book review   

 “The Case for Faith – Student Edition”
By Lee Strobel
Book Review by Ashley Song

I am 13, and at my age many questions have run through my head; thoughts, and even doubts about God, and who He really is. “The Case for Faith” actually answered a lot of my questions, explaining the questions and expanding on the answers.

One of the main questions I thought about daily was “If God exists how can He allow pain in the world?” How could God allow things like the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields to happen? How about 9/11 and the twin towers in New York City, could He not have prevented that? So much pain happens in the world, that if He is the “Almighty God” He should be able to stop these things. So why then, does He NOT stop it? I had no idea why someone who supposedly loved us didn’t stop the pain we felt.

The book’s explanation was this: “God didn’t make evil. Once He gave people a choice it was up to them whether there was evil or not.”

The moment I read that answer, another question entered my mind. WHY did He give us a choice? Why didn’t He just make this a happy world? At this point, I was not only confused, but a little bit angry. How could He ALLOW such evil to go on in the world? Regardless of the fact that it was human’s choice to be evil, He could have prevented so much hate and anger, saving all the bloodshed and pain by just making this world a better place.

As if it were replying to me the book’s answer was this: “If pushing a button on one of those Barbie dolls makes them say “ I love you” how meaningful is that? If you’re programmed to love, is it really love? Love, goodness, it all involves choice. That’s why God gave us a world with choice.”

While that answer slowly sunk in, I began to understand. Not fully, but slowly I began to understand why God had given us a choice.

God really does love us, and by giving us choice, all He wanted us to do was love Him too. Love Him because we wanted to, not because we had to. He made that big decision, knowing that there was a chance of great destruction and disasters, hoping that we’d love Him, like He loved us.

SO SO many of those sorts of questions were answered. This book helped me understand so much more about how I felt about God. A lot of my doubts and anger that was wrongly pointed towards him, faded. While reading it, it made me love God even more, allowing me to become closer with him, and I was SO happy about that.

This book helped me more then I could have imagined. It explained things in ways that kids my age could ACTUALLY relate to.

The point of this book review is this, it was an amazing book, and I truly loved it. J If you’re looking for something to get a teenager who doesn’t know where their heart is at, this book can help.

I can’t even begin to say how it helped me, with where MY heart was with God.