How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator
176
How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781433502712 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 12/18/2008 |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.34(d) |
About the Author
John Coleman (MBA, Harvard Business School) is an author and businessman. His professional experience includes work in asset management, housing and community development, and consulting. John lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Jackie.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
PATHOS
Emotional Jesus
On January 28, 1986, a national tragedy supplanted Ronald Reagan's planned State of the Union Address. Early that morning, the Challenger space shuttle incinerated in midair over Cape Canaveral, Florida, only minutes after takeoff. As schoolchildren watched from classrooms around the country, seven American astronauts lost their lives, and NASA's push for space exploration came to a standstill. An alarmed populace immediately began to reconsider the cost of an activity that, at times, seemed without purpose.
President Reagan faced the task of mourning seven American heroes and reminding a heartbroken nation of the reasons that in the course of history such sacrifices are sometimes necessary. Unsurprisingly, at a moment of sadness and with little time to speak, the President turned not to lengthy reasoning but to simple emotional appeal. To comfort the nation, President Reagan used pathos.
After listing the names of the astronauts and thanking their families, the President offered these hopeful words:
We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers....
I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them....
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."
In a moment of national tragedy, President Reagan appealed not primarily to the intellects of his listeners but to their hearts. He knew that Americans are a nation of immigrants and pioneers. He knew that though Americans might find the long-term rewards of space exploration hard to understand and the tragedy of seven casualties difficult to fathom, they would feel pride that after five hundred years Americans were still exploring, still pushing forward on the frontiers of man, still risking their lives in the pursuit of discovery. He knew that at a time of loss you must assure people that the losses are not in vain. In understanding these simple concepts, President Reagan and his speechwriters crafted one of the most memorable speeches in American history and committed the Challenger astronauts to the ages.
The appeal to the heart — pathos — is perhaps the most intuitive of Aristotle's principles. As mentioned in the Introduction, Aristotle literally wrote the book on communication with his treatise On Rhetoric, and his categorization of the essential elements of communication (logos, pathos, and ethos) are still useful as we discuss these concepts today. Emotion isn't a learned skill or an acquired capacity but a primal component of human nature. In On Rhetoric Aristotle notes, "[There is persuasion] through the hearers when they are led to feel emotion [pathos] by the speech." Three millennia later the power of emotional appeal remains strong.
We can all think of speeches, songs, pictures, or movies that have moved us. We tear up listening to the soulful intonations of Martin Luther King, and our hearts flutter or falter at just the right moments in movies like It's a Wonderful Life or Hotel Rwanda. Our emotions are often our catalysts to deeper consideration and action. They give us a fuller picture of the reasons to act on information, encourage us to stand by principle, and add dimension and life to cold fact. As Blaise Pascal phrased it: "The heart has reasons that reason cannot know." Pathos is the essential complement to logos (discussed fully in the next chapter) in human understanding, and just as emotion without reason is hollow and incomplete, logic without emotion is cold and unmoving. Life without feeling is shallow and gray.
Jesus Christ was an exemplary practitioner of the appeal to pathos. Even when his audiences were uneducated or lacked the sophisticated biblical knowledge to fully absorb the power of his religious reasoning, Christ was able to reach their hearts. Through his kindness, his words, and his miracles, Jesus taught his disciples that the way he described was not merely correct but beautiful and comforting and hopeful. Pathos can be abused. But properly used as a complement to reason, emotion adds to the structure of logic the aesthetic of feeling, creating a deeper structure that only our hearts can know.
Of course, knowing that pathos is important and inspiring emotion in those with whom you communicate are two very different things. There are two components to pathos: knowing which appeals are likely to reach listeners and knowing how to implement them effectively. In the following section we discuss both those elements of pathos illuminated by Jesus and the ways in which he communicated them. This is not an exhaustive treatment, and there are surely other ways in which Jesus used pathos to reach audiences, but these are a few key strategies that you can replicate in your daily communication.
IMAGERY AND NARRATIVE STRUCTURE: GIVING EVERY SUBJECT A FACE
In his 1862 work Fathers and Sons, Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev wrote, "A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound."
Nothing in rhetoric is as powerful as an image or a narrative. That is why movies have become such dominant media, the visual arts remain so compelling, and storytellers are often the most powerful speakers. People are not moved by abstract moral lessons or logical discussions in the same way they are moved by faces, names, tall tales, and vivid visual imagery. Any discussion of pathos, therefore, must begin with a discussion of imagery and its place in narrative structure.
We will delve deeper into narrative structure in Chapter 4 (which focuses on the overall importance of narrative), but it is useful here to briefly introduce the concepts of narrative and imagery as they relate to pathos before fully exploring them later in the book.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines narrative as "a narrated account; a story." The same source defines imagery as "the formation of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things, or of such images collectively." The ancient Greeks even had a term, enargia, to refer to "vivid ... description" that could be inherently moving when depicting things graphic in nature. Intuitively you realize that compelling, graphic accounts of people, places, and things can be stirring, which is why Christ often used visual imagery, particularly within the context of narrative, to create an emotional response in his hearers.
One of Christ's most inspiring uses of narrative and imagery is the Parable of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke 10:30–37.
Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
"But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy."
And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."
Consider the context of the original audience. The people of the region lived under a series of complex religious and secular laws. The Jewish religious leaders taught the people the truth of their sin nature, but not the hopefulness of God's love. They were often derided by the Pharisees and Sadducees and in many ways must have felt beaten up and abandoned. In other words, they must have felt a lot like the abandoned man in Jesus' parable. This is an important point to consider. Jesus was showing that he was on the side of these people, that he had sympathy and love for them. He even specifically called out the fact that a priest (a religious authority) and a Levite (a ruling elite) behaved inhumanely, but a Samaritan (an outcast! a pariah!) made the right choices and gained God's favor.
In this brief story Jesus accomplished several purposes. He showed empathy for his audience, painting their pain in the kind of stunning detail ("stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead"; "bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine") that was sure to make them sit up and pay attention. He also criticized the cold and unfeeling way in which many religious leaders of the time behaved. And in the subtext he showed one group that had suffered hypocrisy (the common people of the region who suffered under pharisaical rule) their own hypocrisy in condemning an even less fortunate group of people (the Samaritans).
In context, Jesus was relating a powerful story that resonated emotionally with the Pharisee who asked the question, with the crowd of diverse people who overheard them, and with the millions of readers who would eventually encounter the parable through Scripture. In an effort to teach people how to be good neighbors — to treat one another properly — Jesus didn't lay out a complex series of rules as the Pharisees were prone to do. Instead he painted a picture of proper behavior that would allow his audience to make commonsense judgments about neighborliness when they encountered their neighbors in the future and would motivate them to remember and follow his maxims.
Of course he often did this with even simpler statements. "Do not throw your pearls before pigs" (Matthew 7:6) is a far more emotionally compelling admonition than "Do not continue to argue with those who refuse to listen." "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3) is more jarring than "Why don't you think through the things you have to fix before you spend time thinking about the things your friends have to fix?" Jesus fully understood the importance of imagery to generate pathos and how the use of vivid imagery can enliven communication. Imagery makes a story or word picture more compelling and in doing so excites in us an element of pathos that drab, gray storytelling cannot.
Next time you are giving a speech or writing a paper, begin with a narrative attention- getter — an image that captures the audience's imagination and hearts. Tell someone's story, or paint a picture using metaphor and simile. This can be factual — like using a heartbreaking or hopeful news account from the community — or it can be a fabricated image designed to present a familiar topic in a new way. For example, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn began his 1970 Nobel Prize lecture with the words:
Just as that puzzled savage who has picked up — a strange cast-up from the ocean? — something unearthed from the sands? — or an obscure object fallen down from the sky? — intricate in curves, it gleams first dully and then with a bright thrust of light. Just as he turns it this way and that, turns it over, trying to discover what to do with it, trying to discover some mundane function within his own grasp, never dreaming of its higher function.
So also we, holding Art in our hands ...
Do those words stir something within you that a mere explanation could not? Do all of the extra details ("intricate in curves, it gleams first dully and then with a bright thrust of light") bring the subject to light?
Again, we will discuss narrative and imagery further in Chapter 4, but for those reading the book piece by piece, it is such an essential component of pathos that it bears repeating.
SHARED VALUES: RELYING ON COMMON BELIEFS
A second method for stirring the hearts of your audience is to utilize shared or common values. As human beings, some concepts inherently move us, and some ethical imperatives compel us to action. At the 1996 State of the World Forum convened by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, participants from around the world were asked to name five values that mattered most in their daily lives. Truth, compassion, responsibility, freedom, and reverence for life were the values that the diverse group agreed were universal. Indeed, these are intuitively accepted. We all want to be free and happy. We want strong families, good lives, responsible children, and honest and compassionate friends. Because they are universal, you can use these shared values and the words that communicate them both to impact your listeners' emotions and to connect those existing values to new concepts.
Jesus does this brilliantly throughout the four Gospels. While he introduced dozens of radical new concepts, he always did so utilizing the language of the values shared by the Jewish people — love, hope, faith, truth, righteousness, honesty, forgiveness. He often used these established concepts to illuminate new ones that subsequently became shared values (for example, humility, self-sacrifice) and to deepen people's understanding of the values they already shared, extending the application of those values to new arenas.
You can see this in Jesus' statement, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13), in which Christ uses the shared values of love and friendship to deepen our understanding of the concept of self-sacrifice (which has itself become a shared value because of this and other associations). You can also see it in his Sermon on the Mount. After speaking of the Beatitudes, Jesus reviews a number of concepts including murder, adultery, divorce, and the law — starting with a shared value and using language to deepen his audience's under standing of those values in an emotionally impactful way. Speaking of love, Jesus says:
"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:38–48)
Jesus' audience valued love, but they did so imperfectly — loving only their family and friends. Jesus used the shared value of love, illuminated by the shared values of righteousness and respect for God, to illuminate a stirring new application of love — love for one's enemies.
One of the best modern examples of this is dialogue from the movie A Few Good Men. The entire film is an argument for embracing the shared values of honor, freedom, and courage. In the film, a Marine colonel played by Jack Nicholson orders the beating of a young Marine in order to teach the private a lesson about honor and respect for hierarchy. The beating leads to the young man's death and to the court-martial that forms the plot of the story.
On the opposite side, the prosecuting attorney (Tom Cruise) learns that real honor and courage would have involved protecting, rather than abusing, the young Marine. In the pivotal scene between Cruise and Nicholson, the colonel uses an emotional appeal to connect to our shared values: Nicholson: You want answers?
Cruise: I think I'm entitled to them.
Nicholson: You want answers?!
Cruise: I want the truth.
Nicholson (loudly): You can't handle the truth! ... Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "How to Argue like Jesus"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Joe Carter and John Coleman.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
INTRODUCTION,
CHRIST THE COMMUNICATOR,
1 PATHOS EMOTIONAL JESUS,
2 LOGOS JESUS THE LOGICIAN,
3 ETHOS JESUS AS SHEPHERD, SAVIOR, TEACHER, AND FRIEND,
4 NARRATIVE AND IMAGERY THE STORY AND STORIES OF A SAVIOR,
5 DISCIPLESHIP SPREADING AND SUSTAINING THE MESSAGE,
6 HEAVENLY HEURISTICS RHETORIC'S RULES OF THUMB,
7 CASE STUDIES,
GLOSSARY,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
What People are Saying About This
"How to Argue Like Jesus will help communications professors to teach angelically. Carter and Coleman Christianize Aristotle and add heavenly heuristics that show how Jesus used story and imagery, and how we can go and do likewise."—Marvin Olasky, Editor in Chief, WORLD Magazine
"This engaging and edifying study by two gifted Christian writers shows that Jesus understood better than all the others both who he was talking to and what they needed to hear. It turns out that the right kind of straight talk really can confound the smooth experts, and being rhetorically effective doesn't have to be at the expense of your good name. This is a genuine self-help book."—Peter Lawler, Dana Professor of Government, Berry College; author, Homeless and at Home in America
"Anti-intellectualism plagues the modern church, but the best response is not a false intellectualism. How to Argue like Jesus falls into neither trap. It effectively teaches logic and critical thinking in the context of a well-lived life. This is what the church needs."—John Mark Reynolds, Founder and Director, Torrey Honors Institute
"Carter and Coleman take a complex topic and distill it into a clear and readable volume on proper communication. I highly recommend this book."—William J. Bennett, Fellow, The Claremont Institute; Cofounder, Culture11