Award-winning reporter and author Lee Strobel (The Case for Christ) once again uses his investigative skills to address the primary objections to Christianity. As a former atheist, Strobel understands the rational resistance to faith. He even names the eight most convincing arguments against Christian faith: 1) If there's a loving God, why does this pain-wracked world groan under so much suffering and evil?
2) If the miracles of God contradict science, then how can any rational person believe that they're true?
3) If God is morally pure, how can he sanction the slaughter of innocent children as the Old Testament says he did?
4) If God cares about the people he created, how could he consign so many of them to an eternity of torture in hell just because they didn't believe the right things about him?
5) If Jesus is the only way to heaven, then what about the millions of people who have never heard of him?
6) If God really created the universe, why does the evidence of science compel so many to conclude that the unguided process of evolution accounts for life?
7) If God is the ultimate overseer of the church, why has it been rife with hypocrisy and brutality throughout the ages?
8) If I'm still plagued by doubts, then is it still possible to be a Christian?
These are mighty tough questions, and Strobel fields them well. Rather than write a weighty dissertation about the merits of faith, he brings us along on his quest as we meet leaders in the Christian community, such as Peter Kreeft and William Lane Craig. We also encounter his everyday friends and acquaintances that serendipitously fill in the holes in each of the eight arguments against faith. The use of dialogue from personal interviews and a scene-by-scene active narrative makes this an easy and engaging read. However, easy does not mean breezy. This is a book of substance and merit, one that will help Christians defend their faith, especially during the hardest of times, when they have to defend their faith to themselves in moments of doubt. --Gail Hudson


From Booklist
Ex-newspaperman Strobel's Christian apologetics read like feature interviews in the religion pages rather than a theological treatise. To knock down what he calls "the Big Eight" roadblocks to faith, he questions experts about them rather than logically bulldozing his way to solutions. He grills Catholic lay philosopher Peter Kreeft about the problem of evil, Indian-born evangelist Ravi Zacharias about Christian exclusivism, historian John Woodbridge about oppression in the name of Christ, and other authorities about the truth of miracles, God's callousness in the Hebrew Bible, the justice of Hell, the challenge of evolution, and the struggle with persistent doubt. Each conversation is pointed and engaging, so much so that Strobel's occasional melodramatic note (did he really speak "in a voice laden with sarcasm" to any of these, his fellow believers?) seems ridiculous. Kreeft and Woodbridge are Strobel's least doctrinaire interlocutors. The others, staunch evangelicals all, may interest fewer readers, though Zacharias on the exclusivisms of the other major religions touches on matters Americans too rarely hear discussed. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
This eagerly anticipated sequel to Lee Strobels best-selling The Case for Christ finds the author investigating the nettlesome issues and doubts of the heart that threaten faith. Eight major topics are addressed including doubt, the problem of pain, and the existence of evil.


From the Publisher
A Seasoned Journalist Chases Down the Leads in the Biggest News Story in History


From the Author
Lee Strobel, with a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale, was an award-winning journalist for 13 years at the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. He was a spiritual skeptic until 1981. Today he serves as teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. He is the best-selling author of Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary, What Jesus Would Say, and The Case for Christ


From the Back Cover
Was God telling the truth when he said, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart"? In his #1 bestseller The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel examined the claims of Christ, reaching the hard-won verdict that Jesus is God’s unique son. In The Case for Faith, Strobel turns his skills to the most persistent emotional objections to belief—the eight "heart barriers" to faith. This Gold Medallion-winning 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 discussing Christianity with even their most skeptical friends. "Everyone—seekers, doubters, fervent believers—benefits when Lee Strobel hits the road in search of answers, as he does again in The Case for Faith. In the course of his probing interviews, some of the toughest intellectual obstacles to faith fall away." —Luis Palau "Lee Strobel has given believers and skeptics alike a gift in this book. He does not avoid seeking the most difficult questions imaginable, and refuses to provide simplistic answers that do more harm than good." —Jerry Sittser, professor of religion, Whitworth College, and author of A Grace Disguised and The Will of God as a Way of Life


About the Author
Lee Strobel, educated at Yale Law School, was the award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and a spiritual skeptic until 1981. He wrote the Gold Medallion-winning books The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith. A former teaching pastor at two of America’s largest churches, he and his wife live in California.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Objection #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 Gods 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 Chicagos underbelly of deprivation and desperation. In a way, my experience was akin to Charles Templetons reaction to the photo of the African woman with her deceased baby.
Just a short drive from Chicagos 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 dont complain.
Hours later, safely back in my plush lakefront high-rise with an inspiring view of Chicagos 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, mans inhumanity to manthose were my daily diet as a journalist. This wasnt looking at magazine photos from faraway places; this was the grit and pain of life, up close and personal.
Ive looked into the eyes of a young mother who had just been told that her only daughter had been molested, mutilated, and murdered. Ive listened to courtroom testimony describing gruesome
horrors that had been perpetrated against innocent victims. Ive 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 didnt 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 didnt 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?

FROM OUR EDITORS

The bestselling author of The Case for Christ takes an unflinching look at the toughest questions and most troubling doubts a believer might have. He discusses topics like the presence of evil, the challenge of science, the hypocrisy of the church, and the place of hell. By examining these issues without fear or trembling, Strobel ultimately provides an airtight case.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In his #1 best-seller The Case for Christ, legally trained investigative reporter Lee Strobel examined the claims of Christ, reaching the hard-won verdict that Jesus is God's unique son.

But despite the compelling historical evidence that Strobel presented, many people grapple with serious concerns about faith in God. As in a court of law, they want to shout, "Objection!" They say, "If God is love, then what about all the suffering in our world?" Or, "If Jesus is the door to heaven, then what about the millions who have never heard of him?" Or, "If God cares for everyone, then why does he eternally torture some in hell?"

In The Case for Faith, Strobel turns his tenacious investigative skills to the most persistent emotional objections to belief—the eight "heart" barriers to faith. The Case for Faith is for those who may be feeling attracted toward Jesus, but who are faced with formidable intellectual barriers standing squarely in their path. For Christians, it will deepen their convictions and give them fresh confidence in discussing Christianity with even their most skeptical friends.

SYNOPSIS

This eagerly anticipated sequel to Lee Strobel￯﾿ﾽs best-selling book finds the author investigating the nettlesome issues and doubts of the heart that threaten anyone￯﾿ﾽs faith, even if he or she believes the evidences of Strobel￯﾿ﾽs first book, The Case for Christ.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

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)