The first time I read this book was nearly twenty years ago. As a Christian student in a Christian university, I definitely believed the claims of Jesus to be God’s Son, resurrected and alive. But then again, I had never doubted those claims. My parents were Christians, as were their parents before them. My dad was a pastor. I had heard on the Truth from the Bible since childhood, and there was never any room (or opportunity) for doubt.

But then in college I met students from backgrounds like mine who—when suddenly “unsheltered”—began challenging the faith of their parents. Even within the walls of that ultra-conservative place, some of my friends started sowing their wild oats. It wasn’t until I noticed that most never reaped what they sowed that I started to question certain aspects of my own parents’ faith. Specifically, I began to doubt the chastisement of God so often emphasized in conservative circles. Punishment for unbelievers is Hell, and punishment for believers was taken by Jesus on the cross, so why should I ever expect to reap what I sow? This line of thinking made me wonder as an eighteen-year-old, if this discipline-for-sin wasn’t really as my teachers had described it, then what else about my faith might they have been wrong about? Such apparent paradoxes got me onto a path of discovery, seeking out my own answers from the Word, not simply accepting the spoon-fed opinions of others.

I came across Josh McDowell’s More Than a Carpenter at about this time. While this book doesn’t deal with those initial doubts of mine, it helped support the foundation of my faith from a perspective far stronger than I had known growing up. Instead of, “Believe it cuz it’s true” or “Believe it because I said so,” McDowell follows a different tack, that of historical investigation.

I was relieved to discover from this book that my faith isn’t merely a family tradition passed down from one generation to the next, but is instead an historically verifiable reality than has yet to be disproved, despite two thousand years of bloody or at least vitriolic antagonism. McDowell’s short-and-sweet book quotes the findings of a vast array of commentators and historians who have studied the historicity of Jesus Christ and his claims of resurrection. Specifically, McDowell helps the skeptic understand that “the Christian faith is not a blind, ignorant belief but rather an intelligent faith.” (39) He later expands this conclusion:

A believer in Jesus Christ today can have complete confidence, as did the first Christians, that his faith is based, not on myth or legend, but on the solid historical fact of the risen Christ and the empty tomb. Most important of all, the individual believer can experience the power of the risen Christ in his life today. First of all, he can know that his sins are forgiven. Second, he can be assured of eternal life and his own resurrection from the grave. Third, he can be released from a meaningless and empty life and be transformed into a new creature in Jesus Christ. (98)

While over the years I’ve studied the Bible in greater depth and have come to different conclusions than my parents’ about a number of minor details, I praise God that I have never strayed from the Truth. All my studies—from a wide range or authors, including non-believers and writers of other faiths and denominations—have only helped to bolster my faith in Jesus Christ and the God of the Bible. And my parents’ faith remains as solid as ever, their character always remaining the most power testimony to back up their beliefs.

Now as a father and Bible teacher myself, I realize what kind of impact I want to have on my own children and students. I never want to push them towards something simply because it’s what I believe. I want them to “use their brains”, as Dr. Benjamin Carson is fond of saying, and to study the Bible with as much confidence in their own reason as in their faith. Too many Christians (and skeptics) think that “faith” is the opposite of reason, but this is so dangerously untrue! Francis Schaeffer spent his life encouraging people to forget the nonsense of “blind faith” and pursue Truth with their brains fully engaged, and this is precisely what McDowell also advocates in this short book, making it a must-read and—to quote someone, I’m sure—an even muster re-read.

©2018 E.T.