29Aug 2020 by Post

How to Build a More Discerning, Less Naïve, and Better Culturally Engaged Church

Biblically-sound articles, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, Christians, Church, Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Natasha Crain, Politics and Religion, Social media, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics, Worldview
By Natasha Crain  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…
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27Jul 2020 by Post

Christian Naivety is Harming the Church’s Engagement with Today’s Culture

Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, Christians, Culture, Discernment, Legislating Morality, Culture & Politics, Natasha Crain, Politics, society, theology
By Natasha Crain 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 conversations 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…
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18May 2020 by Post

8 Things Christian Parents Should Consider Before Sending Kids Back to Public or Private School This Fall

Apologetics, Apologetics for Parents, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, homeschooling, Kids, Natasha Crain, Parents, theology
By Natasha Crain  This is going to be a very long post, so I’ll cut to the chase: My husband and I decided back in January that we were going to begin homeschooling our twins for middle school this fall…weeks before we had any idea that the coronavirus existed and that it would lead to everyone schooling at home this spring! I guess we were unintentionally ahead of the “curve” on this. (Get it? Curve? Coronavirus? Hello?) This decision was the product of a long period of consideration, during which I did a ton of research, thinking, and learning about educational choices. I came to the conclusion that far more Christian parents should consider homeschooling if they would be able to do it. Note that I said consider. This is not a black and white subject, and…
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20Apr 2020 by Post

God Uses Our Dreams and Disasters to Accomplish the Impossible

Apologetics, Apologetics for Parents, ApologeticsForParents, Bible, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, evil, God Sovereignty, Natasha Crain, theology, Theology and Christian Apologetics
By Natasha Crain  If you’ve read my books or followed my blog for a while, you know that the focus of my writing is to equip parents with an understanding of how to make a case for and defend the truth of Christianity so they can pass that knowledge on to their kids. This is my passion and focus, but it certainly doesn’t represent ALL that kids need to know and experience in their faith. It’s not enough to KNOW what’s true if that truth doesn’t transform us. For years now, I’ve followed blogger and author Kristen Welch at her blog; We Are THAT Family. She is someone I hugely admire for living a life transformed by truth through her work to serve others around the world, and today I…
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28Mar 2020 by Post

Why Studying Evolution Will Likely Challenge Your Kids’ Faith

Apologetics for Parents, Bible, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, Doubts, Evidence, Evolution, God, Kids, Natasha Crain, theology, truth
By Natasha Crain I saw the following post in a Christian Facebook group: My daughter is starting her second semester of college tomorrow. She got ahold of her syllabus and found the following quote from the professor. “Except to one whose reason is blinded by unquestioning adherence to fundamentalist doctrine of creation, the evidence of the fossil record, with that of anatomy, embryology, biochemistry and genetics, compels a single conclusion: evolution is a fact.” Any suggestions on how she should approach this? If this is his daughter’s first time hearing about evolution (or at least secular views of it), it’s going to be a tough semester. Any suggestions on how she should “approach this” are at least a couple of years late. I hear or see questions like this all…
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02Mar 2020 by Post

Why Your Kids May Become Atheists No Matter What You Do (and Why That Shouldn’t Discourage You)

Apologetics for Parents, ChristianMomThoughts, Doubts, Emotional Doubts, Intellectual doubt, Kids, Natasha Crain, Parents, Questions, theology, Volitional doubt
By Natasha Crain My 5-year-old and I were playing the game Connect Four the other day and, for the first time ever, she was in a position to beat me. I absolutely won’t let my kids win a game for the sake of winning, but when I see that they’ve gotten into a position to win on their own, I’m willing to point it out (yes, I am that generous). All my daughter had to do was put her checker in a specific spot and it would guarantee a win on her next turn. I excitedly explained, “You’re going to win! You did it on your own! I didn’t let you win at all! Look. If you play right here, you are going to win on your next turn no matter where I…
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05Feb 2020 by Post

10 Ways to Get Your Kids More Interested in Their Faith

Apologetics for Parents, Christian Apologetics, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, Kids faith, Kids in the Church, Natasha Crain, theology
By Natasha Crain A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak to four groups of parents during the Apologetics Canada conference (incidentally, if you live in the Long Branch, NJ, area, I’ll be speaking at the No Pat Answers conference on April 9). I ended up speaking with a lot of parents after these talks and heard some variant of one particular question repeatedly: “I’d love to have deeper conversations about faith with my kids, but how do I get them more interested in sitting down and having those discussions?” To answer that, I gave several of these parents a snippet of advice from my marketing background. Every day you probably see or hear some kind of advertisement for buying a new car. If you aren’t currently interested in…
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23Nov 2019 by Post

Reactions to John Crist’s Moral Failings Demonstrate Our Culture’s Confusion about Christianity

Apologetics, Apologetics for Parents, Christianity, ChristianMomThoughts, Christians failures, John Crist, Natasha Crain, Theology and Christian Apologetics, Uncategorized
By Natasha Crain News broke yesterday that popular Christian comedian and YouTuber John Crist has come forth with an admission of ongoing “sexual sin and addiction struggles” after multiple women exposed years of his sexually immoral behavior. Honestly, my heart sank when I saw this. I love Crist’s videos. We watch them with our kids. In fact, our family had just watched one of his most popular ones, “Church Hunters,” this week! If you’re not familiar with Crist, he pokes fun at evangelical culture through his videos, and in a way that you can typically nod along with because they (unfortunately and humorously) hit close to home. Church Hunters, for example, is a parody that features a couple searching for a new church, but they’re considering all the wrong criteria…something…
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