In your conversations with other people about Christ, Christianity, and the really important things, you are going

to encounter what I call THE question. That is, the question that stops most Christians in their tracks, and they

don't really know how to deal with it.  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?"

people have said that if you're careful how you phrase the question, you could win any argument. 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 bad. So, if I had 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 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. And so in that particular circumstance, I side-stepped the issue and went in a different

direction. But we can't always side-step that issue, nor should we. We need to address it because it's

really important, but how do we do that? And this is where the tactical approach, I think, is really important.

Especially using the Colombo Tactic in its third sense, 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. 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 remains. 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 then I get nowhere. So instead, I am going to use questions to get those pieces placed on the

table by the other person, 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 and Noble, I said, when he offered the question, "Do you

mind if I ask you a couple of questions?" "No, go right ahead." Here's the first question I asked, "Do you

think that people who commit moral crimes ought to be punished? In other words, 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 would have said he didn't do any bad things, I want to talk to his

wife! You know? Of course, now we all know we've done wrong things. I agreed with him; so have I. And then I

said, "Now we've got another piece on the table." And so I said to him, "Look at

where we've 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." Now, 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. He wasn't thinking about that

when he walked into the Barnes and 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

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. God

becoming a man to take the guilt upon Himself so that we can be forgiven—that's the reason Jesus is the only way.

He's the only one who solved the problem. And this is one way of getting to that vital point by using a tactical approach.

The Question that Stops Christians in Their Tracks

Scripts