In this episode, we discuss Christian fiction and how sexual content can be incorporated into your faith-based stories.

Although many Christian publishers and writers will tell you that there shouldn’t be ANY sexual content in your Christian fiction, there are ways to handle sexual content responsibility that will allow you to elevate your writing, build upon your character development, and create situations that can showcase not only temptation, but the ability to overcome it (or the devastating consequences of giving in to it).

Links from the episode:

Our website: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com

David N. Alderman's website: https://www.davidnalderman.com

Review for Black Earth: End of the Innocence: https://freebookreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/black-earth-end-of-innocence.html

In this episode, we talk about the importance of voting, and how Christians need to remember that we are not picking a pastor, but a leader.

We need to understand that political leaders are not spiritual leaders. Sure, political leaders can be of the Christian faith, but that doesn’t mean they are spiritual leaders. Politics is for the sake of the nation and for the sake of the citizenry, not for the sake of the nation’s spirituality. There are moments when these two things—spirituality and nationality—come together, but not always.

The issue isn't that we need to vote for the ‘lesser evil’. We’re all evil. We’re all fallen creation, and we need Christ to redeem us. Not just once in our lifetime, but every single day. So who are we to point a finger at a man or woman and say that they are any worse than me? What we really need to do is look at our candidates motivations, and use discernment to determine whether or not said candidate has our best interests—and the interests of this country and this country’s future—in mind.

Links from the episode:

Our website: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com

David N. Alderman's website: https://www.davidnalderman.com

In this episode, we talk about tolerance and how Christians have embraced tolerance in place of standing up for Godly virtues.

Over the last decade, tolerance has become a trendy word. Secular groups throw it at religious groups, calling for them to be tolerant of their sins. Christians throw it around to other Christians—for the same reasons. People want others to be tolerant of their attitudes, their preferences, their entitlements, their behavior. Everything, really.

Tolerance isn’t a new thing. Over the centuries, cultural activists usually make a wide call for tolerance right before they saturate the society with some previously fringe behavior or concept that they want others to accept.

Links from the episode:

Our website: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com

David N. Alderman's website: https://www.davidnalderman.com

In this episode, we talk about culture's casual attitude toward divorce, what the church's attitude should be concerning it, and how one can heal from it.

There’s speculation in today’s society of what the divorce rates in America are. Some say 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce. Some statistics try to show that marriage numbers are actually up and divorce numbers are down, watering down the negative statistics so that it’s actually not ‘as bad’ as everyone has been led to believe.

Regardless of the statistics though, one only has to peer through the foggy windows into their friends’ lives to see that divorce is a very real—and very common—issue not only in society in general, but also within the Christian church.

Links from the episode:

Our website: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com

David N. Alderman's website: https://www.davidnalderman.com

In this episode, we talk about the importance of discernment, both in our personal lives and in our writing.

Many think discernment is simply the ability to differentiate between good and evil forces at work in one’s life. Discernment can certainly be used to tell if something is good or evil, but more than that, discernment—in a spiritual sense—is differentiating between the nuanced right and wrong, using both Biblical knowledge and Godly wisdom.

C. H. Spurgeon once said that, “Discernment is not the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong; rather, it is telling the difference between right and almost right.”

In reality, humanity knows the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. You know it’s evil to kill your neighbor. You know it’s right to save someone who is stuck on the train tracks, about to be run down by a train. You know these things.

Discernment though helps us in a more nuanced way. In many ways, discernment is a more complex way of looking at things, but it’s also a more natural way to look at things, because discernment forces us to look at things through God’s eyes.

Links from the episode:

Our website: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com

David N. Alderman's website: https://www.davidnalderman.com

In this episode, we talk about the disturbing trend of deconstruction and the dangers of tearing apart one's faith to try and merge it with cultural values.

Deconstruction has become sort of a trend in recent years.

Some of us grew up under a variety of Christian nuances, especially within the various denominations that espouse Christianity. For example, Baptists and their beliefs on dancing. We all get to a point where we want to re-examine the beliefs we grew up under and reconcile them with what we have learned about the Bible and with the relationship we have grown with the Lord.

However, reconciling these nuances is not the same as deconstructing. Most of those claiming to 'deconstruct' take it so much further and are really doing nothing more than tearing apart their faith to try to merge it with cultural norms - two things that do not and will not ever go together.

Deconstruction has led many believers away from the church, away from their faith, and away from God. Deconstruction is a dangerous game and is nothing more than a strategy from the enemy to lead people away from Christ and the Christian walk.

Links from the episode:

Our website: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com

David N. Alderman's website: https://www.davidnalderman.com

In this episode, we’ll be talking about our increasingly woke culture and how Christian writers can navigate through it to write truthful, compelling stories.

Our culture has been increasingly butting heads with Christian beliefs in the last decade, and especially in the last five years, and today we'll take a look at why and at how Christian writers can hopefully navigate this cultural minefield to produce Christ-centered content.

The 80s and 90s and saw some of the best that our generation could offer. Writers, actors, artists rose from the ranks and put out some stellar content. Our nation followed Godly principles. Men were men and women were women. Scientific fact and Biblical core standards trumped people’s feelings. God was allowed in our schools, our workplaces, and our communities a lot more than He is now. The Nuclear Family was upheld as the standard for our society. Children were protected. Common sense was a little more common.

Insanity wasn’t considered sanity. Abnormal wasn’t considered normal.

Some may call this a shift in the Overton Window, but at its core, it’s a shift in acceptable sin.

Things are much different nowadays than they were in the 80s and 90s. The lines are all blurred. Faith-based proclamations are shot down and ridiculed. Family values—and the idea of The Nuclear Family—are attacked daily. Common sense isn’t so common. Christians are deconstructing their faith at an alarming rate but passing it off as some sanctimonious act that makes them out to be pious saints and not abandoners-of-the-faith.

Selfish ambition takes center stage, overshadowing personal or family responsibility.

Many could say that it’s always been this way, just more obscured, but I disagree with that. Sure, our society as a whole has always had underlying problems. Creation itself has underlying problems. But up until this point in time, we’ve had a moral compass that we were able to hold our behaviors up to.

Now our moral compass is broken.

The question is, what broke it?

Links from the episode:

Our website: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com

David N. Alderman's website: https://www.davidnalderman.com

With this being our introductory podcast, we’ll be talking about who The Crossover Alliance is, what kind of books we publish, and what you can expect from upcoming podcast episodes.

Links from the episode:

Our website: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com

David N. Alderman's website: https://www.davidnalderman.com

The Black Earth Series: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com/the-black-earth-series

The Tears of Nero by Jason Brannon: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com/the-tears-of-nero

Nikolai the Penitent by Mark Carver: https://www.thecrossoveralliance.com/nikolai-the-penitent