Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father's Questions about Christianity

by Gregory A. Boyd

the foundational beliefs of Christianity are the most reasonable beliefs to base one’s life on.

We were created with the ability to choose love, and thus with the potential to choose its opposite—evil.

all evil in the world comes from free wills other than God.

What God wills and does is always good.

Whatever is not good has its origin from someone or someth...

Christianity isn’t a religion or an institution of any sort: It’s a relationship.

To be significantly free is to be morally responsible, and to be morally responsible means being morally responsible to each other.

A freedom which is prevented from being exercised whenever it was going to be misused simply wouldn’t be freedom.

God creates free people who can do as they please, not determined instruments who always end up doing what He pleases.

The fact that we humans have such an incredible amount of potential for evil, then, is to my mind indicative of the fact that we also have an incredible amount of potential for good.

If a person never loved, he’d never suffer. But then again, he’d never really live.

But isn’t God in this same position, only on a cosmic scale? To refuse to create a world where love was possible because the risk was too great seems to be beneath God. Love is really the only reason worth creating! It’s not freedom for the sake of freedom that God values—it’s love. Freedom is simply the only possible means to this end.

We tend to become the decisions we make. The more we choose something, the more we become that something. We are all in the process of solidifying our identities by the decisions we make. With each decision we make, we pick up momentum in the direction of that decision.

The more we choose something, the harder it is to choose otherwise, until we finally are solidified—eternalized—in our decision. The momentum of our character becomes unstoppable. We create our character with our decisions, and our character, in turn, exercises more and more influence on the decisions we make.

Love must always start free—but its goal is to become unfree. To be unable not to love is the highest form of freedom in love.

We had, and have, the potential of beings of incredible love. But that means we had, and have, the potential to be beings of incredible destruction. And we, to a large degree, make ourselves one or the other.

And unconditional love is the only life source for the soul and the only medicine for its wounds.

the Gospels are not trying on every point to just give us biographical information on the life of Jesus. They were not written to satisfy historical curiosity. They were written to save people by bringing them into a relationship with the Savior.

Salvation is a matter of being related to Christ, not the Bible.

What is most important to hear can be clearly heard if a person’s heart is open to it.

Narrow-mindedness does not attach to what you believe, but how you believe it. If I refused to consider any perspective, any religious book, and any philosophy which disagreed with my own, that would be narrow-minded. But just because I hold to a belief that disagrees with other perspectives, other religious books, and other philosophies doesn’t itself make me narrow.

is that it is people who put themselves in hell, not God. “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance,” the Bible says. If anyone goes to hell, then, this is against God’s will! It is simply inaccurate to construe God as taking any delight in people’s pain. He tells us explicitly, “I take no delight in the destruction of the wicked” (Ezek. 18:23). It is, rather, the rebellious people themselves who “loved darkness instead of light” (John 3:19). Hell is where they want to be, not where God wants them to be.

it is not the will of God which keeps sinners in hell, but the will of sinners.

The most important thing about hell, Dad, is not in understanding it or explaining it: It’s to avoid it!

Always remember, Dad, it’s not first and foremost a matter of what you believe. It’s first and foremost a matter of whom you trust.

Being a Christian isn’t about doing what you don’t want to do; it’s about allowing Christ to change what you want to do.

When one hears the impossibility of Jesus’ ideals, when one finally gives up his own self-effort as a means of impressing God, when one finally realizes that all he is and ever shall be before God is due to God’s performance, not his, then one is free to be real with what is going on in one’s life.

Our sin must be “atoned for.” It cannot simply be overlooked.

We must be changed into beings who are compatible with God, and who, therefore, are perfect.

So the million-dollar question becomes, how are these two things going to occur? The biblical teaching is that they could never occur on humanity’s own effort. Our situation in sin is far too severe for this. Left to ourselves we do not even want to “pay” for our own sins, and even if we did want to, we’d have to die (eternally) to do it! What is more, our situation in sin is such that we don’t on our own want to change ourselves, and even if we did want to change ourselves, we couldn’t do it.

Our enslavement to sin prevents us from desiring, and certainly from achieving, perfection in holiness.

When you trust in Christ as your only hope for salvation, Dad, God not only forgives you all past, present, and future sin (condition 1), but He also gives you His own perfect righteousness

God’s beautiful plan of salvation comes to nothing if a person doesn’t accept it as his own, but when one inherits it, one inherits the whole thing!

So we are made new creatures in Christ the moment we believe. All of our sin is absorbed in the cross, and all of Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. We are forgiven, and we are changed. But we do not instantaneously manifest this truth in our lives. Our “old” (and now false) habitual way of thinking often doesn’t accept our forgiveness. Our “old” (and now false) habitual way of living opposes the change which God effects in our heart. Our old (and now false) self-identity, defined by all previous experiences and inclinations and feelings and ambitions which we’ve had, simply takes time to die out. Only in heaven will what we “truly are” be manifested untarnished.

So how are believers holy and sinful at the same time? In terms of their re-created essence, they are holy, but in terms of how they manifest this essence in their thoughts, feelings, and actions, they are yet sinful. In terms of God’s perspective of what they shall become, believers are holy, but in terms of their perspective of what they now are, they are sinners. In terms of what is ultimately true, as defined by God, they are holy, but in terms of what is ultimately false, as defined by every other source, they are sinners. In terms of who they are “in Christ,” they are perfectly holy, but in terms of who they are “in themselves,” apart from Christ, they are wholly sinners.

Transformation is the effect, not the cause, of salvation.

let God’s life reside in you, and you do this by confessing that you are a sinner without hope in yourself and by accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior. Let God love you and accept you as you are, and slowly you will feel the internal desire and strength to become something different from what you are. Letting Him save you—that is the only thing you need to worry about.

The most reasonable thing to do, Dad, is to believe! The evidence is strong. The alternatives are comparably weak. And the risk of not believing is far greater than the risk of believing.

As Blaise Pascal said (in his famous “Pascal’s Wager”), if Christianity is false, you’ve lost nothing. If it’s true, you’ve lost all eternity. Christianity, therefore, is clearly the best bet!

One of my greatest joys is knowing my dad’s dreams of heaven have now come true. I envision him in the presence of Christ, dancing with absolute abandon and shouting for joy at the full realization of God’s deep love for him.