"Ye shall have the attitude of a puppy dog"

When out in public, if people ask me if I have any siblings, I tell them I have two younger brothers. I know that I am lying. Indeed, I do have two younger brothers, but I also have a younger sister as well. You see, in my house, the puppy is a child.Yes, somehow we arrived at the notion that Abby = child.

Abby is the kind of animal that models a life that Christians could learn from. I know that the previous statement sounded crazy or insane, but just hear me out. She is a dog that models a series of behaviors that, once you simply transpose them to ways humans can understand them (as great as science is, it still hasn't produced the Universal Bark Translator), a Christian should also model. Allow me to present some examples.

1. "Go" is the word that she absolutely loves. If you tell her "Abby, let's go!", she will bolt to the back door making sure she can make it to the car. It's gotten to the point that all I have to do is look at her with the keys in my hand, and she knows to go. She doesn't know where she is going, but because Austin-dog (she becomes a child, and the people get demoted to dogs. Awesome, right?) tells her that we are going somewhere, that is a good enough of a reason to become a super happy butt-shaking dog. I wonder what would happen if I started living my faith like that. God tells me to "go" and instead of whining or putting up a fight, I would instantly and gladly go wherever God is taking me. I don't know where I am going, but because God tells me that we are going somewhere, that is all I need to know.
2.  Abby has a foe that occasionally walks by the house. We call her Nemesis-dog. When said dog walks by, Abby instantly becomes a siren, and getting her to shut up is hopeless. Yet when the front door is open, she just sits by the screen door and waits. Waits for what, I dunno, but the front door is one of her favorite spots. When she sees someone coming to the door, she runs to grab a bone (we haven't figured that one out yet), then starts shaking her butt in anticipation of this person who is coming over. It doesn't matter who the heck it is; if it's Daddy-dog, Mommy-dog, Travis-dog, Parker-dog, or a total stranger, she is always ready to greet people. I wonder what would happen if I treated the other people in my life the same way. What if I treated strangers the same way I try to treat all of the people I know in my life? What if I greeted visitors of my church or youth group with this kind of enthusiasm?
3.  While Abby has a playful side, she is known to be a protector. If Travis-dog starts yelling at Parker-dog or Parker-dog starts fighting with Travis-dog, Abby will usually step in and try to break up the conflict. Granted, often times she causes more problems than she fixes (she is a dog, after all), but she is at least trying to make sure nobody hurts each other. She will stand and face the aggressor and bark in her commanding voice, and we often imagine her saying something like "You! Stop! It! Now! I'm! Warning! You!" I wonder what would happen if I make an effort to be a peacekeeper like Jesus described in Matthew 5:9. What if I was willing to get in the face of my friends or my students when they start doing things they shouldn't do?

Abby is just awesome. But the God who created dogs is just even more awesome. He uses the simple things to teach important lessons.

Book Review: "Tactics: A Game Plan For Discussing Your Christian Convictions" by Gregory Koukl

Tactics: A Game Plan For Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Gregory Koukl

Buy It: Amazon.com

Textbooks. You either love them or hate them. Some are practical, easy to understand, and immediately applicable; others are confusing, inaccurate, and require extra work before usage.

This book is 100% the former.

To get the meat out of the way, if you are looking to share your faith with others, you are doing a disservice to yourself by not reading this short book. "Tactics" is a book that trains you in how to be a solid ambassador for Christ. Gregory Koukl, founder of the incredibly effective "Stand to Reason" ministry, instructs you on how to be a solid representative of Christ by walking you through conversational strategies that, when properly practiced and implemented, will give you the upper hand in respectfully presenting reasons for the faith. Rather than teach you how to hit a home run every time, "Tactics" teaches you to just get up to bat. Rather than trying to win a soul with every conversation, Koukl encourages to "leave a stone in the shoe", something for the person to ponder and think about. The goal of this book is 100% evangelistic in nature. As an apologist, this is THE must read book; in fact, it has become my default book for evangelism, both apologetics driven and not. Even if sharing your faith is just going through the ABCs or the Four Spiritual Laws, reading this book will provide incalculable benefits.

With catchy names like "Columbo" and "Sibling Rivalry", Koukl effectively communicates a set of conversational strategies that are easy to understand and immediately applicable. Even better, the strategies Koukl presents are not just untested theories but refined and well-worn strategies Koukl has been using for years. Complete with several examples of his strategies in action, Koukl isn't writing some theoretical nonsense but is writing down what he has used for many years in words for us to learn from. His writing attitude in the book is like that of a teacher, guiding step by step through the specifics of each tactic. In all seriousness, if you like books that are concise and to-the-point yet immediately useful, this book gets the gold medal. I loved how easy of a read this was yet how incredibly useful it was. In fact, I have already been putting to use several of the strategies of this book to use in Twitter conversations and it is amazing how effective they are. If I had known half of this stuff back during the Pray for an Atheist event, I would have been so much more confident and bold in my faith. And if you are shy by nature, or freeze up at challenges to your faith, reading and applying this book will turn you into a lion.

What ties all of the various conversational strategies together is the fact that Koukl isn't teaching these tactics just by themselves, but with an ultimate goal in mind: to make you an ambassador of Christ. According to Koukl, as written in several parts throughout the book, a good ambassador has three things: knowledge (being aware of facts), wisdom (how to engage in smart dialogue) , and character (an attractive and winsome attitude and personality). Before diving into the tactics themselves, Koukl spends his time defining what an ambassador is and why being an ambassador for Christ is so important. Indeed, if you try to read "Tactics" without understanding what Koukl is saying about being an ambassador, you will miss out greatly. This section of the book is especially important for evangelists and missionaries just as much as it is for apologists. It is in this section of the book that Koukl really shines, as makes defending the faith and being an ambassador of Christ not only something that is attractive but something that is desired as well.

You really have nothing to lose by reading this book. It is very short (you could read it in a weekend), it is written in everyday language and written toward an audience with little to no knowledge about apologetics and philosophy. However, the wealth of knowledge and information this book deals out makes "Tactics" one of the best buys around.

4.5 stars out of 5

The Genetic Fallacy and Hypocritical Christians [Part 2]

 "An ounce of love outweighs a ton of argument" - Dr. James Spiegel, The Making of An Atheist

The first part of this blog series discussed the basics of a reasoning error known as the Genetic Fallacy. If you missed that one, read it here to catch up on what's going on. Or, if you already know about the Genetic Fallacy, just keep reading. No need to hear again what you already know.

Thinking over the events of the last year, there are two events that highlight when Christians become the definition of hypocrisy. The first is the (ongoing) atrocities of Westboro Baptist Church. If you've not heard about these guys, you must live in the desert or in a cave or something. "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" have become phrases brought to light by a group that is the definition of hate speech. Protesting at the funerals of soldiers, and a protest attempt at the funeral of the 9 year old victim of the Tuscon shootings (the Arizona legislation banned them from coming), this group has given ammo for many critics of Christianity and has provided an eyesore for those who are actually living the teachings of Christ, much less for Christ Himself. The other would be the attempting Qu'ran burnings on 9/11. Now, the Qu'rans that would've been burnt were English Qu'rans; technically, that is not the Qu'ran. In Muslim theology, the Qu'ran is written in Arabic. However, that is beside the point. The firestorm that was caused over that incident was worldwide. Since I trust the reader is aware of this event, I won't elaborate on it.

Aside from the painful obvious that in both instances the name of Christianity is being slandered and tarred, it pales in comparison from the many actions of Christians that don't make the national headlines. To be sure, there are Christians who are living out their faith and making positive differences in the lives of others. At the same time, there are just as many (if not more, in some places) plenty of Christians who claim one thing yet live antagonistically to it. Christian hypocrisy is one of the most powerful weapons of Satan. It is a very powerful weapon to have someone who calls himself/herself a Christian yet brings about the divisiveness and destruction that Satan desires.

Many people don't believe in Christ because of the attitudes of Christians who have wronged them. I know people who believe this (and I know one who has had her mind changed after the miraculous survival of her son). In this ugly reality, however, pain and suffering often cloud clear thinking. Those who don't believe in Christ because of hypocritical Christians are committing the Genetic Fallacy by finding fault with the believers rather than the belief itself. Even if every single Christian lives the opposite of the Gospel of Christ, it does not mean the Gospel is false. The claims of the Gospel, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and is the only One who can provide forgiveness of sins, are true or false independent of those who hold them. Of course, when encountering this example, diving into an explanation of faulty thinking isn't what the antidote is (unless the Spirit of God explicitly commands you to go that route). Often, the antidote to these kinds of wounds are by living a life that characterizes a devotion to the Gospel. In other words, a public demonstration of a lack of hypocrisy is the best antidote to those who have been wounded by hypocrisy.

Apologetics is powerful in many ways, but it has it's limits. Many people have a very distorted view of apologetics, thinking that it is useless or inferior to service or love. "People just need to see Christians love others and get into action and they will believe" and "You can't argue people into the Kingdom of God", they say. While both views are false (though there is some truth in the former), the best apologetic is always an apologetic of love and compassion. If 1 Peter 3:15-16 commands us to prepare a defense of our faith, sometimes that defense is one characterized in a lifestyle. Some people need a philosophical argument; all need a display of an authentic life.

The Genetic Fallacy and Hypocritical Christians [Part 1]

I love philosophy. It is the field of study that every single other field depends on. You cannot do science without doing philosophy, you cannot do language studies without philosophy; virtually everything in some way falls under the umbrella of philosophy. I started this blog to write about philosophy and philosophical apologetics for Christianity, but I've not actually done that until now. This is part one of a two-part conversation concerning the very real and practical claim against Christianity that people don't believe in Christ because of hypocritical Christians. Part 1 talks about the Genetic Fallacy itself, and Part 2 talks about why claiming "I don't believe in Christ because Christians are hypocritical", though a very real and understandable claim, is a bad reason not to believe in Christ.

In philosophy, there are several mistakes in reasoning that one can commit. One of the most common of those is called the Genetic Fallacy. The Genetic Fallacy isn't hard to understand; you probably use it or recognize it often. A person committing the Genetic Fallacy is finding fault with a belief or a truth claim based on it's supposed origin. A good example that I hear quite often from my liberal friends is "Because [insert truth claim] came from Glen Beck/Fox News, it's not true". Independent of the merits of the claim itself, a conclusion about a claim is formed on the sole basis of it's origin. It fails to assess the claim on it's merit by refusing to examine the evidence for and against the claim. While that wasn't a plug for either Glen Beck or Fox News, I hope you get the point.

For Christians, it is important to be familiar with the Genetic Fallacy for several reasons. For one, it gets used  against us quite often. A very common form of the Genetic Fallacy against Christians (and one that was used on me the other day) is "You only believe in Jesus Christ because that is what you were told to believe by your parents/friends/pastor". Regardless of how I came to form my belief that Jesus Christ is God, the question is whether or not the claim is true; namely, that Jesus Christ is God. Saying that the claim is false simply because of how I came to hold that belief is to ignore the merits of my belief/claim and judge it by false merits. Another common example is "I don't believe what the Bible says about Jesus Christ because the New Testament was written by Christians". When you think about it, that is such a silly claim. If the New Testament as we have it is false because it was written by Christians, would the New Testament be true if it were written by pagans? Of course not. Just because the New Testament was written by Christians does nothing to disprove what they are saying. Indeed, Luke has been shown over and over again to be a very solid historian when writing Luke and Acts, even though he was a Christian. If we aren't careful, we can get trapped in a corner with no good reason other than our own ignorance of how to handle a faulty objection.


Christians who make an effort not to commit the Genetic Fallacy are doing a huge service to both themselves and society. By resolving to not commit the Genetic Fallacy when having discussions about faith or politics, you are granting a massive amount of grace to people who believe differently than you. By being willing to show evidence as to why you think someone is wrong (and subsequently showing evidence for your own beliefs) instead of assuming they are wrong from the start, you open the door for an opportunity to show the other person good, solid reasons why his/her belief is wrong are yours are right. Not only that, you show that you care about the person himself/herself because you are taking an interest in his/her beliefs and treat them seriously. Of course I believe that Muslims and atheists are wrong in their beliefs about God, but I don't assume everything that they say is wrong from the start. How they came to become a Muslim or an atheist or whatever is irrelevant to whether or not what they are saying is true or not. I let evidence decide. By letting evidence be the reason why you discount the belief, you are being a solid representative of Christ. Of course, being familiar with evidence means studying and research and understanding. Failure to do any of those is to handicap you beyond repair. Do your homework, but make sure you understand the facts. Trust me, you don't want to be a "quote mine" unless you can explain the ins and outs of your quotes!

The next post will be about the relationship of the claim "I don't believe that Christ is God because of hypocritical Christians" and the Genetic Fallacy. If you have ever wrestled with that claim, either from yourself or someone else, you will want to check out the next post.