Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (21 page)

"Of course."

"But people said the government should approve
slavery,
too. They were wrong then, and you are wrong now. Same-sex marriage is wrong."

Here's the breakdown:

Claim: Argument: Because people were wrong in the past on one issue, they are wrong in the present on a different issue.

Taking the Roof Off: Since the government was wrong endorsing slavery in the past, it would be wrong for them to endorse same-sex marriage in the present.
This is absurd because the same kind of reasoning produces contradictory results: Same-sex marriage is wrong,
and
same-sex marriage is right (see above).

Therefore: It is not sound to argue that just because people were wrong in the past about interracial marriage, they are now wrong about same-sex marriage.

The only way out of this problem is to show a similarity between interracial marriage and same-sex marriage that is relevant to the issue of government endorsement. There is none.

Jesus used the Taking the Roof Off tactic in an argument with the Pharisees. Notice how He reduced the Pharisees' reasoning to its logical and absurd conclusion:

But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, "This man casts out demons only by
Beelzebul
the ruler of the demons." And knowing their thoughts He said to them, "Any kingdom divided against
itself
is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand? . . . But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Matthew 12:24 - 26, 28).

Here's how the tactic played out:

Claim: Jesus casts out demons by the power of Satan.

Taking the Roof Off: If Satan is the source of Jesus' power,
then
Satan is casting out Satan, destroying his own kingdom. This is absurd.

Therefore: Jesus' power must not come from Satan, but from God who opposes Satan. Those who oppose Jesus, then, are not opposing Satan, but God.

Each vignette below tackles a common challenge using
Taking
the Roof Off. Notice how many ways this technique can be used. It is flexible because people frequently hold beliefs that lead to absurd consequences.

BORN BAD?

It's common of late to justify one's sexual "orientation" by an appeal to nature. Some people think the claim "I was born this way" is all that's needed to stem moral criticism of homosexuality. But why settle for this approach? Why think the state of nature is an appropriate guide to morality?

The basic argument can be summed up this way: Anything that is natural is also moral. Homosexuality is natural (the claim goes). Therefore, homosexuality is moral. What happens when we go down that road?

I once asked a radio caller who used this reasoning if the same rationale would justify gay-bashing. If scientists isolated a gay-bashing gene, would violence toward homosexuals be acceptable?
Hardly.
If there really were a gay-bashing gene, the correct response would be to fight its influence, not to surrender to it.

Seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes noted famously that life in an unregulated state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Morality protects us from the brutality of living in a world where people act out their impulses.
Animals
always do what comes naturally.

Since living according to nature would result in all kinds of barbarism, how does it make sense to invoke the natural state of things to justify anything? The difference between doing what comes naturally and principled self-restraint is called civilization. Morality that counters one's natural inclinations rather than approves them is our only refuge from a life that is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Here's how the
reductio
looks:

Claim: Any "natural" tendency or behavior is morally acceptable.

Taking the Roof Off: If gay-bashing comes naturally for someone, it must be okay.
This is obviously wrong.

Therefore: Just because an impulse is natural does not mean it's moral. Homosexuality cannot be justified this way.

CHALK ONE UP FOR GOD

The story is told of an atheist philosophy professor who performed a parlor trick each term to convince his students that there is no God.
⁵
"Anyone who believes in God is a fool," he said. "If God existed, he could stop this piece of chalk from hitting the ground and breaking. Such a simple task to prove he is God, and yet he can't do it." The professor then dropped the chalk and watched it shatter dramatically on the classroom floor.

If you meet anyone who tries this silly trick, take the roof off. Apply the professor's logic in a test of
your own
existence. Tell the onlookers you will prove
you
don't exist.

Have someone take a piece of chalk and hold it above your outstretched palm. Explain that if you really exist, you would be able to accomplish the simple task of catching the chalk. When he drops the chalk, let it to fall the ground and shatter. Then announce, "I guess this proves I do not exist. If you believe in me, you're a fool."

Clearly, this chalk trick tells you nothing about God. The only thing it is capable of showing is that if God does exist, he is not a circus animal who can be teased into jumping through hoops to appease the whim of foolish people.

TROTTING OUT THE TODDLER

Virtually every argument in favor of abortion could equally justify killing newborns if pressed to its logical conclusion. If it's acceptable to take the life of an innocent human being on one side of the birth canal, why forbid it on the other? A 7-inch journey cannot miraculously transform a "nonhuman tissue mass" into a valuable human being.
⁶

When someone justifies abortion by saying, "Women have the right to choose," use a version of
Taking
the Roof Off called "Trotting Out the Toddler." Ask if a woman should have the right to kill her one-year-old for the same reason.
⁷
Since both are human beings, the same moral rule should apply to each. The logic of choice, privacy, and personal bodily rights endangers newborns, not just the unborn.

At the University of New Mexico, a student said we should abort children to save them from future child abuse. Stand to Reason speaker Steve Wagner "trotted out the toddler" in response. "Should we also kill two-year-olds to save them from future child abuse?"

"I hadn't thought about that," the student said. And that's the point. People don't think about the logical implication of their ideas. It's our job to help them see their mistakes.

CLIMATE CONTROL

A chorus of voices charge that Christians, through their moralizing about homosexuality, are promoting a climate of hate. The phrase of choice is "less than." By claiming that homosexuality is wrong, Christians demote homosexuals to a "less than" status, making them the object of scorn, hatred, and physical abuse.

The flaw of this logic becomes obvious when you take the roof off. In Los Angeles, KABC talk show host Al
Rantel
— himself a homosexual — noted that this kind of thinking would make Alcoholics Anonymous responsible every time a drunk gets beat up in an alley. It simply does not follow that moral condemnation of homosexuality encourages gay-bashing.

Such a tactic is equally dangerous to those who use it. If moralizing causes hate, and hate leads to violence, are those who demonize Christians for condemning homosexuality also guilty of hate-mongering? Taking the Roof Off clearly demonstrates that this kind of attack is really about politics, not principles.

"FAITH” VS.
FACTS

Some people think that facts and knowledge make faith impossible.

The reasoning goes like this. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith, it is impossible to please God. Faith
is believing
things we cannot know. Faith and knowledge, then, are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The more facts we have, the less room there is for faith. God is most pleased, then, when we cling faithfully to our convictions in spite of the evidence against them.

If this is your view of faith, following this route will lead you into a spiritual ditch. First, apologetics—giving evidence in defense of the truth—would be misguided. This is scripturally absurd. Peter says we should always be ready to make an
apologia,
a defense, for our hope (1 Peter 3:15), and Jesus and the apostles gave evidence regularly.

Second, if knowledge and faith are inversely proportional (i.e., as knowledge decreases, faith increases), the more evidence we find
against
Christianity the better. Our knowledge would shrink to nothing, providing ample opportunity for an abundance of blind faith. Indeed, affirming something you knew to be false would be the greatest virtue, if you took this view. God would be most pleased with those who had every reason to know the resurrection never happened, for example, yet still believed.

The apostle Paul, however, called such a person pitiful:

If Christ has not been raised . . . your faith also is vain. . . . You are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17 - 19)

According to Paul, if we believe contrary to fact, we believe in vain. We are not heroes to be praised, but fools to be pitied.

What has gone wrong here? The problem is with the premise, "Faith
is believing
things we cannot know." This is not a biblical understanding of faith. Faith and knowledge are not opposites in Scripture. They are companions. The opposite of faith is not fact, but unbelief. The opposite of knowledge is ignorance. Neither is a virtue in Christianity.

EARTH DAY FOR EVOLUTIONISTS?

Has anyone else noticed a contradiction implicit in the annual Earth Day celebrations? The vast majority of devotees at such fetes are Darwinists who believe humans have an obligation to protect the environment. Starting with a naturalistic worldview, though, why should anyone care?

For millions of years, Mother Nature has spewed noxious fumes and poisonous gasses into Earth's atmosphere and littered the landscape with ash and lava. Indeed, the most "natural" condition in the universe is death. As far as we know, the Earth is completely unique. Death reigns everywhere else.

Species have passed into extinction at a steady rate from the beginning of time, the strong supplanting the weak. Why shouldn't they? Each is in a struggle for survival, a dance of destruction fueling the evolutionary process. May the best beast
win.
That's the logic of naturalism. Yet the sense of obligation to steward the Earth is strong. Why?

The moral motivation for Earth Day simply does not follow from Darwinism. It makes perfect sense, though, if God entrusted man with stewardship over the Earth. Taking the Roof Off—following an idea to its logical conclusion — shows that Earth Day makes sense for theists, but not Darwinists.

Here's a variation of the same idea. If there is no God and we evolved by chance, there is no fundamental difference between animals and humans. However, we permit a farmer to divide the weak from the strong in his pack of cows, yet we're appalled when Hitler does the same to Jews. Why is the first right, but the second wrong, given a Darwinian starting point?

"MODIFIED PRO-CHOICE”

The modified pro-choice position is a politician's favorite abortion doubletalk: "I'm personally against abortion, but I don't believe in forcing my view on others."

I once had a discussion with a man who offered this nonsense to me at a conference. I asked him the question I always pose when I encounter such a notion: "Why are
you
personally against abortion?"

He responded with the answer I always get. "I believe abortion kills a baby," he said, "but that's just my own personal view."

"Let me see if I understand you," I said. "You are convinced that abortion kills an innocent child, yet you think the law should allow women to do that to their own babies. Did I get that right?"

He objected to my wording, but when I asked him what part of his view I misunderstood, he was silent. I hadn't misunderstood it. That
was
his view.

The logic of the modified pro-choice position reduces to, "I think it’s wrong to kill my own children, but I don’t think we should stop other people from killing theirs.”

JUST
YOUR
INTERPRETATION

The "that's just your interpretation" parry when you make a biblical point is usually vulnerable to Taking the Roof Off. Use the first
Columbo
question ("What do you mean by that?") to find out if the person thinks all interpretations are equally valid and yours is just another in an infinite line of alternatives.

If you suspect that this is his view,
Take
the Roof Off. Treat
his
own
words as infinitely malleable. Tell him, for example, that you are sorry to hear that he believes all Jews and homosexuals should be executed. When his jaw drops, tell him that's
your
interpretation of what he said. Does he have a problem with that?