Category Archives: Life

When the Power Goes Out

The Cincinnati Reds are playing the New York Mets. The Reds have soundly thrashed the Mets the first two games of the series. The game features two tough pitchers, Matt Latos for the Reds and Matt Harvey for the Mets. It’s the eighth inning now and the score is tied. I sit here hoping the Reds will pull out an exciting ninth inning win.

It’s raining out. We need the rain. The garden is planted and Polly has flower seeds planted here and there in the yard. Without rain nothing grows, so the rain is a needed and welcome friend. I can feel the air cool as the temperature drops. I need a blanket.

And then it happens.

Pop. Blink. Silence. The power is off.

Dammit, I thought, Now I won’t know if the Reds won the game.

Silence.

I can’t hear the freezer or the refrigerator humming and the satellite DVR has ceased its constant clicking. All of a sudden, the house is eerily quiet. The noise of our electrified home is silenced by a line-dropping car accident, power surge, or blown transformer. It looks like all the homes in the one stoplight town of Ney have lost their power. Silence pervades the hundred homes that surround me.

As my ears begin to adjust to the silence, I notice voices I had not heard while the power was on, voices that are drowned out by the noise of modernity.

Birds. I hear numerous varying chirps and tweets. A mourning dove calls out with her haunting voice.

My neighbor is talking on his cellphone. I can hear every word he says and in the distance I hear children playing loudly. I hear car doors slam shut and I hear the tires of passing cars as they slosh through the water that covers the pavement.

The silence reminds me of what I lose when the television or sound system is blaring. Sometimes I think I fear silence. I don’t want to be left alone with my thoughts, with the sound of blood being pumped by my heart. Silence forces me to confront my mortality and my place in a culture that can not bear a moment of silence.

Click. Pop. The power is back on. I can hear the refrigerator and the freezer doing their work cooling and freezing our food. In a few minutes, the satellite DVR will finish its start-up process and I will be able to see if the Reds beat the Mets.

Yet, I find myself thinking, maybe the power needs to go off more often…so my ears and my mind can reset; so I can once again hear the tunes of the world I live in. I find myself thinking that silence is a catharsis we moderns need. As long as we have noise to entertain and occupy us, we need not think about what goes on outside our home. We need not think of our own mortality.

The Reds won 7-4.

The Victim Becomes a Victimizer

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Bruce, Ordination, 1983, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Buckeye Lake, Ohio

In the early 1960’s, my parents put their faith and trust in Jesus and our family joined the Scott Memorial Baptist Church in San Diego, California. Tim LaHaye was the pastor at the time. From this point forward, until I left the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement in the late 1980’s, I was immersed in IFB thinking, ideology, and practice.

When my parents moved us back to Ohio, we immediately found a “good” Bible preaching church to attend. Wherever we moved, and we moved a lot, my parents made sure we were going to an IFB or IFB-Like church.

I spent my teenage years attending Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. I lived in Findlay for almost four years. This was the longest time I lived in one place, even though I lived in three houses over four years. I spent 1973-74 living apart from my parents, splitting time living between two families in the church. (Bob and Bonnie Bolander and Gladys Canterbury)

As we all know, our teenage years are very important. It is during our teenage years we begin to develop critical thinking skills and we begin to develop a worldview. Of course, my worldview had God, the Bible, and IFB thinking smack dab at the center of it.

Not long after my parents divorced, I made a profession of faith in Christ and was baptized. Shortly after that, I told the church I was called to be be a preacher. From this point forward, I immersed myself in the IFB way of life.

I was a true-blue believer. When my less-spiritual church friends were drinking, smoking pot, and having sex…it was the 1970’s…I was going to church every time the doors were open, attending all-night prayer meetings, running a bus route, going out on visitation, carrying my Bible to school, and witnessing to classmates.

In every way, I was the real deal. Keep in mind my parents stopped going to church after they divorced. I went to church on my own, often riding my bike or walking to church. I sincerely believed the IFB church was the way, truth, and life.

When I had to move away from Findlay in 1974, I continued to involve myself in IFB churches no matter where I lived. While I had moments where I strayed from my IFB beliefs, for the most part, I remained a loyal-son of the IFB church.

In the fall of 1976, I enrolled, for the purpose of studying for the ministry, at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. Midwestern was an unaccredited IFB Bible college started in the 1950’s by IFB megastar Tom Malone. It specialized in training men for the ministry.

Bruce preaching to full house at Somerset Baptist Church, Somerset, Ohio 1986

I met my wife while at Midwestern, and in 1979 we left Midwestern and I began working at an IFB church in Montpelier, Ohio. (affiliated with the GARBC) For the next ten years, I pastored IFB churches.

In the late 1980’s, I moved away from the IFB church, embracing Calvinism and expository preaching. For a time, I was a Fundamentalist Calvinist, quite conservative, but, bit by bit, my theology, and, most importantly, my treatment of the people I pastored, changed. When I left the ministry in 2003, I was a long-long way from my days in the IFB church movement.

Those of you who have read this blog for years know everything I have written so far. Perhaps you are wondering, Bruce…do you have Alzheimer’s? This is old news to us. Smile First, I want new readers to understand how and why I got to where I am today. Second, it is important for me to write what I have written above so what I write next makes sense. If readers don’t understand my past, the context of my life, they will certainly misjudge what I am about to write.

The title of this post is, A Victim and a Victimizer. It could just as easily be titled, Abused and an Abuser. I am sure you are familiar with the fact that a person who was abused as a child is more likely to abuse their own children. Why is this?

Humans, like all animals, do what they know. They tend to do what they have been taught, what has been modeled to them by parents, extended family, and people they have intimate contact with. (i.e. teachers, preachers)

We also know that a child almost always chooses the religion of his parents, family, and culture. I could no more have become a Catholic than the Pope could have become an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist. I became exactly what I was raised and trained to be.

I am sure many of you can relate to this. We look back on our lives in the IFB church and we are embarrassed and ashamed. I know I have a lot of guilt over my past. Yes, I now realize that I was a victim, but I also realize that I was, for many years, a victimizer. Sometimes, I find a bit of mental relief when I remind myself that I was only doing what every church, pastor, and college professor taught me to do…but the relief quickly passes as I remind myself that I mistreated people.

Bruce preaching at Somerset Baptist Church 1986

Like every IFB preacher who has travelled a similar path, I reached a place where I had to embrace my “sins.” No, I wasn’t a child abuser. No, I never slept with women in the church. No, I never stole money from the church. No, I don’t have any criminal acts in my closet. Should I find comfort in the fact that I wasn’t as bad as some IFB pastors and church leaders?

In many ways, I was a good pastor. I loved the people I pastored and I sincerely wanted to help them. I was there for them, no matter the circumstance. I married them and buried them. I wept with them and rejoiced with them. I loaned them money, clothed their children, and gave them food to eat. I took them to the doctor, grocery store, and the welfare office. In these kind of things…I was a good pastor.

But, there’s the rest of the story.

I also was an arrogant, filled with certainty, hellfire and brimstone IFB pastor. I ruled the church as if it was my kingdom. I also ruled the lives of the people I pastored. I did this through my preaching. I preached on sin, their sins. I used the Bible as a club. What I thought was God calling out their sin was really me gutting them and showing their humanity to everyone.

Through “hard” preaching and high-pressure altar calls, I manipulated people into getting right with God. You see, I am a pretty good public speaker. I learned my craft well. At the time, I thought the response to my preaching was God working and moving, but I now see that I emotionally manipulated people to get the response I wanted. (after I became a Calvinist and an expositional preacher, these tactics stopped)

As an IFB pastor, I was the CEO of the church. I controlled everything. Anyone raised In the IFB church has heard the phrase “pastoral authority” countless times. My word was the law and those who dared to challenge me usually ended up leaving the church. Where did I get the idea to be so controlling? It was what was modeled to me by every church and pastor I was ever a part of. Even when I was in college, Tom Malone ruled the church, Emmanuel Baptist Church and the college with a rod of iron. (after all this is what the Bible taught, I was told)

I wanted to be like Tom Malone. A great orator who pastored a large church. He was my idea of the ideal preacher. There was no doubt who controlled Emmanuel Baptist Church and Midwestern Baptist College. Cross Tom Malone and you were out on your ear.

Tom Malone is revered in IFB circles. (he died a few years ago) What a great man of God. Yes, and he was an autocratic control freak, who, in the name of God, always got what he wanted.

As a preacher boy trained in HIS college, I emulated him when I started pastoring churches. The victim became the victimizer. I became what I was raised to be.

Yes, I find a small bit of comfort in the fact that my family and I escaped the abusive, mind numbing clutches of the IFB church movement. I am grateful we were able to find and develop a more healthy form of Christianity. (though I never lost the tendency to need to be the CEO of the church) But..finding a more healthy form of Christianity, and now embracing atheism, does not erase the emotional and mental damage I did to people when I was an IFB pastor.

When I come across former church members I always tell them, I am sorry. It seems so hollow, doesn’t it? I robbed people of their ability to think critically and I used the Bible to control and dominate their lives. I manipulated them, albeit sincerely, in the name of God. I’m sorry, doesn’t cut it.

Most of the people who made me the IFB preacher I was, are either dead or still plying their trade in the IFB church movement. Most of my former IFB colleagues are still in the IFB church movement. With great certainty, they continue to pass on the bankrupt, abusive heritage of the IFB church movement.

Why was I able to get away from it? Good question, a question that I have asked myself many times. My counselor told me it is very rare for people who were immersed in Fundamentalist religion like I was, to break free from it. The same goes for leaving the ministry altogether. Rarely does a man in his fifties, a man who spent his entire adult life in the ministry, walk away. They have too much invested to walk away.

But, I did. Am I special? Of course not. I have met hundreds of people like me, This blog is read by people who grew up like I did. They may not have been a preacher, but they know what it is to have their lives ruined by the IFB church.

We are however, a fraternity of survivors and if we have one goal, it is to make sure that other people do not get caught up in the mind-killing and soul-killing IFB church. (and this could be said about Evangelicalism too) We are broken people and we bear the scars of our past. We can’t undo the past. All we can do is embrace the past and do everything we can to make sure other people do not follow in our steps.

As a father, I am so glad that the generational curse of the IFB church has been broken with my children. I am so grateful that none of my grandchildren will be raised in mind-numbing, soul-killing Fundamentalism. They are free, thank the gods, they are free.

As for me, I continue to see a counselor and work through the past. By understanding my past I hope to be able to help others in the present. I can’t undo the past. At best, this blog is my penance, and as I get the Leaving the Faith Project up and running, I hope that I can in the latter years of my life help those caught in the web of Fundamentalism. It is the least I can do…

If you have not read the ongoing series, The Fundy World Tales, I encourage you to do so. It will help give you some insight as to my past.

Mother’s Day 2013

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On Friday, May 10th, my family and I celebrated Mother’s Day at the Red Pig Inn in Ottawa, Ohio. While the food was, much to our surprise, so-so and the service underwhelming, we had a wonderful time. All of my children and grandchildren were there, along with Polly’s Mom and Dad. (21 of us)

Here a few pictures I took of my family. I hope you enjoy them. The last picture was taken by my daughter Laura.

Our six children

Our eight grandchildren

The honored guests, three generations of mothers

Yours truly and his definitely better half. I shocked Polly…I bought her a corsage, something I have not done in over thirty years. Getting “soft” in my old age. Smile

These pictures reflect what life is all about for me. Family.

Northwest State Community College Graduation 2013

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Saturday, May 11th, our youngest son graduated from Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio. We are very proud of Josiah. In a few days, Josiah will turn 20, and we will officially no longer have any teenagers living in our home.

It seems like yesterday, Polly and I were a young married couple. Where has all the time gone? Once our youngest daughter graduates from Bowling Green State University in December, that will be it…that is until the grandkids get old enough to go to college. I hope I live long enough to see my grandkids grow up and become all they are meant to be.

An interesting note about the graduation at Northwest State. Three of our children, along with Polly, have graduated from Northwest State. This is the first graduation where they didn’t have a clergyperson give an invocation and benediction. Dare I hope that the powers that be at Northwest State have finally seen the secular light?

Here are a few pictures I took at the graduation of a fine, young man.

The Evolution of Bruce Gerencser

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One of the biggest problems I face with Christian commenters and letter writers is that they are unable or unwilling to understand my storyline in context. Instead, they often pick a point along my timeline and then judge me from what I was at that point in time. Unfortunately, this results in them making errant, incomplete judgments.

The timeline of my life makes one thing clear…I have changed, I am changing, and I have no doubts I will change in the future. The person who never changes their mind, beliefs, or way of life, is missing out on the possibilities that life might have for them if they would dare move forward.

Yes, move forward. Change is about moving forward. It is about contemplation and maturity. It is about admitting you were wrong. It is about making mistakes and learning from them.

Yes, change is hard and way too many of us, whether out of fear or arrogance, refuse to change. Over the years, I pastored several small, dying churches that knew they needed to change but they couldn’t bring themselves change. They died because of their willingness to live in the past and their unwillingness change when it was necessary to do so.

An unwillingness to change is intellectually stifling. It means we think we have arrived, that we KNOW all we need to know, and we are CERTAIN we are right. We forget that the Bible says, pride goeth before a fall. Filled with ourselves, we lose sight of our humanity and our own weakness and fallibility. As my counselor often reminds me, we have itty-bitty minds and we arrogantly think that with our itty-bitty minds we have everything figured out.

So, yes, I have changed and I will continue to do so. If you try to judge me based on where I was you will err in your judgment. As Thomas Merton taught me, Where I am is not where I was. I am constantly moving…

To understand this is to understand my evolution. To not understand this is to be the equivalent of a Young Earth Creationist who is bound to an ancient text and can not see the change that is all around them.

It is likely that I am not who or what you think I am. You remember me as your pastor, Christian friend, your dad, your husband,school classmate, or acquaintance. You likely have a static memory of me, but I am no longer that person. And tomorrow I will be a different person again.

Bruce, don’t you yearn for rest? Don’t you want to reach a place where you are a finished product? Surely, change can be bad, right?

Yes, change can be bad. I have made a lot of bad choices and decisions over the course of almost 56 years. I have made changes in my life that had a disastrous result; changes that left me wishing for a do-over.

But, there are no do-overs. All I can do is learn from the mistakes I have made. All I can do is make sure I don’t repeat the bad choices and decisions of the past. I know I will ignore what I have written here, and, in some cases, repeat the same bad choices and decisions. Sometimes, I have to learn the hard way, and when the price extracted from me is high enough I will then have learned my lesson.

I never want to reach a place where I have arrived, a place where I become settled. I always want there to be unanswered questions before me, It is these questions that drive me to seek and understand. It is these questions that are my lifeblood. Even as a Christian, I understood the importance of, Seek and Ye shall find…

I am who I am primarily because of my Mother. As a preschooler she taught me to read. From my youngest years, she taught me that knowledge was like a deeply satisfying drink on hot day. She encouraged me to read non-fiction books. She knew that reading was the only way I would ever understand the world I lived in. She also knew that if I was a good reader that I could do most anything I put my mind to.

She taught me to love books. She taught me shelves of books in a home were a sign of person who had a thirst for knowledge, a person who was not satisfied with the pat answers of teachers, politicians, and preachers. I literally owe her my life.

I know that potential change lives in the next book, blog post, or magazine I read. I look back over my life and I can clearly see how what I read brought about change. I find it amazing that words have such power and I am cognizant of this every time I put my own words out there for people to read.

Let me close out this post with a little Bob Dylan:

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

Dear Christian, Before You Hit Send

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This entry is part 6 of 6 in the seriesLetters

Dear Christian,

I have been blogging for going on six years. When I first started blogging, I was still a Christian. I was a liberal Christian with sympathies for the emerging/emergent church movement.

In my Christian blogging days, I would get emails from people I called the Keepers of the Book of Life. These people thought of themselves as TRUE Christians. They judged every other Christian by their own personal beliefs and interpretations of the Bible.

According to these Christians, I was not a “real” Christian.

In late 2008, I deconverted and became an atheist. Of course, my deconversion was proof to the above-mentioned Christians that they were right…I was not a “real” Christian. As one Christian said, we now know who the REAL Bruce Gerencser is.

Since 2008, I have received hundreds of emails from Christians. These emails are an attempt to witness to me, chastise me, judge me, correct me, ridicule me, challenge me, feign friendship with me, preach at me, attack me, or quote Bibles verses to me.

There are a handful of emails from Christians who sincerely want to understand my story and are willing not to make any judgments about me. All of these letter writers are liberal/progressive Christians. They accept my storyline as is and make no attempt to convert me or judge me.

However, the rest of the letter writers are of the Conservative or Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christian variety. They all have one thing in common. They are CERTAIN they are right and I am wrong. They are CERTAIN they worship the one, true, and living God. They are CERTAIN the Bible is the infallible, inerrant, inspired Word of God.

They are certain that their peculiar interpretation of the Bible is absolutely correct. They never consider the arrogance of such a claim or consider their own fallibility. Armed with certainty, they become insufferable bigots who attack anyone and everything that does not fit their narrow, truncated worldview.

And here YOU are…at the contact page. You have filled out your name. Did you use your real name or are you going to be a coward like so many Christians before you and use a fake name? You have filled out your email address. Did you use your real email address or are you going to be a coward like so many Christians before you and use a fake email address?

And now, you have written out your comment. You are proud of yourself. You have put in a good word for Jesus. You have put the preacher-turned-atheist in his place. You have given him a, THE BIBLE SAYS or a THUS SAITH THE LORD. Like a proud Peacock, you think you have really done a wonderful work for Jesus. You think that Jesus will someday say to you, Well done thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.

And now, you are ready to hit SEND. You pause for just a moment. Is that a twinge of conscience you have? Perhaps a doubt?

Before you hit SEND, let me talk to you for a moment.

Have you honestly taken the time to understand who I am? Have you bothered to read more than a post or two? Have you read the posts in the START HERE series? If you haven’t, how can you make a judgment about me without making any attempt to know me? Surely you know the Bible condemns such behavior?

Do you know that I was part of the Christian church for 50 years? Do you know that I was an Evangelical pastor for 25 years? Are you aware of the fact that I studied the Bible daily for over 30 years and that I preached thousands of sermons? Do you know that for the last 15 years in the pastorate I preached expositionally and that I preached over 125 sermons over 2 years from the Book of John?

You might ask, so what!! Well, here’s the so what… I know the Bible. I know it from every possible angle. Hundreds of emails from Christians, yet not one of them has told me something I did not know.

Does this sound arrogant to you? I am not concerned with how this “sounds” to you. I want you to consider the fact that I have read and studied the Bible over 20,000 hours in my lifetime. I have spent more time reading and studying the Bible than I have going to the bathroom, having sex, or eating.

I have spent 130 weeks or 2 years and 6 months, reading and studying the Bible. So, yes I know the Bible, and yes there is nothing you can tell me that I have not read or heard before. There is nothing you can say that cause me to proclaim, Wow, I never saw that before!! Dear Jesus, Save me!! I believe!!

I am an atheist because I don’t believe in the existence of gods. Am I certain? Of course not, No atheist can be CERTAIN, and unlike you, we are willing to admit we are uncertain. This is why most atheists are agnostic on the God question. We are certain that the gods in the panoply of gods created by humans are no gods at all, but…maybe there is a god who has not yet revealed itself to us. Probable? No. Possible? Sure.

When it comes to Christianity, I have weighed it the balances and found it wanting. I know the Bible is not what Christians claim it is. It is not an infallible, inerrant, or inspired book. It is an admixture of myth, legend, and history. It has great wisdom but it also has commands and teachings that must be dismissed and condemned by people who consider mercy, justice, and peace important.

I am not a Christian because I choose NOT to be one. I did not deconvert because I was angry or hurt. At the end of the proverbial day, I left Christianity for intellectual reasons. I no longer believe the claims of Christianity to be true.

If you have read what I have written above, I hope you know quoting the Bible to me will have no effect. I am an apostate, and according to the Christian Bible, I am a fool with a seared conscience. There is no hope for me since I have trampled under the blood of the covenant and hath done despite unto the spirit of grace. (Hebrews 10:29)

I don’t think the God you worship exists. Telling me I am living in denial or that there are no atheists in foxholes, will have no effect on me. I don’t think Jesus was divine, I think he was a good man who lived and died.

I don’t think there is an afterlife, a heaven or a hell. I think we make heaven or hell for ourselves and others by how we live our lives. So, knowing this, don’t bother to threaten me with God’s judgment or hell. I am immune to such things.

Perhaps you are getting ready to tell me that you are going to pray for me. Don’t bother. I don’t need your prayers and I am not afraid of your praying power. There are Christians who are praying for God to kill me…yet here I am. There are Christians who are praying that God will reveal himself to me…yet he hasn’t. There are Christians who are praying that God will save and deliver me…yet…he hasn’t. Take the hint. God doesn’t want to be bothered and neither do I.

Nothing you write in your email will make one bit of difference. I hope you understand this. After all, God frowns upon those who waste their time in foolish, unproductive endeavors. Instead of writing me an email, why not spend your time helping someone in a nursing home or local jail.

Now, if you have a question you would like me to answer, I will be glad to answer it. I will politely answer your question. Please do not take my polite answer to your question as an invitation to have an email debate with me. I am not interested, and, as one recent writer found out, when I am attacked, after I have been polite and respectful, I am liable to tell you, with words you are not likely to hear in church, what I think of you.

Perhaps you are a, let’s be friends, Christian. Sorry, I don’t want to be your friend. Let’s face it…we have nothing in common. Dozens of Christians have taken the, let’s be friends, approach with me, and, in every case, they had an ulterior motive or became upset at me because I wrote something that “offended” them.

Besides, the Bible is clear. Friendship with the world is enmity with God and you are commanded not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. We all like to hang out with people who think like us…so, if you really need friends, I suggest you visit any of the thousands of churches that populate the street corners of America.

Perhaps you are an armchair psychologist and you know, contrary to what I say, that I have deep emotional or mental problems. Surely, no one in their right mind would ever walk away from Jesus after they have intimately known him for 50 years. There must be a secret reason for my deconversion.

Whatever my emotional or mental state may be, you are not qualified to make any judgments on these things. I see a psychologist on a regular basis…so I am good. Really, I am…

Well, you have read all of this and you are STILL going to hit SEND, aren’t you? Like hundreds before you, you don’t care what I think. Sending me an email isn’t about me at all…it is about you. It is all about your need to be right or feel superior.

Perhaps, YOU are the one who needs to see a psychologist. Perhaps she can help you with your need to take a passive-aggressive approach to people like me. Perhaps she can help you see that your attack of me is actually you revealing that you are not as certain about your beliefs as you say you are and that you think if a person like me can fall from grace so can you.

Most Christians who hit SEND will ignore everything I have written in this letter. It doesn’t matter to them that they are causing others to look poorly on Christianity, on their Jesus. They are convinced that God is leading, directing, or telling them to hit SEND. They never consider that the voice they are hearing might be their own.

Dear Christian, I thought you might want to know these things. What you do next will say a lot about what kind of follower of Jesus you really are.

Sincerely,

Bruce Gerencser

Why Doesn’t God Heal the Sick?

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Take a look around you. Do you know anyone who is sick? Do you know anyone who is suffering? Are many of them Christians? I am sure you have quietly asked yourself, WHERE is their God? Why does God ignore their pain and suffering? Why does it seem God is more interested in Tim Tebow scoring a TD than he is dear Christian Aunt Suzie finding relief from her suffering?

According to orthodox Christian belief, God is all-knowing and all-powerful. God knows who will be sick, who is sick, and what their outcome will be. God has unlimited power to heal them or keep them from getting sick. According to Christians, God is an AWESOME God and he can do ANYTHING!!

Ask yourself, how awesome of a father would I be if I saw my child suffering, knowing I could do something about it, and did nothing? I would rightly be considered an evil man, perhaps even subject to criminal charges.

But, God gets a free pass. When a plane crashes and one passenger out of the hundred that boarded the plane survives, God is praised for deliverance of the one passenger. He delivered 1% of the passengers. What about the other 99%? Were they not worthy of being delivered by the awesome God who can do anything?

Christians can say what they will, but look around…God is nowhere to be found. Every once in awhile a healing is attributed to God, but, for the most part, people get sick, suffer, and die. Christians go to the grave praising a God who they just know will be waiting for them on the the other side. If he wasn’t around when they really needed him, when they were suffering and in great pain, what makes them think God will be around once they get to the Promised Land?

Of course, Christian pastors have all kinds of answers for the issues I raise here. Sam Storms, in an article on the Resurgence website, had this to say:

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this [thorn], that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” 2 Corinthians 12:8–9

God loved the Apostle Paul. Yet God sovereignly orchestrated Paul’s painful thorn in the flesh and then declined to remove it, notwithstanding Paul’s passionate prayer that he be healed.

We are not apostles. Yet, God loves us as his children no less than he loved Paul. We don’t know the nature of Paul’s thorn, but each of us has undoubtedly suffered in a similar way, and some considerably worse.

We, like Paul, have prayed incessantly to be healed. Or perhaps knowing of a loved one’s “thorn,” we have prayed for him or her. And again, as with Paul, God declined to remove it.

Why?

It’s hard to imagine a more difficult, confusing, and controversial topic than why God chooses not to heal in response to the intercessory pleas of his people. I don’t profess to have all the answers, but I think I’ve got a few.

Storms goes on to list seven reasons why God might not heal someone. I have put these reasons in statements that are easy to understand:

A Lack of Faith-Occasionally healing does not occur because of the absence of that sort of faith that God delights to honor. This does not mean that every time a person isn’t healed, it is because of a defective faith, as if healing inevitably follows a robust and doubt-free faith. But it does mean that faith is very important…
Sin in the Person’s Life-Sometimes healing does not occur because of the presence of sin for which there has been no confession or repentance. James 5:15–16 clearly instructs us to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another that we may be healed.
A Lack of Desire to be Healed-Odd as it may sound to hear it, healing may not happen because the sick don’t want it to happen. Jesus asked the paralyzed man in John 5:6, “Do you want to be healed?” What on the surface may appear to be a ridiculous question is, on further examination, found to be profoundly insightful. Some people who suffer from a chronic affliction become accustomed to their illness and to the pattern of life it requires. Their identity is to a large extent wrapped up in their physical disability.
A Lack of Praying-We must also consider the principle articulated in James 4:2, where we are told, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” The simple fact is that some are not healed because they do not pray. Perhaps they pray once or twice, and then allow discouragement to paralyze their petitions. Prayer for healing often must be prolonged, sustained, persevering, and combined with fasting.
The Person is Influenced by Demons-Some are not healed because the demonic cause of the affliction has not been addressed. Please do not jump to unwarranted conclusions. I am not suggesting that all physical disease is demonically induced…
Because God has a Reason and He is not Telling-We must also consider the mystery of divine providence. There are undoubtedly times and seasons in the purposes of God during which his healing power is withdrawn or at least largely diminished. God may have any number of reasons for this to which we are not privy, whether to discipline a wayward and rebellious church or to create a greater desperation for his power or to wean us off excessive dependence on physical comfort and convenience or any number of other possibilities
Because God Wants to Teach You a Lesson and Make the Person Stronger-Oftentimes there are dimensions of spiritual growth and moral development and increase in the knowledge of God in us that he desires more than our physical health, experiences that in his wisdom God has determined can only be attained by means or in the midst of or in response to less-than-perfect physical health. In other words, healing the sick is a good thing (and we should never cease to pray for it), but often there is a better thing that can be attained only by means of physical weakness…

For those of us raised in the Evangelical church, we have heard each of these statements many times as church leaders attempted to explain why so many Christians are sick and why God doesn’t seem to be healing them.

Did you see a common theme in Sam Storms reasons? It is YOUR fault if you are not healed. You lack faith, have sin in your life, don’t pray enough, are influenced by demons, or you really don’t WANT to be healed.

Of course, this is Evangelicalism 101. The sinner is always to blame. God gets a free ride because be is an AWESOME God and he has a wonderful, super-duper plan for our lives. God gets credit anytime something good happens, but when bad things happen God is absolved of any culpability. (if only life was like this) Smile

Storms does allow for the fact that maybe the reason a person is not healed is because God has a mysterious plan that he is not sharing with the sick person OR God has a lesson he wants to teach the person.

Why would anyone want to worship a God who uses suffering and sickness to teach people a lesson? Why would anyone want to worship a God who leaves people in pain because they don’t do EXACTLY as he says and even if they do EXACTLY as he says, he still leaves them in their pain? In other words, the suffering Christian is damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

This is why Christian pastors often teach that life is meant to be endured, a test from God. Those who endure to the end will be saved, the Bible says. If the Christians bears all the cans of whoop-ass that God opens up and pours out on their lives, God promises to give them a real nice place in Heaven after they die.

I find the humanist approach to suffering and sickness superior to the Christian view. As a humanist, I know there is no deity behind the health problems I have. Genetics, environment, lifestyle choices, and a healthy dose of, we don’t know why, are the reasons I am disabled and live with unrelenting pain, fatigue, and loss of muscle strength.

When I go to the doctor, I expect him to help me IF he can. I have told him many times, I don’t expect you to heal me. All I want is for you to help me as much as you can. The rest? I just have to live with it, and when I no longer want to live with it…well…I won’t live with it any longer.

As a humanist, I embrace my life as it is. I don’t live in hope of a divine payoff in the sweet by and by. This is my life and it is the only one I have. Either I embrace my life as it is and make the most of it or I roll over and die.

I know this seems hard and cold but it better than living under the Christian delusion that if really, really pray God might, if he is not too busy, heal me. Imagine going to the doctor every week for six months, and every time you went to the doctor he wasn’t there. I suspect, after a while, you’d be looking for a new doctor.

And that is exactly what I have done. I no longer have need of the mythical, absent Great Physician. I choose to embrace my humanity and hope that those who love me will help me when I need it.

Freshlike Peas, Just Peas, Right?

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Several nights ago, I decided I wanted something to eat. It was late…so I thought…I would eat a can of vegetables. Vegetables are good for you, right?

I opened the can, put them in a glass bowl, popped them in the microwave, and in a few minutes they were ready to eat. I took the bowl to the bedroom, sat down, and started to eat the peas.

Right away, I knew something wasn’t right. I told Polly, these peas taste way too sweet. They taste like sugar has been added. Polly assured me, that I was imagining the sugar. Surely, no one puts sugar in canned vegetables.

I ate the peas…went to bed…and the next morning I went to the cupboard to take a look at the canned Freshlike vegetables we bought several weeks ago. Come to find out the peas DID have sugar-added.

Now, peas have a carbohydrate value, but with the sugar added it dramatically boosts the carbohydrate and calorie value.

A non-sugared 1/2 cup serving of peas is about 7g of carbohydrates and 59 calories.

The sugar-added Freshlike peas have 19g of carbohydrates for a 1/2 cup serving. Each serving is 110 calories.

So, eating a can of Freshlike peas is almost the same as eating a King Size Snickers bar. Trust me, I will take a Snickers every time. Smile

My “healthy” snack was 385 calories and 67g of carbohydrates, 21% of the daily carbohydrate allowance for a non-diabetic person. Since I am diabetic, eating a can of sugar-laden Freshlike peas was NOT a good idea.

Freshlike, canned by Allen Canning Co, in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, should clearly list on the FRONT of the label that they have added sugar. (none of the other Freshlike canned vegetables we bought had sugar-added)

In the process of taking another look at the label, I also found out that there is only 9.1 ounces of peas in the 15 ounce can. I did not know this and this resulted in me doing the math…I am paying, on sale, 79 cents for 9.1 ounces of Freshlike peas. Thus, a 1 pound bag of frozen peas priced at less than a 1.39, is cheaper than a can of sugar-added Freshlike peas. In most cases, I can buy a 1 pound bag of frozen peas for less than 1.39. On sale they are often 99 cents a bag. (or I can by them in bulk, 5 pound bags) It looks like Freshlike lost a customer.

Of course, the peas I am really waiting for are the FRESH, and not FRESH-LIKE, peas we planted a week ago . Everything is up…and when the harvest starts coming in the vegetable cans in the cupboard dwindle.

Sierra Vista, Arizona 1974-75 Part One

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This entry is part 1 of 1 in the seriesSierra Vista Arizona 1974-1975

Bruce and Sunday School Class atop Miller Peak, 1975

After my parents divorced, Dad remarried and moved us to Tucson, Arizona. I attended Rincon High School to finish out tenth grade and then I moved back to Ohio to live with my Mom.

After a few months with my Mom, I moved to Findlay, Ohio to live with a family in the church I attended when we lived in Findlay. I attended Findlay High School and didn’t miss a day of school until the last week of school.

I decided that I wanted to move back to my Mom’s home in Bryan, Ohio. She was having a lot of problems and I thought I could be a help to her. Because I left school a week early, Findlay High School refused to grant me credit for the eleventh grade. This meant that I would not be able to graduate on time in 1975.

My best friend, Dave Echler, had dropped out of school and I decided I would follow suit. My Mom objected, but I told her I was going to drop out no matter what anyone said. So, I dropped out, got a job, and bought a 1960 Mercury Comet. In my eyes, life was great.

In October of 1974, my mother was admitted to the State Mental Hospital in Toledo, Ohio. My siblings and I played house for weeks until my Dad found out about it and drove from Arizona to get us.

Dad packed us up and drove us back to his new home in Sierra Vista, Arizona. To this day, I grieve over leaving my Mom in the State Mental Hospital. I can only imagine the pain our move to Arizona caused her. Dad certainly did what was best for us but what about Mom?

Bruce, Age 18, 1975

Dad drove us to Arizona in a beige 1960 Dodge truck. It had a camper on the back of it that carried all our worldly goods. Somewhere near Amarillo, Texas Dad had to stop and get the truck repaired. The back rims on the truck had somehow cracked and had to be replaced.

When I first lived with my Dad, we lived in Tucson. Tucson proper sits at an elevation of 2,643 feet. It is surrounded by mountains, some of them towering to almost 10,000 feet. Dad had moved to Sierra Vista during the time I was back in Ohio, and as we neared Sierra Vista, I realized that Sierra Vista was no Tucson.

The elevation of Sierra Vista is 4,623 feet. It is surrounded by several mountain ranges and off in the distance I could easily see Miller Peak, reaching into the sky at 9,466 feet. Sierra Vista was the best of both worlds, desert at the lower elevations and snowy mountain peaks at the higher elevations.

Sierra Vista was a small community in 1974. Butting up against Sierra Vista is the U.S. Army post Fort Huachuca. Today it is a community of 43,000 people. My younger brother lives east of Sierra Vista in the village of Tombstone.

I found a job in Sierra Vista working for Food Giant. It was a union job. I worked at Food Giant until a few months before I moved back to Ohio. I also worked at Yellow Front, a small variety store.

Being a good Baptist, I sought out a Baptist church to attend. At the time, there wasn’t an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church in the area, so I started attending Sierra Vista Baptist Church, a Conservative Baptist church.

Sierra Vista Baptist Church was a Fundamentalist church that had strict standards. The church membership included a number of military officers and soldiers. One such officer was Chuck Cofty. Chuck Cofty left military after 22 years and is now an Evangelist.

Cofty was an ardent Fundamentalist. I remember one time Cofty coming to me complaining about my girlfriend’s skirt being too short. Evidently, he had seen her bent over and she was showing too much skin. I told him he shouldn’t look. Cofty and I never got along after this.

Another man in the church, August Jaxel, took an interest in me. August was a never-married older man. He also was a pilot. I believe he worked for the government. I have nothing but respect for August, even though I am sure he thinks me being an atheist is quite disappointing. I will always be grateful for all the good advice and support August gave me while I lived in Sierra Vista.

I immersed myself in my job at Food Giant and I became an active member of the Sierra Vista Baptist Church. I worked in the bus ministry and I helped teach Sunday school. I also sang in the choir.

It wasn’t long before I noticed an attractive woman in the church by the name of Anita Farr. Her family had moved from Elmira, New York to Sierra Vista. Anita worked for a local pizza place. We began dating, and for the spring and summer of 1975 we were inseparable.

I was madly in love with her. She was a couple of years old that me and much more experienced in the ways of the world. I dated a lot of church girls but Anita was a woman, not a church girl. She was a committed Christian but she had a rebellious streak that irritated some people in the church, along with her parents. (she wore short skirts and served beer at the pizza place)

Anita had an early 1960’s Ford Mustang and I had a late 1960’s Ford Falcon. We drove all over Southern Arizona visiting the sites. We even drove to Mexico to spend the day. It was a wonderful, exciting time.

And just like that, it ended. In the fall of 1975, Anita left Sierra Vista and returned to college in Phoenix. (it is now called Arizona Christian University) We tried to make the relationship work but I was quite jealous (to this day I don’t know if my jealousy was justified or not) and several months later I broke up with Anita and moved back to Ohio.

This is a multipart story. Please check back for the next episode.

The Way Forward

Featuring the Writing of Bruce Gerencser

Category Archives: Life

When the Power Goes Out

The Victim Becomes a Victimizer

Mother’s Day 2013

Northwest State Community College Graduation 2013

The Evolution of Bruce Gerencser

Dear Christian, Before You Hit Send

Why Doesn’t God Heal the Sick?

Freshlike Peas, Just Peas, Right?

Sierra Vista, Arizona 1974-75 Part One

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