Evangelical zealots are known for bugging, harassing, and irritating people with their Bible-quoting, preaching, and all-around Bible masturbation in public. Believing they are commanded by God to go into all the world and bug the Hell out of people, Evangelicals couldn’t care less what you think about their efforts. Sinners need to hear the gospel, Evangelicals say. Death is certain and Hell is hot, souls must be rescued from eternal torture at the hands of the thrice-holy God in the Lake of Fire. What sinners think or want doesn’t matter. Evangelicals are God’s door-to-door salesmen, peddling the old-fashioned gospel. Always on the prowl looking for marks, Evangelicals go out into the highways and hedges demanding people listen to their JESUS SAVES sales pitch. Few of us will make it through this life without having at least one Evangelical trying to “save” us. Most of us will suffer through such ill-behavior numerous times, often by Evangelical pastors, evangelists, family members, and friends. No matter how often we object to Evangelicals not respecting our wishes and invading our personal space, soulwinners are determined to get us to pray the sinner’s prayer so they can put another notch on the gospel six-shooter. Don’t like it? Tough shit. What you think doesn’t matter.
The other day I ran into an atheist who hated it when Christians reasoned from, referred to, or quoted their “dumb holy book around her” because she believes it’s a work of fictitious nonsense that has no relevance.
My first thought was, well duh, of course atheists don’t like dumb holy books, why would they?
But is it a reasonable to have any expectation that a Christian should be willing to even temporarily set aside his or her dumb holy book?
Further, should a Christian ever consider not reasoning from, referring to, or quoting the Bible even as an act of good will, congeniality, or in the interest of political correctness?
NO! and NO!
First, setting aside the Bible because it offends the sensibilities of someone who is dead in sin is profoundly absurd. Their feelings about the Bible are theirs and not our concern. They hate it? So what.
These, of course, are the words of a bully, the words of a man who has no regard for personal boundaries. And Evangelicals wonder why they are one of the most hated sects in America. Only in the Evangelical world do people think it is okay to bully complete strangers. In fact, Evangelical colleges and churches teach pastors and congregants how to effectively bully people for Hey-Zeus. As a student at Midwestern Baptist College, I had to take evangelism classes EVERY semester. Not only that, I had to practice my skills twice a week on unsuspecting people.
So how do we respond to the Hatts of the world?
First, we can politely listen, all the while thinking we would like to cut their tongues out with a rusty, dull knife.
Second, we can stop their unwanted advances, and walk away.
Third, we can engage them, knowing that we likely know far more about the Bible than they do.
Fourth, we badger them in kind, giving them a taste of their own medicine. I do this with street preachers. I will stand near where they are screaming and start preaching the atheist gospel. Lots of fun, at least for me. 🙂
Fifth, we can tell them that they can take their Bibles and shove them up their asses or utter other words that are sure to turn their virgin ears red.
Remember, the Hatts of the world have no regard for us, not really. Oh, they say they love us and only want what’s best for us. But, the fact remains is that we are just a means to an end — new church members, increased offerings, and more worker bees for their churches. As those of us who were once devoted followers of Jesus before we deconverted learned, once you are no longer part of their club all the love, kindness, and acceptance disappear. We quickly learned that some of the nastiest, most hateful, mean-spirited people in America are Evangelical zealots. I have receipts if anyone dares to challenge my assertion.
I rarely have to deal with Evangelical evangelizers these days. I am the Village Atheist. Most local Evangelicals know who I am, know my backstory. I’ve watched evangelizers going door to door in our town, only to have them skip our home. Why is that? 🙂 Man, I might enjoy a bit of hand-to-hand combat on my front porch. Alas, I’ve been written off, one who is an apostate and a reprobate.
Most of my interaction with evangelizers comes through this blog. I have had thousands of interactions with Evangelicals determined to “save” me, “correct” me, show me the error of my way, or deconstruct my life. Years ago, I was more inclined to engage such people, treating our interactions as a blood sport. These days, I am more inclined to tell evangelizers to fuck off. Do they? Of course not. As sure as the sun comes up in the morning, one or more Evangelical zealots will send me an email or comment on my blog, saying that they speak for God, that what they have to say will bring me back to Hey-Zeus. Fifteen years in, I remain an unrepentant atheist. If you are keeping score, it’s Bruce- 2,666 and God- 0. Hey, today might be the day when James Hatt or one of his fellow evangelizers finally scores, and I return to faith once delivered to the saints. With Gawd, all things are possible, right? 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Originally written in 2010, slightly edited and corrected
From your earliest recollection, you remember the CHURCH.
You remember the preacher, the piano player, the deacons, and your Sunday School teacher.
You remember the youth group and all the fun activities.
You remember getting saved and baptized.
You remember being in church every time the doors were open.
You remember everything in your life revolving around the church.
You remember daily praying and reading your Bible.
You remember the missionaries and the stories they told about heathens in faraway lands.
You remember revival meetings and getting right with God.
You remember . . .
Most of all, you remember the people.
You thought to yourself, my church family loves me almost as much as God does.
You remember hearing sermons about God’s love and the love Christians have for one another.
Church family, like blood family, loves you no matter what.
But then IT happened.
You know, IT.
You got older. You grew up. With adult eyes, you began to see the church, God, Jesus, and the Bible differently.
You had questions, questions no one had answers for.
Perhaps you began to see that your church family wasn’t perfect.
Perhaps the things that Mom and Dad whispered about in the bedroom became known to you.
Perhaps you found out that things were not as they seemed.
Uncertainty and doubt crept in.
Perhaps you decided to try the world for a while. Lots of church kids do, you told yourself.
Perhaps you came to the place where you no longer believed what you had believed your entire life.
And so you left.
You had an IT moment, that moment in time when things change forever.
You thought, surely Mom and Dad will still love me.
You thought, surely Sissy and Bubby and Granny will still love me.
And above all, you thought your church family would love you no matter what.
But, they didn’t.
For all their talk of love, their love was conditioned on being one of them, believing the right things, and living a certain way.
Once you left, the love stopped, and in its place came judgment and condemnation.
They are praying for you.
They plead with you to return to Jesus and the church.
They question whether you ever really knew Jesus as your savior.
They say they still love you, but deep down you know they don’t.
You know their love for you requires you to be like them.
And you can’t be like them anymore . . .
Such loss.
The church is still where it’s always been.
The same families are there, loving Jesus and speaking of their great love for others.
But you are forgotten.
A sheep gone astray.
Every once in a while, someone asks your Mom and Dad how you are doing.
They sigh and perhaps tears well up in their eyes . . .
Oh, how they wish you would come home,
To be a family sitting together in the church again.
You can’t go back.
You no longer believe.
All that you really want now is their love and respect.
You want them to love you just-as-you-are.
Can they do this?
Will they do this?
Or is Jesus more important than you?
Does the church come first?
Are chapters and verses more important than flesh and blood?
You want to be told that they still love you.
You want to be held and told it is going to be all right.
But here you sit tonight . . .
Alone . . .
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Evangelical Christian apologist William Lane Craig writes, in response to a question about doubt (link no longer active);
Be on guard for Satan’s deceptions. Never lose sight of the fact that you are involved in a spiritual warfare and that there is an enemy of your soul who hates you intensely, whose goal is your destruction, and who will stop at nothing to destroy you. Which leads me to ask: why are you reading those infidel websites anyway, when you know how destructive they are to your faith? These sites are literally pornographic (evil writing) and so ought in general to be shunned. Sure, somebody has to read them and refute them; but why does it have to be you? Let somebody else, who can handle it, do it. Remember: Doubt is not just a matter of academic debate or disinterested intellectual discussion; it involves a battle for your very soul, and if Satan can use doubt to immobilize you or destroy you, then he will.
I firmly believe, and I think the Bizarro-testimonies of those who have lost their faith and apostatized bears out, that moral and spiritual lapses are the principal cause for failure to persevere rather than intellectual doubts. But intellectual doubts become a convenient and self-flattering excuse for spiritual failure because we thereby portray ourselves as such intelligent persons rather than as moral and spiritual failures. I think that the key to victorious Christian living is not to have all your questions answered — which is probably impossible in a finite lifetime — but to learn to live successfully with unanswered questions. The key is to prevent unanswered questions from becoming destructive doubts. I believe that can be done by keeping in mind the proper ground of our knowledge of Christianity’s truth and by cultivating the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
First, Craig describes infidel websites like mine as:
A tool of Satan used to destroy the souls of Christians
Pornographic (evil writing)
Something that, in general, should be shunned
Craig readily admits that websites like mine can cause Christians to doubt their faith. While I have no interest in converting any Christian to atheism, I do think the tenets of Christianity and the teachings of the Bible should be carefully and fully investigated. If my writing causes a Christian to question and have doubts . . . good!
If Christianity is worth believing it will withstand any questions or doubts a believer might have. If Christianity is what it claims to be, then websites like this one will do little to no harm. Of course, I think that Christianity is NOT what it claims to be, and that is one of the reasons people are leaving the faith in droves.
Second, Craig attempts to dismiss people like me by calling our testimony of loss of faith a Bizarro-testimony (not to be believed). Craig contends we lost our faith, not for intellectual reasons, but because of spiritual or moral failure. He believes former Christians use intellectual doubts as a cover for moral or spiritual failure. In doing this, Craig moves the focus from Christianity and the Bible to the individual. According to Craig, I am no longer a Christian because of some moral lapse or spiritual deficiency in my life.
I will leave it to Detectives for Jesus to ferret out my moral or spiritual failures. I doubt they will find much to hang me by, but I will readily admit that I, like every other Christian and pastor, had moral and spiritual failures. After all, since I STILL had a sin nature, moral and spiritual failure was sure to happen, right? That said, I have no affairs lurking in my closet, just in case someone thinks moral failure = screwing a church member.
Craig lives in a world of willing, deliberate delusion. He refuses to accept the fact that many of us, especially those of us who were once pastors, left the ministry and the Christian faith for intellectual reasons. I have written many times about this subject. The primary reason I left Christianity was that I no longer believed the Bible was the Word of God. I no longer believed the Bible was “truth.” I no longer believed that the central character of the Bible, Jesus, was who the Bible says he was (and I use the word “was” because I don’t believe Jesus “is”). (Please see the WHY page for information on why I left Christianity.)
I didn’t have a moral or spiritual collapse that led to me leaving Christianity. Instead, I decided to investigate again the claims of Christianity and its divine Holy Book. Conclusion? I weighed Christianity and the Bible in the balance and found them wanting. (Daniel 5:27)
At the end of the day, it really is all about the Bible.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
My story is somewhat different from others I read on Bruce’s blog.
I was born in England, and raised in the Church of England, where it has been jokingly said that “belief in God is optional.” My father died when I was young and was, I understand, quite active in the church. My Mother was fairly active but never imposed her views on us.
I went to boarding school, where church attendance was mandatory or you were punished; a quick way to turn one against attendance.
I married into a Catholic family, so I had to be indoctrinated before I was deemed fit to marry a Catholic. At some time, I must have mentioned something about the evil in the world and was then provided with much discussion about God giving mankind freedom of thought and action.
I married a girl who attended a convent school. She was indoctrinated in the one true faith (sarcasm) and we agreed to raise the children as Catholics, though subsequently the children have very little interest in Catholicism. In the words of George Carlin “they were raised as Catholics until they learnt to think for themselves.”
I have always had a great interest in European history, particularly the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Reading about the horrors of the twentieth century, I started to have doubts about my beliefs. I started to question, how much horrific behaviour god would allow before saying okay people, that’s enough.
English history is full of the most appalling Catholic versus Protestant behavior. I read with interest the pieces about the Northern Ireland nitwit (Susan-Ann White), she is quite mild, (sane?) compared to some in that country.
My shift away from religious belief has been very gradual, probably over 30 years. I live in a part of Wisconsin that is mostly Catholic or Lutheran, with very few extremists, though I am aware of several Creationist and anti-evolutionists. I see them as just people to avoid. I have a very good friend who is a Baha’i. She knows my views and doesn’t really accept them, but we don’t discuss them in detail; now as a single man, I really value her friendship.
I follow Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I don’t agree with everything they say, and quite by chance stumbled onto Bruce’s website. I think I was searching for Atheist Pig cartoons. I have read and appreciate many items on the website, and many of the comments.
So I’m an Englishman, a great believer in science, and I just cannot accept much of the biblical nonsense: virgin birth, original sin, the resurrection, the vile vindictive god of the old testament. Come on, people!
I don’t believe in Heaven and Hell, but if there were such places, I would choose the latter — far more interesting people there. I sometimes feel that, having attended a 1950s English boarding school, I have already been to hell.
Although I am an atheist, I’m somewhat reluctant to call myself one; it seems pointless to give a name to something that occupies so little of my thoughts.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
I found the following graphic today on The Christian Post website. I transformed the graphic to accurately reflect how Evangelicals view the world. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Life without God is empty. Eventually life without God comes to a very lonely and unfulfilled end – after you die. But life with God – after you die and are raised to life again – goes on forever, in indescribable joy!
The gist of this person’s comment is this . . . Atheists live empty lives that will come to a lonely, unfulfilled end.
I have given up trying to educate Christians concerning their ignorance about atheists. I have come to the conclusion that they simply do not want to know the truth.
Christians need to think that their lives matter above all others, that their worship and devotion to God will result in a divine payoff in the sweet by and by. They need to think that going to church on Sunday matters, that giving 10% of their income to the church matters, and that doing all the things the Christians do matters. To admit that atheists can have fulfilling lives that matter is to say that a person can have a good life without God. Christians will have none of that. No! No! No! GOD makes life worthwhile. GOD gives life purpose and meaning.
Here’s what I know. People are people, regardless of what they think about God. Purpose and fulfillment are not dependent on God. There are atheists who live unfulfilled, meaningless lives, but there are plenty of Christians who do the same. In fact, since Christianity is one of the largest world religions, I suspect there are far more Christians than atheists living unfulfilled, meaningless lives.
Atheists are often more focused on the present than Christians — especially Evangelicals. Christians tend to focus on the hereafter. Living and enjoying life is offloaded to eternal life beyond the grave. The present life is to be endured, with the result being that God gives Christians indescribable love, joy, and peace that goes on forever. Atheists, on the other hand, only have this life. They only have one opportunity to live life and live it well. Atheists are highly motivated to make what they can of this life, to enjoy this life, and to make the future a better place for their progeny.
Most Christians can’t accept how atheists view the world. They are too invested in their interpretation of the Bible, their worship of God, and the mansion that awaits them after they die, to admit that atheists can have a life that is, in every way, as happy as theirs.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
I enjoyed Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. A lot.
I saw it in the theatre twice. I have seen it many times on cable television.
A friend once took up, as a hobby, teasing me about inconsistencies in the production.
In a flashback, Butch the fighter has childhood eyes of different color than he has as an adult. After a shooting, Butch only partially wipes his fingerprints from a gun. He encounters a cab driver who has a license bearing a name the spelling of which does not fit what it should be for an immigrant from her home country.
The list goes on.
Jimmie is a brief reluctant host to a couple of friends who happen to be killers. His wall clock seems to stay at the same time from scene to scene. “Lightning fast action” my friend observed.
A microphone can be seen hanging briefly in reflection at the upper right corner of a window.
That sort of thing.
While it lasted, I had fun participating in my friend’s game. I would present him with explanations.
My own eyes changed color a few years ago. No idea why, but I had to ask for a change in my driver’s license. It happens.
Someone involved in a shooting might indeed fail to be completely diligent in removing evidence. Understandable.
Some bureaucracy misspelled a name? Or someone has a name that runs counter to prevailing culture? My name is “Burr” for God’s sake. Try that for unusual parental inspiration.
A stopped clock? Look at our kitchen. I’ve been telling my loved one for months I’ll replace the battery. I’ll get to it soon, I promise.
The movie microphone reflected in the window still has me stumped. Can’t think of an explanation. So I told him: Every home should have one. He didn’t buy it. When I think of something better, I’ll give him a call.
The bullets stopped me cold, though. Guy steps out with a hand gun and blazes away at two central characters. But at least two of the bullets are suddenly seen in the wall behind them before the guy fires a single shot. First the wall is unmarred, then there are bullet holes, then there are gunshots.
I thought about that movie incident after reading an account by former pastor and current atheist Bruce Gerencser. Bible reading Christians occasionally claim to know more than does he about why he made that transition from faith to atheism.
Bruce responds, reasonably, that he accepts at face value the stories of Christians about their own journey toward faith. He asks for similar respect in return.
All I ask is that Christians do the same, regardless of whether they can square my storyline with their peculiar theology. It’s my story, and who better to tell it than I?
Frequent correspondent Ryan adds his voice, quoting a critic:
“It is the Bible, not I, who says that you do not believe because you do not want to believe. It is because I have studied the Bible and found it to be a reliable predictor of human behavior that I tend to accept its explanation rather than your protestation.”
Who better to tell my story than I? Apparently, any stranger armed with a Bible.
Little irritates me more than people who claim to know what I think or feel or do better than I do after only a few minutes of conversation or after labeling me, especially if they think that a religious text qualifies them to do so.
As I see it, Ryan speaks wisdom.
I can empathize to the extent that I have roughly parallel experiences within my own extended family. One has, by unspoken mutual agreement, avoided contact for a number of years. It seems I am not a real Christian because I do not hate the requisite groups. And I do not realize the actual reason I only pretend to follow Jesus, while refusing to join in God’s hate for Obama, Hillary, and gays.
Another family member, a skeptic, is at the other end of the spectrum. She knows, better than do I, why I submit to my own insecurities, following sheep-like into Christian belief. Her diagnosis: It is mostly because of my inability to venture into independent thought. I notice her slowing her words way down as she gently describes to me the obvious emotional deficiency that limits my mental range.
Okay, I admit all that has the ability to irritate. I respond in what I hope is gentle sarcasm. I flatter myself, believing that I know my inward thoughts more than anyone else could. And I enjoy living in the illusion that I am capable of rationality.
My friend J. Myste teaches me that a little gentle mocking is not injurious to mental health. He once complimented me on my staggering intellect, which was evident in the mental gymnastics I showed in defending an absurd religion. He once added this:
However, I think you really believe that God has visited my heart. You could be right. Perhaps God is influencing me. Perhaps the exorcism is not yet complete.
The Bible experience to which Ryan was subjected is not that uncommon. I once watched in awe as a visitor searched frantically through his Bible for a verse he knew would settle an argument. The argument was about whether scripture is infallible.
Circular logic sometimes seems to find its orbit around me. My friends help me out occasionally, in discovering it in my own reasoning.
One zombie story from long, long ago still occasionally makes the rounds. A religious man describes to a friend how very impressed he is with a new acquaintance. The new fellow actually talks with God. The friend is curious.
“Talks with God? How do you know that?” “He said so himself!” “But maybe he lied!” “Would a man who talks with God lie?”
Unusual logic does not always flow in only one direction.
In my college days, a psych professor explained why religious beliefs are inherently absurd. Everything in the universe, including him and me, is merely an evolved combination of matter and energy. I remember suggesting that there is still wonder in our ability to analyze. If we are merely collections of matter and energy, then our universe of matter and energy is itself examined by a small number of its own collections of matter and energy. And that is a matter of wonder. There is a transcendence in consciousness.
He was dismissive. Consciousness, he said, is an illusion.
I regarded that with hidden amusement. I thought to myself, if consciousness is an illusion, who is around to be fooled?
I later discovered that he was presenting what had already become an aggressive argument when discussions of science and philosophy intersect. That aggressiveness sometimes approached antagonism. There was no room in a scientific worldview for consciousness.
Everything is composed of matter and energy. The only conclusion is that there is no such thing as consciousness.
I eventually happened upon Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest who was also a renowned paleontologist. I was amused at what I saw as an exercise in intellectual jujitsu. Teilhard agreed with a materialistic worldview. Everything is indeed composed of matter and energy. The only possible conclusion was that all matter and energy possess a sort of proto-consciousness that becomes something more as organisms evolve into complexity.
The late David Foster Wallace, in a famous commencement address, illustrated how the committed perspectives of two individuals could compel radically different conclusions. At first, I thought he was making fun of atheism. But with a little thought, I changed my mind:
There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer.
And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing.
“Just last month I got caught away from camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’”
And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.”
The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”
The atheist is right, from his perspective. The prayer for a winning lotto ticket may seem to be answered, but there had to have been several million unanswered prayers as well. Statistics are on his side.
My desperate prayers that our young Marine might return safely from the battle zones of Afghanistan prove only that most combat heroes come back unharmed. We don’t know how many prayers were answered only with tragedy, death, and grief.
Does prayer cast us into a sort of Schrödinger parallel timeline? How can we know what, if anything but chance, guided those Eskimos to us?
In some religious argument, I have the advantage of having no compelling case to make. I can provide what many Christians call witness to my own belief. But it does not come from a Paul-of-Tarsus-like epiphany. In fact, I experience faith as more a weakness of imagination.
I can grasp the intellectual argument made by materialists. I can envision the amazing constructs that carbon atoms can achieve when the right series of chance cosmic occurrences combine with a lucky lightning strike and a few billion years of evolution. I can see in my mind some series of combinations of matter and energy that make up my desk, my computer, me, my loved one, our children, and others whom I love.
That love represents a problem, at least for me.
I do not have the capacity to sustain that materialistic grasp in my daily life, or in the experiences that matter most to me. Am I really a group of atoms and energy swirls that loves other similarly configured groups? It is possible, but I cannot sustain that view. I measure some ethical value by my level of care for what Jesus tells me is the least of these. I care about justice and injustice. It matters to me what policies our government follows and who lives, who dies, who is provided for as a result.
In my life, there have been a few individuals I have most admired. In my best moments, I have been able to act in ways I believe might have earned their approval. At least I enjoy thinking that. They were able to maintain a materialistic worldview that supported a level of love, ethics, and meaning that I can only have aspired to follow.
But I have trouble reconciling my cares, my loves, my character, my consciousness, with a purely materialistic view.
There is nothing in my internal experience that I would expect others to find compelling, unless there exists some chance encounter with someone who finds a fit. I would guess internal evidence is often compelling only to the one doing the experiencing.
As a Christian, I do share a communal vulnerability. Our faith is historically based, at least in part. Our belief comes from our view of history.
I am not concerned with the truth or falsehood of the Virgin Birth or the astrologers traveling from points east. The census that required a trip to Bethlehem may be fictional. I enjoy the water-to-wine story and the raising of Lazarus, but neither is central to my faith. I’m okay with Jesus walking on water, or knowing which stone to step on, or surfing on a piece of driftwood, or simply standing on shore.
I do love the idea that God would come to earth as human, experiencing more temptation, pain, and struggle than most of humanity. So my faith would be shattered if it was proven to me that Jesus died running in panic from Gethsemane with a Roman spear in his back.
But even that twisting of the universe might reinforce what I already know: that the specifics of my religious faith are constructs that make a deeper truth comprehensible to me.
That may be why I enjoyed Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. It has to do with those bullets.
One of the gunmen in the path of those shots quickly decides that he ought to have been killed, that he is at the center of a miracle.
On the surface it seems absurd. He is, after all, in the business of terrifying, then killing, helpless victims. He seems to enjoy the evil he generates. He has fun destroying others. But then comes that moment of new clarity. God had come into his life.
His friend, the other gunman, disagrees.
“I just been sitting here thinking.” “About what?” “About the miracle we just witnessed.” “The miracle you witnessed. I witnessed a freak occurrence.”
The gunman explains: It doesn’t matter.
I mean, it could be that God stopped the bullets, or He changed Coke to Pepsi, or He found my … car keys. Whether or not what we experienced was an According-to-Hoyle miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God.
In the silence of the night, I can often close my eyes, look inward, and feel a presence not my own. Perhaps it is only a phantom reflection of myself, or maybe a form of prayer. It is possible that I sense only the breath and the pulse and the touch of life.
Only.
It could be that I experience the consciousness that my psychology professor called an illusion. I’m okay with the universe in which I dwell turning out to be the accidental matrix made up of molecules.
It still is my home.
In friendly argument with a friend, I mimicked traditional religious posture. After all, it seems to be the way of the world.
“We can agree to disagree,” I told him. “You worship God in your way. I’ll worship him in His.”
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Evangelicals, particularly Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB), have a strict definition of what a “good” marriage is. I was taught by my IFB pastors and professors and I later taught to church members a patriarchal and complementarian form of marriage and family. Husbands are to be the heads of their homes. Wives are to submit to their husbands in all things. Husbands and wives have strict roles. Husbands are to lead their families and be breadwinners. Wives are to be keepers of their homes, bearers of children, and coin-operated sex machines. Children are to obey their parents in all things under the penalty of corporal punishment for disobedience.
I spent most of my twenty-five years in the ministry teaching and modeling a patriarchal marriage to church members. Within that framework, Polly and I had a “good” marriage. It wasn’t until we began the slow process of leaving Evangelical Christianity that we realized we had a warped understanding of what constitutes a “good” marriage. We’ve been married for forty-three years. We were virgins on our wedding day. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that our marriage began to change in appreciable ways, moving from a complementarian marriage to an egalitarian one. Our marriage is very different today from what it was forty, thirty, or even twenty years ago. Is our marriage a “good” one? Maybe. Good is such a subjective term, meaning different things to different people. The same goes for dysfunctional marriages. By what standard do we determine whether a marriage is good or dysfunctional?
Years ago, I sold insurance for United Insurance in Newark, Ohio. I had one married couple who was a client that I saw each month. I would stop by their home to pick up their insurance premium, and inevitably they would start screaming at each other. They had been married for fifty years. The first time I heard them hollering, I thought they were going to kill each other. After months of watching them holler at each other, I realized the hollering was just a part of the ebb and flow of their life together. They deeply loved one another.
Polly and I have had more fights than I can count. I explain it this way. Temperamental Bruce loses his temper and hollers. Quiet, passive Polly says to herself, “I’m not putting up with his shit!” I will draw a metaphorical line in the sand, and Polly, with few words, will step right over the line. And then we fight, albeit briefly. I can’t remember a fight that lasted more than a few minutes. I can’t remember the last time we’ve had a fight that mattered. We deeply love one another, and according to our own standard, we are 98.9 percent of the time happily married. What works for us may not work for others. That’s why I don’t encourage couples to follow in our steps. We’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years. We’ve gone through tough times, some so serious that the future of our marriage was threatened (1981-82 comes to mind, when our second child was born, Polly devoted herself to two children under three, and I was working 60-70 hours a week for Arthur Treacher’s).
I take a live-and-let-live approach to life and marriage. It’s up to individual couples to judge the quality of their marriages. What may work for one couple may not work for another. This is not to say that there is no such thing as a “bad” marriage. I counseled countless Christian couples over the years, people who had “bad” marriages; marriages filled with violence, abuse, and infidelity. Oh, they may have loved Jesus, but they treated their spouses and children like dog shit on the bottom of their shoes. Over the years, I encouraged women to separate from their abusive husbands. Sadly, none did. I witnessed child abuse, and, quite frankly, practiced it myself when I whipped my three oldest sons. Fortunately, I came to understand that it is wrong to use violence (and beating children is violence, regardless of what the Bible says) to discipline children. Unfortunately, I can’t undo what was done in the past.
What are your thoughts on good, bad, and dysfunctional marriages? How do you describe your marriage? I would love to hear what you think.
I am content to say that I am happily married. If I had to do it all over again, I would still marry Polly. We’ve had a rough-and-tumble roll in the hay all these years. When it’s my time to die, I hope I have the opportunity to tell Polly one more time that I love her. Most of all, I want to be able to tell her, “thank you, it’s been good.”
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
I plan on taking some time off in the near future. I would love to have you write a guest post for this site, if you are interested. In particular, I am interested in hearing from people who would like to share their deconversion stories. Maybe you have posted your story elsewhere. I am more than happy to share it here. Perhaps you have never put your story into words. This is your chance to have thousands of people read your story! Don’t worry about whether your story is “good” enough or grammatically correct. Carolyn, my editor, will whip your story into fine form.
Posts on other subjects are welcome too. This offer is also open to my Evangelical critics, people who want to set me straight or deconstruct my life. Please send all submissions via the Contact Page.
Thanks for your help!
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
And whoever does not receive you nor listen to your words, as you leave that house or city, shake the dust off your feet. Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment, than for that city. (Matthew 10:14,15)
We do not take scripture lightly like that. You can ask why we [the royal WE] do not do the same thing to BG [Bruce Gerencser] and MM [Ben Berwick], after all, they have not received our words nor the truth. We have only considered that action recently but we hesitate. [Tee wrongly thinks I give a shit. By all means dust off your sandals! It’s not that I haven’t received Tee’s words, I have. Unfortunately, Tee the man gets in the way of anything he might say.]
Not so much for BG as he is beyond hope [how does Tee know this? Did God tell him?] but more for his readers. We would not want to harm anyone who may still have a chance to be saved [what about those who are already saved? Scores of Christians read this blog.] As for MM, we do not do it as there is still a chance that he will see the light and see the error of his ways and come to Christ.
We do not want to shut down any opportunity he may have of becoming a believer, even though his hatred of the truth is a major stumbling block for him. [I can’t wait to see what Ben has to say about this!] In using this type of instruction we really have to be careful as when we use it frivolously we may not be in God’s will and harm someone that may still come to Christ. [Tee is delusional. His atrocious behavior has been on display on this site and his blog for all to see. He has written (well, I write, he steals) more than thirty posts about BG and MM since January 1, 2022. He has done more to keep people away from Hey-Zeus than I ever could.]
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
