In our culture of personalization, where everything is customizable, Jesus is often reworked into what each individual wants Him to be. Jesus is aligned to a person's agendas and dreams, making it easier for him or her to agree with Him.

This book heals our wounding images of an angry and unfriendly God. It offers us a fresh appreciation of a faithful God who loves us regardless of our response, and who continuously forgive us, consoles us, and nurtures us as we struggle along in life. With a biblical approach, this author provides the basic foundation with which to convey God's fidelity. She then teaches us how to use prayerful images to replace the symbols of God that no longer work for us in a personal way.

Based on a debate between John Dominic Crossan, codirector of the Jesus Seminar, and evangelical William Lane Craig, with responses from experts in Jesus studies.

An enlightening follow-up to the bestselling book The Case for Christ, In Defense of Jesus follows award-winning journalist Lee Strobel as he explores the most explosive arguments against the identity of Christ as the Messiah. Has modern scholarship debunked the traditional Christ? Has the church suppressed the truth about Jesus to advance its own agenda? What if the real Jesus is far different from the atoning Savior worshiped through the centuries? In Defense of Jesus explores such hot-button questions as: Did the church suppress ancient non-biblical documents that paint a more accurate picture of Jesus than the four Gospels? Did the church distort the truth about Jesus by tampering with early New Testament texts? Do new insights and explanations disprove the resurrection? Have fresh arguments disqualified Jesus from being the Messiah? Did Christianity steal its core ideas from earlier mythology? Evaluate the arguments and evidence being advanced by prominent atheists, liberal theologians, Muslim scholars, and others. Sift through expert testimony. Then reach your own verdict with In Defense of Jesus. This title is also available in Spanish, En defense de Jesús.

We have come to admire Buddhism for being profound but accessible, as much a lifestyle as a religion. The credit for creating Buddhism goes to the Buddha, a figure widely respected across the Western world for his philosophical insight, his teachings of nonviolence, and his practice of meditation. But who was this Buddha, and how did he become the Buddha we know and love today? Leading historian of Buddhism Donald S. Lopez Jr. tells the story of how various idols carved in stone—variously named Beddou, Codam, Xaca, and Fo—became the man of flesh and blood that we know simply as the Buddha. He reveals that the positive view of the Buddha in Europe and America is rather recent, originating a little more than a hundred and fifty years ago. For centuries, the Buddha was condemned by Western writers as the most dangerous idol of the Orient. He was a demon, the murderer of his mother, a purveyor of idolatry. Lopez provides an engaging history of depictions of the Buddha from classical accounts and medieval stories to the testimonies of European travelers, diplomats, soldiers, and missionaries. He shows that centuries of hostility toward the Buddha changed dramatically in the nineteenth century, when the teachings of the Buddha, having disappeared from India by the fourteenth century, were read by European scholars newly proficient in Asian languages. At the same time, the traditional view of the Buddha persisted in Asia, where he was revered as much for his supernatural powers as for his philosophical insights. From Stone to Flesh follows the twists and turns of these Eastern and Western notions of the Buddha, leading finally to his triumph as the founder of a world religion.