Above, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune in the 1970s, Strobel is portrayed by actor Mike Vogel.

March 2017 – Lee Strobel’s world turned upside down when his wife Leslie told him she had begun a relationship with a man named Jesus. She was abandoning their atheist lifestyle and turning to Christ.

Leslie’s newfound faith struck her husband right in his heart, and his world began to tear apart under the strain of two opposing factors: his atheist worldview and his love for his wife and family.

“I had just discovered Christ,” Leslie told AFA Journal. “It wasn’t something I was going to be able to keep quiet about. I was really hoping and praying Lee would receive it and believe it, but I didn’t really anticipate he would. He was adamantly against it.”

Sure enough, Lee set out to prove his wife wrong using his 14-year background with the Chicago Tribune as a legal editor and investigative journalist adept at picking up clues from crime scenes and court cases.

He pursued his search for “the real truth” with passion. And finally, he arrived at a startling conclusion: Jesus Christ is Truth.

Lee details the evidence he gathered during his 21-month search for objective truth in his well-known book The Case for Christ, published in 1998 and now with 10 million copies in print.

But do his investigative methods and logic still work today? Does The Case for Christ – a book written almost two decades ago – still have the power to impact a younger generation?

Same story – new medium
“In my generation,” Lee told AFAJ, “the Baby Boomer generation, apologetics was this – you line someone up against the wall and you machine gun them with facts. That’s not effective with Millennials [born after 1980]. But a story is effective.”

Accordingly, his search-for-truth experience has been transformed from a facts-filled book to an in-depth personal drama for the big screen, adapted to reach a larger audience. In the movie version of The Case for Christ, coming to theaters April 7, Strobel’s struggle with faith is shown through his desperate battle for his marriage and his family.

“His first instinct is to divorce her,” said the film’s screenwriter Brian Bird. “But instead he says, ‘I’m going to debunk it, prove it’s all a big con job. I’m going to rescue my wife.’”

Bird has seen the potential of story to convey important messages in film.

Same truth – new audience
We live in an era described as beyond post-post-modern. Various terms have been proposed for the latest twist on the modernist period that began around the advent of the 21st century.

In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries defined post-truth – their “Word of the Year” – as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

In the British journal Philosophy Now, cultural critic Alan Kirby calls the movement pseudo-modernism. Whereas post-modernism took a hard look at reality, putting all under the scrutiny of skepticism, pseudo-modernism creates its own reality.

Kirby alternatively dubs it digi-modernism, in reference to the way the Internet allows individuals to click, scroll, and download the version of the world they wish to see.

In this new paradigm, what matters is one’s own experience. Reality and truth matter only as they touch one’s personal experience. What is felt is more important than what is thought.

“There is a generation gap here, roughly separating people born before and after 1980,” Kirby said of the rise of pseudo-modernism. “Those born later might see their peers as free, autonomous, inventive, expressive, dynamic, empowered, independent, their voices unique, raised, and heard. Post-modernism and everything before it will by contrast seem elitist, dull, a distant and droning monologue which oppresses and occludes them.”

The challenge for evangelism today is selling truth in a culture that is past caring and not hesitant to admit it.

Same goal – new life
“My goal with a redemptive true story like this,” Bird explained, “is to focus on the personal and let the other stuff sort of happen around it. People are not looking to be pounded with facts, but to go on a quest – get in someone else’s shoes and walk with them.”

“If we can tell a story, as this movie does, it draws people in,” Lee added. “Apologetics isn’t just about the head. It’s about the heart too.”

In the book Fool’s Talk, Os Guinness indicates we have entered a new era of apologetics, but one in which timeless spiritual principles still apply. Essentially, apologetics rides off two key elements universal to humanity in all times: unregenerate resistance to God and insatiable desire satisfied only by God. At the point of tension between the two is where apologetics can step in. For each generation, the pressure points are still the same, although delivery may differ.

The apologist in the post-truth age, more than ever, must connect with people in their own sphere and allow time for the questions of Christianity to become meaningful where it impacts their reality. As a baby Christian, Leslie Strobel had to live her faith at the cross-section of her relationship with her husband and his fiercely opposing worldview.

She quickly learned that she was going to most influence her husband not with lectures or arguments, but with their relationship.

“I realized it was not my role to try to convert him, which I tried doing for awhile, but to allow God to grow me to where He wanted me to be,” she said. “God was changing me in ways that Lee did see, and it did impact him.” 

As Guinness says of today’s apologists: “We have to take the time to get to know the person, to love them, to pray for them, and to listen to their stories.”

This is what Leslie did in her decade. It is what Jesus did in His time. And it is what every effectual bearer of the gospel must always do to open doors to Truth.    

The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel was first published in 1998.

 

 

Read More
Fool’s Talk
Os Guinness

Surviving Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage
Lee and Leslie Strobel

 

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The real deal Photo, Lee Strobel today
At an on-set visit during the filming of The Case for Christ, I had a sneak peek at some clips from the movie. I was struck by Leslie’s courage. A pregnant young wife and mother ventures out on her own to confess her belief in Christ and quietly work for her husband’s salvation. At the same time, Lee is in mental anguish as he fights to escape the truth.

Lee and Leslie were there to see film clips for the first time as well. Both were moved to tears as they relived their journey. Later, I sat down with them, two truly humble and genuine people, for an easy, delightful conversation.

“Our story is told honestly and authentically [in the film],” Lee said. “We want to tell the human side. I think that comes through powerfully.”

Viewers will find tears flowing, and no easy believism sugarcoats the challenges of choosing to follow Christ. It is scheduled to release in theaters April 7. Visit thecaseforchristmovie.com to locate theaters. Watch for a review in the April issue.
Stacy Long