Interview: Natasha Crain – When Culture Hates You

Summary

Stand to Reason Weekly Podcast

Episode: Interview – Natasha Crain, "When Culture Hates You"
Host: Greg Koukl
Guest: Natasha Crain
Date: February 5, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation between Greg Koukl and Natasha Crain on her new book, When Culture Hates You: Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square. The discussion focuses on the challenges Christians face in an increasingly antagonistic culture, the importance of biblical clarity, and practical ways believers can engage with a world that often finds Christian convictions not just disagreeable, but harmful. Crain and Koukl explore the roots of the culture’s hostility, key issues in the public square, and how Christians can thoughtfully and graciously persevere for the true common good.

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Shifts in Natasha Crain’s Writing Focus

[01:01 – 04:01]

• From Parenting to Broader Cultural Engagement:
  • Crain describes her earlier work as focused on apologetics for parents (“making it easy for parents to explain things to their kids”).
  • In 2020, noticing the convergence of secular social justice movements and the confusion within the Church, she pivoted to address broader cultural issues.
  • Her blog post on the intersection of social justice and biblical values went viral, prompting her to write Faithfully Different (2022) and now When Culture Hates You.
  • Quote: “Somebody needs to talk more about these things, about this intersection between the secular worldview and the biblical worldview. How do we keep them clearly separated?” (03:31, Natasha Crain)

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Addressing Hostility Towards Christians

[04:01 – 10:00]

• Heightened Culture War Issues:
  • Topics include abortion, gender, marriage, sexuality, politics, and Christian nationalism.
  • Koukl commends Crain’s lucid, urgent, and grounded approach.
  • Crain shares that her aim is not only analysis, but practical encouragement—her book is “a kick in the pants and a pep talk.” (06:52)
  • Many are weary of “culture war” books that feel depressing; Crain wants hers to inspire and embolden practical action rooted in biblical worldview.

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Understanding the Book’s Title: “When” Culture Hates You

[08:14 – 10:23]

• Crain emphasizes increasing stories of Christians being ostracized—loss of jobs, relationships, businesses—not for being “wrong,” but for being considered “toxic” and “harmful.”
• The cultural shift means biblical convictions are now seen not as mere errors but as oppressive evils.
• Quote: “It’s another thing to experience [hostility] and understand where it’s coming from... When you do understand that, then you can engage with people a little bit better.” (09:50, Natasha Crain)

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Exploring “The Common Good” and Its Conflicts

[10:23 – 13:00]

• Defining ‘Common Good’:
  • The term has been used in various contexts (sometimes negatively, as by critics who accuse it of promoting socialism).
  • Crain uses it simply as “the flourishing of society, our life in common together.”
  • The real “culture war,” she argues, is over what is truly good for society—every side thinks it’s pursuing good; the difference is the standard by which ‘good’ is judged.
  • Quote: “My hope is that Christians will start thinking more in terms of, well, how do I know what is good? As a Christian, I have God’s word to go to…we can be clear about the common good.” (12:13, Natasha Crain)

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Biblical Anthropology vs. Cultural Self-Invention

[13:00 – 17:14]

• What Does It Mean to be Human?
  • Koukl and Crain discuss how all debates on the common good come back to “anthropology”—Who is man?
  • The Christian view: humans are created in God’s image, with purpose and objective design; going against that design is intrinsically harmful.
  • Cultural view: purpose and identity are self-defined.
  • Quote: “If we have a Creator who has made us in his image and gives us a purpose, then anything that goes against that purpose is going to be harmful to us in an objective sense.” (14:45, Natasha Crain)
• Cultural Blind Spots about Human Nature:
  • Koukl: “Culture does not take seriously the fallenness of human beings…then you run into all kinds of difficulties and troubles.”
  • Crain offers the Joe Rogan example—Rogan senses a qualitative distinction in humans but lacks an explanation outside the biblical worldview.

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The Power of Distinctions & Purpose

[17:14 – 21:50]

• Distinctions as a Judeo-Christian Motif:
  • The biblical worldview is marked by clear distinctions—God/man, male/female, humans/animals, right/wrong.
• Identity, Purpose, and Sin:
  • Culture selectively acknowledges positive aspects of human nature but ignores sinfulness, leading to false optimism about “flourishing.”
• Freudian Legacy:
  • Freud’s reduction of identity to sexual instincts paves the way for today’s conflations of sexuality and identity.

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Hostility: Not Universal, but Specific

[20:52 – 22:24]

• The culture’s hatred isn’t blanket; when Christians do things the culture approves (e.g., soup kitchens), there is praise. But opposing prevailing moral norms (e.g., abortion opposition) brings hostility.
• Quote: “They hate us for some very specific [things].” (21:50, Natasha Crain)

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Foundational Truths: God’s Revelation, Love, and Justice

[22:24 – 26:55]

• Crain: The foundational Christian conviction is that God has spoken—through nature and especially through Scripture.
  • Many Christians get moral direction from friends/family, not the Bible (“outrageous…we have the God of the universe…”).
• Definitions of love and justice must come from God, not culture. Culture’s definitions lead to confusion (“love is love”) and perversion of virtue.
• Quote: “Being loving means wanting God’s best for people, even when it’s not what they want for themselves.” (24:22, Natasha Crain)
• Justice, too, is only justice by God’s standard—other standards may align in some cases (helping the poor) but go far astray in others (abortion framed as “reproductive justice”).

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Engagement in Politics and Public Policy

[28:26 – 35:30]

• Political Engagement as a Christian Responsibility:
  • Crain explains that politics is simply “how people living in communities make decisions about how they’re going to live together.”
  • Christians should not shy from political advocacy when given the opportunity in a constitutional republic.
  • The Bible, while written in other political contexts, evidences God’s concern for the moral health of societies.
• Objections to Christian Political Advocacy:
  • The common secular objection (“don’t impose your values”) is critiqued: all public policy involves someone’s values being imposed.
  • Crain introduces the “Slavery Test”—would we object to Christian involvement in ending slavery as “imposing values”? Of course not.

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Media Double Standards & Progressive Christianity

[35:30 – 37:44]

• Media and culture celebrate Christians involved in public life only when they support progressive values (NYT article “Hallelujah, Progressive Christians Arise!”).
• Conservative Christians, by contrast, are demonized.
• Quote: “Progressive Christians aren’t hated…their political views overwhelmingly line up with progressive values.” (35:59, Natasha Crain)

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Christian Nationalism: A Manufactured Scare and Cultural Smokescreen

[37:44 – 43:25]

• Defining the Term:
  • “Christian nationalism” is an ambiguous, often undefined term used by mainstream media as a slur against conservative Christians advocating biblical values.
  • Quote: “What you see is that…you are called a Christian nationalist if you’re advocating for conservative values that are biblically based.” (39:28, Natasha Crain)
• Research and Media Hysteria:
  • Studies label generic statements (“laws should be based on Christian values”) as “Christian nationalist” even though most Christians would naturally agree.
  • The left is never accused of “progressive Christian nationalism”; the label works only one way.

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The Sexual Revolution, Queer Theory, and Children

[44:54 – 51:14]

• Current Sexual Revolution Trends:

  • Crain describes the increasing advocacy by a subset of activists for the sexual “liberation” of children—moving beyond “acceptance” to erasure of age-based sexual boundaries.
  • The role of queer theory is highlighted: it rejects all sexual and gender norms, including childhood innocence.
  • Quote: “A group of activists…actually want to remove any kind of age limits advocating for children to have sexual pleasure. They’re looking to get rid of the concept of childhood innocence.” (45:20, Natasha Crain)

• Queer Theory vs. Transgenderism:

  • Queer theory’s opposition to any category or norm actually conflicts with transgender ideology, which depends on clear categories of male and female.
  • This leads to left-on-left conflicts (e.g., feminists vs. certain transgender activists).

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The “Velocitization” of Culture and the Danger of Normalizing Extremes

[51:14 – 55:48]

• Koukl references Francis Schaeffer’s warning: what is “unthinkable” today is “ordinary” tomorrow. Cultural acceptance of extremes is rapidly accelerated (“velocitized”).
• Example: once-ridiculed notions like “men can get pregnant” quickly become mainstream orthodoxy.
• Crain agrees, pointing out how Drag Queen Story Hours, rooted in queer theory, are intended to erode norms and mainstream radical ideas.
• Quote: “They’re trying to make it mainstream so that they can come in on the underside and start to pull in these ideas.” (54:41, Natasha Crain)

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Final Reflections: The Stakes for Children and Society

[55:48 – End]

• Crain’s Warning:
  • Drag Queen Story Hours are not just about “accepting” gender-fluid performance; authored academic papers reveal a purposeful attack on society’s sexual boundaries, targeting children’s innocence.
  • Koukl emphasizes the particularly sinister and devastating implications for families and children.
  • Quote: “To remove the kind of protection we as parents are supposed to be providing…this, to me, it’s as bad as it can get when it comes to family.” (56:22, Greg Koukl)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “This book was somewhere between a kick in the pants, a pep talk, and…an analysis.” (06:52, Natasha Crain)
• “If we have a Creator who has made us in his image and gives us a purpose, then anything that goes against that purpose is going to be harmful to us in an objective sense.” (14:45, Natasha Crain)
• “Being loving means wanting God’s best for people, even when it’s not what they want for themselves. That’s the hardest thing to do. They’re going to hate you for it…but you’re actually being loving according to God’s standards.” (24:28, Natasha Crain)
• “Any kind of public policy involves one group’s views imposing their views on another group.” (32:52, Natasha Crain)
• “Christian nationalism…what you see…is you are called a Christian nationalist if you’re advocating for conservative values that are biblically based.” (39:28, Natasha Crain)
• “A group of activists…actually want to remove any kind of age limits advocating for children to have sexual pleasure. They’re looking to get rid of the concept of childhood innocence.” (45:20, Natasha Crain)

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Actionable Takeaways

• Christians must regain moral and spiritual clarity from Scripture—allowing the Bible, not culture, to define love, justice, purpose, and identity.
• Understand that engagement in public policy is not optional but a stewardship opportunity.
• Do not capitulate to shifting language and definitions—recognize how terms like “the common good,” “justice,” and “love” are weaponized.
• Stay vigilant about cultural “velocitization”—yesterday’s fringe is often tomorrow’s mainstream.
• Protect the innocence and well-being of children; advocate for truth even when it brings cultural hostility.

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Conclusion

This discussion between Greg Koukl and Natasha Crain showcases the pressing challenges facing Christians who desire to remain faithful, winsome, and courageous in a rapidly worsening public square. Crain’s diagnosis is sober and urgent but also empowering, reminding believers that understanding the roots of cultural hostility enables them to both endure and graciously pursue the true common good.

For more, see:

• Natasha Crain, When Culture Hates You (2025)
• Stand to Reason Podcast archives

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Transcript

[A]

Sam. Hello, friends. Greg Koukl here. And I am really glad that you joined me today because I get to talk about a brand new book that just got released today that I read in digital form because that's all I had a couple of months ago. It's fantastic. And I have with me the author, my dear friend Natasha Crane with her new title and it's When Culture Hates you. Congratulations, Natasha. Another book and so thrilled to have you on board.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

This is number five for you and the third time we've been on board here. Right. Because we talked about one of the kids books, you know, keeping your kids on God's side or talking to your kids about God or talking to your kids about Jesus. I mean, those are the first three, right? And then one of those we talked about, I can't remember which one it was. But then when you did Faithfully Different. Boy, I loved that book too. And we talked then and now When Culture Hates you. Persevering for the common good as Christians in a hostile public square. Wow. I looked it up. Did you? You just released today. Did you see the numbers yet on Amazon? Or don't you do that kind of thing?

[B]

Well, of course I do. Every author does. You want to know, you want to know how the book is doing. So yes, I've been looking at Amazon, seeing how things are going.

[A]

Yeah, Jay Warner, he doesn't do that. I don't really believe him because he chastises me when I mention some, but you know, but he's always up there toward the top. Okay, look it, I just checked this this morning. Number 893 on Amazon Top 1000. That's fabulous. You're actually number four in apologetics behind. Watch this. CS Lewis, Lee Strobel and Melissa Doherty, who's number three. You're number four. In that order. Okay. Tactics is a lowly number 27 on the list. You know, so I am thrilled that both you and Melissa are doing so great and you know, I must decrease you increase kind of thing. So it's really super. Your books have always been fabulous. They all been fabulous. But you shifted quite a bit from your first set of books to this set of books. I'm curious about the thinking about that. It's not really a formal part of the interview, but I am curious about the thinking from kids stuff to adult stuff, so to speak.

[B]

Yeah, well, so for several years I was really focused on apologetics for parents specifically so not directly for kids, but for parents to explain to them an easy to understand way. Here's how you can talk about these topics with your kids. So I did three books that you mentioned before. Toward that end, I kind of made the switch in 2020. So in the famous summer of 2020 when things started getting very crazy, a lot of these secular social justice movements started coming out. And I started noticing that there were a lot of Christians who were bringing a secular worldview into their biblical worldview. And for the first time, I decided to step out of that lane a little bit because I'd been very focused on just knowing what I was going to do was all about parents. And I decided I was going to write an article on my blog about. So some of those things that were going on in social justice area. And that went viral. And that led to me realizing, you know what? Somebody. Somebody needs to talk more about these things, about this, this intersection between the secular worldview and the biblical worldview. How do we keep them clear, clearly separated? And so that became faithfully different eventually. And after that, then that led to this book. Now, When Culture Hates you. So I still am, you know, writing and speaking for parents as well, because a lot of this is very relevant for parents raising the next generation, but just kind of broad the audience to any Christian who wants to think through these cultural issues.

[A]

What I think is great is your ability to, in a sense, have your finger on the pulse of what's going on and the very particular ways that trying to choose the right words. Christians are beset by these issues and faithfully different. They were beset because they were absorbing some of these things that they shouldn't be and they didn't know better and you clarified things so that they could be faithfully different. Subtitle Regaining Biblical Clarity in the Secular Culture. And that came out in 22. And now this book, When Culture Hates you. Persevering for the Common good as Christians in a hostile public square. And now you're dealing with a whole bunch of issues that are the kinds of things that we've been facing. Whether issues have been around for a long time, but now there's a different tone to them. Like the abortion issue. I mean, I think since Roe vs. Wade was overturned, lots fewer abortions are happening. That's good. And a lot of pro abortion people are a whole lot more angry, you know, at pro lifers, you know, but you have that. You have. You talk about the gender issues, you talk about marriage and sex, and you talk about getting political and just a whole host of things you talk about Christian nationalism or so called Christian nationalism. These are the Things I want to get into now because these are what you focus on in your book, but I just want to read just for fun. My endorsement of your book because it does capture what I like about your material so much. What Natasha Crane has accomplished in When Culture Hates you is remarkable. It's just true. As Crane's warning of the escalating dangers facing followers of Christ is appropriately charged with urgency and not a moment too soon, her sobering analysis of the current evils rapidly descending on our children, our families and our churches is clear headed, lucid, and completely faithful to a robust Christian worldview. And I think what I like about the way you approach these things, Natasha, is that you really understand Christianity. You have a very robust understanding about how Christianity works and you understand the culture in a way that you can see these things fitting together and then you assess them in a way that Christians are able to take the information you've given and put it into practical use. You made a comment to me off the air. Maybe you can say something about it about someone who paid you a big compliment by saying that this book was kind of a kick in the pants, right? Tell me what you said regarding that. That was kind of fun.

[B]

Well, you know, today's the first day that you can actually put reviews onto Amazon and so some people had received an early copy of the book so that they could read it and give their honest review on Amazon when these go live. So I was telling, telling Greg before we got on here that I was reading through the reviews that have been posted so far and there are a few dozen there, but I just really loved one phrase in particular that somebody said. They said for me, this book was somewhere between a kick in the pan, a pep talk, and, and I love that because, you know, to, to some degree there's a lot of analysis that goes on in the book. I want people to understand why the culture does hate Christians. And so I think that's a very important part of the book. But it's not just about the analysis. The analysis there is therefore a very specific purpose so that once you better understand, you can better engage and then you can take action. So I love when this particular reviewer said, hey, this was a kick in the pants. I realize I need to get out there no matter how hostile the culture is. But it's also a pep talk. They found it encouraging. A lot of times people don't want to get into some of the more the cultural issues kinds of books because they find it depressing. I've seen many comments to that Effect, like, if this is another book like that, you know, I don't. I don't want to read it because it's just, it brings me down, which. That's a whole other problem. But I think that, you know, to hear that a book that does the analysis on these difficult issues really is moving people to action and is a pep talk encouraging. That to me was kind of the ultimate compliment given my goals for.

[A]

Yeah, this. I actually like the analysis part. That's kind of where my head goes. But there are so many people that are. Get benefit from the large sections of application, the action guides regarding the common good, which is a major theme in your book. What is the common good and how do we pursue the common good? How do we as Christians pursue the common good? And so those are really helpful. Let's just start with the title for a minute. Why the Culture? Where is it? When culture hates you? Not why, of course you talk about why, but when culture hates you. So this is how to respond. That's pretty strong. When culture hates you. Okay, so why did you go that direction with the title and with the book?

[B]

Well, in the last couple of years, I've really noticed in talking with Christians, when I go out and speak at conferences and events and engage with people online, I've noticed how many people were just bringing up this. This subject of, yeah, the culture is getting harder and harder. People were perceiving the hostility more and more and kind of to some degree scratching their heads, you know, why. Why can't people just think we're wrong if that's what they think? But instead they think that we're toxic, we're harmful. We, you know, we are evil oppressors in a lot of cases. And I started talking to more and more people who had been cut off by their friends, they'd been cut off by their family, they had lost jobs. Some cases they were having trouble getting jobs. Some people who had their own businesses lost their businesses because they were targeted by people in their local areas over things that they had said that were just reflective of their biblical values. So the more that I talked to people, I realized this was becoming something that people needed some. Some additional insight on. I thought in terms of how do we understand it and deal with it? Because it's one thing to experience that, it's another thing to experience it and understand where it's coming from. It doesn't make it easier to understand where it's coming from, but at least when you do understand why the hate, which is what I'm addressing In the book, when you do understand that, then you can engage with people a little bit better. Doesn't make it easier, doesn't mean that everything is going to have a happy ending to it, but it does mean that you can understand better how to engage and ultimately to be a light in the culture. That's why I wanted to write it.

[A]

Part of what you address in the book is the concept of the common good. I've already mentioned that. And of course, this is actually a big part of the American experiment. You read in the Declaration or the Constitution that this is for the general welfare. To promote the general welfare, the good of the people is what is meant there. And of course, as Christians, this is part of what we want to be in the culture. Salt and light. We want to promote the common good. But the notion of the common good is part of the conflict. Why don't you talk about that a little bit?

[B]

Absolutely. So the common good as it has been a term that has been used in many different ways over history. In fact, I've had some negative responses to the subtitle just because I mentioned the common good. Some people think, oh, that's, you know, are you advocating for socialism because you can justify anything by appealing to the so called common good, for example, or, you know, you don't care about the individual good if you care about the common common good. Sometimes people have these different ideas, but I'm not importing any of those historical meanings in different ways that different groups and people have used it over time. In this book, as I explained the second chapter, I have a whole chapter on what is the common good. And rather I'm just saying, okay, if we're looking for the flourishing of society, our life in common together, what does that look like? What is a good for entire communities? And what I say in the book is that, you know, ultimately the culture wars that we see today, they are over the common good. But it's not that some people are advocating for the things that they think are good for society and others are advocating for what they think is bad for society.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Everyone is advocating for what they believe is good for society. The question is, what is actually good for society? And so my hope is that Christians will start thinking more in terms of, well, how do I know what is good? Because as a Christian, I have God's word to go to. I know God's standards on these issues. And so I can be clear about the common good. Even if other people are using the same term and using it in a different way. That doesn't mean we have to capitulate and say, well, everyone's got a different idea of the common good. I guess we should kind of be quiet because it's going to harm our witness if we speak up. We can't be like that. We have to understand we know what is good because we know from God himself. And when we have that clarity, then we can speak truth and culture.

[A]

So I'm thinking of one of the new atheists was talking about morality and the problem of how do you get morality without God? And he said, well, we can all agree that morality is about human flourishing. So the problem is that's kind of a formal category. It's not material. It doesn't get down to specifics. And the details of what flourishing actually looks like are going to be much different depending on your worldview. Okay. And what you do in the beginning of the book is you start out part one with foundational principles that help lay the predicate for what follows. How are we going to respond to these particular kinds of challenges that are an alternative understanding of what the common good looks like in our culture? Okay. Things that have been hugely popular in the last 15 or 20 years and really in the last four years or so have really, really taken on a tremendous force. And contrary to that, the biblical worldview, the biblical foundation is going to lead us in a different direction. So let's talk. And that's part one and part two. You talk about the issues themselves, which we'll get to, but let's just talk about what it means to be human, because this is obviously foundational to any understanding of what human flourishing is going to look like. And you develop some of the core elements of biblical identity for human beings. So could you share some of those ideas with us?

[B]

Well, at the very basic level, I think all of these common good issues do come back to a question of anthropology. Who is man? If we don't get that right, we're not going to get anything else right. And as Christians, we have, or we should have. If we compare what we believe to what the Bible teaches, we should have a very different view of anthropology than the culture is going to have. We believe, for example, that we are created beings. We didn't just get here by time and chance. That means that we have a purpose, that there is an objective purpose to our lives. We don't just kind of float around as purposeless beings who get to decide for ourselves what our purpose is. If we have a Creator who has made us in his image and gives us a purpose Then anything that goes against that purpose is going to be harmful to us in an objective sense. And that is a key distinction from the way that culture sees things. Because if culture sees it that way, your purpose is self defined. You can do whatever you want. If you believe you're another gender, for example, then you can go ahead and make those physical changes and you know, the theoretically become another gender that is actually extremely harmful. If the reality, if the nature of reality is that you actually have a purpose, you actually have a design. And so it comes down to a question of who, who is mankind. And as Christians we have to be really clear on that. If we're not, we're going to get all of these other issues wrong.

[A]

You know, I, I saw a piece on Prager University piece on, on what a Judeo Christian worldview entailed. And he had a number of things there. But one of the things that kind of was a motif that he used a foil to describe the Judeo Christian worldview is the idea of distinctions. The scriptures filled with distinctions like God and man, or male and female and humans and animals and right and wrong. I thought it was a brilliant way to characterize the Christian worldview. And that's part of the foundation that you're talking about here. You mentioned something about purpose there. And I'd like you to develop this idea of human purpose just a little bit more. Because the good thing about human beings being made the image of God is set up against the sin nature part too. And it just seems to me this is something that culture does not take very seriously. They look at what they like about human beings and they can reflect on the noble quality of human beings, but not take seriously the fallenness of human beings. And consequently, anyway, this to me you run into all kinds of difficulties and troubles as a result of that. Not taking that aspect of humanity seriously.

[B]

Yeah, I think that it's interesting because I'm sure that you saw part of the Joe Rogan interview with Wes Huff. Apologist Wes Huff got on with Joe Rogan every minute.

[A]

We talked about it a little bit on the air. Yeah, it was really great.

[B]

So at that. So at the end of that interview, in I think it was the last 10 minutes, Joe Rogan was talking about how humans are different than animals. He, and he just kept reflecting on this and he didn't know why. You know, he just kept saying like we're, we're able to do so much more. We have so much more complex thought and we can reflect on that. And it was so interesting. I Actually used this as an example to teach a youth group this weekend. Because I was saying, here's somebody who recognizes there is a distinction to your point about distinctions. There's a distinction here. And he's asking, why is that? And it's just such a perfect opportunity from a biblical perspective to say, well, there's a reason for that. You know, the. The Bible teaches us that if we're made in the image of God, we are fundamentally inherently different from animals. And if we start thinking, if we don't believe that, if we have a view that conflicts with that reality, and we start believing that animal, animals and humans are basically one and the same, we're so a little bit more evolved than that, then we're going to have so many beliefs that are going to be destructive to us. And you see examples of that, especially when it comes to matters of sexuality, which I talk about later in the book, that, you know, when Freud comes along and sees us as basically an animal, then we're defined by our instincts. And for Freud, that was our sexual instincts. And so our identity, our fundamental identity for Freud was who we are sexually. It marries the identity and the sexuality, which is how we get now, you know, more than 100 years later, here we go. And everyone thinks that your identity is your sexual. And so this just cascades in so many ways when you think that we're just another type of animal, but our view as Christians, the view of reality, is so much different than that.

[A]

Yeah, well, there certainly is an animal element, and that's the problem, of course. But the Joe Rogan comment to me is interesting because you have. And this happens a lot, and I'm saying this partly so we all can be more alert to it. Fallen man understands a whole bunch of true things about the world that are consistent with the Christian worldview, and they bear testimony to it without even realizing it. Just take the concept of more evolved, and this is something that Rogin was playing off of. Well, there is no living thing right now that exists. Even if evolution is true as an explanation of how life developed, there is no thing that is any more evolved than anything else. Everything has evolved exactly the same amount to accomplish the end of being able to effectively get its genes in the next generation. So why do people say things like that? Because they understand something is fundamentally different about human beings. And it's not physical, it's qualitative, it's not quantitative, it's qualitative. And that's what he was getting at. And I thought west did. Did just a magnificent job in just trafficking in that conversation. But back to your book stuff, When Culture Hates you. I mean, this is the conflict of worldviews that we're talking about here. And even Joe Rogan, he can see things that are true about the world that fit in with the Christian worldview so well. At the same time, there's this animosity. There's this desire to be the one in charge, to be the one that calls the shots. We want to be the potter, not the clay. Okay, so let's talk about the potter for a moment. Part of what you develop, there are biblical truths about God that need to be in place for us to have the proper foundation to answer the questions about the common good.

[B]

Yeah, I want to add something really fast to what you just said because it's so important. There's a reason why the book is called When Culture Hates you, not Culture Hates you all the Time for everything. Culture doesn't hate us for everything that we say and do as Christians. I give the example in the first chapter about, you know, if you're advocating publicly in some way for your local soup kitchen, no one's gonna hate you for that. They're gonna say, good job, Christians. That's exactly what you should be doing. Stick with the soup kitchen. That's great. You know, go serve. Go serve the homeless. Wonderful. Because there are things that, like, you're saying that the culture is going to get right. Even fallen man can say, yes, we should help people, and they're going to have that in common with us. But in the current culture, at whatever period you're talking about in history, if what Christians believe is going to run contrary to what the popular consensus is, the popular moral consensus about something, that's when the culture is going to hate you. That is when they're going to exhibit this kind of hostility. So it's not that they hate us for everything. It's that they hate us for some very specific good distinction.

[A]

I, I Now that makes sense of a note I took that I couldn't make sense of since I wrote it down two months ago and it said soup kitchen slash abortion clinic. Yeah, but that's what you're getting at. Soup kitchen's fine. Complaining or objecting to abortion clinics, that's off the, that's off the reservation for them.

[B]

Right. And we all intuitively know that in the book, I introduce the soup kitchen scenario and then say, now, let's say that you're out with a group advocating for a local pro life pregnancy center. Now you, I don't have to tell you that you're going to exhibit that. You're going to have culture exhibit hostility toward you for that. We all know that intuitively.

[A]

That's when culture hates you.

[B]

That's when culture hates you. And when culture does, we need to understand it. But to answer your question before that, about what do we have to know about God, I go through several different things. But I think the number one thing that we as Christians have to get back to, and this is the most basic thing of all, is that our God is a God who has revealed Himself. He has revealed himself through nature. Obviously we know that, but also through His Word. And so when we're trying to come up with an answer to the kinds of issues that we're talking about today and we're trying to understand them, a lot of Christians don't actually go to the Bible to form their moral view. In fact, researchers have looked at this, and the majority of Christians will actually agree with the statement that most of their. And I'm going to word it wrong, because I don't, I don't know the exact phrasing. But most of their trusted moral advice comes from friends and family. How does this happen? How does this happen that Christians would see a statement like that and say, yes, most of my, you know, advice about what's morally right or wrong comes from friends and family. It's outrageous. I mean, we have the God of the universe who created and sustained everything. He's given us a book, and he's revealed what's true about reality on the things that we need to know. And we're not overwhelmingly, as the body of Christ today, going to that book to form our understanding.

[A]

Well, it's the power of socialization. You know, these are the people that mean something to us. And that's lots of times the voice we're going to follow instead of following the Lord, especially when those voices sound more attractive to us than what God has to say and maybe are less troublesome.

[B]

Right, exactly. And, and so I, I think that's the number one thing that, that Christians have to get back to is just understanding that the Bible is God's Word. And if, and I keep saying, you know, if a Christian doesn't understand why we have good reason to believe that's true, then they really need to get back to that fundamental level. First, some basic apologetics to understand that, because then you'll have the conviction of knowing that when you stand up for these difficult positions, they're actually positions that are rooted in God himself. If you don't have that conviction in the first place. You're not going to get out there in a hostile culture.

[A]

Well, you're also going to get a different definition of love and justice from God's perspective than you are from the culture's perspective. And this seems to be a major point of conflict right now.

[B]

Yes, absolutely. Those are the next couple of points in the book, setting up about who God is and how we need to define God in order to understand these issues correctly. God is love and defines love. Love and God is just and defines justice. These two points alone will shape so much of the discussion that we have today, because the word love especially gets thrown around so much. People hear the word love and they're accused of not being loving. And Christians say, wow, I don't want to be unloving and I don't, you know, I don't want to be harmful. I want. And I want to be helpful to people. All these words come along, and yet we're not using what God says to define them. Just because someone tells you that you're not being loving doesn't mean you actually are. A lot of times being loving means wanting God's best for people, even when it's not what they want for themselves. That's the hardest thing to do. They're going to hate you for it, they're going to hate you for it, but you're actually being loving according to God's standards.

[A]

The portion of First Corinthians 13 comes to mind when we're talking about this is love does not rejoice in unrighteousness. And it's just amazing to me how that word has been so twisted. In fact, it is so effectively twisted that now a slogan in favor of some things that are certainly not loving is advanced just by a repetition of the word love. Love is love. Well, love is love. There you go. Like, oh, now I get it. Oh, I was mistaken in my application, but it appeals to so many people. That word has so much power, and it ought to. But when it's wrongly understood and it creates damage, destruction. I gave a talk many years ago, probably 40 years ago, called Love is a Lie or When Love is a Lie. And this is an example of it, when love is used as a justification for things that are just plain evil, wrong, destructive, and yet this is a point of conflict with Christianity and the culture. I almost said Christians, but that's not always the case because Christians sometimes are wooed over by these ideas. And the same thing is true of justice, right?

[B]

Yeah, it's the same thing, you know, justice is about making right that which is wrong. And anytime you're talking about categories of right and wrong, that requires a standard. And anytime Christians need a standard, we should be using God as our standard. So if you think about the very concept of justice being about making things right that are wrong according to a standard defined by God, and then that should tell us right away if culture is not looking to God as their standard, which of course they're not going to. Any standard you use other than God to define justice is going to get you to the wrong place. Sometimes it might line up, for example, talking about the soup kitchen, you know, people might recognize, yes, it's the loving thing to do to help people who need food, who need a place to stay. These kinds of things, sometimes they will align not because they're actually using God as their standard, but because whatever standard it is that they're using will lead them sometimes to that same conclusion. But a lot of times the standard that they're using will lead them to a vastly different kind of conclusion. And this is how we get concepts in our culture today like reproductive justice, which is a euphemism for abortion, this idea that women should have the right to kill a preborn baby, because that is justice, well, that's justice according to a very different standard. That's justice according to the standard of the social binary based in neo Marxist ideas and critical theory that men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed, and therefore it is unjust for men to in society to be able to tell women what they can or cannot do with their bodies. When you use the wrong standard, you're going to get wrong ideas of justice. And even if the culture calls it justice, it's not actual justice according to God's standards.

[A]

The use of language is such a key factor here. And someone once said if you get to define the words, then you control the argument or something like that. But it's so true. And the left really knows, let's just the outside world in general really knows how to use language in that kind of way. They're very good at it. What you're talking about, though, is when you talk about the common good, obviously this is going to have ramifications for action in the culture, not just in the micro, but in the macro as well. Things that have to do with public policy. Okay, and you do talk about that. I mean, there's. This is an activist book in many ways, and I don't mean political activist book, but it has ramifications in that area. And you talk about that in the book. Tell us a little bit about that.

[B]

Right. So the way that I phrase that is the third chapter is called when the Common Good is Political. So the common good and all of these ideas and things that we should be concerned with as Christians, it's not always political in nature. There are a lot of other things that can be going on that we're advocating for locally or with our local schools, things like that, that. But like you say, it often overlaps with political things. And it's a big dirty P word. Right. For a lot of Christians, they don't want to get quote, unquote political. So what I try to do in that chapter is take everyone into a step back where hopefully we can all agree on something. Let's put the baggage down and just understand what does that word even mean. Can we just get to a basic definition? And politics is just the way that people living in communities make decisions about how they're going to live together. That's all it is. So when you strip away all the baggage that people sometimes import to the conversation, I think most people are going to hear that definition go, okay, yeah, I think Christians should be involved in that. You know, Christians have lived under different forms of government throughout history. We're talking about today in a constitutional republic in America. What does that look like? If we are citizens of this country and we have the opportunity to influence our governing structure through our voting and other ways to. To make and enforce laws that promote the common good, that promote God's actual good for people, of course we should take advantage of that opportunity. Now, just because we have the right in a society in which we live doesn't necessarily mean that we should be doing that. We'd have to look to the Bible to see is there some reason why we should not be engaged in those activities. But when you go to Scripture, you see there's nothing forbidden about that. In fact, you see throughout the Old Testament, for example, that God is very upset with nations for not practicing righteousness. Both the nation of Israel and the surrounding nations, it's not even just asked about Israel. You even get him. You know, you see Daniel, for example, who's talking to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon and and basically telling him, hey, break off your sins by practicing righteousness and having mercy. So there's this expectation that we can see running throughout the Bible that God does care about the moral health of societies. And we have Romans 13:1:7 that speaks to the fact that all authority is from God and that the civil rulers are God's servants to promote what's good and restrain what's evil. So at the very most basic level, yes, there are going to be disagreements that arise once we go from the basic level. But at the basic level, we should be able to all agree that if you have the opportunity to advocate for what is actually truly good and advocate against what is evil in society, that Christians should take that opportunity.

[A]

Well, I think of this verse in Proverbs 3, I think is where it's located. And it says something like, don't withhold good from them to whom it is due when it's in your power to do it. And this is something that your point about the Bible is really good, but something a lot of folks don't understand or haven't taken into consideration. They think, well, there's not that much pointing in this direction. Look it, they didn't have suffrage. We do. They didn't have the right to participate in the political process. We do so we have an opportunity. That's how slavery got ended. It is the involvement that good people had to end something that was evil. And so that's when I think of not withholding the good to them to whom it is due when you have the power to do it. Of course, what the other side is going to object to is us forcing our views on them somehow through the political process. You address that, I think, in the book.

[B]

Book, right. So I have a chapter that covers objections that, that often come up about this. And you're right, one of the most common ones is, you know, oh, you're just imposing your values on, on us. And it's important to understand that there's nothing that's special about Christians advocating for our views when it comes to public policy. That's just the nature of public policy itself. Any kind of public policy involves one group, one group's views, imposing their views on another group. So in a constitutional republic, we all have the right to advocate for what we believe. It doesn't mean, if you're coming to it, know if my rationale is, well, this is my religious belief, so I'm bringing it to bear. We would be psychologically profiling people all day in the book if we were looking to see, well, what was your motivation? Was it religiously motivated? Well, you can't use that to, you know, in, in your voting. It doesn't work that way. And yet we're always told, hey, you know, you're imposing your views on us because they think that somehow Christians are different that, you know, oh, if you have a religious rationale in some way, then that's problematic. But if that were the case, then we shouldn't be able to advocate against a murder either because most religions would that murder is wrong. So it doesn't hold up logically, doesn't hold up even from a civic sense. And you mentioned slavery and that kind of ties back to this because I use something in the book called what I call the slavery test. So when you hear an objection to political involvement, something like, hey, Christians shouldn't be involved in politics because you're imposing your views on other people, try it out by saying this first. Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because we shouldn't have imposed our values on others. We all hear that. We go, well, no, because slavery was an evil institution in America that needed to be eradicated. We don't say, well, we don't want to, you know, we want to just kind of sit back and we don't want to impose our values on others. No, we look back to with an eye toward history and we condemn the people who didn't see it at the time. And we say, yes, absolutely, praise the Lord that there were people who were standing up and saying that this is wrong. They weren't afraid to impose that view on others because it was the objectively right, right thing to do. And you can do that with all kinds of objections. Another one is, you know, Christians shouldn't have worked to end slavery because we shouldn't have sought power. You know, it's a common objection today. It doesn't hold up. Or we shouldn't have end, worked to end slavery because it would harm our witness. No, you know, or because it would cause divisions in the church. It did cause divisions in the church at the time. And we still look back and say it's good that it caused the division because right, division is what we want. No, not getting rid of all divisions completely. So the slavery test, I think is a very powerful way of looking at these objections to Christian political involvement to start to see through these mantras, these phrases that people say that really don't hold up biblically or logically even.

[A]

Well, part of the point is to show, I think that this is, it's not really a two way street here, it's a one way street. And I think of the statement, where did I hear this? I don't know. What's mine is mine and what yours is mine too. Because they don't want Christians involved in politics. If Christians are advocating against them. But when Christians are advocating in favor of the things that they agree with, they have no concern at all.

[B]

Right? That's why the progressive Christians aren't hated. Culture doesn't hate progressive Christians because their political views overwhelmingly line up with progressive values. And so they don't hate Christians. There's a article that I mentioned in the book from the New York Times by a writer named Nicholas Kristof. And it said something like, you know, know, Hallelujah, Progressive Christians arise. Something like that. I'm forgetting the exact title of it. And he was basically celebrating that there were more and more progressive Christians that were in government. But can you imagine any headline ever coming through the New York Times that said something the opposite? Hallelujah, More conservative Christians are coming into government. You know, that's laughable. You know, you would never see that in the New York Times. So we can celebrate any kind of progressive Christian who's holding to the popular progressive values on things like abortion and gender and sexual. But conservative values that run contrary to the popular moral consensus, those are never going to be celebrated.

[A]

So this brings to me up to me the issue of so called Christian nationalism. And I say so called because I think it's a very misleading title. And I will say I made a note about this, read it again, and it rings true for me. Your chapter on Christian nationalism is worth the price of the book. It is so good because it's so enlightening. And I think in that area there is massive amount of confusion. Can you give us a kind of a quick tutorial on the issue of Christian nationalism? First, do your best to explain what that is and why is it so troublesome to so many people that it's become almost like a social movement of sorts? Not Christian nationalism, but the resistance to Christian nationalism?

[B]

Sure. So the title of this chapter is Dangerous Christian Nationalism the View from Mainstream Media. And so because this is part of the section of the book, talking about the different issues that were hated on in Christian nationalism is one of them where there's just this strong disdain. And I'm writing about it specifically from the perspective of mainstream media because that is who has really promoted the idea that there is this pervasive, theocratic, anti democratic, dangerous movement called Christian nationalism. The problem with defining it is that it completely depends on who you ask what Christian nationalism is. If you ask a hundred people, you're going to get a hundred different ideas. So if anyone's ever asking something about, oh, well, how do you feel about Christian nationalism? You got to bring out the tactics, the Greg Cokel tactics and say, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by Christian nationalism? Because depending on what someone says, I may or may not agree with you, but I can tell you from the perspective of mainstream media how they define it, even though they're never actually doing a definition on their own. So what I did was there are hundreds of thousands of search results. If you go on Google and look up Christian nationalism, you're never going to see or rarely going to see anyone take the time to define what they're saying. But what I did is survey hundreds of pieces of content and basically looked where they're talking about Christian nationalism and they're not actually defining it. If you look at the article itself or you watch the video itself, what are they using as the examples? Because that tells you implicitly how they're defining it. And what you see is that overwhelmingly in the vast majority of cases you are called a Christian nationalist. If you're advocating for conservative values that are biblically based on it's everything we just talked about. It's, it's considered dangerous and in an imposition of values because you are supposedly doing something that is problematic within a democracy. But like we talked about, if you're advocating for your views, regardless of your motivation, your rationale, whether it's biblically based or based on the Book of Mormon, whatever it is, all of that is consistent with our democracy. It is using the democracy exactly as it's intended to function. So it's not not anti democratic in any way. It's also not theocratic. So this is a term that's closely tied up with it. A theocracy is a form of government in which you're actually recognizing officially a deity. Very few people are out there saying that that is what they're advocating for. So the rhetoric is very powerful. And you'll see a lot of this online especially. But at the end of the day it's just Christian nationalism. When people are advocating for conservative values that are aren't popular today.

[A]

So this is kind of a sophisticated ad hominem scare word, so to speak. These people are bad for advocating for their views. We're going to call them Christian nationalists. And that really sounds dangerous, but there's no clear characterization of what that amounts to except conservative Christian political views. Does that be a fair way of summing it up?

[B]

Up right. In the vast majority of cases now some there are. I actually dig into a couple of major research studies in that chapter, which I won't get into the details of. People can see the book to get into that. But even the way that the researchers lay out the questions, they use these highly ambiguous statements and if you end up agreeing with them, they label you as a Christian nationalist for research purposes. But they're so ambiguous that anyone who's a conservative Christian would probably agree with it. And the first place, you know, something like law should be based on Christian values. Well, if you're a Christian and you're advocating for what is good as well.

[A]

We just lost Natasha. All right. We had a little technical difficulty there, but I think we had it worked out. Thank you, Kyle. And we were talking about Christian nationalism and I think where we were at was just this whole idea that, that what Christian nationalism turns out to be is a stand in phrase in the majority of to describe conservative Christians who are trying to have an impact on their culture for Christ. Is that a fair way of summarizing?

[B]

Yeah, I think that's a fair way of summarizing it for sure. And you know, it's interesting because actually if you get into, you know, on X, Twitter, whatever we want to call it today, there are all kinds of discussions that are going on in house amongst some Christians about some of the theological and you know, how should you set up a society and thinking about, you know, in a theoretical case, what would that look like? That is not what the mainstream media is concerned about, funny enough. I mean, you would think that if they actually got into those conversations, they'd be very concerned because in some of those cases that's they're advocating for actually setting up some kind of official status for Christianity. For example, what they're talking about though, when you look at the actual content, they're not even talking about that stuff, even though that's what you would think they'd be concerned about. They'll say, for example, they'll have an article about terrifying Christian nationalism when, when you read the example, it'll be something about, you know, Christians advocating for pro life bills that are going to take away women's rights, that we're advocating for what they call anti trans bills, which from a Christian perspective are actually pro the good of trans people. And so you see these examples and you say, okay, well this is what they mean by Christian nationalism. And via that really all they're saying is that Christians are bringing their biblical values into the public square and trying to impose them on others.

[A]

Of course the. There is no such thing as progressive Christian nationalism, is there? No concern there.

[B]

It only goes one way. Only goes one way. If you bring your faith into the matter. And you're a progressive Christian and you're going to go along with the progressive consensus, that's totally fine. But you're a Christian nationalist. We have a special category for you if you're advocating for conservative values.

[A]

Yeah. So what's. Yours is mine with mine in mind. And yours is mine too. Back to that again. So let's. We're a little tight on time here, but there's a couple of things that I want to get to, and we've already made some. I think we're going to skip the pro choice issue right now. You go into detail on how to promote the common good in that particular area. I am concerned, though, about the transgender issues and the sexual revolution. You also have a whole chapter on social justice, which is great. But one of the things that shook me up the most is the chapter that you had on sexuality, and it's titled Hateful Bigots. You also have another one that's similar to that, that's cruel rights deniers, and that has to do with transgenderism. Let's just talk about those issues a little bit. In particular, the hateful bigot, the sexual revolution part, because this was one of the biggest eye openers to me. I'm aware of some of the things that are going on. And look at. I'm a child of the 50s and the 60s. I was graduated from High School 68. The whole explosion of the sexual revolution. And now we're facing something entirely different. Though it sounds similar, it just sounds like more freedom. Can you talk to us a little bit about what's going on in the so called sexual revolution area right now?

[B]

Sure. So what I talk about in that chapter very specifically is that a subset of activists from the LGBTQ community, and I, and I do mean a subset. This is not to say everyone is advocating for this, this, but a subset are actually advocating for the sexual liberation of children. So this is very different than in the past where there was a movement toward getting more acceptance among children to be, you know, quote, unquote, tolerant and accepting of the LGBTQ community and different kinds of, you know, sexualities. And we. I think every Christian has seen how this has come into children's cartoons, for example, on the books that are in schools. I mean, we, we've seen this and we know that there's a movement toward getting these things in front of kids, but I think most Christians assume that that's just trying to get more acceptance from an early age. This issue I'm talking about in the chapter is very different than just Seeking acceptance. This is about a group of activists who actually want to remove any kind of age limits from, from advocating for children to have sexual pleasure. So they're basically, they're looking to get rid of the concept of childhood innocence. If you Google the, the phrase childhood innocence and queer theory, what you'll see is several academ of academic papers and conversations around this that childhood innocence is just this social construct. It has no basis in reality. This idea that, yeah, children should not be sexually active, that's just something society has come up with. But because children are fundamentally sexual beings, thank you to Freud, you know, that means that from a young age they should be able to have sexual pleasure themselves. It's very disturbing. It's the, it's the most disturbing thing that I have to talk about and that I wrote about. And it's extremely distinct, dark, but. But it's just the reality. And it's as soon as you start. And this comes out of queer theory and there's a lot that led into queer theory, but that's the most recent kind of iteration of this sexual revolution. But queer theory is all about rejecting all norms around gender and sexuality. It's getting rid of any kind of categories of a male and female heterosexual homosexual is just saying get rid of it all. And when you do get rid of all those norms, norms, then what you end up with is people saying, well, we also have to get rid of any norms around age that childhood innocence, that's just not something that's real. And children as sexual beings should be able to participate sexually as well.

[A]

So that was an epiphany for me when I read your work because I have not delved at all into queer theory. And what I thought was this is just kind of a sophisticated philosophical way of characterizing pro gay sociology or something like that. But it's actually nothing like that. Well, not relieve. It's not pro gay. It's anti any restriction of any kind at any age in any way.

[B]

That's right. It's anti all norms, all norms. Getting rid of any kind of norm or expectation around gender and sexuality. And you're exactly right. I think most people hear that term queer theory and they think of queer in terms of gay, as those terms have been used, used in a similar sense in the past. But queer theory is a very, very specific academic discipline. I use that term loosely, but it's an academic discipline around this idea of rejecting all norms of gender and sexuality.

[A]

So this is how of course, when you have that idea taking root, it has the consequences with children and age that you just mentioned. But of course, it has obvious application to transgenderism, because any resistance to transgenderism is going to be a norm pertaining to sexuality that someone is trying to enforce in society in some way. Even if we're not talking legally, we are talking about ideology. That's oppression by ideology. That's part of critical theory. Just that you hold an opposing view regarding transgender, then you are violating this standard. Something like that. Like that.

[B]

Well, well, it's interesting because with transgenderism, if you think about it, to. To have transgenderism as a reality that assumes that there are actual categories of male and female, right? You can't. How can you be transgender if there aren't actually two genders? So it's actually in. In conflict with queer theory, because queer theory is the saying that there. There is no such thing as the male and female, that, you know, there should be no norms around this at all. And therefore that's actually in conflict with transgender.

[A]

So how does this actually play out among the left? Because when you are trying to obliterate all distinctions, then women's rights are gone, because that implies that there is such a thing as a woman that should be respected as a woman in the distribution of rights, or the binary is rejected. But if you reject the binary, then, well, you get all kinds of different genders. But if you are transgender, that kind of trades on binary sexuality. A man and a woman's body, a woman in a man's body. So that just blows the whole thing out of the water. It seems to me it does.

[B]

There are several different movements on the left that absolutely conflict. Probably the most well known is that there are a lot of feminists who reject transgenderism, where, you know, trans exclusionary radical feminists, I think, is the term TERFs. You know, J.K. rowling would be an example of that. As someone who is a feminist and speaking out against the transgender movement. And so you have these movements that don't work together, where some. Some feminists, not all of them, but some feminists don't accept that men can become women. And they think that that is radically inconsistent with their own movement of feminism. So at the end of the day, Greg, it's all about this fundamental distinction that I draw in faithfully different, which is that you're either looking to God as your authority or you're looking to your.

[A]

Yourself, right?

[B]

And if you're looking to yourself as the authority, which you are on the left with all these progressive movements, at some point you're going to have a lot of Conflicts. It's all going to contradict because you have all these people looking to themselves about what's true about reality, getting a lot of different ideas about it. Of course it's going to conflict. It makes total sense when you think of it from a worldview perspective.

[A]

You know what? You. You were careful to qualify the queer theory and the bizarre ramifications of the that as a subset. But I'll tell you what my concern about subsets are, and it goes back to something Francis Schaeffer said many, many years ago that has stuck with me and it has proven to be true. And what he said was, what is unthinkable yesterday is thinkable today and ordinary and commonplace tomorrow. So he's talking of a kind of a. Like a velocitizing. You know, when you get in a car and you go on the freeway and you go from 35 to 65, it feels like you're going fast for about three minutes or two minutes, and then you're not. You're with everybody else. So you step on it, you crank it up to 80, and you go, now I'm moving. And then kind of feels normal. You don't realize how fast you're going because you're velocitized. And it just strikes me that this kind of thing is happening in culture. And he said that in the 80s, and I've seen all kinds of examples of that playing out. And so when I read your book and I learn about the way some of these ideas are really gaining a hold of the culture, and especially many of the gatekeepers of culture, and I'm thinking particularly of Title IX stuff. I'm not Title ix, but queer theory stuff that frightens me because it may be a subset on the fringe today, but it doesn't mean it's going to be tomorrow. And there are so many things that are ordinary and commonplace to us in the moment that 20 years ago, no one would have even countenanced. I remember one talk show host talking about this. I think it was on a Bill Maher show. And he said something about people believing that men. Men could get pregnant. And everybody just about laughed him off the stage because this was such a bizarre idea. No one would ever believe that. But within a year, less than a year, that statement was leftist orthodoxy that men can get pregnant. And so my concern partly here is, and this is one of the reasons I'm so happy for you, the books that you write, including the more recent one when Culture Hates you, it's right on the cutting edge things don't stay the same. You accept one thing as, okay, go along with that a little bit. It's like the camel gets his nose under the tent kind of deal. Little by little by little. Pretty soon the camel's all in the tent. And that's what. I think that your book is so helpful, though, because it gives us a warning about what's not just on the fringe, but what in many cases is mainstream stream. And you tell Christians how to deal with that, you help them to understand it, then you have your action guides as an important part of your book. There's so much more we could talk about. I got 30 seconds left, but 20 now. We can go more. Two more minutes. Okay. Amy just said we can make up the time we lost. I don't know if you have a response or a reflection. We're going two minutes longer. Right. Okay. All right. So a reflection on the concern that I just raised about being velocitized, but it seems to me that's a huge concern.

[B]

No, I agree completely. I think that it's easy to assume that these kinds of things, when you hear them, are so extreme and so crazy, that we're not, you know. Well, okay, it's just a tiny number of activists out there, but in that chapter, and we don't have time to get into it now. I know, but I talk about Drag Queen Story Hour, for example, which is something that Christians realize, for the most part, this is a problematic thing because you have these guys dressed up in female clothing and they're dancing around, and there have been a lot of concerns come up about things that have happened at those. But still, most people don't understand that the concerns go deeper. And I talk about in that chapter, I reference all the sources of this. You can look at it yourself. But there are academic papers that have been written on Drag Queen Story Hour and what they're actually trying to accomplish. And it is rooted in queer theory. It is rooted in the idea that there should not be these norms of gender and sexuality. So it's about far more than what people realize. But they're trying to make it mainstream so that they can come in on the underside and start to pull in these ideas. And that's how you get what you're saying, where people don't realize what's going on, but then it picks up faster and faster. You get used to it. And before you know it, people start to accept the idea that, well, children, you know, children are sexual beings. It's only a few steps away from that. With some of the, the actions that, that they're taking right now.

[A]

So it's not just that drag queens are okay. The message is anything's okay. Anything. That's the subset. And I think some people are embracing the drag queen idea because they're not offended by the notion of drag queen, but they don't realize the real message that's being communicated is there are no boundaries at all. So there shouldn't be boundaries here nor anywhere else. And the shot at children, I mean, it's especially, what's the word I'm looking at, like sneaky and evil. I can't find the right word now. But it's especially that because of the children that are involved, that you have impressionable young people. And to remove the kind of protection that we as parents are supposed to be providing for them, sexual protection, so that we're guarding their innocence. This, to me, it's as bad as it can get when it comes to family. Anyway, Natasha, now my clock is ticking down here. You've been great to talk to. The book is fabulous. When Culture Hates You. Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square. I love this book, but I love all your books. So thanks so much for joining us.

[B]

Thank you so much, Greg.

[A]

All right, friends, that's it for this hour. Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason. Give him heaven, friends. Bye bye now.

[B]

Sam, it.