Release Date: Feb 4, 2025
When Culture Hates you, what do you do? Bow out of the culture? Capitulate to the masses? What if you’re wrong and the culture is right? How do you know?
This book, by Natasha Crain, is for Christians with a Biblical world view. The author presupposes that the reader shares this view. This is a good primer on issues that Christian face and how one might respond to these challenges.
The format is in two sections and the first titled, “Understanding the Hate” has five chapters and aptly begins with Jesus telling us that of course we would be hated for His sake. Crain then goes on to define the common good and that for it to be a common good (we all have a mutual understanding), we need to know the authority of what is good and moral. As Christians, we have God as our moral law giver and we take our authority from the scriptures, but this isn’t universal for non-believers since our world views and the influences that shape them are different.
The author dedicates the succeeding chapter on the Common Good in Politics and argues why Christians should be involved in politics since someone is always inserting their worldview into shaping the world around us. So why shouldn’t it be a Christian worldview? She rightly points out that someone is always wanting to ‘impose’ their beliefs on others, and someone is always seeking to wield power.
Crain rounds out the end of Part One by introducing the acronym ACT: authority, conviction and tenacity. She explains that being able to persevere in the face of open hostility is something that requires Biblical Authority, Conviction and Tenacity.
In Part Two, Crain addresses how we should be responding and persevering to the accusations that are coming up. Such accusations that run the gamut of Christians wanting to set up a theocracy, wanting to convert everyone, or else, having a dark hunger for power. She offers reasonable responses to such accusations which direct the reader to question what is meant by such accusations.
The next section tackles the cultural issues of the moment. What used to be ‘alternative’ has been pushed into the mainstream as ‘normal’ and Christians have been pressed to accept and affirm deviant behaviors and desires. Cultural Marxists label heterosexual Christians fearful, or terrified. If we reject Critical Race Theory, we’re automatically lumped in as racists. Rejecting Queer Theory makes us intolerant. Crain offers suggestions on how to use “Biblical Justice” to influence culture through prayer, voluntarism and donating to charities to share the Light of Christ.
The book expands further into the Dobbs decision which sent the question of legal abortion back to individual states. She briefly explains why Roe v Wade was overturned and then makes a succinct case for why the question of abortion shouldn’t be a question for Christians. Crain also highlights the reality that scientists are aware at which point life begins. She offers a few scenarios on how arguing over gestational age could drag into infancy and toddlerhood, and sadly it has.
Since we’re already trying to deny women the choice to kill their unborn, we’ve now arrived at the messy part: Gender Dysphoria. Crain compares Psychology’s behavior Bible, the Diagnostics Service Manual (DSM) III with the DSM IV and the DSM V in how they addressed the issue of gender dysphoria and highlights the dramatic shift that happened when the DMS V came out. She shows through the culture how changes in the diagnoses affected how the culture responded to the diagnosis and the subsequent explosion of diagnoses.
Finally, she gets into the Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) and the perversion that is coming for the children, to confuse them and to groom them. The perversion doesn’t necessarily come in the form of DQSH, but could be sex education in schools, library books that offer explicit details or imagery (as in graphic novels) of sexual acts, PRIDE parades and the never-ending assault of [insert name] awareness day, promoting one of the acronyms of LBGTQ.
Following Jesus takes sacrifice and perhaps you haven’t experienced that yet. But if you are following Jesus, you will. As Christians we are called to take up our cross. It’s with this thought in mind, I recommend you read Natasha Crain’s book, so you may be equipped with an understanding of what you are facing, why you are facing it, and how you may respond to it. Natasha presents her work well and the material is easily understood. It’s not exhaustive, but it would likely require many more pages to go deep on the topics Crain covers. The author does provide a bibliography if you wish to dig deeper into the topics she raises.
I received an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.