Director: Jon Gunn
Starring: Mike Vogel, Erika Kristensen, Faye Dunaway, Robert Forster, Frankie Faison
“It’s been an incredible journey, not only to go from atheism to faith, but to see the raw reality of our lives played out on film. ” (Lee Strobel)
This movie is based on the best-selling autobiography of the same title by Lee Strobel, an award-winning American journalist and a hard-boiled atheist. Told in a gripping manner, it combines elements of detective investigation, documentary and drama of relationships. Strobel is a self -centred, arrogant and aggressive atheist. So is his wife Leslie. But things turn upside down for him when Leslie confesses that she has become a Christian. Her conversion was the consequence of their daughter Alison’s miraculous escape from death due to choking when a nurse, named Alfie, came to the rescue at the restaurant where the family was dining. When Leslie visited the nurse to thank her, she was intrigued by what the nurse said about the episode. Alfie tells Leslie that Jesus had asked her to go to the restaurant at the time of the accident. Alfie’s faith becomes the door-opener for Leslie.
But Strobel cannot stomach the idea. He had not bargained for this. The conversion creates tensions in the family and open quarrels. Finally, Strobel decides to use his own investigative method to convince his wife that Christianity is a hoax. He goes on a two-year quest, interviewing a whole spectrum of people—believers, sceptics and fellow atheists. An agnostic psychologist tells him that if five hundred people had seen the resurrected Christ (I Corinthians 15:6) as the Bible says, then it is not a hallucination and is a greater miracle than the Resurrection itself. He is also told about the “father wound” experienced by prominent atheists like Sigmund Freud, which is what turned them away from God. Strobel’s case is similar.
His meeting with a forensics expert dispels the ‘swoon theory’ regarding the Death of Christ. His meeting with an archaeologist, Fr Jose Maria, focuses on the Shroud of Turin, Christianity’s most famous relic. The archaeologist believes it is the burial cloth of Jesus and the investigation moves forward in this line. In the end, Strobel ends up with compelling evidence for the Resurrection and the historicity of Christ. He surrenders to that truth and joins his wife. More than his conviction about the Resurrection, he is overcome by his wife’s long-suffering patience, prayer and deep love.
The movie is entertaining, informative, intellectually satisfying and emotionally charged. It addresses the contemporary world where faith must satisfy the demands of a world that wants fact and reason for conviction. It treats atheism with great human sympathy and understanding.
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