Today we spoke with accomplished author and journalist Lee Strobel about the personal nature of his new book The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives and his thoughts about the current state of the evangelical movement.
1. Most of your books are a journalist's search for the truth, but this one seems shaped more by your experience with a sudden and serious illness. How did this change the way you think about God?
My wife found me unconscious one evening. I woke in the emergency room, where the physician said, “You’re one step away from a coma; two steps away from dying.” An odd set of medical circumstances had caused my blood sodium level to plummet, leading to confusion, hallucinations, and threatening my life.
In the midst of that muddled mental state, I became convinced that everyone had abandoned me and that I had lost everything, including my reputation, my finances, and my house. Worse yet, I imagined God had walked away from me. It was my son, Kyle, a professor of theology, who walked me through an extraordinary prayer experience to reconnect me with Jesus. I came to realize that even if I did lose everything in this world, it was okay—because I would never lose Christ. I’m grateful God restored my health and that this condition will never recur, but I’m even more thankful for the lessons learned from being at the gate of death.
2. A lot of Christians seem to define grace in a kind of nebulous way as if God just overlooks our sins. How should we think of grace?
We can define grace pretty easily—it’s a free gift of forgiveness and eternal life that we cannot earn or merit, but which God offers out of his amazing love for us. The cost, of course, was steep: Jesus died on the cross as our substitute to pay the penalty for our wrongdoing. And God doesn’t just wipe away our sins and then keep us at arm’s length or treat us as a servant, but he adopts us as his children forever.
I think the depth, wonder, and texture of grace are best illustrated by stories, just as Jesus told the parable of the Prodigal Son. Each story in my book The Case for Grace casts fresh light on a different aspect of God’s grace. Does God forgive people we’d consider to be “monsters”? How can we forgive someone who hurts us in an intimate way? How can we learn to extend grace to ourselves? How can we offer grace to others? How do “good” people come to realize their need for grace? Personally, I’m addicted to stories of how God redeems wayward people and then absolutely revolutionizes lives—maybe because I’m so amazed at how he brought a wretch like me into his family.
I came to realize that even if I did lose everything in this world, it was okay—because I would never lose Christ.
3. You speak in your book about your complicated relationship with your own father. How has this been instrumental to your understanding of grace?
Fathers can play an important role in shaping the way we look at God. Going back to Freud, psychologists have made this observation. Many famous atheists in history had fathers who abandoned them, divorced their mother, died when they were young, or with whom they had a terrible relationship. If your earthly father has profoundly disappointed you, then why would you want to seek after a heavenly Father? Maybe it wasn’t a mystery that I would end up an atheist myself.
I start my book with an episode where my father told me when I was a teenager that he didn’t have enough love for me to fill his little finger. I stormed out of the house, vowing never to return. I wanted revenge, but what I didn’t realize is that this incident had launched me on a lifelong quest for grace. Over the years, through a variety of experiences, I’ve pieced together the puzzle of grace—and this book is the result. I’ve found grace personally in Christ’s redemption of me, and now my life’s mission is to share his grace with others.
4. How would you encourage those whose view of God has been shaped by a negative experience with their own fathers?
Even before I was a Christian, and despite my own flawed relationship with my dad, I could imagine what a perfect father would be like. He would be caring, compassionate, loving, supportive, encouraging, generous, kind, and gracious. That, of course, is a good description of what our heavenly Father is like. As we hunger for that kind of an ultimate father-child relationship, we come to realize it can only really be found in God.
As we hunger for that kind of an ultimate father-child relationship, we come to realize it can only really be found in God.
5. You've been a leading evangelical voice for several decades now. In your view, what concerns you about the movement and what gives you hope?
I’ve been concerned about the lack of theological depth of many Christians and the failure of some churches to help Christians dig deep roots in their faith. Consequently, the challenges raised by the New Atheists and the general skepticism that is growing on our culture have crippled the faith of some Christians.
I’ve been encouraged by the way this has caused a lot of Christians to respond by delving deeper into the Bible and into the study of apologetics. More and more Christians are learning not just what we believe, but why—and there is a wealth of evidence backing up our beliefs. This has strengthened their faith, enriched their relationship with God, and better equipped them to share Jesus with others. The new Center for American Evangelism at Houston Baptist University, which I’ve recently launched with my colleagues Mark Mittelberg and Garry Poole, is our effort to innovate fresh ways for churches to reach spiritually confused people, and this includes tightening the ties between apologetics and evangelism.
Daniel Darling is vice-president of communications for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Activist Faith.
