"Refining the Columbo Tactic"

Notes taken word for word from:

“Refining the Columbo Tactic”

by Greg Koukl

"The problem is, is that we are all broken inside, and we all know this.  When I spoke at Berkeley, actually when I speak at universities, I use this illustration almost every single time and I said, "Something I know about you that you know about yourself that other people don't know because you don't want them to know, but you haven't fooled me.  What's that?  You got a bad self image.  How do I know that?  Because everybody does; everybody's broken inside and we're aware of it and we look down inside of us and we see that the broken thing is something moral, there's something evil there.  And we don't like it, but we have a feeling about it.  And that feeling about our moral brokenness has a word, and what do you think we call our feeling about our own moral brokenness?"  This is what I ask the students at Berkeley...and every place I speak.  What do you think they tell me?  "Guilt" is what they say.  Shame might fit.  Guilt is what they say, because that's what it is.  Then I ask them this question:  "Why do you feel guilty?"  I don't know, maybe because society causes feelings of guilt, and we can talk about that, that's a possibility.  How about this:  Maybe we feel guilty because maybe we are guilty.  Is that in the running?  Is that a possibility?  Of course it's a possibility, ladies and gentlemen.  This makes all the sense in the world.  ...And the answer to guilt is not denial, that's relativism!  The answer to guilt is forgiveness.  And this is where Jesus comes in."

Here is a paraphrase of what Greg Koukl said in the sermon, "Getting You into the Driver's Seat: the Columbo Tactic" which I found to be quite thought provoking:

"If I drew two little circles on a board, like tablet size and ask, "Are these circles basically the same?"  One would reply, "Yes."  And yet if I proceed to put a line from one and wrote "aspirin" and put a line from the other and wrote "arsenic”, it will show that they are different.  Because with the statement, "All religions basically teach the same thing", an individual is failing to realize that with all the different religions, it is the DIFFERENCES that really matter."

Here are more notes from the same sermon that expound the importance of discussion with others who refute and dismiss the claims of Christianity by their statements and then expect the Christian to take the brunt of the responsibility in answering and defending their beliefs against what was just stated by the other person:

“...to reverse the burden of proof.  Somebody tell me what the phrase “burden of proof” means.  It’s the responsibility to give evidence to prove a point of view.  Okay.  In any discussion, who is the person in the discussion who bears the responsibility to give evidence?  The person who makes the claim, okay?  It’s pretty straightforward.  If you say something is so, it’s reasonable for someone to ask you why you think it’s so; to give reasons for the view.  Now, let me tell you why this is important in our discussion here, is because for far too long, we have allowed the other side to make the claim, which amounts to a challenge.  They say this is so, and then we’ve taken the responsibility upon our own shoulders to disprove their view, if we can, rather than putting the responsibility back on their shoulders to make sense of the claim that they’ve just offered.  No more free rides, that’s the rule here, all right?  In the immortal words of Desi Arnaz “They got a lot of ‘splaining to do!” themselves.  They have just as much of an obligation to defend the assertions that they make as we have to defend the assertions that we make, right?  So whoever says it’s so has a responsibility to say WHY they think it’s so.  They bear the burden. …”