In your conversations with other people
about Christ, and Christianity, and
the real important things, you are going
to encounter what I call THE question.
That is, the the question that stops most
Christians in their tracks, and they
don't really quite know how to deal with
it. And the question was posed to me in an
hour long TV debate that I had with
Deepak Chopra, the New Age guru, as we
talked about spiritual things. And what
he said to me is, "So you're saying that
anyone who doesn't believe just like you
is going to Hell."
That's the way he put the question. Now some
people have said if you're careful how
you push the question, you could win any
argument. And the problem here is that
this was a question about the
exclusivity of Christ. A critical issue
in Christianity, but it was put in a way that
made me look really really bad.
So, if I would have answered the question,
"Yes. Unless you believe that Jesus is the
Messiah, then you will die in your sins,
you would go to Hell." I would have answered
correctly, but I would have really given
the wrong impression. I would have
fulfilled a really negative stereotype
that people have of Christians, and I
would have played right into Deepak
Chopra's rhetorical hand, and I did not
want to do that. And so in that
particular circumstance, I side-stepped
the issue and went in a different
direction. But we can't always side-step
that issue nor should we.
We need to address it because it's
really really important, but how do we do
that? And this is where the tactical
approach, I think, is really golden.
Especially using the Colombo Tactic in
its third sense, and that is using
questions to make a point. Using
questions allows us to make the point a
much more powerful way especially when
we get stuck in a circumstance like this.
People asking us about Jesus being the
only way of salvation. This happened to
me once in a Barnes and Noble where I
was giving a presentation for a book I'd
written, the "Relativism" book, and
afterwards during the Q&A
someone came up to me and asked the
question, "Why do I need to believe in
Jesus?" He said, "I'm Jewish.
I believe in God. I tried to live the
best life that I can. Why do I need Jesus?"
So there's the question again. Not as
belligerently put as with Deepak Chopra,
but the question. Now here's a case where
I want to lead up to the point. I want to
make the point by making a
couple of steps. I have a choice at this
point. I could go ahead and state my
steps as part of my argument. Put my
pieces on the table, so to speak, and then
come to a conclusion, which leaves me
with a certain liability.
Every time I make a claim that is a
stepping stone to my conclusion, the
other person, especially if they're a
little bit belligerent, can just deny the
claim, and now I get nowhere.
So instead, I am going to use questions
to get those pieces placed on the
table by the other person, because if
they put those pieces on the table
it's a lot harder for them to take them
off. To deny them. Okay, let me show you how
that works with THE question.
Alright? And this person who asked the
question there at the Barnes and Noble, I
said, when he offered the question, "Do you
mind if I ask you a couple of questions?"
"No, go right ahead."
Here's the first question, I asked, "Do you
think that people who commit moral
crimes ought to be punished? In other
words, the people who do bad things,
should they pay for them?" And he said,
"Well since I'm a a prosecuting attorney..."
Yeah, I got lucky on the attorney part,
you know. But most people have this sense,
this deep intuition that people who do
wrong things should not get away with them, okay?
And so I agreed with him. I
agree the people who do wrong things
ought to be punished. So now we've got a
piece on the table. He put it there
because I asked him the question. Second
question. "Have you ever done any wrong
things?" That's personal right? What do you
think he said? He said, "Yeah, I guess I
have." If he would have said he didn't do
any bad things, I want to talk to his
wife! You know? Of course, now we all know
we've done wrong things.
I agreed with him, so have I. And then I
said, "Now we've got another piece on the
table." And so I said to him, "Look at
where we've come just in two questions. We
both agree that people who do bad things
ought to be punished, and we both agree
that we've done those bad things. You
know what I call that?" I said to him.  "What?"
he said. I said,  "Bad news.
This is not a good picture for us." Now, do
I need to tell this man he's a sinner?
No, he just told me. Do I need to tell him
that he's under judgment? No, he just
told me. He wasn't thinking about that
when he walked into the Barnes and Noble.
But when I asked him a couple of simple
questions that brought these moral
intuitions, moral common sense, really to
his awareness, he laid them right on the
table. Now I've got something to work
with. And then I went from there, and I
explained, "It's as if the judge is about
to lower the gavel on the two of us in
the dock, and we both know we're guilty,
and we both know we deserve what we're
going to get, and then the judge pauses
and says, 'By the way, are either of you
guys interested in a pardon
at this point?'" Look, when you know
you're guilty, you're much more open to
an offer of forgiveness, and that's
exactly where I wanted to bring him. And
then I explained in very simple terms
about substitutionary atonement. That
the judge took off his robe, and got in
the dock, and took the punishment for us
so that we could be set free.
I didn't use the language of substitution,
I just explained it because
that's what God has done in Jesus, and
that's why Jesus is the only way. He's
the only one who solved the problem.
Nobody else could do this.
Only Jesus could. And that's why we have
to put our confidence in Him.
So what I've done now is I've taken a
very tricky situation, THE question, and I
I've approach it using a tactical
approach. Getting help from the other
person to get my pieces on the table so
that when I'm going to make my case, now
it's much easier to do so in light of
what he's helped me to
establish. And, I don't know if that
attorney trusted the Lord or not, but at
least I was communicating the Gospel to
him, at least in a way that he could
understand. Because now it just wasn't a
matter of believing in God and living
the best way you could live. We both
realized that's not enough. If we're
really guilty, then there's got to be a
solution to the guilt problem, and that's
what Christians offer in Christ. God
becoming a man to take the guilt upon
Himself so that we can be forgiven –
that's the reason Jesus is the only way.
He's the only one who solved the problem.
And this is one way of getting to that
vital point by using a tactical approach.
