Making the Case for Christmas

THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS by Lee Strobel. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1998, 2005. 91 pages.

Lee Strobel, a Yale law graduate, journalist at the Chicago Tribune, and an atheist, didn’t have much interest in digging out the religious roots of Christmas – until his agnostic wife became a professing Christian. Following that, he was greatly affected by a tenement family who received a great outpouring of public support after he wrote an article about them. When he returned for a follow-up story, he discovered that the family was giving much of their newfound largesse away. Why? “Our neighbors are still in need. We cannot have plenty while they have nothing. This is what Jesus would want us to do.”

He was astounded as he drove away, thinking “They had peace despite poverty, while I had anxiety despite plenty; they knew the joy of generosity, while I only knew the loneliness of ambition; they looked heavenward for hope, while I only looked out for myself; they experienced the wonder of the spiritual while I was shackled to the shallowness of the material – and something made me long for what they had. Or, more accurately, for the One they knew.”

This small book, easy reading in one or two sittings, is a cutting from Strobel’s longer book, THE CASE FOR CHRIST. Strobel’s goal is to separate hard evidence from tradition and sentiment. He asks four main questions: Can the biographies of Jesus be trusted? Does archaeology confirm or contradict Jesus’ biographies? Did Jesus fulfill the attributes of God? And finally, did Jesus – and Jesus alone – match the identity of the Messiah?

For each question Strobel interviews experts in the field, trying to discover the logical and empirical truth for each question. All the experts give solid answers to the questions he asks, as well as to his follow-ups.

The most interesting interview was with Louis S. Lapides, who was reared a conservative Jew. Strobel devotes eleven pages to the story of this man’s spiritual journey. Lapides began to study the Old Testament, to attempt to confirm if Jesus was the Messiah. When he read Old Testament prophecy, he decided that Christians had rewritten Isaiah’s words to make it sound that Jesus was the Messiah. So he asked his stepmother to send him a Jewish Bible. “She did, and guess what? I found out that it said the same thing! Now I really had to deal with it.”

Strobel asked Lapides if it was possible that the gospel writers fabricated details or that Jesus himself ordered his life in such a way as to fulfill prophecies. Lapides replied that too many people in the Jewish community knew what had happened to let potential fabrications go unchallenged, without making rebuttals. And Jesus could not have arranged for the Sanhedrin to offer Judas thirty pieces of silver, or to be born when he was, or to be resurrected. The accuracy of scripture is strengthened by many external events.

THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS, perfect reading during this holiday season, may be a small book, but it provides an objective reassurance that outside details confirm what Christians know and can testify of in their hearts and lives.