Fatherhood Quote by Josh McDowell

A clean, blunt confession like this is doing more than sharing pain; it’s establishing authority through scar tissue. McDowell doesn’t dress up the feeling or the target. “A lot of hatred” is deliberately unpoetic, almost inventory-like, and that plainness signals honesty. Then he narrows the lens: “mainly toward my father,” which makes the emotion legible in an instantly recognizable family drama. The final word, “alcoholic,” lands like a diagnosis and an explanation at once, offering a cause without fully granting absolution. That tension is the point.

The intent is persuasive as much as personal. McDowell built a public career in Christian apologetics and testimony-driven ministry; lines like this function as a credibility down payment. Before you’re asked to consider redemption, forgiveness, or faith, you’re shown a credible reason not to. The subtext is: I’m not selling you a neat, sanitized spirituality. I’m coming from somewhere bitter.

It also quietly reframes hatred as something learned and inherited, not an innate moral failing. Alcoholism becomes both the father’s identity and the family’s weather system - shaping the emotional climate the child grows up in. The phrasing “I once had” hints at an arc without naming it: transformation is implied, which is rhetorically efficient. You’re invited to ask what happened next, and in McDowell’s world, that “next” is usually the story he wants you to hear.