For the last three decades, Lee Strobel has been one of the foremost apologists for the Christian faith around the world. His books have sold millions of copies as he has defended the reasons for Christianity. Now in his 70s, he is as passionate as ever in communicating the Gospel through his writing, films, teachings, and other avenues to reach the skeptic, the curious, and the confused.
What Was Lee Strobel Known For Before He Became a Christian?
In the 1970s, Strobel received his law degree from Yale before eventually becoming the Chicago Tribune’s legal editor. In addition, he was an award-winning investigative reporter for over a decade at the Tribune, receiving acclaim for his work.
For instance, Strobel won multiple awards for a 1980 article investigating a Ford Pinto crash in which three people died. His later book, Reckless Homicide? Ford’s Pinto Trial, chronicled the lawsuit against Ford for releasing a defective product from the first trial to the final verdict.
How Did Lee Strobel Become a Christian?
In 1981, Strobel observed that his wife was happier after she became a Christian. At that point, he was a skeptic who emphasized Darwinian evolution. By his later admission, he was also living hedonistically. He drank too much, pursued pleasure as his end goal, behaving selfishly, angrily, and self-destructively. He realized he was on a path to divorce and a strained relationship with his kids.
But on a Sunday morning, with a hangover, he relented to going to church with his wife. After hearing a sermon on the basics of Christianity, he decided to start an investigation into Christianity–specifically who Jesus is and the claims He made–which ended up lasting almost two years. Eventually, he concluded that less faith was required to believe in Christ than it did for him to believe in atheism. Reason and logic led him to faith rather than an emotional experience.
After becoming a Christian, Strobel wrote several evangelistic-themed books. Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary has 15 key descriptions of why people avoid God and the church. What Jesus Would Say addresses such hard topics as sexuality, success, and forgiveness. God’s Outrageous Claims examines the promises of God and how they can lead to a transformed life.
Strobel’s returned to his personal spiritual journey when he wrote the 1998 bestseller The Case for Christ, which has sold millions of copies and been translated into various languages. In the book, he acknowledges it’s hard for many to believe in the miracles of Jesus, including rising from the dead. However, Strobel asks many tough questions and wades through the evidence and facts of history, science, psychiatry, literature, and religion. He conducts 13 interviews with scholars from around the world, revisiting the questions he asked when he was first investigating faith and new questions he had.
The Case for Christ is still in print and considered a classic that has changed many lives–one new edition includes testimonies from readers.
What Did Lee Strobel Write Besides the Case for Christ?
Since The Case for Christ, Strobel has written over a dozen books in a similar style (sometimes called The Case for eries), some for adults and some for children. These books cover topics ranging from the existence of miracles to the accuracy of the Christmas story. The most notable ones are as follows.
Strobel won the Gold Medallion for the first follow-up book in this series, The Case for Faith. A conversation with Charles Templeton, an early ministry partner of Billy Graham who left the ministry over doubts about Christianity, inspired Strobel to write this book looking at the questions Templeton brought up.
In The Case for Faith, Strobel takes on topics such as “Since evil and suffering exist, a loving God cannot exist,” “It's offensive to claim Jesus is the only way to God,” and “A loving God would never torture people in Hell.” The book has recently been updated to include the top eight objections to Christianity.
Additionally, Stroblem has written the New York Times bestseller The Case for a Creator. In it, he concludes everything cannot come from nothing, life cannot be produced from non-life, the intricacy of creation cannot evolve from randomness, and the consciousness of humans cannot come from unconsciousness.
In The Case for Grace, Strobel again shares his testimony and travels around the world to interview others. But this time, he focuses on everyday people who have experienced God’s grace—including addicts, murderers, or racists—and how it has revolutionized their lives.
Most recently, in 2021, Strobel wrote The Case for Heaven. He dives into issues like universalism, reincarnation, the logic of hell, annihilationism, and questions around eternal punishment.
Overall, Strobel’s books have sold over 14 million copies.
What Else Has Lee Strobel Done?
Before Strobel wrote The Case for Christ, he was the teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago from 1987 to 2000. He then left the church to become pastor at Saddleback Church, also in the Chicago area. He left the pastorate in 2004 to host the TV show Faith Under Fire.
In 2014, he moved to Texas, started a new post as pastor at the Woodlands Church, and taught Christian thought at Houston Baptist University. He has also taught First Amendment law at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
In addition to his writing, pastoring, and teaching, Strobel has been a part of his books being made into films. In 2017, his faith journey was portrayed in the film, The Case for Christ.
The film condenses the book into two of the most familiar criticisms of Christianity: “Why is Jesus the only way to God?” and “How could a loving God exist if there is evil and suffering in the world?” Strobel notes the film is also for Christians who want to grasp their faith more clearly and be more confident in what they believe—especially regarding Jesus and the New Testament. He also said he hoped Christian viewers would bring friends who are confused or curious about faith issues.
Most critics did not receive the film well, but it got better reviews than many Christian films–including acclaim from Variety and Forbes. The review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes deemed the film great for preaching to the choir if less effective for non-Christians.
More recently, the documentary The Case for Heaven follows Strobel as he interviews experts about the afterlife. In the documentary, he argues that God has placed a sense of eternity in each person. He suggests this sense of eternity manifests in people wanting to create a long-lasting legacy that will outlive—by writing a bestseller, creating something beautiful, or even creating a heinous crime to be remembered in history.
In 2019, Strobel and Mark Mittlebery created the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. The Center has doctorate-level professors in science, faith, history, and philosophy teaching almost 100 online, fully accredited undergraduate and graduate-level courses. The intent is to guide students in deepening their theology and encourage them to share their faith and defend its truth.
Inspiring and Thought-Provoking Lee Strobel Quotes
1 “. . . You can know all these things about your wife and not be in love with her and put your trust in her, but you do. So the decision goes beyond the evidence, yet it is there also on the basis of the evidence. So it is with falling in love with Jesus. To have a relationship with Jesus Christ goes beyond just knowing the historical facts about him, yet it's rooted in the historical facts about him.” — The Case for Christ
2. “All we needed when we first came to Jesus was his grace, and grace is all we need to grow in Christ. Grace liberates us. Our tendency toward performance imprisons us.” — The Case for Grace
3. “If the gospels had been identical to each other, word for word, this would have raised charges that the authors had conspired among themselves to coordinate their stories in advance, and that would have cast doubt on them.” — The Case for Christ
4. “These are his people, this congregation of misfits, crack addicts, and drunks, the unshaven, unwashed, unemployed, and unwanted.” — The Case for Grace
5. “He was loving but didn’t let his compassion immobilize him; he didn’t have a bloated ego, even though he was often surrounded by adoring crowds; he maintained balance despite an often demanding lifestyle; he always knew what he was doing and where he was going; he cared deeply about people, including women and children, who weren’t seen as being important back then; he was able to accept people while not merely winking at their sin; he responded to individuals based on where they were at and what they uniquely needed.” ― The Case for Christ
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Jeff Schear/Stringer
Nate Van Noord is from Detroit, MI, a graduate of Calvin University, and has taught high school history for many years. He loves to bike, run, and play pickleball, has been to about 30 countries, and is a three time winner of NPR's Moth Detroit StorySlam competitions.
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