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If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’ve seen me repeatedly recommend the book Cold-Case Christianity by detective J. Warner Wallace. It’s my go-to book to help people start learning the case for Christianity. I love how he uniquely and compellingly uses a detective’s skill set to investigate the claims of the Gospels.

Today I’m excited to tell you that Det. Wallace has a new book coming out August 1st that will now powerfully help readers learn the case for God.

Det. Wallace’s new book is called God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe, and I had the opportunity to read a pre-release copy.

Christian parents, you need this book.

God’s Crime Scene brilliantly lays out the case for God’s existence based on cumulative evidence from the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe, the origin of life, the design of life, our experience of consciousness, free will, and morality. In each chapter, Det. Wallace evaluates possible explanations for these pieces of evidence, just as a detective would evaluate possible explanations for evidence found at a crime scene. In the process, he points readers to “expert witnesses” who vary in their conclusions about the evidence and then provides an excellent reading list at the end of the book so the reader can continue to study both sides of the issue. One of the things I loved most about the book is that each chapter adds to an emerging “suspect” profile that characterizes the nature of who or what must be responsible for the evidence presented. Det. Wallace also includes 70-plus pages of a more in-depth “secondary investigation” at the end with a chapter-by-chapter dive into greater detail for those wanting to know more.

If you want to learn the evidence for God’s existence (which every parent should), I can’t think of a better place to start. And here’s an exciting opportunity: Starting August 17, I’ll be leading a read-along in the Facebook group “Apologetics for Parents.” We’re simply reading a chapter per week together and discussing the material. So grab your copy of the book, request to join the Facebook group, and read chapter 1 by August 17.

I had the honor of interviewing Det. Wallace about God’s Crime Scene this week and I’m thrilled to share what he had to say. 

 

I love God’s Crime Scene because it’s engaging, it’s appropriate for “beginners” while digging much deeper than most entry-level books on the same subject, it’s highly memorable given your unique detective’s approach and illustrations, and it points readers to the resources they need next. Because of those characteristics, it’s not only a great book for parents, it’s also a great book for parents to read with their (older) kids—no experience necessary! What tips do you have for a parent who might want to study God’s Crime Scene with their teens?

I became a Christian while in the middle of a career as a homicide detective, and I soon realized my professional experience provided me with a unique opportunity to help people examine the evidence for Christianity and theism (the belief in God). Let’s face it, everyone watches detective shows. If I told you we could look at the evidence for God and Jesus while simultaneously mastering some of the tools detectives use to investigate murders, do you think you (or your kids) might be interested? That’s the goal of Cold-Case Christianity and God’s Crime Scene. Let me explain the approach in the latest book.Continue reading

I was tempted to not write anything at all about the same-sex marriage ruling.

So much has been written on this in the last week that I don’t see how one more person’s take could possibly be valuable.

And, valuable or not, no matter what I say, I won’t be fired up enough for some people and I’ll be too fired up for others.

But then I started getting messages from people asking how parents should respond; what they should tell their kids; what it means for the future. I realized that to not comment would be sheepish avoidance of a topic that’s important right now to so many readers of this blog.

So, for those who would like to know what I think the same-sex marriage ruling means for Christian parents, I humbly offer these thoughts.Continue reading

The other day, I saw a post on Facebook from a mom who was concerned because her teenage daughter was turning away from God after learning about evolution. The mom was considering pulling her out of public school because she wasn’t sure what to do about it.

It breaks my heart when I see parents who feel unequipped to dialogue with their kids about evolution and age of the Earth issues. These questions are so crucial for parents to be able to discuss with their kids that I devoted 8 of the 40 questions in my book to explaining the scriptural and scientific considerations at stake.

Today I want to bring to light four key points I think Christian parents need to make sure their kids understand about evolution, but are often left unaddressed. This post could easily have been 101 things kids need to understand about evolution, but that would be another book! This is far from comprehensive, but I hope it will get the conversation going.Continue reading

By now, you’ve probably seen the headlines from the most recent Pew Forum study on religion in America: The number of Christians continues to decline sharply, while the number of those who are “unaffiliated” with a religion continues to grow by leaps and bounds. The “unaffiliated” group includes atheists, agnostics, and people saying they believe “nothing in particular.”

I’ve talked a lot about atheism on this blog, and I absolutely believe it’s the number one threat to our kids’ faith today. But it’s also important to understand that the group growing fastest is those who believe “nothing in particular.” Most of these people believe in some kind of God, many consider themselves “spiritual,” and some pray regularly…but they don’t identify with a specific religion.

While your kids may get pulled into atheism by its vocal proponents, they may inadvertently fall into “nothing in particular” if they aren’t raised with a faith that gives them reason to believe something specific.

Here are 6 signs your kids will eventually believe “nothing in particular.”

 

1. You talk about God 50 times more often than you talk about Jesus.

OK, I can’t quantify that exactly, but the point is that faith can start sounding very generic to your kids if you almost always talk about God and rarely talk about Jesus—for example, why Jesus lived on Earth, what He taught while here, who He claimed to be, who others said He was, why He had to die, and what He accomplished on the cross.

The possible result: Your kids won’t see the need for faith in Jesus—Christianity—specifically. Subsequently, any view that embraces some notion of God starts sounding roughly equivalent. That can eventually turn into a distaste for religious “labels” and a rejection of Christianity’s exclusive truth claims. Your kids might hold on to a generic view of God, but for all intents and purposes, they’ll end up believing “nothing in particular.”Continue reading

Lately, my two daughters (ages 6 and 4) have been arguing incessantly every morning. It’s the first thing I hear every day, echoing from down the hall:

“Stop staring at me!”

“Then leave my room!”

“You’re so mean!”

“No, you’re the meanest in the world!”

The other morning, my older daughter ran into my room, crying, “Mommy! Sister pushed me to the ground! I got hurt!”

In utter fatigue and frustration, I just looked at her blankly and replied, “I just don’t care anymore. I don’t know what to tell you.”

She burst into tears. “It’s NOT FAIR! Why don’t you care she did something bad?”

I shrugged and said, “I should. I’m just too tired of all this fighting to do anything anymore.”

I ushered my wailing daughter out of the room and finished getting ready, feeling like a total failure.

Little did I know my failure would serve as a great lesson about God’s love and justice only a few hours later.

 

Explaining God’s Love and Justice to Kids

That evening, when I was tucking my daughter into bed, she said, “I don’t totally understand who goes to heaven and hell.”

We had talked about this topic on many occasions before, but of course it’s something hard for kids to understand. At that moment, God placed it on my heart to use the example from the morning to explain the concepts in a more tangible way. I saw the lights really go on in her eyes through our conversation, so I want to share it with you today in dialogue form. I hope it will help you have this discussion with your own kids (you can use your own similar failure, or set one up as a lesson!).Continue reading

I recently asked on my blog’s Facebook page what parents thought the hardest part of Christian parenting is. A lot of people responded, and there was a clear theme: setting a good example.

Over and over again, parents were concerned about their ability to really live out their faith. While no one said too much more about what that meant, I’m going to read between the lines to guess that it means things like:

• Being more patient and loving—more Christ-like in general
• Serving others
• Going to church regularly
• Reading the Bible and praying consistently

All of these things are absolutely important. If our lives contradict our faith, we are hypocrites and give our kids little reason to think that we really believe what we say we believe.

And, yes, that’s often hard to do (I’m particularly guilty of yelling. I even have a name for it with my kids: my “mommy monster” moments).

But there’s a significant problem with focusing so much on our actions:

Our actions can never fully speak to our beliefs.

And, for Christians, those beliefs are of primary importance. If we focus predominantly on the role of our actions in our kids’ faith development, we can inadvertently leave them with two major faith disconnects.Continue reading

Today I want to shed light on a nasty little “fact” that regularly makes the rounds online:

Studies show that Christians are less intelligent than atheists.

This statement is proudly tossed about by atheists who want to reinforce their claims that religion is for the poor, ignorant, and unintelligent.

And you know what? The statement is true…a number of studies have found a negative relationship between intelligence and religiousness (the more intelligent a person is, the less likely they are to be religious).

Does that mean people can legitimately say, based on these studies, that Christians are less intelligent than atheists? Absolutely not. 

I have an MBA in marketing and statistics and have taught university-level market research, so I’m a professional numbers geek…a numbers geek who dug into all these research studies to find out what they REALLY say. Today I want to set the record straight.

Before we get too far, however, I have to point out what is hopefully obvious: Even if we could reliably measure which group is smarter, the answer wouldn’t tell us anything about the truth of Christianity; intelligence doesn’t equate to always having the right answer.

Theoretically, we could end all conversations on this topic by pointing that out. But if your child asks you one day why Christians aren’t as smart as atheists, do you really just want to reply, “Well, that doesn’t mean Christianity isn’t true”? We owe it to our kids to be able to address the claim itself.

So here we go. Please bookmark this page as a resource that you can link to next time you see someone claim that Christians are less intelligent than atheists!Continue reading