Summary: God's Not Dead

The GIST

God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty is pastor and campus evangelist Rice Broocks's compact case for the reasonableness of Christian belief. Thomas Nelson published it in 2013. Broocks has spent decades talking with university students around the world, the kind of audience that brings sharp questions and expects real answers. Here he gathers the arguments he has found most persuasive into one readable volume. He covers cosmology, biology, morality, human uniqueness, the historical Jesus and the reliability of the Bible, then closes with stories of former atheists who changed their minds. The title comes from the Newsboys song of the same name. The book in turn inspired the 2014 film God's Not Dead, a surprise box-office hit that launched a whole franchise of sequels.

Broocks says plainly that he is writing for three kinds of reader. The first is the seeker, who wants to believe but is held back by doubt. The second is the believer, who knows God personally but struggles to explain that faith to others. The third is the skeptic, already convinced there is no God. The book is an overview rather than a deep treatise. It draws heavily on thinkers such as C. S. Lewis, William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, J. P. Moreland, Ravi Zacharias, Hugh Ross and Francis Schaeffer, and its footnotes point toward fuller treatments. Its value lies in its breadth, clarity and combative energy. Broocks sets out to show that faith in God is not a relic of a pre-scientific age, and that it can be both intellectually satisfying and spiritually alive.

The Big Ideas

God Isn't Dead: The Surprising Comeback of Faith

Broocks opens with a personal story. In his third year of college, as a fairly new Christian, he was confronted by his older brother Ben. Ben was an atheist at the top of his law school class at Southern Methodist University, and he already held a master's degree in counseling. He prepared for a weekend at their parents' Dallas home as if it were a trial. He studied the Bible for ammunition and told a classmate he was going home to get his little brother out of "this born-again thing." Broocks admits he didn't have dazzling answers. He simply responded to Ben's doubts as plainly as he could, and he watched his brother begin "doubting his doubts." At one point he told Ben that what kept him from believing wasn't what he didn't know about God, but what he did know. By the end of that day Broocks had baptized Ben in a swimming pool. Coming up out of the water, Ben said, "I don't think you answered all my questions, but I think I was asking the wrong questions."

Broocks links Ben's resistance to the apostle Paul's claim in Romans 1:18 that people suppress the truth. His image for this is a beach ball held underwater: the harder you push it down, the harder it pops back up. From that weekend on, he says, he has given his life to getting people out of "this atheist thing."

He then widens the lens. Time magazine famously asked "Is God Dead?", echoing Friedrich Nietzsche. Darwin's followers predicted that religion would fade as science advanced, and Karl Marx called religion the opium of the people. The Economist even ran an obituary for God in 1999. Then, in 2009, its senior editor co-wrote God Is Back, which served as a retraction. Broocks points to explosive Christian growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America, to signs of renewal in cities such as London, Berlin and Dublin, and to students questioning the naturalism they've been taught. He compares the present moment to the first-century Roman world that Paul faced. The so-called new atheists, he argues, mostly repackage old objections. Their success comes less from the strength of those objections than from the fact that the best Christian responses haven't reached enough people. His book aims to change that.

Faith Is Not Blind, and Science Is Not the Enemy

A central claim of the book is that real faith is not a leap in the dark. Broocks borrows C. S. Lewis's definition: "faith is actually holding on to what your reason has led you to conclude despite your changing moods." He breaks faith into three ingredients:

• Knowledge: understanding what is claimed.
• Assent: agreeing that it is true.
• Trust: personally relying on it.

He insists that science and religion are not at war. The real conflict, he argues, is between faith and naturalism, the philosophical view that nature is all there is. Broocks treats naturalism as a worldview with its own unexamined assumptions, not as a neutral finding of science. The preface sets the tone with a vivid image. Claiming there is no evidence for a Creator, he writes, is like insisting the thousands of paintings in an art museum couldn't have been painted because no artists are visible in the gallery. Truth, for Broocks, is another word for reality. It holds everywhere, as the multiplication tables work the same in China as in America.

Evil and Morality Point Toward God, Not Away

Somewhat unusually for a book in this tradition, Broocks takes on the problem of evil early, before the classic arguments for God's existence. He reverses the usual objection. If there is no God, he asks, where do "good" and "evil" come from at all? He cites the theologian Cornelius Van Til: without God, the categories of good and evil wouldn't make sense, so the complaint about evil quietly assumes the very moral order it uses against God. He surveys Kant's categorical imperative and Darwinian ethics, and he asks whether humans can be good on their own. He ends with Dostoevsky's famous point that without God, everything is permitted.

His explanation for suffering rests on free will. God made a world where moral choices are real and where people affect one another. Drunk drivers kill innocent people, and people steal and murder. That mess, Broocks says, is our doing, not God's. He also argues that moral truths hold across every culture. Lying, theft and cruelty to children are wrong everywhere, and that universality suggests a transcendent moral law that we didn't invent and can't escape. When those laws are broken, he says, people are broken too.

He also has a pointed reply to the skeptic who rejects God because of Christian hypocrisy. That reasoning, he suggests, is like telling someone who behaves badly that his misdeeds prove his parents don't exist.

There Was a Beginning, and Life Is No Accident

The cosmological chapter starts from a simple claim: "there was a beginning." Broocks explores what the big bang implies. He takes aim at atheists such as Lawrence Krauss, Victor Stenger and Michael Shermer, accusing them of redefining "nothing" until it quietly means "something" so they can explain a universe arising from nothing. He presents the fine-tuning of the universe and the anthropic principle as strong evidence of design, and he gives his reasons for doubting the multiverse hypothesis as an escape route.

He also borrows an illustration from Alvin Plantinga to answer a common atheist move: the claim that God explains nothing because you would then need an explanation for God. By that logic, the argument goes, nobody could explain why a car runs unless they could also explain whatever lies behind that explanation. Broocks treats this as plainly absurd.

In the chapter titled "Life Is No Accident," Broocks turns to biology. He notes that Darwin's Origin of Species addressed the origin of different species, not the origin of life itself. He distinguishes microevolution from macroevolution. He also presents the argument from irreducible complexity, which holds that some systems can't work unless all their parts are present at once. His examples are the bacterial flagellum and the human eye. He discusses the charge that this is merely a "God of the gaps" argument, and he examines the Cambrian explosion, the sudden appearance of many complex life forms in the fossil record.

Human Beings Are Not Just Another Animal

Next Broocks argues that people long for "a solid sense" of meaning and purpose, and that this longing itself is telling. Humans, he insists, are "not just another animal." He points to capacities that set us apart:

• Metacognition: our ability to think about our own thinking.
• Aesthetic values: our sense of beauty.
• Language and creativity.
• Morality and spirituality.

His conclusion is stark: "a pointless beginning points to a pointless existence." If the universe came from blind chance, he reasons, then any purpose we claim is self-made and arbitrary, an individual goal with no deeper anchor. Only a Creator can ground ultimate meaning. Thinkers such as Viktor Frankl appear among the voices he draws on here.

The Historical Jesus, a Reliable Bible and the Grace Effect

The final stretch of the book moves from "a God" to the God of Christianity. Broocks reviews non-biblical sources that refer to Jesus. Strikingly, he leans on Bart Ehrman, an agnostic scholar and critic of Christianity who nonetheless affirms that Jesus really lived. Using a hostile witness this way gives the argument extra weight. Broocks then lays out Lee Strobel's "five Es", which he presents as the facts history supports:

• the execution of Jesus
• the empty tomb
• the eyewitnesses
• the early records
• the emergence of the church

On Scripture, he discusses the Dead Sea Scrolls, fulfilled prophecy, the Bible's historical accuracy and the careful copying of the text across centuries. After sitting down with the leading textual critic Dan Wallace, he came away with three principles. The Bible is true in what it tells, true in what it teaches and true in what it touches. In his view, together these show it to be divinely inspired and a trustworthy witness to God.

In "The Grace Effect," Broocks argues that God's grace has reshaped the world through believers who passed it on. He credits Christians with defending the dignity of human life, protecting children, raising the status of women, advancing education and health care, and working to end slavery.

The last chapter gathers stories of former atheists who came to faith. They include Ming Wang, one of the world's leading laser eye surgeons; physicist Brian Miller; and professional illusionist Jim Munroe, who argues that unbelief is life's real illusion. A brief conclusion then invites the reader to seek God personally.

Putting It to Work

• Answer simply and honestly. The Ben story is Broocks's model. You don't need every answer to help someone. A plain, sincere response can soften a skeptic more than clever debating.
• Look past the stated question. Broocks suggests that disbelief is sometimes less about missing information and more about resisting what one already senses. Gently ask what might lie beneath an objection.
• Separate science from naturalism. When a conversation turns to "science versus faith," point out that the real dispute is between two worldviews, not between faith and evidence.
• Turn the problem of evil around. Ask what grounds the very idea of evil if there is no moral lawgiver.
• Know a handful of anchor facts. Lee Strobel's five Es, Dan Wallace's three principles and the evidence from fine-tuning and the beginning of the universe give a believer a compact toolkit for conversation.
• Use unfriendly witnesses. Pointing to scholars such as Bart Ehrman, who aren't Christians yet affirm a historical Jesus, can carry extra weight with skeptics.
• Keep reading. Broocks presents himself as offering an overview. Follow his footnotes to Lewis, Craig, Plantinga, Moreland and others for deeper treatment.
• Hold faith through changing moods. Lewis's definition reminds believers that faith means staying loyal to what reason has shown, even when feelings waver.

Who Should Read It

This book suits Christians who are new to apologetics and want an accessible, wide-ranging primer. It also suits students heading into university settings where their faith may be challenged, and honest seekers looking for an evidence-based case in plain language. Fans of the film will find the substance behind its arguments here. Seasoned apologetics readers may find little that is new, since Broocks skims many topics rather than diving deep. Skeptics should expect a frank, confrontational tone rather than a neutral survey.

This has been a summary of God's Not Dead by Rice Broocks, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST.