THIS One Question DESTROYS Christians? | Pastor Reacts

We started off with the question, if I don't believe like you, then I'm going to hell. To simply say yes is to mislead these people. It's possible to speak truth while also confusing people at the same time.

Truth and Clarity in Evangelism

Truth and clarity do not always go hand in hand. A lot of Christians still just don't understand this. Welcome back to another episode of Wise Disciple. My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you were meant to be.

If this is your first time, definitely help yourself to the videos here. I pray that they will absolutely bless you. Today, we're looking at Greg Kogel, president of Stand to Reason, which is an apologetics organization.

It's been around for decades now. Kogel says, this one question stops Christians dead in their tracks. Ooh, that's dramatic. What is that question? And how exactly does it stop Christians cold? Before I did this ministry, I was a pastor and a debate teacher.

So let's put on our thinking caps and see if we can break this down so we can be ready when someone throws this question at us. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel and do me a favor. If this video is helpful to you, please share it with someone else so we can get on the same page as Christians in today's culture.

And the question was posed to me in an hour-long TV debate that I had with Deepak Chopra, the New Age guru, as we talked about spiritual things. And what he said to me is, so you're saying that anyone who doesn't believe just like you is going to hell.

That's the way he put the question.

Now, some people have said, if you're careful how you push the question, you could win any argument. And the problem here is that this was a question about the exclusivity of Christ, a critical issue in Christianity.

But it was put in a way that made me look really, really bad.

Okay, so Greg was posed with this question by Deepak Chopra in a debate. If you've seen that debate, that one was definitely worth watching. And Chopra said something like, okay, so if I don't believe just like you, then I'm going to hell.

Is that right, right? If you've watched my debate videos before, then this is going to be familiar to you. What Chopra just did was he framed the question in a manner that was advantageous to his position.

Now, here's the reality. The debater that lays a better framework, like better than the other one, typically wins the whole thing.

Really, Nate?

Even over substance? Yes, even over substance. That's how powerful laying a framework can be. And Chopra, whether he realized it or not, framed the question to, as Greg said, make him look bad. Now, there is a way to respond to this kind of thing that is productive, and I'll give you my thoughts on that in just a moment.

But let's see how Greg responded.

The Exclusivity of Christ and the Wrong Question

So if I would have answered the question, yes, unless you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, then you will die in your sins.

You will go to hell.

I would have answered correctly, but I would have really given the wrong impression. I would have fulfilled a really negative stereotype that people have of Christians, and I would have played right into Deepak Chopra's rhetorical hand, and I did not want to do that.

So from my experience, it just cannot be overstated how much Christians simply do not understand or appreciate what Greg just said. By the way, full disclosure, Greg has been a friend of mine for years and a mentor of sorts to me.

As a matter of fact, he was the very first person I talked to about Wise Disciple when I was sort of getting up off the ground. We had dinner together, and he gave me some incredible advice. But I say all that to acknowledge, while I'm friends with Greg, I'm not just agreeing with my friend, okay?

He's actually making a strong point that many of us in the church completely miss, and that's this. It's possible to speak truth while also confusing people at the same time. Okay, let me say that a different way now.

Truth and clarity do not always go hand in hand. Very often, the true things we say can be missed simply because we are not thinking about the person receiving the truth. So if you're watching a football game, and somebody comes up to you, and they say, hey, what's going on?

And you say, oh man, it's so crazy. There have been two fumbles on a blitz, and now they're going for a safety. You may have said something true, but you forgot to find out whether the person understands the game of football at all.

You know what I mean?

And that's what you have to consider. And boy, a lot of Christians still just don't understand this. They're still totally fine with throwing around the Christian language that they use to talk to other believers in church on a Sunday.

They use that same language and throw it at a non-believer, some of which have never set foot in church before at all. So it's a really great point that Greg is making here.

And so in that particular circumstance, I sidestepped the issue and went in a different direction. But we can't always sidestep that issue, and nor should we. We need to address it because it's really, really important.

But how do we do that? And this is where the tactical approach, I think, is really golden, especially using the Columbo tactic in its third sense, and that is using questions to make a point. Using questions allows us to make the point in a much more powerful way, especially when we get stuck in a circumstance like this, people asking us about Jesus being the only way of salvation.

Using Questions to Expose Hidden Assumptions

This happened to me once in a Barnes Noble where I was giving a presentation for a book I'd written, the Relativism book. And afterwards during the Q &A, someone came up to me and asked the question, why do I need to believe in Jesus?

He said, I'm Jewish. I believe in God. I try to live the best life that I can. Why do I need Jesus? So there's the question again, not as belligerently put as with Deepak Chopra, but the question. Now here's a case where I want to lead up to the point.

I want to make the point by making a couple of steps. I have a choice at this point. I could go ahead and state my steps as part of my argument, put my pieces on the table, so to speak, and then come to a conclusion, which leaves me with a certain liability.

Every time I make a claim that is a stepping stone to my conclusion, the other person, especially if they're a little bit belligerent, can just deny the claim. And now I get nowhere. So instead, I am going to use questions to get those pieces placed on the table by the other person.

So Greg is assuming something here that, in my opinion, is it's almost like step two or three of a response. So he wants us to use the Columbo approach, part of his book Tactics, which by the way, Tactics, absolutely an amazing book, just phenomenal.

Highly recommend it if you have not already read it. And if you have read it, read it again, right? You know, it's one of those books where you read it maybe once a year, you know, just to stay fresh, right?

And so Greg wants us to ask certain kinds of questions that will make the point for us. This is a great piece of advice. It's the same advice I would give, really. It's very Socratic in approach, very productive in terms of methodology.

I mean, essentially, this is cross-examination that Greg is advocating for. However, I'm more interested as a debate teacher in first identifying what the point is at all. So in other words, I think step one is to first figure out what's wrong with the question that Deepak Chopra asked.

I think we actually need to develop those skills to be able to look at a statement or a challenge like that and go, okay, here's what's wrong with it, to be able to identify that right away. Now, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to show you that, okay?

So stick with me. I'm going to run the Deepak Chopra challenge through the x-ray machine, so to speak, so you can see how it's problematic. But first, let's let Greg finish his response.

Because if they put those pieces on the table, it's a lot harder for them to take them off, to deny them, okay? Let me show you how that works with the question, all right? And this person who asked the question there at the Barnes Noble.

I said, when he offered the question, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? No, go right ahead. Here was the first question I asked. Do you think that people who commit moral crimes ought to be punished?

In other words, the people who do bad things, should they pay for them? And he said, well, since I'm a prosecuting attorney, yeah, I got lucky on the attorney part, you know? But most people have this sense, this deep intuition that people who do wrong things should not get away with them, okay?

And so I agreed with him. I agree that people who do wrong things ought to be punished. So now we've got a piece on the table. He put it there because I asked him the question. Second question, have you ever done any wrong things?

That's personal, right? What do you think he said? He said, yeah, I guess I have. If he said he didn't do any bad things, I want to talk to his wife, you know? No, of course not. We all know we've done wrong things.

I agreed with him. So have I. And then I said, now we got another piece on the table. And so I said to him, look at where we come just in two questions. We both agree that people who do bad things ought to be punished.

And we both agree that we've done those bad things. You know what I call that? I said to him, what? He said, I said, bad news. This is not a good picture for us.

Reframing the Gospel Around Guilt and Punishment

Hey, real quick. I'm so grateful that you're watching. If I've earned the right to get your sub, I'd love it if you would just click the like and subscribe button. It would really help me to get the video out to more and more people.

I really do appreciate you. This is why Greg is so good at this. Because notice now, Greg is reframing the issue, right? Remember, we started off with the question, if I don't believe like you, then I'm going to hell.

That's certainly a way of asking the question, but it's framed to give the challenger an advantage, right? Is that what Christianity is?

Okay.

And in one sense, the answer is yes. Because I believe in Jesus as a Christian.

Okay.

Why?

Well, because he took my place and he bore the punishment for my sins that I deserved. And now I have right relationship with God. I mean, that's the gospel, amen? All of that, when I say yes, is in my mind as a Christian.

It's floating around in the back there, right? When I simply say yes to Deepak Chopra. The problem is, that's often not in the mind of the person asking this kind of question who is presenting this kind of challenge.

Why?

Because they don't know the gospel. They don't think about it. It's not part of their reality or, you know, part of their calculating. When they ask the challenge or the question. And so, to simply say yes is to mislead these people.

That's why Greg begins with bad news. He's reframing the discussion. Can you see that?

Do I need to tell this man he's a sinner?

No.

He just told me. Do I need to tell him that he's under judgment?

No.

He just told me. Now, he wasn't thinking about that when he walked into the Barnes Noble. But when I asked him a couple of simple questions that brought these moral intuitions, moral common sense, really, to his awareness, he laid them right on the table.

Now I've got something to work with. And then I went from there and I explained. It's as if the judge is about to lower the gavel on the two of us in the dock. And we both know we're guilty. And we both know we deserve what we're going to get.

And then the judge pauses and says, by the way, are either of you guys interested in a pardon at this point? Look, when you know you're guilty, you're much more open to an offer of forgiveness. And that's exactly where I wanted to bring him.

And then I explained in very simple terms about substitutionary atonement. That the judge took off his robe and got in the dock and took the punishment for us so that we could be set free. I didn't use the language of substitution.

I just explained it. Because that's what God has done in Jesus. And that's why Jesus is the only way. He's the only one who solved the problem. Nobody else could do this. Only Jesus could. And that's why we have to put our confidence in him.

So what I've done now is I've taken a very tricky situation. The question. And I've approached it using a tactical approach, getting help from the other person to get my pieces on the table. So that when I'm going to make my case, now it's much easier to do so in light of what he's helped me to establish.

And I don't know if that attorney trusted the Lord or not, but at least I was communicating the gospel to him, at least in a way that he could understand. Because now it just wasn't a matter of believing in God and living the best way you could live.

We both realized that's not enough. If we're really guilty, then there's got to be a solution to the guilt problem. And that's what Christians offer in Christ.

Diagnosing the Assumption Behind the Challenge

Yeah, it's a brilliant response here, really. That's how you do it in terms of, you know, practice. You need to reframe the discussion around the gospel. And that's what Kochel essentially did, right?

Because again, the questioner shines the spotlight, not on the gospel, but on you. You see that, right? If I don't believe like you, then I'm going to hell. Well, wait a second. I don't matter in this equation.

Christians don't matter when it comes to this issue. Our Christian belief doesn't send anyone to hell, right? It's the truthfulness of the content of our belief. That's what elevates the stakes and makes it spiritual life or death.

The fact that our belief is in something true about reality. And if it's true about reality, it applies to everyone, including the one asking the question. So this is, yeah, this is a great response. So now you know how to proceed, right?

But wait a second. How do you know that you should respond this way in the first place? Okay, in other words, what if you get another question that functions in the same way as Deepak Chopra's challenge, where if you simply answer yes, you're speaking truth, but also misleading people.

By the way, there are other questions out there that will do the same thing. It will function in the same way. So let me end by showing you a practice that I've taught my students and that I teach at churches when I travel and speak, okay?

Let me pull this up here. The slide is the slide that I use there. But I'm zoomed in on this particular picture. We have to understand that a lot of times the statements, particularly the challenges that non-believers give Christians, are like a layered cake, okay?

And you're gonna have to forgive me. I'm Samoan and I love to eat. Almost all of my illustrations are food-related, okay? So let's think about Deepak Chopra's statement for a moment. That is the top of the layer of the cake, okay?

Can you see that? So you're telling me that if I don't believe just like you, then I'm going to hell. Now, here's what we all need to do as good critical thinkers, okay? We need to ask ourselves, what is the assumption that shaped this question?

Think about it, right? This is a diagnostic question. Something, again, that not just for this question or challenge, but we should be sort of asking for all kinds of challenges to the Christian faith.

And when you pose this question, when you seek to identify these assumptions, what you'll find is there is an assumption that shaped this question, okay? Do you see it? Okay, here it is. What sends people to hell is their belief, okay?

Now, that's not what sends people to hell, okay? Somebody watching, right? Throw the comment in below, okay? I'm going to ask you the question. What sends people to hell, right? As a Christian who knows their scripture, you've read your Bible, you know your doctrine.

What sends people to hell? Throw it in the comments below, okay? Because here's the answer.

Sin.

Your sin is what sends you to hell. Your repentance and trust in Jesus and his work on the cross is what saves you from hell. That's not what sends you there, though. You with me so far? That's why this exercise is key.

I encourage you, when you engage a challenge from a skeptic or a non-believer, ask the question, what is the assumption that shaped this question? In the beginning, it's going to be difficult, and I totally get it, right?

Because it's not something that, you know, a habit that we've developed in our brains. So you might have to, like, think about it by writing out the statement, okay? Over time, though, I promise you, if you do get into this practice, it'll happen just like that.

Okay?

Asking Better Follow-Up Questions in Apologetics

And so, as you engage people, especially if they're staring at you in the face, right? If you're unsure, maybe you can suss this out by simply asking one of the Columbo questions, right? Well, wait a sec.

What do you mean by that? You know, if I don't believe like you, you know, that I'm going to hell, what do you mean by that? Can you explain what you mean there? Maybe another question you could ask is, do you know what the Bible says sends you to hell?

Do you know what the Bible teaches about that, right? So in that sense, you're identifying the assumption and you're trying to draw it out so it can be dealt with properly and so that you can have a productive conversation.

If not, if you simply say yes, you miss the opportunity to deal with the root assumption and you likely talk around the person instead of to them directly, instead of dealing with the issue that has shaped the challenge that they're presenting.

And by the way, this happens all the time and it's extremely unfortunate. So there's a little debate tip for you as you get out there and you engage others for Christ. Hey, have you ever been given this kind of challenge before?

What do you think about a challenge like this? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to get your thoughts. If you like stuff like this, then you're going to love what's about to happen in summer, okay?

I just need you to stay tuned to the channel. I'll make the announcements, but I'm going to develop a series of debate trainings and I pray it blesses you. And like I said, as it takes shape and forms, I'll let you know and tell you where to go to get all that stuff.

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Hey, I'm going to return soon with more videos, but in the meantime, I'll say bye for now.