How to Navigate the Hate Against Christians

How to navigate the hate against Christians. That is the topic we'll discuss today on the Christian Worldview radio program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

I'm David Wheaton, the host. Christian Worldview is a listener-supported radio program. Our website is thechristianworldview.org, and the rest of our contact information will be given throughout today's program.

As always, thank you for your notes of encouragement, financial support, and lifting us up in prayer. In speaking to his disciples, Jesus used strong language to describe the reaction the unbelieving world would have to his followers. He said in John chapter 15, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world because of this, the world hates you.

Not dislikes you, or misunderstands you, or is confused by you, but hates you. So why does the world hate believers? Well, Jesus answers that question in John chapter 3, where he said, for everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light lest his deeds be exposed. In other words, the light of Christ is in every true believer, and a sanctified life convicts unbelievers of their sin and their alienation from God. Even though the political winds have changed recently in this country, the spiritual winds will always be in the face of Christians.

So how can believers obey their call to be salt and light, a preservative to what honors God, and a light to the way of salvation? How do we avoid passivity, in other words, removing ourselves from engagement in society, but rather faithfully be an ambassador for Christ? Our guest today is Natasha Crane, the author of a new book in our new featured resource titled, When Culture Hates You, Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square. She writes that the purpose of her book is to give Christ followers the crucial understanding required to confidently advocate for righteousness in today's increasingly dark and hostile culture. After laying the theological foundation for engagement in the first part of the book, she addresses five hot-button issues of our day that Christians must know how to respond to. Later in the program, we'll hear part two of the interview with Pastor Jamie Bambrick, editor-in-chief of Clear Truth Media, on how mis-prioritized love has contributed to the decline of Western civilization.

But first, let's hear from Natasha Crane about how to navigate the hate. Natasha, so good to have you on the Christian Worldview radio program today for the first time, and so why don't you tell us about your background, how you became a follower of Christ, and what your life is like now. Well thanks, it's great to be here with you. So I grew up in a Christian home, so I'm one of those people who doesn't have the big moment to look back to and say it was exactly this day that I became a follower of Christ that I know that I was learning about and knowing Jesus from a very young age. But I would say I really didn't start taking my faith as seriously as it should have been taken until I had kids. As with a lot of new parents, you start to really think about what you believe and why and how you're going to raise your kids, and so I realized I need to take this a lot more seriously. So in the process of doing that, I had three kids who were three and under at the time, and I decided to start a blog. I just wanted to write a blog about what we were starting to do to raise our young kids to know and love the Lord, very young kids at that point. I called it Christian Mom Thoughts, didn't think much of it, and just started writing about little things.

As the blog grew in popularity, people were sharing it on social media, it started bringing skeptics to my website. I started getting comments like, you are indoctrinating your kids, and there's no evidence that God exists. Science has put God out of a job. The Bible's filled with errors and contradictions.

There's no evidence that Jesus even existed as a person in history. I got comment after comment, and I realized I've been a Christian my whole life, and yet I really don't know how to answer these questions very specifically at all. I realized my kids are growing up in a completely different world than the one in which I grew up, and so that sent me into a really intense reading journey. I discovered what's called apologetics, which is how do you make a case for and defend the truth of Christianity, read tons and tons of books, and then turned my blog into a place where I was equipping other Christian parents with that knowledge, so basically saying, hey, you might not know how to answer this, but these are the kinds of things that people are saying out there, and here's how we can talk about them with our kids. After a while, I had a publisher reach out to me and say, hey, what do you think about taking maybe 40 of these kinds of questions that you've been talking about and coming across and writing a book with just easy to understand chapters designed for parents?

That's what I did. It became my first book, Keeping Your Kids on God's Side, and continued writing after that. I wrote two more apologetics books for parents, and then I've now written two books on engaging with cultural issues for the broader body of Christ, not just for parents, but obviously still relevant to parents. I have three kids who are now teenagers.

I have two 16-year-olds and a 14-year-old, and I'm married and live in Southern California. You wrote in an article that is publishing in the Christian Review Journal this month in February 2025 about, you called it a vibe shift that is taking place in this country with the election of Donald Trump. Is this a vibe shift that is likely to change back with a different political win two or four years from now? Yeah, I think it's a really good question because this term, the vibe shift, has been used by a lot of people to kind of suggest things are different.

I think we've all seen that lately. I mean, we all feel that it's suddenly okay to say things out loud that maybe even a few months ago people, especially Christians, did not feel comfortable saying out loud. Just as one example, you see some of the executive orders around keeping biological categories of sex rather than giving into gender ideology and all of the implications of that. That's a very positive thing from a Christian perspective, and we should absolutely celebrate when we see that that is moving in that direction for now. What I talk about in that article is that at the end of the day, it's not that these things have really changed in some fundamental way in people's hearts. It's not that there was this giant shift in conviction, as you put it, that now people are really looking to God as the designer of biological sex and we no longer can separate gender from sex.

We're not seeing that. It's just that because there is a new administration in place that is going along with that particular position that happens to align with a biblical view on that issue today, now we're seeing that there's something to celebrate, but we have to be very cautious in that and understand it's not objectively rooted to a biblical view that this happened. It was something that we can celebrate, like I said, is something that we absolutely should be happy about, but we have to continue to understand we need to be courageous in advocating for what is right in society. That's one thing that is good, that has happened, but it doesn't mean everyone suddenly changed their convictions.

Celebrate what's good while realizing we still have a lot of work to do in culture with hearts and minds. So Natasha Crane is our guest today here on the Christian worldview. Now, the title of your book is strong, When Culture Hates You. Hate is, of course, a really strong word, and I would say in America that American society or American culture hasn't always hated Christians in this country. There was so much Christian influence in the founding of our country and for even the decades and centuries that followed. This has been a more recent, maybe the last 60 years, since the 60s or 70s.

Maybe you could clarify that. But what were some of the dominoes, do you think, in this country that led to biblical Christians or biblical Christianity being resented if not hated? You know, I would go back to Scripture first and foremost to see why Jesus said we would be hated, because then that's going to give us a clue to answer your question. Jesus said to His disciples, if the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

So what does He tell us there? If you're of the world, the world is going to love you as its own. And in Scripture, to be of the world means to be under the governing rule of Satan. Quite literally, you are a slave to sin, and there are two kinds of people in the world, those who are under the governing rule of Satan and those who are children of God, who are slaves to righteousness. And so Scripture makes clear that if you are a slave to sin, you are going to hate those who are practicing righteousness because you are shining light on the works of darkness.

You are literally shining light on what people are doing that is evil. Of course, they're going to hate that. Ultimately, they hate God. It's God that they hate.

It's not the messengers directly, but they hate the messengers of God because we're sharing His truth. So when we understand that that's the context here, that there are these two groups of people in the world, theologically speaking, then we can come back and say, well, what's going on in America today? Well, what we've seen is that the percent of people who hold to a biblical worldview, seeing reality primarily through the lens of what the Bible teaches, has dropped precipitously in the last 25 years.

Dr. George Barna has done a lot of this research. He's now at Arizona Christian University, and you can see the studies that they've done there. But what you find is that overwhelmingly, even though there was such the strong founding in Christian values and by Christians, this over time has changed a lot because fewer and fewer people are holding to biblical truth. There were a lot of nominal Christians in the last century, for sure. But during that time, you saw people dropping off in terms of actually holding to the doctrinal tenets of Christianity.

So where does that leave us? That leaves us today realizing that there are very, very few people in America, about 4%, according to Dr. George Barna and the most recent research about worldviews, about 4% of people have a biblical worldview in our country. If that's the case, and we know that those who are practicing evil are going to hate those who are children of God, who hold a biblical worldview and advocate for what's right, then the fewer there are of Christians, the more resentment there's going to be in this country. So yes, over time, there's been increasing resentment because there have been fewer and fewer Christians. And Jesus said that this is what happens when Christians are advocating for righteousness.

You said in your book, and I think you just wrote a recent column about this, too, in light of the Super Bowl, and this He Gets Us campaign was aired again this year in the Super Bowl. It's about to make Jesus more relatable. Last year was about Jesus is not a hater, but He's a foot washer. And this year in Super Bowl was about Jesus is a model of greatness, because He serves others. Someone's pictured in pushing a car out of the snow or donating an organ and another woman saving a woman from a car accident.

Of course, these are all kind things to do. But good deeds to the exclusion of the hard truths about Jesus, like He's the only way to be saved, are the main emphases of professing Christians who advocate for more liberal causes. Why don't they experience the hate of society like theologically conservative Christians do? Progressive Christians are those who generally reject the authority and inspiration of Scripture. So rather than recognizing Scripture as God's authoritative, inspired truth for all time, as an evangelical biblical Christian would, they see it as man's best ideas about God over time, and that we can evolve in our understanding of truth. So right there, that's going to tell you a fundamental difference between the two types of Christians, because you have a different source for truth. So what ends up happening is that if you don't have the Bible as your objective source for truth, if you're going to be a, quote unquote, progressive Christian, you're going to pick and choose whatever beliefs you want from the Bible, whatever you think makes Jesus into the person that you think He is. And what happens is that that ends up looking a lot like culture's version of Jesus. And so if you think back to what I said about why Jesus said we would be hated, we're hated when we believe things that don't line up with the authority of the self in the world, that when you're a slave to sin, you're ultimately going after your own will and desires rather than going after God's will and desires.

And so it ends up looking just like the culture. So progressive Christians are really rarely hated by non-Christians because they believe pretty much the exact same things that the secular culture around them believes. There's no conflict with the popular moral consensus. So if there's no conflict with it, there's nothing to hate.

You will just like the world. And so that's why a progressive Christian is not going to be hated in the same way. Elder Smith Natasha Crane, the author of When Culture Hates You, is our guest today. Frank Turek, the apologist, wrote the foreword for your book, and he says something interesting.

He's actually quoting what you had said in one of your previous books titled Faithfully Different. He said about you, Natasha revealed how modern secular people tend to think about life and how to live it. Here's how they think about it. They believe that feelings are the ultimate guide, happiness is the ultimate goal, judging is the ultimate sin, and God is the ultimate guess, like whether He exists or not. How is that helpful to understand how secular people think? Natasha Crane Well, I think it's really important that as Christians that we understand where other people are coming from before we try to just dump truth onto them, right? We want to share truth, but we want to share it as effectively as we can.

And one of the best things that you can do is seek understanding to see where people are coming from before we try to share with them. So in Faithfully Different, my last book, actually, I give what I call the four tenets of secularism, and those are the ones that you just read there. And the four tenets of secularism really come back to this idea that the secular worldview is all about the authority of the self. I'm going to look to myself to determine what is good or bad, right or wrong, harmful or helpful. That is the secular worldview. And that is, of course, different than a Christian biblical worldview in that we're looking to the authority of God to determine these things about what is good and bad and right and wrong and so on.

And so when you have that, then you start to realize that if everyone in culture around you is all about the authority of the self, they're actually ironically going to start thinking a lot alike. And so when we start to see things like the He Gets Us ads, for example, that we were talking about, you see exactly that mentality that they're trying to appeal to people's ideas about Jesus that the commercial asks, what is greatness really about? I might be getting the exact wording there off, but in greatness, according to this ad, was pushing the car out of the snow and helping people. But Jesus wasn't here to tell us that we're great. I mean, this completely misses the message of Jesus and the gospel.

It's not about that we're great. We do good works to glorify God. It's how we love others is an outflowing of how we first love God. Whereas this commercial makes it seem like doing good works is the end in and of itself.

And so they feel good. They get towards feelings as being people's guide. You know, yes, I agree with that. I agree with that Jesus I'm seeing because that makes me feel exactly the way that I felt before that.

Yes, I want to help people. And that makes me happy. You know, happiness is the guide. People justify all kinds of things today by saying, well, it made me happy.

Right. And judging is the ultimate sin. If you are a culture based on the authority of the self, there is nothing more offensive than someone coming along and saying, Hey, you, you're doing something that you shouldn't do, or you should be doing this instead.

Why? Because that points to an authority other than you. So it's the most offensive message that you can have, but that's why you don't see these, he gets us ads showing a Jesus who judges in any way. You don't see a Jesus who says, Hey, there's actually an objective definition of right and wrong and good and bad.

So it leaves out all of the important messages of Jesus and actually mischaracterizes the message of Jesus as well. So I think that those ads really are problematic for all the reasons I wrote about in depth online, but yeah, it does represent a very secular worldview coming back to those tenants that you read. Natasha Crane is our guest today, author of When Culture Hates You, Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square. If you'd like to better engage in society and with unbelievers, this would be an excellent resource.

It's softcover, 256 pages and retails for $18.99. For a limited time, you can order a copy of When Culture Hates You for a donation of any amount to the Christian worldview. Just go to thechristian worldview.org or call 888-646-2233 or write to Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Next segment, we'll discuss how the quote common good is not subjective, but rather based on God's truth.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit thechristianworldview.org where you can sign up for our weekly email, the Christian worldview journal, monthly print publication, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is how to navigate the hate.

And Natasha Crane, author of When Culture Hates You, is our guest. Natasha, speaking of that phrase, common good, this is a critical part of your book, actually. On page 41 you write, people may have all kinds of views about reality leading to cultural wars over what's good for society, but it's time now to emphasize that there's only one actual reality.

And as Christians who believe the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God, our answers to worldview questions must come from Scripture. So how would you define common good? And how is it not subjective to whatever any given person thinks about what is good for society, but really established on what God says is common good? When we are talking about matters of the common good, we're talking about what is going to be a healthy, thriving, functioning for our lives in common as a society. And when we use the word good as a shortcut for that, we have to understand that good is inherently a worldview term.

It's going to depend on what your view of reality is. So for example, if someone doesn't believe that there is any kind of God or higher being outside of the world, if they're an atheist in that way, then they might believe that good is just whatever is what I want, is whatever I feel is good. It's like the tenets of secularism that we just talked about is what I feel is good and what makes me happy.

That's how I'm going to define good. And you don't have to be an atheist to define it that way. That's overwhelmingly culture's definition, but that's just to say that it's going to depend on how you see the world. From a Christian perspective, however, it's not about what we feel is good necessarily. It's not necessarily what makes us happy either. Good is a term that is objectively rooted in God's standards. He is the only definition of what is good or bad, right or wrong, harmful or helpful. And so we have to be really clear as Christians that yes, people are going to have all kinds of ideas about what is good or bad for mankind and our life in common as a society. That doesn't mean that it's really up for debate in terms of how we define it.

Now, there can be different ideas of how to prioritize different goods. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that there are certain things that are objectively good and objectively bad, and that comes back to our understanding from scripture of what God teaches. And it especially gets at the heart of anthropology. What is the nature of mankind? If you get that wrong, you're going to get everything else wrong for the common good, because what is good for an individual is something that's going to be good for the society. So you have to get back to understanding what God says about who people are, why He made us.

Earlier in the book, I think it's page 31, you give the purpose of your book, When Culture Hates You, and you say it's to give Christ-followers, Christians, the crucial understanding required to confidently advocate for righteousness in today's increasingly dark and hostile culture. Talk about Christians being engaged in public society in ways that are, I think, realistic maybe for who they are as individuals. Yeah, I love that question because I am a card-carrying introvert.

I am absolutely the most textbook introvert that you could find. And so it totally makes sense to me when people say, but what do you mean like getting involved in the public square? I'm not going to be out there lobbying in a government building and that's just not me.

I don't even feel comfortable calling my local school board. I totally understand. On the one hand, I want to say that we're called to do a lot of things that we're uncomfortable with in life as Christians. And so we should not gauge whether or not we should do something just based on our comfort level. Because if we do that, we might just say, well, my comfort level is sitting at home and I'm not going to be salt and light, but we are to be salt and light. So we have to kind of balance these things.

But that said, that doesn't mean every Christian has to function in the same way when they go out to be salt and light. We all have different things that we can do. In the second half of the book, I take five different issues that are of particular importance, I think, in urgency for Christians today in the public square, things like abortion and transgenderism and sexuality and social justice.

And I take those things and explain why the culture hates us on them. And then at the end of each of those chapters, I give seven actions for the common good that you can take for those things. And I was very careful in those action items to try to give a broad variety of recommendations or things that you can do with it being in mind that people have different seasons in life. As a mom myself with three teenagers, I understand I even limit my own speaking schedule. I'm not going to be traveling all over every weekend to do what I do.

I can't do that. I do what I can do. And so all of those recommendations are given with that in mind. But even many of the things that I give as examples of things you can do, you can pray, everyone can pray in some of these specific areas. You can sometimes get out and just volunteer locally with one of these organizations, or you can donate financially to some of these.

Even small amounts can make a difference. So there are a lot of ways to get involved. I just encourage people, if you feel like you're too introverted or you feel like you're not comfortable with how to articulate things, get equipped. Understand that this is a role that Christians should take.

Don't slink back because it's just an excuse that you don't feel comfortable. At the same time, you do have certain giftings. You do have certain ways that you can make a difference. You just have to identify what they are.

Yeah. And I think the second half of the book, which I want to get into just a few questions on, is really good in that regard because it deals with responding to and persevering, as you title it, through today's most prominent changes. And as you mentioned, these five things that biblical Christians are constantly pushed back against. Let's start with the chapter that's titled Dangerous Christian Nationalists, that Christians want to set up a theocracy by imposing their values on everyone else. And America was never a Christian nation.

How to respond to that charge? I think this is kind of at the heart of many people's objection to when you bring Christianity into what you're advocating for publicly. We have to understand that the nature of public policy, any public policy that you're looking at, is going to involve one group's views being imposed on another group. So even if you're talking about something where virtually everyone agrees, like, hey, murder is bad, we don't want to make a murder legal, you're still imposing the value that murder is bad on those who might say, well, I don't think we need any kind of laws, we should be able to do what we want.

So the word impose sounds very powerful and strong. It's just rhetoric because at the end of the day, we live in a constitutional republic. And in this structure of society, everyone has the right to bring their views to bear in the public square, whether they're motivated by their religion or by their personal background in some other way, we don't psychologically profile to figure out, hey, what motivated you? So there's nothing specific about, hey, I'm bringing my religious views to bear that's somehow problematic.

It's just that the culture has convinced us that it is. And so that comes back to this whole idea of Christian nationalism, that when you really get into it, and I dig deep into this in the chapter, but just to keep this short, when you really get into it, most of the time, the view from mainstream media that there are these dangerous Christian nationalists, when you look at the content they're producing to see, well, what are their examples of Christian nationalism? What is so scary and theocratic here? All they do is basically talk about conservative, unpopular viewpoints that run against the popular moral consensus that are being advocated by Christians. And then they label that a problematic Christian nationalism. There's nothing anti-democratic or theocratic about advocating for your views in the public square.

But that's how they make it sound. And a lot of Christians have come to believe it. So we have to be really careful in understanding that the rhetoric doesn't actually mean anything. A theocracy is when you actually recognize formally and officially a deity as the ruler over your society. I don't know Christians who are advocating for that. That's certainly not even what the mainstream media is claiming. And yet they say that what we're doing when we advocate for pro-life policies, for example, is somehow theocratic. It's not.

It's just powerful language. So just a quick follow-up. What would it look like for Christians to seek the common good, say, in our public educational system? An obvious one that we could talk about would be looking at the transgender issues that are going on in schools, because there are a lot of these debates that are happening at the local school district level. So, for example, the Alliance Defending Freedom is a Christian legal advocacy group, and they're representing a lot of different cases that involve parents that are coming up against school districts who didn't want to notify them that their child was attempting to transition genders at school. And so a lot of districts are actually protecting kids from being, quote unquote, outed to their parents and requiring teachers in the schools to go along with what the child wants. So in this case, I think that as Christians who understand that there's no separation of gender and biological sex and that the family is a primary unit in society that we need to protect and then give parental rights, I think that Christians should be able to agree that this is a very dangerous direction for school districts to take. And so with that in mind, that would be an example of, first of all, understanding what your school district is requiring on these issues.

And if there's something problematic from that perspective, then going and making your voice heard that this is not an appropriate kind of policy for the school district. Natasha Crane is our guest today here on The Christian Real View and her excellent new book, When Culture Hates You, Persevering for the Common Good as Christians in a Hostile Public Square. This is our new featured resource.

You can just contact us to get a copy for a donation of any amount. Natasha, I'm not going to go over the next four—that Christians are power-hungry oppressors or they're controlling misogynists, that has to do with the abortion issue, or they're cruel rights deniers, that's with the transgender issue, or hateful bigots, that has to do with the sexual revolution. But all those are very good chapters of your book, and we'll just let readers get it and read through these chapters.

But I want to get to the conclusion of your book, just as a final question today. You say, this is a culture in deep rebellion against its creator. On every topic in part two, those five I just mentioned, the hatred of Christians ultimately stems from people's deep-seated desire for self-rule.

And you mentioned that earlier in our conversation. It's either God's going to rule your life, or you're going to rule your own life. Christian nationalism, don't impose policies we don't like on us. Secular social justice, don't impose norms, values, and expectations on us. Abortion, don't impose bodily rules on us. Transgenderism, don't impose gender restrictions on us.

Sexuality, don't impose your sexual restrictions on us. Again, self-rule over God rule. Ultimately, it's not Christians that culture hates, it's God. Feeling the weight of evil in the world—and you talked about this as you wrote these chapters how weighty this was to dig into these topics—feeling the weight of evil in the world has given me a fresh appreciation for how desperately that light is needed. The light of the gospel, the light of the truth of Scripture. Yes, evil is dark, but exposing the unfruitful works of darkness puts God's goodness on beautiful display for the world to see. It points people to the glory of God if they're willing to look.

We're not responsible for making them look, but we are responsible for lighting the way. I thought that was really well said toward the end of your book. So just in conclusion today, as we've talked about a lot of various issues in your book and things going on in society, what is your final exhortation you'd like to make to Christians listening today and maybe even unbelievers who are listening today as well? Well, I would just say to Christians who are listening, it's important to remember that we're going to have ups and downs in any society.

So you talked about the vibe shift at the beginning, right? We're going to see certain things and go, oh, wow, things are on a good trajectory or, oh, we lost this one. Things are going on a bad trajectory. We can't just kind of like hang on with our fingernails to every victory and loss at any given time. We should celebrate, obviously, when things are good, and we should lament when things are bad. But at the same time, what this comes down to is obedience. We have to be obedient to what God has called us to. And so I would just encourage any Christian listening to think about what that looks like in your own life.

For every person like we talked about, that's going to be a little bit different, but for no person should it be, I'm going to sit in my living room and do nothing. We need to be salt and light. We need to preserve the world for as long as God wants to work out his purposes. And we need to shine light on the works of darkness and expose them as Ephesians 5-11 says. So just encourage anyone listening to really take that to heart and take it seriously, because we have an important role that God calls us to play. And then what about for unbelievers listening today who are thinking, who is this woman who's trying to impose her values on me? What's your message to an unbeliever listening today as to how they can kind of better understand, let's say, God's purposes for this world and how the common good is really based on God in Scripture? Well, I would say this, if you don't believe in God or you don't believe in Scripture, let's try to understand each other first. And I just want you to put yourself into my shoes so you can understand where I'm coming from, that if there is a God, and not just a God who created everything, but a God who revealed himself in Scripture, who told us who he is and who we are and how we're related to one another and what's expected of us.

If those things are true, I hope that you can understand why I would be concerned to share that truth with the culture around me. Because even if you don't agree with me that this is true, I'm just trying to get you to see from my perspective that if this is true, then it would make sense that the God of the universe who created everything and sustained everything, that he's going to know what's actually good, that he's going to be that standard of what is good and what is evil. And so if that were true, if you were to believe that too, I would think that you would say the same things I'm saying, that you would want the best for society based on the standards set by the God who created everything. Now, you might disagree with me that that's true, but I want you to at least understand how, from a Christian perspective, that that would matter.

So I think that I would always start with that understanding. Ultimately, when you come to saving faith, you begin to see God for who he is, Scripture for what it is, the inspired Word of God. And you see that truth, and you understand that this is God's best for mankind. And when we live according to his ways, we flourish.

We personally flourish, and he gets the glory. So Natasha, so much appreciate your coming on the Christian review radio program today. We really like your book, and we recommend it to listeners that they get a copy of When Culture Hates You.

Keep standing strong for him, and we'll look forward to doing it another time. All of God's best and grace to you. Thank you so much.

I appreciate your time. All right, we have links to Natasha's website and podcast on thechristianrealview.org. I spent quite a bit of time in her book, and it will sharpen your thinking as you engage with the culture and with unbelievers, particularly on some of the hot button issues of our day.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit theChristianrealview.org where you can sign up for our weekly email, the Christian Real View Journal monthly print publication, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. In this final segment, Pastor Jamie Bambrick joins us from Ireland to discuss the curious Fuhrer to Vice President J.D. Vance saying that the U.S. needs to focus on our own country first before sending money all over the world to other countries. In other words, order your love, take care of your own first, and then work out from there. Just to give you a sample of the response, Dr. Krish Khandia, who describes himself as a foster carer, adoptive father, and advocate for refugees and vulnerable children, here's what he had to say.

J.D. Vance, the Vice President of the United States, has been talking a lot about love, and specifically what the Bible has to say about love. He says that you should love God, then you should love your family, then you should love your neighbor, then you should love your community, then you should love your country, and then, and only then, should you love people from other countries around the world.

This is his justification for the America first policy. It's why the government of America has stopped funding all of its international aid and development programs, and he says that's justifiable on biblical grounds. But it's interesting, he kind of tripped over this promise or this command that we're supposed to love our neighbors. When Jesus was asked the two greatest commandments, he said love God and love your neighbor, and when asked who is my neighbor, he said actually, here's a little parable, a Jewish man was walking down the road and he was assaulted and left for dead, and two other Jewish men came to him and walked by on the other side of the road, did nothing to help, but a Samaritan stopped and helped, and offered assistance at great personal cost. The Samaritan was not ethnically connected to him, he was not even necessarily faith connected to him, and he was definitely not the same nationality, and yet this was the pinnacle, the example of love that Jesus chose to show what loving your neighbor meant.

We've got to allow Jesus to challenge us. He loves every single person on this planet, and therefore to choose one nation at the expense of all the others is not fair to the Christian faith. Jamie, it sounds like what he's saying, you know, love other people and care for them and care for the widow and orphan, and God doesn't have favorites as far as countries, and he desires all people to be saved. I mean it kind of appears to sound correct, but how would you respond to that?

I think two responses that I would give to that. The first would be that just from a pure understanding of the text of the Good Samaritan, what Jesus in that is not doing is he is not advocating for a sort of vague and generic love for absolutely everybody in a way that doesn't recognize natural priorities and opportunities and responsibilities. It's very, very interesting when he gives that parable, he's answering the question, who is my neighbor? And he gives the example of someone who is personally near you, who is in real need, and whom you can actually help.

That is who he is talking about. So what the Samaritan does not do, there's a few things that he doesn't do. He doesn't actually treat the man like his son. I imagine if this was the Samaritan's son, he wouldn't have just left them in an inn.

He would have stayed with him and been personally more involved. Now what he does is entirely appropriate because it's not his son. So this is him showing love, but it's showing love in a way that is appropriate for the relationship that he has. The Samaritan also doesn't bankrupt his own family to send money to foreign governments in the name of some sort of elitist globalist project to end all highway robberies of any sort. That's not what he's doing. He's using his own resources to help the man who is in front of him. So I actually think that the position of the Trump administration and the one that Vance was articulating in the first clip that we listened to is a better application of the good Samaritan story.

I think that he is advocating that there's real people that we have in front of us that we can actually help and we should prioritize them, rather than like the Levite and the scribe, ignoring the people near us in the name of some greater ideal that we may have. So that would be my first response. My second response was to make a little bit of fun of it.

I did make some fun of it on Twitter and I gave the example of my wife and said she made us pancakes and bacon for breakfast, but unfortunately she didn't make enough for the four of us and the entire nation of Chad. So I've asked that she be put under church discipline. And if you actually hear what Chris is saying there and then you take that to the logical conclusion, you're sinning by looking after your own people. That obviously is not what the Bible is teaching. It's not how Chris is going to live his own life. I'm sure I very much hope he doesn't and I assume he doesn't, but it's wrong of him to then go and demand that other people should. He should actually be more consistent with his own actions. Just one follow-up question on this, because this may seem like kind of a what kind of topic is this you're talking about and it seems irrelevant maybe, but I think in some way this debate in the how hot it turned immediately. People responded one way or the other. How dare you focus on your own family and people and your own nation first.

That's not Christian. It seems to me that this debate over where we place our first loves, our first attentions in life, is actually representative of the divide between those who, let's say, are more orthodox or conservative theologically and those who are more liberal theologically. And I think it's the same also as you've been discussing some with political conservatism versus liberal politics. Do you think that's accurate to say that this misplaced empathy or misunderstanding of our responsibilities and duties and who we are to love and care for most is really representative of a much bigger worldview issue that is battling each other in both of our societies? I think it's very very interesting there was a graph that came out which you've probably seen and some of your listeners may have done as well. Sort of a heat map graph comparing the perspectives of those who consider themselves conservative versus those who consider themselves liberal and it allowed people to rank how morally important they considered various things to be and it started with yourself and then your immediate family and then it went to similar to what we've been talking about in sort of concentric circles, friends, people you kind of know, people in your own nation and it went the whole way out to rocks in space. Like that was the extent so from yourself to as far away as possible. And what they found was that conservatives, I think we made the argument for it biblically, had I think an appropriate response which is the things closer to you are more important to you and you give them more moral worth.

Liberals were the complete opposite and the rocks in space were of more importance and more moral weight to them than their own children. Now that is a completely warped worldview that is not a Christian worldview that is unacceptable but I do think it does get down to one of the real dividing points of the difference between those two groups and unfortunately as you say many professing Christians have fallen for that idea and I believe that you're incorrect in loving your own people and your own family and those near you more than those far away from you. Unfortunately scripture would disagree with them or I say unfortunately I think it's entirely right and a good thing. Jamie Bambrick again here with us today on the Christian Royal View, the Associate Pastor of Hope Church in Craigavon, Ireland. We have links to him at our website as well as the media entity that he leads, Clear Truth Media, he's the editor-in-chief of that. Final topic I wanted to have you on for Jamie is it seems that and I'm not sure exactly why maybe it's just the Holy Spirit moving in the world and it just seems like some prominent media influencers like Jill Rogan has got one of the most listened to podcasts in the world or country at least, people like Jordan Peterson again more conservative but neither of them would be professing born-again Christians. Both of them seem to be curious or exploring Christianity more. You hear Jordan Peterson I think is doing some sort of video series on the Gospels right now or something with a panel. I don't think it's very sound and orthodox but they're talking about these things and recently Jill Rogan had a well-known Christian apologist from Canada on his program named Wesley Huff. Here's a portion of their conversation. So what is your personal belief when it comes to the resurrection?

Do you have a belief or do you just try to interpret the text and try to see what is the message? As a historian I do think it is a historical question. You have a guy who objectively lived, he objectively died, and then individuals close to his inner circle claim that they see him not dead again. This is a highly unusual activity.

Highly unusual. So it's hard when you're dealing with thousands of years of time, you're dealing with an oral tradition, and then you have us sitting here talking about it in 2024 trying to figure this out. It's very difficult for anybody who thinks of themselves as an intelligent person who's secular to even entertain the possibility that someone died and come back to life. And I get that but we've already talked about the fact that we don't think that the only thing that exists is matter and motion.

We as in you and I, right? Like the gospels are written in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses and they're written in this period of time where you have groups of individuals who could have fact-checked those things. So how do you fact-check someone coming back from the dead? Well, if you... How many people saw his body, right? Well, Paul says that 400 people saw him all at once. 400 people saw the crucifixion? No, saw the resurrected Jesus.

Yeah, 1 Corinthians 15. Again, that was mega popular podcaster Jill Rogan asking important questions to Christian apologist Wesley Huff. Jamie, what do you make of this curiosity and exploration of Christianity by some well-known non-Christian voices? Yeah, I think there is an awakening of sorts happening.

I think we could be on the verge of something that does look like a real revival and I think it comes back to a few things. From a practical perspective, people are realizing what happens when you get rid of Christianity. You know, when you dispose of the truths that have built our society and that have built really everything good that we like about our world and when you dispose of those as a society, the madness and the chaos that ensues where no longer can anybody say what a man or a woman is or how we could possibly define that.

Where morality descends into total chaos and how can anybody say that anything else is wrong when it's so self-evident that there are things that are wrong. So I think that that has done something to a lot of people who, as you say, are not Christians, are not professing faith yet, but they are starting to realize that the world cannot go on the way it is indefinitely and the rate of change has been so rapid and the decline has been so marked that it has led to people asking these significant questions and going, well, if it was Christianity that built the world that we like and if it has built all of the stuff that we think is good, what if there is some truth in there? What if there is something to that and I'm hoping will lead to people then coming to not just an acceptance of some of the teachings of Christianity or, you know, viewing Christ as a great moral teacher or anything like that. We want them to come to genuine saving faith.

So I think it's a really positive move. It's not the fullness of everything just yet. I also think, just to put on a little bit more of a sort of spiritual hat to it, I think the devil overplays his hand. The devil never knows when he's had enough. If everything had stopped, if he had stopped all of the madness in 2010 or 2014 or somewhere back there, the reality is a lot of the church would not have woken up to this and a lot of the world would not have woken up to it. But I think he has so ravenous for destruction that he was unable to prevent himself from keeping going and pushing these ideas further and further and further. And so I think there's a side to that as well. I think that often that is how God moves is that God uses the enemy's own tactics and ideas against him and wins incredible victories that start off perhaps with a crucifixion but end with a resurrection.

And as a great theologian, TK Chesterton once said, Christianity has died many times and each time it has returned because it has a God that knew the way out of the grave. So I believe that is also partly what is happening here. During this moment now where we see a resurgence at least some biblical values, maybe not biblical Christianity, not going to go that far, but what's your exhortation to Christians and pastors then in this moment? I think the harvest field is ripe among people like that. I think we should be doing everything to reach those people who are exploring those ideas.

I think the harvest is on the political right. I think they are asking those questions and I think that rather than alienating ourselves from people like that, rather than criticizing, you know, not that we don't challenge and go, yeah, you need to go the whole way, but I think we should be viewing them as a real gospel opportunity and running towards those people going, yes, you're absolutely right. You're asking the right questions and yes, you've got some truths. Now let's go the whole way.

Let's find the one who is truth himself. Jamie, we appreciate your coming on the Christian worldview. It's great to meet you for the first time. Keep up the great work you're doing. All of God's best and grace to you. Thank you so much.

Pleasure to be here. soon and refer young adults to the Overcomer Course. All these things are geared to the goal of 1 Corinthians 16, 13, and 14. Be on the alert. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong.

Let all that you do be done in love. Thank you for joining us today on the Christian worldview and for your support of this nonprofit radio ministry. Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of the Christian worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out What Must I Do to Be Saved?, go to thechristianworldview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian worldview is a listener-supported nonprofit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian worldview partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianworldview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401 Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to the Christian worldview.