Christians in Cinema

Author, journalist and now filmmaker Lee Strobel is best known for his “Case” books that explore the claims of Christianity. Educated at Yale Law School and former legal editor for The Chicago Tribune, he was an atheist for years. When his wife became a Christian, the changes he observed in her caused him to investigate God, the existence of Jesus Christ, and the Bible’s claims for faith.

I investigated Christianity because of the positive changes I had seen in my wife

What he found caused him to turn to Christ and a life that has influenced millions through his writing. So far, three of his books have been turned into documentary DVDs that take the view on a journey of a discovery – a discovery of the God of the Universe, His Son, and a faith that can withstand the greatest onslaughts.

Was there a particular chronological order in which you wanted to produce these DVDs?

Lee:    Yes, initially, I wanted to do The Case for a Creator, which dealt with the scientific evidence pointing toward God. That’s sort of the central “God question.” Then The Case for Christ, which deals with the historical evidence for Jesus being the Son of God. Then I wanted to do The Case for Faith, the newest one, which deals with tough obstacles and tough objections to God. Objections like “How can there be so much pain and suffering if there is a loving God?” and “Why do Christians claim that Jesus is the only way to God?”

That’s the order in my mind, but it doesn’t really matter because people are at different places in their spiritual journey. Some of them might need one thing before another.

It’s been 20-something years since your conversion. In one of the films, you and your wife are very transparent about the struggle you had as a couple when she was a believer and you were just exploring faith.

Lee:    It was a very difficult time. We actually did a book on that topic called, “Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage.” We talk about the real struggle that happens when one spouse is a committed Christian and the other is not. (I was an atheist before becoming a Christian)

We try to talk honestly about that year of our life because a lot of people are there and need encouragement. They also need help in terms of how to reach out to someone, so we’re hoping these DVDs are something that a spouse might be willing to sit down to watch. Perhaps it will lead to some discussion.

Your wife mentioned that she didn’t realize coming to faith was such a deeply emotional process for you. A moment later, you said that you didn’t want to be held accountable.

Lee:        I investigated Christianity because of the positive changes I had seen in my wife since she became a Christian. That impressed and intrigued me. It was very winsome and attractive. So it prompted me to use my journalism and legal training to investigate whether there was any truth to this.

I had reasons not to find God.

It was a process where I tried to keep an open mind, as much as I could. At the same time, I had motivations for not finding God. I didn’t want to be held accountable for the immorality in my life. I knew that if God existed, there were things I had been involved with that He wouldn’t approve of. So I had reasons not to find God.

At the same time, I did try to approach it like an umpire at a baseball game. I tried to call a strike a strike and a ball a ball and let the outcome be whatever was appropriate.

When you realized the existence of God, did you simultaneously recognize Jesus as His Son, and that all of His claims were true, or was it a more gradual process?

Lee:        I was investigating a lot of different strands of evidence at the same time. But I had to come to the conclusion first whether or not God existed before I could know whether or not Jesus is His Son. So the scientific evidence from physics and biochemistry and genetics and so forth was important in being confident that God does exist in the first place.

Then it becomes an historical question whether or not Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and whether or not He proved it by returning from the dead. That’s really a question of history, and as I looked at the historical evidence for the resurrection, I became convinced that it was an event that actually happened in time and space. Jesus, by returning from the dead, established His credentials as being divine. So that kind of completed the case and took me from general theism, or belief in God, to Christianity, which is believing as well in the divinity of Jesus.

What are some of the most compelling sources you found that you would recommend to someone who’s on a similar journey?

Lee:        Fortunately, we have a lot of good resources these days. We have a lot of scholars who have spent a lifetime delving into the minutiae of the issues and documenting a lot of the historical material that makes this investigation easier today than it would have been a hundred years ago.

There are sources outside the Bible that tend to corroborate what the New Testament tells us. In his book, “The Historical Jesus,” Gary Habermas documents over 100 facts about the life, teachings, miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus that are in some way corroborated by material that comes from outside the Bible. That material is all over the board in terms of its reliability, but you can create sort of a contour of the essentials of Jesus’ life, even from sources outside the Bible.

I looked at the historical evidence for the resurrection and I became convinced that it was an event that actually happened in time and space.

Yet I think people who rely too much on that are missing the point because the New Testament is the best information we have about Jesus. Not just because it’s the Bible or “The Word of God,” but because it’s a set of ancient historical documents that come right from the first century, right from where Jesus lived and rooted in eyewitness testimony. They are corroborated in places by archaeology and stand up to scrutiny.

They have credibility, and I think that scholars who tend to dismiss the New Testament as propaganda have not really taken and applied the historical techniques that are used to determine whether any historical document is trustworthy and applied them to the New Testament. If they do, they find that the New Testament really does pass with flying colors.

Do you know why you were an atheist in the first place?

Lee:        I would like to say that I was an atheist because I thoroughly examined the evidence and came to the most rational conclusion that God doesn’t exist. But I didn’t, and few atheists do, to be honest.

On the one hand, I did have intellectual objections to Christianity. I was not aware of the historical evidence for Jesus the scientific evidence for the existence of God. I did a smattering of reading. I read some atheist writers, who tend to reinforce each other. I read Bertrand Russell and Antony Flew, and lots of atheistic scholars who are sort of “preaching to the choir.”

To a degree, intellectual objections did keep me from God. On the other hand, in my case, and in the case of many people, there is a moral objection. I was living an immoral life, and  I did not want God to exist. I had an ulterior motive in not finding God, so I cannot say it was purely a matter of intellectual objection. There was a moral issue involved, and as Ravi Zacharias has pointed out, it probably indicates more often than not that people have a reason for running from God. Many times it’s intellectual, by many more times it’s moral.

Part of your journey to faith involved hearing Bill Hybels speak at the Willowcreek Church, didn’t it?

Lee:        On January 20, 1980, the first day I began to investigate Christianity as an atheist, my wife brought me to that church, which is where she found faith. That’s what started my whole journey, was hearing Bill Hybels talk. Years later, in 1987, after I became a Christian and felt called into the ministry, I ended up on the staff of Willowcreek. Ultimately, I ended up being ordained there and being on the teaching team as well as the management team. I was there from 1987 – 2000.

After your ordination and joining the staff there, did you continue to do investigative journalism and writing?

Lee:        I really did stop writing for many years. I left The Chicago Tribune at the end of 1981, and stopped writing for almost a decade. I was editor of a newspaper in Missouri and later became managing editor of a string of newspapers in Illinois, so I was editing a lot of other people’s stories, but I really didn’t feel compelled to write.

What I really love about writing books is that people in China could be reading them while you are asleep.

It wasn’t until years later that I wrote my first Christian book, which was Inside the Minds of Unchurched Harry and Mary, in the early 1990s. That was the first thing I had written in a long time. I found out that what I really love about writing books is that people in China could be reading them while you are asleep. They can have a worldwide impact, and by God’s grace “The Case” series of books is approaching 10 million copies. That’s a ministry I don’t think I could ever have accomplished had I not written.

So now my passion is writing and speaking. I find that these films are a new way to communicate. These documentaries are a way to reach people who may not want to wade through a120,000 word book.

Was the series your idea, or did someone approach you about the rights?

Lee:        A guy named Lad Allen with Illustra Media interviewed me for some documentaries they were doing and we got to know each other. They proposed doing some films based on The Case for Christ, The Case for a Creator and The Case for Faith.

They are a non-profit group that does excellent work. Because I trusted him and his team and they promised to be faithful to the book and let me be involved in the production, I said, “OK, let’s try it,” and we did.

The amazing thing was that after the first one came out (The Case for a Creator), Lionsgate Films, which is a major Hollywood distributor and had never done a faith-based film before, saw it and loved it. They wanted to do all three films, and it was the first time Lionsgate ventured into the faith market.

We were thrilled with that because it meant that the film would be available everywhere and hopefully reach people who would otherwise never have heard of the book, let alone be motivated to read it.

It’s always interesting to hear how satisfied the author is with a film. How were you able to translate the book into a film to your satisfaction?

Lee:        We tried to be careful that we didn’t bite off more than we could chew. For instance, in The Case for Faith, the book deals with eight major objections to Christianity. We knew we couldn’t do justice to all eight objections in an 80-minute film. People would say it was too superficial, and it would be irresponsible to raise those issues and not adequately answer them.

As a print person, I’ve been amazed at the ways in which film has been able to add an emotional undercurrent

So we decided to go with the two biggest, which are the ones that are the obstacles in most people’s spiritual journeys. I think it’s a good thing because we could deal with those two topics in great death.

As a print person, I’ve been amazed at the ways in which film has been able to add an emotional undercurrent to these films by communicating at a very powerful level. When I first saw The Case for Faith film after it was done, I cried three times when I watched it. It’s so moving when it talks about real-life cases of people who have suffered greatly and yet found God in the midst of it. It’s so affirming and so moving that I was emotionally hit by it.

It’s difficult to do that in a book. The Bible balances truth in love, and I find books to be really good on the truth side, but a film often reaches a balance of love and truth. It has the possibility of communicating the emotion of both at once. It balances those two values very well. I’ve been extremely happy with the way these films came out.

One of the things we’re doing that I think is very exciting is we’re creating curriculum from these films. We’ve finished The Case for Christ and The Case for a Creator and have published those recently. The Case for Faith curriculum will come out a little later.

These are available for small groups or Sunday School classes, even for families. There’s a participant’s guide and all this new material we shot in Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois and Michigan. It’s new material where I introduce and set up the issue for the day. Then you watch a scene from the film and there’s a series of discussion questions. You watch a second scene from the film and there are more discussion questions. Then I wrap it up at the end with some new material.

I’m really thrilled with the way this has come out. It can be used as outreach also to invite your spiritually curious friends to sit down and watch it together and go through that guided experience.

It’s been fun to discover something late in life that I really enjoy doing.

As someone who came to faith as an adult, how important is it that you became spiritually curious, and not just that your wife tried to convert you?

Lee:        She admits going overboard a few times and leaving Bible verses around the house, or books open to certain pages on the coffee table and things like that. That wasn’t particularly helpful.

My curiosity was fostered and generated by her authentic walk with Christ and how it changed her values and character. I was impressed by that and wanted to get to the bottom of it and understand it. That’s what really got me curious about whether or not God was really real. She said that He was and He was changing her life.

I saw her life changing but I didn’t believe in God, so there was a disconnect there. That’s what made me curious.

There’s an additional resource mentioned in the films called “Off My Case for Kids.” Can you describe that?

Lee:        We produced four books for children: “The Case for Christ for Kids,” “The Case for a Creator for Kids,” “The Case for Faith for Kids,” and “Off My Case for Kids.” It’s a fun book. It’s a series of stories for kids in which kids go through a variety of situations involving faith, their friends, and people who may challenge their faith in God.

It helps them think through how they would react and what they would say if they got into a conversation with a friend. So it’s very child-friendly. It’s done in their world and with their experiences. It’s almost like a little evangelism book for kids, helping them see situations and recognize how they can reach out with the love of Christ to their playmates. It was a fun little book.

Are there any current projects you’re working on?

Lee:        I’m working on a novel. My daughter is a novelist and she has two books she’s published. It sort of encouraged me to say that novels can reach people who won’t read a non-fiction book or watch a DVD. So I’m trying to take the Christian message and communicate it to different audiences.

I’m in the middle of it, and it’s kind of a John Grisham novel and I’m having the time of my life! I’m having a blast writing this thing, and I’m a little disappointed that I’m 56 years old and just finding out that I love to write fiction. But it’s a lot of fun and hopefully God willing it will come out some time next year from Zondervan.

It’s been fun to discover something late in life that I really enjoy doing.

©2008 ChristianCinema.com