Discussing "Tactics" with Greg Koukl: How to Talk to People About Christianity

[Music] [Music] well Greg Coco it's a pleasure to have you on capturing Christianity thank you thank you we are in association actually this time with the evangelical philosophical Society they've been gracious enough to give us this beautiful room to do this interview in oh and then also with defender's media who they give let me let me see if I can put this in the right terms they give social media solutions to apologetic ministries great so of it that's what we're doing with them oh and so today with you Greg we're talking about tactics your book tactics like I'm looking right now for discussing your Christian convictions there you go the subtitle is important right so it so tell us about the book just an overall view of what it is and why you wrote it well the the title is actually quite descriptive I talked about tactical maneuvering okay if you think of military metaphors and sometimes those are unfortunate but I think they work here because in a certain sense we are in a battle we're in a spiritual battle and there's an engagement we have with other people but we want this engagement to look more like diplomacy than d-day okay this is a very important part of my approach but if you think of those terms strategy is kind of the big picture d-day the invasion but tactics is what actually takes place when you are face to face with someone opposite you in this case in a conversation so it's more like one-on-one basketball oh how do you maneuver in conversations to be able to make your case clearly and effectively and what I'd seen a lot in conversations that I had with many other people and coming out of the Jesus Movement myself that's when I became a Christian in 1973 when I was a student at UCLA a very particular kind of dynamic there but as time changed and the culture changed a direct confrontational approach or a simple presentation of the gospel you know that kind of approach that began to lose its effectiveness for a number of reasons one of them is because people don't know understand the simple gospel I mean it's a culture is changed radically and also if you if people want to if they're told here's how you go you go and give them the simple gospel you try to get people to sign on the dotted line and close the deal well you know a lot of Christians aren't going to do that because that sounds like trouble and so they're just gonna if this is what they think is expected of them they're just gonna sit on the bench and I wanted to get more and more believers followers of Jesus into play into productive conversations with people who disagree with them in a way that provided a tremendous amount of safety for them and at the same time created very particular kinds of effective opportunities for our case to move forward all right and so I choose that lent chosen language rather than the gospel because a lot of times you don't get right to the gospel you have to do some pre evangelism is what Francis Schaeffer used to call it I call it gardening before there can be a harvest there also always has to be a season of gardening okay and if we're harvest oriented when gardening is necessary we're gonna be using the wrong tools okay in the conversations with people so all of that kind of coupled with maneuver is that over time I began to develop can i semi consciously I just started doing these things and then I realize hey there's kind of a method to your madness here and then trying to get more precise about the method and then eventually putting it into a book form that's the genesis and the progress of the tactical approach the tactical gameplan and now I can take this particular game plan along with other tactics that are attached to it and provide a way for Christians to with a tremendous margin of safety to engage in productive conversations even if they don't know a lot of apologetics or philosophy or even theology or anything and still be used by the Holy Spirit because the game plan is so effective to accomplish that end that is so good so I in my class that I teach at my church yeah I actually well we went through your book we went so I've read it once by myself a long time ago and then I read it through with my class my church and beyond that I tell everyone that I meet pretty much and I put it all over my facebook page I'd probably post it like once or twice a month I'm like this is a required reading if you're a Christian doesn't matter what you're interested in this is a required reading for you music to an author's ears but what do you think about that I mean well I think you're right I mean what a wife is about I wrote the book look at it if I were a book uh years ago one relativism I don't think that books for everybody yeah it's work it's for a certain slice and whatever I understand it but this book it's not for everybody but it's for I think Christians who are interested in making a difference in their culture if you're a follower of Christ that means your Christianity is vocal it is not a private matter Jesus Christianity wasn't private the disciples Christianity wasn't private if we're a follower of Christ it's part of our job to fulfill the Great Commission and that's making disciples principally but it starts with bringing people to a point of conviction and faith in Jesus before you can disciple them so this is all part of the package and if you want to do that in this culture nowadays it's really hard and it's it sounds like conflict and trouble to most Christians which is why a lot of Mirth sitting on the bench and so what I do when I give my own presentations now as I make a promise I said there's I'm gonna make a prophecy and a promise or a prediction really because I'm not a prophet the prediction is that this that you you're gonna look back on this weekend learning these tactics and likely you will say that is the weekend everything changed for me that is the weekend I look back and my whole ability to engage productively for the cause of Christ when underwent a transformation so that now I am much more at ease much more comfortable and much more effective than ever was and it all goes back to that weekend now I can say that because I know so many people have said essentially what you've said Cameron is that this book was a game-changer you know this is why you recommend it to so many people and the most common comment that I get from people as this book changed my life and it's a flattering and almost a little bit embarrassing because that's a phrase that you use for the Bible but I understand because the techniques changed my life too so that's the prophecy I make the prediction I said this could be that change for you guys but here's the promise I'm going to make and the promise is that I'm gonna give you a game plan that will allow you to converse with confidence in any situation no matter how little you know or how knowledgeable or aggressive or even obnoxious the other person happens to be now even if I got 45 minutes to do a talk at a sermon in a church and I'm talking about the game plan I make that promise because I know I can fulfill that promise in that 45 minute period of time when they walk out I've sketched out a game plan that anybody in that audience can begin to use immediately and I think it's this practical element here the accessibility of these tools you don't need to know apologetics you don't need or no philosophy you don't need a no theology all of those things are add-on improvements later but the basic game plan is actually quite simple and can and can can be used immediately by any Christian and I encourage them just step in the shallow end of the pool and just get used to it and you will be amazed at what the Holy Spirit does so I make entirely behind your recommendation but for those reasons you know I do think that it's a book that every Christian who is who is a follower of Christ and then and properly engaged in engaging the culture needs to read when I was a teenager and this is not in our questions that I had prepared for us when I was a teenager they challenged us to go out and like evangelize and share the gospel with people and I was terrified like I cuz I didn't feel like I had grown up in church I went to church every Sunday I was terrified I was like I don't know what I'm gonna say I don't I have no desire to go do this but if I had had your book basically back then if I had have someone gave it to me or whatever if I had got my hands on it it would have changed everything yeah so I can 100% agree yeah I'm thinking of a passage in Colossians that applies to this Paul says in Colossians 4 verse 5 and 6 he says first of all he says be it conduct yourself with wisdom towards outsiders making the most of the opportunity so here's this is good advice is to be smart you know where in other words maybe don't just blunder into every situation don't avoid every situation but don't just blunder into it you know but just try to be wise all right so good advice and then he says let your speech always be with grace seasoned as it were with salt so first he says be smart then he says be nice what a concept you know all right okay there's that's good then he says so that you know how to respond to each person so he says be smart and he says be nice then he says essentially be tactical approach each individual as an individual because they are individuals they have different stories they have different beliefs they had different convictions they have different emotional things that are going on therefore things that drive them different doubts different belief and and if you don't know a little bit about what that is with the individual that you want to engage with then you're gonna be just like you were when you're a teenager I don't know where to start I don't know what to say I don't even know how to get rolling and if I open my mouth they're probably gonna shoot me down anyway and there is this feeling and it's understandable but it's kind of like numbers and the 12 that go into the the the promised land the spies that go in and then the 10 of them come back and said they're giants in the land and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight in other words we sometimes over exaggerate the force of the opposition so we think to--it were totally incapable of address singing it but partly we lack the confidence because we don't have a game plan and that's where the tactical game plan can make all the difference so our ministry page our Facebook page we've been blessed to have right now I think we have about 6500 followers oh good on our Facebook page to you but what I did was you may not like this part so I asked them I was like well what what's your biggest question for Greg cocoa during my interview with him and as you might imagine most of my followers are are though the people that like our page are younger and one of the things that they said this is actually the number one thing they said was when is he gonna update his terminology well I'm trying to think of what they might be thinking of I am me oh that's not gonna ever change but I mean I am rewriting tactics right now okay and I'm rewriting it because because I'm adding new material I'm taking tapes out for example listen to the tape yeah that's well that's the kind of terminology that I'm updating okay III I tend to speak with the male pronoun covering all the bases which is the classical way of in there this is not politically correct so I trying to adjust that a little bit more mankind not man kind of deal okay so those are things are legitimate now the problem with changing Colombo is that it's become an icon for the technique so I can't midstream I'm trying to think about a parallel illustration I understand that there are a lot of people who are young who don't know who Columbo is it doesn't matter and I'll tell you what and I'm not I mean not being disrespectful I'm not saying I don't care about them I'm seeing when you think about it there are lots of things that are iconic that are old that we keep using because that word now is a placeholder for a concept at a few moments ago I was trying to think of an example of one but I can't at the moment maybe I will in a little bit when I do public presentations I get out my trench coat I got a cigar in my pocket you know this is the collide do Columbo right and it's it always has a powerful visual impact on the people and it's a way of helping them remember how the tactic works I never heard of Columbo it doesn't matter watch me I'll do Columbo if you don't remember what Columbo was it's in the book so you can't see me doing it doesn't matter this is the name that I'm giving to the tactic and now when I talk about Columbo you'll know what I'm talking about I don't think the accessibility of the cultural element there is important to understanding the concept once you get the concept then the name is just a name like stand to reason you know I don't think most people who are familiar with stanbury's and thinks of standing to reason they think stand to reason is a whole unit it's a sound that represent this organization you know so there's a way in which these terms over time have they they get isolated from their original use but they still serve the purpose to communicate something in the present day so there's all kinds of terms in English language that go way back but we still use we understand it and it would be really hard to revamp that so my apologies to the Millennials in your audience or the what's Generation Z which I'm really happy they're calling them Generation Z because they just ran out of letters and so they're not gonna do any of this stuff anymore with unless they use ampersand or something like that but I think slicing and dicing generations with these special characterizations sometimes is counterproductive human beings are human beings and yes different slices of the culture a little different language but there still are human beings and this is something I train on all the time when I talk to people human nature doesn't change the culture changes human nature doesn't change so the issues are still the issues with individual people anyway so I probably won't change the Colombo element of it but I am working with some of the other things that can kind freshen up the text a bit and I'm doing that now and I'm trying to use gender inclusive language it's still binary okay but uh but it is gender inclusive more than it was before so one of the things that I love most about your book is that you lower the bar for evangelism yeah going back to those teenage years like I thought that in order to evangelize I had to have an entire spiel memorized like go up to this person give it to him get them to convert on the spot like that was evangelism that's right right and so the deal yeah close lid yeah right get the name put it right so I that's one of the things that I love about your book and when I taught it to my class that was another thing that they picked up on that's was the fact that I don't have to go out and do this whole thing in order to just have a conversation with somebody and put that rock in their shoe I think this is a virtue to the approach and I've actually increased the space in the book that I've given to explaining this notion because I spend so much time in my public presentations explaining this notion and I've seen that the exact reaction you're talking about for your group I see it in the eyes of the people of the audience and that what I what I I can see going on is they're in their mind they're thinking I can do this this is what they're thinking I can do this and so but just to flesh that out a little bit more for for our conversation I want to go back to a phrase that I used earlier and that is before there can be a harvest there always has to be a season of gardening okay I mentioned the gardening and harvesting and this is a very important concept because I think you're right that I am lowering the bar but a lot of times when you when people use the phrase and I would use it myself but it initially sounds like you're compromising in a certain way you're making it easier well yes I am making it easier but I'm not compromising anything think about Jesus in John chapter 4 the woman at the well okay most of us know about the occasion think about what happens afterwards she goes to citecar the disciples come to Jesus remember they weren't with him in that conversation they went and got some food probably it's a car they bring the food back and then Jesus says to them you are about to reap listen to the language you are about to reap where you did not sow ah well that's interesting so Jesus is identifying two seasons a sowing season that's necessary before you have a reaping season so you get a harvest but you have to have gardening before that that's the way I characterize it okay and-and-and-and and basically he's telling them that you are going to get the the the easy pickings but somebody else did the heavy lifting to get the harvest to this point that the crop to the point of harvest and so what you have is one field two seasons and two kinds of workers you have the gardening season and a harvesting season you have the gardeners and the harvesters and there are some people that are good at harvesting and they're in that other mode there get out there get the simple gospel out bang and because I think they're gifted as harvesters God it places them in circumstances where fruit is ripe just like the disciples in that situation in John chapter 4 you're about to reap now because it's harvesting season you didn't sow somebody else did the hard work but you're gonna reap now where you didn't sow and some people are good at that and the people who are harvester types they don't like this talk because they think I'm lowering the bar in an unhelpful way you're making it too easy they should get right to the gospel because that's what they do and they're effective because they're harvesters okay most of us are not harvesters I'm cannot a harvester I'm a gardener as I look back at my life 45 years as a Christian worker I'm gardening most of the time and and then you know I find out people who know the Lord now I give him one notable example J Warner Wallace cold case Christianity Jim listened to our radio show before he was a Christian when he was still an atheist now he came to Christ you not to me but I was somebody who is gardening in his life that helped bring him realize what happened somebody went in my garden and harvested my crop do you think I mind get out of my garden no I don't care this witchy said in the same chapter for john so that the one who reaps and the one who sews can rejoice together oh that's cool I like that we all have different jobs but it's we're all on the same team and we rejoice when each is doing his or her job okay and so it's fine for me to be a gardener and somebody else to do the harvest doesn't matter to me okay but since there are more gardeners needed than harvesters because the gardening job is the longer job especially nowadays it probably is the case that a lot of those folks that are sitting on the bench our gardeners and they don't know it yeah and so what I want to do is give them a tool to garden and we can garden a little here and garden a little there and you know when you garden you go you got a garden somebody you times you spend them all day Saturday all day but sometimes just go out you know it's the early part of the evening and it's nice and you could pull a few weeds or do a little watering you know I'd do a little bit here and a little bit there but you're not necessarily doing much but the little you're doing is adding up over time and that is the broader concept here if we get more people into play doing gardening and the goal now is not to get to the endgame sign on the dotted line but rather just to do a little gardening or as I put it you mentioned in a moment to go put a stone in their shoe just to get them thinking move them along a little bit say something that's productive maybe even offer a challenge to get them thinking then I'm happy I've done my job now maybe I could do more but my goal is modest and so when I teach the tactical game plan I'm encouraging people to think of a modest goal not this forget about it you don't have to swing for the fences frankly you don't even have to get on base in my view just have to get in the batter's box and that's what I want to teach them to do with the tactical game plan just get up to the batter's box and I think the game plan allows them to do that very very effectively the feedback I've been getting Cameron from people who actually are willing to step out and do it and by the way just a side point if you don't do it it don't work all right it's like a lot of things in life if you don't do it it don't work but people who begin stepping out and I know you've experienced this yourself or you wouldn't be teaching this to others it's amazing at how effective you can be with doing very little listening a lot using the the game plan proper which is the Columbo tactic which entails asking questions just doing that can it's amazing what the Holy Spirit often does in the process that was perfect I was waiting for my moment to talk about the Holy Spirit so what is the Holy Spirit like what's his role in all okay I don't talk much about the Holy Spirit but partly because of my particular doctrine of the Holy Spirit that was not peculiar but here's my way of putting it it's God is 100% responsible for his side of the equation and I am 100% responsible for my side I have very high view of the sovereignty of God especially when it comes to soteriology salvation stuff so I know that nothing is going to happen within another person's life moving them towards God save that God through the Holy Spirit is accomplishing that but God always uses almost always means to the MC has in mind I mean think of Jesus Jesus was destined for the cross but when Jesus life was threatened there in Bethlehem Joseph had to take Jesus to Egypt for two years why did he do that God had a destiny for Jesus because the means and ends are all interlocked so that means even though I trust fully in the sovereignty of God and different people will cast that out in different ways but that's okay we know that the Holy Spirit has to act or else people are not going to turn to Christ whatever one's theology is that there's a necessity of the spirit at some point at some level I get that but I know that the means that God is going to use is Christians working hard to do their part and so it's my job to communicate the truth as clearly as persuasively and as faithfully as possible okay so I I am I'm not listening for the Holy Spirit to tell me what to say I'm not waiting for the leading you know wait until you feel that most people feel the wrong kind of lead you know let in the seat of their pants you know that's not a requirement it's not a biblical requirement we have commandments and we are to proceed with the trust that God will do his part and so I don't I talk about the Holy Spirit in Chapter two I think of the book and and how and basically what I just described but the rest of the time the focus isn't on God God's gonna do his part I'm gonna trust God to do his part I gotta worry about my part the Christian has to worry about their particular role in the process and their and it's not just proclaiming the gospel just get the simple gospel out because that isn't the way Jesus comported himself I mean Jesus talked a lot he didn't just give the simple gospel Paul talked a lot he didn't just give the simple gospel and Peter same thing you see Peter with Cornelius in Acts chapter 10 so there's lots of detail we can see in how Jesus maneuvered in conversations in very clever ways and he used lots of questions by the way you see how Peter maneuvers and conversate you can see how Paul maneuvers in conversations this teaches us about how we might comport ourselves even though we're trusting fully and the Holy Spirit to do his job I'm 100 percent god hundred percent man is the way I characterize it is that Deepak Chopra is that how you pronounce his down that's right so I showed your conversation with him to my class one of the things that they said about it was how did he keep his cool during this conversation with him so what kind of tips you have for people to not get so frustrated in conversations well the first thing just to be quite honest with that was national TV and I also have a fairly big radial footprint you know with my guest with everything lots of people are listening when you know people are watching you you know then you're gonna be on your best behavior okay so that helps depends on who you are some well I know well best behavior looks different in different environments okay so when you're in a political situation being aggressive and you're doing this political you know crossfire well that's a very different environment but my view is that if you if if people look at if if I get mad in a conversation I lose that's a simple equation what if I don't get mad but they get mad okay um if they get mad I still lose in other words simply put if anybody in the conversation gets mad it's not going anywhere productive so this is part of what informs my own conduct now it I don't always live that ethic out I'm human like anyone else and I often will say you know that's a good ethic in marriage to you know if anybody gets mad I lose but it's harder to live out of marriage than it is in these kinds of circumstances because there's so much more at stake personally but it's still a good dictum and so what I'm trying to do is I am trying I'm trying to be virtuous I mean being kind is virtuous it doesn't mean flat-out that's a retirement be gracious be nice like I said in Colossians chapter 4 but it's also good tactics so this is another element if if you are if if if you realize that to maintain your Europe you know calm or calm perspective or manure control yourself okay this makes you look more confident in your view and therefore your view looks more persuasive to people so so there's a couple things going on here for one lots of people are watching ok so that makes it easier to be nice especially in my circumstance secondly I know that it's going to be counterproductive let me be secondly it's virtuous to be nice and I want to be a virtuous person so this is just part of my character development as a Christian the third thing is that I realize that if I if I lose my cool in this then I'm not gonna be effective in the other person's life if it's one-on-one and nobody's watching well let them I could get mad but I'm not gonna win the person that I'm talking with so what's my point what why am I even wasting my time doing that but the fourth thing is that it's persuasive its but more persuasive to the person who's listening when you're nice and also for people who might be listening in third party whether it's on the radio or just people in the room or part of the conversation you know when we do these stand the reason we do these field trips I like to Berkeley we take train kids and we take them up there and then they interact with atheists and stuff like that they have atheists that come and give presentations for the most part the kids are prepared for this but the times when they have the hardest time with the atheist is when the atheist is really nice when the atheist is really really nice and mellow and that's when they sound most persuasive so all of these are factors for me and it's a matter of practice too you know you you you you don't want to give in to your your darker side when you're engaged talking about the light I mean there's a kind of a contradiction there so those are all the factors there you know and I it I'm trusting God is helping me you know but but we all have the Holy Spirit and we're not always nice so this is another place where I think we have to we have to take the the ability the Holy Spirit gives us and we have to we have to use it I don't think sanctification is just some kind of magical thing that happens we just sit here and God just all of God none of me I don't think that's a legitimate biblical understanding of sanctification we are to discipline ourselves for godliness it says in the New Testament so this is somewhat of a discipline we make a decision that we're going to be we're gonna do it Paul says be wise be nice detective speech always be with grace clausten's for first Peter 3 you know defend the faith right always be ready to give an answer yet with gentleness oh why because you don't want to defame the gospel in the process that's what says they're essentially second 2nd Timothy chapter 2 the glory bondservant is not to be quarrelsome but patient went wrong so my mind revisits some of these passages that give instruction there and and then it instructs me and it makes a little easier for me one of the things that I've noticed in my talking with atheists and my growing and being able to do this is I've noticed that when I get defensive when I get frustrated it's because I'm insecure about something maybe I'm insecure about what I think I know or what I should know and so I think what are your thoughts on that do you think what security plays a part and oh we get frustrated I even self-reflection now if I feel like I don't have the confidence regarding a particular issue my tendency is to get a little bit more defensive with with a person it's like I don't want to go there yeah I don't want to go there Boyd issue and and I have it I have a tactical maneuver at this point I just need to probably use it more myself and that is when we find that we're out of our element in a point like the other persons where let's see we're in persuasion mode we're making our case the other person is coming back with a bunch of information that we can't that deal with we're not familiar enough to deal with they're not necessarily steamrolling you interrupting a lot but they're just giving stuff that you're you know a lot of your Ken's so to speak and that's when I suggest people use what I call it kind of a verbal Aikido Aikido is that self-defense where you don't resist their energy you use their energy on your behalf so essentially you're gonna say come on down and so part of the tactical approach is to stay in the driver's seat of the conversation but if somebody else is coming on to you with a lot of information you don't know how to deal with and that's what makes you kind of defensive and then you lose your virtue is in the conversation that's when they're in the driver's seat of the conversation and I use this little technique called getting out of the hot seat to kind of reverse the direction of the of the in a certain sense management of the conversation and the way you do this and this is the Aikido thing instead of pushing against them you invite them to come on down oh you want to beat me up oh okay fine just do it slowly and thoroughly please and the way you do that is say something to the effect of well this is the point I haven't really thought about and you know see know a lot more about this than I do I wonder if you could slow down for a minute let me just get this particular point clearly and so then you use your us I want to know what you believe and why you believe it that's the simplest way to put it however you characterize those things in that portion of the conversation so make your point and give me a reasons for it and then let me think about it okay so a couple of things have happened very quickly there for one the the direction of control has changed who's in who's in the driver's seat now when I say that oh now I'm in the driver's seat not the other person I'm going I'm taking student mode instead of persuasion mode and I'm going to be a student of their ideas okay tell me okay tell me tell me tell me I'm not gonna try to refute you I can't I don't know enough tell me your vo and the reasons for it and when you say let me think about it it lets you completely off-the-hook to have to deal with that point I actually used this recently yeah this is this exact tactic I was so glad that I read it too I used it on a plane and I was sitting next to a I forget what his title was that he was a physicist some kind of physicist a space physicist right right okay he's talking about like how gravity works in outer space basically and he had all of these objections way it works here by the way oh yeah just say I don't know it wasn't gravity it was a magnetic field okay in outer space that's a whole new ballgame but anyway so he had all these objections to Christianity he goes to like a small group and they read books together and yeah yeah yeah and so I said well okay let's do this give me all of your objections to Christianity and I want to ride him down and and he had the same reaction that you just scribe in the book I think it just took him by surprise he was like oh okay you know I guess all right so I gave it so after he started to read off all these objections I had about eight there I was like okay is that those your objections to Christianity and then at that point he was like yeah uh-huh and so at that point I was like all right and then the conversation kind of died down we talked about different pure but it was it was a really interesting way of doing it to get his objections put him down and a little like a nice neat thing and I was I was wanting to make sure I was getting them exactly how he's ending them so it was it was amazing I was amazing just to kind of point out some things that may not be so obvious to your your viewers and that is your you are first of all you're in a tough spot I mean this guy's the physicist yeah and you're the photographer you know kind of things like what am I gonna say and even for me and that's not my field isn't I'm a specialist or anything especially in the magnetism things so you know you're outgunned basically and so it it's extreme disadvantage but by asking that person to lay it out for you methodically now what you've done is you've put yourself in them in a in the driver's seat again and you're managing that circumstance as a learning experience and you're acknowledging that you can't deal with the issues so you're not under the pressure to deal with the issues and if you try to you deal with them poorly which would just reinforce that person's sense that Christianity doesn't have the answers so you just say well okay yeah let me write it down but it also as you pointed out it kind of took the heat or the pressure out of the circumstances and now you've got something concrete to deal with when the pressure is off you know on your own at your leisure yep it's hard under fire to even think clearly about some of these things but if you take this stance like you did and as the tactic suggests getting out of the hot seat that gives you the ability to know what the challenges are and then deal with them when you're not under pressure and when you're not under pressure you're gonna see things all on your own that you didn't see be or and then when you can do some research then you're gonna be able to oh here's what I could do now once you get your in a sense substantive responses to the individual challenges the best way then to move forward if you have a conversation with someone about this in the future is to try to use this information but maneuver with questions regarding that information this is a perfect segue to the next question that I had and this is gonna be more for like the apologists the Christians who've been thinking about the evidence I know the evidence when do you move from asking questions to talking about the evidence is there like a specific point that it supposed to happen well remember I mentioned earlier like one-on-one basketball that's kind of like asking when do you shoot for the rim you know when do you make your shot well it all depends on the maneuvering at the moment it's when you one-on-one when you've got a clear shot you know kind of thing and so what we've kind of jumped over a section let me just say this briefly there the tactical game plan involves three ways of using questions and the first use of questions is to gather information the second use of questions is to reverse the burden of proof I'll explain both of those in a moment the third use of questions is to do what you just asked so now we're as you acknowledge where this are more of an advanced use of questions and I'm just gonna call that using questions to make a point where your apologetics comes in you're gonna make a point but you want to use questions to make that point but the first step though and this is I think will be really helpful to your listeners and and to it goes back to your initial anecdote about when you're a teenager you say well I don't know what to do how am I gonna get into this I think even those listening up to this point are still asking the same question well how does how how do you get into play with this so the first step of the gameplan and when I say the first step I want people not to think about anything else when they encounter a circumstance where they might like to have a spiritual impact very general here we're not even saying preach the gospel because we don't know we're gonna preach the gospel at this point we want to have a spiritual impact on somebody's life we want to plant a seed garden do something yeah you want to do some gardening yeah exactly so what are we how do I do that what's the first step and here's the first step and that's gather information the first step is to gather information so back to the military stuff you want to maneuver in the field you got to have Intel okay are there minefields out there what's the topography like where the where the bad guys hiding so to speak you know I'm not saying that people were talking to you is the bad guy but you follow the metaphor you've got to have Intel about this so I'm sitting next to a guy on an airplane and his name is John and I'm drawing a dry mouth with my questions I'm just using basic questions to find out a little bit about him he saw me reading my Bible he asked me where I'm going you know I saw him go under this thing so he knows I'm a Christian so he tells me I'm not a Christian he tells me to me he said he's not a Christian John's not a Christian is that a good information for me to know absolutely of course now I know he's on what side of the rails he then he says I used to be a Christian but I'm not anymore oh that's more information is that helpful yeah okay then he says in fact I used to be a preacher's kid I said John how'd you used to be a preacher's kid did your dad die no my dad didn't die he said my dad's not a preacher anymore oh I get it he said in fact my dad's no longer a Christian so here's a non-christian who used to be a Christian who was a preacher's kid whose dad is not a preacher and not even a Christian himself do you think there's any baggage sitting here bad experiences with Christianity absolutely can you imagine if I had gone you know James Michael um yeah or anything simple gospel anything been there done that and it hurt yeah right big blunder that's the problem of going into a circumstance with a pre a prefab presentation when you do not know anything about the person with whom you're talking and it turned out this guy he was he had a lot of bad experiences and he talked about I let him talk about it and he says you know guys like you like the Christian guy you see what he's saying to me you would usually be really mad at a guy like me given what I've just told you but you know you're not mad at me and I really appreciate that of course I wasn't defensive for the church because he had bad experiences you know other nasty Christians out there yeah other bad churches yeah so I'm not a bit surprised but apparently he's talked with other Christians about their I don't defensive now I'm just thinking do you think just the fact that I listened drew him out enough to hear his sorry story his sad story is what I mean without making any case for Christianity whatsoever do you think just being a Christian who sympathetically listened to his sorrows with his experience of the church do you think that could have been a stone in his shoe all by itself a little gardening are you asking me yeah yeah absolutely yeah it's just like a psychologist right you go and you sit on the couch and you exhale right right a it's similar in that in that regard but here's the point I'm making though Cameron all I'm doing is initiating my game plan I'm gathering information and I'm letting the other person talk I'm not doing evangelism we're not doing apologetics I'm not in theology I'm not doing philosophy I'm just being a guy sitting there listening yeah okay but because I'm initiating my game plan and that is the first step of my game plan gathering information I'm making progress already because I'm being a sympathetic listener to the person in this particular case okay and that's what I want your people to see well there's there's progress here already in fact when he got when I got off the airplane I had his email address in my pocket now how'd that happen well he raised some question about the Bible being changed and the manuscripts being rewritten and whatever he'd heard about that and I said well you know I've actually written an article about that if you if you'd like to look at it and he said okay and I said where should I send it and that's when he gave me his email address so that's trust right because he's he's given me his email address now what I did is I when I went to my hotel that night I fired off the document to him in next morning he said thanks and s last I heard from him but some people may wonder well why didn't you follow up I said because he's already had bad experiences with Christians all I wanted to do was what put a stone in his shoe and I think I did plus he had something written to consider plus he had my email address if you ever wanted to get back to me you know what I'm saying so he had everything he needed for now and I wasn't gonna pester him and I was just gonna let the Holy Spirit do his job in that set of circumstances so I have a quote from the book and I'm gonna read it here quote beware when rhetoric becomes a substitute for a substance right you always know that a person has a weak position when he tries to accomplish with CLEP with the clever use of words what argument alone cannot do right can you expound on that well I think rhetoric is a valuable component if what we mean by rhetoric is offering [Music] persuasive maybe even clever ways of putting things okay that can be very powerful if it's done in service to your point or to the evidence or to the argument okay oftentimes even the word nowadays rhetoric has a negative connotation because it sounds like you're obscuring things with fancy words and that's the way it's often used when I notice that somebody else is obscuring with words I realize they probably don't have good reasons they can offer for their view because they are trying to make their case using a lot of noise can they do this with questions you think oh yeah they could do it with questions I'm thinking of Marilee of a specific circumstance Street epistemology I don't know if you're happy with that or Bogosian this crowd in fact I have I had a regular caller on my show that was a disciple of Bogosian that had used his stuff and so he's engaging me on that it's it's a lot easier to use the tactical approach when you have the truth it's a lot harder and therefore you need more rhetoric or histrionics or whatever if you don't have the truth what the street epistemologists crowd does and just to bring your listeners up to speed here this is a kind of tactics for atheists and what the and I've seen videos of the people who use this technique the atheists talking to Christians and all they do is ask questions about the justification Christians have for their views so you have faith what is why do you believe in God well I just have faith well why do you believe it just as well I have faith I mean when it come comes down to is just there naked belief because of the community community that they've grown up in and whatever they don't have any good reasons for it and people like that are deeply vulnerable to a challenge like this a mere question it isn't as if the so-called Street epistemology crowd has all this really good evidence against Christianity that's not what they're taught they're taught to ask questions to cause doubt to arise in the heart of the Christian because they can't answer a simple challenge they can't give any good reason for their own faith they just have empty faith and this is the way Bogosian defines faith something along the lines of belief you have no right to you have no good reason for it you know thinking you know things you don't know at all pretending then pretending yeah and so when Christians are in Christian environments and everybody's pretending then there's no threat but when they get in a non-christian environment and somebody begins asking these questions this creates problems for them what's the difference between the Street epistemology approach and the tactical approach you order like the primary differences well we know too because they both involve asking questions right so what's the what are the some of the biggest differences well would you say it once in one sense there's very little difference in the practical gameplan because think of it as pardon me the game plan is kind of formal categories so first you gather information okay and then you reverse the burden of proof we haven't got to that yet but when somebody says something is so ok God exists or God doesn't exist that's a claim okay now if the atheist says God doesn't exist the Christian thinks it's his job to give reasons against that view it's our job to refute but the rule of burden proof is that the person who makes the claim bears the responsibility to give the reasons so if a Christian says that God does exist it's our job to give reasons why we think that's the case but if the Atheist said God doesn't exist it's not our job to refute him first it's his job to defend okay and so um so in this case of the street epistemologists they're aware of these kinds of things but they're trying to put put the christian in the awkward position with their questions okay and in a certain sense it's the same thing that i want to do with my questions but i mean they're not it's not abusive and i in some ways it's not abusive even from the street epistemologists he says what do you believe gathering information I believe God exists why do you think God exists ah cuz I was raised that way okay is that a good reason to believe that God exists because you were raised that way are you what are you like twenty years old so you're basically a grown up so because mommy and daddy says so is that still a reason to believe I mean that's a quick notice that's a question but that gust go to pissed Amala G is that a good reason for an adult to believe something that Mommy and Daddy says something says so no it's not probably in those cases you know and and we it's okay when you're seven but when you're 17 18 19 20 that's not going to cut it and if they don't have the Christians now don't have a response then they're going to think that their views view is not defensible which is exactly what the atheist wants them to think the methodology is fine it's clean it's being used on Christians who have no answers I use exactly the same methodology I'd a couple weeks ago I talked to a person who's Muslim and I in a camp just driving the cab to the airport and I asked about you a Muslim because you think Islam is true or because you were raised that way he said well I was raised that way and I asked do you think that's a good reason to believe in a religion just because you were raised that way so I'm willing to ask the exact same questions okay the problem here is the Christians are not prepared to answer there's nothing wrong with the tactical approach it's that the Christians are not prepared to answer here's the difference between the two though Christians have the ability to answer Christianity has answers to all of those things atheism does not have the answers so when we ask the questions of the atheist okay while they're also going to be in many cases without answers because there are no answers in their case atheism is the answer less worldview there is no God there is no meaning there is no rationality ultimately we can't defend it it's just molecules in motion the cosmos is all there is ever was or ever will be you know nothing but playing blind pitiless indifference to quote Richard Dawkins it's the nothing worldview so when all of the questions of meaning and significance and morality and evil the problem of evil atheists have a problem of evil - they live in a world they acknowledge as evil how do you make sense of that we can make sense of it fits our story here there are two ways I think that your tactics are different from the Street epistemology approach one of those is that well first of all you have a chapter your book called just the facts right right where you explained that you need to give facts in some of these situations they call for facts right and the Street epistemology approach you don't have that at all Yeah right well it it yeah I think that many of the objections of Christianity that are raised by people like atheists are just based on bad information not on the facts like yeah it causes more bloodshed than everything else and that's not true but I'm down the street epistemologists because they are specifically strictly all about asking questions they're not giving arguments for atheism right so it's so in in that I think that's a big difference good but in yeah this is we have the facts on our side and so I was saying that it's atheism is the nothing point of view that so when we press them on these questions they don't have answers because there are no answers for them to have native to their worldview is a kind of niall ism or nothing ISM okay in Christianity a lot of Christians don't have the answers so they're vulnerable to that approach but it isn't because the answers aren't available the answers are available we have a robust worldview and this is why just the facts ma'am can play in certain cases because people are trading on bad information to inveigh against Christian views in and when if we know that's bad information then we can just point that out that's not gonna work because you're you know as dennis prager the radio talk show host says first tell the truth then give your opinion and he means that your opinion has to be informed by facts it can't be formed by false beliefs and so i think i think that's that's a good point that's one distinction but you said there are two different things there's two yeah and the other one is that they told you interviewing you oh yeah so they they he target people who are very they don't they target lay Christians okay they target Christians on the street they don't really target philosophers yeah people who are not gonna go after me no no not not really I mean that some of them may want to interview you but they're not going to go out and find the people who are apologists and philosophers like there's no Street epistemology at this philosophy conference right right right and so I think that's another difference there is that the tactical approach can work on anybody right and you you you use it that way and you you have different scenarios and situations and you explain what to do in these different situations depending on who the person is but for the Street epistemology approach their target is unsuspecting Christians who haven't really thought through their beliefs exactly and so that's a big difference to me yeah there's another difference I can point out to you but let me just add something to that okay and then and that is that with our approach we I think we could easily go to the street epistemologists atheists in other words these are people that are that are on the move these are people that are doing their own great commission you know they're evangelists for their view okay we're not trying to just pick off the village atheist we'll go after these guys in the sense that we'll be willing to engage them and then they protect amusing our in a conversation because again my conviction that they are going to wither when they are asked the right questions but notice something and I want to hear your third point in just a second but notice something here there what is successful about their approach what's successful is they are asking questions that cause doubts to rise in the minds of the Christian what are they doing they're putting a stone in the shoe of the Christian this is exactly the same thing that I'm suggesting and I'm trying to show the power of that you know sometimes we could ask questions we don't know how to answer it but we put on a strong face or whatever like well whatever it doesn't but bother me kind of thing but inside we're thinking oh man that was a good question I don't know how to deal with that and this little icy doubt arises in our hearts okay that's a stone that they put in our shoe all right so it works both directions and even though people are resistant doing our little gardening and asking the right questions especially when it's not rhetorical cover for a bad argument but it really goes to the heart of the issue and I'll there's more about that and the books book proper as I develop the ideas that can really make a huge difference but number three so number three is that really about the motivation behind why they do it and one of the things I love that you said was how you want to be a virtuous person and part of the reason why you go and do this is because there's a great Commission and we're called to do this we're called to love people that is the reason why we do it because we it's for virtuous moral reasons but in a lot of cases with Street epistemology so it's not really about that and the tactics that they use are really just manipulative yeah well there's weighty matters are at stake and this is why Christians are willing to stand in the line of fire because there are weighty matters at stake I think this is a very fair question to ask it's what I'm I should ask more of atheists it isn't like I get in conversations with atheists a lot well as my friends are Christians you know kind of thing unless atheists call me on the air which they do on occasion but those who live in a camp or traffic at a campus environment or a highly secularized environment those are the people we're training we're giving information to this podcast for example at this broadcast that that I think it would be fair to ask an atheist what is it that gives you explain your sense of urgency about these issues explain your sense of mission about what you do explain why it seems you think you're on the high moral ground pursuing what you're doing and trying to defeat Christians or theists in general from their view because they're strictly speaking in atheism there is no such thing as high moral ground there can't be there can't be any high moral ground because morality is reduced to relativism in in virtually any atheistic scheme and there was only one exception that's moral platonism but almost nobody goes that direction because I said the Eric Whelan burg he's a he did he debated William Lane Craig Rees yeah I'm using moral Platonism as a yeah yeah yeah okay but this is a rarified very sophisticated form you're at your normal atheist isn't even know anything about Plato and platonic forms or anything like that so characteristically 99% of atheists their morality is reduced of necessity by their worldview to some form of subjectivism see they're going to be a Darwinian kind of characterization or it's going to be a kind of a social contract thing but that neither of those can give you any substantive weighty morality but which you can say yeah I'm taking the high moral road all you're doing is what your society agrees to do if that's your explanation of morality or all you're doing is acting out what your genes demand of you that's all why why is that moral you know so I'd be curious to hear their response what is it well we care about truth why how how it is truth itself become virtuous since there cannot be any virtue in atheism virtue is a moral quality okay and anyway evolution doesn't choose for truth it chooses for reproducibility that's all not for truth and many have made this point including CS Lewis and Alvin plant again and others like him so so I'd be curious what an atheist had to say about that I'd be good question for your listeners to ask to atheists well why are you why are you campaigning so aggressively what motivates you now they're gonna give some answer but I think that answer is going to be vulnerable to more questions because I think the answer they give is not going to be able to make sense in a materialistic worldview so be interesting and what that conversation will look like so how do you respond to the problem of the unev and relized this was actually one of the questions that my brother brought up when I first discussed with him I don't know how familiar are with my story but he became an atheist about five six years ago and that's what sent me on this journey in apologetics so for instance this is basically the way that he put it there's a guy in Africa he's never heard the gospel how is this guy automatically condemned to hell to suffer eternal torment okay how is that a justly a tactical or just but but not because I'm trying to be fancy pantsy here I just because this is naturally the way I do it so so tell me describe for me precisely the problem as your brother understands it I what he said but that's just a factual statement that how is this guy going to hell so what is the problem here what would be the problem if you want to play your brother for a moment yeah here what would be the problem notice by the way I'm stepping out of the role play for a second I'm asking a clarification question I want to get more information I want to see what you understand about how our system works because I think a proper understanding of theá-- our theological system solves the problem it may not be psychologically satisfying to some people but I think there's a solution there but I want you to talk a little bit more and give me a clearer idea so there's two ways that I'll respond and the first way is how I think he would have responded in the conversation which is to say that that's just immoral that would be the first way the second way I think which is more sophisticated what would be immoral about it what would be immoral it would be unjust unjust how what would tell me that and I'm not being contentious here I'm saying what is the precise nature of the injustice what would he say that the person goes to hell because he never heard of Jesus so it is in virtue of a geographic accident that he is punished is that the way yeah yeah well then you misunderstand Christianity because nobody goes to hell according to Christianity because of a geographic accident what do you understand the basis of judgment to be from the Christian perspective I'm role playing now still what Alexis tan okay you know understand ax t there's judgment right right okay so what is the basis of the judgment do you think the basis of the judgment is whether people have heard Jesus or not I would I would say he probably said yes okay well that's a misunderstanding and I'm sorry you think it this way if you go to the end of the story okay and there's a judgment and it says there in the Jetta and all the people are before God everybody all the people you're concerned about and you're rightfully concerned about they're all standing there before God and everyone is individually judged what are they judged by says right there they are judged according to their behavior according to their deeds jesus said that every every casual word that you speak you will give an account of in the day of judgment okay so now here's my question of you so we're both world I just can't let Bob we'll call you Bob for this okay I don't know your brother's name is but just say bah so my question of youa bob is this person that you have in mind who has never heard of Jesus do you think this person has done any wrong things in their life that they need to answer for what do you think probably yeah that would be and probably an understanding I mean if they just did 10 wrong things a day from the time they were 10 to 60 so would on either end of that we'll give him a freebie free ride but just those 50 years you've got something like 186 thousand infractions of the law that's just ten a day and you know I've had ten against me just during this conversation just so you know so in this particular case if this person gets judged as guilty how would that be unjust notice the question there the claim is that it's unjust right so I'm asking how is that unjust you've given the person's guilt regardless of whether they've heard of Jesus or not right so how was that unjust so at that point I'd have to throw up my hands well Bob is throwing up his hands I don't have an answer to that yeah okay okay so the theology here is that people don't get condemned because they rejected Jesus that's not they are that's not there at the great white throne judgment they are condemned according to their works and this is all through the New Testament okay lots of places you know and that's the grounds or the basis for the judgment so even a person who never hears about the remedy is still responsible for their own behavior before a sovereign all right and so there's no injustice here now somebody they say well it's not fair because they didn't hear well are you presuming that if they heard they would have bent their knee and received the mercy that is being offered how would you know anyone who knows that would be God and I'm pretty convinced that anybody who would do that God would get the message to them that's another theological issue but all I'm doing now is addressing the question of the injustice in notice how we're out of the role play now but notice how I'm using my questions because I know what's wrong here I know he's met there's a wrong Christian theology okay and there's a charge against Christianity it's unjust okay tell me precisely what is the nature of the injustice and I noticed even in your case you're thinking I don't know how to answer that but you know what because people make these charges as if the charge is completely obvious and who would miss them but then when asked to spell it out they have a hard time even the problem of evil okay we got a problem of evil right Christian what's the problem well you know these even in the world yeah I'm glad you think there is ok well then and there you're in God you got God right so there's the problem what exactly is the problem and if once they spell it out like in a syllogism or something kind of like a line of reasoning they're gonna make a mistake because it turns out that there is no logical inconsistency between evil and God's goodness and God's power God's existence there's none philosophers know this and the deductive problem of evil but this is why I want to get people to spell these things out so all I'm doing is gathering information at this point but the person is giving me what I need to to go further with it and this is where the apologetics kind of comes in so we've kind of gone for a full circle in this little role play with your original question well Greg it's been such a pleasure to do this I mean it's more of a conversation this isn't even really an interview so it was it was really great fun that's the way these things should be that's the way I you know doing radio myself for 29 years I think I want those kinds of interviews to be conversations that people can eavesdrop in on and I and you know I didn't kind of itemize every detail in the book and here's how it all works but we cover some important things and I hope people will get the book because I think they'll find that it'll really help them but I enjoyed just not only conversing about some of the details but having a little role play here so people can see actually how this works out right and by asking the question it is gathering information that is the big first step and then you see where to go from am from there maybe you don't go anywhere but you you it's I want people to realize it's amazing how much progress they can make with fairly very little effort if they use the game plan properly and and that's my encouragement to them well thanks again for coming on capturing Christianity and hopefully one day we'll have you on again I'd love to do it thank you you

Channel: Capturing Christianity

Views: 46,093

Rating: 4.8696685 out of 5

Keywords: Christian Apologetics, Philosophy of Religion, Christian Apologist, apologetics, capturing christianity, greg koukl, greg koukl tactics, koukl tactics, greg koukl christianity, greg koukl stand to reason, koukl interview, greg koukl interview

Id: W_HcKbls_RI

Length: 70min 24sec (4224 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2019