Do You Know Why You Believe?
I’m an inquisitive person. For me, it isn’t enough to merely have a bunch of useless facts in my head, I have to understand the how and why of things. If there is a song or book I love, I can probably tell you the backstory behind it, because I went and searched it out for myself. This same mindset also applies to my faith as well. There are a lot of benefits to growing up in a Christian home, mostly that my head wasn’t full of useless crap. However, this also means that I’ve grown up with a lot of beliefs I don’t really understand.
Why do I have 66 books in my Bible when there were about 300+ texts considered? How can the claims of Jesus be verified, when there are multiple prophets from other religions who claim their own miracles? Sometimes as Christians, we don’t talk about this enough. We don’t admit that we have questions just like everybody else.
Investigating The Claims of the Bible
It is out of this very curiosity that I read “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobel, a book considered a modern classic by most. There is no shortage of books and videos from apologists, all having ready answers for nearly any question. Strobel is a little bit different. “The Case for Christ” is a culmination of several years worth of investigation into the life and claims of Jesus. Strobel shares how when he began his investigation, he set out to disprove Christianity. At the time, he was an atheist determined to destroy Christianity once and for all. Strobel worked as an investigative journalist and using his expertise, tracked down the most respected experts and theologians. “The Case for Christ” is a record of his conversations with eminent historians and theologians such as NT Wright, Willaim Lane Craig, Bruce Metzger and others.
“One of the most obvious lessons was that evidence can be aligned to point in more than one direction…And there was another lesson. One reason the evidence originally looked so convincing to me was because it fit my preconceptions at the time.”
The Case for Christ
I was genuinely surprised at how much information is packed into this book. Even despite Strobel’s bias, every expert he interviewed had no issue with engaging the most complex of issues. There isn’t enough room in this article to go over everything. I will say that I read nearly every chapter twice over just to fully digest the information contained. Strobel writes in a clear and angaging way. I really felt like I was sitting in front of these experts and talking with them.
Interviewing The Experts
Some of my favorite interviews were with Bruce Metzger, William Lane Craig and Ben Witherington. (I’m certain that different chapters would be more meaningful to different people) The majority of my questions were over the text of the New Testament. You may or may not be familiar with a professor by the name of Bart Ehrman. Ehrman is bestselling author who has written seemingly devastating critiques of the reliability of the New Testament. His most famous argument is that the texts cannot be relied upon because they have been copied so many times that they couldn’t possibly resemble the original, often citing the example of the game of telephone.
Bruce Metzger directly addressed this issue by turning Ehrman’s argument on its head. Dr. Metzger explained that there are more than 5,000 copies of the New Testament that we have, which allows us to cross check them all for any errors or contradictions. Something I had never thought of. William Lane Craig made some powerful arguments over why we have 66 books and rejected the roughly 300 other texts. Dr. Craig talked about all the absurd statements and claims coming from these texts, such as how the cross that Jesus died could speak (and somehow followed him into the tomb), or how women must ‘make themselves into men in order to reach the kingdom of heaven’. Anti-Christian advocates would have a field day with these little nuggets if they were in our canon. Ben Witherington went into great detail about what separates Jesus from all other supposed prophets and would-be Messiahs. Witherington pointed out that so many of claims made by Jesus literally could not be made up, because of how different his claims are from all the dozens of fabricated claims of history.
“I would argue that the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead is not at all improbable. In fact, based on the evidence, it’s the best explanation for what happened. What is improbable is the hypothesis that Jesus rose naturally from the dead. That, I would agree, is outlandish. Any hypothesis would be more probable than saying the corpse of Jesus spontaneously came back to life.” William Lane Craig, The Case for Christ
“Jesus says, ‘If I, by the finger of God, cast out demons, then you will know that the kingdom of God has come upon you.’ He’s not like other miracle workers who do amazing things and then life proceeds as it always has. No—to Jesus, his miracles are a sign indicating the coming of the kingdom of God. They are a foretaste of what the kingdom is going to be like. And that sets Jesus apart.” – Ben Witherington III, The Case for Christ
This is just a tiny taste of the incredible amount of content in this book. As said, I expect other portions will affect people harder than others. I for one am very glad I took the time to read this. I think it is important to admit that even as a believer, I have questions too. Not because I’m a doubter, but because I’m curious. I think it is important to know not only what you believe, but why you believe it. In that area, ‘The Case For Christ” helped me tremendously and I would highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. “The Case for Christ” doesn’t address every argument, no one book can. The point is that a case for Christ can absolutely be made, the rest is up to you. I’m very happy to give this a solid 10/10.
