Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (20 page)

Infanticide is a little more difficult to grasp. Sometimes an objection (the "child") is dependent on a prior notion (the "parent") that must be in place for the challenge to be offered. If a claim cannot be made unless the parent concept on which it depends is true, yet the claim denies the parent concept, then the parent kills the child, and the argument commits Infanticide.

We saw how this type of Suicide applied to the problem of evil. Since God's existence is necessary to make the notion of evil intelligible, the existence of evil cannot be used as a proof that God does not exist. It proves just the opposite. Simply put, if evil exists, then good exists. If good exists, then God exists. Ironically, the existence of evil is powerful evidence
for
God, not
against
him.

SOME points of view, if taken seriously, don't actually commit suicide, but they work against themselves in a different way. When played out consistently, they lead to unusual — even absurd — conclusions.

To understand how this works, you might think of maps and highways. If you were visiting Los Angeles and wanted to go to Santa Barbara up the coast, someone might draw a map to guide you to your destination. If, however, you followed the instructions very carefully and took the highway they suggested, but found yourself in Riverside on your way to the desert, you would know something was wrong with the route you were given.

In a similar fashion, worldviews are like maps. They are someone's idea of what the world is like. The individual ideas making up a worldview are like highways leading to different destinations. If you use the map but arrive at a strange destination, either part of the map is inaccurate (the part about the highway you were driving on), or the map itself is the wrong one for the region.

I realize that this last option is not likely when you are talking about real maps. I doubt if you would try to find your way around New York using a map of Chicago. But this kind of thing happens all the time with worldviews. Sometimes the roads are wrong on otherwise good worldview maps. At other times, worldview maps are completely inadequate for the actual terrain.

Keep this illustration in mind as we explore our next tactic. It is a method that helps you determine the accuracy of someone's map of reality—their worldview — by noting where the route on the map leads them.

If you help someone see in advance that the route his map recommends will actually lead him off a cliff, he might consider changing his course. He might even discover he is using the wrong worldview map altogether and exchange it for one that is more reliable.

TAKING A TEST DRIVE

I first learned the tactic of
Taking
the Roof Off from Francis Schaeffer. The tactic itself is simple. First, adopt the other person's viewpoint for the sake of argument. Next, give his idea a test drive. Try to determine where you will end up if you follow his instructions faithfully. If you arrive at an odd destination, point it out and invite the person to reconsider his starting point.

Sometimes when you press an idea to its logical consequences, the result is counterintuitive or absurd. If you take a view seriously and apply it consistently and it leads to disaster, you are on the wrong route. Something must be wrong with where you started if this is the place you end up.

This tactic makes it clear that certain arguments prove too much. It forces people to ask if they can really live with the kind of world they are affirming. Those who are intellectually honest will think twice about embracing a view that ultimately leads to irrationality, incoherence, and absurdity. That is too high a price to pay.

Taking the Roof Off is also known as
reductio
ad absurdum
(or simply
reductio
).
This is a Latin phrase that means to reduce a point to its absurd conclusion or consequence.

WHY REDUCTIOS WORK

When I was a young Christian, I read Francis Schaeffer's
The God Who Is There.
Schaeffer argues that Christians have a powerful ally in the war of ideas: reality. Whenever someone tries to deny the truth, reality ultimately betrays him. As Schaeffer points out, "Regardless of a man's system, he has to live in God's world."
¹

The fact is, mankind is made in the image of God and must live in the world God created. Although culture shifts, human nature remains the same. Ideas change, but ultimate reality does not.

Every person who rejects the truth of "the God who is there” is caught between the way he says the world is and the way the world actually is.

This dissonance, what Schaeffer called the "point of tension," is what makes
Taking
the Roof Off so effective. Any person who denies the truth of God's world lives in contradiction. On the surface he claims one thing, yet deep inside he believes something else because he knows the truth. To protect himself from considering the consequences of this conflict, he subconsciously erects a defense, a deceptive cover, a "roof." Simply put, he's in denial. Our job is to remove that roof, expose the fraud, and deprive him of his false sense of security. In Schaeffer's words:

Every man has built a roof over his head to shield himself at the point of tension. . . . The Christian, lovingly, must remove the shelter [the roof] and allow the truth of the external world and of what man is to beat upon him. When the roof is off, each man must stand naked and wounded before the truth of what is. . . .

He must come to know that his roof is a false protection from the storm of what is.
²

Regardless of our ideological impulses, deep inside each of us is a commonsense realist. Those who are not realists are either dead, in an institution, or sleeping in cardboard boxes under the freeway.

Knowing this gives us a tremendous advantage. The key to dealing with moral relativism, for example, is realizing that for all the adamant affirmations, no one really believes it, and for a good reason: If you start with relativism, reality does not make sense.

It is significant that those who want to practice relativism never want relativism practiced
toward them.
For example, Schaeffer tells of an encounter with a Hindu student at Cambridge who had been vigorously condemning Christianity.

"Am I not correct in saying," Schaeffer asked, "that on the basis of your system, cruelty and
noncruelty
are ultimately equal, that there is no intrinsic difference between them?" The Hindu nodded. To his alarm, a student who understood the implications of this view took a kettle of boiling water and held it above the Hindu's head repeating, "There is no difference between cruelty and noncruelty."
³
The Hindu turned on his heel and walked out.

When I lectured on relativism at UC Berkeley, I asked a question I pose frequently at secular universities: Why do we all feel guilty?

"Maybe guilt is just a cultural construction," I offered. "I guess that's possible. But there's another possibility. Maybe you
feel
guilty . . . because you
are
guilty."

I have asked this question countless times on campuses. No one has ever stopped me afterward and said I was wrong — that they did
not
feel guilty. They could not. They knew better.
Which makes my closing statement to the audience all the more powerful.
"The answer to guilt is not denial," I say. "The answer to guilt is forgiveness. And this is where Jesus comes in."

My question at Berkeley was a direct application of Schaeffer's insight. We start with the truth of the world as each person already knows it to be. Then we offer an explanation that resonates with her deepest intuitions and makes sense of the reality she encounters every day.

We start with guilt, then reason back to morality and a moral lawgiver. We start with evidence for design, then reason back to a designer. We start with personal worth and significance, then reason backward to the source of all meaning. We start with reality, then reason backward to a cause that makes the best sense of what people already know to be true.

In a very real sense, every person who denies God is living on borrowed capital. He enjoys living as if the world is filled with morality, meaning, order, and beauty, yet he denies the God whose existence makes such things possible.

When you start with theism — "In the beginning,

God” — these destinations make complete sense.

When you start with materialism, though — "In the beginning, the particles” — that route takes you over a cliff of absurdity and despair.

ROOF REMOVAL, STEP BY STEP

Taking the Roof Off is not complicated if you follow these three steps. First, reduce the person's point of view to its basic argument, assertion, principle, or moral rule. This might take a moment of reflection. Ask yourself what the person's
specific
claim is. The first step of
Columbo
is handy at this point. State the idea clearly (write it out if you need to). If this is part of a conversation, check with the person to make sure you got it right. You might say, "Let me see if I understand you correctly," then repeat the point as clearly as you can.

Second, mentally give the idea a "test drive" to see where it leads. Ask: "If I follow this principle consistently, what implications will it have for other issues? Will it produce a 'truth' that seems wrong or counterintuitive? Will any absurd consequences result?" The answer to these questions sometimes occurs later, after you have given the issue more thought.

Third, if you find a problem, point it out. Invite the other person to consider the implications of her view and the absurd end that follows from it. Show her that if she applies her view consistently, it will take her to a destination that seems unreasonable. Therefore, something about her original view needs to be modified.

For example, Mother Theresa once appealed to the governor of California to stay the execution of double murderer Robert Alton Harris. Her reasoning: Since "Jesus would forgive," the governor should forgive.

This argument proves too much, as our tactic demonstrates. When applied consistently, it becomes a reason to forgo any punishment for any crime because one could always argue, "Jesus would forgive." Emptying every prison does not seem to be what Jesus had in mind because great evil would result. Capital punishment might be faulted on other grounds, but not on this one. Here is the analysis:

Claim: If Jesus would forgive capital criminals, then it is wrong to execute them.

Taking the Roof Off: On this reasoning, it would be wrong for government to punish
any
criminals because one could always say, "Jesus would forgive."
This seems absurd, especially when Scripture states that the purpose of government is to punish evildoers, not forgive them.
⁴
Therefore: Even though
Jesus
might forgive murderers, that does not mean it is wrong for the
government
to punish them.

Here's another example. Typically, social conservatives in this country think it is wrong for the government to endorse same-sex relationships by granting them marriage licenses. A common rejoinder is, "That's the same thing people said about interracial marriages." The assumption with this remark is that since people were wrong then, they must be wrong now.

To Take the Roof Off, first ask what the core argument is. In this case, it's a little tricky, but I think this sums it up: We were wrong in the
past
on
one
issue (interracial marriage). Therefore, we are wrong in the
present
on a
different
issue (same-sex marriage). The following dialogue demonstrates how absurd this logic is:

"I don't think same-sex unions should be endorsed by the government."

"You know, people said the very same thing about interracial marriages. They were wrong then, and you are wrong now. Same-sex marriage is right."

"So you think the government should
approve
of homosexual unions?"