Have a Conversation, Not a Fight
Article adapted from episode content.
Conversations surrounding abortion frequently escalate into intensely heated disputes, often resembling a “combustible gas fire” that ignites with a mere spark and “blows up in your face”. While some of this volatility is inherent to the topic and not necessarily the fault of the individual, there are aspects that can be controlled to prevent such explosive outcomes. The core challenge lies in a significant worldview divide prevalent in Western nations, including the U.S., Canada, and Europe. This divide centers on two fundamental questions: “Is truth true? In other words, is moral truth real and knowable? Can we actually know what’s right and wrong? Or are moral is just a preference like choosing chocolate ice cream over vanilla?” and “What makes humans valuable in the first place?”.
The debate over abortion, fundamentally, is not about medical procedures, gender politics, or religious imposition; it is about whether “the unborn count as one of us”. This echoes the historical debate over slavery, which was not about property rights or religious enforcement, but whether an enslaved person was considered a human being, and thus, should not be treated as property. If the unborn are indeed considered “one of us,” then any justification for ending their lives must be as compelling as reasons required to justify killing any other human. This deep-seated philosophical difference is why abortion discussions become so charged. However, it is possible to engage in these conversations constructively, where participants genuinely stick to the issue and listen to one another. This article explores a strategic approach to fostering such productive dialogues, drawing insights from an interview with a university student on the topic of morals and abortion.
Setting the Ground Rules: Objective vs. Subjective Morality
A critical first step in navigating the abortion conversation is to establish whether the individual believes abortion is a moral issue with objective truths or merely a matter of personal preference. In a relativistic, postmodern culture, many people perceive abortion as a preference akin to choosing an ice cream flavor, which can lead to both parties “talking right past each other”. To address this, a conversation might begin by posing a seemingly simple question: “Is there a difference between these two statements I’m about to make? Chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla. That’s statement one. Statement two, it’s wrong to torture toddlers for fun”.
Initially, a common response is to classify the ice cream statement as a “subjective opinion” and the torture statement as “pretty objective”. This acknowledges a distinction between objective and subjective claims. However, when pressed on whether morals, in general, fall into the objective category, individuals may express disagreement, arguing that “a lot of like decisions you can make morally that are also subjective depending on the situation”. This often reveals a philosophical stance where “most of her worldview is built on the premise that morals are totally subjective,” a position they are hesitant to abandon.
Despite initial resistance, the Socratic method can reveal underlying concessions. When asked if it’s “ever you could imagine it would be okay to torture toddlers for fun,” the answer is unequivocally “No”. This establishes at least one “objective moral truth” that can be universally agreed upon, demonstrating that “she does accept that there might be some objective morals out there, at least in some situations”.
The conversation might then delve into whether one can like something but still acknowledge it as wrong. The example of desiring to steal a Corvette but refraining because “it would be wrong” highlights this distinction. Further probing reveals the underlying tension: if one person feels stealing a car is “morally okay,” does that make it so? This leads back to the assertion that “morals really are subjective because even though I might feel like torturing to others for fun is wrong, somebody else could feel a different way”. This demonstrates an attempt to “switch her position to hedge it a bit” to maintain a subjective moral framework.
The key is to “graciously but firmly press the point” without creating a “gotcha” moment. Asking, “If someone felt it was okay to torture toddlers for fun, would that make it okay?” elicits a “No,” confirming that it would “still be objective. wrong even though they felt it was okay”. The goal is clarity, not confrontation. The conversation can further explore the existence of non-situational objective moral truths by asking if there’s “any possible world we could conceive of where racism and rape are okay?”. The answer is consistently “No,” solidifying the concept of objective moral truths. This often leads to the individual softening their stance, acknowledging that “some things I feel like are objective” while others remain subjective, moving away from an “all morals are objective or subjective” dichotomy. This creates “room to work” for further discussion.
Engaging the Core Issue: Human Value and Equality
Once a common ground on objective moral truths is established, the conversation can transition to abortion itself. The New York law liberalizing abortion up to nine months and stripping protection from fetuses surviving abortion procedures serves as a tangible example to prompt discussion. When asked for thoughts, an individual may express a “pro-choice” stance but often with limits, such as drawing a line at the third trimester. This limit is often justified by the idea that there has been ample time to make a decision, and beyond a certain point, it becomes “unfair to the child”.
Probing the reasoning behind this “decisive point” often reveals a reliance on fetal development. The individual may acknowledge that a “fetus is like pretty well develop,” with a heartbeat around the eight-week mark, and that it “develops a lot faster than people might think it does”. This admission itself can cause internal conflict, demonstrating that “this knowledge is already bothering her”.
The conversation then pivots to the logical implications of development as the basis for rights: “if development gives us our right to life or our value, do you believe then those with more development should have greater rights than those with less?”. This directly challenges the premise that value hinges on developmental stage. When asked if this poses a “problem for human equality,” a thoughtful individual will often concede, “Yes”. This moment highlights a crucial point: if equality is valued, then basing rights on developmental differences leads to a contradictory position.
Another common deflection in abortion debates is the “my body, my choice” argument. The speaker notes that this is often a cultural refrain rather than a conscious dodge. While respecting the individual’s perspective, it’s important to “stay on message” and bring the conversation back to the core issue of human value. The individual may revert to the idea that as long as the baby is “inside her body,” it’s her choice, acknowledging that “Whether or not that makes sense or is justified, I don’t really know”.
To create “cognitive dissonance,” an example from fetal surgery can be introduced. Doctors can remove a fetus from the womb, repair a herniated diaphragm, and then place it back inside, with the baby eventually born at full term. The question then becomes: “If location matters, whether it’s in the womb or out, does that particular fetus go from having no rights just prior to the surgery to having rights while outside during the surgery, but back to having no rights again when placed back in?”. This thought experiment directly challenges the “location” argument for personhood, often leading to a moment of significant intellectual struggle, described as “blowing my little liberal moderate mind”.
Tactical Considerations for Effective Dialogue
1. Address Underlying Worldviews: The success of such conversations hinges on understanding and engaging with the other person’s foundational worldview. If someone adheres to “body self dualism”—the belief that one’s true identity is solely their “thoughts, your desires, your cognitive processes,” separate from the physical body—then presenting arguments based on fetal development (e.g., “by week 12 it can already dream,” “by week 16 it can feel pain”) will be ineffective. These developmental milestones “doesn’t mean squat to you” if identity is disassociated from the body. Therefore, before discussing abortion specifics, it is essential to determine what they believe makes a human being valuable: is it what they do, or do they possess “intrinsic value” simply by being human?. Understanding their views on objective truth is equally vital.
2. Ask Thoughtful Questions, Don’t Just Shout Conclusions: A common pitfall in the pro-life movement has been “shouting conclusions rather than establishing arguments”. Holding signs that declare “Abortion kills children” might be seen as merely a personal opinion by passersby. Instead, asking questions like, “Don’t you think all humans have an equal right to life?” encourages thoughtful engagement. The goal is not to win an immediate argument or to deliver a “gotcha question” that shuts down the conversation. Such tactics may silence an opponent but rarely lead to a rethinking of their position. The true objective is to “put a pebble in someone’s shoe”. Just as a pebble irritates until it’s dealt with, a well-placed, thought-provoking question or point can prompt ongoing reflection, even after the conversation ends. This is like getting “a single rather than swinging for the fences” in baseball; the aim is to get on base and create future opportunities for deeper engagement.
3. Watch Your Tone and Be Gracious: Maintaining a respectful and genuinely appreciative tone is paramount. The objective is not to “corner you and make you feel stupid”. If the other person feels belittled or embarrassed, they will cease to listen. A successful conversation, even one that challenges deeply held beliefs, should end with both parties feeling respected and heard. Expressing gratitude for their time and willingness to share their thoughts, as seen in the example conversation, fosters a positive environment. The goal is to “give her something to think about,” not to embarrass or ridicule. As “Christian ambassadors,” the approach should be gracious and thoughtful, not aggressive or confrontational.
In conclusion, transforming heated abortion debates into productive conversations requires a strategic shift from confrontation to empathetic inquiry. By first establishing common ground on the nature of objective moral truth and then gently but persistently exploring the implications of differing views on human value, it is possible to plant “pebbles” of thought that encourage genuine reflection. Prioritizing thoughtful questions over declarative statements, maintaining a gracious tone, and understanding the underlying worldviews are crucial components of engaging others effectively. This approach fosters an environment where individuals are open to reconsidering their positions, leading to more meaningful dialogue on one of society’s most contentious issues.
Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.
Do all conversations on abortion have to end badly? They often do and we’ll talk about why and how you can fix that on this episode of the case for life. Welcome. It’s great to have you. How many times have you been in a conversation with someone on abortion and it heats up almost like a combustible gas fire? Just boom, there’s some little spark and the whole thing just blows up in your face. Well, it happens for a number of reasons. One of which is not your fault.
The other though, you might have some ability to control how heated it gets. Let me begin with the part that’s not your fault. The reasons why heartbeat or the reason why conversations on abortion can heat up in a heartbeat have to do with the big worldview divide that we face in our country today. Our country, in fact, all of the western world, Europe, Canada, US, all of the western nations are having huge debates over two key questions. And these questions impact you, they impact your grandchildren, they impact your kids, and they will for the remainder of their lives.
Here’s the worldview questions we’re haggling about right now in the Western world. Number one, we’re haggling over the question, is truth true? In other words, is moral truth real and knowable? Can we actually know what’s right and wrong? Or are morals just a preference like choosing chocolate ice cream over vanilla? The second question we’re arguing about is what makes humans valuable in the first place? At bottom, the debate over abortion is not about a surgical procedure. It’s not about who loves women and who hates women.
It’s not about who wants to control women’s bodies. It’s not about religious people forcing their views. None of that is relevant to the actual debate. Here’s why abortion debates get heated because fundamentally the arguing question that we’re faced with is this. Do the unborn count as one of us? And one side says yes, the other says no. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, this strangely sounds very similar to what happened with slavery. And you’re right. It was the same exact worldview question.
The debate over slavery in the United States and in Great Britain had nothing to do really with property rights. Had nothing to do with northerners wanting to force their narrow religion on southerners. No. What the debate was about is the slave a man like we are? Because if he’s a man, he should not be treated as property like a man owns a hog. In other words, what you’ve got to do is understand that if the slave has human standing, he should not be subjected to the kind of treatment we were giving him when we forced him to serve us.
With abortion, it’s the same issue. If the unborn are one of us, the reasons we use for killing them must be as compelling as would be reasons given to justify killing you or me. That’s why the debate is so heated. But sometimes it’s possible to have a conversation where people actually stick to the issue at hand and actually listen to what’s being said. We’re going to show you such a conversation in just a moment here. What happened was a while back I was on campus at the University of Georgia and we did some filming of some conversations I had with students on the topic of morals and on the topic of abortion.
And we’re going to show you a conversation that I think is quite helpful for a number of reasons. First of all, the young lady I was interviewing was very gracious. She was very open to a conversation and she actually listened. She didn’t just, you know, get angry when I would make a point or ask a question. She actually would consider it. And the other thing I admired about her, she would acknowledge when I made a good point. And I know you’re probably thinking that’s never happened to me in a conversation on abortion.
Well, give a watch to this. And I think you’ll notice a couple of things. Number one, I was not working at gotcha questions. This tends to happen in debates over abortion. Each side wants to get the other with a gotcha question that just shuts everything down. You may succeed in shutting your opponent down, but you won’t succeed in getting them to rethink their position. So, this conversation, I think, actually did some work on her in terms of her rethinking her position.
I think you’ll see that in the course of our conversation. So, let’s take a look at this and when we come back, I will talk about it after you watch this brief interview. I’ll talk about it, give you some other pointers and thoughts that I think are relevant to conversations like this. My hope is you’ll get some ideas for how you might engage family and friends on the topic of abortion. Let’s take a look at this conversation. Here’s my first question.
Okay. Is there a difference between these two statements I’m about to make? Chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla. That’s statement one. Statement two, it’s wrong to torture toddlers for fun. Notice that right out of the gate, I was determining whether or not she thought abortion was a moral issue or a preference issue, like choosing your favorite flavor of ice cream. That’s important because in a relativistic post-modern culture like ours, people think that abortion is a mere preference issue and we will talk right past each other if we don’t establish the ground rules upfront.
If you heard me say chocolate ice cream is morally superior to vanilla,
What would be your response?
Is morally superior? I mean that’s a sub that’s a subjective opinion. I don’t think it’s
Yeah. Okay. I guess I would say that the saying that chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla is an opinion, whereas I feel like saying it’s wrong to torture toddlers for fun, I would say, is pretty objective.
Objective. Okay. So, there’s a difference between objective claims and subjective ones. And
Morals would fall in the category of objective rather than subjective. Is that
Because then I don’t necessarily agree with that because I feel like there are a lot of like decisions you can make morally that are also subjective depending on the situation.
Mhm.
I wouldn’t say morals are objective.
You can see here that she has already found that her philosophy is on shaky ground. Look, this young lady is not a fool. She knows that most of her worldview is built on the premise that morals are totally subjective and she doesn’t want to give that ground up. The problem is she already did. Is there any place ever you could imagine it would be okay to torture toddlers for fun?
No.
So that’d be one objective moral truth we could agree on.
Yes.
Okay. Remember, one of the points we established in this session was that we’ve got to be clear on what words mean, especially words in our formal pro-life argument. And one of the words we need to defined is the word wrong. So, notice in the conversation right now with this young woman, I’m establishing what the word wrong means, that it’s an objective term, not a subjective one. And you can see she’s intellectually honest enough to concede that she does accept that there might be some objective morals out there, at least in some situations.
Is it possible to like something and still say it’s wrong?
Yes.
For example, my father-in-law drives Corvettes. I’d love to steal one and drive it, but I don’t do it because it would be wrong.
It would be wrong. But would it be subjectively wrong or objectively wrong? I think we say it’s objectively wrong to steal because that’s the law and that’s what we’re taught. But I suppose if you if you were to feel like stealing a car is morally okay, then that’s there’s that’s your I guess. So, I guess I would say that I guess morals really are subjective because even though I might feel like torturing dollars for fun is wrong, somebody else could feel a different way.
So, I guess I can’t really make the claim that morals are objective because they’re not.
She sees the box that she’s put herself in and she’s trying to switch her position to hedge it a bit, but I’m not going to let her do it. I’m going to graciously but firmly press the point that her worldview at this point isn’t going to hold water. If someone felt it was okay to torture toddlers for fun, would that make it okay?
No.
So, it would still be objectively wrong even though they felt it was okay.
Okay, I see. Okay.
This is not a gotcha. I’m just asking for clarity. It’s hard because I feel like it’s kind of situational.
Like
Could there be some things that aren’t situational?
Like in I mean like in terms of defining what is objective and subject? Like for example like is it okay to kill two people in order to save 10 others? That’s kind of a subjective moral situation. Is that like So,
Well, let me let me ask one that I think might help. Is there any possible world we could conceive of where racism and rape are okay?
No.
So, if it’s if there’s no possible world where they could be okay, those would be objective moral truths. So, you’re not saying there are no objective moral truths. You’re saying that not everything is an objective moral truth. Would that be a fair I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
Yeah. No, I would say that some things I feel like are objective.
Okay.
You have to evaluate like harm to others or, you know, kind of stuff like that. But I feel like there are some things that could be subjective. I don’t think it’s fair to say all morals are objective or subjective. Notice that she now softens her position enough to say that some morals are subjective and some are objective, which gives me some room to work. We go on to talk a bit about things like what happened in Nazi Germany. But let’s go ahead and skip ahead to the subject at hand, abortion.
In January, the state of New York liberalized its abortion laws.
Mhm. To basically codify abortion for all nine months of pregnancy. And it also stripped protection from any fetus that survives an abortion procedure. It stripped the legal requirement that that fetus be treated as a patient.
Okay. Your thoughts on that
On abortion? So, I’m generally pro-choice. However, I will say for me there’s even limits to that.
Life is about compromises and I feel like once you hit the third trimester, you’ve had I mean what about 6 months to make the decision to understand, okay, am I, you know, financially able to care for a child? Am I able to emotionally do that? You know, blah blah blah yada this whole thing. So, I feel like doing it up all the way until birth would kind of then be unfair to the child at that point. So, I would say kind of it’s not even really meeting in the middle.
It’s actually kind of meeting twothirds of the way there.
Mhm.
Tell me why you picked that spot as being the decisive point.
I mean, so I know the fetus is like pretty well develop. You can feel the fetus can move I mean around or have a heartbeat around the 8week mark I believe.
So it honestly develops a lot faster than people might think it does.
You can see that this knowledge is already bothering her. She started out by saying she was compromising by admitting that abortion is immoral after the second trimester. But she ends up by admitting that most people don’t realize how quickly a child develops. So what it’s the development of the fetus that once it reaches a certain stage of development, it has more rights than it did before that point. Would that be a fair way to
Sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think so. I just I don’t know. I’m not really about telling people like what to do with their bodies and their choices.
Don’t miss the deflection here. Remember, we made the point that the abortion debate is not about telling people what to do with their bodies. I don’t think she’s making a conscious effort to dodge here as much as she is simply paring something she’s heard in the culture around her. But we’re not going to get sidetracked either way. We’re going to stay on message.
But I do feel like once a fetus gets to a certain development point, it is like in a sense
I mean, yeah. Okay. So, last question.
If development gives us our right to life or our value,
Do you believe then those with more development should have greater rights than those with less?
You’re talking about like abilities versus disabilities?
Well, just development in general. The fetus, as you said, up until about twothirds of the way through where you would draw the line,
Is not as developed as it will be when it’s born or when it’s a teenager or when it’s an adult,
Right?
My question is, if development is what our right to life hangs on, does it follow that those with more physical development have a greater right to life than those with less in or out of the womb? Just as a principle, the way I’m approaching this is if development determines the value of the fetus, doesn’t it follow that those with more development have greater rights than those with less?
Yeah.
Is that a problem for human equality?
Yes.
Again, I appreciate her thoughtful honesty here. This young woman is truly engaging. My hats off to her. It’s just a fine line and I’m not going to say that it that it makes sense or that you know
That following that would you know be equal but I think the reason that we people that identify with my group or opinion draw the line is because a fetus is I mean it’s within your it’s hard cuz it’s like your choice whether to have a child or not, right? Like whether to like conceive or do that and say it happens by accident or you were irresponsible or like some other extreme circumstances, whatever. I guess just the fact that we draw the line because this is another person inside another person.
So therefore, like say if I’m if I’m pregnant, right, I have the control. This is my body. This is my choice what to do. So, I feel like that’s why I kind of draw the line between like inside the womb versus outside.
Whether or not that makes sense or is justified, I don’t really know. But
Here she makes the claim that as long as the baby is inside her body, it’s her choice. She’s reverting back to more of a pro-choice position. So I follow up with an example from embryology in fetal surgery that’s designed to create cognitive dissonance. There are doctors at the University of San Francisco Medical Center and they’re doing surgery on fetuses in uterero and what they’re doing is they’re repairing herniated diaphragm. So what they do is they remove the fetus, repair the diaphragm, put him back in, he’s born 40 weeks.
Okay. If location matters, whether it’s in the womb or out, does that particular fetus go from having no rights just prior to the surgery to having rights while outside during the surgery, but back to having no rights again when placed back in?
This is like This is like blowing my little liberal moderate mind. I think if it’s inside the mother, it’s the parents choice. I Yeah, I don’t really know how else to put that.
Fair enough. You have been fantastic. Thank you for letting us take some time with you and for talking to us and really appreciate you doing that. I know you got a lot on your
Agenda, but thank you. Appreciate it.
Of course.
All right. You’ve had a chance to look at that conversation I had with a student. I want to point out a couple of things. Number one, notice how world views matter. Over and over again on this show, we have stressed that people bring their worldviews to topics on abortion. And often pro-lifers fail to account for that. For example, if someone’s worldview of a human person is body self dualism, in other words, they believe that the real you has nothing to do with your body, the real you is simply your thoughts, your desires, your cognitive processes.
If you think that’s what makes you human and valuable, then talking to somebody about fetal development isn’t going to mean straw to you. If you hear somebody give you a demonstration, look how this fetus develops. Why? By week six it looks like this. By week 12 it can already dream. By week 16 it can feel pain. Whatever it is you pick out doesn’t mean squat to you if you’ve bought the notion that what makes your identity has nothing to do with your body and everything to do with your mental processing.
So if someone brings that worldview to the table and you don’t engage that foundational worldview, you’re going to talk right past them. There’s all kinds of other worldviews. You may have noticed in this particular conversation, I started immediately with the ground rules. In other words, is the person I’m talking to one who actually believes that right and wrong are real? Or do they think that it’s just a mere preference? You choose your morality, I choose mine. And just like we have different tastes when it comes to ice cream, so we have different tastes in morality.
We would never judge you based on liking chocolate over vanilla. So in the same way, we don’t make moral judgments about what one culture might do over another or what one person might do over another. And I think you saw in this conversation that I chose to engage her underlying worldview before I even went to a conversation about abortion. And I think this is helpful because I’ve had a lot of people say to me, “How do I talk about abortion to people who you know don’t want to talk about it, maybe to family members around the Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner table.
How can I talk about abortion without looking like I’m just wanting to bring up an awful subject while people are finishing their turkey and stuffing?” Well, one way to get started is to go after their underlying worldview. What is it they believe about human beings in the first place? Do they believe humans are valuable for what they do? Or are they of the persuasion that humans have intrinsic value, that they’re valuable in and of themselves? What do they think about right and wrong?
In their minds, are right and wrong real and something we can know, or is it somehow beyond our ability to know right from wrong? You want to get answers to those questions before you engage on a specific topic like abortion or gay marriage for example or transgenderism. It’s helpful to know what worldview are they bringing to the table. Now you notice the student was wearing a shirt that said equality. So in the course of my conversation, rather than challenge her on what she meant by that, I chose to engage her on the worldview she was bringing to the table.
You know, it was kind of interesting. On one hand, she was arguing that a fetus develops and gains value as it develops. But on the other hand, she’s wearing a t-shirt that says all humans should be treated equally and fairly. A premise I can agree with. Well, if she comes to the conclusion that the unborn are indeed human beings, then shouldn’t they also be treated equally? Now, I did not call out her shirt and say, “Look at your shirt. You should believe what it says.” I didn’t do that.
I didn’t try to make her uncomfortable. Instead, what I wanted to do was give her something to think about by talking about what is it that makes us equal and valuable in the first place? And why do fetuses fail the test? And pointing out to her that if she picks out properties that make us valuable, then it follows those who have more of those properties or characteristics have a greater right to life than those who have less. And her case for equality then would fall apart.
So, giving her something to think about is the way to avoid an inflammatory conversation. It’s also a way to avoid having the person just shut you down and decide I don’t want they don’t want to hear anything more about what you’re saying. All right, we’re going to take a break. When we come back, I want to close out the show by giving you a couple of tactical points that will help you in these types of conversations. And I’ll also mention a few resources that can help you engage others better on one-on-one personal conversations.
Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back friends. Good to have you with us today. Before I go any further, I want to remind you one more time that we have a case for life course up. Although we call it something a little more pedestrian. We call it pro-life 101. And here’s why we call it that. You’ll learn to make a case for life in less than a week. In fact, in just seven sessions, you will learn to master the moral logic of the pro-life view. And you will learn how to state your case persuasively and graciously.
All right, before the break, we were talking about conversations and getting at underlying worldviews. Let me give you a couple of sources that may help you do that. First, you can always take a look at this book, The Case for Life, the second edition. In there, I’ve got a chapter on engaging with good questions. If you want to go to the person who trained me to do that, well, I suggest Gregory Kokal’s book, Tactics. It’s an excellent book on learning to engage people with thoughtful questions aimed not at gotcha moments, but aimed at furthering the conversation.
And then one more on the case of relativism. People who think right and wrong are merely up to us, that there’s no objective rules. This book by Francis J. Beckwith and Greg Kokal, relativism, feet firmly planted in midair, is the place you want to go to read up on that. Okay. Now, a couple of points in closing here. First of all, get past this idea that you need to just make statements in order to persuade people. My colleague and mentor Greg Cunningham puts it real well.
He says, “For too long, the pro-life movement has been shouting conclusions rather than establishing arguments.” That is spoton. In other words, when we hold signs saying, “Abortion kills children.” People driving by on the road go, “Nice. That’s your opinion. I have a different one.” So what? That doesn’t help us. But if we say all if we say something more thoughtful like don’t you think all humans have an equal right to life? Well, who wants to you know disparge that one? Nobody.
So I think it’s important to ask thoughtful questions and not just make statements. Secondly, watch your tone. It’s very important you not come off as I’m just going to get you. I’m here to corner you and make you feel stupid. If you get to the point where people are being made to feel dumb, they’re not going to listen to you anymore. I think you noticed in this conversation with a young woman, we parted as friends. And I mean that. We generally liked talking to each other.
That was a genuine thing. It was not a, “Oh man, you really embarrassed me for 10 minutes of conversation here.” No, she was appreciative of the fact that I engaged her, got to know her thoughts. I thanked her afterward for sharing what she believed and I wasn’t looking for a place to jump on her and make her look silly. No, I just wanted to give her something to think about. It’s what Greg Kokal talks about in his book Tactics where he says here that the real goal of a conversation is not to win the argument, not to close the deal, but to put a pebble in someone’s shoe.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a pebble in your shoe when you’re out hiking, but what happens is that pebble’s going to wear on you and wear on you until you stop to deal with it. And this is what our goal should be as we’re engaging as Christians. Give people something to think about. Don’t worry about winning the argument on the spot. You to use a baseball analogy, if you’ll allow me to, you know, add another metaphor here, think about getting a single rather than swinging for the fences.
Just get on base and from there you can advance further. And often times when you give people something to think about, you’re in a key position to engage them later with more thoughtful conversation and helping them change their mind. Remember, we are Christian ambassadors. We are not bulls in China shops. Thanks for joining us today. It’s great to have you with us. I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.