 Good morning everybody. Weren't last night's talks brilliant? Don't you think? Awesome. Awesome. Which is why I'm not very happy about speaking after electrifying speakers like Father McConey and Mark Hart. It's like the Rolling Stones just finished their set. And here comes the accordion player. That's how I feel right now. I will tell you briefly, very briefly, what Scott alluded to about the first time that we spoke, because it actually has a bearing on the topic of my talk this morning, which is on speaking the truth in love as an act of mercy. And I had started working with Carl Keating at Catholic Answers. I started there in, I think, January of 1988. And the following year, I was doing something very important. It's a very, how can I describe this? The job of an apologist is very exotic. So one day I had the job of calling people who had been given a gift subscription to our little newsletter at that time, Catholic Answers. And for some reason they weren't receiving the newsletter because of a bad address or something like that. So I was going through this pile of addresses and I get to one of the addresses. I dial the number and I ask for Scott Hahn. He says, this is Scott Hahn. And I say, well, hello, Mr. Hahn. I'm Patrick Madrid. I work at Catholic Answers. And apparently you have not been receiving our newsletter, which was sent as a gift subscription to you. I just want to check your address. He said, here's my address. What's it about? I said, well, we deal in Catholic apologetics. And I proceeded for a sentence or two to explain to Scott Hahn what apologetics was. And he politely listened for a moment and then he quickly took over from there. And he said, well, I know a little bit about it because I'm a convert to the Catholic faith. I used to be a Calvinist minister, a Presbyterian minister. I said, really, tell me your story. So two hours later, I said five words in the space of two hours. Literally Scott was just a data dump of information that I had never even heard of, just the things he was sharing with me and teaching me in that conversation. So two hours later, I put my hand over the phone. I don't think Scott even noticed. I put my hand over the phone and Carl Keating was walking by my cubicle. And I said, Carl, you've got to listen. You've got to talk to this guy. He's a Protestant minister. He became Catholic. He knows about apologetics. And Carl said, no, I'm busy. I said, no, really, you need to talk to him. He said, no, no, really, I'm busy. I said, no, really, you need to talk to this guy. So Carl said, okay. So he goes to his office. He picks up the phone. Two hours later, he comes, Carl comes out and we look at each other like, oh my gosh, who is this guy? And that was the beginning of a long and wonderful friendship with you, Scott and with you, Kimberly. And I'll never forget that day. And I feel very blessed that I was the one that got to call you because then it worked out the way it did. So my thanks to Scott and Kimberly for having me back again this summer. The title of my talk, Speaking the Truth in Love as an Act of Mercy, I of course keyed in on those three words, truth, love and mercy. And I thought immediately, as I was thinking through what I'd like to share with you today, what the church teaches about the works of mercy. Now we know about, of course, the corporal works of mercy, corporal referring to bodily works of mercy, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, et cetera. We get that directly from our Lord's own lips in Matthew chapter 25, where he gives us the parable of the sheep and the goats. So we understand what it means to help somebody who is in need. But I think less often do we talk about, or perhaps even think about, the spiritual works of mercy. And so taking my cue from the catechism, this is paragraph 2447, it says, the works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities, instructing, advising, consoling, comforting our spiritual works of mercy, as our forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently. And all of those works of mercy you can fold in under the title of speaking the truth in love as an act of mercy. So each one of these things that we are called to do as a work of mercy for our neighbor fits perfectly with what we're here to do this weekend, to study what it means to do apologetics. What does it mean to speak the truth to people? How do you do that? How do you speak the truth to people who think you don't have the truth? How do you speak the truth to somebody who thinks that you are superstitious and anti-scientific and probably prone to violence if the situation allowed itself because you believe in God? There are many people out there who believe that. I believe Mark said last night that he had to revise his talk, whereas before the statistic was three out of ten young people no longer have belief in God. That number has risen to four. I daresay unless we do our work well, that number will continue to rise. So there are a lot of people out there for whom your attempt to speak the truth in love will be met with anger, with ridicule, with pushback of all different kinds. So how do you speak the truth in love to somebody like that? And that's just one scenario. There are many different examples of where we're called upon to speak the truth, and of course we can take as our guide and our model the Lord Jesus Christ who said I am the way the truth in the life. He said the truth will set you free. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. And I think it's not a great stretch to say that our Lord was speaking of the freedom of slavery to sin, slavery to addiction and vice, slavery to what Pope Benedict the 16th so famously called the dictatorship of relativism, and we live in a very relativistic society now don't we, where people will say well that may be your truth but that's not my truth, or they'll say you know don't push your morality on me why not because I don't believe in pushing morality on people. Well really if you don't believe in it then why are you pushing your morality on me you might say, or somebody may say well that may be true for you but that's not true for me, and you may say well then how do you know what's true? Just like Pontius Pilate asked Jesus what is truth? And we know that truth can be divided into two primary categories. We know of course that there are things that are fall into the category of subjective truths meaning that it's true depending upon how you feel about it. You may not like ice cream, you may love ice cream, you may not like opera music, you may love opera music. So it might be true for you to say that I love opera music but it's not true for somebody else who doesn't like opera music. And we experience this all the live long day, things that are not objectively true or false they're just how they strike us our preferences and what we like and dislike. But then there's that category of objective truths that are true regardless of how you feel about them. So two plus two equals four whether you think that's fair or not and even if you did adamantly insist that two plus two should equal five the IRS will disagree with you rather vigorously if you decide to take that course or if you disagree with the law of gravity and you say that's not fair I don't believe in the law of gravity well when you walk out of a third story window you'll come face to face not only with the ground but with the reality that you were wrong and the law of gravity is right. So there are those objective truths and that's really what we're here to talk about at least in my talk tonight this morning you know how do you go about sharing truth in the objective sense with people who have become prone now societally to see everything is purely subjective basically it's just what I want or what I don't want what I think is good or what I don't think is good and we all learn this from the time we're little we're all told the truth by ideally anyway our parents and I was sorry to put together a long list of the truths my parents told me because they loved me and they want me to be happy be good don't fight with your sister brush your teeth work hard tell the truth drive safely say your prayers and the list goes on and on the same things that we tell our children and our grandchildren which reminds me I have to revise my bio I found out recently that number 24 grandchild number 24 is on the way so I'm going to fix the bio on next time around and by the way Nancy and I with 11 kids have never been called to teach natural family planning classes not even once speaking of Nancy we're coming up on our 38th anniversary here and thank you thank you thank god my father told me a profound truth one day in an almost offhand way but I've never forgotten it I remember where we were standing I remember how he put his hand on my shoulder and how he looked me in the eye just this was very brief but he looked me in the eye and he said if you ever let her get away this is when Nancy and I were just starting to date and we were just kind of getting to know each other you know boyfriend girlfriend and I wasn't sure you know like which direction do I want to go and I wasn't sure if I wanted you know what did I want my dad looked me in the eye and he said if you let her get away it will be the worst thing that ever happened to you and boy did that get my attention and dad look at me now so what are some of the obstacles to speaking the truth and love well one of them and I think this may be one of the most common obstacles is apathy and I know you must experience it I experience it all of us maybe with the exception of Scott Hahn experiences apathy when it comes to opportunities to share the faith and you know what it's like I mean sometimes you just don't want to be bothered you ever have that experience and you just kind of feel like I'm in my comfort zone I feel like staying here now it's not so easy for me because I do a radio show about religion I'm on the air three hours a day with relevant radio I'll tell you a little bit more about that toward the end of my talk so I'm talking about things like God and the Bible and religion three hours every day Monday through Friday to atheists and Catholics and Protestants and Mormons it's a it's a very interesting and wonderful audience that I speak to every day nationally but there are I do that as a living I write books about religion I give talks about religion I run the Envoy Institute which teaches other people about religion and what are the two things you're not supposed to talk about when you meet somebody for the first time politics and religion so I've got a big strike against me when I go into something like that so I can't always enjoy the comfort of anonymity and sometimes for example on an airplane when somebody sits down next to me and they say well what do you do and I say if I want to talk about the faith I say oh I do a radio show and it's like oh really radio show well what do you talk about I talk about God and then I wait and see if they want to talk any further and if they do then I let them sort of break the ice and we get into a nice conversation but I keep a Bible with me typically when I travel and I've done this at least a couple of times where somebody says well what do you do and if I'd really rather read my book instead of talk to somebody I reach into my book bag and I pick out my Bible and I open to a page that's marked up garishly with highlighter pen and lots of color and I lean in close and I say I'm so glad you asked and then usually I'm left alone I can read my book and not be bothered so apathy it seems to me is simply a form of sloth as father was talking about last night you know neither hot nor cold don't want to be bothered you can take different forms and it's different for each one of us where you may sense that there's an opportunity where you could speak the truth in love it could be out of fear could be out of apathy it could be out of thinking well I'll do it some other time of course we don't know if there will be some other time we don't know how long our lives will be nor do we know how long the lives of the people around us will be so it makes good sense the smart money says take the opportunity when you perceive that there is one and do what you can like the sower of the seed that in the parable that Jesus gives us you don't know what kind of soil that seed will fall on but if you go through life as Jesus tells us to do and you are liberal you are sowing that seed wherever you go so that whatever kind of soil rocky or shallow or heavily trodden or deep and rich some of that seed is going to take root and spring into life so it's overcoming apathy I find that is very very much a challenge for us and coming coming back to that theme of being in your comfort zone I often think of saint peter in the fishing boat when he sees the lord walking on the surface of the lake and he says to him in a very sort of brash way lord if that's really you call to me to come to you across the water now every time I read that passage I think to myself that would not have occurred to me to ask should I get out of the boat and walk on water it'd be as if you were in an airplane and you saw the lord like walking on the clouds lord do you want me to pop the hatch do you want me to come out all come out if that's what you want that those things just don't occur to me maybe because I'm not a saint like saint peter is but that's what jesus that's what saint peter asked of the lord and that little boat to me personifies the comfort zone because when you're in that little boat you're dry you're safe but swinging your legs out over the side of that boat and literally doing something impossible becomes possible as jesus said for you it's impossible but with god all things are possible because the lord provides what's necessary in the moment but it was that willingness to actually get out of his comfort zone in the moment to say all right I have no clue what I'm about to do here but lord I'll do this if this is what you want me to do I have found that works incredibly well especially in those moments when I have no clue what I'm going to say to somebody I really don't know and I just offer up that little prayer lord I'm popping out of this fishing boat right now and I need you now more than ever to help me say whatever needs to be said even if it's just a kind word so apathy is a big deal I'm always reminded of the catholic who was very apathetic about his catholic faith to the point where when people would even ask him about it he wouldn't want to talk about it so one day this very talkative very friendly evangelical fellow says to him hey listen why don't we play a game of trivia they're sitting next to each other on an airplane and if I ask you a question that you can't answer you pay me a dollar if I can't answer your question I'll pay you a dollar catholics is not I don't I'd rather read my book so then the gentleman says well to make it interesting if you can't answer one of my questions you pay me a dollar but if I miss one of your questions I'll give you $50 so the catholic's ears perked up and he thought all right this is pretty good so the evangelical gentleman he went first and he said um all right how many miles is it from the earth to the moon this is an easy one but the catholic didn't know so he's shrugged his shoulders didn't even want to try to get the answer reached in his pocket pulled out a dollar bill gave it to the guy shrugged his shoulders so his question to the other fellow was what goes up a hill on four legs and comes down on three and he says I think I've heard that before let me give me a minute let me let me figure this one out so he's thinking and thinking now this was pre cell phone days so he couldn't google it so he didn't know what the answer was so after about 15 minutes he's stumped and he's frustrated and kind of angry so he takes out a $50 bill that he didn't think he'd have to give to this catholic guy and he gives it to him and he says I give up and the catholic puts it in his pocket and goes back to his book so now the guy is is really upset and he says no you gotta tell me what goes up a hill on four legs and comes down on three the catholic I just shrugged pulled another dollar bill out of his pocket gave it to the guys I don't know don't be that guy I was doing a speaking tour of Germany some years ago and in preparation for the various venues I would be speaking at and I spoke at universities and some catholic parishes but primarily they were in secular venues and over the space of this week I was told at the very beginning by some of the Catholics who were helping organize this event that I needed to be really careful because the German people are rightfully very proud of their intellectual heritage I mean they produced Beethoven and so many of the other great thinkers of recent centuries and so some of these German Catholics said just just remember that the Germans in the audience many of them have doctorates many of them are working in very high-tech fields and they're very proud of their intellectual tradition they don't like to be told what to think or to listen to the church they don't like it when they're told well the church teaches this and just be aware of that and I'm thinking oh great because this is all I'm here to talk about are these things this is perfect so my way of speaking the truth in love to these people was when I got up to the podium at each of these venues I began like this I said I am an American I am obviously not German and I don't presume to speak to you about anything in your culture because I am a guest here I don't know your culture the way I wish that I did but I'm coming to you speaking from my perspective back in my country let me tell you about the Americans the Americans are very proud of their intellectual tradition and these guys let me tell you these Americans they have doctorates they're into high-tech and they don't like it when the church says this is what you should believe and they don't like it when they're told well the church teaches this and Jesus said that and you should have seen the discomfort on the faces of all these good German people who couldn't say anything negative to me because I was simply criticizing or so they thought you know my people really what I was doing is I was speaking about all people and I tried and I think I succeeded in finding a way around the barrier that I was warned about and that was helpful to me and so over the years I began to think about this as one of the tools for apologetics and that is the technique is very important what you say is important true what you share with somebody by way of logic or perhaps a fact of history or if it's a bible-based discussion perhaps your knowledge of scripture that is all very important but truly truly the way you go about sharing that and the technique that you use is extremely important and if there were time we could go through many examples one comes to mind simply the beauty of the Catholic faith you can speak the truth in love simply by pointing to the beauty it may be architecture maybe the the beautiful music whether it's Gregorian chant or what have you it's the beauty of the patrimony the literary patrimony of the Catholic church it's the the beauty of piety the beauty of faith the beauty of seeing people whose lives are changed through prayer and through following Jesus these are all aspects of beauty that draw us don't they guys when you first met your wife before you knew she would be your wife you were drawn by her beauty weren't you her smile the way her hair blue in the breeze the way she looks the way she acted and that was like a beautiful flower that drew you like a hummingbird to want to know more and of course the more you began to experience and fall in love with her exterior beauty the more you began to learn about her interior beauty and this is the way things are so part of speaking the truth in love I believe goes beyond mere words we I think have to do a better job of helping people see the beauty in the church even though the church is like Noah's Ark we can use many analogies for it I love this analogy the church is like Noah's Ark can you imagine what it smelled like on Noah's Ark can you imagine trying to get a good night's sleep on Noah's Ark all the occupants of Noah's Ark or at least many of them they wanted nothing more than to get out of their cages and devour the other people or the other animals I should say on the Ark it was a smelly messy noisy tumultuous place but by golly all of us would rather be on Noah's Ark than be body surfing as since that was the only option that was left to them and in many respects including the fact that Scott alluded to a few minutes ago we are living in the midst of deeply disturbing trials and crises in the church with scandals and things so it's not as though the church is is clean and odor-free in terms of its human membership it is a tumultuous place and it does have a lot about it that is not easy to put it that way to live with but yet it is the Ark of Salvation and speaking that truth to people can be very difficult if they don't at least have an opportunity to appreciate the other side of the church the spotless bride the beauty in the Catholic church that should not remain obscured under the mud that may cover it because of scandals and things like that so we have a duty it seems to me to share and at the very least to point to the beauty let it be reflected in us I remember vividly on that same trip to Germany I was being escorted around the city of Cologne by a Catholic priest an American Catholic priest and as we got closer to the city center he pointed out the spires of the huge and beautiful cathedral there in the center of the old part of the city and he said that cathedral has a very important place in my own life really well what happened he said well during world war two my father was a crew member on a b-17 bomber and his particular job was he was the guy up in the nose you know the the blast in nose area and he would on his knees be looking through the bomb site and as the pilot would tell them we're getting over the the drop area he would be the one to decide when to press the button and drop the bombs he said my father was a very devout southern Baptist and he was very anti-Catholic and he never ever ever had anything good to say about the Catholic Church until one day when the crew he was on was making a bombing run over this city and he described how his father told him many years later how as he he got to this area of the city where they were about to drop more bombs and if you ever see the pictures of world war two cologne was absolutely pulverized by the bombs and perhaps the only edifice that actually remained somewhat still standing was this cathedral so his father this ardent southern Baptist loved Jesus loved the bible did not like the catholic church he's at however many feet high seven thousand feet whatever it was and he's peering through the bomb site the clouds open and what is he looking at he's looking at this cathedral and it's hauntingly beautiful gothic architecture inspires and and he told his son the priest who later relayed this story to me he said in that moment as he was looking ready to drop bombs he felt as though somebody and he had this deep seated sense or intuition that that somebody was God himself was inside that building he said it was a moment of transfiguring beauty in the midst of the the rubble and the devastation that the war had caused he was just struck by the beauty of this church and he had a powerful overpowering sense that God was present in that church now you and I as Catholics we know he was referring to the holy Eucharist but he didn't even know anything about that so after the bombs were dropped and they were not dropped on that cathedral they were dropped a little further on but after that bombing mission was finished and they flew back to wherever the base was this southern Baptist bible believing Jesus loving anti-Catholic guy he went and he sought out a Catholic chaplain and said something just happened to me I don't know what it is can I talk to you about it and one thing led to another and after a series of instructions his father became a Catholic he entered the church and we now have a priest serving the church because of that mysterious experience of God speaking the truth in love as an act of mercy to this man who is about to unload bombs isn't that incredible when you think about that isn't it so the beauty of the church is a very important aspect of it now sometimes speaking the truth in love will take a very subtle form that's about as subtle as I can think of sometimes it takes a more dramatic form Saul being knocked off his horse as he's on the way to Damascus he falls on the ground he's blinded he hears this voice Saul Saul why are you persecuting me who are you sir I am Jesus whom you are persecuting that's pretty overt wouldn't you say it's not subtle it's pretty overt Jesus is getting his attention I'll never forget I have never before this happened I had never seen this happen I had never heard of this happening before but I was to speak at a conference out west and it was myself and a Catholic priest whom I had never met before I didn't know anything about this priest but turns out he was a really powerful orator very fiery speaker very effective speaker and he would speak and then I would speak then he would speak then I would speak it turns out it was at this very may if we can use the word sort of progressive or left leaning kind of parish they they promoted things let's just say that the church doesn't teach and maybe didn't teach some of the things that the church does teach but the reason it was at that parish was because they had a beautiful large facility and it was rentable so the people who put this conference on rented this place so typically from what I was told it wasn't the parishioners of that parish who were there it was folk who came in from a distance and you could see them with their mini vans and the pro-life bumper stickers and the rosaries hanging from their rear view mirrors and pushing strollers lots of babies that kind of thing so in the middle of this conference or at the end of this conference I should say it was time to pack up and finish and then there would be the vigil mass and it turns out that this visiting priest who I had never heard of before he was the celebrant of the mass and nobody there had ever heard of him before so nobody knew what to expect and I had an inkling that he would give a fiery sermon and he did and at first the sermon was about the bread of life discourse and he was talking about how the Eucharist is food for the journey and it is God's way of staying with us he remains with us he loves us food for the journey and it was kind of this warm bubble bath of nice biblical thoughts it was very mellow and very calming and rather anesthetizing and everybody in the congregation was feeling happy feelings and just sort of floating on all these nice platitudes about our Lord and the whole Eucharist and then when he had them where he wanted them he shifted gears and he said in this life there are only two kinds of people winners and losers and that sort of woke everybody up like that's kind of harsh and then he said winners go to heaven losers go to hell he paused and he said and many of you are losers yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly that was my reaction I had never heard anybody do this I'd never seen anybody do this and I couldn't believe it I'm sitting in the very back of the church in a chair against the back wall and so he said that he said most Catholics are on their way to hell and they don't even realize it and I thought I was about to be the witness at the martyrdom of this priest and everybody was like shocked and frozen and like what is he saying and how dare he's and then he went on and he got everyone's attention then he went on to say here's why I'm saying this and he went through a list of approximately 10 mortal sins pornography drunkenness he went through all the different sort of standard big sins in modern America and he said as a priest I can tell you this that many many people fall into these sins on a regular basis and they don't go to confession they never go to confession in some cases or they it may be many years between confessions and all these sins rack up and he got to his point and he said my point is and yet they go to holy communion Sunday after Sunday after Sunday with all these sins that have burdened them now and on top of it they receive holy communion so he was speaking about the sin the sins that we can commit and the way that when we bring them with us to holy communion without going to confession we compound those sins and everybody was like frozen nobody objected nobody got up and walked out nobody was angry that I could see anyway they were listening and it was harsh and it was direct I grant you that but it was amazingly effective at least when communion time came around because I noticed there were like a lot of people who didn't get up and go to communion it was and I mean that I mean it had some kind of effect so I couldn't I couldn't forget the story I was I was I was just astounded by it so about a month later I was speaking in Reno I don't know why I remember it was Reno but that's where it was and in the middle of my talk I I had this memory of what the priest said to the people and I thought well I could never say that and then I thought well I don't live here and I'm going to be on an airplane tomorrow and then I can also I'll just say that he said that I didn't say this I would never say this but he said this here's what he said so I related the story to them as I did to you just now and the similar reaction gasps in chuckling and that kind of thing well when it was all over a woman came up to me in the back of the of the auditorium and she was very well dressed she was I don't know late 30s maybe 40 years old perhaps she appeared to be somebody very successful in business or maybe she was a physician or something and she came up to me and with a very troubled look on her face she said that story that you told about what the priest said and I said yeah wasn't that something she said he was describing me and I said really and she said yeah she says I I've never even given it a thought she said I do a fair number of those sins and I don't even remember when the last time I was in confession and I go to communion every Sunday and now I realize I am on my way to hell and what what can I do so luckily there were still a few priests who were yet in the room and I said see there's some priests don't delay it go find one of them he will be happy to hear your confession just let him know you'd like a little time to go to confession I guarantee he'll make time for you and so she did she made a beeline over to one of the priests and she went to confession for the first time and who knows how many years moral to the story even second hand telling the truth sometimes when it's almost violently overt can have the desired effect now only god knows when it's the right time to be really direct and really vigorous or when it's the right time to be more subtle and more gentle there's always a technique for every situation but I offer you this to say don't be so afraid of being direct that you never actually come out and say it because sometimes people need to they need to hear it straight I know that's happened to me many times I'm glad my dad told it to me straight if you let this girl go it'll be the worst thing that ever happened to you if he had hinted around at it and if he had said something else more ambiguous I probably would not have gotten the message same Francis DeSales he's a great model for us he would tell the truth using persistence and patience and creativity he used the social media of his day which was the printing press and when he was the bishop of Geneva and prior to that when he was a priest beginning I think around 27 28 years old he began working in the mission field around the city of Geneva where John Calvin had been in for for decades and most of the people by that point had become hardened in their anti-catholicism over the space of his lifetime by the time he died it's reckoned that because of his efforts at using the printing press and printing little tracks apologetics responses to the arguments that the ministers would so often hurl against the Catholic Church he would print up these responses and he would put them under the doors with his helper in the morning so that when people would get up to have breakfast they would see this little track and nobody was giving them peer pressure they could read in the privacy of their homes these things that he was saying and little by little he won them over and most historians who examine his career they admit that he was responsible for thousands of conversions because he spoke the truth to love and people in a way that was creative non you know it wasn't a high impact and it was in a way that they could in their own time and in their own terms they could learn and some scholars say that perhaps 60 000 people wound up converting to the Catholic faith as a result of this now we have the printing press we have some better things than that nowadays we have youtube videos we have lighthouse catholic media audio clips we have the offerings both video and audio of the augustin institute we have catholic radio e w t n relevant radio the network that i happen to be on so this is a lesson to us in the here and now that maybe if you're not exactly sure how you can speak the truth and love on a particular topic you can certainly find people like father mike schmitz or father uh father mcconi or scott hawn or various other people who are speaking on those topics and just send a youtube video clip to your son or daughter who's off in college when they came home for the holidays and well they said i don't see anything wrong with gay marriage oh really well here's a here's a video clip of one of these people speaking about this issue you know that your kids are all always looking at their phones anyway so it's a delivery system that really works send them audio send them video be creative that's another part of it the other thing too is you can speak the truth without telling someone the truth what i mean by that is very often we kind of lapse into our default mode of speaking the truth by saying here's what you need to know i'm here to tell you what you're supposed to believe in most people they don't like that i don't like that when somebody does it to me so what i have found over the last 30 plus years of doing the work of apologetics is you know the technique that almost always works it's called the socratic method i've written books about this topic the socratic method is simply asking questions so somebody says to you you know you're you're superstitious for believing in god really why is that superstitious well it's superstitious because you believe in a god there's no evidence for oh really have you considered the evidence has somebody ever shown you the evidence well i don't believe there isn't any evidence really well what evidence would you accept is you see what i'm doing is i'm directing the conversation by asking the questions some great ways to do this so that you don't wind up getting put on the defensive uh you can follow the advice that's given in a very good book called tactics by a Protestant author by the name of greg kokal he says when somebody challenges you don't immediately assume the burden of proof which is what catholics typically do and we get on the defensive if somebody challenges you just say what do you mean by that and you've shifted it back on him so he has to repeat what he means by that and then when he you get the second blast or the second salvo of the challenge don't succumb to the temptation to start defending quite yet then say something like well how did you come to that conclusion you see what you're doing is by using the socratic method you're keeping the burden of proof where it belongs which is the challenger who's making the claim and he won't even necessarily realize that you're leading him to the truth and he's doing all the talking and you're the one asking the questions it's like the old saying goes you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink true but you can put salt in his oats and make him thirsty which is what you want to do with socratic method when i was even before i began my work in apologetics um i used to listen a lot to the bible answer man show walter martin was the guy on the mic from a protestant fellow and he used a polemical technique that was very entertaining but it wasn't very effective and i had to unlearn that because i was so enamored of this sort of combat radio experience that i had listening to his program i had to unlearn it because i discovered very quickly that in the real world the saying is true you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar and that has become for me the hallmark of the way i try to approach speaking the truth and love a quick bible verse second timothy chapter two verses 23 through 26 excellent reading for us who are for we who are studying to be apologists have nothing to do with stupid senseless controversies you know that they breed quarrels and the lord servant should not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone an apt teacher for bearing correcting his opponents with gentleness god may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth and they may escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by them to do his will now i'd like to share with you this is the first time i've ever done this at a defending the faith conference i'd like to share with you an audio clip from my daily radio show ironically called the patrick madrid show what are the odds that that would happen right i'm on relevant radio monday through friday from nine a.m to noon eastern six a.m to nine a.m pacific and if you don't have the relevant radio app or i should say if you don't have a relevant radio station in your area go to your app store go to google play and get the relevant radio app and you can listen anytime anywhere uh you can listen to it on a podcast you can listen live but just know that i am there for you speaking the truth in love every day nine to noon eastern listen to this call that i received and be thinking about not only what happens in the call but the way in which the caller does not want to hear the truth let's play the first clip please there we go okay compelling insights unpredictable conversations encouragement for your day it's the patrick madrid show on relevant radio let's go to brenda listening in california hello brenda welcome hi patrick i listen to you every morning as i'm driving to work and the way you speak about abortion sometimes i have to turn the channel until you're off the subject because it's like they're jumping holding hands jumping in the streets so glad that they can have an abortion it's not an easy decision when someone has to go through that right you should never be an easy decision to put somebody to death to kill an innocent person i could imagine it's not an easy decision and the way you say to kill an innocent person it's like you're lining children up and just shooting them no it's worse than that brenda no it's not even that nice i mean that would be nice by comparison what it actually is is the doctor goes in with forceps and pulls the child apart limb by limb while the child is alive and then crushes the skull of the child on the way out that's what actually happens you see how you think it's a child so in someone's mind they're picturing of a full grown child with their heads being crushed it's not quite that way oh it is quite that way it is that quite that way in late term abortions brenda it absolutely is okay in late term abortions but in the in the month that is allowed it's not quite that way and that is the time when most women have abortions in that period of time that's allowed can you picture a woman who gets raped and in her life she's not picturing having a child she's she's walking around in her life doing her own thing she gets raped now all of a sudden she has to have a child by someone she doesn't even know by someone who raped her most most women who have abortions you think that's something they want you think they don't agonize over it you think they don't sit there and cry about it and think about it oh i do i do think they do all those things absolutely but it doesn't change the fact that a human life an innocent human life is being taken and that's murder well let's not call it murder because we know it's not if it's legal and they're having an abortion can we call it an abortion because it is not murder well you know brenda and it's legal it's linked legal i grant you that it is legal but slavery also used to be legal and not allowing women to vote in elections used to be legal in this country you know would you say that those were okay simply because they were legal no but we're not talking about that we're talking about you brenda you raised the issue of legality you said can we not call it murder because it's legal so i'm simply taking your logic to the logical conclusion which is you're saying that because it's legal it's okay and i'm just saying that slavery used to be legal and preventing women from voting in elections used to be legal in this country but i think both of us would agree that neither of those things is okay wouldn't we no no that no that wasn't but i don't want to jump off into that subject because as that would take your whole show no it wouldn't all it would take brenda would be for you to acknowledge the fact that you're you're using logic selectively you you just said that this should not be called murder because it's legal and all i'm doing is juxtapose i'm using your logic to say that there are other things that were legal like slavery but that didn't make them right it's still wrong to own slaves even though it was legal it's still wrong to murder an unborn child even though it's legal that's the point i'm making yes and you make that point every time you talk about abortion it you you link one to the other blend they should not be linked they should not be linked why shouldn't they be linked because right because right now we're talking about abortion not slavery if we were talking about that i would have an opinion on that one right but but all i'm saying brenda is that you're using you're misusing logic you're you're misusing it because you're saying that we shouldn't call abortion murder because it's legal so the natural question remains then is is it just because something is legal does that mean that it's morally correct we're getting close to the end and i furnished you with an example of something that is not morally correct it's immoral to own slaves and yet it was legal so i'm questioning your logic because you're telling me that i can't say that it's murder because it's legal that's my point when you jump off into from one subject to another you know it takes away from the topic we're talking about no i'm not jumping from one topic to another what here's what's happening brenda what's happening is you see the flaw in your argument but you won't admit it i pointed something out that you don't you don't want to go there because you know that you're wrong on this issue i don't want to go there because we're not talking about slavery we're not yes slavery was wrong of course it was but it was legal to actually murder someone to actually hang someone yes patrick of course it's wrong that was murder but when a woman decides to have an abortion because either for whatever reason and it's not that she's happy about it she's not jumping and it's like you make it sound like these women are so happy oh i'll just get pregnant and i'll have an abortion it it's never like that well there are women who do feel that way brenda in fact i would invite you to look on youtube at the celebrations in ireland for example just two weeks ago the partying in the streets no hang on printed let me just make the point the celebrating by women who are overjoyed that they can now go and have an abortion in our they're overjoyed because they have a choice that's what i just said if they're not saying now i'm gonna get pregnant now i'm gonna have an abortion no i have the choice if if for some reason i cannot if i get raped or if i cannot have this child if if it's medically impossible for me to have this child i have the choice to kill that child sometimes they make you yeah i don't think that's something to celebrate brenda to say that i legally now have a choice to kill another person to make my life a little easier i have a choice yeah that's not a choice to celebrate you and i that's where you and i disagree and i wish you would have the tolerance like you always speak about on the radio because i listen to you every morning and i agree 99 of the time with everything you say except for this topic i understand it's a choice i understand a woman who's struggling who can't even afford to feed the children she already has she finds herself pregnant i mean living from paycheck to paycheck you don't even know where the money is coming from now i used to live that way myself brenda i used to live that way myself i know exactly what that feeling is like but it still doesn't authorize somebody to take the life of an innocent person and that's what abortion is and let's just talk about the rape example that you gave a moment ago um the woman who winds up having an abortion she in the first place was the one who was preyed upon by the rapist she was exploited she was humanized and something very personal and precious to her was taken from her by by force and when she completes the circle of violence by having an abortion she does that to the unborn child who is innocent just as she was so the right thing to do as difficult as it may be and i've known some women who have done this is to say you know i i'm not able to have a child right now and give that child up for adoption i mean there are many other solutions but our society is we could stop here there thank you there is about another 60 seconds left in the call but i wanted you to hear the majority of it so you could get the full effect do you see how she didn't really want to confront the issue that she raised um and it's a very difficult topic obviously so i i approached i was praying the whole time i was talking to this lady lord helped me to do the right thing here well the happy ending was not that the caller suddenly decided to agree with me she ended the call as much in disagreement with me as she was before but immediately after that there were two calls in a row both of them women both of whom had been raped one when she was 18 years old and homeless the other when she was a young nursing student in college the first woman testified to the beauty of her daughter she chose to keep her she raised her and her daughter like just celebrated that very day of this phone call her 42nd birthday and all kinds of grandchildren and this mom who was raped when she was 18 years old she spoke the truth to a national audience on something the next lady said the same thing happened to me and i gave my child up for adoption and then she described how god gave beautiful healing to her later in life when she was reunited with the the now grown son that she had given up from adoption and both women said i knew that it was wrong to even think about killing this unborn child so they completed the process for me that day they spoke the truth in love and i will not be at all surprised if somebody calls the show at a future point and says i was thinking of having an abortion and i listened to that show and i listened to that call and now my baby is alive and well because i heard the truth from those women think about that god bless you thank you