Hey everyone it's Natasha Crane.

It's Natasha Crane.

So today I published a brand new article on my website at natasha crane.com and when I put out new

content on the site in written form I'm probably not going to have a new podcast episode

as well that week because right now I'm in the middle of writing my new book and I'm on a

deadline and so I just can't do both but in order to do something for the podcast this week I thought

I'd just go ahead and do an audio version of that blog post because I know that a lot of people simply don't have time to read.

And I also know that some of my blog posts can get kind of long and so I'm hopeful that this will be helpful to some of you who don't have the time

to read as much.

The title of the piece is, Christians must care less about our cultural reputation. Never have I written an article title that sounds less

intuitive. Don't we need to be concerned about our witness to the world? Isn't that

implied in the Great Commission? Shouldn't people see us and want to follow Jesus because of our reputation?

So stick with me here because this requires some nuance and it's really important.

The idea that Christians need to fix a growing reputation problem in our society

is becoming increasingly common in conversations on social media and even in articles by well-known Christian leaders.

Comments like, the world is Watching or We're damaging

our witness by often warn believers to modify what we say or do so culture will

think differently about us. The assumption is that we've collectively

gone wrong in recent times and now we've got to quickly do something about it

before the world thinks even worse of us. I would agree that Christians and

Christianity in general are increasingly being seen in a negative light by non-believers,

but I think we need to be extremely careful in how we assess and respond to that fact.

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