All my life I have been a most reluctant Christian. Every lazy way of thinking came my way. Jesus was a great world teacher, but God? Well guess what he said about himself? If thats the case he was a lunatic or a charlatan. This week I have completed Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. I cam across it by accident. There had been a particularly silly and simplistic Times article, fairly typical, airily dismissing Christianity as a legend and a letterwriter to the paper had recommended this book. So would I.

Lee Strobel is an investigative crime reporter. He uses questioning techniques to ask questions that should be asked in schools. Everywhere you look the evidence is compelling that the Gospels are a very early accurate record of what happened. Archaeology and scholarship has only bolstened the case in recent years. This is not legend. Early lazy assumptions like Jesus conveniently faked his messianic outcomes are disproved one by one. Torture on the cross could have ensured that a Roman soldier speared him rather than break his legs. Why were the Apostles prepared to die for something they had faked, like removing the body, even if that was true? And the sheer weight of circumstantial and outside evidence. But be that as it may, reason only goes so far. Reason tells me that the creed is correct, but I still wrinkle with the nature of God. How can one intellect create billions of stars? Are there not hundreds of millions of intelligent life forms? Why should God care about or concentrate on first-century Palestine? But perhaps for me the next step is study of philosophy – if reason can play any part.

One thing is certain, reason is dear and when faith and acceptance reach it, it is transforming.