Tactics
Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions
By: Gregory Koukl
[Fulfilled ‘A book with a plural one word title’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
“If we disqualify legitimate discussion, we compromise our ability to know the truth, and error can thrive without restraint.”
This is an excellent and very practical book that I think every Christ follower should read because this book is about finding out the truth in any discussion. Even some people who claim Christ may not be able to say why they do so this book is not only for how to talk to others but helps us ask questions about our own beliefs to determine if what we believe is based on good reasons and sound rationale.
Some have expressed dislike for this book because of the cover making it seem like talking about our beliefs is a game to win. Some have felt like this book is just manipulation and replaces compassion for other people.
After reading this book, I disagree with those assessments. Koukl makes it very clear that the way we communicate with people is really important because people are image bearers of God. Our goal is not to make people look bad or disrespect them. We talk to them about truth because what they believe about God matters and we do it in a respectful way because who they are is significant.
“Tactics are not manipulative tricks or slick ruses. They are not clever ploys to embarrass other people and force them to submit to your point of view. They are not meant to belittle or humiliate those who disagree so you can gain notches in your spiritual belt.”
He even says at the outset that his goal in talking with people is not to convert them to Christianity. He simply wants to “put a stone in their shoe” and give them something to think about.
There is nothing unbiblical or unloving about having discussions about truth. Paul lays out his arguments for his convictions throughout his letters. He provides reasons and logic for readers to follow to understand his points.
“Rationality is one of the tools God has given us to acquire knowledge.”
Koukl has written this book because we are not all Paul. We don’t always know how to explain our beliefs or how to talk about them with people. We get flustered and don’t know what to say. Perhaps the other person becomes hostile or denigrates our character and we don’t know how to respond. Maybe they completely change the subject and don’t acknowledge the points we are making and we don’t know how to get the conversation back to the facts.
We worry about not knowing what to do or say so we just decide not to talk about our convictions. After all, we don’t want to force our beliefs on other people. Let’s just keep the peace and keep it to ourselves.
But that’s not obeying God’s commandment to make disciples of all people. That’s not working in the fields of the Lord’s harvest.
If we should be talking about Christ with others, we might as well know how to do it well!
What I love about this book is how practical and helpful it is.
Even though I’ve grown up in the church and read a lot of apologetics books, I don’t feel confident about talking with people about them a lot of times. Or I start to think that every conversation about God has to end in sharing the ‘Romans Road’ or having them ‘pray the prayer.’ And that doesn’t feel natural so I chicken out about even saying anything.
What Koukl describes in this book is doable. It’s real. And for the most part, it’s natural. Of course, we can tweak wording and things to fit how we communicate; it’s not a script we have to memorize. But it’s all things that makes sense to me.
Reading it was a bit of an ‘aha’ moment of— ‘Oh! That’s a great way to answer that’ or “That’s an easy way to respond to that objection’ or ‘That’s how I can handle that difficult type of conversation!’
I like this distinction Koukl makes:
“Cleverness without truth is manipulation.”
Knowing how to navigate a conversation is not manipulation if the point of the conversation is to determine truth. And if others try to turn the tables and use these tactics on us, it’s okay; we should have reasons for the things we believe and we shouldn’t be attacking or name-calling. If someone is truly manipulating, they wouldn’t want anyone else to use their own tactics against them, but here that isn’t the case.
We should be ready to give reasons for the hope that we have. (1 Pt 3:15)
I won’t go through all the tactics because it makes more sense as he explains them in his book then a book review really can, but the main gist of his tactics revolves around listening and asking questions.
He tells us to be a student of their beliefs.
“The person who makes a claim has the burden of proof.”
If someone makes a claim, it’s not on us to prove them wrong. We ask them questions to understand why they believe what they believe. They have to defend their beliefs. And a lot of times they can’t.
“An opinion is just a point of view. An argument, by contrast, is a point of view supported by reasons. Skeptics often give the first but not the second.”
I think this is very true. There have been numerous times where someone says something that sounds like a canned headline. Something everyone says but doesn’t really know what it means or where the logic of their statement actually takes them.
“We trot out our pet slogans whether secular ones or Christian ones— letting our catchphrases do the work that careful, thoughtful conversation should be doing instead.”
So most of his tactics involves asking ‘What do you mean by that?’ or ‘How did you come to that conclusion?’
This isn’t an exhaustive apologetics book that will give you all the answers— he assumes you already know why you believe in Christ and his teachings— but he does lay out some of the conversations he has on specific and common objections.
Here’s a few of the things he brings up- (it affirmed to me that he knows what he’s talking about because I think I’ve heard every single one of these multiple times but never with any actual argument for them)
God used evolution to design the world.
God can’t exist if there’s all this evil in the world.
There’s no way to know anything about religion.
You’re intolerant if you tell other people what to believe.
The Bible was written by flawed human beings so it must be flawed.
Science disproves miracles.
You shouldn’t force your beliefs on other people.
There is no objective morality. (He gives a series of questions to ask that really reveals that even if people make this claim they don’t actually live or think like it)
I’m personally against abortion but I don’t believe in forcing my pro-life belief on other people.
That’s just your interpretation.
Religion is the source of evil in the world and more wars have been fought in the name of God than any other. (He provides a lot of facts to disprove this widely believed myth)
The Council of Nicea determined which books should be in the Bible
The Bible has been changed and translated differently for political reasons.
Jesus never said anything about homosexuality.
As Koukl encourages, you don’t have to go out there and change everyone’s minds. You just have to be willing and ready to ask some questions and get to the heart of the claims people make and find out if they’ve really thought about what is true.
“It is always a step in the right direction when we help others to think more carefully. If nothing else, it gives them tools to assess the bigger questions that eventually come up.”
It doesn’t matter how fervently we believe it or how many other people believe the same things that we do. What matters is: what is true? what is reality?
I may not believe my house is on fire, but if it is in reality, that’s a big problem. So help people find out where the fire is.
Reality has a way of revealing itself. Faulty logic and arguments will fall like a roof with no posts. Sound arguments will stand under its own merits.
I liked when Koukl explained how faith in Christ is not an unreasonable faith, or as some would say ‘Faith is believing things we cannot know.’
Faith is not wishful thinking. We all live with faith in something— that our chair will hold us up, that a bus route will go according to the map, etc. There are good reasons for believing these things.
Faith in Christ is reasonable. There are many many reasons to believe what the Bible says is true and that what Jesus claimed was true.
“Faith and knowledge are not opposites in Scripture. The opposite of faith is not fact, but unbelief. The opposite of knowledge is not faith but ignorance.”
If having reasons for what we believe made our faith less, then our faith would be the strongest when there are absolutely no good reasons for believing it. That’s not how faith works. That wouldn’t make any sense.
There are many people out there putting out TikToks and YouTube videos with snappy lines that make it sound like they’re ‘taking down’ Christianity, and many people are ill-equipped to spot the lie or see the inconsistencies or poke holes in the theories.
They begin to feel defeated and wonder if what they’ve believed really is unreasonable. I actually saw that firsthand at a Christian college— people encountering questions they’d never had to answer before and then giving up on all of it instead of doing the work of finding the answers— because there are answers.
Koukl’s tactics help us understand our own faith but also how to identify when other rhetoric is falling short.
One of the sections towards the end of the book talks about changing our lingo and I thought that was helpful. There definitely is a Christian lingo and I can tell that people are turned off by certain terminology or just stop listening to you because they think they've heard it all before.
Koukl's suggestions for words to change make sense to me and I'll probably try to do it. Some of them are using 'my spiritual convictions' instead of 'my faith'. Instead of saying 'the Bible says' to try to quote from Jesus of Nazareth when you can or from the ancient Hebrew prophets (OT) or from the people Jesus trained to follow after him (NT) or from primary source documents (Gospels). Instead of saying 'sin' he calls it 'moral crimes' against God. Instead of 'unbelievers' he refers to 'those who believe differently.'
For the most part I tracked with everything he was saying, however, there were some dialogues he relayed that I wish I could have stepped in to play devil's advocate with him. Things I wanted to question him further on to see how he would respond or deal with certain objections that I thought of while reading.
I will say, that I can see what some reviewers are saying about the limit to these tactics.
For one, in an online forum, these tactics would be really hard to employ properly, but I think we can all agree that trying to talk about matters like this online is usually a dicey and non-advisable situation regardless; talking face-to-face is always best.
Two, I think a majority of his conversations are with strangers or acquaintances or in debates and formal arrangements. As readers we should use wisdom when applying these tactics and be aware of who we are talking to. If we are conversing with long-term relationships or people dealing with big life hardship, etc, the way we go about it will be different.
Some of the tactics are structured in ways that make sense in short one-off conversations and some should be applied differently if we’re talking about these things throughout a whole series of conversations.
I don’t think either of these things take away from the book. I think for the scope and purpose in what he was writing he accomplished something really good and helpful. As with all books and advice we take it in and apply it with wisdom.
The principles of this book are sound and even if you don’t like the title ‘Tactics’ it is what he was providing. Just because tactics can have a bad connotation doesn’t make the word or the book bad. Tactics are simply strategies.
We employ tactics all the time in other areas of life, why not be prepared when it comes to talking about the most important thing in our lives? I’d love a strategy for that. Speaking about truth with excellence seems like a God-honoring endeavor.
Recommendation
I would definitely recommend this book. Even if you don’t plan to go out and start a million conversations, it’s a great way to train your brain to understand belief systems and those who hold them. It will strengthen your own faith. It will give you confidence about a lot of buzzword claims that get thrown around a lot.
I do think it’s not the only book to be read about this. Especially if you don’t feel like you can give arguments for the things you believe, I would encourage you to read some other apologetics books that go through all the arguments in depth. Click the link below to get you started.
I would also recommend visiting www.str.org (Stand to Reason) which is a website Koukl is on that is full of articles and videos talking about all the things in the book. Or look up some of Koukl’s debates to see these tactics in action. He practices what he preaches and writes this book from a lot of experience. I think the website will be a nice resource to visit when a question comes up that I’m not sure how to respond to. I also think I will revisit this book often.
Discussion about truth is always important and this book will help you do it!
You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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