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What is the world’s best package to find in your mailbox?  BOOKS!  So when the other day I found a very book-like package waiting for me in my mailbox, of course I was excited.  But when I looked at the return address and saw that the books were from my very Southern-Baptist aunt and uncle from Alabama, my excitement quickly turned to trepidation.

My aunt & uncle, in front of their custom-made cross lawn ornament, complete with a verse from Joshua (read: Old Testament hero who commits genocide)

I haven’t heard from this aunt and uncle of mine in a number of years, so I was pretty curious to see what was inside the envelope.  Sure enough, there were 2 books: Heaven is for Real: A little boy’s astounding story of his trip to heaven and back and Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity.

Right off the bat I could see that these were books that I would not pull off a shelf.  I probably wouldn’t even read them if I was stuck in a waiting room for hours on end.

Heaven is For Real is about the near-death experience of a four-year-old boy who allegedly visits heaven and then comes back to tell his parents.  The tagline on the back of the book reads: “Heaven is for Real will forever change the way you think of eternity, offering the chance to see, and believe, like a child.”  [the communication instructor in me cringes at that comma splice, while the nonbeliever in me cringes at the glorification of willful ignorance]

On the inside cover of the book, my aunt wrote an inscription where she comments on how she believes my little girl (who is also four years old, like the book’s protagonist) has “a spiritual awareness” in addition to her being “precious and pure and innocent.”

While part of me wants to wants to only see the good will she has in sending me this book, there’s a larger gnawing part that’s upset in how she’s using my daughter as an impetus to bring me back to Jesus.  I can’t help but think she’s purposely drawing an analogue between this little boy who almost died and my very healthy little girl.

But the book that annoys me the most is the inclusion of Strobel’s The Case for Faith.  The inscription from my uncle just reads: “An intellectual case that is pretty hard to refute.”

Oh! Don’t even get me started on what I think about Strobel. I find him to be the fast-food version of most Christian apologists today. Strobel is known for his book The Case for Christ, where he originally sets out to disprove God, using his supposed investigative journalist skills, only to find Jesus in the end [here's a good rebuttal of his book].

Perhaps I’m a little spoiled after having coffee and discussion with one of the top Christian debaters/apologists, William Lane Craig.  While I’d like to think I’m open to reading and discussing Christian literature with my family, I would rather spend my reading time being challenged, and not patronized.

But beyond the poor quality of Strobel’s work/approach, I also resent his schtick of always identifying himself as a former atheist.  I suppose he thinks it gives him a certain cachet in the Christian world, but I find it cringeworthy.  He notoriously describes his prior “atheistic lifestyle” as one “without a moral framework, my personal life was out of control, the drinking, the carousing” — all descriptions that his evangelical audience eats up, and then summarily applies to how they envision the life of an atheist.

I’m not sure how I should respond to these books, or if there’s even a need to.  I’ve always had an open-door policy with my very religious family, where I want them to talk to me about my atheism.  But somehow this “care package” doesn’t feel like an invitation for thoughtful discussion.  Receiving these books in the mail just reminds me of how little my family knows about who I am.