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Defending the Faith Part 3: Using Columbo to Lead the Way

by Greg Koukl

The third use of Columbo takes us on the offensive, yet in an inoffensive way. We will ask a different kind of question, sometimes called a “leading question.”

As the name suggests, leading questions take the other person in the direction we want them to go. Think of yourself like an archer shooting at a target. Questions are your arrows. Your target will be different in different situations. Sometimes your goal will be to defeat what you think is a bad argument or a flawed point of view. Your questions will be “aimed” at that purpose. Or you may want to use questions to indirectly explain or advance your own ideas. Sometimes you will set up the terms of the conversation using questions to put you in a more beneficial position for your next move.

In each of these cases, questions accomplish two things mere statements cannot. Every time you ask a question and get a favorable response, the person is telling you he understands the point you’re making and he agrees with it, at least provisionally. He takes another step forward with you in the thinking process.

Here’s why this is so important. Ultimately, we want to win someone over to our point of view. But we do not want to “force” our opinions on him. Instead, we want to persuade him. When the steps to a conclusion are both clear and reasonable, it is much easier to convince someone because he can see the route clearly. He can even retrace it on his own if he wants to. With each question, we lead him closer toward our destination. In this way, we bring him along on the journey.

Generally, your leading questions will be used to inform, persuade, set up, or refute. Let me show you how this tactic plays out in a specific example.

As you step out as an ambassador for Christ, inevitably you will be asked what I call “the question.” It’s one of the most important questions anyone can ask, but it’s also one of the most difficult because the correct answer—a simple “yes”—would be wildly misleading.

“You’re saying that just because someone doesn’t believe in Jesus they are going to Hell?"

Someone once said if you word the question right, you can win any debate. This question is a classic case in point. A simple “yes” would be the correct answer, but it actually would distort the truth.

Remember that the first responsibility of an ambassador is knowledge—an accurately informed mind. Knowing that people need to trust in Jesus or face judgment, though, is not enough. Since this truth does not give an accurate sense of why Jesus matters, God seems petty, pitching people into Hell because of some inconsequential detail of Christian theology.

I addressed the issue of why Jesus is the only way when the question came up during a book promotion at a local Barnes & Noble. I met an attorney there who didn’t understand why he, a Jew, needed Jesus. He believed in God, and he was doing his best to live a moral life. Those were the important things, it seemed to him—how he lived, not what he believed. Here is how I used Columbo questions to lead him to a proper understanding of the cross.

“Let me ask you a question,” I began. “Do you think people who commit moral crimes ought to be punished?”

“Well, since I’m a prosecuting attorney,” he chuckled, “I guess I do.”

“Good. So do I. Now, a second question: Have you ever committed any moral crimes?”

He paused for a moment. This was getting personal. “Yes,” he nodded, “I guess I have.”

“So have I,” I offered candidly, agreeing with him again. “But that puts us both in a tight spot, doesn’t it? We both believe people who do bad things should be punished, and we both believe we’re guilty on that score.” I waited a moment for the significance to sink in. “Do you know what I call that?” I asked. “I call that bad news.”

In less than 60 seconds I had accomplished a remarkable thing with my two questions. I didn’t have to convince this man he was a sinner. He was telling me. I didn’t have to convince him he deserved to be punished. He was telling me.

I was tapping into a deep intuition every person shares: knowledge of his own guilt and a realization that his guilt should be punished. And I didn’t do it arrogantly or in an obnoxious, condescending way. I freely admitted I was in the same trouble he was.

Now that we agreed on the problem, it was time to give the solution. (This is where the “knowledge” part of the ambassador equation is so vital.)

“This is where Jesus comes in,” I explained. “We both know we’re guilty. That’s the problem. So God offers a solution: a pardon, free of charge. But clemency is on His terms, not ours. Jesus is God’s means of pardon. He personally paid the penalty in our place. He took the rap for our crimes. No one else did that. Only Jesus. Now we have a choice to make. Either we take the pardon and go free, or turn it down and pay for our crimes ourselves.”

In this conversation I handled an awkward question by combining two things: my knowledge of what Jesus accomplished on the cross with asking leading questions. My questions led the attorney, step by step, to an answer to his question.

You can employ the Columbo tactic to take the conversation in an entirely new direction. Instead of using questions to gather information, questions can be very effective to lead someone in the direction we want the conversation to go engaging the other person’s thoughts the whole way. Such “leading questions” often work better than statements to explain our view, to set up the discussion in a way that makes it easier for us to make our point, to soften our challenge to another’s view, or to indirectly exploit a flaw we detect in his thinking.

Unlike the first two uses of Columbo, this one requires knowledge of some kind. When we know what we want to accomplish (e.g., to inform, to persuade, to set-up, or to refute), we can use leading questions to achieve our purpose. This is a skill that develops over time, so if you stall out at first, don’t be discouraged. Instead of trying to force a conversation you don’t have the resources to pursue, you can simply move on knowing you have done the best that we could for the moment.

If someone’s thinking is flawed, the key to finding the error is to listen carefully to the reasons for his views, then ask if his conclusions follow from his evidence. Point out errors with questions rather than statements. You might soften your challenge by phrasing your concern as a request for clarification or by suggesting an alternative with the words “Have you considered…” before offering your own ideas.

Next week: Columbo - The First Question

For more extensive tactics training go to http://www.str.org/ and look for Tactics in Defending the Faith Mentoring Series or STRi DVD interactive training in our online store or call Stand to Reason at 1-800-2-REASON.

Study Finds Glaring Bloopers in Texas Science Curricula

by Discovery Institute

Austin, TX—According to a study released today by the non-profit Discovery Institute, bogus embryo drawings, long-debunked claims about tonsils, and outdated information from a 1950s lab experiment highlight the glaring bloopers found in proposed science curricula currently being considered by the Texas State Board of Education.

“Retro-science must be in, because the proposed curricula are filled with outdated scientific claims,” said Casey Luskin, a policy and education analyst with Discovery Institute. “It’s truly amazing how much discredited information keeps getting recycled year after year.”

In order to satisfy state educational standards set in 2009 (TEKS), the Board of Education asked publishers to submit supplementary curricula that would enable students to “analyze and evaluate” core aspects of evolutionary theory, and to “examin[e] all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking.” But according to Discovery Institute‘s 70-page study, only one curriculum out of the 10 evaluated managed to comply with the TEKS as well as avoid glaring scientific errors.

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500 TSA Officers Fired or Suspended for Stealing

by Howard Portnoy

Houston, you’ve got a problem. Every airport does, and it goes by a familiar name: TSA theft.

In the case of Houston, the problem was Transportation and Security Administration agent Karla Renee Morgan, who decided to augment her salary by helping herself to the contents of passengers’ luggage as it passed through her security checkpoint.

In 2009, a TSA screener at Newark Liberty International Airport by the name of Pythias Brown was sentenced to three years in federal prison on multiple counts of grand larceny. Known to eBay buyers as “Alirla,” Brown had run the largest one-man theft ring in the short history of the Transportation Security Administration, netting an estimated $400,000 via the resale of stolen high-priced electronics.

And even Brown represents just the tip of the iceberg. According to TSA records, press reports, and court documents, Brown is just one of some 500 TSA officers who have been fired or suspended for stealing from passenger luggage since the agency’s creation in November of 2001. The airports servicing New York City—John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty—harbor the most flagrant offenders, but virtually no city in the nation is safe from the TSA’s sticky fingers.

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NBC Omits ‘Under God’ From Pledge Of Allegiance - TWICE!!

Obama Chief of Staff Says he Can't Defend Obamanomics

by Ed Morrissey

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley took heat from business executives Thursday for the Obama administration’s regulatory expansions. Daley also said he didn’t have any good answers for some of what President Obama is doing and expressed frustration about the “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” Daley said at a National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) meeting.

Daley couldn’t answer basic questions and continually faced criticism from the executives in the room. The business leaders even applauded each other’s criticism of the administration. “At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government ‘throws sand into the gears of progress....’”

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Jihad American Style

Ethanol Subsidy Finally Eliminated

by Lurita Doan

A stubborn Washington has taken a long time to finally come to its senses and kill ethanol subsides. Once heralded as a great "green" initiative, studies soon proved that diverting huge amounts of American farmland to the production of expensive corn-based ethanol actually increased green house gases. America's best scientists warned stubborn senators that the nation’s ethanol policy was not achieving the desired results, even as it consumed massive amounts of taxpayer money.

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New EPA Rules Will Increase Cost of Energy

by IBD Editorials

Overregulation: The Environmental Protection Agency has two new rules it wants to impose on utilities that use coal. But the rules make sense only if you want less energy, higher prices and fewer jobs.

Remember then-candidate Barack Obama's comment in January 2008 that the price of electricity would "necessarily skyrocket" once his policies went into effect?

It's now coming to pass — just as OPEC has decided it doesn't want to pump more oil. Get the picture? We're being systematically starved of energy, and our economy is suffering. Just don't ask the White House to help.

Broadly, the new EPA rules seek to clean up the air. Everyone's for that, of course. But at what cost?

According to a study the economic consulting firm National Economic Research Associates conducted for the coal industry, the two new rules mentioned above will by themselves cost electric utilities $184 billion by 2030 and kill 1.4 million jobs.

So why do it? Coal, our nation's No. 1 energy source for making electricity, is "dirty." And granted, coal isn't the cleanest available energy. But clean-coal technologies make it cleaner than ever.

It's also the least expensive and most easily available energy we have. For a pittance, it provides fully half the power we need to heat and cool our homes and run our TVs and computers.

But if these EPA rules go into effect, the cost of energy will shoot up 11% to 23% in just a few years.

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Electric cars may not be so green after all...

by Ben Webster

ELECTRIC cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents because of the energy consumed in making their batteries, a study has found.

An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes.

The British study, which is the first analysis of the full lifetime emissions of electric cars covering manufacturing, driving and disposal, undermines the case for tackling climate change by the rapid introduction of electric cars.

The Committee on Climate Change, the UK government watchdog, has called for the number of electric cars on Britain's roads to increase from a few hundred now to 1.7 million by 2020.

Britain's Department for Transport is spending $66 million over the next year giving up to 8,600 buyers of electric cars a grant of $7700 towards the purchase price. Ministers are considering extending the scheme.

The study was commissioned by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, which is jointly funded by the British government and the car industry. It found that a mid-size electric car would produce 23.1 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime, compared with 24 tonnes for a similar petrol car. Emissions from manufacturing electric cars are at least 50 per cent higher because batteries are made from materials such as lithium, copper and refined silicon, which require much energy to be processed.

Many electric cars are expected to need a replacement battery after a few years. Once the emissions from producing the second battery are added in, the total CO2 from producing an electric car rises to 12.6 tonnes, compared with 5.6 tonnes for a petrol car. Disposal also produces double the emissions because of the energy consumed in recovering and recycling metals in the battery. The study also took into account carbon emitted to generate the grid electricity consumed.

Greg Archer, director of Low CVP, said the industry should state the full lifecycle emissions of cars rather than just tailpipe emissions, to avoid misleading consumers. He said that drivers wanting to minimise emissions could be better off buying a small, efficient petrol or diesel car. “People have to match the technology to their particular needs,” he said.

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Defending the Faith Part 2: Why Tactics?

by Greg Koukl
Let’s discuss our need for tactics, what they are, and how to use them.

Our need for tactics concerns our commission to be effective ambassadors for Christ. Ambassadors use three essential skills:

Knowledge: an accurately informed mind
Wisdom: an artful method
Character: an attractive manner


These skills play a part in every effective engagement with a non-believer.

The second skill the artful method, or “tactical wisdom” is our focus in this series of emails. Tactics are distinct from strategy. Strategy involves the big picture, the large-scale operation, of one’s positioning prior to engagement. I use the term “strategy” in reference to the tremendous resources of knowledge available to us to be adequately prepared to give an account for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15). In our case, Christianity has strategic superiority it is well “positioned” on the battlefield because our ideas can hold up under serious scrutiny compared to other views.

We have an excellent case. We have the best answers to life’s most important questions.

Tactics entail the artful arranging of resources, specifically in maneuvering through conversations. They allow you to:

Use your knowledge in creative ways.
Choreograph the particulars of your response.
Style your response to objections.
Employ specific methods in addressing attacks.
Guide yourself with sound reasoning, clear thinking, and aggressive advocacy.
Often a clever commander has the advantage over a superior opponent through deft tactical maneuvering.

Tactics should not be used as tricks or slick ruses, clever ploys to destroy non-Christians, forcing them to submit to your point of view, attempts to belittle or humiliate to gain notches in your spiritual belt.

Instead, tactics should enable you to present the truth clearly and persuasively. They should enable you to maneuver and get a footing or an advantage in a conversation, helping you to navigate through the minefields. Tactics put you in the driver’s seat, allowing you to, in many cases, stop a challenger cold and turn the tables, offering him the arguments for Christianity he should carefully consider.

The goal in using tactics is to:

Manage, not manipulate
Control, not coerce
Finesse, not fight

Tactics are powerful and can be abused quite easily. It’s not difficult to make someone look silly with these techniques. We should be direct, focused and challenging, but never abrasive, abusive or alarming. This is where the third quality of an ambassador plays an important role: Character an attractive manner. Our goal is to find clever ways to exploit another’s bad thinking for the purposes of guiding them to truth.

In the next e-mail I’ll introduce you to Lieutenant Columbo, the “queen mother” of all tactics.

Next week: The "Queen Mother" of Tactics

For more extensive tactics training go to www.str.org and look for Tactics in Defending the Faith Mentoring Series or STRi DVD interactive training in our online store or call Stand to Reason at 1-800-2-REASON.

Shannan Parker's Description Of The Crucifixion

Global Warming Charlatans Feel the Heat

by Alan Caruba

The University of Virginia, after vigorously resisting a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request for data related to the emails of Michael Mann, was the subject of a court order to make them available. While global warming is known worldwide for its claim that manmade warming would doom the Earth, the names and machinations behind the fraud are far less well known.

Mann, a climatologist, was part of a relatively small clique of charlatans who, working for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), conjured up all manner of “proof” that the Earth was on dangerous trajectory, heating up. Mann invented the “hockey stick” graph that demonstrated this bit of climate magic.

With Al Gore as the most famous face of global warming, Mann and others lent credibility to the IPCC that called for massive reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions resulting from energy use of fossil fuels, primarily oil and coal.

Mann’s problem began when the “hockey stick” graph was debunked and demolished as bogus. All this occurred while Mann was on the faculty of the University of Virginia and while large amounts of research grant money were being received by the University to support Mann and others.

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Sun Headed Into Hibernation, Solar Studies Predict

by Victoria Jaggard

Enjoy our stormy sun while it lasts. When our star drops out of its latest sunspot activity cycle, the sun is most likely going into hibernation, scientists announced today.

Three independent studies of the sun's insides, surface, and upper atmosphere all predict that the next solar cycle will be significantly delayed—if it happens at all. Normally, the next cycle would be expected to start roughly around 2020.

The combined data indicate that we may soon be headed into what's known as a grand minimum, a period of unusually low solar activity.

The predicted solar "sleep" is being compared to the last grand minimum on record, which occurred between 1645 and 1715.

Known as the Maunder Minimum, the roughly 70-year period coincided with the coldest spell of the Little Ice Age, when European canals regularly froze solid and Alpine glaciers encroached on mountain villages.

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Yale, Jews, and Double Standards

by Caroline B. Glick

Last week Yale University announced its decision to close down its institute for the study of anti-Semitism. The move has been widely criticized as politically motivated. For its part, the university claims that the move was the result of purely academic considerations.

While not clear-cut, an analysis of the story lends to the conclusion that politics were in all likelihood the decisive factor in the decision. And the implications of Yale's move for the scholarly inquiry into anti-Semitism are deeply troubling.

The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) was founded in 2006. Its purpose was to provide a scholarly approach to the study of contemporary and historical anti- Semitism. It was attached to Yale's Institution of Social and Policy Studies. It was fully funded from private contributions. Yale did not in any way subsidize its activities from the university's budget.

Since its inception, under the peripatetic leadership of its Executive Director Dr. Charles Small, YIISA organized seminars and conferences that brought leading scholars from all over the world to Yale to discuss anti-Semitism in an academic setting. Its conferences and publications produced cutting edge research. These included a groundbreaking statistical study published by Small and Prof. Edward Kaplan from Yale's School of Management that demonstrated a direct correlation between anti-Israel sentiment and anti- Jewish sentiment.


At a large conference last August titled, "Global anti-Semitism: A Crisis of Modernity," among other things, YIISA confronted the genocidal nature of Islamic anti-Semitism. The conference produced more than 800 pages of scholarly research materials on all facets of anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitism in Western academia.

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“This is What Democracy Looks Like” Yemeni Style

by Trevor Loudon

Do you think this crowd has a Jeffersonian constitutional republic in mind?

Mob power, egged on by Marxists, Iranian agents and the Muslim Brotherhood, is not a recipe for any sort of stable Western style government.

Dictatorship is inevitable. its just a matter of what flavor.



by Socialist Aotearoa

Huge crowds celebrated on the streets of Yemen on Sunday after president Ali Abdullah Saleh fled to Saudi Arabia—saying he needed medical treatment.

“The people have brought down the regime,” chanted the crowds in University Square at the heart of the capital, Sana’a. Protesters have renamed it Change Square and camped there since February.

Saleh, who has held power in the country for 33 years, was injured in an attack on the presidential compound on Friday of last week. Other leading members of his regime were also hurt.

Throughout Friday and Saturday, members of Saleh’s regime insisted that the injuries were minor.

However on Sunday morning it was announced that Saleh had left to have surgery.

Although Saleh’s supporters still say he will come back “in a few days”, that was looking increasingly unlikely.

“The squares have been filling up with people celebrating, and that in itself makes it harder for the dictator to return,” Abubakr Al-Shamahi, a Yemeni activist based in Britain, told the British Socialist Worker newspaper…

The real risk is that the Yemeni protest movement does not continue after Saleh resigns.

But Abubakr Al-Shamahi thinks it will.

“Yemenis are very stubborn people,” he said. “They’ve suffered 800 dead. People won’t let things go back to ‘normal’. People want change.”

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Rising forest density offsets climate change

by Alister Doyle

(Reuters) - Rising forest density in many countries is helping to offset climate change caused by deforestation from the Amazon basin to Indonesia, a study showed on Sunday.

The report indicated that the size of trees in a forest -- rather than just the area covered -- needed to be taken into account more in U.N.-led efforts to put a price on forests as part of a nascent market to slow global warming.

"Higher density means world forests are capturing more carbon," experts in Finland and the United States said...

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Radicalization of Muslims in U.S. prisons