What are the consequences of a secular worldview? With Natasha Crain - Podcast Episode 70

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Today's episode, we have Natasha Crane, the author of Faithfully Different, where we'll be talking about some worldview issues today.

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So Natasha, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It's great to talk to you. So first question for you,

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I'll start off with the softball. So what led you to write Faithfully Different? Yeah, well,

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I've been writing apologetics for parents types of books and material for the last several years.

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And so that's kind of been my focus is equipping parents with an understanding of what the big questions are today that they need to then talk with their kids about.

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And so I have written three of those types of books, keeping your kids on God's side, talking with your kids about God and talking to kids about Jesus.

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But in the summer of 2020, when we had all this social unrest that was going on, I wrote a blog post called

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Five Ways That Christians Are Getting Swept Into a Secular Worldview in this cultural moment. And really, it was kind of like my first major non -parenting post because I had stayed so specifically within that lane.

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And to my surprise, it went viral and it was liked and shared over 277 ,000 times.

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And I received emails and comments for weeks from people who were saying, please write more like this because this is exactly what we need right now.

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We need this biblical clarity in the time of where people are just getting sucked into secular ideas.

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And so I started writing more posts about the situation that was going on and all of them ended up getting shared tens of thousands of times.

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And so I realized there's really this need to help Christians think more clearly from a biblical perspective about secularism.

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And that's really what Faithfully Different is about. And the subtitle is Regaining Biblical Clarity in a Secular Culture.

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So what would you say it means that our world is becoming more secular? We throw out the term secular all the time.

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I think most people understand it means non -Christian or non -religious. But specifically, what do you mean when you say in your experience, in your observation that the world is becoming more secular?

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Yeah, that's a really, really important place to start. So that's a good question because secular does have a lot of different meanings and people will use it in different ways in different contexts.

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So starting with just the most common way people use it, people think of it in terms of a political structure, right?

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Secular means that there's no authority of a given religion or God in public life.

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So the U .S. was actually the first country to explicitly establish this kind of governmental structure.

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So there's no authority of that religion in a given public life for the country.

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And so we can also use that to describe an individual's view of reality.

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So if an individual also does not defer to the authority of a particular religion or God in their own personal life, then we can say that that is a secular perspective.

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So what's interesting is that you could have millions of people who have quite different beliefs about the nature of reality and what kind of God there may or may not be and what that means for us today.

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But functionally, their beliefs are similar in that they're reverting to the authority of the self.

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And I think this is what is so important for Christians to understand is that when you take away the authority of God or any particular religion, you're not left with no authority at all.

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You're left with the authority of the self. And so that is the way that I say it is faithfully different is that that is the tie that functionally binds the worldviews of millions of people.

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It's the authority of the self rather than the authority of any particular religion or God. So when you a lot of people use the term worldview, like a

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Christian worldview versus an atheist worldview or a secular worldview, one thing in my experience is that people who take a atheistic or entirely secular worldview is that they don't really follow it to its end.

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They don't follow that worldview to its logical conclusions, because if you really go that far,

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I'm firmly convinced you will find it completely empty. There's no meaning of life.

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There's no reason to live. There's no reason to really do anything. So they don't really live in light of their worldview.

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Do you find that to be the case as well? Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good point. I think that people haven't really thought through those logical implications of what they believe.

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There's some really interesting research that has come out of Dr. George Barna's Cultural Research Center at the

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Arizona Christian University, and he's basically found that when you do research with people, and not just with Christians, but with all

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Americans, and you survey them about their beliefs and their behaviors, and then you categorize them or at least try to categorize them based on their worldviews, a full 88 percent of people have a worldview that is not internally consistent.

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It's not coherent within itself. And he calls this syncretism, where people are basically just picking up pieces here and there and everywhere and saying, well,

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I believe this and I believe this and this without ever having any kind of understanding of whether those pieces make sense together.

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So they're not thinking about the logical implications of what they believe. And you're right. For a lot of people, if you really get down to what it is they believe, that would lead to some very bleak implications.

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So, for example, for the atheist who doesn't believe that there's anything beyond the natural world, that there's no

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God, that we're just physical stuff, if you follow that to its natural conclusions, then you're going to realize there's no objective meaning of life.

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There is no basis for believing that objective right or wrong actually exists to be able to say that anyone is acting in a moral way, that anything's objectively good or bad.

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There's no purpose to our lives, objectively at least, and we have no inherent human value.

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So people love to talk about justice and equality and all these things today, but there's no objective basis for any of those things if there is no

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God, if there is no objective truth beyond this natural world. So a lot of people don't stop to think about these things.

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And sometimes when you point it out to them, they say, well, I can still, you know, I can still believe in all of this, but at the same time, that's not internally consistent.

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And so that is a challenge. And people, we don't train kids to think well about worldview in school, certainly not in public school.

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That's only one very secular worldview that's being pushed down. Churches overwhelmingly are not training people in worldview thinking, and parents many times are not equipped with an understanding of how to teach their kids about worldview thinking.

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And so it's a really big problem. It's not just Christians who are often inconsistent with their worldview, which is what this book is really trying to counter to help

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Christians think more consistently. It's a problem for everyone, no matter where they're coming from.

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So I think this is really eye opening, this research piece that they found about 88 % of people just having a mix and match worldview.

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It's so indicative of the culture we have of I'm going to be the authority, I, the self, am the authority.

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And these are the things that I want to believe. And that's what I'm going to do without thinking whether or not that's even logically consistent.

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So I know both of us are fans of Frank Turek, and I can't remember if this is the title of the book, but I really love how he explains it, that essentially you have to sit in God's lap in order to smack him in the face.

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And using that as an argument is that atheists or non -Christians borrow things from the

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Christian worldview without even knowing it to make their arguments against God. And I think that's a powerful example of how the

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Christian worldview is the only one that's coherent, the only one that's consistent, the only one that makes sense when you put it all together.

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Because atheists have to, they can't make an argument against truth without appealing to truth in that sense.

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So what's maybe another example in your experience of people not fully applying the worldview, at least from the atheist or secular standpoint?

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Yeah, I think the book you're referring to is Stealing from God, if anyone wants to look that up. Yeah, it's a really excellent book.

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I love that. And he makes the point so well in that about all these different things. Well, I think that the two that I mentioned a little while ago about human equality and justice right now, these are such hot topics.

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You know, everyone kind of says we have to we have to find justice. And it's this term that just gets thrown out all the time.

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But how do you define justice? This is a hugely important concept and not just in a general kind of secular sense, like let's just really pin down this meaning of justice, but really in a big picture sense of, well, do you have any objective basis for defining what is just or unjust?

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That's a really important question, because if God doesn't exist, if there isn't this ultimate creator who is the objective standard of justice, then justice is simply a matter of every person's opinion.

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There's no objective basis for me to say that one thing is just and for you to say that it's not just it's just that's my opinion.

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It's a personal preference. But yet when people talk about justice today and they're advocating for justice, it's not ever talked about in that way.

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It's never, yeah, well, this is my opinion about justice and I hope you'll agree with me. It's this is what justice means.

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And you have to agree with me about this version of justice as if they're the objective standard of it.

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And so you see just so much confusion on that point alone. People think and they want justice, but they don't stop to think about what or who is the objective standard for that.

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And I think closely related to that is the whole idea of human equality. Of course, everyone has this intuitive sense that humans are inherently valuable and that they're equal in value.

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But that comes from the sense that God has given us as humans. It doesn't come from the worldview that many people hold, because ultimately if we're just physical stuff, if we're nothing more than that, we're no more valuable than our physical components.

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We're just dust. And that's all we are. The only thing that makes us inherently valuable as human beings is if we have a creator who has imbued each of us with that value such that we can say no matter your capabilities, no matter your size, no matter anything about you, you are equally valuable because you're a human being.

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And those are two ideas that are completely consistent with and flow from a biblical worldview, but are not consistent with or flow from a naturalistic worldview or a secular worldview in general.

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And just to kind of distinguish those terms, because I do think it's important with a naturalistic worldview, people believe there's nothing beyond nature.

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Secularism is a more, it's a wider term. It encompasses naturalism, but also it encompasses a whole lot of other ideas that people have about God.

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So when you look at more research, you find that only about 10 % of Americans will say that they don't believe in any kind of higher power.

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So flip that around. 90 % of people believe something or someone is out there, even if it's not the biblical concept of God or something that would be consistent with that even.

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And so there are a lot of people who have secular ideas that there's something out there, but here's the big difference.

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They don't believe that that something out there has actually revealed anything specific about who he, she, it is or requirements for our lives.

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So it's a very comfortable God concept because there's nothing required of you, but there's something out there that maybe gives you this higher sense of meaning or purpose.

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But it's really not helpful because if you can't get to human equality and you can't get to justice just from believing that something is out there, if that something hasn't revealed anything through such the

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Bible, for example, or any other holy scriptures, then you have no idea what the intent of that being was.

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What if they created people totally unequal, but they haven't revealed anything you would have no idea.

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And so it doesn't help at all to have a, even a broader secular view that there's something out there, but we just don't know what it is in all of these cases, if you don't have revelation from the creator to know these things about the nature of reality in our world, you're back to the same place.

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You have no objective basis for all of these ideas that we take to be so fundamentally important in our culture today, but people don't think about that.

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Yeah. Excellent. Excellent explanation there. I think a moralistic therapeutic deism is a term

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I keep hearing throwing out that accurately describes most people's belief about God and that, yeah, there's some sort of God or higher power and maybe we're supposed to live good lives as a result, but really it's more of how does it benefit me?

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And once it stops benefiting me, that's where I draw the line. So this is the GotQuestions podcast with Natasha Crane, author of Faithfully Different.

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We will include some links in the show notes and also in the description on YouTube and at podcast .gotquestions

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.org if you'd like to find out where you can purchase this book, again, highly recommended, very good read.

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So Natasha, you mentioned this briefly earlier, and it's a question that we get a lot at GotQuestions, so I'd love your take on it.

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And that question is, can you have morality without a belief in God? And there's a lot of atheists receive the attack that, oh, you don't have any basis whatsoever for being moral, and they will strongly argue against that.

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So how do you respond to the question, can an atheist be a good moral person? Yeah, that's a great question.

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It's something that people are often very confused about, both Christians and nonbelievers, I have to say, because sometimes

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Christians say, oh, yeah, you can't be moral without God. Well, that's not quite right. So we have to kind of break down what we mean here.

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The question is, can you have any objective basis for defining what's right or wrong, good or bad, if God doesn't exist?

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So it's really about the existence of God that makes the difference, and not whether or not someone believes in God.

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So here's why. If there's nothing beyond the natural world, that this physical place is all there is, there's no higher than human moral authority who would have been in the position to say this is what's right or wrong, to be the standard external to us of what is right or wrong, to be that moral lawgiver, if you will.

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There would be nothing or no one in that position. So all of us as human beings would be on an equal playing field in terms of what we think is good or bad, and so it would just be a matter of opinion.

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If I think that murder, for example, is a good thing, there's nothing that you could appeal to to say, no, no, it's bad.

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Because to what external standard or moral authority would you be appealing? It would just be me versus you.

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But the difference is, if there is this creator God, whose character is the standard of morality, and he is the moral lawgiver, then yes, there is an objective basis outside of our own subjective preferences and opinions for things truly being right or wrong for all people, regardless of our personal opinion.

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So with those two pieces in play here, now we can go back to the question, well, if God exists, then can atheists be moral?

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Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And atheists can act in a moral way that's consistent with what's right versus wrong from God's perspective.

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They don't have to believe in God in order for that morality to exist because God exists.

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Morality is found because God exists, not because the atheist believes or doesn't believe.

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And we know from the Bible, from the book of Romans, that God has given all of us this moral conscience that we have a law written on our hearts so we know what's right or wrong, whether or not we want to acknowledge the source of that compass or not.

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So atheists absolutely can behave in ways that are moral and consistent with what God wants in terms of your everyday behavior.

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It doesn't necessarily mean that they believe that God exists. So it's a difficult concept and it's hard to kind of get our minds around.

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And I know, like I said, that a lot of Christians kind of get this wrong too when they say that, you know, well, atheists, they're not moral people.

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They can't do these good things, but that's not right. That misunderstands the argument. And then if God doesn't exist, if atheists were right, then there is no objective basis for morality.

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And consistent atheist philosophers will acknowledge that. I always like to point that out because sometimes people think, oh, we're just being hard on the atheists.

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We're saying something that they would disagree with. Sure, there are atheists who would disagree with that, who maybe haven't taken out their beliefs to the logical implications like we were talking about earlier.

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But you have many atheist philosophers, people who have really thought deeply about these things, who will acknowledge that, yes, this is true, that we are in a universe of pure moral relativism because there is no objective basis for right or wrong.

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Other atheists will go a little bit differently and try to define it based on, say, human flourishing, that there are good and bad things depending on what makes good or bad come out in terms of more of a utilitarian perspective.

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So you do have some people that go in that direction. But that's different than an actual morality in the way that we traditionally think of it, that there are things that you ought to do that are right or wrong.

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And so it's a very complex question, one that can be hard to get our heads around. But it is a really important one to understand.

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And I actually break this down really in a fairly detailed way in Chapter seven in Faithfully Different.

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It's excellent. No, that was one of the sections of the book that I really enjoyed. So I wanted to poke you a little on it just to see if you could explain it as well in person as you do in the book.

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But again, I highly recommend the book. So the title of the book is Faithfully Different.

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So how can we as Christians be faithfully different in the world? And also the subtitle, how can we regain biblical clarity in a secular culture?

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Yeah, well, that's a really big question because, like I said, that's ultimately why the book exists.

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But I broke down the book very intentionally in these three sections about faithfully different believing, faithfully different thinking, and faithfully different living.

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And each of those sections has three chapters in it. And I really think that those three prongs are a helpful way of considering what it does look like to regain biblical clarity in our culture.

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You have to start with faithfully different believing. In other words, believing what the

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Bible tells us is true about reality. That's the starting point. We have a lot of people today, a lot of people who self -identify as Christians, but don't have a biblical worldview, meaning they don't accept core truths as taught in the

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Bible. And I talk about that, especially in Chapter five with the whole progressive Christian movement, for example.

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So, you know, a little bit more research here. If you go out and you ask people, which the Pew Forum is widely known for doing, about how they identify in terms of their religious beliefs, you find that about 65 % of Americans say that they are a

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Christian today. But if you actually dig into what they believe and you ask them these kind of worldview questions, as George Barna has done through Arizona Christian University, who

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I referenced earlier, they find that only about 6 % of Americans have what would be considered a functioning biblical worldview, having beliefs that are consistent with what the

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Bible teaches and then behaviors and how they live accordingly. So you're talking about 65 % saying, yes,

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I'm a Christian versus 6 % that actually are believing and living according to the

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Bible. That's a huge gap. So if we're going to be faithfully different and believing, we better start with our view of the

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Bible, that it's the inspired and authoritative word of God, and make sure that our beliefs actually line up with what the

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Bible teaches. So that's the first part is just believing the right things. And there are right things because if God himself, if this is his word, then we should believe what he has told us because he's the author of reality.

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So that is our starting point. But then our beliefs have to shape how we think about things. And I think that's really when

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I did that viral blog post a couple of summers ago now, I think that was really the heart of it was, okay, if you're a

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Christian and you're letting the Bible inform all of your worldview, how you see everything, that's got to change how you think about things.

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So how do we apply what the Bible tells us to think well about the things that are happening in culture right now?

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And so that's kind of the next step is learning how to transform our thinking and apply it in our current cultural moment.

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And that's the chapter you're talking about, about morality and how does that relate to, you know, atheistic worldview, secular worldview versus Christian worldview.

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Those are all different subjects in that section where I'm talking about less transition from believing to how we think about things.

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And then finally, how we live. So clarity of belief has to shape clarity of thinking and then clarity of thinking has to shape clarity of living.

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We have to actually live out our faith. We don't want to have a dead faith where there is nothing that we produce as the good fruit and the light for the world around us.

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We are called to be salt and light and we have to be able to do that. So as much as I talk about secular justice and how it fails compared to biblical justice, which

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I started writing about in that summer, I carry that through into this book in that section. We are called to justice as Christians.

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And I think some of us who are concerned about all the secular versions of justice that are out there, we kind of get jumpy when anyone says justice.

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And we think that, oh, they're ultimately talking about something, you know, that's not consistent with the Bible, but we should embrace this whole idea of justice, right?

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We are called to this when defined well based on the Bible. And so we want to be bearers of justice in the world.

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We want to fight for those who are truly oppressed, for the poor and for the marginalized. So we want to be living out our faith.

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So that's just kind of a brief description of where I go with the book, but it is those three prongs, I think, that will help us to regain clarity, both for our own relationship with the

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Lord and also to be salt and light to everyone around us. Amen. Excellent. Thank you.

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So just to give maybe our listeners who may not be familiar with the ministry that God's called you to tell them a little bit of, you mentioned before that your ministry has primarily been to families and teaching a biblical worldview in that sense until more recently has been leading you in a very closely related, but slightly different direction.

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So what's the ministry that God's given you? In general? Well, that's an interesting question.

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I don't know how I summarize that super succinctly, other than saying that I really enjoy equipping

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Christians to think more clearly about a biblical worldview in secular culture. So that includes parents who

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I've written for before. It includes others, the general church audience now that I'm kind of branching out to speak to.

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And I think ultimately, whether it's apologetic specifically to a specific parenting audience, or if it's worldview to a broader audience, which is my current book,

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I think that that line kind of summarizes it all that I want to equip Christians to think more clearly today and to really just get people thinking more deeply about what they believe, why they believe it and how to apply it.

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It's fantastic. So a similar vision to what we do at it got questions and seeking to help people, any questions about the

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Bible, anything spiritually related, we want them to be able to find the biblically based answer. And often that results in questions related to worldview, related to apologetics.

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So our ministries have a lot in common. And it's an exciting thing to be a part of.

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I'm sure you would agree, because it's such a challenge right now. There's so many people who do not have a consistent worldview. So being able to speak some the truth and love into some of those situations is crucially important.

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And also, it's amazing. Praise God to see the impact that has when the light bulbs start to go on.

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So this has been the Got Questions podcast with Natasha Crane, author of Faithfully Different.

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And again, we'll include some links in the show notes and on the description field on YouTube and also at podcast .gotquestions

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.org where you can find out how to purchase the book and learn more about Natasha and her ministry. So, Natasha, thank you for being on the show today.

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Thanks so much for having me. This is the Got Questions podcast. Got questions?