An atheist finds God: Lee
Strobel joins Houston church, university
2/9/2015 Houston Chronicle
Web: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/houston/article/An-atheist-finds-God-Lee-Strobel-joins-Houston-6071341.php#/0
As far as Walter Strobel's first three
kids were concerned, their old man was a stand up dad. He coached Little
League, led Cub Scouts and was president of their high school's booster club.
After years of working hard to build a happy home, it's possible he was ready
to kick back and harvest the domestic harmony he had sown. But the loyal
husband, successful businessman and devout Lutheran was in for a jarringly
unpleasant surprise: another son.
Lee Strobel,
recalls his less than welcome birth ‑ confirmed by his mother on her dying bed ‑
as the beginning of a rocky father-son relationship marked by the older man's
emotional absence.
"We never
bonded as father and son," Strobel says. "He never came to my
graduations."
The storms that
swept the Strobels' suburban Chicago household indelibly marked the youngest
son, goading him to excel as a young newspaperman yet casting him into the
depths of anger, alcohol and rancorous religious disbelief. Perhaps they lifted
him as well, eventually making him one of the nation's most recognizable
cheerleaders for Christ ‑ in print, on podiums and television and, since 2014,
in Houston university classrooms and churches.
The low point of
the father-son clash ‑ an event that still stings ‑ came on the eve of the
youth's
high school
graduation. Against the older man's wishes, the teen purchased a motorcycle.
Walter Strobel steamed. "I don't have enough love for you to fill my
little finger," he spat, wiggling his pinkie in the boy's face. Lee
Strobel bolted from the house, vowing never to return.
"I felt
like I was on a quest of revenge," Strobel says. He fantasized of
achieving success as a journalist that his father would envy. "What I
really was doing," says Strobel, "was launching a lifelong quest for
grace."
More than a decade
passed before Strobel, now 63, achieved that grace ‑ a gift, he says, bestowed
by a loving, forgiving God.
That
life-changing event has played out in a multiform ministry that has produced a
series of bestselling books ‑ "The Case for Christ," "The Case
for a Creator," "The Case for Faith" ‑ and a host of appearances
on television, the Internet and the national speaker's circuit. The Washington
Post calls Strobel "one of the evangelical community's most popular
apologists. Last year, he joined Houston Baptist University as a professor of
Christian thought and the Woodlands Church as a teaching pastor. Later this
month, his newest book, "The Case for Grace," will be issued by
Zondervan Press.
HBU President
Robert Sloan Jr. likens Strobel's story to that of the Apostle Paul, who was
struck blind by God while en route to persecute Christians. "He was a hard
case like Paul," Sloan says. "He started off in one direction, but
got flipped."
Kerry Shook,
pastor of Woodlands Church, one of the nation's fastest-growing evangelical
congregations, says Strobel offers a unique perspective on Christian
apologetics. "His evangelism has reignited our whole team," he says.
"Our church just loves him."
Strobel's path to grace was harrowing, he says.
After the
stunning blowup with his father, Strobel studied journalism at the University
of Missouri, joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune and began racking up
awards. He went to Yale to obtain a masters of law degree, then came back to
the Tribune as legal editor.
As his career
soared, his personal life tumbled. "People would see my awards," he
says, "but they didn't see me drunk in the alley in the snow,
literally." Once, he capped a quarrel with his wife by kicking a hole in a
wall as his 5-year-old daughter watched.
Strobel say he
rejected a heavenly father just as his father rejected him.
"I was
angry," he says. "If there was no God, there was no accountability. I
was a hedonist, pursuing pleasure."
When his wife,
Leslie, joined an evangelical group in the late 1970s, Strobel was primed for
divorce.
"I told
her, 'If you need this crutch in your life, if you can't face life on your own,
No. 1, don't talk to me about Jesus, and, No. 2, don't give any money to the
church,'" Strobel says.
Still, Strobel
was intrigued by the changes he saw in his spouse. "She was always a good
person, but she was changing in a positive way," Strobel says.
One Sunday in
early 1980, Leslie Strobel coaxed her hungover husband to attend her church.
Determined to
save his wife from what he considered a cult, Strobel grabbed a notebook ‑ the
better to pose as a reporter on assignment ‑ and went to the service.
"This kid
gets up to preach, and his message was one of basic Christianity," Strobel
recalls, adding that the sermon "knocked down my misperceptions one after
another."
"I remember
walking out ‑ I was still an atheist ‑ thinking that if this stuff is true, it
has huge implications," Strobel says.
In coming weeks,
Strobel wrestled with what he had heard, finally deciding to apply his
journalistic skills to investigating God.
"I'd read
books and try to get to the bottom line," he says. "I wanted it to be
false, but on the other hand, I was a reporter. I had to call a ball a ball, a
strike a strike, to look at both sides."
For 21 months,
Strobel immersed himself in Christianity and science, grilling theologians,
astrophysicists, archeologists and biochemists.
"It all
came down to Nov. 8, 1981," he says. "I had gone to church with
Leslie, and when I got home, I realized that after a year and nine months of
collecting data, I had to reach a verdict."
Strobel
retreated to a bedroom with a yellow legal pad, tallying up the pros and cons
of his research. What resulted was "an avalanche of evidence for the
powerful truth of Christianity."
"The scales
tipped," says Strobel. "On the evidence of science, it was more
likely than not that there was a creator. Based on the evidence of history,
Jesus not only claimed to be divine but backed it up with resurrection. I felt
really let down."
Then he recalled
a verse from the Gospel of St. John: "...as many as received him, to them
he gave the power to become sons of God."
"Ok, I
believed on the basis of the data that Christianity is true," says
Strobel. "But that wasn't enough. I had to receive His gift of free grace.
I got down on my knees next to my bed and poured out a confession of a lifetime
of immorality that would curl your hair. That's when I received forgiveness
through Christ and became a child of God."
Rising from the
bedside, Strobel found his wife in the kitchen.
"Leslie,"
Strobel told her, "for two years I've been reaching out, reaching for the
living, resurrected son of God. I have given him my life."
"I almost
gave up on you 1,000 times," he recalls her replying.
Strobel's growth
in faith led to staff positions with megachurches in Chicago and Lake Forest,
Calif., then a career as author and public speaker. For a time he hosted the
national television program, "Faith Under Fire."
His
presentations came with legalistic precision, as he rattled off assertions by
scientists that the workings of nature ‑ from the structure of DNA to the
expansion of the universe ‑ bore the handprint of God.
Strobel's
transformation resonated with Christian leaders.
"If the
Gospel can capture Lee's heart and life," marvels Southern Methodist
University evangelism professor Elaine Heath, "it is possible for anyone
to come to Christ."
Adam Greenway,
dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Ministry at
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., says Strobel's story
"has the ring of authenticity."
"There's
nothing of the shyster or huckster in it," he says. "There's such a
level of genuineness. You can't understate the power of that."
Dan Barker, a
former Christian mission evangelist who now is co-president of the Freedom From
Religion Foundation, is not convinced.
"I used to
believe in Christianity," he says, "but I painfully learned it was
not true. I think people like Strobel have bought into a delusion and they are
afraid of judgment, heaven and hell. Fear is underneath it all.
"My main
criticism of Strobel is that he's just giving one side," Barker said.
"He touts his experience in journalism for credibility, then turns around
and acts nothing like a journalist."
Strobel says God "changed everything" in his life.
"It doesn't
get any better than this," he says. "This is what I was reborn to
do."
Strobel's father
didn't live to see his son's transformation.
"I always
wondered if I would cry when my Dad died," Strobel says. "I was in
the Yale law school library when a friend told me the news. I did cry. When I
went to his wake, I asked that the room be cleared and I stood in front of the
coffin and said two things. I told him I was sorry for the things that I did to
poison our relationship and I said that I forgave him. Too late. But then the
oddest thing happened.
"People
began to come into the wake and I was sitting off by the side. A man came up to
me and said, 'Are you Lee? Oh man, I always wanted to meet you. Your dad never
stopped talking about you. Every time you had a front page article, he'd cut it
out and show it. He'd show pictures of your kids around the office. When you
went to Yale, he bragged about it for weeks. I'm so glad to meet you."
If Strobel had
one more meeting with his dad, "I would throw my arms around him," he
says.
"I think he loved me in the only way he could. Unfortunately, there were
wrongs on both sides," says Strobel. "I'd like to think he'd be
excited by the path my life is taken. I'd like to think we'd be best
friends."
