love thy father...

This is a long post but worth the read. My church-mate was sharing with me the testimony of Josh McDowell (Writer of "Evidence that demands a verdict") after I was sharing how I am struggling to learn to love my dad and see it hard to even hold a decent conversation with him at times. I guess there's no running away from solving the problem. He is nonetheless, God's portion given to me. I pray that I will slowly learn to love and honor him more. This is an amazing testimony, but more importantly, it is true. And if God can change someone so bitter and forgive that person, why not my dad and me? (It's in 3 parts and I tried editing the transcript but if I do, I will be short-changing it)

Part 1

I want to ask you a question. Just answer to yourself. "Have you ever felt lonely? Have you ever felt all alone in life, like it wouldn't matter to anyone if you lived or died? Have you ever felt abandoned?" I want to tell you a story about an 11-year-old boy who woke up one morning and felt that way and didn't want to live. It's my story. I was born in Union City, Michigan, a little town of about 2,000 people, 1,500, and my father was the town drunk, the town alcoholic. I hardly knew him sober until I was 20 years old. I'd go to high school and my friends and make jokes about my father, downtown in the gutter making a fool of himself. They didn't think it bothered me, cause I'm like some of you right here — you know, when you laugh on the outside when you're hurting on the inside. Every time they told a joke about my dad, it hurt, but I never, ever let anyone know. That's a secret I carried with me all through junior high and high school.

We lived on a farm, and I'd go out to the barn and I'd see my mother, who I loved very much, lying in the manure in a gutter behind the cows, where my father yanked the air hose off the air pipes off the milking machines and beat her to a bloody pulp until she was so weak and bloody she couldn't stand up. And I was 8-, 9-, 10-, 11-years-old and I remember pounding on my dad and kicking him and screaming at him, "When I am strong enough, I'll kill you." We'd have friends over, and my father would be drunk. Any of you, and there's a number of you that have or have had an alcoholic parent or a drug-related parent. Then you know what I'm talking about. Trust me, if you don't have an alcoholic parent, you don't know what I'm talking about. You don't know the shame that every kid with an alcoholic parent carries with them every day of their life, especially when friends come over and your dad or mom's drunk. That's when that shame just totally captivates your life. And so, when friends would come over, and my dad would be drunk, and as just a little kid, I'd grab him around the neck and I would pull him out through the dirt or the snow to the barn, and I'd drag him into the pen where the cows would have their calves and I would just drop him on the straw. Then you learn to drive young on the farm, as a little kid you learn to drive. And I would take the car and I would back it out of the garage and park it up around behind the silo on the other side of the barn so it couldn't be seen. And then when the friends would come, we'd tell them he had to go away — just so we wouldn't be shamed. And in case he woke up before the friends left, I'd go back out to the barn. My dad was only about 5' 8" and a very slender man, and so I'd get down under him and prop him up against the boards, then I'd put his arms through the boards like this and I'd tie a rope from one arm to the other arm. And then I'd go around behind him and make a noose and I'd put it around his neck and tighten it and I'd put it around his feet and as much as I could, as a little kid, I'd pull that rope until his head would go over the top of that board, then I'd wrap it around his feet and knot it. And I'd leave him there at 7 o'clock at night until 6 or 7 o'clock the next morning. And often I'd remember as kid going out there, and he would still be alive. I just wanted him dead. I just wanted him to quit hurting my mother. I just wanted him out of my life.

Two months before I graduated from high school I came home from a date on a Saturday night about midnight, walked into the house and I heard my mother, through the entire house, just profusely crying, weeping, "Mom, mom, what's wrong, what's wrong?" And I ran into her bedroom, and she sat up in bed just crying and saying, "Your father has broken my heart." And then she reached out and put her arms around me and pulled me to her, and she said, "Son, I've lost the will to live. All I want to do is live until you graduate. Then I just want to die." Boy, that was hard to hear as a kid. You know the irony — two months later, 61 days later, I graduated from high school and the next Friday, the 13th, my mother up and died. Don't tell me you can't die of a broken heart. My mother did. My father broke it, and I hated him. I despised him for it.

When I was 11-years-old my oldest brother, Wilmont, sued my parents in a court of law for everything they had. Can you imagine a son suing his parents? No matter what the parents did. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know about the lawsuit, but I knew there was something wrong. Later I found out that one of the things my brother got in the lawsuit settlement was a home my folks had built for workers on the farm that he and his wife had lived in, and he announced that he was going to move it, and later I found out my parents went to him and said, "Wilmont, we need the house. We need it for workers. Leave it. We'll buy you land. We'll buy you a home. We'll give you the money, whatever." But my father had so wounded my brother, he said, "No. I'm going to move it." On that Saturday when they announced that in two weeks they were going to move that house, now, come on, I was 11-years-old, my mind could not comprehend, you're going to pick that house up and move it a mile and a half down into Union City, Michigan, I thought, "No way." It was like anticipating the first time you ever went to Disney World. And so for two weeks that's all I could think about. And it came that Saturday morning I got up extra early and went out and did all my chores and went in and took a good shower to get the barn smell off, put on my best work clothes, slapped on some Old Spice, and I headed out the back of the house. And I went through the porch, and as you go through the porch, there's a sidewalk that goes around the back of the house, and as it comes around the corner of the house you can look up the knoll and see where the house was that they were going to move. It was up the knoll probably twice as far as the length of this auditorium here. And as I went around the corner, I looked up there and I saw this small group of people. There were about 30 to 40 people from around Union City, Michigan. There were farmers, there were merchants from the stores that I went into as a kid to get a hamburger, an ice cream cone, or school supplies. Parents of my friends, people's homes I stayed in. Well, at 11-years-old I thought, "Wow, this is going to be quite a party." I figured they couldn't believe you could move a house like that, so they came out to see it done. It didn't take me long to find out that's not why they were there. They were there because my brother knew that my parents would stand in opposition to moving the house that Saturday. So he was very popular, a phenomenal personality. And he went around and got these farmers and merchants, and imagine this now, parents of my friends, to come out that day to stand in opposition to my parents. Well, I didn't know that. So now, I'm 11-years-old and my adrenaline is flowing and as fast as I could run I was running up that knoll and I got to the top of that knoll, and my world came crashing down. I heard these farmers, these merchants, parents of my friends yell the dirtiest, the filthiest language at my parents. And at 11-years-old I couldn't handle it and I snapped. And to this day it was like hitting a glass wall. The first thing I recall as I can remember — now I'm only 11-years-old — and I'm running down the right side of that knoll, just crying and screaming, and that's about the most embarrassing thing that could happen to an 11-year-old guy. And I went to the end of the barn where we had a room about half the size of this up here, and there were three stalls — one for wheat, one for oats, and one for shelled corn that we used to mix cattle feed for the cows. And I ran up the six steps and turned around, and I pulled this huge door closed, put the big iron latch down and locked it. Then I reached over to the two windows and knocked out the two blinders until it was absolutely pitch black. And then, at 11-years-old, I went into that corn bin and I buried myself up to my neck, and that's when I prayed to die. I felt such shame. I was there for 3 1/2 hours — about 3 hours — until about 1 o'clock that afternoon. And my parents never came looking for me. Have you ever felt alone? Have you ever felt that it didn't matter to anyone if you lived or died? Have you ever felt abandoned? That's how I felt at 11-years-old, buried in that corn. And that's when I became an angry man. I became angry at my father because I felt he abandoned me. I became angry at God, if God existed, because I felt God had abandoned me in that corn bin. Finally, I was so hungry and thirsty and the chaff was in my eyes and my nose and my mouth that I dug myself out of that corn, and I went to the door and took off that heavy latch, and when I threw that big door open and that sunlight hit me in the eyes, it shocked me into reality. And at that moment I started slamming the door on God. I damned God. I cursed God. I called God every name in the book, and I cursed my dad and I damned my father. And for seven years I slammed that door.

Part 2

I enrolled in the university, college. I went to college, and the first two weeks in college I saw a small group of people. There weren't very many. There were eight students and two professors--one of sociology and one of history. And their lives were different. They kind of, for example, they seemed to know where they were going and they seemed to have direction. Then they had something else that I admire in people. They seem to have convictions. I don't know about you all here, but I like to be around people who have convictions. But what really got my attention is something you see everywhere, you have it here and all, but it was a different dimension that I saw. It's called "love." But this is what was different. They also loved and cared for people outside their group. The way I was raised up that was weird. And I wanted it. So I made friends with these students and professors and after a couple weeks, we're sitting around a table in the student union, and the conversation started to get to God. So I looked over at this young lady, and oh, she was a good-looking woman. I used to think all Christians were ugly. I did. I figured if you couldn't make it anywhere else in life, you became a Christian. But she was really cute. Now, I had a problem. This was my problem. I wanted what they had, but I didn't want them to know that I wanted what they had. But all the time, they knew that I wanted what they had and that I didn't want them to know that I wanted what they had. So I leaned back in my chair, and I just tried to act totally nonchalant — totally disinterested. And I looked over at this young lady and I said, "Tell me, what changed your lives? Why are you so different? The other students, the professors, the leaders on campus. Why? What happened? She looked back at me with a little smile, and that can be irritating, and she said two words I never thought I would ever hear in a university as part of the solution. She looked back at me and said, "Jesus Christ." I said, "Oh, for God sakes, don't give me that garbage. I'm tired of that." And I won't share the words there that I used. And I lost my temper. Only three times in my life have I lost my temper, and this was the first time. And I came unglued, and I lit into the. I got calmed down. Finally the one young lady said to me, she challenged me to intellectually, now get this, to use my mind to examine the claims of Jesus Christ as God's Son. I thought that was a joke. I literally thought Christians had two brains — one was lost and the other was out looking for it. I'm serious. I figured if a Christian had one brain it would die in isolation. But they kept challenging me. No, they irritated me. In simple language, they ticked me off. And so I accepted their challenge. And I didn't do it to prove anything. I did it to refute them. In fact, the background of my first book that I'm really known for in most places around the world, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, the whole background of that huge book was to write a book against Christianity, to show it's intellectually stupid, and to refute these students and professors. And the second thing I set out to do was to show that God, if He existed, abandoned me in that corn bin at 11-years-old. That experience in that corn bin had to have a phenomenal impact on my psyche because it's affected me every day of my life. I left the university, traveled throughout the United States, England, Germany, France, and the Middle East, gathering the evidence to write Evidence That Demands a Verdict against those students and professors and to refute Christianity. And I was sitting in a small museum library in London, England. I'm going to try to find this library when I go back there in a couple weeks. It was a Friday night about 6:30 p.m. I remember I was quite tired, and I leaned back in my chair, and I cupped my hands behind my head and right in front of everyone, which probably was three people, I said, "It's true! It's true! It's true!" Now what I meant by that was a reference to the New Testament, not that it was the word of God. Now trust me, I wasn't near that position. What I had concluded as an antagonistic, obnoxious, agnostic university student, now that's a mouthful, but that's probably the best way to describe my attitude at that time, what I meant by that was I had concluded as a total non-believer that there were two things true about the New Testament. One, that what I held in my hand is the New Testament is literally what was written down 2,000 years ago. It has not been changed. Don't you let anyone come along and tell you that the Christians came along and changed it. That's historically incorrect. And I believe in Evidence That Demands a Verdict, the New Evidence, now it's called The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, I believe in there I document that I could reproduce the New Testament to a 99.5 percent pure text. The second thing I concluded was not only that what I had was what was written down but this was more important, that what was written down was true, ‘cause my mother didn't raise any dummies, if what was written down wasn't true, then I could care less that what I have today is what was written down. Come on, I'm not stupid. And I concluded it was true in this sense, that this is what Jesus said and what Jesus did. Not necessarily that what Jesus said was true, that's another story, but that it was true that He said it and He did this. I'm so glad God didn't give up on me. He knew the bitterness in my heart. He knew the blasphemy, the anger that I had, and He still pursued me. And I couldn't have thought this way without God creating it within my mind. I said, "OK, if it's possibly true, I'm not saying it is, but if it is possibly true even what Jesus said, then what does it say about me? What does it say about me?" This is when I first read in the Old Testament. In Exodus 34:14, your translations, most translations have it this way, "You shall worship no other god but the Lord, for He is a God who is jealous." But do you know what that really means? But I think the Hebrew is best brought out here in the New Living translation. This is what "jealous" means there. "You shall worship no other god, but the Lord for He is a God who is passionate about His relationship with you." I went, "Wow. God, you're saying that if you are, you are passionate about a relationship with me. Where were you when I was in the corn bin and I exploded? Why did you abandon me in that corn bin?" And it was the second time in my life that I lost my temper. In about 45 minutes I got calmed down, some Christians were there, that helped a little. And again, only God could have caused me to have thought this way. I said, "OK, God, if you are, and if you are passionate about a relationship with me, what will it look like?" Oh, men and women, this is when as a totally non-believer I discovered the love of a personal creator God.

I discovered four things about God as a total non-believer. Only God could have done that.

One, I learned that God's love takes the initiative. In I John 4:10 in the New Testament it says "This, then, is love, not that we loved Him, but that He loved us and gave His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

The second thing I learned about God's love is that it is sacrificial. Boy, that was a new twist. For God so loved that world He gave His only begotten Son.

The third thing I learned about God's love is that it is all-knowing. In Psalm 139:1-3 it says that He knows everything about you. You know one of the problems I had? After I started to be persuaded you know, God exists and the Bible is the word of God. My greatest fear was this, and oh, it was vivid in my life, if God really knew me, He would never love me. But you know what I learned — He knows me, and He still loves me. That's what I discovered as a non-believer. That He is and He knows me best and He loves me most and He is passionate about a relationship with me.

The fourth thing I learned about God's love is that it's all-encompassing. I read in the New Testament in the book of John chapter 15 verse 9. Jesus is speaking to His disciples and He says, "Guys, just as God the Father loves me, the Son, now, get this, as much as the Father loves the Son" Jesus said, "I love you." And this caused a major crisis in my life, a major crisis.

Part 3

You say, "Now, come on Josh, you're starting to come the conclusion that God is, the Bible is the word of God, and He loves you, and wants a relationship with you, how could that cause a crisis?" Very simple. Is it true, or do I so want to be loved, I am willing to be psychologically manipulated to believe in it? Because I concluded as a non-believer if it is not true then I will walk away and never, ever turn back. But if it is true, then I will serve Him the rest of my life with every breath that I breathe. This is when my attitude changed. From being antagonistic to ... I really believe I became an honest inquisitor or inquirer. I didn't set out to prove it true or to prove it wrong. I just simply asked the question "Is it true?" And out of this search came the book, the huge thing, called New Evidence That Demands a Verdict with thousands of historical evidences and documentations. First, I concluded, starting with the New Testament, that it is true. Just for example, whenever you check out any document to see if it is accurate and true and historically reliable, you do what is called a bibliographical test of the manuscripts. A manuscript is a hand-written copy over against the printed copy. In other words, before the introduction of the movable type printing press in the 1500's everything was done by hand. And one of the many questions you ask of the manuscript is this, "How many of those hand-written manuscripts do you have?" because this is a truth of history. The more manuscripts you have, the easier it is to recreate the autographa, the autograph, the original and check out any errors or discrepancies. I document all this. Just with the New Testament I can now document almost 29,000 manuscripts of just the New Testament. Do you know what the number two book is in all history in manuscript authority? The Illiad by Homer with 643 manuscripts. Almost 29,000 difference, and I never knew that until I set out to make a joke of it. So, I knew I could hold the New Testament in my hand and say it is accurate. It is true.

Second, I examined the person of Jesus Christ. Is He the Messiah, the Son of God, because I knew as a non-believer, if He was not the Messiah, the true Son of God, then love is not real and neither is forgiveness. And this is when, after a whole year of intensive study, examining the evidence, I concluded that God became man and His name is Jesus, and that He is passionate about a relationship with me. So, December 19, 1959 at 8:30 at night I returned to the university and I became a Christian. Somebody says, "How do you know?" I was there! Changed my life. I got alone with a friend of mine. Made sure my other friends weren't watching. I was a coward yet.

And I prayed four things that established a relationship with a living, personal God.

I said, "Lord, Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for me." The most humbling thought I've had to this day, and I had it before I ever became a Christian, is when I realized as a university student that if I were the only person alive, Jesus still would have died for me. Remember I said when I climbed down that corn bin I started slamming the door on God. Well, when I got to the university, that door was only about that far open, and God used the evidence to stick His foot in the door. He got my attention. What brought me to Christ was His love. It was God's love that brought me to Christ. All the evidence merely got my attention, but I don't downplay it. Without that evidence and until I became convinced the Bible was true, I never considered its message.

Second, I said, I confess, as the Bible says, that I'm a sinner. No one needed to tell me, all you had to do was spend a day with me. My sin, I knew there were things in my life, in my character, that was incompatible with the holy, just, righteous, personal God. And the Bible says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I said, "Lord, Jesus, forgive me. I confess my sins to you."

Third, I knew that God said, "I want a relationship with you that is not a religion." Religion is men and women trying to work their way to God through good works and religious ritual. I found that Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship. It's a personal God who became man through Jesus Christ, who desires an eternal relationship with us, and He's passionate about us. He's jealous that we share that with no one else. And I knew the Bible says, "But to as many as received Him, to them gave you the right to become a child of God." A verse that visualizes it is in the book of Revelation where He says, "I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in." So I said, "Right now, the best way I know how" and I didn't know a whole lot, but I said, "I place my trust in you as Savior and Lord. I place my whole life in you. I accept your forgiveness. Come into my life."

The last thing that I prayed was just "Thank you." And nothing happened. Nothing! There wasn't any bolt of lightning. I didn't rush out and buy a harp. But in about six months a year, year and a half my entire life was transformed. For example after I made this decision to trust Christ as Savior and Lord, and again, only God could have done this, I found myself looking my father right in the eyes and saying, "Dad, I love you." Even as a new Christian, by an act of my will, I chose to hate the man who I believed killed my mother and destroyed my family. And I found myself saying to the man I chose to hate, "I love you."

I was in a car accident, a serious car accident. My legs, arm, and neck in traction. And I couldn't move my body. All I could do was flash my eyes. My father walked in to that room. And all I could do was flash my eyes to look at him. And there were two noticeable things: one, he was sober. He was sober. But second, he was crying. I had never, ever, ever seen my father cry. And all of a sudden my father just stopped, and he leaped right over me, right over my face, just crying. And he said, "Son, how can you love a father such as I?" I said, "Dad, six months ago I despised you. I hated you. I despised everything that you stood for." And I said, "Dad, I've learned something, that God became man and His name is Jesus. It is real, it is relevant, but dad, it is true." And I said, "Dad, God is not only passionate about a relationship with me, but he's passionate about a relationship with you." And right there, my daddy prayed with me. And he prayed a very down-to-earth prayer. As best I can recall, he prayed this way, "God, if you're God, and Christ is your Son, and if He died on the cross for me and can" now notice what he prayed, "if you can forgive me for what I've done to my family, and if you can do in my life what I've seen you do in the life of my son, then I accept you as my Savior and Lord. I place my trust in you. Come in to my life." It was like somebody reached down and turned on a light bulb. Now, don't get me wrong. I've never seen it before or since. Such a rapid change. Usually when somebody comes to Christ it takes a few months to a year, a year and a half to see the changes. It happened to my father instantly, but I've never seen that before. Fourteen months later he died because three-fourths of his stomach was destroyed through 40-some years of drinking. He was an extreme wino. I think it was his liver. His liver had been destroyed through the alcohol. But in that 14-month period, scores of people in that little, tiny town and surrounding area committed their lives to Jesus Christ because of the changed life of the town drunk — my daddy. I've come to one conclusion, with deep, intellectual and emotional convictions. God not only forgives, but He became man in Jesus Christ.