Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason is one of my favorite Christian apologists. I appreciate his, and the rest of the STR staff’s, faithfulness to Scripture and commitment to being people of Christ-like character. Koukl’s book, Tactics, should be essential Christian reading as far as I am concerned. In it he outlines a simple but extremely effective approach for engaging people in conversations about our Christian convictions (or really about any issue that matters to us). In a nutshell, Koukl teaches what he has dubbed “Columbo tactics”, named after the famous television detective from the 1970’s.
In the television, named after the main character, the detective always shows up on scene looking like he may have slept in his trench coat. His speech doesn’t give him the air of a particularly intelligent or refined man. He can rarely even find his pencil for his notepad, so surely he won’t do too well finding clues, right? No criminal is afraid of this guy, at least not at first, because his manner is completely disarming. All he wants to do is look around a bit and ask a few questions. But those questions…they start to unearth things. They start to expose the truth.
The basic premise of the “tactical approach” to discussing our Christian convictions is this: Ask good questions. Koukl gives his readers three basic tactics, which are essentially just forms of questions asking, to use in any setting where they might be needed or helpful. Here are the three Columbo Tactics:
Columbo Tactic #1: Information Gathering
Question: “What do you mean by that?”
Columbo Tactic #2: Clarifying the Reasoning
Question: “How did you come to that conclusion?”
Columbo Tactic #3: Exposing flaws in the thinking behind the primary claim.
Question: (This one needs tailored to the specific instance)
Let’s set up an example to illustrate how the Columbo Tactics work. Imagine that you are sitting in the waiting room while your car’s oil is being changed. The television is on and the news is running a report about a Tsunami in Asia which has just killed several thousand people. As you are listening to the news report the person next to you says aloud, “And people think there is a God!”
What do you do?
There are three options in a situation like this. The first option would be to say nothing at all. Maybe you say nothing because you feel unqualified to address the concerns, objections, and questions he may have. Perhaps you say nothing because you don’t like confrontation and you feel certain that this is bound to produce one.
The second option would be to launch into a full scale war with this man over his statement. Maybe you are quite the reader, you know your Bible cover to cover, and you also read Christian philosophy and apologetics so you know you “can take him!” Maybe you know how to argue for God’s existence in at least 20 different ways at the drop of a hat! You know that there are great responses to this and you are ready to vomit them upon him all at once.
Option one and two seem less than optimal if our main goal is effectively move this guy towards the kingdom of God.
The third option, and a still more excellent way, is to ask the gentleman a simple, kind, and disarming question. It will engage him in conversation, give him a chance to be heard (people love being heard), and it will give you the information you need to more effectively address his concern.
Let’s see it in action.
“And people think there is a God!”
“Excuse me sir, what do you mean by that?” (Columbo Tactic #1)
“What do I mean by what?”
“Well, what is the connection between this Tsunami and people’s belief in God?”
“Oh, well, I guess I just don’t see how anyone could believe in God when there is so much pain and suffering in the world.”
“I see. But how did you come to the conclusion that pain and suffering in the world ought to make people disbelieve in God?” (Columbo Tactic #2)
“Well, surely if there is some all-powerful being that cares about us he wouldn’t let such terrible things happen.”
“Ah, I think I see where you’re coming from. Do you have any kids?” (Setting up Columbo Tactic #3)
“Yes, I have three kids. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, I was curious, have your kids ever disobeyed you?”
“Of course…they’re kids, am I right?”
“Ha, sure. But have your kids ever gotten hurt in the process of disobeying you?”
“Yeah, sure. I told my kid, Tommy, not to mess with an iron one time and he put his hand right on it! Had to take him to the ER to get his burn taken care of. He’s so stubborn.”
“So you love your kid?”
“Yeah, of course I do.”
“So you tell him what to do and what not to do with the desire that he might live a full and happy life and avoid pain and suffering?”
“Yes.”
“But he still has faced pain and suffering because of disobedience at times?”
“I guess so.”
“Do you think anything like that could apply to a loving God and a world where there is pain and suffering?” (Columbo Tactic #3)
“Well…I don’t know. Maybe…”
And the conversation could go on and take many twists and turns. It will likely face new objections and concerns from the man but you can see all three tactics at work, asking questions, learning more about the person’s position, being non-offensive and relational, asking a question that makes them begin to rethink their position, etc. Any one of these tactics can repeated as much as necessary. Conversations are rarely perfectly linear. There are u-turn, detours, etc., which may cause you to need to go back to C1 and gather information, C2 clarify the reasoning, and C3 to ask a new question that exposes faulty thinking.
In his book Koukl notes that asking questions, when paired with proper tone and body language, is 1. Non-offensive, 2. Informative, 3. Creates time to think, 4. Gives you control of the conversation (the question asker directs the conversation), and 5. Keeps you out of the “hot seat” (because you haven’t asserted any claims that need defending).
It is noteworthy that Jesus often responds to his attackers (Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees) with a better question than the one they originally asked. See for yourself:
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. 16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” 21 They said, “Caesar's.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” 22 When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.1
Now, Jesus is God and he is dealing righteously with hypocritical false teachers who are leading his people astray. I don’t recommend, in general, speaking so harshly with your average unbeliever as Jesus did here. You might actually study the difference in Jesus’ tone and approach with, say, the Samaritan woman at the well. You might also note Paul’s patience and kindness towards the Greeks in Acts 17 versus his roughness with the hypocritical religious leaders who ought to know the truth. Different occasions call for different approaches, but generally we should be very patient and kind towards those who are unbelievers and who don’t claim to already be Christians. The prescient point here is that in the above example Jesus turned the whole conversation in his favor by asking a superior question.
Obviously, you should read Tactics by Greg Koukl. This article is just a brief crash course and he has a lot more good things to say in his book than I can give you right now. I did want to make a connection before I wrap up this post, however, with classical Christian education’s use of the Trivium. The term “Trivium” refers to the language arts of seven liberal arts (whereas the latter four, the Quadrivium, are numerical in nature). Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric are each a discipline in their own right, they also overlap each other and every other thing you will learn (no matter what it is), but they can also be used as a model for forming good questions.
At Study The Great Books we are using the Trivium as our model for asking questions of the Great Books.
Grammar: “What does the text say?”
Logic: “Why does it say what it does?” Or “How do these ideas fit together?”
Rhetoric: “What ought we to do with this idea? Is it sound? Should we accept it or reject it? How might it be applied to our life?”
You may notice that Koukl’s tactical approach to discussing our Christian convictions is very similar to STGB’s approach to mining the depths of the Great Books. We want to gain understanding first, really listen to what is being said. We want to clarify and see the reasoning process so we can know if the conclusions follow from the premises or if the ideas in the book can coexist. If the ideas are sound, how should they affect us? How can we speak about them to others?
In both the case of studying the Great Books and in discussions with our neighbors about things we care about, our approach ought to be basically the same.
In the end, the last place we go should be the same too. The word of God. Scripture comes last not because it is least important but because it stands as the judge making a pronouncement once the case has been fully heard and cross examined. The word of God then rules upon the case and points us to the authoritative truth which stands above and over all other truth claims.
This is why the above imagined conversation would inevitably need to go Genesis, to the creation and fall if man, to explain the presence of pain and suffering in a world with a good God. This is why, no matter what book we are studying, the STGB study guides always end each lesson with Scripture taking us to where the Bible addresses similar ideas and themes to what we have just read about in the text.
So Tactics and the Trivium go hand and hand and the Christian Scriptures crown both approaches with the revealed truths of God to lead us home.
Matthew 22:15-22 (ESV).
A minister in a church I once went to said that we do not do our best to bring others to Christ we are functionally atheist. The easiest way for most of us is to unabashedly talk, pray and behave like Christians anytime, anywhere. This was easy for me until very recently when the DIE cloud has grown over my sky. But St. Paul had it tough, too. I guess I should suck it up.