Josh McDowell talks about dad
by Doris Fleck

Josh McDowell wanted to kill his father.

"I tried to kill him three times before I was in the 11th grade," the sought-after speaker and popular author confessed during a candid interview at Break Forth Canada’s equipping and renewal conference this past January.

"He was the town drunk," McDowell explained. "He would beat my mother with a milk hose until she was so bloody and weak she couldn’t stand up."

While attending university, McDowell, an avowed atheist, accepted Christ as Lord of his life. But he said, "I still chose to hate the man who I believed killed my mother and destroyed my family."

Of McDowell’s four siblings, one sister committed suicide while another "volunteered for the front lines as a nurse, just so she wouldn’t have to be home," he explained.

One of his brothers ran away from home and the other, "Sued my parents for everything they had."

McDowell cautioned attendees at Break Forth that a father who is abusive, absent or uninvolved in the lives of their family is the greatest evil in the world today.

Lee Strobel, a fellow apologist and author of the popular books Case For Christ and Case For A Creator, concurred with McDowell. Strobel’s father was also frequently drunk and abusive.