How movie helped ex-Arlington Heights journalist Strobel find peace with dad

This might not seem like a Christmas story.

But it is.

The peace and goodwill part takes place on a movie set for "The Case For Christ," based on Lee Strobel's autobiographical story of an atheist's transformation into a believer.

Strobel, who grew up in Arlington Heights, and his wife, Leslie, came to the movie set in Covington, Georgia, to witness his story being filmed.

They watched Michael Provost, playing Strobel as a troubled teenager, square off with Robert Forster, playing Strobel's father, Walter, during an explosive encounter that took place on the eve of Strobel's 1970 graduation from Prospect High School.

His father offered no words of praise, no expressions of pride. Instead, he flatly told his son, "I don't have enough love for you to fill my little finger."

The Strobels watched this emotionally charged scene re-enacted for the cameras. Forster delivered those terrible, stinging words.

Director Jon Gunn called, "Cut!"

Strobel recounted what happened next.

"Forster walks over to me - we had never met - and he stays in character as my father. He comes up to me as my dad, he reaches out and he puts his hand on my shoulder. He looks me in the eye and he says, 'I'm sorry.'"

For a moment, Forster became Walter Strobel, expressing regret over their broken relationship.

"It really blew me away," Strobel said. "Leslie started to cry."

'Pursued pleasure'

Living a religious life never figured into Strobel's plan.

After graduating from Prospect High School, he went on to earn a journalism degree from the University of Missouri, and a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School.

He became the legal affairs editor for the Chicago Tribune and the metro editor for the Daily Herald.

All his life, Strobel had been an avowed atheist.

"The mere concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving creator was absurd on the surface of it," Strobel said.

He'd met Leslie when they were 14, and they married after his sophomore year in college. She'd grown up in Palatine as part of the Presbyterian church but eventually became an agnostic.

Strobel thought he and Leslie had "a pretty good marriage," though he admits he drank heavily even as the father of two young children.

He reasoned that if God, heaven and hell didn't exist, hedonism was the logical way to live.

"I just pursued pleasure," he admitted. "I lived a very immoral, very drunken, profane and narcissistic life."

Then they moved into an Arlington Heights condominium, where a neighbor named Linda began inviting Leslie to her church. Again. And again. And again.

"I finally told Lee I needed to get Linda off my back, I had to go to church and get it over with," Leslie said.

Linda took Leslie to Willow Creek Church, then meeting at a Palatine movie theater. The evangelical gathering made an impression.

"That experience with drama and contemporary music, when you were used to organ music, was so vastly different from anything I had experienced," Leslie said. "It really marked me and made me want to go back."

Strobel remembered the first word that popped into his head when Leslie praised her church experience: divorce.

"I didn't want to be married to a Christian," he said. "I didn't sign up for this."

Then Strobel opted to do something more daring. He would rescue his wife from Christianity.

"I thought, I'll go with her to church and get her out of this cult!"

On a Sunday morning, recovering from a hangover, Strobel agreed to go to church with Leslie.

The sermon that day, "Basic Christianity," inspired him to begin a two-year mission to investigate the facts of this religion, to employ his journalistic skills to debunk it.

"It came to the point where I used a yellow legal pad to write down the pros and cons of the religion," Strobel said.

And?

"I became personally convinced that based on the historical evidence of the Resurrection, that this is actually true."

'I'm sorry'

In 1987, Strobel left journalism and took a 60 percent pay cut to become a teaching pastor at South Barrington's Willow Creek Community Church.

Strobel's dramatic conversion to Christianity paved the way for his new career as a teacher, inspirational speaker, host of the PAX TV show "Faith Under Fire," and author of many Christian-themed books, including "The Case For Christ." He now lives in Texas, north of Houston.

On April 7, the movie version of Strobel's quest will open in theaters.

Brian Bird, screenwriter for "The Case For Christ," befriended Strobel years ago when Strobel was on staff at Southern California's Saddleback Church.

"I had heard about their personal story," Bird said of Lee and Leslie. "He had a happy marriage with his wife, in his mind. He didn't want to lose her. By debunking Christianity, he could save her from herself. To me, when I heard that, I knew there was a movie there."

And that movie will feature the re-enactment of that 1970 blowout between a rebellious teen and his cold father, a confrontation that left Strobel emotionally wounded.

In 1979, Strobel made peace with his father at his funeral service. Strobel asked for the parlor to be cleared. He then stood at his dad's open casket.

"Finally, after a long period of silence," Strobel recounted to the Christian site faithgateway.com, "I managed to whisper the words I desperately wished I had spoken so many years earlier: I'm sorry, Dad.

"Sorry for the ways I had rebelled against him, lied to him, and disrespected him over the years. Sorry for my ingratitude. Sorry for the bitterness and rancor I had allowed to poison my heart."

Walter Strobel could not reciprocate that peace.

Yet, an actor did it for him more than 35 years later, on a movie set in Georgia.

Robert Forster's impromptu gesture of peace and goodwill gave a forgiving voice to Walter Strobel with two simple words, "I'm sorry."

"It was mind-blowing," Leslie said. "When we were on the set watching that fight happen, it was really heartbreaking."

"That moment I will always remember," Walter Strobel's son said.

See? This is a Christmas story after all.

Citizen Strobel?

Long before Arlington Heights native Lee Strobel worked at the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Herald, he edited and published his own newspaper, the Arlington Bulletin, at the age of 13.

His four-page publication, circulated to 73 Stonegate subdivision customers, covered state politics, bicycle news, weekly police reports and local sports features.

One issue contained a pithy observation about an upcoming national election: “The way candidates are criticizing each other, whoever wins, the country will be in trouble.”