An atheist finds God: Lee Strobel

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."