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A child-like faith...
by Lee Strobel, 7.13.2006
Your kids may be liberated from the classroom for the summer, but that doesn’t mean they stop learning. In fact, any time is a good time to investigate faith. But are you ready to help your children learn about God? This edition of my newsletter – as well as new resources at LeeStrobel.com – will assist you as you nurture your children spiritually. Also below, you’ll find the latest on The Da Vinci Code, plus other tidbits, observations, links, and personal stuff. If you like what you see, please pass it on to a friend!
— Lee |
Helping Your Kids Find God: An Interview with David Staal
Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family once told me that he became a Christian when he was three years old. He paused, then added: “I’m not sure what I was repenting of.
”“Terrible two’s?” I ventured.
Actually, many children find faith in Jesus when they are young. So how can we as parents – or grandparents – guide them in their spiritual journey? How can we help them investigate Christianity?
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David Staal |
To provide some answers, I interviewed Dave Staal, author of theexcellent book Leading Your Child to Jesus. Dave directs the innovative children’s ministry at Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago and edits Today’s Children’s Ministry, an e-publication and web site from Christianity Today. I posed to Dave the questions that all Christian parents seem to ask about how they can help their children meet Jesus. [read more] |
Creating a Safe Place for Questions
My first step toward atheism came when I was about eleven or twelve years old and started asking embarrassing questions about faith – for instance, “If God loves us, why does he send people to hell?” And, “If God is good, why does he allow bad things?”
Basically, I was told I shouldn’t be asking questions like that – and I figured if Christians didn’t want to talk about these issues, it must because they didn’t have any good answers.
My second step toward disbelief came when I was a freshman in high school and studied evolution. After learning how a scientific experiment supposedly proved that life could be created through purely natural means, I concluded, “God is out of a job!”
What about your kids? What’s going to happen when they start expressing their spiritual curiosity or encountering challenges to their faith? Based on my own experience as a former atheist and as a parent of two precocious children, here are some ideas I hope will be helpful. [read more]
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Thank You, Dan Brown
Rolling Stone put it best: “Da Vinci is a dud.” Director Ron Howard managed to take one of the biggest-selling thrillers of all time and create a slow-moving, mind-numbing adaptation. Domestic ticket sales plummeted 88 percent in the first month, though the movie has done better overseas.
In the end, the error-ridden novel itself will continue to be a much bigger headache for Christianity than the film. Unfortunately, Christians will be setting the historical record straight for a long time. Still, we owe author Dan Brown some gratitude. Yes, he deserves the criticism he got for maliciously maligning Christianity, and yet he inadvertently did a few things right. Here’s a partial list of things for which we should be thankful: [read more]
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ASK LEE...About Misquoting Jesus
Question: Please help me. I have just read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus. I was raised in the church and I'm now 26 years old. This book has devastated my faith. I don't want to be kept in the dark; I want to know what really is going on in the Bible and what I should believe, even if it goes against what I've believed since I was a little boy. Is Bart Ehrman correct?
Answer: If all you’ve read about the text of the New Testament is this popular best-seller by the chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, then I can understand why your faith might have been shaken. That’s why it’s important to understand that Ehrman’s account is one-sided, overblown, and terribly misleading... [read more]
Question: Have you read The Archko Volume? I find this book to be fascinating, but I don’t know about its accuracy. I would love to know your thoughts.
Answer: Many years ago someone gave me a copy of The Archko Volume when I was investigating the evidence for Christianity. The book, originally published in 1884, claims to contain translations of otherwise secret first-century documents that Rev. W. D. Mahan, a Presbyterian minister from Boonville, Missouri, encountered in a trip he says he took to Constantinople and Rome. [read more]
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Coming Soon: An Amazing Interview...
As a journalist for many years at The Chicago Tribune and elsewhere, I’ve had some fascinating conversations with provocative people, ranging from the president of the United States to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. But I recently was given the privilege of conducting a very rare on-camera interview with one of the most controversial spiritual figures of our times. I’ll tell the whole story in my next newsletter, and we’ll be posting video clips soon at LeeStrobel.com. Please stop by on a regular basis as we continually update with scores of new videos.
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The Atheist and the "Pastor Dude":
My friend (and pastor) Ken Baugh, who devoted a lengthy series in his church to rebutting The Da Vinci Code, got an interesting phone call shortly before the premiere of the movie based on the novel. Newspaper columnist Joel Stein, who describes himself as a “Jewish atheist,” invited Ken to see the film with him. Naturally, Ken said yes, and the resulting column in The Los Angeles Times is a fascinating glimpse into the reactions of a spiritual skeptic. [click here to read it]
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Getting Personal...
- As you can tell from this photo, our granddaughter Abby is enjoying life in Southern California! We’re looking forward to celebrating her six-month birthday on June 28.
- As I mentioned in an earlier newsletter, I really enjoy the blog that’s written by Mark D. Roberts, a Presbyterian minister whose church isn’t far from my Southern California home. I got a chance to meet Mark over lunch the other day. He’s a great guy, and his doctorate in Christian origins from Harvard gives him an interesting perspective on current controversies. He told me he never thought that when he was studying the Gnostic gospels in the early 1990’s that they would become one of the hot topics in Christianity, as they are today. Anyway, visit him at www.MarkDRoberts.com.
- I was saddened to hear of the May 8 shooting death of Deputy Vicky Owen Armel in Fairfax County, Virginia, but I was relieved to learn that she had become a Christian two years earlier after she read my book The Case for Easter. Her church, Mountain View Community Church in Culpeper, Virginia, distributed 6,000 copies of the book at her May 13 funeral. Our love and condolences go out to her family.
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