Focus on the Family

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Lee Strobel: And it came to the point of November the 8th of 1981 where I reviewed all the evidence and I said, "Wait a minute. In light of this avalanche of evidence that points so powerfully toward the truth of Christianity, it would take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian."

Announcer: Lee Strobel is here to encourage you as a mom or a dad to help foster your teen’s belief in the creator of the universe. Stay tuned for a vibrant discussion today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

Jim Daly: Today's teen's world is so... I think the right word is bombarded. They are bombarded. Trent, my not teen but 20-something, said to me the other day, "Dad, I think we're hungry for truth because we swim in a cesspool of lies."

What an amazing statement. And I think that's true. Social media, all the advertising and things that hit them that some might be true, some or mostly are not true about them and what their identity is and who am I as a 17-year-old young man or young woman. It's a really important topic.

And they're on top of things more than I think we as parents give them credit for. They know the world at that age. They're already shaping their opinions and know what is right and wrong and all those things. And so now we need to help build that faith structure. And I'm sure you've been doing that for many years, but with Lee Strobel's help, we're going to talk specifically about teens and it probably tips into 20-somethings too about their faith in Christ.

John Fuller: And Lee has written a great book for teens to help them in their journey of faith and exploring who God is, who they are in relation to God. It's called, "Is God Real for Teens? Exploring Faith in a World of Wonder."

And Lee serves as founding director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University, and he and his wife Leslie have two adult children.

Jim Daly: Lee, welcome back to Focus.

Lee Strobel: It’s always great to be with you guys. I really enjoy it.

Jim Daly: It's good. And it's always fun. And I think the topics we get to talk about together are things that certainly spark interest for me.

And you know, I'm thinking of this thing right now. There seems to be a resurgence of seeking young people. I mean, I think the death of Charlie Kirk at Turning Point has been a turning point for so many college-age kids who are saying, "Why did this guy get assassinated for expressing what he believed the Bible to say about life?"

Right? And I think that's part of it, but it was also already happening, I think, where the Holy Spirit was moving on young people. You had the various college revivals that are taking place, both secular and Christian colleges. Bible studies at these colleges are really on fire right now. I thought this stat was really interesting. They're reporting that Bible sales in the US have increased 41 percent since 2022. And there's just something with young people and spiritual truth that seems to be connecting right now. Are you seeing it?

Lee Strobel: Absolutely. I have a friend named Shane Pruitt, and his ministry is to travel the country and to speak to groups of young people, high school or college students. And he said, "Lee, in the last three years, I've seen more young people come to faith in Jesus Christ than in the previous 18 years of ministry combined."

Jim Daly: So what's happening from your perspective as an apologist? What's going on?

Lee Strobel: I thought your son's comment was brilliant because this generation of young people have been misled, lied to. Who knows what's true on AI anymore? I'll retweet a video and then I'll get people saying, "Well, now that's AI." And I don't know, really. My goodness. And advertising misleads folks and so forth. I think they're looking for something solid, something true, something they can hang their hat on and build their life on. And of course, Christianity provides that.

Now, there are some negative stats too. The percentage of Generation Z that call themselves atheists is twice as many as in my generation.

Jim Daly: Now to put that in perspective, that's 13 percent over 6 percent. So it's still a relatively small number, but it's a growing number. If you keep doubling every year, it's not long before that dominates the perspective.

Lee Strobel: Exactly. And it seems to be growing to some degree on both ends of the spectrum there. There's an increased openness to God and also seems to be an increased hostility toward God.

I was interacting with a grandfather online who said that his six-year-old granddaughter was a kindergarten student in a public school. And the other students were taunting her and making fun of her and mocking her at recess because she believes in God. "Oh, you believe in fairy tales. You believe in make-believe." And this is a six-year-old getting taunted because she believes in God.

So our kids and our grandkids are going to face things that previous generations did not face in our country. They're going to face hostility, they're going to face challenges, they're going to face counter-arguments to the Christian faith. We need to help them understand not just what we believe, but why we believe it. Give them a rock-solid faith.

Jim Daly: You know, another Gen Z stat that I've seen from demographers is they're much more like the Builders. That's the Baby Boomers' parents. This is the World War II generation. People of deep conviction tend to be more traditional. I was floored by that.

Lee Strobel: And the number of men who are coming back into the church. That's a huge trend.

Jim Daly: Huge increase in young men, 20-somethings and teen young men coming to church now, all on the uptick. So how do we process this, Lee? Is this the hand of God turning the hearts of people and do we understand what that means? Is that why he says fear not? Like, you guys, I've got this. Because he can do that. He can illuminate the mind of any human. He can give a dream to Nebuchadnezzar. He can give a dream to any foe of biblical truth. So those things rest with him. But we tend not to rest with that.

So in that bigger piece as an apologist again, Lee, how do you see the moment that we're in right now? Let's be the Bereans in scripture saying, "Here's the assessment."

Lee Strobel: I think the assessment is this is an opportunity that God has put before us and he's doing things in our midst that we could seize this opportunity to take the gospel to more and more people, to see more and more young people come to faith. And then when young people come to faith, guess what? They marry other Christians, they teach their children the Christian faith as it changes future generations. It changes tomorrow and the next day and so forth.

So this is a tremendous opportunity that God has given us. And I think we need to not squander it but strategically say, "How can we get behind what God is doing and take this generation that is being pointed away from him?"

When I think how I became an atheist, it was in three steps as a young person. The first step, when I was about 12 years old, I began asking those embarrassing questions that 12-year-olds ask, like, "Gosh, if God exists, why is there so much suffering?" and things like that. And nobody was willing to engage with that. And so I thought, "Oh, I get it. There are no good answers. That's why they don't want to talk about it."

Second step was in high school when I studied science, biology, and I learned that biology puts God out of a job. Evolution explains the origin and diversity of life. God is no longer needed. That was the second step into atheism.

Jim Daly: And let me just add in that place, when you and I went to school, that was dominant. There wasn't a creation-oriented orientation. Now, mathematics departments and biology departments at elite universities are all saying, "Yeah, it probably didn't happen that way." I mean, that's what's going on behind the scenes.

Lee Strobel: It's true. There is a counter-revolution going on. And then the third step was as a freshman at the University of Missouri, I took a course on the historical Jesus from a critic who convinced me you can't trust the Bible, you can't trust what the Gospels tell you about Jesus. So that was kind of the three steps I took into atheism.

And I think when we have young people, 12-year-olds, middle school, even younger, asking questions, we have to create an environment in our families where it's okay to ask questions.

Jim Daly: And it's okay not to have the answer.

Lee Strobel: That's right. You know, I was just reading a woman who said that when she was taking her family to church, and she had a four-year-old son, and as they were getting in the car, the four-year-old son said, "I hate God."

And she kind of, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't say that. That's blasphemous. You never say that again." She just reacted so strongly. And then later she thought, "I gotta figure out what's going on." And she found out he didn't really hate God. What he didn't like was his Sunday school class at church. A lot of the kids would kind of dance around during the worship time and he didn't like that. No, he was just expressing himself.

But we react sometimes when a young person asks a question. We react negatively and say, "Oh, don't ask that question," or "You're out of bounds there. That's blasphemous even to raise that issue."

Jim Daly: I'm thinking, how do you explain denominationalism to a four-year-old? But hey, let me ask you this. In this great book, "Is God Real for Teens?" you talk about faith being like drinking from a water bottle. What's that connection?

Lee Strobel: Yes. You've all here, folks on the family, given me a container of water. How did I know that it wasn't poison? Seriously, how do I know?

Well, number one, you don't have any motivation to hurt me. Number two, the water is clean, it's clear. I don't see any problem with it. I see other people drinking water around here. Nobody's falling over dead. And based on that evidence, then what do I do? I taste and see that it's good.

And that's what the Bible says, to taste and see that the Lord is good. To look at the evidence. What is the evidence from science, from the arguments from philosophy, the arguments from history and the resurrection of Jesus and so forth, that point powerfully and compellingly toward the fact that Christianity is true?

Because here's the deal, and I talk about this in the book. I have chapters on areas of science where we've had discoveries in just the last 40, 50, 60 years that make belief in God more rational today from a scientific perspective than any time in history.

Jim Daly: Lee, again, these are all the brilliant things that you've discovered over time. And I've got to take the listeners and the viewers back to the fact that you were an atheist. I mean, some people may not know that story, but you were working at the Chicago Tribune and your wife Leslie became a Christian. And you said, "Okay, I'm going to disprove this so that I can have harmony in my home." Usually, can I just tell you from a marriage standpoint, disproving your wife is not typically a good tactic for a healthy marriage. But in this case, you were moved. You looked at it as an investigative journey and said the evidence is overwhelming.

Lee Strobel: It was so powerful that I spent almost two years using my journalism training, my legal training, to systematically investigate the evidence, especially the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

And it came to the point of November the 8th of 1981 where I reviewed all the evidence and I said, "Wait a minute. In light of this avalanche of evidence that points so powerfully toward the truth of Christianity, it would take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a Christian."

Jim Daly: Which is a great statement. I mean, it's true. I mean, the scales just went like that. Now, in that context, translating that vibrancy, that emotion, that illumination that you had and helping parents to help their teens.

Let me ask you that parenting attitude with your 14, 15-year-old, talking to them, encouraging them to read things that are outside the Christian sphere. And I think for the most part a parent would be very fearful about that. But on the other hand, it exposes them like an inoculation to say, "Talk to me about what you're reading. Why don't you read this and then let's talk about it."

Lee Strobel: I and the talking about it is a crucial thing. You don't want to make them to have a situation where you're just reading contrary material. You want to give them some Christian materials like my book, "Is God Real for Teens?" and so forth.

But yeah, to expose them to other things and then, you know what a fun thing to do with them, especially when they get to be 15, 16, 17? They'll read something that will be a little bit challenging to their faith. And then a thing I like to do would be to say, "Well, why don't you research that and let's talk about it then?" And it kind of puts the onus on them to say, "Oh, okay. I'm going to check that out." And it helps them kind of learn how to research these issues.

But I think the environment begins even earlier than that. I believe it begins when the kids are four, five, and six years old because we need to create an atmosphere where they feel comfortable in being honest about the troublesome feelings that they sometimes have about faith.

And so what we did, and we were of course pretty new Christians when our kids were little, but what we did is create a safe spot every night before they went to bed. So we're putting them to bed and they knew at that time it's okay to ask any question, to express anything that's bothering you, that's niggling at you. If you hold that in, it can erode your soul. But if you talk about it and discuss it, it loses its power over you.

Jim Daly: And the key there, and I want to press this, is sometimes they'll ask questions that are hard for parents to answer. "If God is a good God, why is there suffering in the world?" The number one. "Why do children suffer in the world?" The number one question.

Lee Strobel: That's right. And that's why my book deals with that. It has a chapter on that.

Jim Daly: And I'm just, I just want to reinforce: don't back away. Sometimes temperamentally we as parents, maybe we don't feel we have time for this right now, you know, I'm in the middle of paying the bills or whatever it might be. And my goodness, that is the moment to be the parent and to engage that and say, "Well, let's talk about that."

Lee Strobel: One thing I like to do with my kids, my kids are now grown and serving the Lord, thank goodness. My son's a professor of theology at a seminary. So he turned out alright. But one thing we like to do is ask a specific question from time to time. And the question is, if you could ask God any question at all and he'd give you an answer right now, what would you ask him? That is good.

Now, here's the problem. The first thing they say is not their real question. They're sending up a trial balloon. How are my parents going to react? So often they'll make a joke. "Yeah, my question for God would be, why did you make the platypus so weird?" and you laugh and you say, "Okay, but that's not the real question. What is the real question you would ask God?"

Because you were willing to engage, they'll go deeper. And your child might say, "Well, you know, I have a friend at school and their mom is dying. She's in the hospital. And why does God allow that kind of thing to happen?" Now you're getting at the real issues that are bothering them.

And I like to ask a follow-up question often because they'll ask the question, "Why does God allow suffering?" But then I ask, "Okay, of all the possible questions, why did you ask that one?" And now they mention the mother of the friend at school who's in the hospital or they'll talk about something. Now you're getting to the emotional side. And that's so important because these questions don't come in a vacuum. They're not just intellectual conundrums. They're often attached to emotional issues.

A child may feel isolated for some reason and they want to know, "Why does God seem so hidden?" "Oh, that's a great question, but why would you ask that one?" and they say, "Well, because I kind of feel alone. I feel like I wish he would talk back to me. I wish he would hold my hand sometimes." So we've got to ask these follow-up questions to get to the point where we're really connecting at where the issue is. Great insight.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And our guest today is Lee Strobel, and we're covering some of the content in his excellent book, "Is God Real for Teens? Exploring Faith in a World of Wonder." And we'd encourage you to get a copy of that book from us here. Stop by our website, that's focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: You know, Lee, as that young atheist, you got an assignment as a journalist to write about destitute families. How did that cause you... so you're in your 20s, I'm imagining. So you're, not that old. And here you are, you don't believe in God and you get this assignment to go write about destitute families. I would think your mentality would have been, "Okay, good assignment. We'll go check it out in Chicago, South Side of Chicago." What happened?

Lee Strobel: Several things happened to me at that point. I was new at the Chicago Tribune. I'm doing these articles. I meet the Delgado family, which is a family totally destitute. They had no possessions virtually. The grandmother was arthritic, she couldn't work. Two, an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old granddaughter she was raising. No mom in the scene, no dad in the scene, and they lived in a hovel. They had nothing, nothing. The only thing they had was one cup of rice and a rickety card table.

The girls had one dress between them, short sleeve, and only one sweater. And one would wear the sweater halfway to school while the sister shivered beside her and then take off the sweater and give it to her sister. They had nothing. I do an article about them. And then on Christmas Eve, I decided to visit them and see what was going on because the article came out on Thanksgiving Day.

So I go in and the Tribune readers had showered them with unbelievable gifts. I mean, their place was filled with everything. I mean, a Christmas tree and gifts under the tree, a refrigerator full of food, food all over, clothing in the closets, all this stuff. The exact response you were hoping for. Exactly.

But then I interrupted them. I said, "What are you doing?" They were packing up much of this newfound wealth to give it away. And I said, "What are you doing?" And she said, "Oh, well, this is wonderful. This is a gift from God, but we cannot have plenty while our neighbors have nothing. This is what Jesus would want us to do." And she said, "This is wonderful, but you know, this isn't the greatest gift of God. That's tomorrow. It's Christmas. It's Jesus."

Jim Daly: What caught you?

Lee Strobel: Here I am. I have everything I need. I've got an Ivy League education. I've got a good job at a major newspaper, and my soul was as barren as their hovel had been. And here are these people who had nothing and yet they never lost their faith. They still were positive and joyful even when they had nothing. And it just said, "What have they got that I don't have?" And I realized it's that Christmas gift, it's Jesus.

Jim Daly: That was a chink in your atheist armor, right?

Lee Strobel: It was. I remembered them for years. It didn't cause me to come to faith, but it was like a seed that God had planted at that time. The other seed was I went to the Salvation Army emergency shelter in Chicago to find destitute families. And I observed the Christians there who were serving these people who were homeless. And they were helping them get jobs, they were getting them sober, they were getting them off drugs, they were taking care and loving their children, they were helping them get an education. They were serving selflessly these homeless people who nobody in Chicago cared about.

And I remember going in after I finished my research for the article and talking to the woman that ran the facility.

Jim Daly: And she said, "By the way, I know you're an atheist. You had told me that. Who do you think Jesus is?"

Lee Strobel: And I had seen Jesus in the volunteers who had served the homeless there and had loved them sacrificially and helped them when nobody else cared. And that was another big step to see the way that Christians reached out in love to people everybody else ignored.

Jim Daly: Lee, this is a tough question, but it's an important one, I think, for us as parents. You're exactly right. The thing your teen will see the most and believe the most is what they see in you as a parent. I've tried to be very intentional with Trent and Troy to say, "Boys, I am not perfect. I will make mistakes." I wanted that groundwork laid so that I didn't become their stumbling block in their faith journey to say, "I am just your dad. But there's a father much bigger than me who loves you more than I do. I can't believe that, but it's true. He cares about you and loves you more than I do. And I love you a lot. And yet I'm going to make mistakes. I might get angry. And you're going to observe these things and that's not the attitude of Christ."

Lee Strobel: Exactly that kind of honesty with children is huge because it says to them, none of us is perfect. And by the way, that's why we need forgiveness through Jesus. And so forth. So it just sets the stage to say, "Hey, we're in this together. And you're not going to be perfect either, kids."

Jim Daly: Correct. That's the other half. I'm okay because Jesus, that's the price he paid. This begins to lay the entire bedrock of their faith. But it is important that they're watching you as a more mature believer. How do you treat your neighbors? What do you do to treat your neighbor well, to love your neighbor?

Lee Strobel: And you know, those times when we lose it, and we do from time to time, and they see us lose it, what's important is for them to see us later praying and repenting and saying, "Lord, I'm sorry. I should not have reacted that way to that situation. Help me in the future to be more like you as I interact with other people." And they see that and that's helpful to them.

Jim Daly: And those are, you know, those are things sometimes we're moving so fast. It's not that you have a hard heart as a parent. You just didn't think about it. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm just telling you, put that idea in your head. If you need to apologize to your kids, apologize to them. I remember the first time I did that with Trent and he looked at me and said, with a big smile on his face, he goes, "I didn't know parents had to apologize." I said, "Oh buddy, we've got to apologize a lot because you do this one time, right? We don't get to do parenting again. We've got one shot at it and we're not experts."

But that's a good thing to remember. You mentioned the book, I believe a philosopher, Chad Meister, in a conversation you had with him. What was the evidence of that or the fruit?

Lee Strobel: I have a chapter in the book. Chad is a brilliant philosopher and professor of philosophy at a major school. He created what he calls the Apologetics Pyramid, which is to say let's start at a basic—picture a pyramid. Let's start at the broadest issue, which is what is truth? We've got to start somewhere. Let's start with, what is truth? That's what Pilate asked, "What is truth?" Well, truth is that which corresponds to reality.

And if we accept that definition, which I think makes sense, then we can go on to the next step. And so each step of the pyramid is kind of crystallizing and looking at different worldviews and so forth until you get to the peak, which is the Gospel of Jesus. And I think it's a fun chapter that you can work through with your kid and say, "What is truth? Let's talk about that. What do you think truth is?" "Oh, gosh, I never thought about that."

Jim Daly: So here we get, as you complete that book, you say, "Wait a minute. I've got all these arrows that point in a direction of Christianity being true. And if it is true, then when Jesus says, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me,' we can believe him."

Lee Strobel: And then I deal with the two toughest questions: if God is real, why does he allow suffering? And here's the new one that young people are asking more and more. This is really emerging as a dominant objection raised by young people: why does God seem so hidden? They want to know why doesn't God make himself more obvious? Why doesn't he just appear and say, "Boom, here I am, it's true," and shake our hands and hold our hand when we're sick or whatever and just make himself obvious? Why doesn't he do that?

And so I have a chapter that deals with that issue to help analyze through the idea of faith. Faith, exactly. And you look at the Israelites. The times that God did make himself so readily obvious, like during the parting of the Red Sea for instance, did that lead to more godliness from the Israelites? No, they fell into apostasy again. So who's to say if God made himself more real today, we wouldn't fall back into apostasy too?

Jim Daly: Lee, this is just full of good stuff and the excitement. You can tell when we get together, we just share an evangelistic heart. And I mean, wham, we just get out there. So it's wonderful. And I can't imagine a parent of a 12, 13, 14-year-old that wouldn't want, and I'm telling you, even 20-somethings, to get a copy of your book, "Is God Real for Teens? Exploring Faith in a World of Wonder." It's a great roadmap for the parents to better understand the issues and how to address them. So thank you for the hard work of putting it together.

Lee Strobel: I had so much fun. There is an adult version called "Is God Real?" so for adults. But gosh, I want to reach out to the... I know you love young people and Focus on the Family is all about the family and how do we create an energetic and alive and deep and robust faith in our children. So I wanted to write it for them from their perspective.

Jim Daly: It's so good. And let's make it easy just if you can make a gift of any amount, we'll send it to you as our way of thanking you for being part of the ministry. If you're a grandparent listening and you're saying, "Boy, my adult children need this," let's get them a copy. Just let us know and we'll get it to them. And that way we're accomplishing ministry together.

John Fuller: Contact us today. Donate as you can and request this terrific book from Lee, "Is God Real for Teens?" It's a terrific resource and we've got it right here at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

John Fuller: And next time, British evangelist J. John and his wife Killy shed new light on what it means to love your spouse.

Guest (Male): And I remember Killy going, "Well, should I tell you what my life was like while you were away? I had three screaming children in the car driving to church, and I was shouting at them in the car: stop doing that, stop hitting each other! And then getting three children out and saying: hello, God bless you, God bless you." And she says, "That's my world."

John Fuller: That's next time on Focus on the Family. And remember, when you get in touch, let us know how you're listening, on our website, through our mobile app, or on our podcast feed. I'm John Fuller and on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, join us next time as we help you and your family thrive in Christ.

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