Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (18 page)

"No, you don't understand," she replied. "We have separation of church and state."

PROSELYTIZING PROHIBITED

Some years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention publicized its plans to direct its annual summer evangelistic outreach to Jews living in Chicago. It then encouraged Baptists to "pray each day for Jewish individuals you know by name that they will find the spiritual wholeness available through the Messiah."

The public reaction was immediate and severe. The director of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League said the campaign "projects a message of spiritual narrowness that invites theological hatred."
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A consortium of religious groups in Chicago, including Christian denominations, issued a statement condemning the SBC, warning that the Baptists' evangelism in the Windy City would encourage hate crimes.

The grievances were aired on a national TV talk show, where two enraged rabbis from New York and Chicago confronted two Baptists. The substance of their complaint was this: Proselytizing should be reserved for people with no spiritual convictions. Jews already have a religion. It's the height of arrogance to suggest that they need a new one. Therefore, Christians should make their appeal elsewhere. Essentially, the rabbis were saying, "Keep your spiritual opinions to yourself. Stop trying to change other people's religious views."

Do you see the problem here? The rabbis were incensed that Christians were trying to change the religious convictions of Jews. Yet their antidote was for the Christians to abandon their own religious view of evangelism and adopt the rabbis' view.

In the heat of the moment, it probably did not occur to the Christians to simply ask, "If that's what you believe, then I don't understand why
you
are trying to change
my
religious beliefs right now. Why do you interfere when I'm trying to obey Jesus' command to preach the gospel? Why don't you keep your
own
religious views to yourself?"

Oddly, the Baptists were branded intolerant merely for planning to engage others in voluntary, thoughtful conversation about religion. Yet the rabbis who viciously condemned them on national television were considered "tolerant" and "open-minded."

The claim "It's wrong to try to change other people's religious beliefs" is usually an example of Practical Suicide. The idea itself is not incoherent. However, a person risks contradiction simply by trying to promote this conviction.

FREEDOM, REASON, AND KNOWLEDGE

It always strikes me as odd when people try to advance arguments for determinism. Let me tell you why.

Determinists claim that freedom is an illusion. Each of our choices is fixed, determined beforehand by the circumstances that precede it. All of our "choices" are inevitable results of blind physical forces beyond our control.

The problem with this view is that without freedom, rationality would have no room to operate. Arguments would not matter, since no one would be able to base beliefs on adequate reasons. One could never judge between a good idea and a bad one. One would only hold beliefs because he had been predetermined to do so.

That's why it is odd when someone tries to
argue
for determinism. If determinism were true, the person would have been "determined" to believe in it (with others just as "determined" to disagree). He would have to admit that reasons don't matter and that trying to think the issue through is a waste of time.

Although it is theoretically possible that determinism is true — there is no internal contradiction, as far as I can tell — no one could ever
know
it if it were. Every one of our thoughts, dispositions, and opinions would have been decided for us by factors completely out of our control. Therefore, in practice, arguments for determinism are self-defeating.

WHAT WE LEARNED IN THIS CHAPTER

In this chapter we discovered that there is more than one way for an argument to self-destruct. Though some views are not internally contradictory—that is, they do not fail through Formal Suicide—still, in practice they are self-defeating. The view can be believed, but not acted on or promoted. Anyone advancing the opinion cannot avoid violating his own convictions, for example, "It's wrong to say people are wrong."

We call this tendency "Practical Suicide." Moral relativists are especially vulnerable to this problem, as are those who believe it is wrong to try to change another person's religious views.

ARGUMENTS or points of view can self-destruct for a variety of different reasons. We have already talked about two: Formal Suicide and Practical Suicide. Now I would like to introduce you to a couple more that are not internally contradictory, but are self-defeating in their own unique ways.

Sometimes a conflict arises when a person raises two objections that are at odds with each other. This "Sibling Rivalry" is easy to spot if you look for it. At other times, someone's view is built on a prior concept that turns out to disqualify the view itself. I call this "Infanticide." Think of it like a deranged creature from a sci-fi movie that devours its own offspring. This kind of Suicide is more difficult to spot, but it is a powerful defeater nonetheless. In either case, the hard work is already done for you.

SIBLING RIVALRY

Occasionally in conversations you will notice something odd. You will hear a pair of objections voiced by the same person, but the complaints are logically inconsistent with each other. They are like children fighting between themselves, siblings in rivalry.

Since both objections cannot be simultaneously legitimate, your task is cut in half. A fair-minded person will surrender at least

one
when you identify the problem. Graciously point out the conflict,
then
ask which is the real concern. Sometimes this move effectively silences both objections because the person you are talking with realizes she has been unreasonable.

Is Gandhi in Heaven?

When I was in India, Christian apologist
Prakesh
Yesudian
told me of a conversation he had with a Hindu about Gandhi, who is much revered there. Notice how
Prakesh
coupled
Columbo
with the Sibling Rivalry tactic.

"Is Gandhi in Heaven?" the Hindu asked. "Heaven would be a very poor place without Gandhi in it."

"Well, sir,"
Prakesh
answered, "you must at least believe in Heaven then. And apparently you have done some thinking about what would qualify someone for Heaven. Tell me, what
kind of people go
to Heaven?"

"Good people go to Heaven," he responded.

"But this idea of what is a good person is very unclear to me. What is good?"

In typical Hindu fashion he replied, "Good and bad are relative. There is no clear definition."

"If that is true, sir, that goodness is relative and can't be defined, how is it you assume Gandhi is good and should be in Heaven?"

Either Gandhi fulfills some external standard of goodness, thus qualifying for Heaven, or goodness is relative and therefore a meaningless term when applied to anyone, including Gandhi. Both cannot be true at the same time.

Kavita

During that same trip, I had a discussion with a Hindu college student named
Kavita
. As I talked about Christianity, she raised the standard objection. "If God is as you say, how could he allow such suffering, especially for the children?" She gestured with a sweep of her hand as if to take in the collective anguish of Madras, which was great.

The first thing I pointed out was that God hadn't done this to India. Hinduism had. Ideas have consequences, and the suffering in Madras was a direct result of things Hindus believe.

I then explained that it wouldn't always be this way. A day would come when all evil would be destroyed, and Jesus himself would wipe away every bitter tear.

"How could that be?" she objected. "Evil and good exist as dual poles. If you have no evil, it is impossible to have
good
. Each must balance the other out."

I noticed immediately that
Kavita's
response was at odds with her first question. "Let me repeat this reasoning back to you," I said, "and you tell me what you think of it." She nodded.

"You ask 'Why are innocent children starving in the streets?' I answer, 'Good and evil exist as dual poles. Children starve in Madras so kids in other parts of the world may be happy and well. The one balances the other out.' What do you think?"

When the point sunk in, she was forced to smile. "
Touche
!" she replied.

"The Quarrel"

I encountered a clear example of Sibling Rivalry after an airing of
The Quarrel,
a film that explored the problem of God and the Holocaust. Director David
Brandes
had asked me to help moderate a discussion with an audience about the moral issues raised by the film.

From one side of the auditorium a Jewish woman offered that maybe God allowed the Holocaust as a punishment for Israel's wayward drift into secularism. Some Jewish thinkers have raised this possibility in light of the promised curses of Deuteronomy 28. The reflection prompted a sarcastic, "Well, that's a real loving God," from the other side of the theater.

I called attention to the conflict suggested by the second comment. Those who are quick to object that God isn't doing enough about evil in the world ("A good God wouldn't let that happen") are often equally quick to complain when God puts his foot down ("A loving God would never send anyone to Hell").

If God appears indifferent to wickedness, his goodness is challenged. Yet if he acts to punish sin, his love is in question. These objections compete with each other in most cases. They are siblings in rivalry.
One or the other needs to be surrendered.
Both can't be held simultaneously.
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Who Are You to Say?

Sibling Rivalry is the type of Suicide moral relativists commit when they object to the problem of evil. This happened at a restaurant during a conversation with a waitress (I seem to get in a lot of discussions with waitresses).

At first the young lady talked like a relativist: Everyone has his own morality. Right and wrong is a private affair.
Who's
to judge? As our conversation ranged over other topics, though, the problem of evil came up. How could God exist when there is so much evil in the world?

I want you to notice something about the problem of evil. The entire objection hinges on the observation that evil exists "out there" as an objective feature of the world. That is a serious problem for relativists, though.

According to relativism, when someone uses the word "evil," he is expressing a personal preference. The sentence "Premarital sex is wrong" means nothing more than "I don't prefer sex outside of marriage," or "Extramarital sex is wrong
for me."
Strictly speaking, the person is not talking about sex at all. The relativist is talking about himself.

In that light, imagine how silly this conversation would sound:

"I can't believe in God."

"Why not?"

"Brussels sprouts."

"Brussels sprouts? What do Brussels sprouts have to do with anything?"

"Did you ever taste those things? They're awful."

"I agree with you about Brussels sprouts, but some people do like them. What does the fact that you don't like Brussels sprouts have to do with God's existence?

"I can't believe in a God who would create something that tastes so awful to me."

This kind of objection is trivial. If relativism were true, talk of evil as an objection to God's existence would be nonsense. The complaint would mean nothing more than, "If God were really good, he wouldn't allow things that I don't like."

C. S. Lewis summed it up this way:

Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own [relativism]. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too — for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.
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