My Own Columbo Misstep

So…I tripped up a bit in a conversation yesterday.

A few weeks ago on his radio show, Greg Koukl talked about a slight Columbo misstep that he had.   The short story of his approach to witnessing is to ask good questions that draws a person out, forces them to think, and advances the conversation.  His questions make points better than explicit statements, and when asked in the right way, they forge a conversational relationship, rather than an adversarial debate.  This often keeps the other person from getting inordinately defensive.

No sooner had I listened to his show than I had my own misstep.

Here’s how it went down:

I walked up to two colleagues the other day and I invited them to an upcoming debate on God’s existence.  They both turned the invite down.  One, a Christian, said, “I have absolutely no interest in that sort of thing.  There is a God, and I’m settled on it.”

The other, an atheist, questioned him on this, to which the first colleague replied, “it’s all about faith; you just believe.”  His sentiment seemed to be that you  just gotta make the jump and believe, evidence or none.  No proof needed, so he wasn’t interested in that.

I think that someone can have a knowledge of God in the absence of proofs or physical evidence of God via the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, but I still chose to prod him a bit.

I blurted out, “I don’t agree with you!”  Ahhhh.  Therein lied my mistake.

Things pretty much went downhill from there.   This sorta made him defensive, so he reasserted more emphatically.  At this point I asked him a question (albeit, it was kind of a stupid one): “well…what if you’re wrong?”

“Then it doesn’t matter!  Socrates answered that question ages ago.  Before he died, he said that if he was right that the gods existed, he would end up in heaven, having discussion with the greatest minds, but if he was wrong, then he lived a happy, peaceful life and he was all the better for it.  I think the same way with God’s existence.”

He thought I was saying, “prove God doesn’t exist,” which was far from my claim.  I had a brief chance to clarify, so I noted, “If I’m wrong and God doesn’t really exist, then I’ve got better things to do than give my life to it.  Even the apostle Paul saw that if Christ did not raise, Christians are fools and blasphemers.  I’m interested in truth, not placebo faith.

This was a fair rejoinder on my part, I think, but things could have gone better.  I should have started out by asking him a question, rather than blurting out my disagreement.  After this he became quite defensive, judging by the tone of his voice and body language.  He became an adversary, rather than someone to converse with.

Later on, after the conversation was done, I reflected on things, and I came up with a few good questions:

“Where does evidence and reason factor into your beliefs?”

“What is your faith based upon?  Faith is only as strong as its object.”

“Do you think it’s possible to have evidence for your beliefs?  Do you think there is evidence for your beliefs?”

“If it’s all a blind leap or you just gotta believe, why do you think that?”

“What would you say to someone who said there is no proof or evidence for God’s existence?”

“What, after all, is faith?”

And finally: “Is ‘belief that He exists’ all God wants of you?

After we got into the topic, I could have asked:

“Why do you think the truth of the matter (whether God really exists or not) doesn’t make a difference?  Is peace and happiness the goal of the Christian faith?”

“Is there anything Jesus said that makes you think it doesn’t matter?”

Learn your lesson, then move on.  That’s the way I look at it.  No reason to dwell on it tremendously, but I do want to improve.  In this regard, actually getting out there and conversing with people more is the biggest key.

What do you think?  Can you add any other good questions?  Which of the questions above do you think would have been most effective at advancing the conversation in a productive direction?

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