The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity

The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity

by Lee Strobel
The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity

The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity

by Lee Strobel

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Overview

This timeless, compelling, and thought-provoking book on the Christian faith, now updated, includes two all-new chapters, a current list of recommended resources for further study, and a new discussion guide.

In The Case for Faith, bestselling author, journalist, and former atheist Lee Strobel turns his investigative skills to the most persistent emotional objections to belief in God--the eight "heart barriers" to faith:

  • "Since evil and suffering exist, a loving God cannot"
  • "Since miracles contradict science, they cannot be true"
  • "Evolution explains life, so God isn't needed"
  • "God isn't worthy of worship if he kills innocent children"
  • "It's offensive to claim Jesus is the only way to God"
  • "A loving God would never torture people in hell"
  • "Church history is littered with oppression and violence"
  • "I still have doubts, so I can't be a Christian"

This bestselling book is for those who may be feeling attracted to Jesus but who are faced with difficult questions standing squarely in their path. For Christians, it will deepen their convictions and give them fresh confidence in defending their faith to skeptical friends, or during the hardest of times, when they have to defend their faith to themselves in moments of doubt.

Also available: The Case for Faith Spanish edition, kids' edition, and student edition. Plus, be sure to check out Lee Strobel's entire collection of Case for... books:

  • The Case for Christ investigates the historical evidence for Jesus
  • The Case for a Creator explores the scientific evidence for God
  • The Case for Grace uncovers the "how" and "why" behind God's amazing grace
  •  . . . and more!

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780310364283
Publisher: Zondervan
Publication date: 12/14/2021
Series: Case for ... Series
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishing
Format: eBook
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 115,697
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

Lee Strobel, former award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide. Lee earned a journalism degree at the University of Missouri and was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship to study at Yale Law School, where he received a Master of Studies in Law degree. He was a journalist for fourteen years at the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, winning Illinois’ top honors for investigative reporting (which he shared with a team he led) and public service journalism from United Press International. Lee also taught First Amendment Law at Roosevelt University. A former atheist, he served as a teaching pastor at three of America’s largest churches. Lee and his wife, Leslie, have been married for more than fifty years and live in Texas. Their daughter, Alison, and son, Kyle, are also authors. Website: www.leestrobel.com

Read an Excerpt

From Chapter One

Objection No. 1: Since Evil and Suffering Exist, a Loving God Cannot

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, and does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how comes evil in the world?

--Epicurus, philosopher

The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation. Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair. Sensitive spirits ask if it can possibly be reconciled with God’s justice and love.

--John Stott, theologian

As an idealistic young reporter fresh out of journalism school, one of my first assignments at the Chicago Tribune was to write a thirty-part series in which I would profile destitute families living in the city. Having been raised in the homogenized suburbs, where being “needy” meant having only one Cadillac, I quickly found myself immersed in Chicago’s underbelly of deprivation and desperation. In a way, my experience was akin to Charles Templeton’s reaction to the photo of the African woman with her deceased baby.

Just a short drive from Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, where stately Tribune Tower rubs shoulders with elegant fashion boutiques and luxury hotels, I walked into the tiny, dim, and barren hovel being shared by sixty-year-old Perfecta de Jesus and her two granddaughters. They had lived there about a month, ever since their previous cockroach-infested tenement erupted in flames.

Perfecta, frail and sickly, had run out of money weeks earlier and had received a small amount of emergency food stamps. She stretched the food by serving only rice and beans with bits of meat for meal after meal. The meat ran out quickly. Then the beans. Now all that was left was a handful of rice. When the overdue public-aid check would finally come, it would be quickly consumed by the rent and utility bills, and the family would be right back where it started.

The apartment was almost completely empty, without furniture, appliances, or carpets. Words echoed off the bare walls and cold wooden floor. When her eleven-year-old granddaughter, Lydia, would set off for her half-mile walk to school on the biting cold winter mornings, she would wear only a thin gray sweater over her short-sleeved, print dress. Halfway to school, she would give the sweater to her shivering thirteen-year-old sister, Jenny, clad in just a sleeveless dress, who would wrap the sweater around herself for the rest of the way. Those were the only clothes they owned.

“I try to take care of the girls as best I can,” Perfecta explained to me in Spanish. “They are good. They don’t complain.”

Hours later, safely back in my plush lakefront high-rise with an inspiring view of Chicago’s wealthiest neighborhoods, I felt staggered by the contrast. If there is a God, why would kind and decent people like Perfecta and her grandchildren be cold and hungry in the midst of one of the greatest cities in the world? Day after day as I conducted research for my series, I encountered people in circumstances that were similar or even worse. My response was to settle deeper into my atheism.

Hardships, suffering, heartbreak, man’s inhumanity to man -- those were my daily diet as a journalist. This wasn’t looking at magazine photos from faraway places; this was the grit and pain of life, up close and personal.

I’ve looked into the eyes of a young mother who had just been told that her only daughter had been molested, mutilated, and murdered. I’ve listened to courtroom testimony describing gruesome horrors that had been perpetrated against innocent victims. I’ve visited noisy and chaotic prisons, the trash heaps of society; low-budget nursing homes where the elderly languish after being abandoned by their loved ones; pediatric hospital wards where emaciated children fight vainly against the inexorable advance of cancer; and crime-addled inner cities where drug trafficking and drive-by shootings are all too common.

But nothing shocked me as much as my visit to the slums of Bombay, India. Lining both sides of the noisy, filthy, congested streets, as far as the eye could see, were small cardboard and burlap shanties, situated right next to the road where buses and cars would spew their exhaust and soot. Naked children played in the open sewage ditches that coursed through the area. People with missing limbs or bodies contorted by deformities sat passively in the dirt. Insects buzzed everywhere. It was a horrific scene, a place where, one taxi driver told me, people are born on the sidewalk, live their entire lives on the sidewalk, and die a premature death on the sidewalk.

Then I came face-to-face with a ten-year-old boy, about the same age as my son Kyle at the time. The Indian child was scrawny and malnourished, his hair filthy and matted. One eye was diseased and half closed; the other stared vacantly. Blood oozed from scabs on his face. He extended his hand and mumbled something in Hindi, apparently begging for coins. But his voice was a dull, lifeless monotone, as if he didn’t expect any response. As if he had been drained of all hope.

Where was God in that festering hellhole? If he had the power to instantly heal that youngster, why did he turn his back? If he loved these people, why didn’t he show it by rescuing them? Is this, I wondered, the real reason: because the very presence of such awful, heart-wrenching suffering actually disproves the existence of a good and loving Father?

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Introduction:The Challenge of Faith
On the Road to Answers
Objection #1: Since Evil and Suffering Exist, a Loving God Cannot
Objection #2: Since Miracles Contradict Science, They Cannot Be True
Objection #3: Evolution Explains Life, So God Isn't Needed
Objection #4: God Isn't Worthy of Worship If He Kills Innocent Children
Objection #5: It's Offensive to Claim Jesus Is the Only Way to God
Objection #6: A Loving God Would Never Torture People in Hell
Objection #7: Church History Is Littered with Oppression and Violence
Objection #8: I Still Have Doubts, So I Can't Be a Christian
Conclusion: The Power of Faith
Appendix: A Summary of The Case for Christ
List of Citations
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Gerald L. Sittser

Lee Strobel has given believers and skeptics alike a gift in this book. He does not avoid asking the most difficult questions imaginable, and refuses to provide simplistic answers that do more harm than good. Yet his style of writing makes the book surprisingly accessible and winsome. I found it both helpful and captivating.
— (Gerald L. Sittser, professor of religion, Whitworth College, and author of A Grace Disguised and The Will of God as a Way of Life)

Phillip E. Johnson

Lee Strobel asks the questions a tough-minded skeptic would ask. Every inquirer should have it.
— (Phillip E. Johnson, law professor, University of California at Berkeley)

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