A former reporter and atheist who set out to disprove the existence of God – and came to "quite a different conclusion" – said Monday it is "disconcerting" to see his tumultuous story portrayed in a new film.
The movie based on the book "The Case For Christ," which opens Friday, has had encouraging feedback at test previews, author Lee Strobel told Newsmax TV host Miranda Khan on Monday's "Newsmax Prime."
"A lot of faith-based films tend to be, if we're honest, a little cringeworthy, a little cheesy," he said. "And there's none of that in this movie. This is a movie that is so well done from a production standpoint, the acting, the script, that we really are convinced that Christians will go to it, they'll be encouraged . . . to come and see this story about a marriage, a love story, about a father-son story, and be drawn into the evidence."
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The movie stars include Mike Vogel, Erika Christensen, and Faye Dunaway.
Strobel said after his wife converted to Christianity, he was anxious what it would mean for his marriage and "decided to . . . use my journalism and legal training and investigate the resurrection of Jesus, because I figured if I could disprove that, then the whole thing collapses."
He said he came to "quite a different conclusion."
"The evidence of history, I think, points powerfully and persuasively toward the conclusion that the resurrection is an actual historical event," he said. "So, I became convinced that it's true. I ended up becoming a Christian, and our lives changed from there."
"It's a little disconcerting because it's my story, and it's not a pretty story at some points," he added. "A lot of our private arguments that we had about faith, they're very personal, they're now on the big screen.
"But we felt like there's a lot of people who are curious about faith and wonder whether there's any real evidence that God exists and that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and we thought, you know, if it can help people come to some resolution of that or begin their own investigation, then it's worth kind of putting ourselves out there that way."