In this episode, I share my best insights and practical tips for talking with your kids about non-Christian worldviews, based on our months of doing this as a formal part of our homeschool schedule. (You do not need to be homeschooling to implement any of what I talk about–this is for all parents!)
This episode will explain:
Why it’s mission critical for Christian parents to teach kids about non-Christian worldviews.
Three key things kids should understand about the nature of studying world religions before you even start discussing.
Three “best practices” from my experience for how to discuss the particulars of other religions.
In addition, I’m doing a giveaway of the forthcoming Popular Handbook of World Religionsto 5 lucky winners! As I discuss in the episode, this is a hugely valuable resource for Christian parents.
To enter the giveaway, do one or more of the following:
I’m excited to announce that I’ve started a podcast…and the first episode is now live!
I’ve had a lot of people ask me over the past couple of years about starting a podcast, but I was always reluctant because the perfectionist side of me would rather carefully craft every word I want to say in writing. However, I know that many people prefer podcasts now, so after months of getting up to speed on the podcasting world, I decided to give it a go! I’ll continue to blog as well; my podcast will be additional content.
The first episode is titled, “America’s Downward Spiral: What Should You Say to Your Kids?” America is in a moral, spiritual, and political decline. How do you share what’s going on so your kids are informed and understand what’s happening from a biblical perspective, but in a way that won’t overwhelm them? In this first show, I share key tips for talking about issues in each area: moral, spiritual, and political.
You should be able to find “The Natasha Crain Podcast” in your favorite podcast player, though some are slower to add new podcasts than others. If it’s not there yet, check back in a day or two. In the meantime, you can find links to where it is on various platforms or listen in your web browser here. You can also click on the embedded player at the end of this post.
If you’re a podcast listener, please be sure to subscribe on your player for coming content! And if you have any requests for subjects to cover in future episodes, please feel free to email me. I’d love to hear from you.
There’s been a sad fallout among Christians now that the election chaos has (mostly) come to an end and a new administration is taking over: Christians are shaming other Christians for having voted for Trump.
It’s one thing to say, “As a Christian, I didn’t support Trump because (fill in the blank with disagreements regarding his character or the party platform).” But it’s entirely another thing to mischaracterize why many Christians did vote for Trump and then attempt to make that into a shameful thing. Not only is that uncharitable between brothers and sisters in Christ, but it fuels the flames of the resentment non-believers have toward politically conservative Christians.
When a person mischaracterizes another’s position on something in order to attack it, that’s called a strawman fallacy. And there’s a lot of strawmanning going on right now.
Here are three big ones.
Strawman 1: If you voted for Trump, you did so because you want Christians to have political “power.”
Ed Stetzer, a dean and professor at Wheaton College, published an opinion piece in USA Today this week titled, “Evangelicals face a reckoning: Donald Trump and the future of our faith.” The subtitle is, “We must live up to our calling as evangelicals: to proclaim Jesus Christ to the world, rather than betray Him to sustain worldly power.”
There’s no disagreement on one thing in 2020: that it was a year filled with disagreements.
Of course, “disagreement” is a kinder, gentler word for much of the chaotic, nasty, and sometimes violent conflict we saw as our culture responded to a worldwide pandemic, racial injustice, and the presidential election. Through the transparency of social media, people drew battle lines and fought, with the wars leaving wounds on friendships, family relationships, church relationships, and more. Christians certainly weren’t immune to this—in many cases, these wars were most heated within the body of Christ.
By all accounts, it’s been a devastating year of conflict. And we’re all tired from it.
But I’ve noticed a concerning pattern of response to perceived conflict in recent weeks, particularly on social media: Fatigue has led many Christians to avoid any kind of disagreement.
After a year like 2020, that perhaps sounds like a good idea to some. But disagreement is not inherently a bad thing. From a Christian perspective, we can certainly disagree in bad ways (with wrong motivation, hurtful words, etc.), but disagreement is often both good and important. We can’t be salt and light to a decaying and dark world when we’re continually afraid we’ll offend someone by merely expressing something that is at odds with their view. I’m concerned that the disagreement fatigue of 2020 will shape how Christians interact with each other and with secular culture for a long time to come.
Here are 5 things I expect to see in coming months (if not years).
Over the last several years, I’ve spoken on the subject of apologetics to many groups of parents at churches and conferences. Although none of my talks deal with the topic of sexuality, I can hardly think of a time when I wasn’t asked a question about it either in the Q & A or in private conversation afterward with an individual parent. In particular, parents always want to know what they should say to their kids about homosexuality and transgender questions. These are undoubtedly the most top of mind questions parents have today.
While I can appreciate that these specific questions are front and center in culture, I always feel a bit disappointed when I get them. Frankly, I feel like we’ve really missed the boat if this is the “big” question people have after a much broader talk on apologetics. I say that for two reasons.
First, kids won’t care what the Bible says about homosexuality and transgender questions if they don’t view the Bible as authoritative. That’s why my answer to parents always begins the same: “Can you tell me first what your child believes about the Bible? Does he/she believe it’s the authoritative Word of God?” I’d say that out of 10 people who ask the question, a solid 7 of them will say, “I’m not sure.” It’s deeply problematic that many Christian parents have come to believe that our biggest conversation challenge in today’s culture is how to answer controversial questions about sexuality…even though they often aren’t sure what their kids believe about the Bible itself! If we spent as much time teaching kids why there’s good reason to believe the Bible is true as we did addressing subjects that today’s culture happens to bring to the forefront, we would be in a much more natural position to address difficult topics.
Second, there is so much more than homosexuality and transgender questions that our kids need to understand about a biblical view of sexuality. That’s why I’m thrilled about Sean McDowell’s new book, Chasing Love: Sex, Love, and Relationships in a Confused Culture. It’s a book for teens that provides a comprehensive biblical look at sex, love, and relationships–the best resource I’ve seen on the subject!
Sean took the time to answer several questions I sent him on how to talk with teens about sex and love. Enjoy the following interview, and if you have kids in this age range, you must get this book.
I’ve been homeschooling now for 8 weeks and am thoroughly enjoying it. I especially love having the opportunity to dig more deeply into subjects that are glossed over in traditional school or not addressed at all. Case in point: logic.
Every week, I teach my 6th grade twins how to spot logical fallacies using the introductory book, The Fallacy Detective. Last week, however, I deviated from the book and gave my kids a document containing several paragraphs from the Democratic Party platform. This week I gave them a similar document from the Republican Party platform. My purpose in these lessons was to teach my kids how to think critically as they evaluate opposing viewpoints and to help them see that people form their views for many different reasons.
After our first discussion, in which we evaluated the Democratic platform, my son asked, “The Republican platform won’t be so bad, right?”
To his great surprise, I replied, “Of course it will be.”
My son had concluded that the platform was “bad” because I had helped him and his sister ask so many critical questions about it. For example, where money was going to be spent, we asked, “Where will that money come from?” Where guarantees of equal pay were being made, we asked, “How will the government accomplish that, and what will the result be to businesses?” Where minimum wage was being raised, we asked, “How will businesses respond, what will that mean for job creation or loss, and what will the net effect be?”
These were just a few of our discussion points. For each promise that sounded good, I taught them to ask, “What is the tradeoff?”
My kids are well aware that my husband and I are decidedly conservative. We talk about politics a lot. Because our logic lesson revealed so many potential downsides of the stated platform goals (the nature of any tradeoff discussion), my son seemed to assume that the Republican platform we support must be free from such downsides; one party is “bad” and the other is “good.” One of the things I emphasize most in homeschool is being able to see from a perspective other than one’s own, so I immediately wanted to challenge such thinking. In fact, my emphasis on wanting my kids to see both sides of an issue has been even greater lately, because the lack of this perspective is a major problem in our culture right now.
I’ve been disheartened and frankly appalled by the hatred I’ve seen some Christians have toward other Christians based on their political views—and that goes for both sides. To be clear, I’m not talking about impassioned discussions of which party or candidate to vote for. That’s necessary and important. I’m talking about the personal disgust I’m seeing Christians express toward one another.
It should go without saying, but since it apparently hasn’t, I’ll say it here: If you’ve started hating fellow Christians because of how they’re voting, you’ve lost perspective.
For some added perspective, let me tell you the story I shared with my son that day in logic class.
If you haven’t studied much of what’s going on ideologically behind recent protests, this question might seem strangely out of place. What does being a Christian have to do with whether this woman agreed to raise her fist or not? Why would these protesters single out Christianity as a potential cause of someone refusing to give in to what they see as a fight for social justice? After all, they didn’t ask, “Are you a Muslim?” or “Are you a Hindu?” They also didn’t ask any questions that weren’t religious in nature, such as, “Are you a racist?” (a question that would have seemingly been more relevant given the nature of the situation—not that they should have been harassing her in the first place).
Earlier this summer, protesters in Portland were burning Bibles. Again, one might ask, “Why so much anger toward the Bible? What does this have to do with protests? What does this have to do with racial injustice?”
Events like these that suddenly and explicitly pit Christianity against the cause of many Social Justice Warriors (“SJWs”) are the tip of an ideological iceberg that many Christians are (to a large degree) unaware of. Black Lives Matter is just one of many social justice movements, and these movements often share a hostility to Christianity. If you don’t understand the underlying iceberg, these hostile tips that peak out can seem out of place. But when you understand the worldview that SJWs often have in common, it’s not surprising at all.
Middle school and high school age kids—particularly those in
public schools—are increasingly surrounded by this ideology that ultimately
results in hostility toward Christians, even if they don’t yet see that that’s
where it leads. Many Christian kids are getting caught up in it as well, and
I’m increasingly receiving emails from parents who tell me that even their
church’s youth group is promoting SJW thinking.
In this post, I want to shed light on why SJWs often not only disagree with Christians…but also hate us. We and our kids need to understand why.
In my last article, Christian Naivety is Harming the Church’s Engagement with Today’s Culture, I identified four ways that I’ve seen many Christians respond with naivety to calls for discernment in today’s world. At the end, I asked, “How do we fix this?” and said my answer would be the subject of my next article. This is that article. Since this is a follow up, please be sure to read my last post before this one for context.
Let me start by saying that the
title of this article is a rather sweeping proposition. Obviously, this is a
single article, the issues are complex, and I’m not claiming that what I write
here is a complete answer to all the problems we have. But I want to offer what
I see as some key levers needed to drive change in how Christians engage
with today’s culture.
In my years as a marketing
executive, I came to deeply appreciate one particular model that people in the
marketing field have used for over one hundred years (in various shapes and
forms). It’s a simple funnel that describes the psychological stages people go
through before committing to an action:
Though this originates in marketing, I’ve noticed many times in the last few years how this model applies to so much in the area of ministry as well. As such, I’m going to use it as a framework for my current subject. If we want to move more Christians to the bottom of the funnel—the action point of being more discerning, less naïve, and better culturally engaged—here are the key levers I see at the awareness, interest, and desire points leading there.
I had no idea my last article, “5 Ways Christians are Getting Swept into a Secular Worldview in This Culture Moment,” would resonate with so many—it’s been liked and shared over 250,000 times to date (!). Although I no longer leave comments open on my site (I just don’t have the time to moderate and respond), I had the opportunity to observe a flurry of conversation threads on social media related to what I had written. Those conversation threads generated all kinds of ideas for future articles, but the one that pressed on me most over the last few weeks was this one.
As I considered the types of pushback I received from some fellow believers (not skeptics!), I started to realize that their comments had little to do with the facts, logic, or manner in which I wrote that particular article. Rather, they were the same kinds of reactions I’ve see to any post I or other Christians write involving a call to better discernment in the church. Articles of this nature are often met with the same types of broad pushback about 1) the need for love, 2) the need for action, 3) the need to not be fearful, and 4) the need for unity (the implication being that these things are all somehow in tension with discernment).
I want to show today why
there’s a certain biblical naivety in such comments—one that actually harms the
church’s ability and opportunity to effectively engage with culture.
1. There’s a naivety about
the relationship between discernment and love.
This, perhaps, is one of the
greatest naiveties in the church today. If you have anything to say that
is perceived to be negative, there will be plenty of Christians ready to tell
you you’re not being loving. Others won’t directly make that accusation but will
instead point out that they’re “just going to keep on loving people,” as if it’s
impossible to offer truth while loving people.
So much has been said and is being said about the tragic death of George Floyd that it almost feels excessive to add to the conversation. But to continue on with the “regularly scheduled blog posts” without addressing such a significant event would also be bizarre.
Many people have already written on how tragic and unjust Floyd’s death was. This post is not here to elaborate on that. If you’re reading this, I take it that you already agree. Many people are also addressing how unbiblical racism is, and that Christians should actively be working to combat it. This post is not here to elaborate on that either—again, if you’re reading this, I take it you agree. I say this up front, because I know some will read the following thoughts and think I don’t care about Floyd’s death or the problem of racial injustice because I’m not talking about them specifically. Please know that’s not the case; they just aren’t the focus of this particular blog post.
What I do want to focus on are the problems I’ve seen with many Christians’ response to this cultural moment. In particular, it seems Christians are getting swept into a secular worldview as they respond to Floyd’s death…without even realizing it. Here are five ways I see that happening. As parents, it’s extremely important that we think carefully about these issues in order to raise kids who are prepared to grow up in a culture of this nature.
1. We’re too quickly jumping on social bandwagons hitched to secularism.
Christians, we need to open our eyes to a very important fact: research shows that those committed to a biblical worldview are now a minority. This means that if everyone around you is jumping on a bandwagon of some kind, there’s a really good chance it’s not a bandwagon rooted in values consistent with a biblical worldview.
