Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - Upgrade Your Tactics with Knowledge

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

The Columbo Tactic – asking question – is powerful. But what if you could amplify the impact you make with it? In this episode, Alan explains how to upgrade your approach to create even more powerful questions. Download the mp3...

There is a simple question that I ask Muslims when I want to get to the gospel in under 60 seconds. Now, although I'm going to tell you what that question is in a moment, my goal here is actually not to talk about Islam per se. Rather, through this example, what I want to do is teach you a strategy and then explain to you how I arrived at that particular question. how I arrived at that particular question. And that way you can use the same method to formulate your own effective questions when you talk with any person on any topic. Now, at Stand to Reason, you've probably heard us talk a lot about the Columbo tactic. Okay. It has to do with conversational tactics. And these are techniques that help you to engage people in spiritual discussions. Now, the power of these tactics is manifest when you persuasively yet graciously engage a person, even when you don't have a ton of information about their religious convictions or about their worldview. But what if you had knowledge of the person's religion or background?

How might that impact your ability to engage that person in a productive way? Well, here's a little spoiler alert. Having knowledge of the person's religious convictions or of their worldview can amplify your impact. And isn't that what we want to do? We want to increase our impact. Now, first, though, consider a typical conversation between a Christian and a Muslim. The Christian might begin by employing the Columbo tactic, asking about what a Muslim believes and why they believe it. Now, do not get me wrong. Don't

misunderstand me here. This is a very powerful approach. In fact, I teach believers to do this all the time. And the questions might help you to understand several important topics, you know, about maybe Islamic beliefs or religious practices or even some, you know, discovering some common ground with Christianity. Now, don't get me wrong. This is very, very helpful. Okay. But I believe that if you have prior knowledge about Islam, this can actually help you to formulate more powerful questions. So let me give you an example of how I learned about Islam and how what I learned about Islam helped to streamline my conversation. So I first want you to consider four pieces of information about Islam that I used to help to formulate that question. Okay. So here's information piece that question. Okay. So here's information piece number one. Okay. Two angels, according to Islam, follow each person throughout

their entire life. One angel keeps track of all your good deeds and the other angel keeps track of all your bad deeds. Okay. Here's a second piece of information about Islam. They have a merit-based system of salvation. In other words, after each person is resurrected at the end of time, they enter heaven or hell based on the amount and the weight of their good and bad deeds. Now, a third piece of information about Islamic beliefs is that according to Islam, Muslims must believe in Jesus, but only as a revered prophet. And the fourth piece of information is the Quran identifies the gospel as a true revelation from Allah. Now, with those pieces of knowledge in mind, here's the question that I ask a Muslim if I want to get to the gospel in under 60 seconds. Okay, here's the question. Are you 100% certain you're going to heaven?

Now, whenever I ask a Muslim this question, I get almost the same answer every time. And that is no. Okay, no. They'll say, no, I'm not 100% certain I'm going to heaven. Then my follow-up question is this, would you like to have 100% confidence? Now, if they say yes, and by the way, I'll tell you that they often will say yes, or they're at least intrigued to see what I'm going to say, then I offer to point them to what Jesus said in the Gospels about the kingdom of God. And that means I'm able to present the Gospel from the words of Jesus,

and I can get there in under 60 seconds. Okay, so now that you know the question, here's how the knowledge I had learned about Islam helped me to develop that question. First, notice I asked the Muslim if they're 100% confident that they'll go to heaven. Now, I know that they're not typically 100% confident because they can't actually know the tally that the angels have kept about their good and bad deeds. They don't know how the scales are going to tip. And so this part of the question is based on my knowledge of facts number one and two that I mentioned earlier. Second of all, notice that I asked them to consider what Jesus said about entering the kingdom of God. And they're likely to be open to what Jesus said because their highest authority, the Quran,

demands that they believe in Jesus as a prophet. And so this is based on my knowledge of fact number three that I mentioned earlier. And then finally, notice that I point them to Jesus's words in the gospels. And the reason I do this is because the Quran identifies the Injil, which is the Quranic name for the gospel. So the Quran identifies the Injil as a revelation given to Jesus. And Muslims, at least in principle, are open to reading Jesus's words in the New Testament. And this is based on my knowledge of fact number four that I mentioned earlier. And so this is what I want you to notice. Having some basic knowledge of Islam helped me to

formulate a question and a strategy to bring the conversation to a place where I can share the gospel. Now, I'm not saying or suggesting that you must be an expert in Islamic studies, nor am I saying that you need to take a semester course in Islam. I simply use basic information about the Muslims faith. And the more that you can learn about the religion, though, of course, the more that you can learn about the religion, though, of course, the more likely you will be able to leverage that knowledge to ask informed and powerful questions. Now, it's important to clarify that I'm not suggesting that this should be the only question that you ask or that your goal should be always to get to the gospel in

under 60 seconds, okay? People aren't gospel fodder, right? People are valuable and deserving to be befriended. Well, let me put it in the reverse, actually. What I meant to say was people aren't valuable or deserving to be befriended only because they can be witnessed to, right? In other words, every person is valuable in and of themselves. And so, therefore, getting to know them or talking to them and valuing them is important simply because they are fellow image bearers. Even if you don't get to present the gospel, they're still valuable and pursuing them is still valuable in and of itself. them is still valuable in and of itself. So this is an approach that you can use with any person of any background and on any topic. Just take some time to learn about their religion or their

worldview and then find a way to harness that knowledge to ask even more effective questions.