Boyd Edward K - Letters from a skeptic: a son wrestles with his fathers questions about Christianity

CONTENTS

THE INVITATION:
To Dad, With Hope

PART I:
Questions about God

CORRESPONDENCE 1:
Why has Christianity done so much harm?

CORRESPONDENCE 2:
Why is the world so full of suffering?

CORRESPONDENCE 3:
Is the risk of freedom worth all the suffering?

CORRESPONDENCE 4:
Does God know the future?

CORRESPONDENCE 5:
Why does God create earthquakes and famines?

CORRESPONDENCE 6:
Why did God create Satan?

CORRESPONDENCE 7:
Is your God all-powerful?

CORRESPONDENCE 8:
Why believe in God in the first place?

CORRESPONDENCE 9:
Couldnt it all be by chance?

CORRESPONDENCE 10:
Why didnt God spare your mother?

CORRESPONDENCE 11:
Why would an all-powerful God need prayer?

CORRESPONDENCE 12:
Why would God care about us little humans?

PART II
Questions about Jesus Christ

CORRESPONDENCE 13:
Why trust the Gospel accounts?

CORRESPONDENCE 14:
Arent the Gospels full of contradictions?

CORRESPONDENCE 15:
Who wrote the Gospels and when were they written?

CORRESPONDENCE 16:
How can you believe that a man rose from the dead?

CORRESPONDENCE 17:
How can you believe that a man was God?

PART III
Questions about the Bible

CORRESPONDENCE 18:
Why does God make believing in Him so difficult?

CORRESPONDENCE 19:
Why do you think the Bible is inspired?

CORRESPONDENCE 20:
Isnt the Bible full of myths and Gods vengeance?

CORRESPONDENCE 21:
Didnt the Catholic Church put the Bible together?

CORRESPONDENCE 22:
Why are there so many differing interpretations of the Bible?

CORRESPONDENCE 23:
What about the holy books of other religions?

PART IV
Questions about Christian Life and Doctrine

CORRESPONDENCE 24:
Do all non-Christians go to hell?

CORRESPONDENCE 25:
How could an all-loving God torture people in an eternal hell?

CORRESPONDENCE 26:
Isnt the Christian life impossible to live?

CORRESPONDENCE 27:
How can another mans death pardon me?

CORRESPONDENCE 28:
How can I be holy and sinful at the same time?

CORRESPONDENCE 29:
How can I be sure its all true?

EPILOGUE
I believe!

In loving memory of Arlyle Boyd

PREFACE

Exceptionally intelligent, intensely skeptical, very strong-willed, and seventy years oldcould a more unlikely candidate for conversion be found than my father? He had given me little grounds for hope. My father never showed any openness to the gospel. He harbored only resentment toward the church and was outspoken in his animosity toward what he called born-again types. The few talks about the faith he and I had had during the fourteen years I had been a Christian up to the time our correspondence began had all been somewhat awkward, very short, and totally futile. I had, quite frankly, all but totally given up hope for his salvation.

Nevertheless, beginning in March of 1989 I felt strongly led of the Lord to attempt one more time to share the Christian faith with my father, this time not in a face-to-face manner but through the mail. I had in mind a long-term dialogue in which all of our cards would be laid on the table. I would give him the opportunity to raise all his objections to the truth of Christianity, and he would give me the opportunity to answer these objections as well as give positive grounds for holding to the Christian faith. To be honest, I initially thought little would come of this. But what did I have to lose?

To my surprise, my father accepted my invitation. Almost three years and thirty letters after our correspondence began, Edward K. Boyd made Jesus the Lord and Savior of his life on January 15, 1992.

For several reasons I feel it would be valuable to make this written correspondence public. First, multitudes of Christians, like me, have loved ones who are not believers. Some of these loved ones are perhaps as rationalistic, as skeptical, and as apparently hopeless as my father was. My prayer is that this correspondence between my father and me can be useful not only as a source of hope, but also as a resource of information for believers in similar situations. The questions and objections my father raised are the questions and objections nonbelievers most frequently have concerning Christianity.

Secondly, this dialogue can be helpful to believers wrestling with the rational foundation of their faith as well as for nonbelievers who, like my father, are considering the truth of Christianity. While our correspondence doesnt come close to providing anything like an exhaustive critique and defense of the Christian faith, my fathers keen questions touch almost all the relevant objections and invoke almost all the relevant considerations in defense of the Christian faith.

Finally, this correspondence can be of service, I believe, to students of apologetics and personal evangelism. Far too often we view the study of apologetics as an ivory tower discipline with little relevance to what really goes on in spreading the gospel. Objections to the Christian faith, we frequently assume, are really moral, not intellectual, in nature. What sinners need is preaching, not reasons.

It is my hope that this dialogue begins to dispel this myth. There is, of course, always a spiritual dimension in an unbelievers resistance to the gospel (2 Cor. 4:4), and reasons are never in and of themselves enough to convert an unbelieving heart. Prayer and spiritual warfare are also always necessary. But this by no means implies that the rational obstacles to the faith that unbelievers have are disingenuous and that believers have no responsibility for knowing and sharing the rational foundation of the faith they hold. Scripture assumes such a responsibility (1 Peter 3:15).

This correspondence is an illustration of how the intellectual and spiritual elements of an unbelievers resistance to the gospel can go hand in hand, and how a person can address both of these elements simultaneously. It is an illustration of how practical and effective apologetics can be. It is an example of how God can use intellectual considerations to reach and change the heart of one whose mind and heart had previously been impervious to the light of the gospel. And, finally, this correspondence is a testimony to the transforming power of persistent love and honest communication in sharing the gospel.

One further word should perhaps be said about this correspondence. My father and I, in conjunction with the publishers of this work, have sought to preserve the original correspondence between us as much as possible. A certain amount of editorial work was necessary for the purposes of clarity and organization (i.e., the original correspondence did not flow as thematically as it does in its present form), but we have kept as much of the original wording as possible. In most instances, for example, we did not seek to clean up my fathers language, as we felt that the omission of this would have weakened the authenticity of our dialogue. We apologize if some readers find this offensive. Similarly, in the interest of authenticity, we retained the informal way I sometimes quoted Scripture. Where exact scriptural quotations are intended, they are from the New International Version .

I would like to express my thanks to the many who have helped bring this written correspondence into book form. I deeply appreciate the students in my 1992 interim apologetics class at Bethel College for their insightful comments and editorial suggestions concerning this collection of letters. It was a pleasure to share with them the joy of my fathers conversion during this course. My thanks also go out to members of my previous apologetics classes, both at Bethel and at the Church of the Open Door, for the insights they shared with me as they read various letters from my father while our courses were in process.