Things I Learned on the Train

I used to ride the “Coaster” to and from work every day, a trip from the North County area of San Diego into the city of San Diego itself; about a 50 minute ride. Surrounded by professionals commuting back and forth everyday, the train car is fertile ground for interesting discussion, at least when I sit near someone interested in talking. Twice I have had very interesting conversations with an older gentleman, an aggressive atheist who claimed to be writing a book that would put the final nail in the coffin of Christianity.

I would like to take a few moments today to focus on tactics; what did I do right during these conversations? What did I do wrong? Hopefully, I (and you) can learn a little bit through this self-examination on my part and be better prepared next we are faced with a similar opportunity.

In thinking over the conversations, I have identified one primary misstep that I made several times throughout the discussion: I allowed him to dominate the conversation. I don’t mean that he spent most of the time talking, but rather that I spent most of my time responding to his claims rather than making him work as hard as he worked me.

In conversations such as this one, the gentleman I was debating is known as a “steamroller.” The general M.O. of a steamroller is to ask a question, listen to the answer for a few moments and then either interrupt with his own thoughts on the subject, cutting the other person off, or ask a completely new question, without responding to anything the other has said or allowing him (me in this case) to finish the thought he had begun.

My “opponent” was a classic steamroller who jumped from topic to topic, the gospels aren’t reliable, the genealogy of Joseph is contradictory, the two versions of the ten-commandments are different, various failings of early church writers, morally problematic passages in the Law, without letting me finish a single thought or ever responding to any of the arguments I made. What can one do if caught is a conversation like this?

The answer, in hindsight, is perfectly clear.

I have spent the last third of my life studying history, culture, theology, textural criticism and philosophy - in short apologetics, and was well prepared for most of my fellow conversationalist’s questions; I felt that I gave very good responses to most of them. However, by allowing him to control the topics, I let him get away from arguments without ever truly engaging them.

I should have taken control of the situation. Allowing the atheist or skeptic to control conversations is one of the most common mistakes that Christians make. It always goes like this: The atheist makes a claim. The Christian does an enormous amount of heavy lifting in the arenas of Scripture, History, Culture, Archeology, etc. to refute the claim. The atheist makes a new claim and the process is repeated until the Christian doesn’t have a satisfactory response and the atheist claims victory.

I should have kindly and politely interrupted the gentleman, saying something to the effect of, “Excuse me, but you claimed that the events of Jesus’ life, as reported in the Gospels are identical to many of the events in the life of the Pagan deity Mithra. I have demonstrated that this simply is not the case. What do think?” In other words, politely request that he finish the conversation that he began. This is not rude, or aggressive; it is asking him to do the courteous thing and respond to my comments on his original claim. Not only is it respectful for him to address my comments, but his failure to do so allows him to skate through the conversation without doing any of the intellectual heavy lifting.

In thinking back on the conversations, I believe that I did two things right in particular.

The first thing that anyone must know, particularly Christians as we are always hot to defend Christianity, is that the one who makes the claim bears the burden of proof. For example, while engaged in another conversation with an atheist, he made the claim, “Belief in God is irrational.” What many Christians do, and what I used to do, at this point is launch into a full scale argument demonstrating why this claim is false. Instead, the right response is to say, “Oh really? What do you mean?” and then to wait.

You see, my friend made a claim, but if he can’t back it up with evidence or an argument, why should I (or you) have to put yourself through all the trouble of refuting it. In addition, allowing him to expand on and defend his claim lets you know exactly how you should address it. Maybe he has a specific beef with the rationality of belief in God that you might miss completely if you just launch into a full fledged defense of it.

This occurred several times during my conversations on the train, and thankfully I recognized them and bounced that ball right back into my friends court with a simple, “What do you mean by that?”

The second thing I did right, on several occasions, was to recognize when an a claim was irrelevant. In my second conversation with this atheist gentleman he kept bringing up examples of self-professed Christians who have engaged in gross immorality during some time in their life after openly accepting Christ. It should be immediately apparent to everyone that immorality or criminality in the lives of certain self-professed followers of Christ has little to do the main topic we were discussing; namely the reality of God and the truth claims of Jesus and the Bible.

I thank God that he gave me the insight during these conversations to not fall into the trap of defending or rejecting the imperfect lives of certain believers, but to simply point out that Pope so-and-so had multiple children out of wedlock and murdered his rivals says nothing about the truth of Jesus, only that we human beings are sinful (which the Bible points out numerous times itself).

Two closing thoughts: Some Christians object the term ‘tactics’ when thinking about how we should engage unbelievers in conversations; they believe the use of rhetorical tactics is somehow tricking the unbeliever or is unchristian in some way. I disagree, tactics, when used fairly, are simply the wise application of knowledge in a conversation. All Christians should be able to condone that.

Secondly, many Christians question the value of discussing apologetics with hardened atheists. They claim that we should just give them the gospel and let them do with it what they will, allow God to work on them. This is true, we do need to give everyone the gospel and God will work on them; but some, like the gentleman on the train, have erected mental road blocks to God which need to be torn down before they can genuinely accept the gospel message. God often uses other believers to accomplish this.

As I was getting off the train, this man thanked me for the conversation and then said something that floored me: “I have never spoken with a Christian believer like you before.” This man has gone his whole life, apparently, believing that Christians are irrational and must ignore science, history, and culture in addition to doing mental gymnastics to get around supposed Biblical contradictions. In me, by the grace of God, he saw a follower of Christ who doesn’t do any of those things, one who didn’t fit his mold. Maybe, just maybe, his first mental road-block has fallen away.