By Guest Blogger Andy Zehner

Chaplain Mike made a nice  post last Friday regretting what happens when Christians get  ¢â‚¬Å“political. ¢â‚¬  By adding my own bit here I affirm what he said. Anything we do from a desire to score off someone else is wrong. But there ¢â‚¬â„¢s another point I would add. It is too small a thing merely to avoid contentiousness. We do nothing good when guided by our ego, but even when ego is controlled we cannot be content.

Doctrine and practice matter. The Old Testament is packed with proof  ¢â‚¬“ Cain ¢â‚¬â„¢s vegetable offering, Nadab and Abihu ¢â‚¬â„¢s unauthorized fire, the blemished sacrifices God despises in Malachi  ¢â‚¬“ that God doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t accept all that is offered to Him. God ¢â‚¬â„¢s glory demands that He be worshiped in ways that are acceptable to Him. We latter-day believers worship in spirit and truth, but none of us knows how broad a license that phrase confers.   ¢â‚¬Å“In spirit and truth ¢â‚¬  is not the same as   ¢â‚¬Å“what works for me. ¢â‚¬  God allows us latitude in our practices, but when the fences are down the sheep will wander: ¢â‚¬Å“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ¢â‚¬  (2 Tim. 4:3) We have a duty to stand firm for right doctrine and practice.

Before a church-league softball game years ago, I suggested to my teammates that we try to win the game. I said we ¢â‚¬â„¢d honor our opponents by giving our best effort between the chalk lines. By their dropped jaws and incredulous stares you might have supposed I wanted to brush off their lead-off hitter with the old high, hard one or go into second with our spikes up. They seemed to think we did enough if we went through the motions, and that serious effort was unChristian. I suspect many Christians take the same approach  ¢â‚¬“ content to make the appropriate motions and noises without much care for the outcome  ¢â‚¬“ to discussions about religion and faith.

But here ¢â‚¬â„¢s the delightful thing. Fervency for right doctrine and practice does not require us to compromise courtesy. We aren ¢â‚¬â„¢t being pulled in two directions. It ¢â‚¬â„¢s not a case of,  ¢â‚¬Å“You put down your rock and I ¢â‚¬â„¢ll put down my sword. ¢â‚¬  We aren ¢â‚¬â„¢t required to give up anything except what impairs us. Fulfilling the call to be gracious makes us more effective in defending the faith. You catch more flies with honey.

My thesis is that we need to add a firm resolve to defend good doctrine and practice to the graciousness Chaplain Mike commended to us earlier. Let me back that up with a few principles showing how courtesy and humility go hand in hand with persuasiveness.

Speak the plain truth
Christian debate is infected with unkind and inaccurate hyperbole. Hyperbole is fun, but it isn ¢â‚¬â„¢t honest. We need to stop using it. Contemporary worship services are not  ¢â‚¬Å“cheesy rock concerts. ¢â‚¬  People who attend traditional services are not  ¢â‚¬Å“corpses. ¢â‚¬  Liturgical services are not  ¢â‚¬Å“hide-bound magic shows. ¢â‚¬  Old doctrines are not  ¢â‚¬Å“medieval superstitions. ¢â‚¬  This sort of mischaracterization has no place in Christian discourse. Misquoting another person is false witness and sinful. Anyway, mischaracterizations don ¢â‚¬â„¢t work. When we describe people in terms like these I ¢â‚¬â„¢ve mentioned, they won ¢â‚¬â„¢t recognize themselves and they won ¢â‚¬â„¢t acknowledge the criticism as pertaining to them. The point we are making goes off track. If we care about persuading people and defending right doctrine we must give up what isn ¢â‚¬â„¢t honest and accurate.

Speak graciously
CS Lewis says, in his Reflections on the Psalms,   ¢â‚¬Å“It can be argued that if the windows of various ministries and newspapers were more often broken, if certain people were more often put under pumps and pelted in the streets, we should get on a great deal better. ¢â‚¬  But Lewis stops short of endorsing violent action. It would be an effective tool, but it is one we cannot wield. And neither can we accomplish anything good with aggressive speech.

The crowd came to be baptized, and John the Baptist called them a brood of vipers. Whatever John said to Herod Antipas got him imprisoned and beheaded. Jesus himself addressed the Jewish authorities as hypocrites, whitewashed sepulchers and blind guides. And the less said about Paul ¢â‚¬â„¢s comment about the false teachers in Galatia the better. From these examples I would draw no lesson at all. Peter instructs the believers to always be ready to give an answer, but adds,   ¢â‚¬Å“Do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience. ¢â‚¬ 

Listen and wait
Consider the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. James wasn ¢â‚¬â„¢t the biggest name attending that meeting, but he made the vital contribution to the outcome by waiting until after Peter, Barnabas, Paul, and perhaps others, had finished speaking. James comprehended the whole debate before he spoke. And, clever fellow, he even brought Peter onto his side by citing Peter ¢â‚¬â„¢s earlier statement in support of his own.

I have, on occasion, listened while another person stated his opinion, the preceded to find the obvious flaws in it and reverse himself without any input from me. If I had stuck my oar in, it would have been my ideas he reacted to and not his own.

More questions, fewer answers
My high school friend grew up as I did in a traditional denominational church. But he now declares hymns are unfit for church because,  ¢â‚¬Å“They don ¢â‚¬â„¢t know what a diadem is. ¢â‚¬    When he said this to me in a recent conversation, I didn ¢â‚¬â„¢t know how to respond. I should have asked him many honest questions: Who is this they you speak of? Is they the people who attend your services now, or an unchurched demographic you hope to attract in the future? How do you know what they know? Would it be possible to just explain that a diadem is a crown? Doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t the hymn you disparage for introducing an unfamiliar word in one line,  ¢â‚¬Å“Bring forth the royal diadem, ¢â‚¬  clarify that word in the very next line:  ¢â‚¬Å“And crown Him Lord of all? ¢â‚¬  If you reject this hymn as a means of teaching Jesus as King of Kings, how do you teach that important aspect of His nature? Are you only trying to update the vocabulary, or are you changing Christianity?

If I had asked and listened, I might have discovered that my friend is not as wayward as I suspected. Or I might have helped him realize for himself how slight his position is. Either way, our conversation would have been more pleasant and profitable. Some readers might think my questions are too provocative. But people like to talk. They don ¢â‚¬â„¢t mind what you ask, so long as you listen to their answer.

Cite experts rather than your own opinion
As our conversation went round and round it became obvious my friend didn ¢â‚¬â„¢t care about my opinion. But my opinion and his respect for it ought never have come into play. I ought to have preferred the more potent weapons and strategies that were available to me. History tells us that hundreds of French knights were slaughtered by arrows from English peasants ¢â‚¬â„¢ bows at the battles of Crecy and Agincourt. Even as they fell in ranks, the French knights ignored the archers because their chivalric code demanded that a knight fight against another knight. Like the French knights, I suffered a defeat because I persisted in using the polemical weapons that preserved my dignity rather than those that would have succeeded.

My friend and his idea of church may be right or wrong. What is certain is that what he believes about church comes from Bill Hybels and the Willow Creek model. The fact that Hybels himself has disavowed much that he pioneered ought to matter to my friend. I should have avoided my own inferior thoughts and the desire to win my way, and instead quoted from Hybels ¢â‚¬â„¢ Reveal report.

Avoid saying  ¢â‚¬Å“They ¢â‚¬ 
This one may be most important of all. Paul declares in the second chapter of Galatians, ¢â‚¬Å“When Peter came to Antioch I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. ¢â‚¬  Paul ¢â‚¬â„¢s reproach was, no doubt, effective because he said what needed saying to Peter ¢â‚¬â„¢s face and not behind his back. If our goal is to win arguments and persuade people toward right doctrine and good practice, we must be talking to those people. And yet most political talk (both the political political talk on the radio and internet news channels and the religious political talk on this forum and around the coffee hour table) is commentary about people who aren ¢â‚¬â„¢t even present.

We abhor confrontation, so we avoid saying tough things directly to the people who need to hear them. But I think we need to train ourselves to do that, or to stay silent.

Know what you ¢â‚¬â„¢re arguing about, and concede as much as you can
Have you found yourself arguing a point which, on later reflection, wasn ¢â‚¬â„¢t the thing you wanted to stress? When that happens, I can often look back over the conversation and find the moment at which I dug in my heels and began arguing for argument ¢â‚¬â„¢s sake.

I have a friend who is Orthodox, and once we were going around about it. I was prosing on about the importance of a cultural context for Christianity and how I had labored among the Kyrgyz to free them of Russian symbols and practices that were hindering the development of a true Kyrgyz heart-language church. I continued by stressing that America deserves a church free from foreign overtones as much as the Kyrgyz did. At last I paused, well convinced by myself, and my friend asked the only real question between us, which was,  ¢â‚¬Å“Do you have any doubts that I am a genuine Christian? ¢â‚¬  I answered,  ¢â‚¬Å“No, none at all! ¢â‚¬  And that was all that needed to be said.

Know when to quit
Let ¢â‚¬â„¢s be honest. Some people are thick. But that only raises our obligation. The thick-headed man deserves a compelling explanation just as much as the wise and logical man does. Unpersuasive arguments such as  ¢â‚¬Å“Take my word for it! ¢â‚¬  need to be set aside. I need to try harder, not less hard, when the nut is hard to crack.

But there is also the possibility that I ¢â‚¬â„¢m not the man for the job. An antinomian heresy was spreading in Kyrgyzstan several years ago and I confronted the leaders about their error. Our conversation led one of them finally to say,  ¢â‚¬Å“I just can ¢â‚¬â„¢t understand why you say we aren ¢â‚¬â„¢t right. ¢â‚¬    And I came to the point where I said,  ¢â‚¬Å“I believe you. You can ¢â‚¬â„¢t understand it. ¢â‚¬    But I must see it as my own failing and not his. I let him down.

I hope I have made the case that we need to stay in the debate over doctrine and practice even as we give up methods that don ¢â‚¬Ëœt work well anyway. Peter wrote,   ¢â‚¬Å“Always be prepared to give an answer . . . ¢â‚¬  And I ¢â‚¬â„¢m sure he intended that the answer we give be correct and compelling. When he added,   ¢â‚¬Å“But do this with gentleness and respect, ¢â‚¬  he was stipulating both Christian virtue and pragmatic polemical strategy.

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/how-to-win-an-argument-like-a-christian