Book Review: The Case for Miracles

When my oldest son moved to Houston, I wanted to send him a welcome-to-your-new-home card and enclose a restaurant gift card. While scanning a map of his new neighborhood, I also looked at nearby churches. I discovered an interesting place called The Story Church, ministering to unchurched populations. How cool, to learn from their website, that shortly after Bryce's arrival in Houston, they would host an interview with atheist-turned-Christian journalist Lee Strobel. Although Bryce didn't go, I watched the entire (1-1/2 hour) interview. The first half focused on his journey from skepticism to belief. The second half delved into his research for his most recent Case book, The Case for Miracles: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Supernatural.

At one point in the interview, the pastor asks Strobel to share one of the most compelling miracle stories he encountered. If you click on the link to the interview and go to the 48 minute mark, you can watch/listen to an eight-minute segment airing evidence for a stunning miracle in the life of a Houston pastor (well-worth the time investment - indeed, I appreciated the whole interview). I listed the mentioned books I intended to seek: Strobel's own The Case for Miracles, Douglas Groothuis' Walking Through Twilight (a book about a philosopher's experience with his demented wife - a book I simultaneously dread and anticipate), and Tricia Lott Williford's And Life Comes Back. How thrilling, in this pandemic season, to find all three titles available in e-book form through a local library!

I didn't need Strobel's book to convince me that God still intervenes in our world through the use of miracles. When I was three, I had a near-death experience of double pneumonia. The very moment my father changed his prayer from a prayer for healing to a prayer relinquishing me into God's hands, I sat up and asked the doctors what they were doing. On another occasion, as a teenager missing the horn I left behind after they moved my parents to South Dakota, I marveled when my father followed God's direction to purchase a horn for the corps, despite a lack of funds. A week later, a letter arrived with close to the exact amount from a donor who wanted the money used for an instrument for the Salvation Army band in our corps. I fully believe God intervenes in our natural world. Oh, for faith to trust Him even more!

Lee Strobel takes the same method as in his other Case series books. He interviews various scholars and lays groundwork for the reader to decide what conclusion the evidence supports. Indeed, the results of the Barna survey that Strobel commissioned emphasize that more Americans believe than disbelieve in miracles. In fact, two in five claim to have experienced one personally, a mind-boggling number!

Yet, while Americans say they believe in the miraculous, do they really? A conversation Strobel had with a theology professor who observed the response of African and Asian students to American Christianity especially struck me. These students timidly admit they are perplexed by the lack of power in evangelical Christianity. They come from countries where spiritual warfare is a common experience, and it is hard to accept how educated Christians in American discount the miraculous and doubt the supernatural.

Whether you pick this book up to read of astonishing stories of miracles (like the opening one taken from the life of Dr. Ben Carson or the one shared in the interview link), or to digest the arguments outlined for and against, Strobel presents the evidence and leaves the verdict to the reader. Perhaps you're like me and have personal experience with supernatural events. Or maybe you wrestle with unanswered prayers - a hard topic for many. I agree with Strobel's conclusion because conversion itself is as miraculous as it gets. God is in the business of taking skeptics and turning them into believers. He steps into this fallen world and redeems what is broken. That is miracle enough for me!