[Eng B8] The Case for Faith

[Eng B8] The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity (by Lee Strobel), 2000


Book overview

To knock down what Strobel calls "the Big Eight" roadblocks to faith, he questions experts about them rather than logically bulldozing his way to solutions. The Case for Faith is for those who may be thinking about the claims of the Bible but who are faced with formidable intellectual barriers standing squarely in their path. For Christians, it will deepen their convictions and give them fresh confidence in discussing Christianity with even their most skeptical friends.

The Big eight most convincing arguments against Christian faith:

1. If there's a loving God, why does this pain-wracked world groan under so much suffering and evil?
2. If the miracles of God contradict science, then how can any rational person believe that they're true?
3. If God is morally pure, how can he sanction the slaughter of innocent children as the Old Testament says he did?
4. If God cares about the people he created, how could he consign so many of them to an eternity of torture in hell just because they didn't believe the right things about him?
5. If Jesus is the only way to heaven, then what about the millions of people who have never heard of him?
6. If God really created the universe, why does the evidence of science compel so many to conclude that the unguided process of evolution accounts for life?
7. If God is the ultimate overseer of the church, why has it been rife with hypocrisy and brutality throughout the ages?
8. If I'm still plagued by doubts, then is it still possible to be a Christian?

Contents:
Introduction: The Challenge of Faith
On the Road to Answers
Objection #1: Since Evil & Suffering Exist, a Loving God Cannot
Objection #2: Since Mircales Contradict Sciences, They Cannot be True
Objection #3: Evolution Explains Life, So God Isn't Needed
Objection #4: God Isn't Worthy of Worship If He Kills Innocence Children
Objection #5: It's Offensive to Claim Jesus is the Only Way to God
Objection #6: A Loving God Would Never Torture People in Hell
Objection #7: Church History is Littered with Oppression & Violence
Objection #8: I Still Have Doubts, So I Can't be a Christian
Conclusion: The Power of Faith

[Eng B5] What's so amazing about Grace

[Eng B5] What's so amazing about Grace (by Philip Yancey), 1997

Book overview

Why? Grace, which to author Yancey means God’s love for the undeserving, i.e. all of humankind, and ungrace are possibly the two forces in most active conflict with each other daily across the world.

Grace for Yancey and many others is the one thing the world cannot provide; seeking it is probably ultimately why most people attend church. In the author’s words, "I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else." Many active churchgoers could say the same.

Yancey guides us into a clearer understanding of grace by using stories, in much the same way Jesus did. We read stories of both grace and ungrace at work in people's lives. Sadly, it is stories of ungrace that are more prevalent today, the current culture wars painful acknowledgments of ungrace in our lives as Christians in this country. Yancey helps us understand that ungrace is that state of being in which self-righteousness and pride are a result of thinking that we have somehow earned God's approval and may now stand in judgment in his behalf.

On grace avoidance, Yancey notes that the community that made Jesus angriest was the one that he most resembled on the surface: the Pharisees. He obeyed the Torah and quoted and supported leading Pharisees, who were model citizens of their day. Their legalisms He found toxic: for example, their expressions of love for God had evolved into ways of impressing others. Pray, He said, privately without show.

Contents:
Part I: How Sweet the Sound
Part II: Breaking the Cycle of Ungrace
Part III: Scent of Scandal
Part IV: Grace Notes for a Deaf World