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62 reviews for:
The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity
Lee Strobel
3.84 AVERAGE
62 reviews for:
The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity
Lee Strobel
3.84 AVERAGE
Well written and readable, as well as reliant on cyclical, faith-based arguments. But did make me think.
DNF - after reviewing other materials, I’ve found the “claims” made by this author to be unsubstantial.
Originally I gave this title 4 stars. I am revising my stars to zero.
The reason I am doing so is that since reading this title, several things about my faith journey and expression have changed and I no longer subscribe to evangelical ideologies.
I respect Strobel's investigative look but cannot stand behind stars/reviews I have given based on prior readings.
The reason I am doing so is that since reading this title, several things about my faith journey and expression have changed and I no longer subscribe to evangelical ideologies.
I respect Strobel's investigative look but cannot stand behind stars/reviews I have given based on prior readings.
Picked this off my bookshelf. I think I started it years ago and didn't get very far. It's detailed, scientific, and still readable.
The 8 objections he's addressing are: 1) Since evil & suffering exist, a loving God cannot. 2) Since miracles contradict science, they cannot be true. 3) Evolution explains life, so God isn't needed. 4) God isn't worthy of worship if He kills innocent children. 5) It's offensive to claim Jesus is the only way to God. 6) A loving God would never torture people in hell. 7) Church history is littered with oppression and violence. 8) I still have doubts, so I can't be a Christian.
I'm only through objection #3, but it's pretty compelling. Strobel is a former atheist and former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune.
The 8 objections he's addressing are: 1) Since evil & suffering exist, a loving God cannot. 2) Since miracles contradict science, they cannot be true. 3) Evolution explains life, so God isn't needed. 4) God isn't worthy of worship if He kills innocent children. 5) It's offensive to claim Jesus is the only way to God. 6) A loving God would never torture people in hell. 7) Church history is littered with oppression and violence. 8) I still have doubts, so I can't be a Christian.
I'm only through objection #3, but it's pretty compelling. Strobel is a former atheist and former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune.
The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel is an incredibly thought-provoking exploration into a few of the most challenging questions facing Christianity. Strobel conducts several in-depth interviews with world-class theologians, scholars, and philosophers in an attempt to answer those tough questions. Topics such as the problem of evil, the reliability of the bible, and how the theory of evolution fits into the biblical narrative are covered.
One of the things I appreciated the most about this book was Strobel’s willingness to tackle these subjects head on. He recognizes that these questions are important, tough, and not something we can simply dance around. Skepticism and doubt abound because so many people feel like they aren’t getting satisfactory answers to these tough questions. As a former atheist, you can tell that Strobel really gets it. He understands what it’s like to wrestle with these questions, so he approaches each one with humility.
I think my favorite chapter was the last one: I Still Have Doubts, So I Can’t Be a Christian. Sometimes in my own walk as a Christian I bump up against hard questions that I don’t have good answers for, and doubts creep in. This chapter was a good reminder that such doubts are completely normal and shouldn’t be anything to fear. They don’t have to derail our faith.
Overall, I highly recommend The Case For Faith as a must-read for Christians who struggle with doubts on certain topics, or for non-Christians who want to see well-thought-out rebuttals to these challenges to Christianity. Strobel’s honest and intelligent approach will leave you feeling challenged and inspired.
One note of caution though, chapter 5 contains an interview with Ravi Zacharias, who was discovered after his death to have been involved in abusive and sinful activities. I don’t know if more recent editions have excluded his interview, but my copy still includes it. I don’t think this should take away from the book, but should be something to keep in mind while reading.
One of the things I appreciated the most about this book was Strobel’s willingness to tackle these subjects head on. He recognizes that these questions are important, tough, and not something we can simply dance around. Skepticism and doubt abound because so many people feel like they aren’t getting satisfactory answers to these tough questions. As a former atheist, you can tell that Strobel really gets it. He understands what it’s like to wrestle with these questions, so he approaches each one with humility.
I think my favorite chapter was the last one: I Still Have Doubts, So I Can’t Be a Christian. Sometimes in my own walk as a Christian I bump up against hard questions that I don’t have good answers for, and doubts creep in. This chapter was a good reminder that such doubts are completely normal and shouldn’t be anything to fear. They don’t have to derail our faith.
Overall, I highly recommend The Case For Faith as a must-read for Christians who struggle with doubts on certain topics, or for non-Christians who want to see well-thought-out rebuttals to these challenges to Christianity. Strobel’s honest and intelligent approach will leave you feeling challenged and inspired.
One note of caution though, chapter 5 contains an interview with Ravi Zacharias, who was discovered after his death to have been involved in abusive and sinful activities. I don’t know if more recent editions have excluded his interview, but my copy still includes it. I don’t think this should take away from the book, but should be something to keep in mind while reading.
4.5 stars. Overall helpful but I think JP Moreland's answer on hell needed further explication. I think the reader could easily get the impression when Moreland says the language of flames is figurative, that suffering in hell is not real. He talks about separation from God but doesn't flesh out the terror of what that actually means, of an existence without common grace, of being fully stripped of the good things we take for granted in this life.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Tahle kniha má svá omezení i úskalí, ale hodnota pro mě osobně, je tady hodně vysoká. Přečtěte si ji, ať jste věřící, nebo ne, rozhodně se v ní dovíte něco, co vás třeba donutí přemýšlet, u čeho si potvrdíte svá vlastní zjištění nebo si čistě z akademického hlediska třeba rozšíříte obzory.
There were chapters and sections of this book I really liked, chapters I skipped (because they were repeats of Strobel's other two books, "The Case for Christ" and "The Case for the Creator"), and chapters or sections that really irked me because I didn't think they were biblically accurate, or else the answers were so inadequate that I thought they weakened the case for Christianity rather than strengthened it.
Sections I liked a lot were mostly the personal stories. For instance, at the very end, Strobel tells the story of a hardened criminal on death row whose life was so profoundly changed by Christ that even though the justice system left no recourse for him, Mother Teresa and a number of people from the press got behind his case. Miraculously, just hours before he was slated for execution, his case was postponed, later changed to life in prison, and THEN he was actually released on probation! Strobel says he is still friends with that man. Incredible. Those kinds of stories are inspirational... they are examples of the miraculous, of a God who still does impossible things today. And He does. I wanted more of that kind of thing.
I also really appreciated the point that Strobel made in almost every chapter, which was that even though the answers given by experts were inadequate (as almost all of them were), you must take Christianity as a whole. Look at the case for a Creator, and for Christ as the Redeemer. THOSE truly are solid. Given that, and given that we see "as in a glass darkly," we must take the fact that we don't know all the answers as an opportunity for faith. God has created the world in such a way that we must choose to believe -- and granted, we have quite a lot of intellectual evidence to suggest that the God we should believe in is the God of the Bible. But at the end of the day, we will not have all the answers, and faith will still be required for some things. So do we perfectly understand why bad things happen? Of course not (though I very much appreciated that the book did NOT suggest that God purposely does bad things in order to "help us grow." Rather, it admits that we live in a fallen world and we have an adversary who hates us and wants to "steal, kill, and destroy.") But we can look at Jesus -- and when He showed up on earth, all who were oppressed of the devil were healed, who came to him and believed for it. Every single one. So that tells us the heart of the Father is that of a healer, one who desires to set the captives free. If we know that, if we can trust in His heart, that still does not answer every question, of course. But it makes the journey through enemy-occupied territory a lot easier. And when we encounter things we can't explain, we can look to the One we love and say, "I don't understand. But I trust You."
Along those lines, the chapter that really irritated me was the last one -- the one about having doubts. I'll admit I was so annoyed that I didn't read it all the way through, so perhaps I missed some gold in there. But it certainly appeared to me that a Christian who constantly wondered whether God even existed, and who focused primarily on his doubts rather than on faith, was held up as a good example. What this chapter boiled down to in my mind was, "don't expect the fact that you're a Christian to mean your life will look any different. You'll still be fearful and anxious and riddled with doubts -- don't even expect them to go away. You also shouldn't expect to be more joyful or more blessed than non-believers. You won't actually see your prayers answered. You can't actually expect God to change anything in your life." (This last part of the message was contradicted in other parts of the book, but that's what it sounded like in this chapter.) But wait a minute... what was Jesus like when he walked the earth? That guy was full of POWER. And Jesus promised that same power to US -- we have Him living inside of us. The very same power that raised Jesus from the dead now dwells inside of us. We are supposed to be world changers! So what's up with all this low expectation crap? I understand that it happens and people struggle with it, but for heaven's sake, let's not normalize it and say that it's just fine. We ought to be meditating on our faith, and on how big our God is, and not on our doubts... and we certainly shouldn't be telling people that it's acceptable to be just as fearful after you're a believer as it was before you were one. It's not. If you're still living in that place habitually rather than as an every now and then thing, then the Holy Spirit needs to deal with that in you because "anything that does not come from faith is sin."
Off my soapbox now. :) For that reason I probably won't be recommending this book to anybody. But I did thing there were some good sections in it too, hence the three stars.
Sections I liked a lot were mostly the personal stories. For instance, at the very end, Strobel tells the story of a hardened criminal on death row whose life was so profoundly changed by Christ that even though the justice system left no recourse for him, Mother Teresa and a number of people from the press got behind his case. Miraculously, just hours before he was slated for execution, his case was postponed, later changed to life in prison, and THEN he was actually released on probation! Strobel says he is still friends with that man. Incredible. Those kinds of stories are inspirational... they are examples of the miraculous, of a God who still does impossible things today. And He does. I wanted more of that kind of thing.
I also really appreciated the point that Strobel made in almost every chapter, which was that even though the answers given by experts were inadequate (as almost all of them were), you must take Christianity as a whole. Look at the case for a Creator, and for Christ as the Redeemer. THOSE truly are solid. Given that, and given that we see "as in a glass darkly," we must take the fact that we don't know all the answers as an opportunity for faith. God has created the world in such a way that we must choose to believe -- and granted, we have quite a lot of intellectual evidence to suggest that the God we should believe in is the God of the Bible. But at the end of the day, we will not have all the answers, and faith will still be required for some things. So do we perfectly understand why bad things happen? Of course not (though I very much appreciated that the book did NOT suggest that God purposely does bad things in order to "help us grow." Rather, it admits that we live in a fallen world and we have an adversary who hates us and wants to "steal, kill, and destroy.") But we can look at Jesus -- and when He showed up on earth, all who were oppressed of the devil were healed, who came to him and believed for it. Every single one. So that tells us the heart of the Father is that of a healer, one who desires to set the captives free. If we know that, if we can trust in His heart, that still does not answer every question, of course. But it makes the journey through enemy-occupied territory a lot easier. And when we encounter things we can't explain, we can look to the One we love and say, "I don't understand. But I trust You."
Along those lines, the chapter that really irritated me was the last one -- the one about having doubts. I'll admit I was so annoyed that I didn't read it all the way through, so perhaps I missed some gold in there. But it certainly appeared to me that a Christian who constantly wondered whether God even existed, and who focused primarily on his doubts rather than on faith, was held up as a good example. What this chapter boiled down to in my mind was, "don't expect the fact that you're a Christian to mean your life will look any different. You'll still be fearful and anxious and riddled with doubts -- don't even expect them to go away. You also shouldn't expect to be more joyful or more blessed than non-believers. You won't actually see your prayers answered. You can't actually expect God to change anything in your life." (This last part of the message was contradicted in other parts of the book, but that's what it sounded like in this chapter.) But wait a minute... what was Jesus like when he walked the earth? That guy was full of POWER. And Jesus promised that same power to US -- we have Him living inside of us. The very same power that raised Jesus from the dead now dwells inside of us. We are supposed to be world changers! So what's up with all this low expectation crap? I understand that it happens and people struggle with it, but for heaven's sake, let's not normalize it and say that it's just fine. We ought to be meditating on our faith, and on how big our God is, and not on our doubts... and we certainly shouldn't be telling people that it's acceptable to be just as fearful after you're a believer as it was before you were one. It's not. If you're still living in that place habitually rather than as an every now and then thing, then the Holy Spirit needs to deal with that in you because "anything that does not come from faith is sin."
Off my soapbox now. :) For that reason I probably won't be recommending this book to anybody. But I did thing there were some good sections in it too, hence the three stars.