Over the weekend, Adam Stockford, the mayor of Hillsdale Michigan, posted to his personal Facebook account and his official campaign account the post I had written about him last month. Titled MAGA Mayor Adam Stockford Says Hillsdale, Michigan is a “Traditional Values” Community, I wrote about Stockford’s use of the phrase “traditional values.” As expected, Stockford re-posting my article led to his acolytes coming after me personally. I detailed their “love” yesterday in a post titled Did You Know I am a Traitor, Communist, Marxist, a Danger to America, and an Awful Writer Too? One Hillsdale man named Ronald Cook has made it his personal mission to attack me, both publicly and privately. Cook spent twenty years in the military, achieving the rank of sergeant. After retiring, he spent the next twenty years working as a corrections officer. As you will see in a moment, Cook is a bully, making me wonder how much his forty years in authoritarian jobs helped to shape him into the hateful man he is today.
What follows is a Facebook Messenger “discussion I had with Cook over the past three days. As you will see, Cook’s hostility toward me escalated quickly, so much so that I reported him to Facebook. Some of you have been after me to take threats of violence more seriously, so I heeded your advice and acted accordingly. I have not yet heard back from Facebook.
This first comment is what Cook said on Stockford’s personal Facebook page.
Cook says that I should do the world a favor by standing in front of a speeding train and killing myself. He also says that I am a child molester. I don’t understand people like Cook. I didn’t insult him or say anything inflammatory, yet Cook went after me like a terrorist in Afghanistan or an inmate who dared to talk back to him. Cook is certainly not the first, nor will he be the last to threaten me with violence. What concerns me is that Cook only lives 30-45 minutes from my home. He definitely has anger issues and violent tendencies, so I don’t want to provoke him further.
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.
Thank you for your speedy reply. Not expected but grateful. A wise man once said; “…electricity is real, but you can’t see it.” This is what you are saying I guess. Albert Einstein stated “I believe in Spinoza’s God “. He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naive. He clarified however that, “I am not an atheist”, preferring to call himself an agnostic, or a “religious nonbeliever.”
I replied:
No, what I am saying is this: there is no evidence for the existence of a God, especially the Christian deity. Is it possible that someday a deity of some sort might make itself known to us? Sure. Unlikely, but possible. So that’s why I am an agnostic atheist. Practically speaking, I live my day-to-day life as an atheist. The only time I think about God at all is when writing for this site or doing an interview for other sites or news organizations. Life is too short to spend much time thinking about mythical beings.
Langley then sent me a lengthy response, to which I shall reply below. :
Well then we are both at a conundrum about our communication. You say one thing I say another. That’s fine left as it is you would agree.
All I did is explain my beliefs. What should I have said, instead? In the world I live in, disagreements are common, frequent, and encouraged. Is that not the case for Pastor Langley?
After lengthy reading most of your site, (10 minutes you calculated me).
Based on the server logs, Langley read less than 30 of the 4,588 published posts on this site. This means Langley read .00654307 percent of my posts — definitely not “most of your site.” Nor do the logs suggest he spent a lot of time reading my writing. Granted, he could have multiple IP addresses, but even then, it would take weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to read “most” of my posts. I will leave it to Langley to explain his words. Perhaps he is “evangelistically speaking” — a method used by preachers to exaggerate church attendance, offerings, salvation decisions numbers.
You are a very prolific writer as seen on your web site. Maybe this web crawler will show a different time that I spent reading.
Yes, I am a prolific writer, much like I was a prolific preacher back in my preaching days (4,000 sermons). This blog is my job. I spend a significant amount of time each week reading Evangelical blogs, websites, and social media accounts. Since this site focuses on three things: my journey from Evangelicalism-to-atheism, critiquing Evangelicalism, and exposing criminal behavior by Evangelical preachers through the Black Collar Crime series, it is important for me to do my homework before writing a post.
I have been blogging for fifteen years. All told, I have written millions of words. I am a writer. This is what I do. The issues I write about matter to me, as they do the thousands of people who read my work. I make no apology for being “prolific.” Because I AM prolific, I am going to call out Evangelicals who say they have read most or all of my writing.
You certainly tore into my small paragraph, taking several paragraphs to break down every statement.
Okay? I am going to do the same with Langley’s latest email to me. What? Doesn’t he want me to respond? Maybe not. Rarely does a week go by when I don’t publicly respond to Evangelicals who email me or message me on social media. Again, doing so is my job. As far as “tearing” into Langley, he really should read more of my writing. I definitely didn’t give him the full “Bruce Gerencser Treatment®.” 🙂
From your side of the fence you did a great job too. You are not the only person that I have come in contact with as I am 68 years old. I have been preaching/pastoring for 35 years.
I assume there are a few words missing in the “you are not the only person that I have come in contact with” sentence. I assume he means “atheist” or “Evangelical-turned-atheist.”
I cannot say that I will continue in our correspondence. Couple reasons. If I were to be out Soul Winning and ran into to you there would be no argument, attack, preaching, etc. as you have stated many have come after you on the web site. Thus you set some rules and guidelines.
By the way our childhood’s are not so far apart. We all have a past. We don’t choose our parents they say. The other reason is that you would do the same thing as we are doing through this communication, and I would respect you and move on. There would be no attack, no preaching, no disrespect at all. So do not look for much more than you have been given. You obviously do not want to take up all your precious time with this type exchange.
I am more than happy to continue interacting with Langley, as I am every person who contacts me. As far as this site having contact and commenting guidelines, I have these things in place because of the nasty, hateful emails, comments, and messages I receive from Evangelicals — especially Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB). Preachers, by the way, are the worst. They alone would be reason enough for me to reject Christianity,
It is just so odd to me when people say that they can know there is no God! Really.
Here’s the thing, I never said this. I made it clear to Langley that I am an agnostic atheist (as most atheists are).
Now, if the question is whether I believe the Bible God exists, I can confidently say “no.” I cannot, however, say with certainty that no deity of any sort exists. Doubtful? Yes. Probable? No. And that’s why I live my day-to-day life as an atheist (as does my wife). God is not part of my life in any way outside of my writing and speaking engagements.
That’s like taking a gamble on your life and everyone you win over to this thinking. I am sure you hae heard it all before; “What if you are wrong?” and the other one goes like; “To live the Christian life is not a bad way to live.”
Sigh. (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh”.)Here comes Pascal’s Wager, a terrible apologetic if there ever was one. Besides, Langley, doesn’t practice what he preaches. If he did, he would also be a Muslim, Jew, Mormon, and Hindu. Langley never asks himself, “what if I am wrong”? If he did, he would cover all his bases. Instead, he presupposes Christianity to be true.
As far as the “Christian life” not being a bad way to live, I couldn’t disagree more. As an atheist and a humanist, I am free to love, respect, and befriend everyone — I mean REALLY love and respect them — including LGBTQ people. Evangelicals are known for what? “Othering” people; neatly putting people into two categories: saved-lost, saint-sinner, Heaven-Hell, in-out. I prefer a world where freedom and choice are paramount; where the humanistic ideal reigns supreme.
As an unwashed, uncircumcised Philistine, my life is better in every way post-Jesus. Why in the world would I ever want to return to the garlic and leeks of Egypt? Since there is no Hell (or Heaven) I can’t think of one good reason to get up on Sunday and go to church. Besides, I already go to church, three services of the week: Church of the NFL.
So far I have seen the Bible proven wrong. In fact there seems to be many Historians that has proven much of it. Along with many great Scientists, whether they were believers or not there is proof from both sides in that field.
I will make Langley the same offer I have made to other people who tell me “the Bible has never been proven wrong.” The inerrancy and infallibility of the Protestant Christian Bible cannot be rationally, historically, or scientifically sustained. Langley has spent most of his sixty-eight years of life in the Evangelical bubble. His understanding of the Bible has been shaped and molded within the safe confines of the bubble. (Please see The Danger of Being in a Box and Why it Makes Sense When You Are In It and What I Found When I Left the Box.)
If Langley happens to read this post, I would like to offer him a free copy of one of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books on the history and nature of the Bible. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina. I will gladly buy the book for Langley and have it shipped to his home in Oklahoma. I have made this offer numerous times over the years. Not one Evangelical preacher has accepted my offer. Some Evangelicals have read Ehrman’s books after I recommended them. Some of them later deconverted. (Jim Elliff says, Avoid Bart Ehrman, He Could Cause You To Lose Your Faith!)
So with that said I will wait for your response and not sure if it will warrant mine. You have said in this second answer already something that makes me believe that you do not know for sure about something.
Quote: “Is it possible that some day a deity of some sort might make itself known to us? Sure. Unlikely, but possible.”
I lack certainty on most things in life. I have confidence based on knowledge, probabilities, and lived experiences, but “certainty”? That is the realm of Evangelicals who are certain about all sorts of things, even though knowledge, probabilities, and lived experiences suggest they shouldn’t be.
As far as God and the central claims of Christianity are concerned, I am confident that my beliefs are correct. Langley hasn’t said anything that would cause me to change my mind or doubt my present beliefs. I have interacted with thousands of Evangelicals over the years. It’s been years since I have heard a novel argument, proving that Solomon was right when he said “there’s nothing new under the sun.”
You will have to read your email to me to understand. Of course you were correcting me so it may appear that you do not want to learn from anyone but Teach what you either believe, feel, or just aren’t sure of so you reject it.
I am always open to learning new things. However, Christianity is founded on the Bible. I spent thousands and thousands of hours reading and studying the Bible. It’s not a magical book, as Evangelicals claim, providing new information every time you read it. I have done my homework. Do I know “everything”? Of course not. But, I am confident that I understand the Bible, complete with its errors and contradictions. Langley is free to enlighten me, but I suspect, as readers shall see below, that he has no new light to offer.
Moral lives do not make an Eternity difference they just make a Moral life. When life ends then the question and subject you and have had will be up to you, but BEFORE DEATH you cannot do anything AFTER DEATH, which you are stating yourself. I say there are two, Hell or Heaven. To go to Hell do nothing. To go to Heaven one must Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ by Confessing our Sin asking God to Forgive us and believing that Jesus alone saved us by His death on the cross, his shed blood.
Ah, here comes the sermon, the soulwinning appeal. Does Langley think I have never heard these things before? Or did he feel led by the Holy Spirit to say them? Or, perhaps his words are for the lurkers and doubters who read my writing?
Besides, Langley is a Baptist. Once saved, always saved, right? If that’s the case, I am still a born-again Christian, and when I die, I will go to Heaven. Or, will Langley say I never was a “real Christian”? I will have to wait to see how he responds.
I certainly understand all of what you said about Christian, Church People Hurt the worst in those 35 years. Been there too sir.
Langley actually knows very little about my life. His comment reveals that he has read very little of my autobiographical material. Had he done his homework, he would have learned that “hurt” played almost no part in my deconversion. I have chosen not a be Christian because I weighed the central claims of Christianity in the balance and found them wanting. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
I just have to say “forgive me” Jesus suffered more than anyone at the hands of the human race and he was a human at the time, proven by Historians you well know, He was real just you and I have two points of view on these things it seems.
Yes, Jesus was real, but he was also, according to the Bible, God. We have no idea what he actually felt or experienced. After all, God was able to impregnate a Jewish teenager, so it is possible that Jesus’s death was for show. Regardless, Jesus suffered for all of six or so hours. He most certainly did not “suffer more than anyone.” I have battled chronic illness and unrelenting pain for years. I know suffering. I would gladly trade Jesus’s suffering for mine if it meant I would not suffer afterward. I know scores of people who would do the same.
All Langley and I can say is that Jesus was a Jewish man who lived, died, and is buried in an unknown grave somewhere in Palestine. Just because the Bible says something doesn’t mean it is true. The extant evidence suggests that Jesus was some sort of itinerate preacher who attracted, at most, a couple of hundred followers before he died. There’s no evidence, outside of the Bible, for the resurrection of Jesus or the miracles attributed to him. You would think Jesus would have made the front page of the Jerusalem Press a time or two, but he didn’t. Surely first-century historians would have been raving about his mighty works, yet they said almost nothing. Maybe, just maybe, the claims Christians make for Jesus are false.
Thank you again for the communication.
David Langley
Sinner saved by Grace of God
Unworthy but Grace was given
And as you have stated, trying to live a moral life, love family, love wife of 49 years
Praying that your health improves.
I will skip responding to Langley’s benediction. I do want to address his last sentence: “praying that your health improves.” Had Langley read my autobiographical material, he would have known that my health will not be improving; that I am slowly dying; that I have three kinds of days: less bad, bad, and really, really, really bad. I am sure Langley meant well, but offering up empty platitudes to people with incurable diseases is not helpful. Even more so when they are unbelievers.
If you are an Evangelical Christian, please read Dear Evangelical before sending me an email. If you have a pathological need to evangelize, spread the love of Jesus, or put a good word in for the man, the myth, the legend named Jesus, please don’t. The same goes for telling me your church/pastor/Jesus is awesome. I am also not interested in reading sermonettes, testimonials, Bible verses, or your deconstruction/psychological evaluation of my life. By all means, if you feel the need to set me straight, start your own blog.
Two words: please don’t.
A Sinner Saved by Reason,
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 wife, Polly, and I have thirteen grandchildren, ages two to twenty-two. Over the next three years, ten of our grandchildren will be in junior high, high school, and college. One of the first things our older grandchildren do in school is type my name in Google. And what do they find? This blog. And perhaps for the first time, they learn that Grandpa is an atheist.
Out of respect for my children, I don’t talk about religion with my grandchildren. If asked, I will briefly answer their questions, but I wait until they are in high school before I have in-depth discussions with them about religion and politics. I typically shape my answers according to their age and the religious beliefs of their parents; how open their parents are to me sharing my story. The older they get, the more questions they have. Sometimes, I resort to buying them books for their birthdays or Christmas.
Last Saturday, we watched son #2’s three children, ages 12, 10, and 8. We had a delightful time. The girls talked my ears off, especially Emma, the twelve-year-old. Emma excitedly let me know that she had found my blog and that she knew I was an atheist. (I let her parents know she was reading my blog at school.) Emma is one smart cookie, top-of-the-class, a straight-A student who wants to be a large animal veterinarian someday. She loves to talk, as does her Grandpa, so we get along famously.
Emma didn’t ask me any questions about atheism. I did tell her Nana was an atheist too. However, she did share with me her own experiences in the Catholic church. (She definitely thinks her priest is b-o-r-i-ng.) 🙂 I found it fascinating to listen to her explain her view of the world. And make no mistake about it, kids her age have a worldview. Emma is a voracious reader, as are most of my grandchildren. Their parents are quite liberal when it comes to what they are allowed to read (as Polly and I were, surprisingly, with our children). The broader their reading experiences, the broader their worldview.
I told Emma about one of her older cousins being asked by her teacher if she was related to me. (The teacher had read a letter I had written to the local newspaper.) Sadly, my children have experienced this at the local community college and their places of employment. Dad is a public figure with a peculiar last name. People will naturally make the connection. I told my children they are free to disown me, but so far none of them has done so. As my grandchildren get older, they will face the same scrutiny.
After telling Emma this story, I was delighted to hear her say “I am proud of my Grandpa.”
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.
Last month, I wrote a post titled MAGA Mayor Adam Stockford Says Hillsdale, Michigan is a “Traditional Values” Community. Stockford is the mayor of Hillsdale, Michigan. Over the weekend, Stockford posted my article on his Facebook page. Of course, his MAGA-loving followers were quick to go for my jugular. One such neck-slitter was a retired soldier named Ronald Cook.
Cook made no attempt to interact with what I wrote, choosing instead to hurl invectives my way. I gave his comment and private messages the gravitas they so richly deserved. Enjoy! 🙂
Here are several other comments left by Stockford’s devotees.
All told, 90 people from Hillsdale read my post. Only three of them read more than one page. Not one of them clicked on the ABOUT page or the WHY? page. In fact, some of them couldn’t bear to finish reading my article. Yet, by reading one post about Adam Stockford and Hillsdale College, people such as Cook concluded I am a traitor, communist, Marxist, anti-American anti-Christ. And I am a bitter, piss-poor writer too. Let me give these fine folks a bit of the Bible: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude. (Proverbs 18:13)
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.
Yesterday, Polly and I drove to Newark, Ohio to visit Polly’s mom. She is now living with our nephew and his wife. Mom is dying. Could be soon, or could be months from now, but, regardless, the proverbial plane circling the airport is getting ready to land. Polly and I are responsible for settling Mom’s estate. She refuses to write a will, so it is important for us, legally, to settle her estate as much as possible before she dies. We had fourteen frank end-of-life questions to ask Mom. We were delighted when she answered them without a fuss. I suspect that she has resigned herself to the fact that she is dying. She doesn’t plan to seek extraordinary care. Our advice was for her to arrange for hospice. Mom is in a lot of pain, but she refuses to ask for narcotic pain medications. The blame for her unwillingness to accept pain reliefs rests solely on her Fundamentalist religious beliefs: that suffering has value and is part of God’s plan for her life. Hopefully, a hospice nurse will convince her to take the medications.
Mom is eighty-seven years old. She’s been a Fundamentalist Christian her entire life — first as a Nazarene, and then as an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB). Mom has attended the Newark Baptist Temple in Heath, Ohio for the past forty-six years. Polly’s father was the church’s assistant pastor for five years (1976-1981) before striking out on his own. (Dad and I started a church together in Buckeye Lake.) Polly’s uncle, the late Jim Dennis, pastored the church for fifty years. (Please see The Family Patriarch is Dead: My Life With James Dennis.) The church is currently pastored by Mark Falls. (Please see An IFB Funeral: Fundamentalist Christianity Poisons Everything.) Mom’s entire life has been shaped, formed, and controlled by IFB beliefs and practices. At this point in life, she is who she is. She is going to the grave happily praising the IFB God. We accept that there’s nothing we can say or do that will soften her view of us, our heathen children, and our godless grandchildren (even though some of our children believe in God, just not the IFB God).
Polly and I have known each other for forty-six years. Mom didn’t want us to get married, and went out of her way to upend our marriage plans. Five months before our wedding date in 1978, Mom told Polly that she could not marry me. This, of course, enraged us. We talked about eloping. Instead, Polly, for the first time, stood up to her mother and told her that we were getting married with or without her blessing. Bluff called, the wedding went on as planned.
Over the past five decades, we have had numerous conflicts with Mom. Never Dad, just Mom. You see, she was the head of the home. She ruled the proverbial roost. My quiet, passive father-in-law never stood up to her. I do remember several passive-aggressive moments where Dad did exactly what she told him he couldn’t do, but most often he just bowed to her wishes.
I dearly love my mother-in-law. I will sorely miss her when she is gone, though I suspect she can’t say the same about me. Mom wrongly thinks that I control Polly; that she doesn’t think for herself or make her own decisions; that Polly is still a Christian, and she will return to Jesus once Satan is out of her life. None of these things, of course, is true. We left Christianity in November 2008. Fourteen years later, Mom has yet to have a meaningful discussion with us about why we deconverted. She has talked about us to her pastor and other family members. She’s asked her church to pray for us. She repeatedly tells us verbally or in written messages on cards that she is praying for us. We have come to accept that this is just the way it is. Her religion demands she respond this way. There’s no possible scenario where she can love and respect us as we are.
One of our biggest fears is that her pastor will preach AT us during the funeral or church members will accost us, saying “Bonnie told me she hopes to see you in Heaven some day. Wouldn’t you like to be saved today?” We are so concerned that this could happen that we are considering skipping the funeral or sitting at the back of church so we can leave immediately after the service. I am not convinced that if Mom’s pastor mentions atheism by name that I can control my emotions. I hate to ruin the funeral by standing up in the service and telling Mom’s pastor to go fuck himself. Doing so would be epic, righteous, and awesome, but I must think of others too. So, our goal is to go out of the way to avoid interaction and conflict with God’s chosen ones.
We spent six hours in Newark. All told it was a physically taxing fourteen hour day, leaving me with excruciating pain and emotional brokenness. We had a delightful time talking to Mom, our nephew and niece, and their two children. It was a perfect day for five hours and fifty-five minutes. Unfortunately, the last five minutes ruined the stay, reminding us of how much we despise the IFB church movement, the Newark Baptist Temple, and its pastor.
Two years ago, Mom sent me a long, detailed list of demands she expected to be met for her funeral. (She did the same for Dad.) I briefly glanced at her demands and put them in an envelope for safekeeping. Several days ago, I got the paper out and read it carefully. What quickly became clear to me is that my family would have no part in the funeral service. Instead, Mom’s “real family” would be in charge of and take care of everything. Only people associated with the Baptist Temple will play a part in her funeral. Of course, we are used to being treated this way, going back long before our atheist days. Mom treats our children differently from the way she treats her grandchildren, nieces, and nephews who live in Newark. You see, they are all IFB Christians. In Mom’s eyes, we are godless heathens or the wrong type of Christians. While we are used to being treated this way, it still hurts to be “othered.” And now our grandchildren are picking up on this. “Why does Mamaw give them birthday/Christmas gifts and doesn’t do the same for us?” one of my grandchildren recently asked. Mom graciously shares the wealth with her “family” in Newark. Our grandchildren got a singular gift from their Mamaw last Christmas — a Christmas ornament to “remember” her by. Special events for Mom’s real family are memorialized with gifts, including money. (One grandchild recently received $100 for graduation.) Our grandchildren don’t receive such gifts. Worse, because Polly and I have step-grandchildren, Mom refuses to acknowledge they are her great-grandchildren. She seems to believe that blood is all that matters. Thus, she accepts as her great-grandchildren her grandson’s children with three different women, but not our “step” granddaughters. (For the record, we do not use the “step” label.) Mom has caused untold harm by “othering” some of our grandchildren.
Back to Mom’s funeral demands. Mom isn’t a deep-thinker or a list maker. Yet, the funeral demands are detailed, typed out, and presented in a way a preacher would make his sermon. Do you get where I am headed here? I suspect Mom’s pastor compiled the list of funeral demands. And that’s fine, but don’t think for a moment that Polly and I don’t see what is going on here
As we were leaving Newark, the following “discussion” took place. Please note that this is a conversation Mom wanted to have with me. Not her daughter, me.
Mom: I want _______ (nephew) and ________ (niece) to handle my funeral.
Bruce (puzzled): Do you think I’m going do something you wouldn’t like?
Mom (looking pained): Well, you know . . .
Bruce (even more puzzled): No, I don’t know . . .
Mom (forced to say what she meant): Well, you know, I don’t know what you are.
(Ah, our atheism, MY atheism is the problem, but Mom refuses to use the A word.)
Bruce: I’ve been your son-in-law for forty-four years. I will always respect your wishes. You gave us a paper outlining your funeral. We will do exactly what you want done.
Mom: Oh, okay.
Bruce: But I’m more than happy to let ________ and _______ handle the funeral.
And we will. Polly and I want nothing to do with the funeral. It would have been nice if several of our children were given an opportunity to participate, but that’s not going to happen, so we will accept that.
Mom’s funeral is the final strand binding us to the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement and the Newark Baptist Temple. When we drive out of Newark for the last time, we will look in the rear-view mirror and defiantly wave goodbye with our middle finger. So much pain, trauma, and abuse. So many bad memories (and yes, some good memories too). The scars will remain, but praise Loki, the curse will be broken.
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.
Over the years, I have thought about starting a series titled “Dumb Shit Atheists Say.” Atheist YouTube creators and podcasters, in particular, say all sorts of nonsense about Christianity, Evangelicalism, and the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. I have, on occasion, tried to politely correct some of their more egregious errors, to no avail. I have received no response from the offenders, and far too often, they make the same factual errors over and over again. These same people object when Christians mischaracterize atheist beliefs, yet they are blind to their own mischaracterizations.
If atheists are going to talk about Christian theology, the Bible, and church history, at the very least they should have a rudimentary understanding of these things. And if they are unwilling to do this, they should shut the hell up. They are making atheists look bad.
Recently, I heard an atheist YouTuber say that clergymen have easy lives. He implied they were grifters. This strawman assertion is categorically absurd; a distortion meant to paint clerics in a bad light.
Most atheists (or Christians, for that matter) have no idea about how preachers live their lives. Are there lazy, indolent pastors? Sure, just as there are in every profession. By the same token, there are far more hard-working clergymen who devote their days to their positions. Yet, instead of recognizing this fact, these atheists portray clergy laziness and indolence as the norm for all preachers.
Most clerics are devoted to the work they believe God called them to do. They are devoted to the work of the ministry, believing they have some sort of divine purpose and calling. How else do we explain their willingness to work for low wages, often with few benefits? Many pastors even work a second job so their churches can have a pastor.
Contrary to what the aforementioned YouTuber said, pastors work hard and do so regardless of what they are paid. For every megachurch pastor making millions of dollars, there are thousands of pastors making average, or below-average wages (even when housing allowance is taken into account). It’s one thing for atheists to attack and challenge theological beliefs. It is another thing to attack the character of clergymen, all because they don’t like what they stand for.
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 have been accused hundreds of times over the years of never having been a True Christian®. The gist of this accusation is that I met, worshiped, and followed a counterfeit Jesus. If I had encountered the REAL JESUS and put my faith and trust in him, I would have become a True Christian® and would still be a follower of Christ to this day. The Bible gives cover for this argument when it says:
For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. (2 Corinthians 11:13-15)
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. (I John 2:19)
According to Evangelicals who say I never met the REAL JESUS, the angels of light in my life — parents, pastors, professors — were actually tools of Satan used by him to deceive me. And true to my training, I then became a false angel of light too — deceiving the churches I pastored and pulling the wool over the eyes of my colleagues in the ministry; that is, if any of them knew the REAL JESUS themselves.
The fact that I no longer profess to be a follower of Jesus is further evidence that I never met the REAL JESUS. Had I met the REAL JESUS, I would have continued in the faith; I would have continued pastoring churches. That I now stand in opposition to Christianity and the teachings of the Bible is clear evidence to Evangelicals that whatever Jesus I followed over my fifty years in the Christian church, he was not the REAL JESUS.
A good example of this thinking can be found in the recent blog comments by Rod Rogers [all spelling and grammar in the original]:
Yes, but you now claim that you are not a christian and therefore you never were a christian, right? You have painted your self into a corner. Either you were a liar for years or you are lying now; but you have to choose. My point is that God is always God or there never was a god. You have claimed both. Very sad.
Bruce, you don’t go from preaching God’s word, studying and praying daily and then wake up one day and say God never existed. That never happens. Somewhere you came to a place where God didn’t meet your expectations. I don’t know where that happened but it happened.
“Each aspect of my life must be judged in its context.” Ok, YOU said you were a Christian, said you were a preacher. In that context, were you preaching the truth or preaching a lie? Preaching a lie makes one what? “All I am saying is that I once was a Christian just like you, and now I’m not.” And all I am saying is that by your own admission you believed in once saved always saved. Now you don’t believe in God at all. By you own theology you yourself believed either you were not saved to begin with or you preached a lie. You are in a corner.
Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Matthew 7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? Matthew 7:23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Either you never were a child of God or you still are.
Bruce, it doesn’t matter what happened when. The only thing I am assuming is that you are telling the truth when you say that you were an IFB. If you were ever IFB then you believed in OSAS. You just don’t want to admit the truth. Your comment, “It’s like saying, I’m divorced now, so that means I never was married”?”, has nothing to do with my comment; its Non Sequitor.
I’m 64 years old and have met a lot of people and you are the only one who claims to have lived at the foot of the cross and woke up one day and renounced it. Sorry, I don’t believe that.
Rod is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB). As such, he believes in the doctrine of “once saved, always saved.” According to this doctrine, once a person is saved, he can never, ever fall from grace; never, ever lose his salvation. Built upon a foundation of intellectual assent to a set of theological propositions, most proponents of “once saved, always saved” believe that I am still a Christian; that I am just backslidden or out of the will of God. I say most, because some “once saved, always saved” believers can’t bear to fathom that someone who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and has done despite unto the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:29) can still be a Christian. If I am not now a Christian, in their minds that means I never was a Christian; that in decades of pastoral experience I never came in contact with the REAL JESUS.
Calvinists fall into “once saved, always saved” crowd, albeit they believe that a person must endure to the end (death) to be saved; and even then, some people who thought they were saved will wake up in Hell, realizing that they never were one of the elect. What a con job, right? Much like many in the “once saved, always saved” IFB crowd, the Calvinists who knew me have concluded that I never met the REAL JESUS. If I had met the REAL JESUS, I would still be in church, availing myself of means of grace. That I am now an outspoken opponent of True Christianity® is proof to them that I was a false Christian.
In 1994, I was the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church — an independent Calvinistic congregation — in Elmendorf, Texas. While at Community, I became friends with Jose Maldonado, pastor of Hillburn Drive Grace Baptist Church. I had met Joe in the fall of 1993 when he and Pat Horner — my soon-to-be co-pastor — came to preach a conference at the church in Ohio I was pastoring at the time.
I resigned from Community in the fall of 1994. You can read more about that debacle in the series titled, I Am a Publican and a Heathen. After leaving Community, I had no further contact with Maldonado. Imagine my surprise, then, to hear that Maldonado, sixteen years after our last contact, took to the pulpit to let people know that I was now an atheist; a man who never knew the REAL JESUS.
Here’s a short audio clip of Maldonado “exposing” me as a false prophet:
The hilarious thing in the whole “Bruce met a false Jesus” saga, is that “once saved, always saved” Baptists and Calvinistic Baptists bitterly oppose one another, each believing the other preaches a false gospel. In other words, each side believes the other has never met the REAL JESUS.
As you can see, the core theological problem for both groups is that True Christians® are eternally saved. The Bible says in John 10:27-29:
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.
Those who hear the voice of Jesus and follow after him are given eternal life and are held safe in his hand. No man is able to pluck Christians out of the hand of Jesus. The problem with this argument, of course, is my life as a Christian clearly shows that I heard the voice of Jesus and followed after him. There’s nothing in my storyline that remotely suggests that I was following after a false Jesus; that I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing; that I was a false prophet. Yet, here I am today, having safely jumped out of the hand of Jesus, an out-and-proud apostate. “How can these things be?” Evangelicals ask themselves. Zealots such as Rod refuse to accept my story at face value, suggesting that there is some part of my story I am not sharing lest I give away the “real” reason I am no longer a Christian. This leads people to concoct all sorts of conspiracies about my loss of faith.
How about we let Occam’s Razor tell the story here. Occam’s Razor is a philosophy which suggests that if an event has two possible explanations, the explanation which requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct: I once was a Christian and now I am not; I once was a follower of Jesus and now I am not; I devotedly loved Jesus and now I don’t; the telling of my story is an honest, forthright reflection of my life as a Christian and an Evangelical pastor — theology be damned. Christians holding to Arminian theology believe followers of Jesus can and do fall from grace. In their minds, I am just one more sad example of someone who chose not to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Works for me.
Here’s what I know for sure, I once was saved and now I am not. It really is that simple. It is not up to me to help Evangelicals square their theology with my testimony. Can’t make my story fit in the narrow confines of your rigid theological box? Tough shit, not my problem. I have no doubt I met numerous times the REAL JESUS. A mythical being, to be sure, but I most certainly had a torrid love affair with this Jesus for most of my adult life. Just as I would never doubt a sincere Christian’s testimony of faith, all I ask is that Evangelicals grant me the same courtesy. This will never happen, of course, because their theology bars them from doing so. Their intransigence reveals the real truth behind this discussion; that the question has never been about meeting the REAL JESUS; that what really matters is believing the right sectarian doctrines; that Evangelicalism is inherently a text-based system; that what really determines entrance into Heaven is checking off the right boxes on the Beliefs Checklist. The Evangelical gospel is this: BELIEVE THESE DOCTRINES AND THOU SHALT BE SAVED. It’s never been about the REAL JESUS.
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.
As a younger man, I pastored Evangelicals and worked secular jobs, mostly management-level employment. I was a general manager for Arthur Treacher’s, Long John Silvers, and Charley’s Steakery. I also was a grant manager and building code enforcement officer for the Village of Buckeye Lake. My last job (2004) was working for Allegro Medical, managing their Yuma office. While I worked blue-collar jobs, my skills were best suited for managerial positions. As a pastor and a manager, I was the man in charge. Blessed (or cursed) with a Type A personality and a driven, no-nonsense work ethic, I was well suited for the management world. By all accounts, I did my job well and my employers appreciated the work I did for them.
Over the years, I developed certain skills that helped me do my job. One skill was the use of a to-do list. Every day, I would make a list of the things I needed to do, and then I worked the list. Sometimes, I would keep this list in my mind, other times, I would write it down on a yellow pad. As I worked the list, I would mentally or physically draw a line through each completed task. Typically, my work day did not end until I completed the list.
Having an Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) certainly fueled my list-driven work ethic, as did my Fundamentalist Baptist religious beliefs. The Bible was a list of God’s laws, precepts, and commands. The thrice holy creator of the universe expected me obey each and every one of his commands. After all, the Bible says that followers of Jesus are to be perfect, even as their Father in Heaven is perfect. I never had much use for Christians who treated the teachings of the Bible as optional.
Over the years, I employed hundreds of people. If asked, I suspect these former employees would say I was a driven, no-nonsense boss who expected them to show up every day and do their jobs. I had no tolerance for idleness or horsing around. I had zero tolerance for “excuses.” Let me give you an example. When I started managing Charley’s Steakery in Zanesville, Ohio for a Taiwanese immigrant, I inherited two assistant managers. I would have hired neither of them had it been up to me. It wasn’t, so I had to try to work with them.
Jeff was an easygoing “praise Jesus” Evangelical Christian. One of the first things I had to deal with had to do with Jeff’s religious beliefs. Keep in mind, I was an Evangelical pastor, at the time. However, I checked my religion at the door when I came to work. I didn’t try to evangelize employees, nor did I invite them to church. If an employee asked about my church or religious beliefs, I would answer their questions, but when I was at work, I worked for my employer, not Jesus. I tried to model Christianity to my employees by my behavior, not my words.
When Jeff opened the store, he knew he had certain tasks that had to be done, every day, without exception. Yet, Jeff never seemed to get his work done. I would come in around 10:30 am and find the pre-opening tasks incomplete. Of course, I would get after Jeff for this, telling him that these tasks had to be done prior to opening. It was HIS job to make this happen.
No matter what I said, Jeff didn’t do his job. Finally, I decided to figure out what was going on. Come to find out, Jeff was spending the first hour of his work day — are you ready for it? — praying and reading his Bible! He was shocked when I told him he couldn’t do this; that I expected him to start working the moment he walked in the back door. He thought that I, as a pastor, would understand the importance of starting the day communing with God. Of course I did. I read the Bible and prayed every morning too. I did it, however, on my own time, before I came to work. (His excuse was that his home was too noisy for him to have devotions.)
Jeff was notorious for leaving work undone. Such a work ethic was foreign to me. My job. My responsibility. Get it done. No excuses. Ever. I expected Jeff (and my other manager) to account for the money every day. When I came to the store, they were using a communal till. No one was responsible for the money. I changed that by requiring new drawers every time a new employee was put on the register. I discouraged my managers from running the register, telling them that if they did and there was a problem with the money, I would hold them accountable for the missing money.
Every day, the opening manager was required to count the two cash drawers and the safe. There was an exact amount of money in the safe. The total amount had to be exact — no exceptions. And if it wasn’t, the opening manager was expected to figure out why. No excuses. I expected the money to be correct, right down to the penny. This process was repeated at night. At the end of the night, I expected the manager to count the drawers, balance the safe, and make the deposit. The money had to balance, each and every time. If it didn’t, I expected my managers to stay there until it did, and if they couldn’t figure it out, I expected them to call me.
I was having a problem with drawers coming up short on the night shift (when I wasn’t there). One drawer came up $50 short twice in a week. I determined that the cashier was stealing the money. I fired her. The next weekend, I was off work. Jeff was in charge. I came in on Monday morning to find a note taped on the safe that said, “Sorry, Bruce. The money is not right, and I couldn’t figure it out.” The safe was short $70. I recounted the safe and drawers several times. I removed the drawer mechanism from the register to make sure the money wasn’t there (unlikely since this amount required multiple bills). I went to the bank and made sure the previous night’s deposit amount was correct. It was. So, I was left with two possible explanations: either a customer was given too much change (unlikely since there were no $100 bills in the safe/deposit) or someone stole the money. I believed it was the latter, but I had no way of proving it.
When Jeff showed up for work, I took him aside and gave him the ass-chewing of his life. He knew it was his responsibility to make sure the money was right. He knew that he was required to call me if he couldn’t figure out what happened. Worse, when I asked him who was on the register over the weekend, he told me: numerous people. According to Jeff, he was so busy that he just didn’t have time to count the drawers and switch them. In other words, he ran a communal drawer all weekend. The thief could have been anyone — including him. Jeff is fortunate I didn’t fire him on the spot.
I had policies and procedures in place for a reason. I expected the people who worked for me to follow them.
Fast forward to today. The Bruce from yesteryear still lives in my mind. I still have an exacting work ethic. I still make to-do lists. The difference now, of course, is that I can no longer mentally or physically work the list. Oh, I want to (just ask Polly, my children, or my counselor), but I can’t. I need to, but I can’t. The drive is still there, but there’s no gas in the tank. Gastroparesis, fibromyalgia, and degenerative spine disease have robbed me of the ability to do the things I used to do. My life is now measured by the things I have had to give up. Last year, I sold all my professional camera equipment. No longer able to hold a camera due to its weight, I had to give up on photography. Two years prior, I sold all my woodworking equipment, fearing that I would hurt or kill myself if I didn’t. I haven’t driven an automobile since March 2020. I sold my car, knowing that I will never physically be able to drive again. Two years ago, I was excited to rekindle my love affair with O-gauge Lionel trains. I spent months buying engines, cars, and equipment on eBay. Two of my sons helped me build my layout table. Polly painted it for me — a dirt tone. And then, the proverbial train ran out of fuel. A year later, the trains, buildings, and equipment gather dust. I wonder if I might as well give up on this too, and sell the things I have collected. Simply, I am not sure I can (mentally) do this and still want to get up in the morning. So, it sits.
I have kept our financial records our entire married life — forty-four years. Polly never had any interest in doing so. Our checkbook always balanced to the penny. I used programs such as Quicken or Microsoft Money to track income and spending. Always the list maker, I used categories to track everything from the money we spent for utilities to the money we spent buying candles (a lot 🙂 ) We have never been very good with money, but we knew exactly what we were spending money on. Come the first of the year, I would tell Polly, “do you know we spent X dollars on ___________?” We would both laugh/cry/groan, and then promise to do better in the new year.
Three years ago, I started having an increasing problem keeping up with our finances. Receipts would sit on the desk for months. The “checkbook” no longer balanced. I started missing payment due dates. So, I gave up. After talking with my oldest son about this, I was able to develop a system that worked for me in my present dilapidated condition.
I know that tomorrow will not be better than today. I have resigned myself to the fact, that I will be forced to give in until there is no more to give. That’s the nature of my afflictions. They rob me of my life, one inch at a time, launching at me and mocking me as they do. I try to focus my energy on Polly, our children and grandchildren, and writing. If I’m lucky, I will get to spend time sitting in the yard, taking a short road trip, attending one of my grandchildren’s games/performances (though I can rarely do so since I require someone to drive me to these events), going to the grocery store, or eating out with the love of my life.
Last night, Polly and I went out to eat at Sweetwater Chophouse in Defiance. Bethany stayed home and watched the new Elvis movie on HBO Max. After we were done eating, Polly asked if I wanted her to take the long way home. The answer is always “yes.” I never want to go home. So we drove west from Defiance to Sherwood (where we stopped at the Apache Dairy Bar and I had a chocolate malt) and then turned north and east to our home in Ney. When we arrived in Ney, I told Polly that I want to tour the town (population 356, about 100 houses). She asked, “which way?” I replied, “I want to go down all the streets.” “All of them?” Polly asked. I replied, “all.” And so we did, gossiping about our neighbors along the way. We noticed a block from our home six or so feral cats, six to eight months old. We love cats and have fed feral animals for decades, but we despise humans who show no regard for them and leave them to their own devices.
I returned home in time to watch Sunday Night Football. As I tiredly sat in my recliner, I opened up my iPad Pro to check for new blog comments, emails, and social media messages. There were — a couple of emails from people upset that I didn’t respond to their email when they thought I should. Of course, I will, when I can, politely respond to them, apologizing for my delinquent behavior. I want to ask them, “do you know how sick I am?” In recent days, I have thought about doing away with my comment form, but even if I did, people would still find ways to contact me. Last week, a man in his 70s from Chicago somehow found my phone number and called me — at 8:30 am. I had been asleep for two hours. His call disrupted my sleep for the rest of the day. Yes, he needed someone to talk to. Yes, he had questions about religion and atheism. But, damn, it has taken me several hours and a plethora of medications to fall asleep, and you woke me up!
Deeply engrained in my mind is the need to work the to-do list. The list is still there; it will always be there. The difference now, of course, is that I can no longer work the list like I used to. The list gets longer and longer and longer. On “good” days I will knock a few things off the list, but on most days, the list continues to grow. Three weeks ago, I bought a kit at Menard’s to repair our toilet. There it sits on the kitchen shelf, unused. Everywhere I look I see jobs half-done, projects incomplete. Whether it is my home or this blog, things left undone have become tyrants who love to mock my fragility and inability. On “good” days, I ignore their voices, telling them to fuck off. On “bad” days, I find their mockery and taunts to be overwhelming, constant reminders that I am a frail, dying man.
I am at a place where I have more decisions I must make. I am facing increasing physical problems. The memory problems that were just a niggling problem for years are now getting in the way of me doing what I want and need to do. (This is not dementia or Alzheimer’s. It is more likely driven by the cumulative effect of chronic illness and pain.) I will have days when I feel like the man on The Waterboy: “you can do it.” Such days are flights of fancy, much like an auto engine that runs its best just before it blows up. Reality says that I must use a cane, walker, or wheelchair everywhere I go. I am not stable on my feet. Prone to falls, I must plot out every step when in public. I know a bad fall could be the end for me. I am losing strength in my hands. A new problem, nerve-related, causes my left thumb (I’m left-handed) to fold under my fingers, numb and unmoveable for several minutes. This is likely caused by the herniated discs in my neck. I continue to have problems with my eyes. I have done from near-sighted to far-sighted. I have given up wearing glasses.
These days, even the basics of life are challenging. Nausea and vomiting have turned eating into a chore instead of a joy. I try, but I have found nausea to be an enemy I cannot defeat. Medicine helps, but I can only take so much Zofran. The rest of the time, I endure nausea. It’s really not fun when drinking ice tea makes you nauseous
I don’t write these things to whine or solicit sympathy (fuck you, Derrick Thomas Thiessen). Writing about my life is a distraction, a medication that lessens my suffering. And maybe, just maybe, my writing might resonate with a few of you, a reminder that you are not alone. I will continue to do what I can for as long as a can, but I know there will likely come a day when I must further trim my to-do list, reducing it to one line: breathe.
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.
Dr. David Michael Ward, an Evangelical Christian, messaged me on Facebook recently. I have no idea what Ward was responding to. While Ward appeals to authority, I could not verify any of the personal claims he made in his messages. The best I can tell is, outside of Facebook, he has no Internet presence; which is odd, considering his claims of advanced educational attainment and superior IQ.
What follows is our “conversation.” I will make a few concluding comments afterward. All spelling and grammar are in the original. My brief, pithy, somewhat snarky responses are indented and italicized.
There is no word in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek that can be translated as Hell. Hell was not created until th 700’s and that is about 300 years after the Bible books had been collected by the Catholic Church. Sheol is the Hebrew word for Grave and can be used in most verses that have Hell in them. Hades was the Greek word that meant the Grave. The word Lucifer is from the Latin Vulgate that had Lux Ferro meaning mover of light in Isaiah 14:12 .Jesus called him Satan and that is the devils name. I have a Doctorate in Theology and have been a preacher for 42 years. I lived in Ohio for a few years and had to teach several preachers the truth of Hell since they used the KJV and did not know the meaning of the word Hell or the root language. With my Doctorate in Theology and an IQ of 189 I have translated the Bible from the original language so that young people in the USAF could understand the scriptures more easily.
And your point is?
Well a person who teaches languages at a college who studies old languages might be able to understand the KJV an how it was mistranslated from the Latin Vulgate instead being translated from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek to achieve a correct translation without the word Hell and Lucifer so that people would have a clearer understanding of the Word of God. The Jewish nation knows nothing of the word Hell or Lucifer since those words are not in their section of the Bible. A Greek scholar helped to verify my translation and found only 3 verses that he felt needed a small clearing up of the verbage. I took his help and applied the correction and the rest as is told is history.
I’m an atheist, so it really doesn’t matter to me.
Well Jesus will state that He does not know you and the Angels will put you into the Gehenna Fire and you will be consumed body and soul. You will no longer have any meaning in the Universe.
Again, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe the central claims of Christianity are true.
Do you think it is okay to contact strangers on the Internet and threaten them with Hell-lite—annihilation?
Ward is not the first person to contact me, suggesting they have — much like a hog rooting in the forest and finding an acorn — “discovered” the Biblical “truth” about Hell. To the man, they paint themselves as smarter than other Christians, people called on to spread the “good news” that non-Christians will NOT be tortured for eternity in a lake brimming with fire and brimstone by the God of the Bible. Instead, they will be tortured for a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or a few years and then be annihilated (turned into ash). Regardless, non-Christians in both schemes suffer.
While Ward paints himself as someone who has stumbled upon an acorn, annihilationism — a minority view — has been taught throughout Christian church history. Both the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in annihilationism. My first exposure to the doctrine came in the 1980s from reading Evangelical scholar John Stott. In 1988, Stott co-authored a book titled Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue. (Stott was viciously eviscerated for his view on eternal punishment. Some apologists even said that Stott wasn’t a “real” Christian. These Christians believed worshipping a violent deity was essential to true faith.)
“Emotionally, I find the concept [of eternal torment] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain. But our emotions are a fluctuating, unreliable guide to truth and must not be exalted to the place of supreme authority in determining it. As a committed Evangelical, my question must be-and is-not what my heart tells me, but what does God’s word say? And in order to answer this question, we need to survey the Biblical material afresh and to open our minds (not just our hearts) to the possibility that Scripture points in the direction of annihilationism, and that ‘eternal conscious torment’ is a tradition which has to yield to the supreme authority of Scripture.” [pp. 314-15]
“The fire itself is termed ‘eternal’ and ‘unquenchable,’ but it would be very odd if what is thrown into it proves indestructible. Our expectation would be the opposite: it would be consumed for ever, not tormented for ever. Hence it is the smoke (evidence that the fire has done its work) which ‘rises for ever and ever’ (Rev 14:11; cf. 19:3).” [p. 316]
John Stott disputes whether Matthew 25:46, “They will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life,” must be interpreted as meaning that the lost will suffer for all eternity. In his opinion, “that is to read into the text what is not necessarily there. What Jesus said is that both the life and the punishment would be eternal, but he did not in that passage define the nature of either. Because he elsewhere spoke of eternal life as a conscious enjoyment of God (John 17:3), it does not follow that eternal punishment must be a conscious experience of pain at the hand of God. On the contrary, although declaring both to be eternal, Jesus is contrasting the two destinies: the more unlike they are, the better.” [p. 317]
“It would be easier to hold together the awful reality of hell and the universal reign of God if hell means destruction and the impenitent are no more. I am hesitant to have written these things, partly because I have a great respect for longstanding tradition which claims to be a true interpretation of Scripture [eternal punishment in hell], and do not lightly set it aside, and partly because the unity of the worldwide Evangelical constituency has always meant much to me. . . . I do plead for frank dialogue among Evangelicals on the basis of Scripture. I also believe that the ultimate annihilation of the wicked should at least be accepted as a legitimate, biblically founded alternative to their eternal conscious torment.” [pp. 319-20]
While I found Stott’s position emotionally appealing, at the end of the day, I couldn’t reconcile it with the overall tenor of the Bible. I remain a firm believer to this day that the God of the Christian Bible will one day torture billions of unbelieving humans in a burning lake where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.
This is, of course, an intellectual exercise for me: what does the Bible really say? As an atheist, I don’t believe in the existence of the Christian God, Heaven, Hell, or an afterlife. I have no idea why Ward thought these things would interest me. Before we could even discuss what the Bible says about Hell, Ward would have to provide convincing evidence for the existence of his peculiar God and why anyone should accept that the Bible is in any way authoritative, let alone inspired, inerrant, and infallible. While I just have the IQ of a mere mortal, I did attend an Evangelical Bible college. I did spend fifty years in the Evangelical church. I also spent twenty-five years pastoring Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. I am now sixty-five years old. I have spent years on both sides of the atheist-Christian divide. I am confident that I have heard EVERY argument an apologist might make for the existence of the triune God and the supernatural natural authority of the Protestant Christian Bible. I have weighed these arguments in the balance and found them wanting. I am confident that Ward will not provide any evidence that would cause me to repent of my heathen ways and return to Christianity. The sex, booze, drugs, and rock and roll are too much fun for me to ever return to Biblical Christianity. 🙂
I have no idea if Ward invested any time in reading my story. If he had, he would certainly know that my objection to the doctrine of eternal punishment is just one of many objections I have to the central claims of Christianity. Even if Ward’s claims could be rationally sustained, they wouldn’t make a difference for me. God is still, as Richard Dawkins says,
. . . arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
As atheists, should we be appreciative of the fact that some Evangelicals think God will annihilate us some day, and not endlessly torture us? Ponder for a moment the fact that many annihilationists think God will — for a time — torture unbelievers before turning them into ash heaps. How is this really any better than eternal hellfire and damnation? The fact remains that the Christian God will reward or punish people based on their beliefs. Believe the right things and a home in Heaven awaits. Believe the wrong things and God will erase your name from the book of the living. I get it . . . many Evangelicals are tired of being viewed as mean and hateful, and liberal and progressive Christians are weary of being lumped together with Fundamentalists. However, the fact remains that annihilation is a form of punishment reserved for those who are members of the wrong religious club. This means that good people will be burnt to a crisp for no other reason than that their God was some other deity but Jesus. Forgive me if I don’t find such beliefs “comforting.”
Here’s the good news. Many Christians, having tried on annihilationism for a time, eventually realize that it is just endless-punishment-lite. Once annihilationism is abandoned, universalism awaits. All paths now lead to eternal bliss, so there is no need to evangelize or argue doctrine. Imagine a world without theocratic demands of fealty, arguments over theology, or threats of God’s judgment. Why, such a world would be Heaven on earth — a Heaven where even atheists are welcome.
Perhaps Ward is on a slippery slope that will eventually lead him to Universalism, or better yet atheism. We can only hope that this is the case.
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 mom was born in 1938 to John and Jeanette Tieken. John owned a farm in Missouri. He was also a pilot and an airplane mechanic. I don’t know much about my mom’s childhood, but three stories come to mind. (Please see John.)
Mom had a younger brother, Steve. Their dog had puppies that John didn’t want. Instead of giving them away, John forced his son to put them in a burlap bag, take them down to the creek, and drown them.
Mom told me towards the end of her life that John had repeatedly sexually molested her. (Look at the picture of my mom above. This is the little girl John molested.) When Mom confronted him about his crimes, John, now a Fundamentalist Baptist Christian, pleaded the blood of Christ over his SBC — sins before Christ. As you shall read later in this post, John did a lot of sinning post-Jesus too. John told my mom that “God had forgiven him and so should she!” No apology, no attempt to make amends. Just cheap, meaningless Christian cliches. This would be John’s approach throughout my life with him. Not one time did I ever hear him say he was sorry or wrong.
John was a violent drunk during my mom’s childhood. His wife Jeanette was an alcoholic too. (Grandma would later quit drinking cold turkey. I had a close relationship with her.) Their alcoholism created such dysfunction for my mom and her brother that a Missouri court took them out of their home and placed them with their grandparents.
John and Grandma divorced. John then married a woman named Margaret. They too would divorce. Mom had a close relationship with Margaret, corresponding with her for years. I remember reading several of her letters. John left Missouri in the 1950s/1960s and moved to Pontiac, Michigan (Waterford Township). He married a Fundamentalist Christian divorcee named Ann. She had a son named David who was a few years older than I.
Sometime in the 1960s, the alcoholic John Tieken was gloriously saved by Jesus at Sunnyvale Chapel — an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation without the label. (Sunnyvale is now defunct.) My first memories of my grandparents come from this period of time. As I pondered what to write for this post, it dawned on me that I only have two good memories of my grandparents. That’s it. Try as I might, I can’t recollect any other good experiences with them. There are reasons for this as you shall see in a moment.
John may have been saved and alcohol-free, but he was still a violent man — at least to some family members. My siblings and I would stay with the Tiekens during the summer. One day, David, who was an avid high school baseball player and fisherman, was sitting at the dinner table with the rest of us. John said something to David and he smartly replied. John stood up from the table, and with a balled fist he struck David in the face, knocking him off his chair. I would also face his wrath one summer day. My younger brother and I were playing in the garage. We found an old Bell telephone, which I proceeded to take apart, doing what boys do. When John found out, he beat the living shit out of me; the worst beating I ever received besides the one my Dad’s farmer brother gave me for moving his beer. There would be many violent outbursts from John over the years, reminding me that Fundamentalism and violent temperaments don’t go well together.
One deep, dark secret in my life comes from my childhood with the Tiekens. As I mentioned previously, my siblings and I would spend time in the summer with them, both by ourselves and with our mom. Ann would have my brother and I get in the bathtub to take a bath. While bathing, Ann would come in and show us how to “clean our genitals.” She “taught” us this lesson several times. It would take years for me to realize that she was sexually molesting us.
I did say that I had two good memories of John and Ann, so I will share them now. John, a pilot, and mechanic, was the co-owner of T&W (Tieken and Wyman) Engine Service at Pontiac (Michigan) Airport. My first fond memory of John was when he took me up in a twin-prop cargo plane he had just overhauled. Boy, was that fun (and terrifying).
My other fond memory dates back to the summer of 1968, the year the Detroit Tigers won the world series. For my eleventh birthday, John took me to watch the Tigers play the Cleveland Indians. I remember John buying me a pennant. On this day, I felt close to my grandfather. Just a grandfather and his oldest grandson enjoying their favorite sport. Alas, this would be the first and last time we did anything together.
John and Ann were devout Fundamentalist Baptists. They attended church every time the doors were open. John became an in-your-face soulwinner — a bully for Jesus. No matter where he went, he felt it his duty to witness to people, often embarrassing family and friends. He was also a big proponent of loud prayers before meals at restaurants, letting everyone around us know that we were born-again Christians.
I enrolled for classes at Midwestern Baptist College in the fall of 1976, as did my future wife, Polly Shope. Midwestern was located in Pontiac, Michigan so this put me in contact with John and Ann. Polly quickly learned, as I had long known, that the Tiekens were domineering and controlling. By the time we started our junior year of college, we had distanced ourselves from them.
I saw John and Ann maybe once a year — Christmas at my mom’s home — from 1979 to 1986. By then, I was pastoring Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio — a fast-growing IFB congregation that eventually reached a high attendance of 206.
John and Ann came to visit the church twice in the eleven years I was there. One Sunday, John thoroughly embarrassed me in front of the entire congregation. The building was packed. This was during the time when the church was growing rapidly. After I preached and gave an invitation, I asked if anyone had something to share. John did. He stood and told the entire congregation what was wrong with my sermon. I wanted to die (and murder him).
The last time John and Ann came to visit was in 1988. We were living in Junction City at the time. After church, we invited them over for dinner. John spent a good bit of time lecturing me about my car being dirty — the beater we used to deliver newspapers. According to John, having a dirty car was a bad testimony.
After dinner — oh, I remember it as if it were yesterday! — we were sitting in the living room and one of our young boys got too close to John. What did he do? He kicked him. I knew then and there that, regardless of his love for Jesus, he didn’t love our family, and he would always be a mean son-of-a-bitch.
From this time forward, we had little to no contact with the Tiekens. Sometime in the late 1990s — I was pastoring Our Father’s House in West Unity, Ohio, at the time — Ann called me a few days before John’s seventy-fifth birthday and said she was having a party for him and expected our family to be there. When I explained that we couldn’t attend (it was on a church night and Polly had to work), Ann launched into a vitriolic tirade, telling me what a terrible grandson I was. Vicious and vindictive as always, Ann told me I had a terrible family.
Finally, after forty years, I had had enough. I told her that should have worried about the importance of family twenty years ago. I then told her that I was no longer interested in having any contact with them. And with that, I hung up the phone. I had finally learned to cut these toxic people out of my life — almost.
A few years later, I heard through the family grapevine that John was dying from colon cancer. I traveled three hours to Pontiac to visit him. Why? I don’t know. When I entered his hospital room, Ann wasn’t there — a small favor from God, I thought at the time. John was sedated and unable to communicate. I stood there for a few moments, with tears trickling down my face (as they are now). And then I walked away. He died a short time later. I did not attend his funeral. I knew it would be a masturbatory celebration of John, the Fundamentalist Baptist soulwinner. I had no appetite for yet another lie.
I never expected to see Ann again. When I said I wanted nothing to do with John and Ann, I meant it. They had caused so much pain in my life. I had no interest in my children knowing anything about them (and they don’t). In 2003, I began pastoring Victory Baptist Church in Clare, Michigan — a Southern Baptist congregation. Unbeknownst to me, Ann had remarried and moved to Clare. She lived five minutes from our home in White Birch — a gated community outside of Farwell. What are the odds, right? Was God punishing me?
Ann attended a nearby Southern Baptist church. One Sunday, I looked out the church door while I was preaching and saw Ann sitting in the parking lot with her husband and David’s son. (David was murdered in Detriot in 1981, at the age of twenty-six.) After the service, I briefly talked to her. The next Sunday, Ann visited Victory Baptist, and after the service invited us over to dinner later in the week. I didn’t want to go, but I thought, what kind of Christian am I? Surely, I can forgive her and let the past be the past.
And so we went. Things went fairly well until Ann decided to let me know — as if it was a fact that everyone knew — that my dad was not really my father. I showed no reaction to this revelation, but it stunned me and cut me right to the quick. I knew my Mom was eighteen and pregnant when she married Dad, but I had never before heard what Ann was telling me. Why did she tell me this? What good could ever come of it? Two years ago, I took a DNA test, confirming that my father was actually a truck driver from Chicago. So Ann was right. But the fact remains that this was not hers to tell; that she did so to hurt me. I never saw Ann again. Last I heard, her husband died and she was in a nursing home.
Members at Victory Baptist were excited to find out that I was the oldest grandson of Gramma Clarke (her new married name) — a fine, kind, loving Christian woman if there ever was one, they told me. All I ever told them is that things are not always as they seem.
Years later, Ann did a Facebook search on my name and “found” me. She sent me a message that said:
What ? An athiest ?? Sorry Sorry Sorry !!!What happened ? How’s Polly & your family??
Nine years, and this is what she sent me. I sat down and wrote her a letter. You can read it here.
I wrote:
I don’t wish you any ill will. That said, I don’t want to have a relationship with you, especially a pretend Facebook friendship. Ooh Look! Bruce got reconnected with his estranged Grandmother. Isn’t God good!!
Not gonna happen. I have exactly zero interest in pursuing a relationship with you. It is too late.
My “good” memories of you and Grandpa are few and far between (and I haven’t even mentioned things that I am still, to this day, too embarrassed to mention). You really don’t know me and I don’t know you. And that’s okay.
Life is messy, Ann, and this is one mess in aisle three that no one can clean up. I have been told that I have a hard time forgiving and forgetting. This is perhaps a true assessment of me. I told Polly tonight that I am quite willing to forgive but it is hard to do when there is never an admission of guilt or the words I am sorry are never uttered. How can there be since the blood of Jesus wipes away every shitty thing a person has ever done? Talk about a get out of responsibility for sin card.
I am sure you will think I am just like my mother. I am.
You know what my last memory of my Mom is? After I tearfully and with a broken heart concluded my 54-year-old Mom’s graveside service, Grandpa Tieken took the “opportunity” to preach at us and tell us that Mom was in Heaven. Just days before she had put a gun to her chest and pulled the trigger. We all were reeling with grief and pain and Grandpa, in a classic Grandma-and-Grandpa-Tieken moment, decided to preach instead of love.
A comment by Amy B actually provoked me — in a good way — to write this post tonight:
I’m astonished (and impressed) that you feel no bitterness towards your grandfather. I hate his guts, and I never met the man!
I certainly have plenty of reasons to be bitter towards John and Ann (I refuse to call them Grandpa and Grandma). Not wanting to write a tome, this post is just a summary of the heartache and harm caused by John and Ann. I am sure some Christians might think that my unwillingness to forgive them is a sign of bitterness. That’s the problem with Christianity and its demands that we forgive people no matter what they do to us, Fake, syrupy “love” demands they “forgive” regardless of the pain and trauma caused by others.
I reject this kind of thinking. I don’t owe anyone forgiveness, though I have asked for forgiveness and forgiven others countless times. In the name of God and in accordance with the teachings of the Bible, John and Ann showed nothing but contempt for me, my mother, and my younger siblings. We never measured up. They used money and gifts to manipulate us, demanding that we conform to their exacting Biblical standard. Imagine my surprise years later when I learned that Ann was a Valium addict. Even she couldn’t measure up.
John and Ann were big fans of Bill Gothard and his Institute in Basic Life Principles seminars. Year after year, John would badger me about attending the Detroit seminar, saying he would pay for it. I always said no, thinking that I could see no discernable difference IBLP made in their lives, so why should I bother?
I am now sixty-five years old. What am I to make of the terrible wound John and Ann left on my life? Some family members, mainly my uncle Dave’s family and my mom’s younger brother, Steve, view John and Ann differently from the way in which I do. Were their experiences so much different from mine? I don’t know. It seems more likely to me that Evangelical Christianity, with its dysfunctional teachings about love and forgiveness, keeps them from honestly giving an account of their experiences with John and Ann Tieken. The blood of Jesus continues to cover up trauma that caused untold heartache and harm.
I don’t blame them for doing so, but that’s not the approach I take. Instead, I value responsibility, accountability, repentance, and restitution. John and Ann wanted forgiveness without these things, and I am not going to give it to them. That I write about my life with John and Ann Tieken infuriates some people in my extended family. They want me to leave the deep, dark secrets of the past buried in the sea of God’s forgetfulness. How do we learn to do differently if we don’t tell our stories? I want my children to better understand me as a man. What better way to do that than tell my story — painful warts, and all? I want my grandchildren to know me as I am, not as a caricature or a facade. These experiences have made me into the man I am today. When people confide in me, speaking of the trauma they experienced in their lives, I understand. I am a deeply marred and wounded man, but I survived. That’s the key. I SURVIVED! I wish Mom were alive today so we could toast our survival together. Instead, the most important person in my life, save Polly, is dead, having killed herself at age 54. When I think of John and Ann Tieken, I can’t help but lay much of the blame for her suicide at their feet. They could have loved Barbara and her children, but they chose not to (or loved them in a warped Evangelical way). They could have helped by giving of their time and money, as Jesus would have done. Instead, they judged and berated us for not measuring up, withholding material help because we weren’t doing things the right way. Mom’s life was a mess. John and Ann could have lent a hand, loving her as they were commanded to do so in the Bible. Instead, they micro-judged every part of her life, raining judgment on her head, and when I got older they did the same with me, my wife, and our children. Is it any wonder that I wanted nothing to do with them; that when John died I felt nothing; that when I hear of Ann’s demise, I will likely feel the same? Whatever feelings I might have had for John and Ann Tieken died two decades ago. They are little more than a chapter in my autobiography now — that is except for the ugly marks they left on my life. These deep wounds will never go away. All I know to do is keep telling my story, and when I feel John and Ann closing in, call my therapist and say, let’s talk.
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.
