"The only way to truth is through facts," says Chicago Tribune legal affairs reporter Lee Strobel. "Facts are our greatest weapon against superstition, against ignorance and against tyranny."
Facts—solid, substantial, incontrovertible—are the only currency the rising young reporter trades in. "We are atheists," he tells his young daughter, Alison, before bed one night. "We believe in what's real, what we can see and touch."
Lee and his young wife, Leslie, once shared the same skeptical perspective on facts and superstition. But when Alison nearly chokes to death and is saved by a conscientious Christian nurse at a restaurant one night, it rocks Leslie's belief system to the core. Alfie, the nurse, tells the couple that she had a sense that she needed to have dinner at that restaurant that night. It wasn't luck or coincidence she was there, but Jesus' plan so that Alison might be spared.
Lee laughs it off. But Leslie tracks down Alfie and begins going to church with her. Soon she tells her hard-charging, just-the-facts-ma'am husband, "I felt something. … I talked to Jesus. I told him that I want him in my life."
Lee responds to Leslie's new faith with a toxic mixture of contempt, anger and alcohol. Then he decides that the only way to "save" his wife from drifting further into what he considers a cult-like faith is to prove to her, once and for all, that Christianity cannot possibly be supported by the facts.
One of Lee's mentors, fellow reporter and atheist Ray Nelson, is confident Lee's efforts will yield the result he wants. "You present her with the facts," Ray says, "and I'm sure she will find her way back to the truth."
And so the award-winning investigative journalist launches into a passionate—and secret—crusade to disprove his wife's nascent faith by proving, he hopes, that the resurrection of Jesus Christ never happened.
But the facts that Lee Strobel uncovers lead him toward an outcome altogether different than the one he expected to reach.
Here is Focus on the Family's "Plugged In" Review of the movie.
And, here is the link to the Focus on the Family's web site "Plugged In" Review of the movie: http://www.pluggedin.com/movie-reviews/case-for-christ
