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For some reason, as soon as I heard the phrase "straw man", I thought about a scene from a movie. No, I'm not talking about the Scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz", which is probably what most people would think of. The scene that immediately came to my mind is a rather comical one from the war drama "The Patriot". Mel Gibson's character is in the office of one of the British generals negotiating the release of colonial prisoners. His main bargaining chip is that his men have taken British soldiers, many of them highly-ranked, captive and are holding them at gunpoint on top of a ridge quite a distance from the office. The British leader looks from afar to receive apparent confirmation of their capture and subsequently agrees to release his prisoners. However, we learn within mere moments what the British leader did not know - the colonials had created straw men and dressed them up in British uniforms! The plan of the colonials worked as the Brits had been deceived!

And that, friends, is the main goal of the "straw man" tactic - to deceive. As you might guess, the name of this tactic comes from the use of actual straw men. They are easier to fight and defeat because they obviously cannot retaliate. In the same way, turning someone's argument into a "straw man" makes it easier for you to shoot it down because it is NOT the real argument the person was making. It doesn't necessarily mean you are completely misrepresenting them, lying, or changing their argument altogether. What is more likely and more deceptive is exaggerating someone's argument to a point they were not making.

Biblically speaking, this tactic brought to my mind the book of Acts. It seems that in the early church and even before that, followers of God were subject to ridiculous and exaggerated accusations because their accusers could not find fault in them otherwise. One specific example is in Acts 16:16-40. Paul, Silas, and some of their fellow believers were traveling throughout Syria, which was almost entirely pagan at that point. A slave girl who made money by fortune-telling was following them. While this sort of thing would've been very common in a pagan society, it was completely deplorable to the believers. So Paul commanded the evil spirit to leave her and it did. Her owners were enraged because she could no longer make them money, so they brought Paul and Silas into the marketplace to face the authorities in front of crowds of people. It was at this point that they used a "straw man" tactic. Since they couldn't find any realistic charges to bring against these men, they simply declared, "These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar" (v. 20b). Since Paul and Silas were in fact Jews in an anti-Semitic region, all the owners of the slave girl had to do was play to the emotions of the crowds and magistrates. Paul and Silas' goal was to simply command an evil spirit to leave one girl, but her owners exaggerated the situation by calling them troublemakers who are affecting the whole city.

Because they were Jews and it was assumed they were not Roman citizens (even though we later find out that they were), Paul and Silas had no defense. As a result of the accusations, they were stripped (humiliated), severely flogged, and thrown in jail. Should we expect that the world will do the same to us the more we speak out against evil and for Jesus Christ? You better believe it. Fortunately, very few if any of us have suffered such consequences to this point. But we should not assume that we never will. Even if we never face it to this extent, those who oppose the Christian faith will most certainly use any tactics they can, including straw man arguments, to try to defeat us. The important thing for us to remember and the challenging thing for us to live out is that we need not defend ourselves. We must check our motives by the Holy Spirit, and if He approves of us, then the accusations of others are irrelevant. I once heard megachurch pastor Matt Chandler at a conference and he labeled Paul as "the most free man ever". The authorities could do what they wanted to Paul, but they still couldn't get to him. He lived in freedom as a workman approved by God.

You and I can live this way too. In the Acts story, it ends with the authorities being "astonished" to find they are Roman citizens and were treated unfairly. They then escort Paul and Silas from the prison and out of the city. If you resist the temptation to defend yourself against straw man arguments or anything else that misrepresents you, God will be your Defender.