Apologetic Conversation Tactics (Greg Koukl)

Revealed Apologetics

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All right. Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. As always, I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today

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I have a super duper, very special guest. Super duper, very special guy.

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That's a pretty good introduction to - I have never been introduced as super duper before, so this is a first for me.

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Well, I do consider you a very super duper guest. I do understand that you're probably very busy and so I greatly appreciate you being able to take the time.

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I'm happy to do it. Really am. I'm glad to be here. Thank you, Eli. Awesome. Well, today I have

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Greg Koukl with me. He is the author of multiple books, one of which is Tactics, which is an awesome book that goes through really tactics and strategies as to how to navigate a conversation.

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And of course, that has application not only within the context of apologetics, but it also has application to just reasoning and thinking and conversing in general.

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So I highly recommend the book Tactics, and of course, there's an updated version that recently came out.

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I'm not sure how recent that was, but there we go. By the way, this little red emblem is important.

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That's the 10th anniversary edition one. That's the updated one, 35 or 40 % more material, lots more tactics anyway.

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There we go. Yeah. And so I read the older, I do have the updated version. I did read the older edition, but I mean, it's excellent stuff.

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Definitely very applicable, very practical, and not over anyone's head, which

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I think is sometimes something that we run the risk when we're doing apologetics because we're dealing with such big topics.

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So without further ado, though, why don't you take some time to introduce yourself? I'm sure folks will be more familiar with you than they are with me, but why don't you go tell us a little bit about yourself?

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Well, I didn't become a Christian young. I became a Christian as a young adult, actually, which to me is a big advantage in some ways, although not walking with the

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Lord when you're younger gets you into trouble that you have to deal with the rest of your life.

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But I became a Christian at university at UCLA in 1973. I was 23 years old, and it was a long time of me assessing things.

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I wasn't really doing apologetics then, and it wasn't, ironically, it wasn't apologetics that made a big difference in my conversion like it's done with the others that do what

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I do, J. Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel, Frank Turek, etc. These guys were all deeply influenced by apologetics.

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In my case, it was just the faithful witness of my younger brother over time and other people that had some things to say, but it was mostly

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Mark. And when I became a Christian in 1973, this changed everything for me, and my whole worldview shifted.

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And deliberately, I realized that I was entering into an entirely new way of understanding how reality is structured.

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I wouldn't have put it that way, you know, 50 years ago or so, but still, that's the way

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I look at it now. It's everything changed for me. And so it wasn't like, you know, get Jesus to get your ticket into heaven.

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I was a follower of Jesus, and I had really fabulous people around me, got discipled early on very intensely for two and a half years.

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I was part of a Christian community there in Westwood Village by UCLA, and that's when I developed my interest in apologetics.

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And I just naturally gravitated for that because I was on the street a lot. That was during the Jesus Movement in Southern California.

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I was on the street talking to people and on the beach, and, you know, people would push back, and so I'd have to figure out how to answer their pushbacks if I wanted to make a credible presentation of the gospel.

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And so that's where my interest in thoughtful Christianity and defending the faith came in.

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And early on, I had read some of Josh McDowell, which was great. His material was kind of encyclopedic, you know, in the evidence that demands a verdict, so it just flipped to the pages you need.

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But I was really deeply influenced by Francis Schaeffer because he provided for me a whole broad way of understanding the

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Christian project and how the Christian worldview actually spoke aggressively and soundly to the broader issues of life.

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And so he was somewhat philosophical in his teaching. I was the first exposure

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I had to that kind of stuff, but it really, really began to ground me well. And I visited

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Labrie there in the mid -70s, and so that, by the time,

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I guess about 10, now, I think, about 20 years later, I guess I was 20 years old when

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I became a Christian, I did a lot of different things. I was a pastor at a church, an associate pastor, a teaching pastor, basically, and I spent time overseas in Europe working with Christians behind the

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Iron Curtain. I spent time in Thailand. I lived there for a while working with Cambodian refugees. Anyway, lots of crazy experiences.

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But I started radio in 1990, and I was doing weekend talk radio, three hours

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Saturday, three hours Sunday, in addition to my other job. And that kind of introduced me to a whole new way of engaging people in a way that's effective.

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I wasn't really wild about being on the air like some people are, but it was something that I could do, and that worked. And so I thought, okay, as a stewardship,

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I'm going to keep doing this. Now it's 30 years later, and I'm still doing it. But about four years into that enterprise, 1993, that's when

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I decided to focus my efforts on an enterprise that now is known as Stand to Reason.

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And Melinda Penner helped me start out that organization. She's ailing now, so she's not actively with us.

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But the goal that I had, Eli, was I looked around and I saw that, first of all, for my education, at that point,

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I had a bachelor's degree, or rather a master's degree in apologetics, and I was beginning to work on a master's degree in philosophy.

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And I thought, man, we got the best thinkers on our side, but so many Christians, they're arguing and engaging in such a shallow fashion and shrill.

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So there's a lot of yelling going on. I thought, that's not good. It's shallow and shrill. That's part of the body of Christ.

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The other part was silent because they were scared. They weren't going to get off the bench. They didn't like the opposition.

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They didn't know what to say. They're not going to stand up in the line of fire. And so we started

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Stand to Reason with a goal of training Christians to think more carefully about their convictions. And in the process of that, being able to engage in a thoughtful, gracious, but incisive way with those who didn't share their convictions.

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And so that's pretty much our enterprise at Stand to Reason has been that. Our longer term goal, our vision is confidence for every

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Christian, clear thinking. Let's see. How do we put it? Clear thinking for every challenge and courage and grace for every encounter.

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And those three things really capture what we're doing. We're trying to build a person that we call an ambassador who has those qualities.

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They have confidence because they know the reasons for the truth. They have, therefore, courage to face the opposition and they are doing it in a graceful way with clear answers regarding the issues.

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So now 27 years into Stand to Reason, 30 years into live radio and still doing that.

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Now it's kind of morphed into a podcast kind of thing. We still have a live presence on radio, but most people are podcast listeners because it's so much easier.

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You can get it anytime. You don't have to thread the needle, sit in the car and be there right at the right time when this comes on.

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But now we have 18 staffers. We have four speakers. We've rotated speakers out over time because they've gone out and started other organizations like Scott Klusendorf started

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Life Training Institute. He was with us for about eight years. Brett Kunkel started his organization and he was with us like 15 years or something.

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And he's just doing great working with young people and he's left a tremendous legacy at our organization.

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Maven is his group. And J. Warner Wallace was with us a couple of years. He's with Cold Case Christianity and he's really having a powerful impact.

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And so we've had others. So we're just really happy to hear that we're kind of seeding the field, so to speak, even though we're losing good people, but more people are coming in.

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So right now we got four full -time speakers and we've got a great website that's just pumping out a lot of stuff.

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You know, I'm writing. Others are writing. We're doing blogs and all kinds of stuff. So we're just trying to be faithful to make a difference in a gracious way for the kingdom of God in the midst of an increasingly hostile circumstance that we're facing in this country.

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So that's kind of your little thumbnail sketch. You spoke about doing radio. I must say, from the first time

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I ever heard you, I was like, this guy has a really good radio voice. You got a nice, a good cadence to your voice.

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It was very pleasant to listen to. I remember the first thing I ever listened to of yours, and I think it had something to do with decision -making and the will of God or something.

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Oh yeah, quite controversial. People either love me or hate me on that one. But I thought it was awesome when

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I first listened to it. I was a fan from early on, but then it was later on when I saw some of your books, I started reading those and became a greater fan of your work.

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Oh, thank you. Thank you. I actually started out talking way too fast with a real high -pitched voice, and I thought, this is not going to be helpful to the audience.

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So I just tried to slow down, lower my register a little bit, and just slow down. That was more than anything else, just slowing down.

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So thank you for that comment. Yeah, no problem. I mean it. Now, one of the things

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I really appreciate about you, those who are connected to your ministry, is your ability to speak with clarity and simplicity in a way that can be multiplied, reproduced, and sent out to the masses in a way that the average person can just grasp.

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And I think a very difficult thing is to take these complex topics, because when we're dealing with apologetics, we're very much dealing with philosophy and related topics that are very, very difficult to wrap your head around.

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So I would imagine that when you are doing the videos and you're speaking, there is a strategy that you use to simplify these very complex concepts.

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What is your process when you're trying to simplify? You know, that's a really fair question. It's a very nice compliment, and especially gratifying, because I view our work at Stand to Reason as kind of like translation work.

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And so we get to rub shoulders with the really smart people, you know, and do our best to understand what they're saying, and then translating that.

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And I don't call it putting the cookies on the bottom shelf, because though that's a kind of a favorite metaphor for this kind of thing, frankly, all the cookies can't go on the bottom shelf.

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But what we can do is some of those cookies, so to speak, that you know, you got to reach for, we can put them within reach if people are willing to reach.

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And so that's, I think, what one of our big virtues are of our organization is that we've done that.

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We really work hard at translating. And you know, to be honest, Eli, nobody's ever asked this question of me before, and it's a perceptive question because it goes to the workings of a person's mind and trying to make information accessible.

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And I'm glad you care about that because you're in the same kind of position. And I wish

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I could tell you, well, here's the secret. Here's the strategy. And it isn't like I'm following a particular strategy to accomplish things.

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I can tell you a couple of things that will help, and will help your listeners too when they're in the same position. But I don't, it is things, you know, people talk about the muse, people who are creative people, they talk about the muse,

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M -U -S -E. Well, muse is like a mythic woman who gives them their inspiration.

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So, you know, Shakespeare had his muse, you know, and Bach has a muse. And all they're really referring to in a metaphoric way is a native and unusual and unique capability to have things come to mind that reflect their talent.

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And then they put those things down and make it visible for people, whether it's words or whether it's music or art or something like that.

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So there is, part of it, I think, is just an uncanny, like odd and hard to explain process of things just coming into one's head.

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So I think, and this is a spiritual, there's certainly a spiritual element, the

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Holy Spirit working. There's also a spiritual element in the sense that it's not the immediate working of the

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Holy Spirit, but it's the fact that God made each individual certain capabilities and natural abilities that are native to them.

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They have them when they're born. We don't usually call them spiritual gifts. They're natural gifts, but they're still used for spiritual ends.

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And a lot of times the spiritual gifts and the natural gifts kind of blend together. And so I've always been, as a young adult,

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I was a little on the talkative side kind of thing. And so I think I had some of that native capability.

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But then becoming a Christian and having the Holy Spirit, well, this just brings in a whole bunch more, in a certain sense, resources.

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But when somebody asks me a question about something, a lot of times a little outline just appears in my head.

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Now, it's because I have done the work, I have the studies and stuff. It isn't like I'm getting new information from God.

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But you know how Jesus told the apostles, he said, the Holy Spirit, this is in Matthew 10, he said, the

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Holy Spirit will give you the words kind of at the time you're in a stressful circumstance.

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But he didn't say that like when he first met them. He said that after he'd been training them for about a year and a half.

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And in Neperom discourse, he says something similar. He said, the Spirit will bring to remembrance all that I have taught you.

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So there's two parts to the Spirit's involved, but he's not working with nothing. He's not working with new stuff. Like you just open the channels and you get what the

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Spirit's saying. Rather, he's working with the things that you have worked yourself to store up.

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We call this knowledge, an accurately informed mind, understand the reason. And so this is a tip for your listeners and for you,

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Eli, that God constructs things with stuff that's there.

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Okay, so if we're not somehow a student of our interest or our craft, as the case may be, there's not much raw material to work with.

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I'm not saying God can't use somebody who's totally uneducated, but that's not the point. We pursue knowledge. Okay, it says that in Proverbs, it says that through the

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Scripture, whatever. We pursue knowledge, okay? Once we have accurate knowledge, now we've got resources to assemble like Legos in different ways.

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And for some people, they got to work harder than others to assemble those things. Me, sometimes it comes kind of naturally.

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You know, certain things come into my head. Oh, that goes bang, bang, bang, bang. Even you asking this question of me, you know,

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I thought, okay, here's a rhythm. Here's a series. Here's I can talk about this. So to some degree, there's a native capability of that, and I can't take any credit for it.

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It just happens in me. But basically, your strategy is just to be naturally gifted.

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Yeah, there's more to that. And this is something I can pass on, but part of it is native gifting.

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That's all I could say, you know. And each person has their own particulars, you know. My wife has a certain sensitivity with people that I don't have, you know.

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And so sometimes I got to ask her how to handle something because she gets it and I don't, you know. But to her, it comes kind of natural.

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So that's kind of her native capability. So people know what I'm talking about. But I always tell people to be a student of your craft.

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So if you want to be more effective in engaging people, apologetics, however, whatever, learn stuff related to that.

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So you build up your reservoir of information that you can draw from as you have the opportunity, okay.

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So that's one thing, build up your reservoir. That's something you could do. Be a student of your craft.

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Another thing I just mentioned a little while ago is, and this is really important.

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I think this helps the process. Talk slower, all right.

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Talk slower. I was so fast when I first started doing public speaking and stuff.

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I would warn people. I say, I talk 180 miles an hour with gusts up to 200. So sorry about that.

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Here we go, you know. But it was such a flurry of stuff. It's like, you know, when the wind's blowing really hard, nothing sticks on the ground.

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It all blows away. So in the same way, you know, things don't stick if you're moving too fast.

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So the more you can speak more slowly, not only is it easier for people to pick things up.

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Notice how I'm pausing here, even saying this. It's easier for people to pick things up, but it's actually easier for you to articulate without stumbling, which

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I used to do a lot. I'd stammer because I'd try to talk too fast. And it's easier to organize your thoughts.

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You have a little bit more time for these thoughts to come to mind so that you can kind of put them in order.

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I noticed that William Lane Craig does that in the way that he answers. You know, someone will ask him a question.

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He'll be like, well, well, I think if we think of it, he's just very ponderous of each of his points.

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And he speaks with a good, I mean, he's not a quick speaker, but he speaks in such a way that you can follow his line of thinking.

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I mean, if the purpose of speaking is communication. If you understand his vocabulary, I listen to Bill because he keeps me sharp.

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That very thing that you're talking about, he has a certain kind of elegance of thinking that is a tutorial for listeners.

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Sometimes clear thinking or capable thinking is not taught, but caught. Right. And so when we listen to somebody like Bill, you know, and I hope when people listen to me, they start to get the rhythm of how this works and they can't even really put their finger on it, but they realize as they expose themselves more frequently to careful thinking, thinkers like Bill or J .P.

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Moreland, or even like Dennis Prager. Many of your listeners might know Dennis. I think Dennis has magnificent clarity.

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He's not a Christian. He's a Jewish conservative talk show host. But he has magnificent clarity, and I learn from him by listening to him.

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That's one reason I listen to him. Also, I think he's got a lot of good ideas, too. So those are the things that I would recommend.

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Listen to smart people who communicate clearly, and you'll catch some of it.

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Okay. Study, as Paul says, to show yourself to prove, to workmen who does not need to be shamed, handling accurately.

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And here he's talking about the Word of God to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, but it's a broad principle that's really good.

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Know your stuff. Make that a lifelong process. And slow down when you're talking to people. I think what you said before is being a student of your craft is very, very important.

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I mean, even in the Bible, it says, may I hide your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you. God helps us to avoid falling into sinful action, but he brings to remembrance what is already deposited within us.

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That's right. It's not just this ex nihilo. God just produces these thoughts in our minds. Ah, this is the right thing to do.

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I'm glad you put it that way, because this is a tremendous misunderstanding that I think that comes out of pietistic movements of the late 19th century, that it's all of God, none of me, that I'm an empty vessel, that God's just pouring his

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Spirit through me, and I'm just kind of standing aside and not doing anything. And there were very godly people who believed that and taught that, but I just don't think that's the biblical model.

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And something that I noticed, Eli, by reading—I've made a commitment now. I've read through the

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Bible a number of times, but I've made a commitment to always be reading through the Bible. So I have a check -off box, as you know.

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I have a chart, and actually, two weeks ago, I finished, after two and a half years, I finished my Bible in a year chart, and I just started again.

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But when you're doing this and getting the full counsel of God over time, instead of just focusing on your favorite passages, some things jump out that you didn't notice before.

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And for me, as I'm reading through the historical parts of the Old Testament, I'm reading through 1

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Samuel, 2 Samuel, David's struggles, etc., and Solomon, and 1 Kings, and Chronicles, I realize that every time

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God promised something to a people or a person or a group, they had to fight to actually get it.

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Now, this was a huge revelation to me. It wasn't a surprise, because I see—this was a conviction

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I've developed over time—that we are partners with God in these things, and God may have an end that He has guaranteed is going to happen, but He has ordained the means as well as the end, and so we've got to engage the means in a faithful fashion.

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And so, you know, things just don't—it's not like pixie dust. God just sprinkles

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His promises, and boom, there we are. It's just the magical world in that sense. No, it's a world of work, and hardship, and difficulty, and training, and discipline.

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And these concepts are thick in the New Testament, by the way. It's amazing how many people miss them. So I'm glad you put it that way.

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You know, it is just like, come to you, you work for it, and then God's working with us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

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Very good. Now, again, when I think of your ministry and what your ministry puts out, there's one word that comes to mind, and perhaps—I mean,

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I'm sure you would agree with this, but it just pops out at me, and it's the word intentionality. It seems like everything you do, whether it's a small video, an article, there is specific intentionality in what you're trying to get across, okay?

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And I think that's a very important thing. Now, what should be— That's a good word. Intention, I would say. Yeah, we're intentional about what we do.

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We have a target we're shooting for. We're not just kind of rambling on, right? Yes, and that intentionality produces the necessity for doing things that you do with strategy.

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And so that gets me into my point with regards to navigating conversations, okay?

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Why is it important, as Christian apologists, not just broadly speaking in general, why is it important to do what

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I'm about to ask you, but as apologists, why is it important to have intentional strategies in place when we are engaging in apologetic discourse?

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Well, the reason is that—and there's actually two aspects of being intentional.

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The first one—you mentioned both of them, actually—and the first one is we're intentional about a particular end.

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We are trying to accomplish something particular, whether that particular thing is in the conversation we're having with an individual or as an organization, what we're trying to do.

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We want to build ambassadors. That's our goal. We train Christians, the first three words of our mission statement. And so we know that we're not an evangelistic organization.

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We do evangelism. We're Christians. But our focus, our work, our effort is to train

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Christians to be more effective in the ways that I described earlier, okay? So we have, in every case, we have an intentional target, all right?

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Now, if you don't have an intentional target, you're not going to hit it. That's a good point.

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All right? I mean, it's this common -sense notion, but, you know, if you don't know what you're aiming for, then you're not going to hit anything.

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You know, you might get lucky. Even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while, as the saying goes.

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But, and I think sometimes this goes to a pietistic view, well, God will take care of everything.

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No, God has put that responsibility on our shoulders. I just read 1 Peter 4 this morning, you know, that anybody who has, if you, given that you have a gift, use it as a good steward of the glory of God and the power that God gives you, but use it.

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And he gives some examples there. So it's our job to kind of use those things. So now that I have a target in mind, how do

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I hit that target? That's the next step. I mean, see, this is this little outline coming together in my head, you know, but it's an obvious one.

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Okay. How do we hit the target? Well, you've got to have an idea of how you're going to hit a target.

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If you're just thinking literally about targets, well, you might shoot a gun at the target.

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You might shoot an arrow at the target. You might throw a ball at a target. So there are different ways to hit the target.

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And then once you choose, you get, you realize what, in a certain sense, means that you're going to, then you've got to think about the technique, how you use the means.

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Okay. So our target may be different in different circumstances. In a debate, let me back up for a second.

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In conversations with people, at least at Stand to Reason, we want that person to think about Christ.

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We're not trying to win them to Christ. We're trying to put a stone in their shoe. And this is in the tactics book, and it's a modified goal.

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We're going to do what I call gardening. Okay. And then we have a technique to do that. When I'm having a debate,

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I'm not trying to change the debater's mind, a formal debate. I'm trying to change the audience's mind.

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The debater's in print, man. He's not going to change his mind. He's debating against me. I mean, characteristically, that's the way it works.

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And they're going to find everything they can say to try to reinforce their own view, which I'm going to do, too. I mean,

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I don't fault them for that. But I don't have much of an expectation I'm going to change that person's mind.

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Who am I going to speak to? I'm speaking to the people listening, who are listening in.

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And so I'm going to comport myself in such a way and give the information in such a way that it gets them thinking about the truth.

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And so notice now, so I've got a certain strategy in mind about those are the targets.

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Okay. Then if I'm verbally, okay, now, how do I go about doing that? And this is where the tactical game plan comes in.

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And we've been talking a little bit around the concept of tactics here. And I wrote the book and flashed it a few moments ago.

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Excuse me. The subtitle of tactics is a game plan for discussing your

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Christian convictions. A game plan. It's actually a plan. It's precisely what you're asking about.

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It's the step -by -step way. There are three steps to it. Easy. And they're pretty common, sensible notions.

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But what I do is, but what it provides for a Christian is something most of them do not have.

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Many will have like a tract, like steps to peace with God or the four spiritual laws. And those things have value.

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But I want to point out something about those pieces. And I've used them in the past, especially during the

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Jesus movement. Those are harvest tools. The goal of using a tract is to get to the last page of the tract and pray the prayer with the person.

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It's a harvest tool. Most people aren't ready to be harvested. They're maybe in your garden.

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They can be gardened, but they're not ready for harvesting. And so what people don't have is gardening tools.

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And that's what the tactical game plan is. In fact, my encouragement is, given the truism that you cannot have a productive season of harvest unless you have a long season of gardening.

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You can't have a harvest without gardening. I mean, duh, right? Okay, so that's true in agriculture.

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It's true in spiritual engagements with people. So who's doing the gardening? Well, if people are trained mostly to do harvesting with tracts like that, or that's the perceived accepted approach to evangelism, a lot of people aren't comfortable with that.

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They're going to sit on the bench. You're out of play. And my point that I try to make to people is that they ought to be gardeners.

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Because I'm a gardener. I mean, I'm not saying they should be gardeners because I'm a gardener.

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My point is, a lot of people think of me in a different way, I think.

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When really, I'm a gardener. Here, I'm going to tell you something, Eli, that I now say regularly to audiences, but will shock a lot of people.

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I have not prayed with anyone to receive Christ in at least 30 years. What a loser.

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Wow, what's the matter with you, Koko? Don't you know that evangelism? Yes, I— You want staff to do that.

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Because there's two parts to the whole process, and Jesus identifies it in John chapter 4.

29:47

He says, some sow and some reap. Sure. There it is. It's right there. It's right after his conversation with the woman at the well, and he's talking to the disciples.

29:55

Some sow and some reap. You are about to reap what you didn't sow. So he's identifying one field, which is sychar at that point.

30:02

He's identifying two seasons, which is a sowing season and a reaping season. I call it gardening and harvesting.

30:08

And two kinds of workers, sowers and reapers. Gardeners and harvesters. And without the first, you can't have the second.

30:15

Period. That's just the way it works. Okay. Now, what Jesus is telling the disciples is somebody else has done the heavy lifting, you're going to get the easy pickings.

30:23

Okay. Who's doing the heavy lifting, so to speak? Who's doing the gardening? That's the question

30:28

I'm asking. If we have people sitting on the bench who are gardeners and not harvesters, but are sitting on the bench because they think harvesting mode is the only thing that's available, then we're going to have a lean harvest.

30:40

So what I've tried to do is encourage people to get out and garden. Because for my life, radio shows speak in university campuses.

30:50

I don't have altar calls. I've spoken on over 80 university campuses. So I don't have altar calls there.

30:57

What I do is garden on the radio show. What am I doing? I'm gardening in the books. What am I doing?

31:02

Story of reality. I'm gardening. One second, Greg. That's a good point to move into my next question, which we'll get into some of the details of all this.

31:14

First, a preliminary question. When you speak of harvesting, or I'm sorry, gardening, are you equating that to something akin to, say,

31:25

Schaefer's idea of pre -evangelism? Harvesting. Yeah. In fact, I do mention that. I was going to say the word.

31:31

He uses that word, pre -evangelism. So I can choose the religious word.

31:37

I can do the more down -to -earth word, which is, and this is a little point on accessibility. So a lot of people now are talking about gardening because it's a more down -to -earth term, so to speak.

31:50

And so I think that aids recollection, memory, and communication and education.

31:57

So that's another little tip regarding our earlier conversation.

32:04

So yeah, it's the same thing with pre -evangelism, if you will. That's what he called it, but I just consider it all part of the process of evangelism.

32:15

Because as I understand gardening, as the way I'm using it, is we are talking about spiritual things, and we are trying to commend some aspect of the

32:25

Christian worldview to a person, or we are trying to disabuse them of false ideas that get in the way of them considering the

32:32

Christian worldview. One other thing is we might be just providing them with the kinds of tools of thinking that allow them to assess things more accurately, okay?

32:46

And I can't right off the top of my head think of an example of that, but I mentioned in the book on tactics, sometimes we're just kind of working with how people think about things.

32:53

And we realize because, for example, oh, I just thought of an example. People think emotively now, okay?

33:01

That is, their feelings. Well, I feel this, or I feel like this is the case.

33:07

And for them, because subjectivism, relativism, is so big in our culture in many ways, they think that their feeling that way defines what is true.

33:19

The whole gender dysphoria is an example of that, okay? Okay, well, why does feeling a certain way define what is true?

33:27

And on the issue of this gender stuff, you might have seen the video of the guy who starts asking college students about gender.

33:34

And the average person believes he's female, though his male genitals, and okay, well, then he must be female.

33:40

And then he starts asking, what if I believe that I'm six foot ten and my height is five foot four?

33:46

Or if I believe that I'm black and I'm white, you know, or something like that.

33:52

With these series of questions, he's showing how bizarre this way of assessing truth is. So what's he doing?

33:58

He is helping teach people how to think about questions of truth. To me, that's really important, because those are predicates, those are preconditions that people need now.

34:11

Fifty years ago, they didn't need these, but they sure need them now, before they will give the gospel a hearing.

34:18

Sure. It won't make sense. To me, all of that is gardening. Call it pre -evangelism if you want, call it whatever you want, but it's necessary.

34:27

We ought to be doing more of it. Very good. Just real quick, as a side, again, if you guys are listening in,

34:35

Greg is going to be taking some questions, if you have them. So if you want to send them in towards the back end of this episode,

34:41

I will be sharing the questions with him, and he will address them. So I just want to let you guys know to be doing that, if you have not already.

34:49

All right, well, let me move into the next question here now. Before we get to the question, can I add one more thought?

34:55

Very quickly. Yeah, of course. I mentioned something that was pretty dramatic earlier, and people are going, huh, 30 years hasn't prayed with anyone to receive

35:05

Christ. But I just mentioned a guy's name a little earlier, J. Warner Wallace. A lot of people have heard of him.

35:10

I don't know, you might have even had him on the show. Famous cold case detective, Torrance PD in the

35:16

LA area, never lost a case that went to trial. And this is a guy who solves murder mysteries that are stone cold dead after 20 years, and he still gets the bad guy.

35:25

He had four different of his shows, his cases were featured as TV programs.

35:34

Okay, he's that famous. Okay, well, what he did, he was an atheist, a hardcore atheist. And what he did is he took his detective skills with eyewitness testimony in particular, and he applied them to the

35:47

Gospels. And he became convinced that the Gospels were reliable records of things that actually happened in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and he became a

35:54

Christian. And then he wrote a book called Cold Case Christianity, which is a bestseller, and then

36:00

God's Crime Scene and then Forensic Faith. And I mean, it's a great series of books that he has. He's one of the best apologetic speakers available.

36:10

I would rather listen to J. Warner Wallace than anybody. I have a friend who is also an apologist.

36:16

He says, I have to say J. Warner Wallace has the best PowerPoints.

36:22

He does. He does. You don't even know you're watching PowerPoints when he's doing his deal. You're right.

36:27

It's just like a full multimedia presentation. But here's the deal. Jim Wallace was in my garden when he was an atheist.

36:37

Sure. He was listening to my show. He told me this. I mean, long after we became friends, I didn't even know this.

36:43

And he said, yeah, well, by the way. And so some of you have heard of Abdul Murray.

36:49

Abdul Murray is the senior vice president of RZIM. Okay. Abdul is a former Muslim who became a

36:55

Christian and then became an apologist and then worked for Ravi. And now he's a senior VP over there. Abdul was in my garden when he was still a

37:02

Muslim. Now, I'm not trying to wave my own flag. What I'm trying to say is, this is how it works. I wasn't the one who led those guys to Christ.

37:10

It does not matter to me. I mean, somebody came into my garden, harvested my fruit, right? So what?

37:16

Jesus said, John 4, that the one who sows and the one who reaps can rejoice together.

37:25

That's my attitude. And so even though I haven't prayed with people, there's been tremendous fruitfulness to my gardening is kind of what

37:33

I want to say. Yeah. Those are excellent, excellent points. Now, I like the analogy of gardening.

37:40

Gardening is not just some willy -nilly. You're walking around with a little apron, a little hat that protects you from the sun coming in.

37:46

Although there are some people who garden that way. It requires some background knowledge.

37:52

It requires a knowledge as to how to use the tools of gardening. And so it's one thing to say, we need to garden more.

37:59

And then, of course, we work together with the harvesters who harvest. What are the tools of gardening, right?

38:07

Okay. To use our analogy here. And how does one get better at using those tools?

38:14

Well, the answer to the second one is easy. You get better at using them by using them.

38:19

In a certain sense, there's just like anything else, okay? And if I could sum up, we can get more detail about this, and the book certainly does.

38:27

But if I can sum up the most important individual tool for gardening effectively, that would be asking questions.

38:38

Questions of the most important detail. Detail. Now, why are questions important?

38:44

Well, for a number of reasons. First of all, when you're asking other people questions, and genuine questions, you're drawing them out.

38:51

It's polite. It's a nice way to start a conversation by showing a personal interest in another person and finding out more about them.

39:02

So questions do that. Not only do questions create a kind of polite, genial atmosphere, but questions also give you valuable information.

39:14

And so if you want to navigate with someone on difficult issues, like moral issues or spiritual issues, it'd be a good idea to have a clear understanding of that person's point of view, where they're coming from, and the reasons they hold the views, etc.

39:35

And further, when you're asking questions, here's a third virtue to this, is you're asking questions, the pressure is not on you.

39:45

And so if somebody else is doing all the talking, you're gaining information.

39:52

And by the way, when you're asking questions, you're not stating your own view. The minute you state your own view, especially in a contrary situation, you are putting a big target for people to shoot at, you know?

40:06

Now, this is discomforting for Christians. Guys like you and I are kind of used to that, maybe, but for most

40:12

Christians, they don't like that. Now, I completely understand it, you know? And so you want to put that big target up there?

40:17

No, I'm not going to do that. They might shoot at it, and I'm the target, you know? And so this is never going to stay on the bench, okay?

40:23

But if you're using questions, at the point you're using questions, you're not stating your own view.

40:31

And if you're not stating your own view, you have no view they can attack at that moment.

40:37

Doesn't mean you can't have an impact with your questions. You could, but I'm just talking about the general value of questions.

40:44

The final thing that questions do, in addition to being friendly, and you're not under attack because you're not putting it out there, you're gathering information, is that it gives you time to think.

40:59

Because maneuvering in difficult situations is not always easy, and so it's good if you have some time to reassess.

41:07

And while you're listening to the other person, it gives you some time to figure out, okay, where will

41:12

I go next? And maybe that what the person is saying is going to prompt more questions.

41:18

And so that's, you know, people love being addressed and asked their opinion about things, generally speaking.

41:26

As long as they don't feel like they're, you know, in an interrogation or something about to be waterboarded.

41:32

They do like that. It's because you're showing an interest. So what I've outlined here in general terms is the very specific ways that we use questions in the tactical approach.

41:42

We can talk about this if you want, but if they don't remember anything else, your listeners,

41:48

I want them to remember, use questions. Use questions all the time. Questions are not to be used disingenuously.

41:57

I know a lot of, especially within these like popular presuppositional interactions, you know, how do you know that? How do you know that?

42:02

How can you trust me? It's like, sometimes, you know, you don't want to ask questions just for the sake of asking questions. Like you said, there's an end goal you're trying to get at when you are beginning your conversation, even if that is a formal debate.

42:14

So questions are tactics to be used to reach an end, not simply to... Yeah, let me add something to that too,

42:20

Eli, because in a certain sense, there are times when you enter conversations and you don't know what the goal is because you don't have the lay of the land at all.

42:29

What your goal is very, very generally is to try to hopefully have some kind of spiritual impact on a person, but you don't know if you're going to do that.

42:39

You don't even know what that looks like because you don't even know in some conversations whether the person is a Christian or not.

42:45

And so this is why your initial questions are a bit open -ended and they help you to find out the lay of the land.

42:54

So just a qualification on the good point that you just made. So a tool for gardening would be the tool of asking questions.

43:02

That's a good tool. That is the main tool, okay? Now, it can be used in a variety of ways, as I describe in the book, but this is what

43:09

I want people to fix in their mind. Even if they, you know, they get called away right now, they don't listen to any more of this podcast or whatever, just that notion in their mind.

43:21

Coco said, ask questions. What does that look like? Well, I don't know. I'll just try it out. And you start trying it out, and I give you some specific questions to ask, but even if you don't know what those are, draw people out with questions, especially if they're giving their opinion about their own spiritual point of view, they're going to learn a lot and they're going to make progress.

43:43

Even if they hear nothing more from me, never read the book. That's the key, questions.

43:49

So questions, that's a tool, important tool, okay? There are certain tools that a gardener will use more than others, but if we can give kind of a,

44:00

I guess not a comprehensive list, but a list of maybe three or four things. I just made that up. I could have said five, five felt more complete, but three, four or five tools other than questions that would be considered the tools of the gardening process, of course, using our analogy for apologetics.

44:21

Well, the way tactics work, there are actually a number of tactics, okay?

44:27

We have tactics like taking the roof off and just the facts, ma 'am. These have names like suicide and the inside out and what a friend we have in Jesus.

44:36

And these are all names that I give to different maneuvers and conversations. So these are all going to be tools that you use in conversations.

44:43

The tactic about asking questions and that particular game plan, that has a name too.

44:48

I call it Columbo after Lieutenant Columbo, because he always asks questions, the

44:54

TV guy. He's gone now, the TV show is still around, Peter Falk, the actor is long gone.

45:01

I used to watch Columbo, so I know. Yeah, a lot of people remember him.

45:07

Even young people are exposed to him in some way. I've never gone into a country and taught on tactics and mentioned Columbo and people didn't know who he was.

45:13

So he's got a lot of name recognition. But the point is that what was good about Columbo is he was kind of a bumbling, appearing and non -threatening, you know, and he just kind of scratching his head.

45:26

And I don't know, there's something about this thing that bothers me. Do you mind if I ask you a question? And so then he'd maneuver in conversations that way and then get the information he needed.

45:36

And then he would use questions to box people in and get the bad guy. So there are different ways to do that. Okay, now that's the game plan.

45:43

But a part of what we use questions for, this is the third use of Columbo actually, and that is to make a point.

45:52

So we can make our points, but we want to do it shrewdly. And if we can use a question or a series of questions like Columbo did to lead to a conclusion that we're after, that's really good, okay?

46:06

Because it has all the value of using questions. And it always engages the other person in conversation.

46:16

But how do you know if a person's point of view has gone south? And this is what a lot of the other tactics are for.

46:24

So the suicide tactic is a tool that allows you to recognize when a point of view is self -destructive, okay?

46:35

Philosophers call it self -refuting or self -referentially absurd or whatever, but it's just, you know, commit suicide.

46:43

I like that one. And so, because that's what happens. It has within it the seeds of its own destruction.

46:50

So if I said to you, Eli, look Eli, I cannot speak a single word of English.

46:56

Right. Well, you know that the statement itself is immediately false because I just did it, okay?

47:05

You don't have to refute it. It's already refuted itself. Or if I said there are no English sentences longer than four words.

47:12

Well, wait a minute. Isn't that a sentence? That's longer than four words in English? So there are, those are very obvious examples, but there are lots and lots of things that people say that are kind of like that.

47:24

Like people say there is no truth. Really? Is that true?

47:31

Yeah. It's true. Yeah. If it's false, it's false.

47:39

Also, if it's true, it's false too. There's no way for those statements to be sound. And people say these things all the time.

47:47

They say, here's a very popular one. They say, you know what? The moral relativist, the idea that doesn't believe in objective morality.

47:53

There's no set of rules over everybody. We make it up on our own. He says, look, there's no morality.

48:00

It's just a matter of personal opinion. So it's wrong for you to push your morality on me. Now, just think about that sentence.

48:06

First, they're asserting relativism. I get it. And in the next phrase, put a period on the sentence yet, and they are asserting just the opposite.

48:18

It's wrong for you to push your morality on me. And they do not mean wrong in that statement, in a relativistic sense.

48:26

They mean it's objectively wrong. Nobody should be pushing the morality on anybody else. But wait a minute. If relativism is actually true, then it can't be wrong for me to push my morality on other people if I think my morality is correct or pushing things is correct.

48:43

That's up to me on your rules. Okay. So those are some examples of the suicide tactic in play.

48:52

Now, what I did in those illustrations is I just explained the problem, how it's self -refuting.

49:00

And for many of your listeners, they've heard those statements before and never realized that there was a problem within the statement.

49:06

Of course, now they'll see it. It'll just jump out at them. But I would expose the problem in a tactically sound way.

49:15

And how is that? And the answer is with questions. So young man, this conversation is in the book.

49:23

He says, you know, it's wrong for you. Here he said, he objected to Christians who were judgmental, what he said.

49:33

And I said, what's wrong with that? He said, well, it's wrong to judge. Okay, now notice, someone notice that the statement, it's wrong to judge and Christians are judgmental.

49:41

So therefore they're wrong. It's just basically the whole thing. That's a judgment. So he's doing the same thing he's saying we shouldn't be doing.

49:49

That's suicidal in a certain sense. Tactically, it's a tactical suicide. And so what

49:55

I did is I asked him, what's wrong with judging? He said, well, it's wrong to judge. Now he's got a straight out.

50:01

Notice the question for clarification. And so now I know he's doing the very thing he's telling me not to do.

50:07

Now I could say that and make the point, but it would be inelegant. Instead, I said, well,

50:14

Gil, his name is Gilbert. Gil, if it's wrong to judge, then why are you judging me right now?

50:21

Notice that's a question that exposes the problem. When I ask the question, the ball goes into his court. Now he's got to say something.

50:28

And he didn't have anything to say. In fact, he was stonewalled and legitimately so.

50:33

And finally he said, I guess it's wrong to judge. I mean, he said, I guess it's okay to judge is what he said because he was doing it.

50:41

But then he said, you can't push your morality on other people. So now he thinks he's getting out of this problem, right?

50:48

So I had another question. I said, Gil, is that your morality? What you just explained to me, that it's wrong to push your morality, is that your moral point of view?

50:55

He said, yes, it is. I didn't realize what was coming next. Because I said, then why are you pushing your morality on me right now?

51:06

And he was speechless again, you know. So there's an example of the suicide tactic being employed because I can see the problem, but being employed in a conversational way using questions.

51:19

And when you do it that way, it is really powerful. And I think asking questions is key, but I think also there is another thing that one needs to know is how to ask the right questions.

51:35

And I think what you highlighted there is the right questions, given the context you've just provided, are the sorts of questions that bring out the absurdity of the person's position so that you can get your point.

51:44

Exactly right, exactly right. But this goes back to an early point we were making that you got to know something.

51:50

Yes. You got to be able to see the problem. Excuse me. And this is, of course, a big part of what the tactics book is about.

51:55

The first part is called the game plan. Part one is the game plan. And I go into a lot of detail in Columbo, the three uses of Columbo, model questions you can ask to kind of exploit those stages of using

52:08

Columbo and maneuvering, okay? But the second half of the book, and the bulk of the book really, is all these other tactics that allow you to not only see certain kinds of problems, but also how to exploit those problems using questions.

52:25

And I give very specific examples in every single case of how the person can maneuver shrewdly in what are otherwise tough situations using questions.

52:39

I'm actually in the habit, Eli, when I hear a challenge, then on TV or somebody in public, or I read it, whatever,

52:50

I think, oh, that's a tough one. How would I navigate that? So I think in advance about a way that I might, what's wrong with the issue, and then how can

52:59

I exploit that using a question? And so I remember watching a news thing, and it was during the same -sex marriage debate, and somebody kept accusing the conservative person on this issue who believed that marriage was between a man and a woman.

53:15

He said, you don't believe in marriage equality. Now, notice how the other side has adopted a rhetoric that's very compelling.

53:24

Marriage equality, that sounds really good. You know, oh no, what's he gonna say?

53:30

I don't believe in marriage equality. Well, not the kind of equality that person was speaking of, okay?

53:37

But you can't say it like that because then it makes you sound bad. That's the rhetorical maneuver of the other side.

53:43

And so that's a big part of our conversations, the power of rhetoric, okay? So how do we maneuver?

53:50

I'm thinking about this. If somebody asked me in a newscast, well, then you don't, or claimed against me, you don't believe in marriage equality, how would

53:58

I respond? And I would, and it came to me. So now I'm ready.

54:04

If they said that, I said, well, wait a minute, let me ask you a question, or do you mind if I ask you a question? They say, you don't believe in marriage equality.

54:10

Do you mind if I ask a question? No. Do you think children should be married to adults? No, of course not.

54:17

That's ridiculous. Oh, I agree with you, it's ridiculous, but you don't believe in marriage equality either, do you? That's right.

54:24

So back in his court. No, he thinks that marriage ought to be restricted and restrained in some legitimate way.

54:32

Well, we both agree on that basic concept. Now the difference is where you draw the line. So this issue,

54:38

Mr. Commentator, isn't really about a marriage equality, it's about where we're drawing the line. Would that be a fair way of putting it? And see, notice

54:45

I close with a question. So initially, if you imagine a conversation like that,

54:51

I'm off balance. You know, he asked me this question, do you believe in marriage equality? He's got the rhetorical momentum in his favor.

54:58

Now I'm stuck, but because I thought in advance a question I could use to turn the tables in a legitimate way,

55:04

I can do that. I could blunt the rhetorical force of his approach and then try to return it to the appropriate discussion, not who believes in marriage equality or not, but what marriage actually means and whether same -sex marriage is a good example of a real marriage.

55:23

Right, very good. So we have asking questions and a bunch of other tools that people define by picking up your book.

55:30

All right, so equipped with these tools, I mean, apologetics can be done in various contexts.

55:36

It can be done within the context of just a normal day -to -day conversation. And of course, one could engage in kind of like formalized debates like myself or some debates as well.

55:47

What kind of advice would you give to people as to how to overcome some of the anxiety and fears of actually being put in that context to defend a position?

55:55

I mean, I don't think the prerequisite for doing debate is that you remove all fear of debating.

56:00

How does one cope with the anxieties and fears that generally come along with the idea of having your ideas?

56:07

Eli, are you asking about a circumstance of a formal debate or an informal engagement that kind of causes anxiety?

56:15

I would say in a more formal way. Okay, because most people are not involved in formal debates.

56:22

But the key to dealing well with formal debates is very simple, it's preparation.

56:29

It's just preparation. You are prepared. I mean, there's a certain art to debating, but the big thing is preparation.

56:42

So debates are broken down in certain ways. Debates are broken down into, you know, each make their case and you have rebuttals and you have conclusions and closing.

56:49

And sometimes you have a Q &A session with the person. So if you're gonna start your opening remarks, well, then you have to, you make your case, especially if you're on the affirmative.

57:00

And you wanna make sure that when you're in a debate like that, that you always have a resolve that requires both person, both persons to shoulder some burden of proof, okay?

57:16

If the Christian is going to claim that God exists, then the

57:23

Christian is taking the affirmative and the Christian, I mean, these kinds of debates, the Christian has the burden of proof because they're making the claim.

57:29

And the other side, all they have to do is shoot at your claims. They don't have to actually make a case for the opposite, okay?

57:36

We don't wanna be in a situation like that. So a debate on the existence of God would better be a question.

57:45

Does God exist? And then the Christians could say, yes, here are my reasons. And then the atheist has to say, no, and here are his reasons.

57:52

So both sides have to bear a burden of proof, okay? And atheists don't wanna do that.

57:59

And so a lot of times they're going to try to arrange the title of the debate in a way that favors them. So that's something to watch out for.

58:05

But if you're gonna make the case for God's existence, then you need to have some arguments and you need to understand them and be able to explain them in a simple way.

58:14

Watching debates with William Lane Craig is a great example of someone who does that.

58:20

He gives a number of cases. He gives the cosmological argument. He gives a moral argument. He gives the argument from the resurrection, the historical argument from Jesus of Nazareth and the resurrection.

58:31

And these represent a huge positive case. Now, atheists generally don't make a case for atheism.

58:40

What they do is they just try to shoot holes and maybe things that Bill Craig hasn't even talked about. What Bill does is he sticks assiduously to his points, okay?

58:49

He said, wait a minute, I gave this evidence, I gave this evidence, and I gave this evidence. You never addressed any of these evidences.

58:56

You did as you went here, there, and there or whatever, but you never said this. You did make this claim, and here's what's wrong with that claim maybe, so you can address the claim, but he's gonna bring people always back to his core case.

59:08

And whether formal debates or informal debates, and we are making a particular case and making a good point, it is very common for people to change a subject and run off somewhere else, you know?

59:22

And so this is where you have to say, well, wait a minute, that's not what we're talking about. That's another issue, maybe we can talk about that later, but all

59:30

I'm saying is here, the cosmological argument, a big bang needs a big banger is the way

59:35

I put it. How did the universe start? Either something caused it or nothing caused it. There are only two choices, you know?

59:42

So what's the odds on favorite? And then they go off into some kind of other thing. I said, well, wait a minute, you still have to answer this question.

59:50

And the smart money is simply on that something outside of the universe caused the universe because the universe came into being.

59:57

That's the nature of the cosmological argument. But you want to keep people on the topic and addressing the good information that you offer them.

01:00:05

Yeah, when I did a debate and I asked, I was debating a pragmatist, a pragmatic epistemology.

01:00:11

And I asked him, you know, on your view, can we know objective reality? And he responded, well,

01:00:17

I can give you my definition of objective reality. I'm like, that's cool. Can we know objective reality?

01:00:23

Actually, he admitted on his view, he couldn't. And so it drew into doubt everything else he was saying.

01:00:28

And so I challenged him every time he made some specific knowledge claim. I tried to show how that was inconsistent with his other commitments with regards to not being able to know the nature of reality.

01:00:39

So - And his claim that you can't know objective reality is a claim about objective reality that he thinks he knows.

01:00:46

So you have a self -refuting circumstance right there in his claim. Right. That's the way the world is.

01:00:51

You can't know it. Especially when they'll say something to the effect, you can't know objective reality, or I can't know objective reality, but we're all in the same boat.

01:00:59

It's like, well, wait, your deficiencies of your philosophy upon me.

01:01:05

I mean, we have explanations as to why we can know objective reality. So just recognizing those things,

01:01:11

I think, are very important. And asking questions, I think, can be a great tool to bring out the fallacious character of their questions, their objections, or whatever the case may be.

01:01:20

By the way, if I could just role play this for a second, you don't have to say anything, but in that situation when he says, we can't know objective reality, then the next question is, okay, what helped me to know, is that a statement about objective reality, or is it a statement about your subject of reality?

01:01:39

Right. Now, if they say it's about objective reality, well, then they've just refuted themselves. If they say, well, no, it's really my subject of reality, well, then why should any of us care here that are listening?

01:01:49

That's just your own subjective view. Why should any of us care? It has nothing to do with us, according to your own admission. So notice all those are questions.

01:01:58

They are ways of recognizing a problem, a suicidal tendency of a statement, but then using questions to expose that and toss the ball back into their court.

01:02:08

Right. And as you said earlier, you said it, I think you said it rather quickly, but you said something that there's an art to doing this too.

01:02:14

It's not just asking questions at the right time and the right place. There's an art as to how you ask the question in such a way that brings out your point with clarity,

01:02:22

I think. And that comes with, as you said before, practicing. Practice, exactly right. How do

01:02:27

I become a better debater? Well, debate. How do I become a better debater? That's well put.

01:02:33

I'm glad you mentioned that. And the more you do this intentionally, back to your earlier word, the more you do this intentionally, that is you do this with wisdom and with some instruction, and this is what the book is meant to provide, the more effective you're going to get at this.

01:02:51

And incidentally, I have people tell me this all the time, Eli, they tell me, wow, this has really changed my life.

01:02:58

Actually, that's the comment that I hear more often than any others, because it's doable. It's accessible. Sure. Sure.

01:03:05

Very good. Well, again, we've just creeped over an hour, so I want to actually shift our discussion to the questions.

01:03:12

We do have a couple of questions here, and I wanted to give, sometimes I go over, and then by the time we do the questions, it's kind of getting a little long, and then

01:03:20

I don't want to bombard our guests with all of the questions that people ask. I want to give you sufficient time to address some of the questions, and perhaps you can give answers in a little more in depth, as opposed to if we waited a little longer.

01:03:32

Once again, thank you so much for your time. Just real quick, guys, if you haven't already, please subscribe to the

01:03:37

Revealed Apologetics YouTube channel, and also to the podcast as well, all of the interviews that I do here.

01:03:44

We take the audio and put them on podcasts. You can listen to this on iTunes as well. Okay, so let's move on to the questions.

01:03:52

I'm going to pick a question here. Let's see here.

01:03:58

Okay, here is a question from Daniel. How do you deal with people? How do you deal with people? You can just stop right there.

01:04:05

How do you deal with people that deny the absolute nature of the laws of logic by quantum mechanics?

01:04:12

Well, this comes up with some regularity. People don't necessarily, don't usually bring in quantum mechanics, but just as an aside, almost nobody understands quantum mechanics, okay?

01:04:28

And I'm not saying they aren't smart people who do well in the field, but they acknowledge that there are all kinds of variables, and there are all kinds of theories about how the quantum world works.

01:04:42

In other words, explanatory theories, and there's lots of different ones.

01:04:47

So it isn't like what we see in quantum mechanics has some bearing on other normal things in our world, what we seem to think.

01:05:01

I mean, this is Heisenberg uncertainty principle. You know, you try to, if you, I think the way this goes, if you try to measure the speed of electron, you change its position.

01:05:11

And if you try to measure its position, you change its speed or something like that. You know, now the general idea there is that, well, see the observer in the process of observing is changing the reality.

01:05:28

Well, in one sense that's true, but it's trivially true. If you weigh it, you move it.

01:05:33

If you move it, the weight changes. When I say it's trivially true is this doesn't tell you anything about epistemology in general.

01:05:41

That is how we know things. And what people have done is it taken this particular scientific detail of quantum mechanics, and they've expanded it into a metaphysical principle of thinking that the attempt to know something, the attempt to measure anything, assess things, the observer is already changing the reality.

01:06:08

Well, that doesn't follow. That might be true with Heisenberg's application there, but it doesn't mean that everything follows like that.

01:06:18

And just to make another observation, this error here is what's called a category error.

01:06:26

It's a fallacy, okay? A category error is when you ask the wrong kind of question about something.

01:06:32

So you say, how much does the color blue weigh? Well, colors don't weigh anything.

01:06:38

What is the sound of a lamb chop? What? Okay, so these are questions that don't properly apply.

01:06:48

Notice that the question, and I'm not faulting Daniel who has asked the question because he's been asked it before probably, but notice that the person who makes this claim that the laws of logic are not absolute because of quantum physics, is saying that he's confusing the categories of physical things, quantum physics, and metaphysical things, okay?

01:07:10

The laws of logic are metaphysical. That is, they're not physical. They're metaphysical.

01:07:16

They're above the physical world. And the laws of logic are abstract objects is what philosophers call them, okay?

01:07:23

A equals A, law of identity. A cannot be non -A at the same time, in the same way, law of non -contradiction.

01:07:28

Well, these are metaphysical notions. They're not physical things. No physical states affect any metaphysical thing, okay?

01:07:39

Or simply put, the metaphysical laws of logic cannot be influenced, changed, and altered by electrons or any quantum state.

01:07:51

So it's a category error to try to compare those two. And so this is, and if I were to put this in a tactical way for Daniel, as he's talking with his friend,

01:08:02

I would say, okay, ask your friend, tell me how, how does this work? That's the first question.

01:08:08

What do you mean, how does this work? How is the, how does the laws of logic influenced by the laws of nature?

01:08:16

Well, the quantum field in Heisenberg, blah, blah, blah. I understand that. But how does that change the laws of logic?

01:08:26

Tell me how a physical thing can alter a metaphysical thing, all right?

01:08:33

Because the laws of logic are pretty fixed. And when people look at those things, like the law of non -contradiction, law of identity, law of excluded middle, these are very basic things.

01:08:41

Most people don't know the names, but they know the concepts. They use them all the time because they're part of reality. They're a feature of reality and they work, okay?

01:08:49

How about this one? Either A or non -A, either A or non -A. That's the law of excluded middle.

01:08:57

Well, stated that way, there is no third option. And it doesn't matter which direction molecules spin or how the quantum world works.

01:09:05

It's not going to change the truth of this rational rule called the law of excluded middle, either

01:09:13

A or non -A. So those are the questions I would ask the person to get them to defend what turns out to me to be a somewhat absurd statement that the laws of logic are somehow governed by the quantum realm, which is unstable.

01:09:34

So therefore the laws of logic are unstable, huh? By the way, if the laws of logic are unstable, then his statement has no meaning because the laws of logic govern our ability to even understand statements.

01:09:47

That's right. I think there's a problem when we ground the laws of logic, which we believe to be metaphysical in nature.

01:09:54

We ground it in the ever -changing and mutable physical material universe.

01:10:00

Fundamental aspect of the universe is ever -changing. You can't have immutable, unchangeable laws that are grounded in what is fundamentally changing.

01:10:10

Well, somebody might come back and say, I think that the laws of physics aren't changing, but just the things are moving around and changing their position and their shape and all that, but the laws governing them are not changing.

01:10:22

I think the bigger mistake is just that they're mixing two categories that are unrelated. That might be something similar too.

01:10:30

All right. Here's a question. If Jesus is the authority of our reasoning and an atheist uses their own autonomy -

01:10:38

Hey, Ian, hold on just a second. I mean, Eli, hold on. I just noticed I got a low battery thing and my computer is about to go down, but I'm plugged in.

01:10:45

So I must be in the wrong plug. Hold on just a second. I'm gonna change plug. Hopefully it's not my camera. My camera might be dying.

01:10:52

We'll see. Okay. All right.

01:10:59

We got juice. All right. I hope that's not my camera. If anything, if my camera dies, you'll still hear the audio and they don't need to see my face.

01:11:07

I do see a low battery on your side too here. Well, hopefully. If not, the audio would be fine.

01:11:14

We got most of the video fine. All right. So here's a question for you. So if Jesus is the authority of our reasoning and an atheist uses their own autonomous reasoning to find

01:11:24

God, then they would say they didn't need God to get there. How would you answer this atheist? Well, yeah, this is kind of borderline presuppositional kind of stuff here a little bit.

01:11:39

Jesus is an authority based on the things that he tells us are true about God that we don't know.

01:11:47

Okay. So whatever Jesus says is true. Okay. But he doesn't tell us everything that's true. As Francis Schaeffer put it, the

01:11:54

Bible is true truth, but it's not exhaustive truth. Okay. An atheist is using a faculty though to reason regarding God.

01:12:04

The question becomes, how can that atheist trust the faculty that he's using to achieve true conclusions?

01:12:14

No, his faculty isn't from Jesus, strictly speaking, Jesus of Nazareth and the teachings of Jesus in the gospel.

01:12:20

The question is, well, what about his reasoning capability on his own?

01:12:26

Autonomous is the word there. So that's on his own. And well, that faculty is not something that could be relied on if evolution produced it.

01:12:39

And Alvin Plantinga and many others have made this same argument against evolution, saying that the concept is self -refuting because you're reasoning to evolution when evolution itself would not produce the circumstances that would allow you to reason at all.

01:12:54

Okay. So my question of the atheist is, what worldview supports your ability to reason at all?

01:13:02

It's not an atheistic worldview. It's Jesus' worldview. It's not Jesus' words against the atheist's words.

01:13:09

I think that's not the right way to put this. Like Jesus isn't the authority of our reasoning.

01:13:17

I wouldn't put it that way. I would say God created the world that allows reasoning to work, okay?

01:13:26

So God is the necessary precondition for reasoning. He is the source of our ability to reason.

01:13:33

Now, reasoning can be used poorly, and atheists do that, I think. But it's not

01:13:40

Jesus' authority versus autonomous reasoning. I think it's a false dichotomy. That's why I would repair it.

01:13:46

I think there's a point here, but I would repair it this way. The atheist has the ability to reason.

01:13:53

What worldview makes sense of that? You're reasoning against God, okay? But it turns out

01:14:00

God is necessary for you to have the ability to reason at all.

01:14:06

This is a classic presuppositional approach to this question, and I think it's good. You have to sit on God's lap to slap his face, is the way

01:14:14

Van Til put it, okay? And I call this a special kind of suicide.

01:14:20

I call this approach that the atheist is taking, I call this infanticide suicide.

01:14:28

That is, the infant, there's an idea that depends on a parent idea.

01:14:35

The parent is God in this case, and the child is reasoning. Reasoning is possible because of God.

01:14:43

So you can't use reasoning to try to refute the existence of God. God's existence and necessity for reasoning kills the child, which is the attempted refutation.

01:14:57

That's what I call it, infanticide suicide. It doesn't matter, but you get the basic concept.

01:15:02

That's the way I approach it. You presented something of a transcendental argument, just asking what are the preconditions, and the atheist system doesn't provide those preconditions.

01:15:10

So that's a sort of a transcendental argument if the person's coming from a presuppositional perspective. I agree, yeah.

01:15:16

Okay. I agree. And I think that as a classic presuppositional response, I think it's a great one. I think the response is really good, that presuppositionalism.

01:15:25

There's more to presuppositionalism than just some good responses there. But anyway, I'm not a presuppositionalist, but I like that argument.

01:15:32

Okay, very good. Hey, Greg, I'm the president of a Christian outreach ministry on a university campus and was wondering if there are any tools, studies, resources that I could use to teach the tactical approach.

01:15:44

Sure, yeah. First, get the book, the 10th Anniversary Edition, and read it, and then get the video that goes with it.

01:15:50

You can do this, I think, online with Zondervan, or you can just get the kind of the hard case itself and then plug and play for your group.

01:15:59

And then there's six sessions or maybe seven sessions now, because I think the new edition, the 10th

01:16:05

Anniversary Edition tactic video and workbook are coming out very soon,

01:16:10

August, I think. So I think, Tim, that's a great idea. Lots of people do this.

01:16:16

And the new edition, the 10th Anniversary Edition, will be out, I think, in August. So that's what I would recommend.

01:16:22

But I think you should read the book first so that you're familiar with the materials. And you can also then be a good guide in the discussion that's associated with that video session, that video series.

01:16:38

Here's another question. How would you evangelize someone in a language you are not too familiar with, especially when you don't have enough time to study the language?

01:16:47

Well, there are certain limitations to this kind of thing. I think it's going to be really hard to evangelize someone in a language you're not too familiar with, okay?

01:16:58

And if you don't have time. But speaking of time, the characteristic, the approach is to find somebody who's culturally near, all right?

01:17:06

That the best people to reach, someone in another culture, another language, is people who are close to that culture or speak the language.

01:17:12

So I would find a Christian who is really good in that language and maybe be a translator for you or do the witnessing themselves.

01:17:22

Very good. Daniel asked another question here. When is it right to give up trying to evangelize someone like the apostles did in the

01:17:27

New Testament? Well, this is a judgment call, Daniel. Jesus said in Matthew chapter seven that don't throw what's holy to dogs, don't throw your pearls before a swine.

01:17:38

You know, they're going to turn and tear you to pieces if you're not careful. And sometimes I talk about this in a chapter called steamroller in the tactics book.

01:17:46

Not everybody deserves an answer. And sometimes you just, as Jesus instructed, you shake up the dust off your feet and you move on.

01:17:55

How do you know when to do that? It's kind of a judgment call. I think the guideline Jesus gave there in Matthew seven, you know, if they're trampling the good stuff under their feet and they're about to tear you to pieces, that's maybe a good indication it's time to exit stage left kind of thing.

01:18:11

So, but it is a judgment call. Do your best. Very good. How do you bring up a topic about spiritual things in conversation?

01:18:22

Well, the way I do it, and I say that I'm not a real aggressive evangelist, all right?

01:18:28

So I'm not like Ray Comfort or who I think is wonderful. He's a friend of mine and we've done a lot of work together.

01:18:33

And it's just, he's constantly evangelizing, but that's not everybody's style.

01:18:40

It's not my style. And so I'm kind of waiting for opportunities for things to come up. And I keep my eyes and ears open, so to speak.

01:18:49

And if something presents itself of a spiritual nature or gives me an opportunity to ask a question, then

01:18:56

I'll do that. A good example, a little over a year ago, I was in Seattle and I did a conference on Friday night and Saturday.

01:19:02

I was really tired Sunday morning. I was leaving my hotel, having coffee and breakfast before I checked out.

01:19:07

And I was on my way to a church to teach. And this gal came out to my table, the waitress, and she was way too energetic for me for that time of the morning, because I'm not a morning person, you know?

01:19:17

All cheery and bubbly and full of life and all that. Good for her. But I was like, uh -oh. And I did not want to talk about spiritual things.

01:19:24

I'm just saying. That's the last thing I wanted to get into as a discussion about Jesus. I just wanted to kind of wake up, have my coffee, then go off and teach at this church.

01:19:34

So she's carrying on, blah, blah, blah. What are you doing, this and that? And why are you out here and all that? I thought, oh, I don't want to talk.

01:19:39

I'll tell her what I'm going to do. I'm going to preach at a church and that'll get rid of her. And so I said, well, I'm going to be preaching at a church later on in about an hour and a half.

01:19:47

She said, oh, that's great. Now I'm surprised to hear that. So I said, are you a

01:19:52

Christian? She says, no, no, no, I'm not a Christian. I used to be, but I'm not anymore. Instead, now the universe takes care of me.

01:19:58

Now I can't pass by a statement like that, because first of all, I don't know what that means.

01:20:05

And it's clear she's kind of new agey or whatever. So I said, what do you mean the universe takes care of you?

01:20:11

What does that mean? I said, is the universe a person? Oh, no, no, but God takes care of me.

01:20:18

Oh, I see. Okay, God takes care of you. Well, God is the universe, she says. I said, well, how could

01:20:24

God be the universe? I'm confused about that. Now notice all of these questions are ones they're just coming out because I hear these statements and I'm confused about what she's talking about.

01:20:34

So I'm asking, this is the first Columbo question, actually. What do you mean by that? I'm trying to figure out her point of view.

01:20:40

And so she's all over the map. And remember, my basic thing is I just want her to go away.

01:20:46

And so eventually she just goes away. Okay, see you later. She got my mortar and delivered whatever.

01:20:51

And so she's gone. And then a few minutes later, she comes back. And she's standing with a pot of coffee. And she says to me, you know what?

01:20:57

Nobody has ever asked me those questions before about my view. And it got me thinking, that's pretty cool.

01:21:05

And I said, well, you know, if we had more time, I could ask you more questions and you could do some more thinking, is what I said. So, and I actually had a copy of the story,

01:21:13

Reality, a book I wrote really for Christians and for non -Christians. So I gave her a copy. She was happy to receive it.

01:21:19

But notice in that situation that I didn't have to generate or engineer the circumstances. Some people like doing that, that's fine.

01:21:26

I'll give you a question in a minute. You can ask if you want to do that. But, you know, that's not me. I'm just kind of waiting for things to come along when there's an opening.

01:21:32

Then I start asking questions. And notice in this case, I've made some progress even when I didn't want to witness. I was not into it, but that's how powerful

01:21:41

I think the tactical approach is. If you want to get into a conversation, here's the question I suggested.

01:21:46

I got this from someone else. I can't remember the source of it. But you might say something like, you know, I've been thinking about something a lot.

01:21:52

And I'm curious what your opinion is on this. And it may be a personal question. You don't have to answer if you don't want to.

01:21:58

That's okay. But I'm just curious of what other people's point of view happens to be. And here's the question.

01:22:04

If the person said, no, that's right. Go ahead and ask. Here's the question. What do you think happens when you die?

01:22:11

What do you think happens when you die? And then see what happens. You know, see what they say.

01:22:17

We don't know. We're just probing. We're gardening. That's all we're doing. We're probing. We're trying to get information. And we'll see where it goes.

01:22:23

Now, the second question, after they give a description, if they have some idea, if they say,

01:22:29

I don't know, how can anybody know? I say, well, if somebody, if there was a way of knowing, would you be interested? So now you're leading into something more directly evangelistic.

01:22:38

But if they say, well, I think, you know, you just stay in the dirt, nor that we go to afterworlds or we get reincarnated or something like that.

01:22:44

All right. Or maybe they'll say we go to heaven or hell. But then the next question could be, okay, why is it you think that's what happens?

01:22:51

I'm just curious. People have different points of view. What do you think? Why do you think that's what happens?

01:22:57

That's our second Columbo question, by the way. How did you come to that conclusion? Or why do you think that way or whatever? So notice, these are just two simple questions.

01:23:06

One, launching a question to get some information with the other person. Then a question of rationale.

01:23:13

And then take it from there. That's a way of getting started. That's what I'd suggest. Very good.

01:23:20

I've been notified that my battery is dying. And that's with a full charge. Those of you guys have been following me,

01:23:27

I haven't been doing this stuff for too long. I'm kind of working my way up to get some extra tech stuff.

01:23:33

I do need an external camera charger so that it can be charging while I'm doing this. But we are actually coming up towards an hour and a half.

01:23:40

And that's the amount of time that we agreed. So hopefully we can conclude right now and not diminish the visuals.

01:23:46

So I don't want you to disappear on me here because your battery goes out. Maybe you need an extension cord or something like that.

01:23:52

But Eli, we can do this again sometime in the future if you have more you want to talk about. Well, I would love to have you back on in the future.

01:23:58

That'd be great. So we'll conclude this interview now. I hope you guys have found what

01:24:05

Greg has shared today. Very, very useful. Again, you can go back and listen to it again. Please subscribe if you haven't already.

01:24:11

And I will be posting this within a day or two on the podcast as well. Also stay tuned.

01:24:17

I'll be having Michael Jones from Inspiring Philosophy on August 5th, I believe. And I have two debates coming up.

01:24:23

One on apologetic methodology. And I'm debating a very nice atheist who has a really cool name, which has escaped me right now.

01:24:31

It sounds like a superhero. I think it's Benjamin Speed something or other. But I spoke with him on the phone.

01:24:37

Very nice guy. And I'm looking forward to having a great interaction with him. I'll let you guys know what's going on with regards to that and other upcoming events.

01:24:44

All right. Thank you so much, guys, for listening in. That's all for today on Revealed Apologetics. Take care and God bless.