Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts: Revised and Updated

Steven Estes, Steve Estes, Joni Eareckson Tada

When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty

A must-read for anyone who has ever asked God, "Why me?"It's easy to trust God when things are going our way and the world makes sense. But when suffering strikes--especially seemingly senseless suffering--we are filled with doubt and stunned by events spiraling beyond our control.In the midst of suffering, we often question the very foundation of our faith--our belief in the God who says he loves us. Since our trust and obedience rest on God's character, the questions that life's tragedies force us to face are difficult, even frightening: Who is God?Can he really be trusted?What are his purposes in the face of suffering?If he can stop suffering, why doesn't he?Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman who has lived in a wheelchair for more than thirty years, and Steve Estes, a pastor and one of Joni's closest friends, explore the answers. When God Weeps is not so much a book about suffering as it is about God. It tackles tough questions about heaven and hell, horrors and hardships, and why God allows suffering in this life.Through a panoramic overview of what the Bible says about suffering, the authors make clear who God is, why he permits so much heartache and pain, and how it is we can trust ...

Lee Strobel

The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity

@lt;DIV@gt;Was God telling the truth when he said, 'You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart'? In his #1 bestseller The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel examined the claims of Christ, reaching the hard-won verdict that Jesus is God's unique son. In The Case for Faith, Strobel turns his skills to the most persistent emotional objections to belief---the eight 'heart barriers' to faith. This Gold Medallion-winning book is for those who may be feeling attracted to Jesus but who are faced with difficult questions standing squarely in their path. For Christians, it will deepen their convictions and give them fresh confidence in discussing Christianity with even their most skeptical friends. 'Everyone---seekers, doubters, fervent believers---benefits when Lee Strobel hits the road in search of answers, as he does again in The Case for Faith. In the course of his probing interviews, some of the toughest intellectual obstacles to faith fall away.' ---Luis Palau 'Lee Strobel has given believers and skeptics alike a gift in this book. He does not avoid seeking the most difficult questions imaginable, and refuses to provide simplistic answers that do more harm than good.' ...

Slavoj Zizek, Slavoj A1/2ia3/4ek

The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity

One of our most daring intellectuals offers a Lacanian interpretation of religion, finding that early Christianity was the first revolutionary collective. Slavoj Zizek has been called "an academic rock star" and "the wild man of theory"; his writing mixes astonishing erudition and references to pop culture in order to dissect current intellectual pieties. In The Puppet and the Dwarf he offers a close reading of today's religious constellation from the viewpoint of Lacanian psychoanalysis. He critically confronts both predominant versions of today's spirituality--New Age gnosticism and deconstructionist-Levinasian Judaism--and then tries to redeem the "materialist" kernel of Christianity. His reading of Christianity is explicitly political, discerning in the Pauline community of believers the first version of a revolutionary collective. Since today even advocates of Enlightenment like Jurgen Habermas acknowledge that a religious vision is needed to ground our ethical and political stance in a "postsecular" age, this book--with a stance that is clearly materialist and at the same time indebted to the core of the Christian legacy--is certain to stir controversy.