UPDATE: The Pugnacious Irishman has linked to me! Thank you for the link Rich! EVERYONE: GO READ HIS POST RIGHT NOW!
UPDATE: Neil Simpson has a debate going on about whether faith is opposed to reason. 50+ comments so far.
Shout out: Brian Auten of Apologetics 315 helped me to make this post nicer. He’s much nicer than I am.
I would like to describe a situation that arises frequently that concerns me. The situation I describe below brings out a flaw I see in the way that rank-and-file Christians respond to criticisms of Christianity in the public square.
Here is the situation
Eve is busy programming away at her desk, rushing to check in her unit tests so she can spend her lunch hour reading the latest Stephenie Meyer horror novel, or looking through an Avon catalog. Suddenly Eve hears Alice talking to Bob on the other side of her cube. She stops typing to listen to the following unencrypted conversation.
Alice: I was watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel last night that said that the universe has always existed, so there is no God!
Bob: I was watching a documentary on PBS last night showing simulations of how the first life started on Earth! God didn’t do it!
Alice: I saw “Inherit the Spin” on the weekend! The only reason people oppose evolution is because of the Bible! Not because of science!
Bob: I’m going to see “The Va Dinci Code” this weekend! It says that the Gospels are unreliable and that Jesus didn’t even die on the cross!
Alice: I just bought the latest Dichard Rawkins book “Christians Should Be Fed to Lions and the Bible Should Be Burned”!
Bob: I will read that as soon as I finish Histopher Chritchens’ book “Why God is the Evilest, Stupidest Person in the World”!
Eve double-majored in business and computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology, and has an MBA from the London School of Economics. She has spent a ton of time, effort and money studying very difficult subjects for her job, and she even publishes research. She works full-time and runs her own business part-time, and earns about 200K per year. She lives in a huge house, drives a huge car, and goes on vacation abroad to all the best vacation spots.
Eve thinks she is a Christian. She has attended church since childhood, her husband is a church elder and she sings in the church choir. She reads the Bible and prays. She gives money to the poor. She teaches Sunday school to children. She has even read all of the Narnia novels three times!
But even though God is being maligned in Alice and Bob’s conversation, Eve is not going to stand up to defend God’s reputation to them, (or even to her own children, who are both committed atheists).
Why won’t Eve stand?
I am wondering if anyone can explain to me why it is that most church Christians are not able or not willing to make a public defense when God’s reputation is called into question. It seems to me that there are two bad effects that follow from Eve’s unwillingness to stand up and invite Alice and Bob to lunch so that she can address their questions and concerns.
1) God’s reputation is being trashed by Alice and Bob on the basis of lies they’ve swallowed from pop culture. These lies about God’s existence and character could be easily corrected with a minimal amount of study, which Eve is capable of. If someone said similar lies about her husband or children, she would speak up, but she won’t speak up for God.
2) Alice and Bob are bound for Hell unless someone cares enough to correct their mistaken beliefs, which, along with their sinfulness, is what is keeping them from a relationship with God that would go on in Heaven. If Eve’s husband or children were mistakenly about to drink poison thinking it was Aspirin, then Eve would speak up. But to save her co-workers from Hell, she won’t speak up.
Eve is capable of studying to defend the faith, because of her great success in other areas where so much time and effort were required to master difficult material. So why has she not applied herself to answering public challenges to her Christian faith from her professors, teachers, actors, the media, politicians, scientists, historians, etc.?
It seems to me that if she did spend some time studying, and then made her defense to her co-workers, then two things would follow:
D1) Eve would be demonstrating her love for God and her friendship with God by protecting his reputation when it is called into question by unbelievers in public settings. That’s what friends do – if Eve wanted to be God’s friend, she would care that no one believed lies about him and told lies about him in public settings.
D2) Eve would be demonstrating her love for her neighbor if she was able to correct some of these false beliefs, such as that the universe is eternal, or that a historical case cannot be made for the resurrection, or that evil is not compatible with theism. It’s important for Alice and Bob to know that Christianity is not stupid.
So why is it that Eve is able to go to church for 20 years, sing in the choir, read the Bible, read the Narnia stories, pray on her knees, and yet still be unwilling to do the best thing for God and the best thing for her neighbor?
Questions for my readers
Can anyone help me to understand why Christians are willing to accept this? Why is this not being addressed by churches?
Do you have an experience where a Christian group stifled apologetics? Tell me about that, and why do you think they would do that, in view of the situation I outlined above? My experience is that atheists (as much as I tease them) are FAR more interested in apologetics than church Christians. Why is that?
My answers
My answers to these problems are given in the following previous posts.
In general:
- Christians think that the Bible teaches that faith is irrational and unprovable
- Christians don’t know how to discuss faith in public without upsetting others
- Christians don’t think that their silence harms God or their neighbors
- Christians don’t treat their faith as seriously as their academic and professional work
- Christians are afraid to study because they think that they’ll have doubts
- Christians don’t believe that reasons and evidence lead people to faith
- Many churches are feminized, and therefore knowledge and disputes are discouraged
Also, this debate I blogged about before talks about postmodernism and relativism, which has infected the church and has an impact on this question of whether we will study and defend our beliefs in public. I highly recommend giving it a listen – you will learn something about how we got to this point.
Disclaimer:
I want to clear that this is a problem for male and female Christians. I have seen it manifested by equal numbers of men and women in leadership roles. I picked these names because there is a running gag in computer network security where these names are used to describe the actors. Eve is the eavesdropping hacker, get it?
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I think that most Christians simply don’t know what a decent response looks like. They know “God made it, I believe it, and that settles it” is better reserved for Grandma’s bumper sticker collection, but they don’t know how to defend their beliefs using Scripture (because memorization has gone out the window, as has expository preaching and teaching) or reason (because, as you mentioned in your post on the feminizing of the church, reason and logic are rarely a part of Christian worship or study anymore.
Show me a pastor, evangelist, or Sunday School curriculum that regularly touches on apologetics. It doesn’t happen. Show me a Christian thoroughly trained by his/her church in the use of Scripture. You’d almost have to go to seminary or do it on your own. You’ll find thousands of churches with sports ministries and fellowship times, though.
Is it any wonder God spoke of His people being destroyed for lack of knowledge….
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Okay. I came back to read your 4 PM post. This is what I want to ask. Are Alice and Bob really ignorant or are they those people who simply like maligning Christianity for heck of it? If it’s the first case, I would defend my faith like you said. Always! It would be too much for me to suffer someone’s ignorance, especially if it’s misdirected towards my DEAREST friend. But if it is the second, they deserve my silence. I don’t go about arguing with people who prefer to live in a state of denial. Trust me, I’ve met both kinds of people in my life and the second kind don’t need explaining! I don’t think my silence, in cases such as these, would harm God. After all, that’s something I learnt from Christ. And if you really want to bear witness to your faith, sometimes you really cannot help upsetting others. The truths Christ spoke did upset many people around Him, but you just cannot please everybody.
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Well, what sort of resources would you recommend to someone like Eve to get her started? What are your favorite arguments, and which arguments do you like to answer that come from the other side? I put up my page of arguments here, in case you want to see what I like to discuss.
I find that it’s useful to watch or listen to debates. Then you can see how to respond and where you may have to give ground up. Ever seen or heard any of those? I recommend this debate between Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and William Lane Craig, for beginners. My debate page is also a good place for finding debates.
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I’m a pastor and I tried to do a sermon series on good reasons to believe in God and Christainity. It was the most despised sermon series I ever did. People felt the series “didn’t speak to their needs” or “didn’t speak to where they were at”.
People just aren’t interested. They believe in God so why do they need an argument or a reason to believe in him. Give me some sort of inspirational message. It is beyond frustrating.
My only explanation is that people don’t really believe in God or Christianity. Like you said they would stand up for a close friend or relative. The fact that they don’t stand up for what they may say is the most “important” person it their life shows that they don’t really believe this person exists.
The more positive side of me says maybe they are just scared and intimidated. I’ve been in that case before. But sometimes I still reflect on my life and whether it examples a life of a person that truly beleives in God (and I’m a pastor!)
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Thank you SO MUCH for responding. Please feel free to expand on your series and the response. I want to hear more about this problem.
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Stand to Reason gets it right when they talk about being good ambassadors for Christ.
The first thing we need is Knowledge: an accurately informed mind. That means knowing who sends us, knowing who we are sent to and knowing about the important issues people face.
I’ve learned the more I know about something, the more opportunities I get to know someone. For example, the more I know about Mormonism, the more I can find ways to engage in conversation with a Mormon – not just in arguing but simply in relating to them as people.
Knowledge also helps me gain confidence when I speak to people. I don’t have to depend solely on my abilities but on the truth that God would have us share.
Of course, with right knowledge, we also learn how to share that knowledge well. STR calls this Wisdom: an artful method.
Wisdom in this sense, is about conveying the knowledge we hold in a way that others can understand and be challenged by. Wisdom means we not only learn where people are at but we learn how far we can help that person move towards God. We know how far we can or cannot push.
It’s really about being wise in our manners, our questions and in our attitude. Truth doesn’t exist in us (like relativists believe) which means all of us are trying to find ways to understand truth better. That should humble us and encourage us to show respect to others.
Which of course leads to the last STR trait: Character, what they call an attractive manner. And all that entails is ensuring that nothing in our character hinders our message. We don’t represent Christ well if we act in ways He didn’t – that doesn’t mean always being nice because Jesus wasn’t always nice. But it does mean always being loving, whether love requires us to put an arm around someone’s shoulders or to kick them in the butt.
These are important traits to remember because they are great ways to measure how we’re doing as we share the truth of the Good News of Jesus.
You want to know why Christians aren’t being effective ambassadors? It’s because they don’t know or don’t bother to know what their faith is really about. They don’t really know their God.
Phil 3:8
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Perfect! I could not have said it better myself!
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Well the series went through various reasons people have given for believing in God. I went through various arguments and such. The biggest complaint I got (after the “this message isn’t relevant to me) was that what I was teaching was more appropriate for a Bible study (which I agree). The problem is is that no one ever comes to our Bible studies! I’m lucky to maybe get two people.
The only reason I can think of that a message about God’s existence isn’t relevant is if you think God is a fairy tale. None of them would ever say that, but really, how could it be any other way? I understand that arguments rarely ever convert people, but I can’t imagine anything more relevant to my life then if God actually exists.
I pastor a very young congregation, mainly youth and young adults. They are the new generation and they have zero desire in engaging these questions. It’s like Christianity is just a cherry on top to their lives instead of being the very foundation of their lives.
Any advice on how to engage people in these questions would be appreciated!
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Pastor Peter,
Try this test (from STR) on them.
Show them this sentence:
“All worldviews have equal merit and none is better than any other.”
Then ask them what they think of that sentence? Ask them if they agree.
Then show them this sentence.
“Jesus is the Messiah and Jews are wrong to reject Him.”
Ask them the very same questions about this sentence.
When I show these sentences to the average Christian, they tell me that they more or less agree with the first sentence and disagree with the second one in whole or in part.
But there’s the crux: if the second sentence is true, then the first sentence can’t be. But if the second sentence is false, then the first sentence can’t be either.
The problem here is that many of these Christians don’t view faith as true, they view it as true for them. They see it as ice cream not insulin.
Greg Koukl actually points out that he doesn’t like using the word faith anymore because it means something else in our culture. Rather, he likes using the word trust because trust is something that is earned through good evidence. You don’t trust a person to give you medicine unless they have the knowledge (ie they are a doctor) who can actually help you.
I recommend STR’s Decision-Making and the Will of God series. In it, Koukl points out that there’s lots of people who know about God but don’t know Him. But there’s no one who knows God who doesn’t know a lot about Him. It’s like dating – you would never base a relationship with someone on falsehoods (ever watch M Butterfly?). Rather, that relationship has to be based on truth.
And even in the rare chance they already know all this stuff, then I would ask them if their non-Christian friends and family know all this stuff. If they don’t, then the question I would ask them is, do they love their neighbours enough to learn how to explain these truths to them?
That’s all apologetics really is: it’s not about head knowledge for head knowledge sake. It’s about knowing what’s real, what’s true because if the Biblical God is real, He lives in reality. We will get to know Him and have a better relationship with Him if we learn about Him.
People who complain that apologetics isn’t practical or knowing why we believe what we do isn’t important, don’t know what they believe and don’t know Who they believe in.
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Peter,
Your problem is a common one for anyone who works with youth, and the issue is not, as you suspect, that a defense of the faith really is irrelevant to their lives. It’s incredibly relevant, they just don’t recognize that.
As far as recommendations, check out Brett Kunkle’s work on str.org (you should also check out many of his posts on the str blog). He leads mission trips of youth to Cal Berkely and Utah…these trips are designed to wake them up to their need to become articulate in defending the faith. For many of our youth, as I pointed out in my post, they won’t see the relevance of this unless they are put in the thick of things…once you are out on the battlefield and you feel the bullets whizzing by your head, you suddenly become desperate for a helmet and a gun.
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Thanks Rich & Canbuhay. Very good advice.
Ironcially Rich, I tried that. We had a trip planned for Utah and it was meant to acomplish exactly what you say it should accomplish. Except no one wanted to go! No one wanted to go somehwere where they knew they would be challenged – it frightened them (almost verbitum quotes from several people as well as parents of some of the youth)!!
Many say they want to be challenged but in actuality they don’t. They want to be spoon fed and patted on the back.
I should really try that STR challenge. I think that could be effective – at least on the day that I give the talk.
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I’m sorry to hear that, Peter! That would frustrate me to no end…actually, I *do* get that just about every day in my high school classroom (incredible apathy). I had that happen this year with the Christian club as well in doing a certain outreach…they objected to engaging a certain group of people on the grounds that their sin had a “spirit,” and if they hung out with these folks, that spirit would “jump” onto them! GAH!
Demonic oppression is real, but not like that…
Anyway, all that to say: I hear ya bro, I hear ya.
One thing Brett does to counter this is when he speaks to groups for the first time, he poses as an atheist. The group leader introduces him as an atheist friend, then Brett proceeds to tear their faith apart, in a friendly manner, for about half an hour. When they are left with nothing and are frustrated, then he “comes out” as a Christian and walks them through some of the challenges he presented. I’ve seen him go at it first hand, and it is beautiful….they can’t run away then!
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One last thing Pastor Peter – I’m a youth pastor too and I was always leary about teaching them God’s word simply because I said it was true. So the first year I taught them, I didn’t teach them directly from scripture but we talked about what they believed, why they believed what they did, how did they decide what is true, what values they have , why hold those values etc.
I got them to really think through the questions that CS Lewis asked, which are what is right and wrong and how do you know that it is right and wrong?
Only when we established that there were objective moral truths did we move to talking about where does truth come from, if it is from god, which god, and if it is the Christian God, what reason should we believe the Bible.
Our second year together is when I opened the Bible with them.
But not only that, all our lessons are practical (ie we ate Neopolitan ice cream when talked about the trinity, went kite flying when we learned about the Holy Spirit and went to the highest point in Calgary when we talked about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness). This way, they learn that apologetics and biblical truths that are interwoven in their everyday lives. There’s nothing impractical about it.
One of my students came up to me the other day and asked about abiogenesis because he was debating a university student about atheism (he’s in grade 10).
They’re not perfect but I see many of them taking my challenge to them seriously: This faith is worth believing in because it’s -true- If you walk away from this faith, that is your decision but you better walk away with better reasons and explanations than I have given you for believing in it.
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I hope you noticed the recent posts I’ve been doing on the Cambrian explosion and the origin of life! Make your students watch those YouTube movies, as they normally cost $20 apiece and now the knowledge is free!
This post has all the links.
Part of the reason why apologetics matters is because even if the people don’t become Christians, their perception that Christianity is based on blind faith changes, and the culture as a whole becomes more respectful of Christian belief and practice. If you take a look at my buddy Rich’s post at Pugnacious Irishman, he assembles a number of quotes to that effect.
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Hey Rich, Canbuhay and Wintery, thanks for the advice, resources and comments! Much appreciated!
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As I noted at the Pugnacious Irishman’s place . . .
Many people like to use the “just love them” cop-out. Greg Koukl pointed out how the book of Acts has 13 presentations of the Gospel and love isn’t mentioned once. Not once.
Of course the Gospel has love at its core, but it isn’t like Paul said,”Jesus really loves you, so you might want to think about following him.”
No, He commands us to repent and believe. The early church used logic, evidence and, at times, miracles to present the faith.
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Basically my view is that Jesus had to use miracles in order to provide evidence of his authority. If I could do that, I would but I can’t, so I use the evidence of God’s past miracles in nature instead.
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Evidence of your changed life: the life of an overcomer, is a true modern miracle greater than any physical healing.
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No actually scientific arguments for God’s existence and historical evidence for the resurrection is the best evidence. A changed life is not compelling evidence, because any religion, even atheism, can do that.
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Hi there. Came to this blog through Rich’s. I think that this is a good post and I thank you for posting it.
That said, I won’t say that I have been a great defender of the Bible/God/Jesus at my workplace but I have had a few chances to convey the message of the Gospel in the past year.
I was somewhat trained by my previous pastor on some basic apologetics and light theology during my university years and though I have some confidence in answering people’s questions, I still do find myself afraid to speak up sometimes. I think that for the most part, people are afraid of being judged and criticized. For me, I am afraid of being hypocritical in the things I say. I am fearful that I am not living my life in the way that is “Christian-enough” that what I say may come across as hypocrisy even if whatever I said was in pure sincerity and that I would repent of any kind of hypocrisy. At times, I have a fear of man and that I do admit that it’s not something I’m proud of. So even though I have been somewhat trained, without ‘practise’, I have forgotten a lot of the arguments/evidences that I could use. Ultimately, I am fearful.
This post has opened my eyes and made me realize that I should really be serious in my desire to repent of this fear of man.
I hope this comment is readable as my thoughts are all tumbling out without a real structure. My apologies to that.
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Thanks so much for this comment.
I think there are some valid reasons for keeping quiet. My advice is to let your opponents know that your personal morality is not evidence for any premises of your arguments. When you make the kalam argument, say, the premises are true given the evidence of the beginning of the universe regardless of whether you are good guy or not. You are offering an argument – you don’t have to be perfect! No normal Christian is. Tell them that up front, then make your case!
I remember when I started getting serious about this in 1999, my palms would literally sweat for a period of time afterwards and I would watch sweat drip off my nose onto my shaking hands. (We had a lot of whacky left-wing people in this company – this was a research company that invented a piece of software you use every day). But a few years later, I gradually got more and more comfortable. It helps to save your money in case anything goes wrong, and apologize constantly!
Be CAREFUL who you talk to. The easiest thing to do is to check people for objectivity. Ask them to say something nice about their opponents. Ask them for arguments against their position. You need evidence that they have studied at a high level on the other side. (For example, I can cite arguments of pro-abortion scholars like Michael Tooley, Eileen McDonough, Judith Jarvis Thomson, etc.) My advice is to watch some free William Lane Craig debates online, and pick up all the Lee Strobel books. Study builds confidence. Study of actual debates makes you courageous.
Stop by again soon!
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Hi again. Thanks for your reply. I found it really helpful and I’ll be sure to keep the things that you said in mind if and when I speak to people. It never really occurred to me what you said about personal morality. Thank you!
My husband constantly tells me to pick my battles wisely and to not debate with fools or with people who are clearly only arguing for the sake of argument. I have one such colleague who is a proponent of Richard Dawkins but then turns around and says that he’s not an atheist but believes that he is more of an agnostic. However, sometimes his arguments against God make me really irritated. I have yet to take him up on any arguments as I am unsure what to say but my husband managed to debate him one time over lengthy Facebook messages. My husband’s conclusion was that the guy is simply trying to argue and is not really listening. He just wants to give his point of view and prove his own ‘smartness’. This has led me to believe that perhaps taking him up on a ‘discussion’ would not be a fruitful thing. What are your views on that?
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Thanks again for your comment. Sorry my reply is late I’m preparing tomorrow’s posts.
I think the way to handle this guy is to try to structure the discussion more, and if that fails then forget talking to him.
Here’s what you need to do to get this guy off his game. You need to develop a structured case and insist that he stick to that structure. You should cut off your opponent any time he strays from the path. Use William Lane Craig’s case for Christian theism (below) as your model. Craig is the #1 Christian debater in the world today, and has 2 PhDs. He has debated anything and everything that stands on two legs, and almost always wins.
Craig makes two contentions in his standard case:
+ There are good reasons to believe that God exists
+ There are no good reasons to believe that God does not exist
He then gives five arguments in favor of his first contention:
+ The kalam cosmological argument
+ The fine-tuning argument
+ The moral argument
+ The argument from the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus
+ The immediate personal experience of God (not really an argument)
You can read about these arguments pro and con here.
So you need to stay focussed on these two contentions: 1) present rebuttals to your arguments and also 2) to offer you arguments that disprove Christian theism. You must keep the discussion focused on the evidence for and against God. Never let him change the topic to Christianity’s historical record, or moral bugaboos, or politics, or how religious belief arises. Stick to the evidence. Never let him make an assertion without demanding reasons for it.
A good place to start from scratch is to watch some free videos on YouTube, which I linked to here. And get yourself Lee Strobel’s books, especially “The Case for a Creator”. If you don’t have a book on the resurrection, the best book you can get is by Gary Habermas and Mike Licona (two Christian debaters with Ph.Ds in history) called “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus”.
After you finish that, I recommend that you spend some time watching some debates with William Lane Craig. I’ll just warn you in advance that he is not a young-earth creationist, but he does not believe in Darwinian evolution, either. (The evidence for the beginning of the universe at the big bang is one of our most dangerous arguments)
Here is a debate he had with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (MP3 audio), where the first 4 points are made. (The debate was later turned into a book with Oxford University Press)
A good video debate held at Purdue University is online. The audience size is 3,500 students and faculty. I helped to sponsor it! The rematch (MP3 audio) is here, in which Craig gets Dacey back for the Brian Greene quote that threw him off in the first debate. Another debate (video) that may be useful is this one against boring Peter Slezak at the Sydney Town Hall.
You can find some more debates in various formats, including text, here.
I appreciate your interest!
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Wow! That’s a lot of stuff! ;) Thanks for the links and the advice again. I will be sure to check them out (albeit slowly…).
I mentioned that my husband took him up on a discussion. It was based on a Creation Science Evangelism video (both my husband and I believe in the young Earth creationism) that I had posted on my Facebook account. They got on to the topic of the Big Bang. After giving Biblical evidence and also some scientific ones to disprove the theory of the Big Bang, my colleague suddenly replied by saying that he is ignorant of such evidences and therefore would not want to argue about the Big Bang anymore. Throughout the discussion he deviated many times by bringing in the argument that the Bible is flawed as it was written by so many men and he also inserted many snide and sarcastic comments after which he accused my husband for being the one who was sarcastic. So I think that your advice to keep him on track of the discussion is a good idea. I’ll keep that in mind if we ever get into a serious discussion.
I hope to be able to at least convey a basic Gospel message to him before he leaves next year. Thank you again for all the advice. I’ll check out the Craig posts first.
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WK, I am here via our pugnacious mutual acquaintance. This is an ongoing topic in my life. My thoughts on your questions:
“Can anyone help me to understand why Christians are willing to accept this? Why is this not being addressed by churches?”
Essentially due to having absorbed the media’s “no fair meanie” messages and their “we won’t like you” threats. Or, in the little places, town gossip about snobbery.
“Do you have an experience where a Christian group stifled apologetics? Tell me about that, and why do you think they would do that, in view of the situation I outlined above?”
My husband had to fight to bring apologists into our church, years ago. The pastor had to fight for the right to teach on the difference between Christianity and various other belief systems. We were consistently told by one influential leader (entirely incongruously), “We don’t need to know that other stuff. All we need to know is what we believe.”
All it takes is one influential person to buy into the idea that church is a social game, a popularity contest with “friendliest public face” for the win. There is truth doctrine and there is tolerance doctrine, and neither one tolerates the other.
A dear but naive friend told us that he believes Christianity should be less about talking at people and more about just living our faith without having to say anything about it. He honestly believes that, for instance, your Eve’s best option would be to just be a really, really nice person, and that will utterly obliterate everything Alice and Bob are absorbing.
Uhhh….? Because only Christians can be…nice?
Salut,
~Cat
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Wow, that was a great comment. I can tell that you and your husband have had similar experiences to me. It is so frustrating to me that people are more interesting in being liked by others than in being faithful. Thanks for leaving this comment, I feel better that I am not alone.
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“Eavesdropping” on this dialogue has been inspirational. Thank you! I do believe in Creationism and that the Bible can be trusted, but I tend to be pretty personal testimony based in my approach to witnessing. For a few people that is what they need to hear, but this is helping me see why that does not address the core issues of our day.
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Sorry if I was mean. I really recommend you consider reading some of the basic books by Lee Strobel, such as “The Case for Christ” and “The Case for a Creator”. I also like Edgar Andrews’ “Who Made God?” and “True for You But Not For Me” by Paul Copan. Just pick them up in the Christian book store and take a peek inside.
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