Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (11 page)

The most powerful questions—and the most persuasive—are the ones that help people recall what they already know. In the case of the attorney, I asked key questions to cause his own intuitions about guilt and punishment to rise to the surface. The approach was powerful because I didn't have to persuade him of some foreign idea. I merely connected the dots.

This was true of Shannon, an American college student living in Germany whom I met on a train from Normandy to Paris. Shannon had been raised in a Christian home. She'd been educated at a Christian college and had what she described as a "strong relationship with the Lord." Still, like the attorney, she was perplexed by the idea that others were lost apart from trust in Christ.

"What about someone who believes in God?" she asked. "What about the person who is sincerely following his own religion and trying to be the best person he can be?" I hear these kinds of questions from non-Christians all the time. But I also hear them with surprising frequency from believers. I suspected Shannon already knew enough to answer her own question. She simply had not pieced it together.

"Why should anyone become a Christian in the first place?" I asked. "You and I are Christians. What benefit does putting our trust in Jesus give us?"

"Jesus saves us," she answered.

"From what?"

"He saves us from our sins."

"Right.
You might say we have a spiritual disease called sin, and Jesus did something on the cross that healed the disease." She nodded.

"Can simply believing in God heal that disease?"

"No," she said after thinking a moment.

"Can trying our best to be
a good person heal
it, or being really religious, or even being completely sincere? Can any of those things forgive our sin?" She shook her head. No, none of those things in themselves could take away our guilt. "We'd still be dying from our spiritual disease, wouldn't we?" I said. She agreed.

Then I simply connected the dots for her. "If religion, or sincerity, or 'doing our best' cannot save
you and me,
then how can any of those things save
someone else?
Either Jesus rescues us by taking the punishment for our sin on himself, or we are not saved and we have to pay for our own crimes. It's no more complicated than that."

Notice two things about this conversation. First, I gave Shannon no new information. I just reminded her of things she already knew, but had not related to her own concern. Second, I did it almost entirely with questions.

TURNING THE TABLES

The third use of
Columbo
can help you get out of a different kind of tough situation. Sometimes you may need to use questions to set up the conversation in a way that is most favorable to you.

I have a friend who is a deeply committed Christian woman and whose boss is a lesbian. That in itself isn't the problem. My friend has the maturity to know that you can't expect non-Christians to live like Christians. The difficulty is that her boss wanted to know what my friend thought about homosexuality.

If you are placed in a situation where you suspect your convictions will be labeled intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded, or judgmental, use
Columbo
to turn the tables.

When someone asks for your personal views about a controversial issue, preface your remarks with a question that sets the stage — in your favor — for your response. Say, "You know, this is actually a very personal question you're asking. I don't mind answering, but before I do, I want to know if it's safe to offer my views. So let me ask you a question: Do you consider yourself a tolerant person or an intolerant person on issues like this? Is it safe to give my opinion, or are you going to judge me for my point of view? Do you respect diverse points of view, or do you condemn others for convictions that differ from your own?" Now when you give your point of view, it's going to be very difficult for anyone to call you intolerant or judgmental without looking guilty, too.

This line of questioning trades on an important bit of knowledge: There is no neutral ground when it comes to the tolerance question. Everybody has a point of view she thinks is right, and everybody passes judgment at some point or another. The Christian gets pigeonholed as the judgmental one, but everyone else is judging, too, even people who consider themselves relativists.

I call this the passive-aggressive tolerance trick.
²
The key to understanding this trick
is knowing
that everyone thinks his own beliefs are correct. If people didn't think their beliefs were true, they wouldn't believe them. They'd believe something else and think
that
was true.

If you have already been labeled intolerant by someone, ask, "What do you mean by that?" This, of course, is an example of the first
Columbo
question. Though I already have a pretty good idea of what the person means when she says I'm intolerant, asking this question flushes out her definition of "intolerant" and sets the stage — in my favor—for the next two questions. Here's how it looks:

"You're intolerant."

"Can you tell me what you mean by that? Why would you consider me an intolerant person?"

"Well, it's clear you think you're right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong."

"I guess I do think my views are correct. It's always possible

I could be mistaken, but in this case I don't think I am.
But what about you?
You seem to be disagreeing with me. Do you think your own views are right?"
³

"Yes, I think I'm right, too. But I'm not intolerant. You are."

"That's the part that confuses me.
Why is it when I think I'm right, I'm intolerant, but when you think you're right, you're just right?
What am I missing?"

Of course,
you
are not missing anything; she is. Her move is simple name-calling. Labeling you as intolerant is no different than calling you ugly. One is an attack on your
looks
. The other is an attack on your
character.
Neither is useful in helping you understand the merits of any
idea
you may be discussing.
⁴

The quickest way to deal with a personal attack is to simply point it out with a question. When someone goes after you rather than your argument, ask, "I’m a little confused about your response.

Even if you were right about my character, could you explain to me exactly what that has to do with this issue?”

EXPLOITING A WEAKNESS OR A FLAW

You might have noticed something unique about how I dealt with the tolerance trick. My questions went beyond positioning myself in a more favorable way in our conversation. This time I also used
Columbo
questions to challenge the other person's ideas. Once you have a clear understanding of what a person thinks and why he thinks it, you can move on to this step: using questions to subtly expose a weakness or a flaw, or to uproot difficulties or problems you detect in his view.

I stumbled upon a wonderful example of this while reading
Icons of Evolution,
the fine critique of Darwinism by Jonathan Wells.

The following dialogue is an example of one student's gentle use of the third step in the
Columbo
tactic:

Teacher: Okay, let's start today's lesson with a quick review. Yesterday I talked about homology [how different organisms show remarkable similarity in the structure of some of their body parts]. Homologous features, such as the vertebrate limbs shown in your textbook, provide us with some of our best evidence that living things have evolved from common ancestors.

Student (raising hand): I know you went over this yesterday, but I'm still confused. How do we know whether features are homologous?

Teacher: Well, if you look at vertebrate limbs, you can see that even though they're adapted to perform different functions, their bone patterns are structurally similar.

Student: But you told us yesterday that even though an octopus eye is structurally similar to a human eye, the two are not homologous.

Teacher: That's correct. Octopus and human eyes are not homologous because their common ancestor did not have such an eye.

Student: So regardless of similarity, features are not homologous unless they are inherited from a common ancestor?

Teacher: Yes, now you're catching on.

Student (looking puzzled): Well, actually, I'm still confused.

You say homologous features provide some of our best evidence for common ancestry. But before we can tell whether features are homologous, we have to know whether they came from a common ancestor.

Teacher: That's right.

Student (scratching head): I must be missing something. It sounds as though you're saying that we know features are derived from a common ancestor because they're derived from a common ancestor. Isn't that circular reasoning?
⁵

Here's another example of how to use
Columbo
to expose a weakness or a flaw. Let's revisit the conversation with our professor from
chapter 4
. In that section, we learned to avoid being taken in by what I called the "professor's ploy" by asking for reasons for his own view, in this case that the Bible was just a bunch of myths.

He might answer, "I know the Bible is a myth because it has miracles in it." This bit of valuable information sets up the next series of questions:

"And why does that mean the Bible is myth or fable?"

"Because miracles don't happen."

"How do you know that?"

"Because science has proven that miracles don't happen."

Now,
I happen
to know that science has proven nothing of the sort, nor can it. Since science only measures the natural world, it is not capable of ruling out anything, even in principle, in the supernatural realm.
⁶
Armed with this information, I can now ask the decisive question: "Professor, would you please explain to me exactly how the methods of science have disproved the possibility of supernatural events?"

The professor has no place to go at this point because no such scientific proof exists. Science has never
advanced
any empirical evidence to show that supernatural events cannot happen. Instead, science (and the professor) has
assumed,
prior to the evidence (i.e.,
a priori),
according to naturalistic philosophy, that miracles are impossible.
⁷
Thus, any "historical" reference to supernatural signs is either a myth or a fable.
Your simple question—and the long silence that follows it—does all the work necessary to make your point.

One of the advantages of the
Columbo
tactic
is not having
to assert something you want someone else to believe. You aren’t taking the burden of proof on yourself. Instead, you accomplish your goal in an entirely different — and more powerful — way. You use questions to make the point for you.

This last step is more demanding because you have to be able to see some weakness in the person's argument before you can work with it. How do you find the flaw? There is no special formula for making this discovery. The key is to pay close attention to the answer to the question, "How did you come to that conclusion?" Then, ask yourself if the person's conclusion is justified by the evidence he gives.

Remember, an argument is like a house whose roof is supported by walls. In this step of
Columbo
you want to find out if the walls (the reasons or evidence) are strong enough to hold up the roof (the person's point of view).

Look, observe, reflect. Maybe your friend's comments have tipped you off to some problem with his view. Is there a misstep, a non sequitur
,
⁸
a fallacy, or a failing of some sort? Can you challenge any underlying assumptions that might be faulty? Whatever you discover, be sure to address the problem with a question, not a statement.

STUMPED OR STALLED OUT?

Getting to the third use of
Columbo
requires insight that the first two
Columbo
questions do not. You need to know the specific direction you want the conversation to go, the precise purpose you want to accomplish with your leading questions. Do you want to use your questions to clarify a point?
To convey new information?
To expose a weakness?
You have to know which target to aim at before you can continue.

This skill takes time to develop, so don't be surprised — or discouraged — if you find yourself stalled out at first. It's not always easy to flush out the error in someone's thinking or to maneuver in conversation using questions instead of statements. This takes a little practice, but in time, you'll improve. In the second half of this book, "Part Two: Finding the Flaws," I give you a handful of tactics to make this easier.