ReFOCUS with Jim Daly

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Neil Shenvi: When we pray true blessing on our enemies, not only are we obeying God's command, which we are, we're blessing ourselves. We are softening our hearts because the ultimate example of someone loving their enemies is Jesus. When I was His enemy, He loved me. How can I not do the same for others?

Jim Daly: That's Dr. Neil Shenvi, and he'll have some excellent insights on responding to woke culture as ambassadors for Christ. Welcome to ReFOCUS with Jim Daly, a podcast production from Focus on the Family. We're living in a cultural moment where words are being redefined, long-held assumptions are being challenged, and many people, especially Christians, are asking a simple but urgent question: How do we engage a rapidly changing culture without losing our convictions or our compassion?

Even though we see some encouraging signs of a spiritual awakening, we know that fewer Americans identify as Christians. Our conversations in the culture are dominated by issues of race, gender, sexuality, and power. We all feel the strain of that as we try to navigate the ideological minefields and shifting ground. Today's conversation with Dr. Neil Shenvi is about making sense of this moment and helping us as Christians to know how to respond in a post-woke culture, engaging our neighbors, coworkers, and even our family members with grace and truth. Dr. Shenvi is a former atheist, a Christian apologist—that's quite a spread—and a coauthor of the book *Post-Woke: Asserting a Biblical Vision of Race, Gender, and Sexuality*. The culture changes, but the gospel still has the power to transform hearts. So whether you feel confused, concerned, or just tired of the noise, this conversation is meant to better equip you. Let's dive into that conversation with Dr. Neil Shenvi on today's ReFOCUS with Jim Daly. Neil, thanks for joining me today on ReFOCUS.

Neil Shenvi: Thank you, Jim. It's a pleasure to be here.

Jim Daly: We've shared before on the podcast, and we're really trying with the podcast to talk about cultural issues and to equip people to do the best job they can do as believers in the cultural space. It takes a lot of patience, understanding, wisdom, reading, and knowledge. I think for some people, it can become overwhelming. But this is faith. This is what it's about. We've got to engage. Paul is a great example, I think, of somebody who was prepared. Don't you?

Neil Shenvi: Yes. If you look at his speech in Athens, for example, he was quoting the pagan poets back to the pagans to convince them that you can know things about the God that you unknowingly reverence through your own writings, and then pointing them to the God who speaks through Scripture.

Jim Daly: Today when we look at that, it's very similar, isn't it? We've got to use things within the culture to point out the twisted understanding that so many people have now. My wife and I will sit there and go, "My goodness, we can't even agree on what is true." It is so difficult to speak to people who have no faith or are antagonistic toward faith. In that context, what are the preparatory things that are good? Just one or two.

Neil Shenvi: I'd say begin with establishing a good, healthy relationship with the person and just loving them in very concrete ways. Take an interest in their lives, blessing them when they need help, offering it, and being a good neighbor to them. That's a great way to build trust.

The second thing I'd say is to simply point them to Jesus. Point them to a person who is there, who speaks through His word, and who can transform their lives. Try not to get caught up in side issues. Occasionally, you have to talk about hot-button cultural flashpoints, but ultimately we want to turn the conversation to the one who's calling all men to Himself and can transform people because our mere words can't.

Jim Daly: That's a great umbrella statement, and we're going to get into all of this. But let's peel back a bit the culture. Since 1950, the number of people in the U.S. that identify as Christian has gone from about 90% down to 68% or so. That's a big decrease. They haven't moved to other faiths; they've moved for the most part to what we would call the "none" category. They just aren't interested in spiritual or religious things. Speak to that drop in the culture and how that makes our job as Christians in the culture easier or harder.

Neil Shenvi: It's hard to say because if you think about the early Christians, they were facing a culture that was definitely non-Christian and often very antagonistic to Christianity when they heard it. But they conquered it. But how? Not through installing a Christian emperor originally, but through preaching the gospel and through demonstrating its power through their lives. It brings its own challenges to be facing a post-Christian culture, but also unique opportunities because you're talking to people who really are cast adrift at sea. They're lost. They often know they need something, and we can offer it to them.

Jim Daly: I've met pastors out in the Bay Area, San Francisco, or some other areas, maybe Boston, where things are black and white. If you're going to stand up and say you're a Christian, you're going to take some heat, and you've made that determination that "I'm going to be okay and I'm going to stand for the things I believe in." There isn't what I would describe as what we might call "cultural Christian." I'm Christian because my folks were Christian and everybody's Christian around me. You don't find that in those core non-Christian areas like the Bay Area. Speak to that clarity where everybody knows where each other's at, basically.

Neil Shenvi: Exactly. I became a Christian at Berkeley as a grad student at UC Berkeley. We used to call it "Bezerkeley." That's exactly right. People hear that and say, "Wow, that's like a miracle." And I remind them every conversion is a miracle. It takes the Holy Spirit changing our hearts miraculously. But that said, it's a very non-Christian, post-Christian environment. I do think it was very clear there if you were going to follow Jesus or not. No one was going to church just for fun as a country club or a social club on Sunday mornings. They were sleeping in. But in Berkeley, if you're there in the morning gathering with other believers, it's because you believed and followed Jesus.

Interestingly, I grew up as a non-Christian. I would say I was a Pharisee because I was very proud of my own righteousness and my spirituality. I looked down on Christians as ignorant and fundamentalist. When I came to Christ then, realizing that I was a sinner who needed rescue like everybody else, that made me horrified at what I'd been. Therefore, I was more comfortable in a sense in this very black-and-white environment where I knew hypocrisy didn't really exist because no one was trying to fool anyone. For people that grew up in the Bible Belt where there was a sense that you just go to church like you go to the grocery store—it's the thing you do—that has always terrified me because hypocrisy is a barrier to a real encounter with Jesus.

Jim Daly: It's interesting because it is clarifying. That is a good thing where you need to know who you are and what you're about. When it's more cultural, it can be blinding like you don't really know and you're never really tested.

Neil Shenvi: Jesus spoke to the Pharisees and said, "You think you can see. Your problem is not that you're blind, because I can heal blindness. Your problem is you don't know you're blind." That has always stuck with me. It's not really our sins per se that keep us from Jesus, because we all sin. It's our righteousness. It's our feeling that we're okay, we can manage this, "I'm a little bad but I'm not a wretched sinner in need of salvation." Jesus says, "But you are."

Jim Daly: When you look at the New Testament, there's two neon signs that strike me: salvation through Christ and Christ alone, and don't become a Pharisee. Those are blinking lights of the New Testament. Why as human beings do we tip into that? I know it's sin nature, but there's got to be psychology and other stuff where we have this predisposition almost to look down on people that don't measure up to us. It's in race and all kinds of things.

Neil Shenvi: I think it goes back to Genesis 1 to 3. After Adam and Eve sinned, the first thing they did was they hid from God. The second thing they did was to cover themselves with fig leaves to cover their shame and nakedness. Throughout history, in some sense, the deepest need of the human heart is to feel righteous, to feel justified, to make excuses or justification for why we're better than other people. That has always driven us. We think that's a religious impulse. No, it's a human impulse, which is why people have raced towards things like wokeness, critical theory, and all these different activist causes because it's a way for them to feel like they're on the right side of history, that they're the good people, not like the other bad people.

Jim Daly: It is so easy for us in our flesh to do that. I'm thinking of psychological testing where they'll ask questions like, "Do you tell the truth more than other people?" Oh, yes. We score ourselves rather high when it comes to virtue, and it's just funny that right there we tend to look down on those around us that we perceive don't do it as well as we do. As faithful Christians, we've got to put that in check every day.

In your book, *Post-Woke*, which really becomes like a manual for Christians particularly to understand the world around us, one thing that you started with that I so agree with is when you love your neighbor. It's almost like the Lord has put spiritual DNA in us. When somebody—and I don't care where they're at, non-Christian, LGBTQ people—when they feel sincerity from you, my experience has been their hearts open up. It's like you can't avoid it as a human being created in the image of God. You've experienced that at Berkeley. You were baking muffins, right? I love that idea.

Neil Shenvi: That's right. When I became a Christian at Berkeley, two things really immediately moved me. One was a desire to reach my secular, intellectual colleagues and grad students with the gospel, so I began reading apologetics. But the other passion I had was the desire to just reach out to those on the margins. Berkeley had a large homeless population. I thought, "What can I do?" I started baking muffins, which I learned to do, and I would bring them down to the People's Park, which was a place where homeless people would hang out. They were mainly receptive. You give people muffins, they're happy about that.

But of course, it's Berkeley, so I can recall getting cursed out and yelled at. I remember running into a woman handing out leaflets and saying, "Stop the Christian fascist." Because she assumed that everybody in Berkeley is going to be behind stopping the Christian fascist. I had to say, "I'm actually a Christian. I don't know if I'm a fascist." But how do you deal with people that are antagonistic like that? I think the answer is just love them. Keep bringing the muffins. Eventually, you show them that Jesus is here for us, He actually cares about us, and even if I think He's totally wrong, He cares about me. That's very disarming.

Jim Daly: It is, and we're going to get more into how you do that and the attitude of the believer and how to present Christ in a way that's healthy and receivable. But let's talk about some of the cultural stuff. For the listeners, Critical Theory—its origin, how it's seeping into everything now—we will attach something like Critical Race Theory to it. But from what I understand, it's something that started in Marxism and Communism. Turn the light on for me and for everybody else. What is that connection, and why do we need to be aware of it?

Neil Shenvi: Wokeness today is what we call the cultural expression of Critical Theory. This ideology does go back to Karl Marx. Karl Marx, the father of Communism, saw the world in terms of economics and class, oppressors versus oppressed. For him, the oppressors were those who owned the factories, the bourgeoisie, and the oppressed people were the poor, the workers. He wanted to have a glorious Communist revolution that would overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie and have a classless society that would destroy all oppression. That was his view of reality.

Fast forward 50 or 60 years after his death, and nothing had happened. The Critical Theorists were looking at Marx's prophecies and saying, "What went wrong?" Their answer was that oppression is not just about money and class and who owns the factory; it's about ideas. Oppressed people are oppressed by the ideas of the ruling class, whether it's rich people, or Christians, or white people, or straight people—that whoever has the power over society's ideas, they're enforcing their values and norms on culture, and that's what oppression is. That then led to a number of disciplines like Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Critical Pedagogy, etc. But all of them essentially see the world in terms of oppressor groups oppressing oppressed groups by putting their values and norms into society in a way that justifies their privilege.

Jim Daly: It's so true. I remember being in a history class when I was in college and the professor was talking about the Bolshevik Revolution. He made one statement that stuck with me. I can't remember another thing this professor said all those years ago, but he said basically the Bolsheviks, the poor people, the uprisers, simply threw out the Tsars and they became the Tsars. They became the oppressors. I guess that's the bottom line: it's who's got the power and how do they wield it in society. That's the battle. Do you want the power in order to help others, or do you want the power in order to oppress others? When people say wherever Communism or Socialism has been tried, it has not worked, why is that? It has appeal to young people because if it could be done, everybody's in a better place. The problem is it can't be done because of the evil in people's hearts.

Neil Shenvi: It's not the only thing that the problem is with Critical Theory. One of the big problems is that they have redefined the word "oppression" to refer not to cruelty and tyranny like we associate with the word oppression in the dictionary, but they redefine oppression to refer to any time the ruling class supposedly imposes their values on culture. They wouldn't just want to overthrow the rich capitalists; they would also want to overthrow the very idea of gender. They would view the gender binary as oppressive. They would view scientific method as white and European. All of these things that we think are normal and objective and good and natural, they would see as elements of oppression. The reason that Critical Theory doesn't work—even more than Communism doesn't work—is because it has a fundamentally wrong idea about reality. They are skeptical of all power structures and all hierarchies and want to throw it all down, but that would include things that are actually good and God-ordained, like gender and the family. All of this we go into in our book. Dr. Pat Sawyer and I talk about these ideas and how corrosive they are to basic common sense principles of reality that have been around for millennia.

Jim Daly: A few years ago, North Carolina School Board Association proposed a resolution to support Equity and Inclusion. They always choose words that sound good, but they want equity and inclusion in their schools. Again, sounds good. But where did it go wrong?

Neil Shenvi: This is a great example, and this is why Pat and I wrote our book—because they have redefined so many words and you have to understand what they're doing to combat them effectively. In that case, a conservative lawmaker reached out to me knowing that I'd written about Critical Theory and said, "Hey, this resolution doesn't feel right. Could you read it for us and explain what's wrong?" I look at the resolution, and at first, they define equity as equality of opportunity. They want to give all kids equal chances. Of course, we'd like that. It's a great idea. At the end of the document, they suddenly say, "And if we have equity, we'll have equality of outcome." Those are totally different. You have to understand that Critical Theorists have redefined equity essentially as being measured by equality of outcome, and in the document they'd done that, but it's very hard to notice.

Take inclusion. What does that mean? It means not just including everyone in some educational system like you all participate. It means equalizing all differences. For example, you want to include all what they would call sexual minorities, having no normalized sexual ethics at all. We have to be trans-inclusive, LGBTQ inclusive, and that would undermine again what people have known for a long time, which is that men and women are different and it's a good thing. These words—things like intersectionality, white fragility, white privilege, transphobia—where do they come from? Our book shows you and explains how these words often carry connotations that are very, very dangerous.

Jim Daly: In that regard, let me ask you for an example when it comes to equality of outcome. Equity is good; equality of outcome is the alarm bell because—give me the example.

Neil Shenvi: For example, in his book *How to Be an Antiracist*, Ibram X. Kendi, a very well-known antiracist author, defines equality of equity as when two groups are basically on equal footing socially. He gives an example of home ownership. There's only racial equity when every racial group owns the same percentage of homes regardless of anything else. You could say maybe that would be good, maybe it would be bad, but you can't assume that that's necessarily a good thing.

The example we always give—many people have given him—is the NBA. The NBA is 75% black. So relative to the population of the U.S., there are very few whites proportionally in the NBA. Do we really think that we need to have racial equity in the NBA? No, the answer is we have a meritocracy. The reason there's so many black players in the NBA is they're so good. We should embrace that—that people groups are different. We don't need the same number of male and female in every profession because women tend to enjoy certain professions more than men do. Equity would tend to just level the playing field, not ask any questions about actual justice and procedural justice, but instead just force certain outcomes through discrimination. Kendi explicitly says—this is a quote—"The only remedy for past discrimination is future discrimination." He openly says this. We're going to discriminate against say whites or men in order to put our thumb on the scale and fix the outcomes. No, justice is about ensuring equality of opportunity and in a fair and equal weights and measures. The outcomes we can't control, and we don't need to.

Jim Daly: Do you think the ideology is the driver there? I mean, they have to rationalize that meritocracy when it comes to being a pilot is a good thing. You want the best person in the seat who's qualified, passed the test, does the regular reviews, and knows how to get out of an emergency if the plane is in a nosedive. Back to that point: is it ideology that's driving them so they're knowingly blind to what's true so they can achieve their goal, or are they just that blind that they don't get it because they're all out on the thumb on the scale?

Neil Shenvi: It is an ideological blindness. It's not that they secretly know this is evil; it's just that they have these blinders on where they see everything through those lenses. A great example of this is how many people even in 2026 still insist that trans-women—meaning men who identify as women—have no advantage over biological women in sports. There was a recent BMJ paper, a huge medical journal in England, that came out declaring that actually the science shows that biological men who identify as women do not have an advantage over women in sports. That is just—and the paper is obviously full of errors. That's a very common sentiment. It's obviously false. I mean, you can show data on how male high school track athletes routinely outperform Olympic female champions. Biological men, even at a young age, are just physically better at most sports than women are. But they're blind to that because their theory insists it's got to be equal.

Jim Daly: But again, the common sense thing is if they're driving for that and they can't even understand that, what are we dealing with? It's like a mirage. You can't—how do you have a discussion with somebody that is that deluded in terms of what's true? Think of a boxer—the boxing ring. All you have to do is measure the impact, the pounds per square inch on a punch. There's no way a woman is going to match a man because of skeletal, muscular, physiology. And the fact that they could bury that and then wave a watch like they're hypnotizing the culture—"This is truly a woman, this is a woman"—and we're going, "What are you talking about?"

Neil Shenvi: In our book, we talk about how to reach out. We have a whole chapter on reaching out to people that have been captivated by these ideas. Part of what we do is we show people how to reach those that have been hypnotized. You have to first understand their ideas and where they're coming from. Think of yourself as a missionary. If you want to be a missionary to Muslims, you often will start by reading the Quran because you want to understand what they actually believe and know it well and then find a bridge to introduce them to the truth.

Take trans issues—preferred pronouns. Trans-women who identify as women will want to be referred to as "she/her," "call me by my pronoun," and "tell me I'm a woman, I'm a woman, and if you don't tell me I'm a woman, you're a bigot." We just talk to people and they say, "That sounds right. If you just—it's politeness, it's just being kind to them, it's loving your neighbor." We point out: okay, if that's true, would you go to an anorexic girl and call her fat? She says, "I'm fat, I know I'm fat, call me fatty. If you don't call me fatty, you don't love me." And would you say, "Okay, that's right, the loving thing to do is to tell her she's fat and needs to lose some weight." We say, "No, you'd never do that." We'd say, "Honey, I won't call you fat, not because I don't love you but because I do. Because you are starving to death. I love you so much I will not be party to this. I don't want you to hurt yourself." That's our response. It's not a lack of compassion; it's a presence of compassion.

Jim Daly: In that context, most people are following to some degree Jordan Peterson from Canada, who has had a terrible battle. When he's asked, "It's not that I don't want to comply with what a person would want me to call them," he said, "I'm very open to talking with that human being with dignity." But when the government tells me what I must say, that's over the line. And that's what he's been fighting very viscerally. That is a great point. It's kind of mandated speech talk, and then where is our freedom of conscience?

Neil Shenvi: We have a section too on how do you address this in the workplace. As a Christian one-on-one, you might just choose how you can speak to the person, but if you go to the workplace, they might tell you, "You have to use preferred pronouns or you're fired." What do you do then? We have a chapter discussing strategies. One of the things we say is go to your workplace, your employer, and say, "Look, you respect diversity here, right?" "Oh, of course we do." "Well, if you respect diversity of thought, then you should respect other people's beliefs, and I will respect their beliefs about their gender if they respect my beliefs about their gender. So I don't force them to say certain things they don't believe, but I want you to respect my right to not say what I don't believe." Or point out to them that you care about religious inclusion. "Yes, we do." Well, there are many religious Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Christians who don't think that trans-women are women or that LGBTQ practice is actually a good thing. We all agree it's against God's design. So will you respect our religious right to disagree? Approach them not by calling them to your standard, which they'll say "I reject your standard," but hold them to their own standards. They respect diversity, they respect inclusion, they respect tolerance. Say you affirm those ideals; live up to them.

Jim Daly: No, it's a great point because that is one of the great contradictions in their philosophy, right? They're all about diversity except you. We don't want any religious diversity in here. It'd be like us going into the lunchroom at work and saying, "I would like you to call me the son of the Most High God," and they're going to say, "What, are you crazy?" But that in essence is what they're demanding from us is to refer to them in some non-aligned, illogical way—call me a woman when I'm a man. We're not forcing them to refer to our God in the lunchroom. We can approach those conversations with kindness, with charity, with deference, and respect for our employers and yet still be firm in our convictions. Neil, let me ask you this. With Focus on the Family, a lot of parents are struggling because their mostly adult children now, 20 and 30-something adult children, are cutting them off. They're saying to them, "Mom, Dad, you're just religious bigots. You don't see it; I see the bigger picture." How do you recommend—that's very intimate and those calls are tearful calls that we get with our counselors saying, "What do I do?" What kind of coaching would you provide to that parent of a 20-something adult saying, "You're living in the Stone Age"?

Neil Shenvi: I would say pray. The first thing we say is pray numerous times in our book. Your kids are their own people. You can't make them do anything; you can't change their minds for them, but you can pray for them. God can change hearts. It's about all you've got. It's got to start there. We are in ourselves helpless and hopeless; we're lost without God. We appeal to someone greater than ourselves to change our lives and to rescue our children. So do that first.

Julia was a girl that lived that, and you mentioned her in the book. Julia's one of the many people that we tell her stories in the book just briefly—who were basically consumed by woke ideology and either left the church or radically deconstructed. She grew up in a homeschooled Christian home, conservative parents, going to church, professing faith in Christ, went to a Christian college, did fine, but then went to a secular graduate program, embraced Queer Theory, cut off her family. It's an example of why these are not just ideas out there in the ether; they're being put into practice, they're affecting your life.

The first step is pray. Second step would be understand. Try if she won't talk to you or your kids won't talk to you, do some reading on what they believe now. If they won't tell you at all, you can at least read books like our book that will tell you, "Well, this is what's being taught to them." That will often build bridges. If you say, "Hey, I read about this theorist, I read this book in fact—did you read this book?" They'll be like, "You read that book?" That often will show them that you care to know where they're coming from, and that can open the door to conversations. And then the last thing I would do is don't give up. Keep reaching out. They might say, "I'm not going to talk to you," but send them birthday cards. It's got to be painful, but don't give up. The prodigal son went and left for years, and the second he appeared on the horizon, his dad ran to him. He'd not stopped thinking about him.

Jim Daly: That's good advice. It's just such an emotional time because you're losing connection, and that's hard for any parent. Let me ask you this. This is something I have said at Focus on the Family: don't let your personality be the offense, let the gospel be the offense. I do believe that. I think you and I have a little different take on that. When I make that statement, what I'm saying is don't get angry, don't get out of character as a Christian to prove your point. You've got to remain in the presence of Christ; you've got to show the fruit of the Spirit. That's what I'm referring to, not voiding truth. Speak truth, be bold. But when you do it, it's so easy to fall again in this way: now you're in an argument, and I'm going to win this argument, and you are just stupid. You can't go that direction. But explain what you believe about that.

Neil Shenvi: I totally agree with you there. I've heard that phrase used to say only talk about the gospel, not about say truth or God's law. For example, when it comes to say sexuality, talk to them about Jesus, about salvation from sin, rescue, atonement, but don't bring up what the Bible says about sexual ethics. I think no, that's—you should never pit God's law versus God's gospel because the point is the law drives us to Christ. Knowing that you've broken God's law is what makes us realize, "No, I need forgiveness. I've been living wrong. I need a Savior." So don't be ashamed, don't be afraid to say, "Here's God's law," but then to also point out, "But God's law condemns both of us. I'm not better than you by nature. I'm also a sinner," and then share with them, "That's why it's so good of God to provide a rescuer, that it is in Jesus."

Jim Daly: That is really good. You wrote an article about George Floyd and his death and what happened with the police officer, etc. What was the framework for that? Why did you write it, and what was the framework of your response to that, and then what was the repercussion?

Neil Shenvi: This is a great example because I had that same ingrained thought, which is don't offend people with anything but the gospel. But after this string of the deaths of black men, often at the hands of police, I was looking at the actual data for police shootings and I realized the narrative they're portraying in the media is not actually accurate. LeBron James famously tweeted after the death of George Floyd that black men are being hunted every day wherever they go. That was the narrative for several months. I looked at the actual data and I said that's not true. So very hesitantly, I wrote an article just looking at the FBI data, the surveys of black people about their attitude towards police, and just showing people no, this narrative is not true in reality. The odds of a black unarmed black man being killed by police are the same as him being struck by lightning. So it's very rare, it's not an epidemic. It's still when it happens unjustly, it's absolutely evil.

But I was hesitant. I didn't want to offend people, but at some point I was like, this is just true. So I shared the article privately with some friends, and one of my friends had a black roommate. As it turned out, his black roommate had so imbibed that narrative, that false narrative, he wouldn't even leave his house. He was so afraid of being killed by police because he's been told everyone's out to kill you. He read my article and was like, "Wait, this is not true," and went out for pizza. I thought to myself, the truth will set you free. We can be sympathetic and gentle, but we should share the truth because it will ultimately help people.

Jim Daly: You look at the situation in Minneapolis, and there's all kind—various observations about what's going on. But the one thing that is true is the amount of fear injected into that, and as a Christian typically that is an antithesis to God, who brings Shalom, His peace. So when you look at that situation and what people are trying to do and the fear being injected there—and you know, I know Christians who have said the intensity of it, I'm very uncomfortable with—what's our message?

Neil Shenvi: Our first message is always the hope of the gospel. Are you afraid? Cast your cares upon God because He cares for you. Are you troubled? Do you see brokenness and evil in the world? There's an answer: it's the gospel. When it comes to on-the-ground realities, I think we just speak truth. The truth, the actual truth, might offend either political side, but we're not afraid of the truth. In fact, we search for it, we long for it, because we ultimately believe that God's a God of truth. But that being said, because these are tense and heated conversations, just show love to the people you're talking to. Let them know that you're open to correction, you want to know the truth, and that you're here for them no matter where they fall.

Jim Daly: Neil, I interviewed Shelby Steele a few years ago, and he had gone in and did a forensic study of Ferguson, where that young black man was killed by the police officer, etc. And he said there's two kinds of truth: there's the objective truth of what actually happened, what typically would show up in a police report, right? Or FBI, or what have you. These are the facts. Then there's poetic truth. He made a pretty interesting point. He said the young man who had issues with authority went and punched the cop while he was seated in his squad car, broke his orbital bone. The officer got out of the car, and as he had been walking away and then turned and charged at him, that was objectively what happened in and then he was shot. What the community believed is that he was shot in the back and then shot in the face while the officer was standing over him. And he made the point that poetic truth is hard to undo. It's what is believed, and if anybody tries to straighten that out to what objectively occurred, there's no chance. So speak to that idea of how do we even know truth in an environment where people are twisting the truth.

Neil Shenvi: This goes back to Critical Theory again. Part of the reason that poetic truth is so powerful is because Critical Theory—we mention this in the book—exalts lived experience over objective truth. In fact, they see your lived experience as being more accurate than this so-called white Western narrative of truth—that actually you have to look to people that are oppressed and they really have access to reality. So that plays into this idea that what you say, the police say happened, is not what really happened. What really happened you have to go to the people on the margins to know that.

How do you work to undermine that? I think as Christians again you point out that no, objective truth really does matter. The simplest place to go to is to the Scriptures: that if you deny that objective truth matters more than your lived experience, well what are the Scriptures? They're objective truth. So you're basically denying that Scriptures have authority over how you feel. Hopefully all Christians would say no, that can't be right. Why? Because our hearts are twisted, easily deceived, and corrupted. We need God to realign our lived experience and interpretations with His truth. But His truth is found not just in Scripture but in objective reality. We don't simply know say that male and female exist from Scripture—we do—we also know it from objective reality. So we have to go way back and say, "Hey, I know it feels right to sympathize and empathize with those who are hurting, that's fine actually, but not at the expense of denying that there is objective truth that takes precedence."

Jim Daly: In that regard, the idea of conviction. This is critical to a true Christian conversion, I believe. And I think you make the point in the book that if we become so soft toward sin, then people won't know that they're living in disobedience to God. This is a really interesting dilemma. Our inability because we don't want to be scorned or looked down upon to say to somebody, "Doing that behavior is really against God's design for you and your life's going to go better if you stop that activity"—an addiction, a porn addiction. Let's aim some of that at the church because those numbers are high in the church. If that's occurring, we need to help each other to say this is not healthy for you. But in that context, if we can't do that, how does the Holy Spirit ever have leverage of conviction if we think it's no big deal?

Neil Shenvi: You talked about the fear of being a Pharisee, and that's preeminent in Christians' minds as it ought to be. We don't want to be the self-righteous Pharisee who looks down at everyone else, like in Luke 18. The great response to that though is when you talk about someone committing sin or being a sinner, you're talking about yourself too. By nature, all of us are sinners. You don't go to them and say, "You're doing bad things." You say, "We're both doing bad things. We both need the cross of Christ." That great quote I think was back to D.L. Moody: he says, "I'm just a beggar trying to show other beggars where to find bread." That's all I'm doing. I'm not coming to you as a rich guy throwing you a loaf here and there. I'm coming to you as a poor man myself who's been trapped in all kinds of sin and who's been rescued by a good, loving Savior. So you don't have to fear talking about the reality of sin and talking about how evil it is because you're patient zero. Talk about your own life, how you have been freed from sin, forgiven from sin, and say, "I'm just coming to you trying to help you with the same thing."

Jim Daly: I remember I wrote *ReFocus*, which is very similar to your thesis here, in the context of how do we engage a culture that doesn't like us. And I remember I was invited by a liberal here in town who owns a bookstore down by Colorado College, which is a wonderful university but in the end of my presentation, this gentleman put his hand up and he was gay and identified "I'm a gay man" and he said, "When will you Christians simply get caught up to the 21st century with your sexual archaic views?" And I'm smiling just like you, and he ends his question and I said, "Thank you for wanting me to be the editor of the book or even the writer, but I'm neither. I'm just a follower of the book, so your issue is really with God, not with me. I would just encourage you to read the word that He's given mankind to know and then you got to deal with it. It's not for me to deal with it with you." And he just sat down nodding favorably to the response. I think of that in the context of the LGBTQ movement. This is one that seemed to come up like a sandstorm off the desert—it just whooshed and all of a sudden within a decade people are back on their heels, not knowing what we can and cannot say and what's the definition of marriage and it's only love. So on that LGBT issue, where do we go from here?

Neil Shenvi: One thing you have to do is learn how the narratives and the slogans they use are just not true. Take "love equals love." In our book we talk about the slogan "love equals love." That could be a tautology like two equals two or cat equals cat. But they mean by it is that all sexual love is equal, is morally equal. But that's not true. When you say it that way, it's obviously not true because no one thinks that sexual love between an adult and a child is healthy and good, or between a brother and sister—that's perverted. We'd all say that. So "love equals love" is not true. Point out that these slogans which we all just kind of repeat—we see on billboards, we hear—they're not objectively even logical.

The other thing to take courage in: it's not that the Christian sexual ethic is revolutionary and appalling to modern ears only; it's always been revolutionary. The ancient Greco-Roman world was filled with all kinds of sexual deviancy, pederasty, meaning adult-child relationships—they happened. The ancient, ancient world in which the Israelites lived, you had gods having sex with other gods—you had things I can't even talk about on air. The biblical sexual ethic was always counter-cultural. It's not any different today. So you shouldn't think "I'm facing something new"—maybe in some sense in the last 50, 100 years, but over the scope of history, we're facing the same objections we always have. And the irony is the Christian sexual ethic, because it's rooted in God's reality, is actually good. It's good for people. It not only is true and honors God, it's good for us. And all of God's law is. God's law is not just about our obedience; it's a matter of blessing ourselves by following it.

Jim Daly: Your heritage is from India, correct? Your dad? I say that only for the listeners because you have had to think about all this and you even lived it—you became a Christian. In that context, here's an interesting insight. We did a film just recently called *Truth Rising*. In there, Baroness Philippa Stroud said something profound. She said Western Civilization was unique because it was based on a simple premise that was biblical: that every human being is created in the image of God. And that transformed over time the way we treated one another—child labor, women, the downtrodden. We began to apply that simple application that everybody deserves dignity because they're made in the image of a God. That is a big distinction between everything else and Christianity. Speak to that for a minute—the importance of that and if we lose that, where do we go?

Neil Shenvi: It's ironic that principle is being attacked on both sides essentially of the aisles. On the one hand, you have progressives attacking say the dignity of the unborn and saying they're just clumps of cells and not respecting no, they're made in God's image, they're image-bearers like us. They're already alive, they're persons like us. You were once an unborn clump of cells. But then on the radical right, you see people wanting a hierarchy and thinking some races are less than other races. It's odd that it's so unique, and yet we take it for granted. We've been so steeped in that way of thinking that we don't grasp how radical and revolutionary it was. I think we should recover that sense of wonder and awe and actually it should be our guidestone for thinking about other issues. Even most progressives would say "Are all people important and valuable?" They would probably say yes because it's in their DNA; it's in our Western DNA. But other areas—if you ask "is all love equally fine?" and they're like "yes," that's counter-cultural to say "no, not all love is equal in God's sight." But when we go back and think "you know, this principle which was unheard of in the ancient world, that all people are valuable," it in the end showed it was both true and beautiful. The Christian sexual ethic is like that. In fact, all Christian truths are like that: that they might seem even odd, counter-cultural, even hateful, but wisdom is known by its fruit. When we begin to root ourselves in God's view of reality, it will bear fruit in people's lives and even in the culture eventually. So take heart. We're preaching a message of good news that is for people to receive and flourish with.

Jim Daly: Shelby Steele made an interesting observation that only a black professor could make. He said, "Jim, you've got to think about it this way: slavery was a 3,000-year-old industry globally. Probably the Ottomans were the ones that really took in many, many European females, for example—I think the number was between two to five million. But the point of it is it was global. Everybody was taking slaves from others to do the industry and do the things they needed, etc." But he said it is interesting that the Founding Fathers, even though they get terrible scores because some of them owned slaves and we recognize that, but he said—and again, Shelby's black—he said they set up a document that he thought they knew at some point that document would light the world. And it only took 80 years for Abraham Lincoln to come on the scene and sign the Emancipation Proclamation. And it just stunned me to think of history in that way: 3,000-year-old industry, the founders write a document that then paved the way for Abraham Lincoln to sign that to give dignity to all men and women eventually. But that's part of it. It's a work in process that we're moving forward, and that's a good thing.

Neil Shenvi: If you look at the founders, their personal correspondences and writings, they were very torn by their own hypocrisy. And actually, many of them were very explicitly wanted to destroy the slave trade—they thought it was evil. So yes, they were totally inconsistent. This is why it's so important to be honest about history. Ultimately, Christians are citizens of heaven. And we love the United States, we love being Americans, but we can be honest about both the great things about America and the evil things in our past because our nation's history, like the history of every nation, is a mixture of good and bad, justice and injustice. And we can tell the truth, and actually telling the truth will help inoculate our kids against these bad ideas because we haven't concealed things from them. We've been open about "Yeah, these people fell short in various ways," and yet we have a deeper truth that never gets things wrong in the Bible, and we can live by that and then not have to whitewash the past in any way.

Jim Daly: One of the difficulties I see—I kind of paint this like we're at a fork in the road as the Christian community—and you can look at the blueprint of ancient times, what Christians were doing in Rome. And people forget: the Christian community created orphanages, hospices, hospitals. They were engaged to help those in need. And that was kind of all they thought about, it seemed, and that's what they did. They took in orphans, they went to the dumps where babies through infanticide were being born unwanted, thrown at the dumps of Rome, and they would go gather those children and raise them as their own. The ultimate sacrifice of love, right? And I feel that fork in the road for us now in our affluence, in our comfort zone, is that it's easy to do orthodoxy, speak truth. It's harder to do orthopraxy, do truth. When we're looking at this space, what are the tips that you can give us to get out of the comfort zone and engage people—and engage culture—to make a difference for Christ?

Neil Shenvi: We talked about prayer, definitely, so start by asking God to open up doors for you to talk to other people. Talk to your neighbors, get to know them. Ask questions. This is another practical thing you can do. Just ask people, "Hey, what do you feel like is happening about the trans issues in our culture? I notice it's very popular, it's very common. Do you think it's a good thing or a bad thing?" Just open-ended questions. Or say, "Hey, Black Lives Matter seemed to disappear recently in the news. What do you think about that? How do you process police shootings?" These are totally open-ended questions. Listen to them. Don't just wait to talk and jump in there; listen to what they say.

And then usually they'll say, "Well, what do you think?" That's your chance now. Another thing we'd say is that you should be familiar with Critical Theory and its ideas. We tell a fictional story, but we talk about how does wokeness happen in real life? We give a fictional story of a young girl raised in a Christian home goes off to college and she wants to be a social work major because she spent all her time in high school volunteering with a battered women clinic, like a domestic violence clinic. She wants to be a social work major, help the vulnerable, raised a Christian to do that. But then she encounters other people—nominal Muslims, LGBTQ people on campus—she joins a Students for Justice co-op and begins going to these homeless shelters to help battered women, but then is exposed to progressive politics and different views on sexuality and gender and gets really confused. In our story, she approaches a campus minister and says, "What do I do about these topics?" and he says, "Well watch this YouTube video" and "Sociology is not compatible with the Bible" and it has really nothing deep to give her. It doesn't know any of the people she's reading, can't relate to Freire or Crenshaw or any of these theorists. So get equipped to have a conversation with your adult children or your teenage children about these authors that they are going to encounter if they go to college—even go to a Christian college, unfortunately, they'll be exposed to these ideas. So be prepared to engage them at a fairly high level. That will earn their respect. Win the person, not the argument. Or you can win both, but you don't want to win the argument and lose the person. Lead with grace. I saw a phenomenal clip of Allie Beth Stuckey—I think she's been on your program before. But they have these debates, 20 versus 1, Jubilee debates, one Christian conservative versus 20 progressives. And I only saw a clip of it, but there was a progressive she was arguing with, and she clearly—he asked a question and she answered it and completely obliterated his argument. You could see him just sink and get crestfallen and just quietly curse and go off really upset. And she says, "Hey, hey, no, no, you did fine. You're okay, you did fine." The love and kindness she was showing him—she knew that she'd answered him effectively, but didn't want to lose him. My daughter came back from homeschool co-op, they'd talked about ice, and the tensions got high. And I said, "Well, make sure that you're talking, make sure you respect the other person and show kindness." And she said, "Yeah, my friend listens to a lot of Allie Beth Stuckey and always reminds us to love your neighbor and to show kindness to anybody no matter who they are." Don't lose the person. You can speak truth in love and still try to win them.

Jim Daly: No, that's so good. And you've experienced that online. Both left and right have attacked you. What's that experience like?

Neil Shenvi: Five years ago, I was—because I was opposing Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory—I was being called a racist, a white supremacist, or a half-Indian supremacist, whatever you want to call me, and a bigot. People were threatening to call the place where my wife worked. Today, oddly enough, I get radical right telling me to go back to India, heaping abuse on me. One thing that's helped me throughout this is a discipline to pray for the people that are abusing me—not praying imprecatory psalms, not praying even for their repentance, praying just for their blessing. Just praying that Lord, bless their family life, bless their friendships, bless their workplace, bless their career, fill them with joy today. God fills our hearts with joy, even non-Christians. Every good gift comes from Him. Let them know Your deep love for them. And you say, "Well but what about justice?" I say, "This is for me." Jesus said to bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, love your enemies. Social media can harden us—can harden our hearts. So when we pray true blessing on our enemies, not only are we obeying God's command, which we are, we're blessing ourselves. We are softening our hearts because the ultimate example of someone loving their enemies is Jesus. When I was His enemy, He loved me. How can I not do the same for others?

Jim Daly: And it so aligns with the fruit of the Spirit. God's commands are for His glory and our good. Take heart. We're preaching a message of good news that is for people to receive and flourish with. Neil, thank you. This has been so good. I'm going to read the book, probably have to buy a couple of copies for my 20-something boys. And just thank you for doing the hard work and taking it on the chin too. You're at the point of the spear when you're out there in the culture saying, "Here's what's true, here's what's not true," because people don't like that.

Neil Shenvi: Thank you, Jim.

Jim Daly: Well, that was an energized and thoughtful discussion with Dr. Shenvi. I thought he had some great insights on what's going on in woke culture or post-woke America. One thing is clear: engaging today's culture isn't about fear, outrage, or retreat. It's about faithfulness. It's about telling the truth clearly, loving people sincerely, and trusting God with the outcome. Our culture may be shifting, but the core questions people are asking haven't changed—nothing new under the sun. The "Who am I?" question, or "Why am I here?", "What gives life meaning and purpose?", and "Where's the hope when everything feels so uncertain?" We as Christians have those answers in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we need to share it. Neil has reminded us that we don't have to choose between conviction and compassion. We're called to hold onto both. So wherever God has placed you—in your family, your workplace, your church, or your community—I hope you'll stay engaged, speak with humility, and lead with love. First Corinthians 13 tells what love looks like: it's patient, it's kind, doesn't envy or boast, is not arrogant or rude, doesn't insist on its own way, and it's not irritable or resentful. That's a great starting place. That is our call as believers, and I hope the podcast is helping you to grow in that way.

Please follow up with this discussion and get a copy of Neil's incredible book from us. It helps the ministry here: *Post-Woke: Asserting a Biblical Vision of Race, Gender, and Sexuality*. When you make a donation of any amount to ReFOCUS, we'll send you a copy of the book as our way of saying thank you for supporting the ministry. Your gifts help us reach more people for Christ and to equip more believers to engage the culture. So let me just give you a big thank you for that help.

Now for the inbox segment, here's a comment that came in from Donna. "I very much appreciated your podcast about living as Christians in the current world situation. I am in no way a trained theologian, pastor, etc., just a person who is thankful for receiving His grace and trying to improve my walk with Jesus day by day. One comment has stuck in my head: you and the guest agreed that we need to act in a manner that follows Scripture and the teachings of Jesus and the apostles because we will all have to answer to God at some time in the future. It's my opinion and hope that we do this because that's the way that we as believers want to live, to glorify Him. The former way seems to be living under the law and none of us can do that; the latter way seems to be living under His grace and love through the power of the Holy Spirit." And let me tell you, Donna, I couldn't say it any better. You are catching it. I think that's exactly right. In fact, I'll be doing a new employee orientation later today, and I'm going to concentrate on Galatians 5:22—the fruit of the Spirit—and 5:19—which is the fruit of our enemy—and it is really an important component to understanding your Christian faith and your Christian walk. The Lord wants you in His fruit and not in the enemy's fruit. And I would encourage you to read both of those and understand them well, because that's the battle in front of us. Donna, let me say thanks for your comment. Since I answered it here on the podcast, I want to send you a book of *ReFocus: Living a Life that Reflects God’s Heart*.

And if you have a culture or evangelism question or comment, please send it to me. You can leave a voicemail or leave a comment in the contact form. Let me know what you thought about this conversation with Dr. Shenvi. The links are in the show notes, and I do love hearing from you. Thanks for listening to ReFOCUS with Jim Daly. Leave us a review and by doing so, you'll be helping us expand our reach to make a bigger impact on the culture for Christ. Like, listen, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Next time on ReFOCUS, we'll share an inspiring conversation with former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, who has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He'll talk about focusing on the things in life that really matter.

Ben Sasse: I am finite, and that is good. That is how it should be. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and infinite, and He creates us to be His children. We need to understand our place. It is a glorious place to be a child of God, but we're not God.

Jim Daly: That's coming up on Monday, June 1st on the next ReFOCUS with Jim Daly.