For the Skeptics

I suspect when it comes to our loved ones, you will know a few skeptics about Christianity. Father’s Day seems like a particularly good time to talk about a book for skeptics called Letters From A Skeptic by Dr. Gregory A. Boyd and Edward K. Boyd. Greg Boyd wrote a series of letters to his agnostic father, Edward Boyd. Even though you’ve never seen this book on any bestseller list, it is one of the top selling titles at Cook Communications. During the years, I worked at Cook, the elder Boyd passed away and I worked with Greg to add a slight addition to the cover. It’s a flag that you can barely see on this small illustration but it says, “Over 100,000 Copies in Print!”

Also I worked with Greg to add a two-page tribute to his father at the back of this book as a part of the reprinting process. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from this tribute to give you a taste of the book, “While I was overwhelmed with joy by my father's decision to accept Christ, I wasn’t very optimistic about how much transformation would take place in his post-conversion life. At seventy-three years old, my father was much older than most people who come to Christ, plus he had always been very set in his ways. My pessimism couldn't have been more misplaced. Indeed, it's difficult to exaggerate the profundity of the Holy Spirit's transformation of my father during the last eleven years of his life.” “One dramatic change was in my father's emotional tenderness. The pre-Christian Ed Boyd rarely expressed his emotions--certainly not in public. But the Christian Ed Boyd became a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. My father literally wept for joy every time he heard of a person coming to Christ through our correspondence—and over the course of eleven years he heard this hundreds of times!”

This book is another example of the potential impact of our writing. It can be the spark for someone to change their life or change the direction of their life. If you have a skeptic in your life, I recommend this book. Or if you want to wrestle with and discover answers for common questions like Why is the world full of suffering? or Does God know the future?, then I recommend you consider this book. It may be just what the skeptic needs.