The Question that Stops Christians in Their Tracks

In your conversations with other people about Christ, Christianity, and the really important things, you will encounter what I call THE

question

. That is, the

question

that

stops

most Christians, and they don't really know how to approach it. And the question was posed to me in an hour-long television debate I had with Deepak Chopra, the New Age guru, while we were talking about spiritual things. And what he said to me was, "So you're saying that anyone who doesn't believe as you do will go to hell." Thus he posed the question. Some people have said that if you are careful when asking the question, you can 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 raised in a way that made me look really bad. So if I had 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 it would have really given the wrong impression. I would have fulfilled a really negative stereotype that people have about Christians, and I would have played Deepak Chopra's rhetorical game, and I didn't want to do that.

And so, in that particular circumstance, I skirted the issue and went in a different direction. But we can't always avoid that issue, nor should we. We need to address it because it's really very important, but how do we do it? And this is where I think the tactical approach is really golden. Especially using the Colombo Tactic in its third sense, and that is to use questions to make a point. Using questions allows us to get the point across in a much more powerful way, especially when we get stuck in a circumstance like this. People ask us if Jesus is the only way to salvation.

This happened to me once at Barnes and Noble where I was giving a presentation on a book I had written, the book "Relativism," and then during the question and answer session someone came up to me and asked, "Why Do I need to believe in Jesus?" He said, "I'm Jewish. I believe in God. I tried to live the best life I could. Why do I need Jesus?" So there's the question again. Not as belligerent as with Deepak Chopra, but the question. Here is a case where I want to get to the point. I want to make the point clear by taking a couple of steps.

I have a choice right now. I could go ahead and lay out my steps as part of my argument. Putting my pieces on the table, so to speak, and then coming to a conclusion, which leaves me with some responsibility. Every time I make a statement that is a stepping stone to my conclusion, the other person, especially if he is a little belligerent, may simply deny the statement, and now I am getting nowhere. So instead, I'm going to use questions to get the other person to put those pieces on the table, because if he puts them on the table, it's going to be much harder for him to take them off.

To deny them. Well, let me show you how that works with THE question. Alright? And to this person who asked the question there at Barnes and Noble, I said, when he asked me the question, "Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?" "No, come in." This is the first question I asked: "Do you think people who commit moral crimes should be punished? In other words, should people who do bad things pay for them?" And he said, "Well, since I'm a prosecutor..." Yeah, I got lucky on the lawyer part, you know. But most people have this feeling, this deep intuition that people who do bad things shouldn't get away with it, okay?

And so I agreed with him. I agree that people who do bad things should be punished. So now we have a piece on the table. He put it there because I asked him the question. Second question. "Have you ever done anything wrong?" That's personal, right? What do you think he said? He said, "Yeah, I guess so." If he had said that he didn't do anything wrong, I want to talk to his wife! Know? Of course, now we all know that we have done bad things. I agreed with him, me too. And then I said, "Now we have another piece on the table." So I said, "Look how far we've come in just two questions.

We both agree that people who do bad things should be punished, and we both agree that we've done those bad things. You know what? I "I call that?" I told him. "That?" he said. I said, "Bad news. This is not a good picture for us." Now do I have to tell this man that he is a sinner? No, he just told me. Do I need to tell him that he is on trial? No, he just told me. I wasn't thinking about that when he walked into Barnes and Noble. But when he asked him a couple of simple questions that really made him aware of these moral intuitions, of moral common sense, he put them on the table.

Now I have something to work with. And then I went from there and explained to him, "It's like the judge is about to bring the gavel down on the two of us in the dock, and we both know we're guilty, and we both know we deserve what we get." we're going to receive, and then the judge pauses and says, 'By the way, are any of you interested in a pardon right now?'" Look, when you know you're guilty, you're much more open to an offer of Sorry, and that's exactly where I wanted to take him. And then I explained to him in very simple terms about substitutionary atonement.

That the judge took off his robe, got into the dock, and took the punishment for us so that we could go free. I didn't use substitution language, I just explained it because that's what God has done in Jesus, and that's why Jesus is the only way to solve the problem. And only Jesus could. That's why we have to put our trust in Him. So what I've done now is take a very complicated situation, THE question, and I've approached it using a tactical approach. Get help from the other person to put my pieces on it. table, so that when I go to make my case, it will now be much easier to do so in light of what he has helped me establish.

And I don't know if that lawyer 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 was no longer a question of believing in God and living in the best way possible. We both realized that was not enough. If we are truly guilty, then there must be a solution to the problem of guilt, and that is what Christians offer in Christ. God became man to assume guilt and be forgiven; that is the reason why Jesus is the only way. He is the only one who solved the problem.

And this is one way to get to that vital point by using a tactical approach.