocate for righteousness because we're not going to think, well, I've got to be comfortable to do this. We're going to know we're not going to be comfortable and we should do it anyway.

[00:26:28] Let me just mention now that the five following chapters are responding to and persevering through today's most prominent charges, Christian nationalism and social justice, pro-life activists, transgender activists, the sexual revolution, and then, of course, an epilogue. We may not get to all of those, but let's see if we can tackle one or two. And one of those is the idea of Christian nationalist.

[00:26:52] Now, Natasha, one of the things I've found, and you have already articulated this many times, is to define your terms because sometimes what somebody calls Christian nationalism is just an epithet put at an individual that might just be patriotic. The other is something that I remember years ago first hearing this phrase, I think David French first used it, nut picking,

[00:27:17] where you pick some nut on the opposite side and use that to extrapolate. And I remember when we did some programs a while back on this idea of Christian nationalism, there are some legitimate concerns, but one of the guests we had actually had written a piece in the Dallas Morning News, and I thought, well, let's get him on so he's actually studied this. Well, the example he used was of a church in Colorado that I'd never heard of, that I don't know if anybody else had ever heard of, to illustrate the danger.

[00:27:46] And you got the sense that, okay, maybe you're extrapolating a little bit much from that. So really one of the keys, whether you're talking about the issue of abortion, transgenderism, social revolution, whatever it might be, is to define your terms, isn't it? We have to define terms because, like you said, there's so many different ways that people define Christian nationalism. So when people ask, well, how should we respond to Christian nationalism, the question is always, well, what do you mean by Christian nationalism?

[00:28:16] Because it can take on so many different meanings. So what I did and focused on in my chapter was to look at this as the view from mainstream media because the mainstream media is really who is talking about this the most. They're the ones who are saying there is this danger, there is this threat, it's pervasive, it's extreme, it's theocratic, it's anti-democratic, and you hear all these words, but they don't define it. So what you have to do is actually look at the content they're producing to back into it

[00:28:44] and say, okay, they're talking about this dangerous Christian nationalism. Well, let's see in this article or in this video, what are their examples of it so we can get an idea of what they mean? And so I surveyed hundreds of pieces of content along those lines. What I found is that overwhelmingly, in the vast majority of cases, all they mean is that there are people who are advocating for certain views that are unpopular in society right now based on their biblical values. That's what it means.

[00:29:12] It's basically a pejorative against conservative Christians. And you can see this when you see the headlines and then you go into the content and what you find out about this dangerous Christian nationalism is that there are Christians advocating for a pro-life view in the public square, or there are Christians who are advocating for, quote, unquote, anti-trans bills, which actually, if you look at them, it's actually for the good of trans people and the good of everyone else, but, of course, they label it anti-trans.

[00:29:40] So when you actually survey the examples they're using that they're labeling a dangerous Christian nationalism, all it means is that you want to bring your, quote, unquote, religious views to bear in the public square. And as we already talked about earlier today, that's just the nature of public policy. It's the nature of what we are able to do and we have the right to do in a constitutional republic. It's not anti-democratic. If we were being anti-democratic, we would be finding ways around our form of government to get our views imposed on everyone else.

[00:30:08] When you're working within the structure, we're using it exactly as it's intended to be used. I might just mention, too, for those of you that maybe want to use this book as a study guide, because at the end of the first five chapters, there's always a summary. Then of these particular chapters that give you application, there's, for example, here, quick responses to five popular challenges on Christian nationalism.

[00:30:32] Then there's a follow-up section on the whole idea of what you can do, actions for the common good. So each one of these has lots of practical helps. Also some material that you could use if you wanted to lead a small group through this area. But one other one I thought we'd pick off is, of course, the view from secular social justice advocates or activists, and that is power-hungry oppressors.

[00:30:59] And, again, some of that gets into things we've talked about on this program before, critical race theory and queer theory and Black Lives Matter and the rest. But this is, again, something that we've been dealing with for about the last four or five years, haven't we? Yeah, it's been percolating for a long time. It's just really kind of come up to the surface in the last four or five years that these trends are reared in something much longer over a whole century, as you know.

[00:31:27] So what it really comes down to is that society sees us when they're looking at justice through the lens of critical theory. They see us as power-hungry oppressors. It's not just, hey, you're wrong about justice, Christians. It's you're actually harmful. You're oppressive. You're toxic. And so my goal really with all these chapters in the second half of the book is not just to look at it from a biblical perspective and to explain society's views, but to say, but why do they actually hate us for it?

[00:31:55] What is driving that kind of disdain? And so in this case, they think that we're oppressive because of the way that we view justice. So justice as a concept is making right that which is wrong, but that requires a standard of some kind to even define right and wrong in the first place. So as Christians, of course, God is the one who has to be our standard for defining those things, so we are making right the things that should be made right.

[00:32:23] Well, if you're a culture and you are secular, you are not going to use God as your standard. So anytime you're using another standard other than God for your idea of justice, you have a very good chance of getting it wrong. You're not always going to get it wrong. Sometimes it will happen to line up, but you're going to get it wrong a lot of times because if your standard, for example, is the social binary, that you're dividing everyone into groups based on power dynamics, as critical theory does,

[00:32:49] then you're going to look at men, for example, as the group in power and women as the victim group, and then you get something like reproductive justice out of that, which is just a euphemism for the right to kill a preborn baby. And so that's how justice goes wrong from the secular perspective, and they look at us when we say, hey, no, we're going to advocate for the right to life for this preborn baby. They're going to look at that and they're going to say, well, that's oppressive to women because they're using a different standard.

[00:33:16] I may just mention as we go to a break that sometimes what you have to do is redefine or define accurately justice. Allie Bestuckey, who used to be a co-host here on Point of View, has done a PragerU on social justice isn't justice, and there's a difference between social justice and biblical justice, and that is certainly something you can find in this book as well. We'll come back and talk about a few other examples from when culture hates you. We'll be right back.

[00:33:55] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Continue our conversation for a few more minutes with Natasha Crane. Again, the book is entitled When Culture Hates You. And, Natasha, you were talking about pro-life, so we might as well get to that chapter. Again, view from pro-choice activists, controlling misogynists. And, again, we have to understand that there have been, for some time, criticism of anybody that is pro-life.

[00:34:22] In some respects, I think that's heated up since June of 2022 with the Dobbs decision. And so, in some respects, we, again, have to understand that the way in which we make our case using common grace really, I think, can appeal to individuals who maybe have never really thought through the issue, which is hard for me to believe, given the fact that it's been around for decades and decades. It is hard to believe.

[00:34:50] I mean, when you really think about what abortion is, it's hard to believe that anyone is going to advocate for the right to do that. But this is one of the goals, like I said earlier, of the book is to help Christians not just understand a biblical view, but to understand the perspective that culture is coming from so that it's not just so baffling to us, like how can anyone believe this, but that we actually understand their view and why they hold it so we can better engage.

[00:35:15] And in the case of this topic in particular, I think it's important to understand that virtually no one is out there saying, yes, I, you know, I love the right to kill babies. I want to kill babies. They're not saying that. They view this as an issue of harm to women, that if women don't have the right to do what they want with their body, and I understand that it's not their body, but I'm saying this is their perspective, that if women don't have that right, then they are harmed in some way.

[00:35:44] So their moral high ground from their perspective is that this is an issue of harm to women. Pro-life advocates, of course, are recognizing that first and foremost, this has to be an issue of harm to the preborn baby whose life is actually being lost in the process. But when we understand that culture views us as harm to women, then we can start looking at, okay, well, what kind of harm to women are we talking about?

[00:36:09] So in that chapter, I go through several examples of the claims about how the pro-life view is harmful to women, because if we can engage with culture more on those specific objections and showing that, no, well, women are actually not harmed in any way by pro-life policies, then we're getting a step closer to actually making our case in a more effective way in the public square. And it sort of relates to your other chapter dealing with transgender and even the issue of sexual revolution,

[00:36:37] because it is perceived and portrayed as, well, you are going to actually harm individuals, and actually you can make the case, and you do make the case in both those chapters, that if you want to actually help individuals, if you want to promote human flourishing, if you want to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, if you want to no longer have to deal with some of the emotional baggage,

[00:37:03] what we are calling for from a biblical point of view is what the creator of sex in the first place has called for, and the need for us to really begin to reevaluate some of the myths that we've picked up from our secular culture. That's right. I think it's one of the hardest things for Christians to sometimes get our heads around, that sometimes we have to be advocating for the good of people in a way that they don't want for themselves.

[00:37:33] That's very hard for us to get our heads around. So if somebody who identifies as transgender says, you're harming me with your view, you're not allowing me to take the steps necessary medically, for example, to do what's going to make me feel best about myself, well, we're going to have a different view, because as you said, if there's a creator and sustainer of the universe who has revealed through scripture who he is and who we are as mankind, then we're going to understand objectively what human purpose is,

[00:38:03] and objectively what the design is that he has given us for human flourishing, including gender and sexuality. And so when we understand those things, then we know objectively what is good for people, because that is going to promote their flourishing. That doesn't mean they're going to agree with us. They can be really, really upset with us. They can hate us. They can think that we're cruel rights deniers, as I titled that chapter on transgenderism. But we still have to advocate for their good,

[00:38:31] even when it's not what they want for themselves, because we need to love them enough to love them the way that God loves them. Let me just mention at the very end you have recommendations for further study, and it reads like the kinds of books that we do interviews on here at Point of View. Erwin Lutzer's The Eclipse of God, Carl Truman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Jack Hibbs' Living in the Days of Deception, Greg Kokel's Tactics, as well as Erwin Lutzer's book on We Will Not Be Silenced, Mark David Hall's on Did America Have a Christian Nation,

[00:39:00] as well as all the way down to Abigail Schreier, Irreversible Damage, or Nancy Piercy, and Love Thy Body, and just a whole series of other books that we have spent some time talking about here on Point of View. But, Natasha, talk about just in the next minute or two how people can use this book. I've already recommended the way you've put it together since the end of each one of the first five chapters has kind of a summary of some of the key points. And then you have,

[00:39:29] later on in the next five chapters, when you take on some of these issues, a whole section on certainly the quick responses to popular challenges and then actions for the common good. But how can people use this book in a way that might certainly take these ideas and expand them in society? Well, that is my hope for the book, that it's not just a book of analysis that helps you better understand things. That's a starting point, and I sure hope that it does. But I hope that that better understanding

[00:39:58] leads people to engage in a more effective way with those around them and to take steps to actually be light, to make a difference in society. So, like you said, in each of the five chapters in the second half of the book, there are suggested actions, example actions for the common good of all kinds of different natures because I'm not suggesting with this book that everyone has to be out there doing the exact same thing. You know, I'm not saying that every person in every season of life has to be out there advocating

[00:40:26] for a specific issue in a specific way. We all are in different places in our lives and have different interests and abilities and knowledge bases. There's something that everyone can do to shine light in the darkness on all of these subjects. So I hope that people will not just sit on this book with some better understanding, but rather that they're actually going to take steps and say, I'm going to be bolder in culture because I love God and I love others. Let me again just mention that you can listen to this again by clicking on that button that says watch or listen. You might want to go back

[00:40:56] to the previous interview we did with Natasha on faithfully different, regaining biblical clarity in a secular culture. Or again, for those of you who are parents and would like to educate your children, a lot of those various apologetics books for parents are also available on her website. And of course, this book is When Culture Hates You, Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square. It was great to see you the other day.

[00:41:25] Thank you for giving us an hour today here on Point of View and thank you for writing the book. Thanks so much. It's been great talking with you. Let's, if we can, again, encourage you to find out a little bit more. That is at the website, pointofview.net. And I think we all agree that America is really changing. It's maybe changing too fast for many of us. And so whether we're looking at politics or religion, education, culture, the family, we are seeing remarkable,

[00:41:53] many people even refer to them as seismic changes. And when we recognize that only a minority, a very small minority of Americans hold to a true biblical worldview, we are the minority, and it's going to be even more important for us to know how to make the case with using the common good. We can't just say, well, thus the Bible says, because a lot of people say, well, I don't believe the Bible. Or even if they are people in your church, they may say they believe the Bible,

[00:42:23] but they really have not applied a consistent biblical worldview to every area of life. And so this is certainly one of those books that I think can be kind of a wake-up call for Christians to understand that we're going to be in an area of hostility. And it's going to be really important for us to know how to make the case. So again, we want you to know how to articulate a biblical worldview, but also how to defend it. And this book gives you an ability to debunk some of the arguments

[00:42:52] that you hear so often. And that's why we commend the book to you. Again, when culture hates you, persevering for the common good as Christians in a hostile public square. And you're listening to Point of View. Are you confused about changes happening in Washington, D.C.? Well, you're not alone. Are you frustrated that you can't get the full picture of what's happening

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