Why didn’t I say this?

I should have offered a better answer, but my mind just drew a blank!

His argument sounded so convincing, but I know there is something not right with what he said!

Why can’t I remember all of these facts about my faith when I am in the middle of the conversation?

I thought I made good points, but she clearly didn’t get what I was saying.

If you are like me, you’ve found yourself less than satisfied with how a conversation about an important issue transpired. Sometimes, we are left speechless when we should have had an answer. Other times, we feel like we overwhelmed another with our views and watched them walk away offended or disinterested.

It’s vital that we know why we believe what we believe, especially when it comes to the consistent challenges our particular culture presents to the Christian faith. However, it is also vital that we know how to communicate with others in a way that will provoke honest and open discussion about topics that really matter. A key strategy for any Christian is to ask great questions.

The power of questions

The power of asking questions is seen clearly in the two greatest educators of all time: Socrates and Jesus. Both men were master teachers. Both men knew most (or in the case of Jesus, all) the answers. Both men had a unique ability to lead others to those answers. Both men were great questioners.

Here are six questions that I’ve found extremely helpful to create the sort of dialogue we should desire about issues of faith and culture.[1]

What Do You Mean By That?

The battle of ideas is always the battle over the definition of words. Therefore, it is vital in any conversation to clarify what is meant by the terms being used. Whether the topic is God, truth, humanity, crime, progress, beauty, or anything else, we ought not assume that we share common definitions.

Several years ago on a cross-country flight, I found myself in conversation with an elderly woman seated next to me. “What do you do?” she asked. “I work for a Christian leadership organization called The Summit,” I replied. Immediately, she cocked her head and retorted, “Hmm. I am an atheist. Prove me wrong.” The ensuing conversation lasted the entire flight.

Early in the conversation, my companion asked, “Why do you believe in God?” I replied, “What do you mean by God?” Her answer was eye-opening: “A grumpy old man in the sky with a beard who can’t wait for you to do something wrong so he can strike you with a lightning bolt.”

My response to her was, “I don’t believe in that God.” With that initial question, I avoided spending three hours defending a God I don’t believe in, and the conversation became much more productive.

Another example is when one says, referring to abortion, “I believe in a woman’s right to choose.” Too often, our reaction is, “Well, I don’t.” This is foolish. Pro-lifers believe in a woman’s right to choose as much as we believe in anyone’s right to choose. However, no one has the right to choose to end an innocent human life.

A better response would be, “What do you mean by choose? Can a woman make any and every choice she wishes to make, including ending an innocent human life?”

How Do You Know That is True?

Too often when it comes to important discussions, assertions are mistaken for arguments. There is a vast difference between the two. An assertion is a definitive statement made about the nature of reality. An argument is presented to back up an assertion already on the table of debate. By asking “how do you know that is true?” you will move the conversation beyond two people merely asserting what they believe to why the assertions should be taken seriously.

Several years ago, a group of home school students were taught this question before taking a tour of the local museum of natural history. They were instructed to ask this question whenever they heard an assertion being made. One particular presenter, a Ph.D. in paleontology, became the unfortunate victim of the students’ question.

After presenting a solidly Darwinist interpretation of a particular set of fossils, the students began to ask, “How do you know that is true?” Each reply by the paleontologist was met with another, “How do you know that is true?” The backpedalling was obvious. In fact, the students revealed to all present, including the paleontologist, that her evolution was an article of faith, as are the first beliefs of all worldviews. Finally, when the paleontologist realized she had no answer to the final “How do you know that is true?” she exasperatedly replied, “I don’t know. I just work here, ok?”

A final word of warning about this question: once this question is introduced to the conversation, your assertions will also be met with “How do you know that is true?” Of course, it is never a bad thing to be forced to provide arguments to back up your assertions.

Where Did You Get This Information?

Once arguments are offered, it is important to ensure that the arguments are valid. For example, one often hears the argument that homosexuality should be embraced by society because it is the result of nature, not nurture. It is important to ask, “Where did you get this information?” since no study has ever demonstrated this conclusively. Or, Christians often hear that the Bible is full of contradictions, historical inconsistencies, and scientific errors. While there are legitimate challenges to the Bible in this regard, they are few and most people don’t actually know what the real challenges are.

We’ve found this question to be particularly helpful for Christian students in the university setting. Often, professors will cite conclusions from faulty research, or re-hashed historical revisionists. For example, statistics about human sexuality are often repeated from the research of Alfred Kinsey, whose research has been discredited due to questionable methodology. Or, conclusions in sociology are drawn from Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, another work that has been compromised after subsequent investigation.[2]

This question is also helpful to distinguish one’s feelings about God and Christianity from actual facts. C.S. Lewis points out in his masterful Mere Christianity that those who accept Jesus as one of the great religious teachers but not as the Son of God and Messiah have no reason to do so;

I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really silly thing that people often say about Him:

       "‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That’s the one thing we mustn’t say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher. He’d either be a lunatic- on a level with a man who says he’s a poached egg- or else he’d be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But don’t let us come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He hasn’t left that open to us. He didn’t intend to."

How Did You Come to this Conclusion?

Everyone has a story, and it is a mistake to neglect this in these sorts of debates. I am not implying that truth changes according to one’s circumstances, but truths do seem more or less plausible depending on one’s circumstance. This question can help reveal the story behind the worldview commitments one holds or rejects.

After two hours with the aforementioned elderly woman on the airplane, I paused and asked her a form of this question, “At what point in your life did you become an atheist?” Her reply was instructive: “My earliest childhood memory was visiting my relatives in Poland. It was the late 1930’s and they were Jewish.” You might guess the rest of the story. In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland and her relatives were victims of the Holocaust.

With the backdrop of her story, our conversation continued into areas of morality, foundations of morality, and the problem of evil in the world. Further, we were able to evaluate side by side which of our worldviews could provide adequate grounding for both the atrocity of the Nazis, as well as our sense of disgust at real acts of evil in the world.

What If You Are Wrong?

Blaise Pascal, the brilliant mathematician and philosopher of the 17^th century, famously postulated a “wager” when it came to the existence of God. Because belief or disbelief in God was beyond the bounds of reason, Pascal suggested that we should consider which belief would give us the most to gain and least to lose. For Pascal, to believe in God was the safest wager since, if correct, one could look forward to eternal life and, if incorrect, one would lose nothing eternally.

Though highly critiqued, Pascal’s wager is existentially challenging and forms the basis for this question, “What if you are wrong?” Ideas have consequences, and it is important that we consider the consequences of the beliefs that we hold. For example, one often hears, “God is love, and He won’t judge anyone.” What if that is wrong?

Incidentally, it is also often useful to ask, “What if you are right?” Once on an international flight, I was told by a fellow traveler that right and wrong were determined by each individual since, in her words, “We are God.” I asked her if that applied to those who felt it was their right to torture babies for their own personal pleasure. She was stumped. If her belief about right and wrong was actually correct, the implications would be terrible.

Have You Ever Considered This?

There is a reason that this question is the last in the list. It is often most effective to share truth with someone, which is often hard and uncomfortable, after their views have been heard and engaged. Also, the way this question is worded does not force our views on others, but asks that they be considered in a thoughtful way.

While one can at times be confrontational with someone with whom we have shared assumptions, Christians can most often expect these conversations to be with those with whom our assumptions clash. Like the Apostle Paul in Athens (Acts 17), we’ll find leverage if we take seriously the cultural values and artifacts which are held to be important by those with whom we are speaking. After all, we too are far more likely to listen to someone who actually listens to us.

Finally, Christians who employ this question need to be aware of the better resources available. If we are asking others to take our views seriously, we must be prepared to present arguments of our own, not merely assertions. Organizations like Summit Ministries (www.summit.org), Stand to Reason (www.str.org), Breakpoint (www.breakpoint.org), Probe Ministries (www.probe.org), and AllAboutGod.com can help.

John Stonestreet is the Executive Director of Summit Ministries and a Fellow of The Colson Center.

For more insight to this topic, get the book,Tough Questions about God, Faith, and Life, by Chuck Colson and Anne Morse. Or read the article, “Quest for Understanding,” by T. M. Moore.

[1] While the descriptions and two of these questions are mine, I am indebted to Jeff Myers, founder and president of Passing the Baton International, and Bill Jack from Worldview Academy for the original concept they referred to as “The Four Deadly Questions.”

[2] For a brief refutation of Kinsey and Mead, as well as 13 other questionable yet oft quoted sources in academia, see Benjamin Wiker, Ten Books that Screwed Up the World and Five Others that Didn’t Help (Regnery, 2008).