Tactics, 10th Anniversary Edition

A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions

Gregory Koukl

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780310101475
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Tactics provides the game plan for defending your faith and artfully communicating the truths of Christianity with confidence and grace.

This expanded anniversary edition of the classic book of Christian apologetics includes updates and expansions of existing tactics, as well as the addition of an all-new tactic and a chapter on Mini Tactics filled with simple maneuvers to aid in discussions.

In a culture increasingly indifferent or even hostile to Christian truth, followers of Christ need to be equipped to communicate with those who do not speak their language or accept their source of authority.

In Tactics, 10th Anniversary Edition, Gregory Koukl demonstrates how to artfully regain control of conversations, keeping them moving forward in constructive ways through thoughtful diplomacy. You'll learn how to:

• Meet challenges, questions, and provocations with poise and conviction.
• Effortlessly start your own evangelical conversations.
• Present the truth clearly, cleverly, and persuasively.
• Graciously and effectively expose faulty thinking and logical fallacies.
• Most important, you'll learn how to get people thinking seriously about Jesus.

Drawing on extensive experience defending Christianity in the public square, Koukl will not only walk you through effective arguments to defend why you believe what you believe, but he'll teach you methods for engaging in meaningful dialogue and debate.

Step-by-step, you'll learn the tactics of good persuasion and defense, how to identify the tactics of your opponent, and how to build your case, patiently and practically.

PART ONE
THE GAME PLAN

Chapter 1

DIPLOMACY OR D-DAY?

Apologetics—giving reasons or evidence to support Christianity —has a questionable reputation for many believers. By definition, apologists defend the faith. They defeat false ideas. They destroy speculations raised up against the knowledge of God.

Those sound like fightin’ words to many people. Circle the wagons. Hoist the drawbridge. Fix bayonets. Load weapons. Ready, aim, fire. It’s not surprising, then, that believers and unbelievers alike associate apologetics with conflict. Defenders don’t dialogue. They fight.

In addition to the image problem, Christians who want to give an answer to challengers face another barrier. It’s too easy for skeptics to ignore our facts, deny our claims, or simply yawn and walk away from the line we’ve drawn in the sand.

But sometimes they don’t walk away. Instead they stand and fight. We wade into battle, only to face a barrage of objections we can’t handle. We have ignored one of the first rules of engagement: never make a frontal assault on a superior force. Caught off balance, we tuck our tails between our legs and retreat, maybe for good. Sound familiar?

I’d like to suggest a “more excellent way.” Jesus said that when you find yourself as a sheep amid wolves, be innocent but shrewd (Matt. 10:16). Even though there is real warfare going on,¹ I think our engagements should look more like diplomacy than D-Day.

In this book, I would like to teach you how to be diplomatic, able to navigate smoothly and graciously through hazardous encounters. I want to suggest a method I call the Ambassador Model. This approach trades more on friendly curiosity—a kind of relaxed diplomacy—than on confrontation.

I know that people have different emotional reactions to the idea of engaging others in controversial conversations. Some relish the encounter. Others are willing but a bit nervous and uncertain. Still others try to avoid them entirely. What about you?

Wherever you find yourself on this spectrum, I want to help. If you’re like a lot of people who pick up a book like this, you would like to make a difference for the kingdom, but you’re not sure how to begin. I want to give you a game plan, a strategy that enables you to get involved in a way you never thought you could yet gives you a tremendous margin of safety.

I am going to teach you how to navigate in conversations so that you stay in control—in a good way—even though your knowledge is limited. You may know nothing about answering challenges people raise against what you believe. You may even be a brand-new Christian. It doesn’t matter. I am going to introduce you to a handful of effective maneuvers—I call them tactics—that will help keep you in the driver’s seat.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

THE WITCH IN WISCONSIN

Several years ago, while on vacation at our family retreat in northern Wisconsin, my wife and I stopped at a store in town to get some photos digitized. I noticed that the woman helping us had a large pentagram—a five-pointed star often associated with the occult—dangling from her neck.

“Does that star have religious significance,” I asked, pointing to the pendant, “or is it just jewelry?”

“Yes, it has religious significance,” she answered. “The five points stand for earth, wind, fire, water, and spirit.” Then she added, “I’m a pagan.”

My wife, caught off guard by the woman’s candor, couldn’t suppress a laugh, then quickly apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’ve never heard anyone actually admit right out that they are pagan,” she explained. She knew the term only as a negative one used by her friends yelling at their kids: “Get in here, you bunch of pagans!”

“So you’re Wiccan?” I continued.

She nodded. Yes, she was a witch. “It’s an earth religion,” the woman explained, “like the Native Americans. We respect all life.”

“If you respect all life,” I ventured, “then I suppose you’re pro-life on the abortion issue.”

She shook her head. “No, actually I’m not. I’m pro-choice.”

I was surprised. “Isn’t that an unusual position for someone in Wicca to take—I mean, since you’re committed to respecting all life?”

“You’re right. It is odd,” she admitted. Then she qualified herself. “I know I could never do that,” she said, referring to abortion. “I could never kill a baby. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt someone else, because it might come back on me.”

Now, this was a remarkable turn in the conversation, for two reasons.

First, notice the words she used to describe abortion. By her own admission, abortion was baby killing. The phrase wasn’t a rhetorical flourish of mine; this was her own description.² I did not have to persuade her that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being. She already knew it.

What she didn’t realize, though, was that her candid admission had given me a leg up in the discussion, and I was not going to waste that opportunity. For the rest of the conversation, I abandoned the word abortion. It would be baby killing instead.

Beware when rhetoric becomes a substitute for substance. You always know that a person has a weak position when he tries to accomplish with the clever use of words what argument alone cannot do.

Second, I thought it surprising that her first reason for not hurting a defenseless child was self-interest—something bad might befall her. Is that the best she can do? I thought. This comment was worth pursuing, but I ignored it and took a different tack.

“Well, maybe you wouldn’t do anything to hurt a baby, but other people would,” I countered calmly. “Shouldn’t we do something to stop them from killing babies?”

“I think women should have a choice,” she responded quickly, without thinking.

Now, generally statements like, “Women should have a choice” are meaningless as they stand. Like the statement, “I have a right to take . . .” the claim requires an object. Choose what? Take what? No one has an open-ended right to choose. People only have the right to choose particular things. Whether anyone has a right to choose depends on what choice they have in mind.

In this case, though, there was no ambiguity. The woman had already identified what the choice amounted to: baby killing, to use her words. Even though she personally respected all life, including human life, this was not a belief she was comfortable forcing on others. Women still should have the choice to kill their own babies.

That was her view. She did not state her conviction in those words, of course, but that was clearly what she believed.

When bizarre ideas like these are implied, do not let them lurk in the shadows. Drag them into the light with a request for clarification. Make the implicit idea explicitly obvious. That is what I did next.

“Do you mean women should have the choice to kill their own babies?”

“Well . . .” She thought for a moment. “I think all things should be taken into consideration on this question.”

“Okay, tell me: what kind of considerations would make it alright to kill a baby?”

“Incest,” she answered.

I was not surprised by her response, since the line is part of the pro-choice playbook, but I don’t want you to miss something significant here.

This dear young woman was advancing her view by trotting out standard slogans in favor of abortion: women have a right to choose, all things should be taken into consideration, incest justifies abortions. Yet in this case, her slogans did not defend abortion in the abstract but explicitly promoted baby killing.

The fact hadn’t registered with her, though, because her slogans were getting in the way. She was simply reciting her lines without thinking. However, you can see that from where I stood, the conversation was starting to sound a little weird.

This happens all the time, of course, on both sides of the aisle. We trot out our pet slogans—whether secular ones or Christian ones—letting our catchphrases do the work that careful, thoughtful conversation should be doing instead. The habit often obscures the full significance (or ramifications, in this case) of our words.

I decided to take the conversation one step farther, hoping to break the slogan spell.

“Hmm. Let me see if I understand your view,” I said. “Let’s just say I had a two-year-old child standing next to me who had been conceived as a result of incest. On your view, it seems, I should have the liberty to kill her. Is that right?”

This last question stopped her in her tracks. Though the notion was clearly absurd, it was also clear that she was deeply committed to her pro-choice convictions. She had no snappy slogan to respond with and had to pause for a moment to think about the corner she had backed herself into. Finally, she said, “I’d have mixed feelings about that.” It was the best she could do.

Of course, she meant this as a concession, but it was a desperately weak response. (“Killing a two-year-old? Gee, you got me on that one. I’ll have to think about it.”)

“I hope so,” was all I had the heart to say.

At this point, I noticed a line of customers forming behind me. I realized our conversation was interfering with her work, and my brief opportunity had come to a close.

True, I hadn’t gotten to the gospel, but that was not the direction this conversation was going. This wasn’t a gospel moment but a gardening moment that involved a vital moral issue. It was time to abandon the pursuit, entrust her to the Lord, and move on. My wife and I finished our transaction, wished her well, and departed.

LESSONS LEARNED

I want you to notice a few things about this short encounter. First, there was no tension, no anxiety, and no awkwardness in the exchange. There were no lines drawn in the sand and no one vigorously protecting their turf. There was no confrontation, no defensiveness, and no discomfort.

The discussion flowed easily and naturally. I was relaxed and so was she. And that’s the way I like it. I don’t want to get in a fight, for good reason. If anyone gets mad, I lose. People are not inclined to change their minds when they’re angry.

Second, even with the relaxed atmosphere, I was in the driver’s seat of the conversation the entire time. I was able to stay there, calmly and thoughtfully, by using three important tactics—maneuvers I will explain in greater detail later in the book—to probe the young woman’s ideas and challenge her faulty thinking.

To start with, I asked seven specific questions. I used these questions to begin the conversation (“Does that star have religious significance, or is it just jewelry?”) and to gain information from her (“So you’re Wiccan?”). I then used questions to expose what I thought were weaknesses in how she responded (“Do you mean women should have the choice to kill their own babies?”).

I also gently challenged the inconsistent and contradictory nature of her views. On one hand, she was a witch who respected all life. On the other hand, she was pro-choice on abortion, a procedure she candidly characterized as baby killing.

Third, I tried to help her see the logical consequences of her convictions. For her, incest was a legitimate reason to kill a baby. But when asked if it was legitimate to kill a toddler for the same reason, she balked, even though—strictly speaking—this was fully consistent with her view.

The last thing I want you to notice about our conversation is critical: The witch in Wisconsin was doing most of the work. The only effort on my part was to pay attention to her responses and steer the exchange in the direction I wanted it to go, which was not hard at all using my tactics.

Plus, because I was comfortable with being a gardener—doing a little spadework instead of pushing for a harvest before its season³—I felt no pressure to squeeze the gospel into the conversation in a way that was artificial, unnatural, and therefore unhelpful. I made the best of the opportunity, knowing that for the moment she was my task, but ultimately she was God’s responsibility. I left her to the Lord and moved on.

This is the power of the tactical approach: staying in the driver’s seat in conversations so you can direct the discussion, exposing faulty thinking and suggesting more fruitful alternatives along the way.

Regardless of your capabilities, you can maneuver almost effortlessly in conversations just like I did if you learn the material in this book. I have taught these concepts to tens of thousands of people just like you and equipped them with the confidence and ability to have...