Yes, I know almost everything about . . .
Christianity
Protestantism
Catholicism, West and East
Western Christianity
American Christianity
Evangelical Christianity
Calvinism
Arminianism
Soteriology
Eschatology
Ecclesiology
Pneumatology
Hermeneutics
Inspiration
Infallibility
Inerrancy
Errors
Contradictions
Variants
How many times do I need to read a book until I know its contents?
I know the Bible from cover to cover
Fifty years in the Christian church
Twenty-five years as a pastor
4,000 sermons
20,000 hours spent reading and studying the Bible
What are you going to tell me that I do not already know?
I am not an atheist because of ignorance, I am an atheist because of knowledge
You believe
I don’t
You have faith
I don’t
Call me a fool
An apostate
A false prophet
But don’t insult me by suggesting that there is something I don’t know about Christianity, God, Jesus, or the Bible, and if I just had THIS knowledge or read THIS book I would then see the light, repent, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Will you “hear” what I have written here?
Of course not
I wish I could test out of this class you think I need to take
Then maybe you will stop . . .
Forget it
You will never stop
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.
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I don’t have your lifelong experience, but growing up catholic – every Sunday, every holy day – I can tell you that church sucked the joy out of me. Constant guilt. Anything fun instantly sinful. Sacrificing my sense of self for others. This notion of the joy of Christ is as Orwellian as the love of Christians to others.
I don’t need any more “good news” – 25 years was enough.
My uncle loved the Lord and followed the Bible’s teaching via the Fellowship Baptist interpretation as offered by his local pastor, another of my uncles. Well, my uncle used to sing in church, the most melodious, full solos, a beautiful tenor. During his middle years, he realized one day that the weight of public sin was overwhelming him and that he was charged by God to save the lost. He started preaching in the streets and suffered so at the lost souls he came upon that he had to give up working for a living to preach constantly. Then he stopped being able to rest well and became manic and needed Lithium. He never recovered any normal life and lived out his days medicated into submission.
I guess that is because he was never really a Christian, huh? I guess that was dear Jesus’ will.
You are fucking right the preaching and bullshit will never stop. It doesn’t matter what you do; you can beg and plead to left alone but you will be tortured for the rest of your life by this unspeakable gift of love.
As I read through these I began began to “hear” them to the tune of I’ve Been Everywhere by Johnny Cash.
The glaring omission is … But do you know HIM (God)? There really is a difference.
How can I know him? If I live five more days I will be 58. In my 21, 170 days on earth, everyone I have ever “known” has physically appeared to me. I have “known” thousands of people and in every case I have been able to touch them and talk to them. So, if you want me to know HIM, then I suggest you arrange for HIM to stop by my house so we can talk. And if the Big Man Upstairs shows up, he better be ready to defend his inaction and indifference.
I am being sarcastic, snarky, and sacrilegious. Why? Because you didn’t hear one word I was saying.
Surely it’s a troll, Bruce. I try never to feed them. This is your blog and when you see shit like this you can delete or block the ISP or whatever. They’re just the scum of the earth and don’t deserve your attention.
I knew your deity. I also knew that I was irredeemably valueless, totally unlovable, an ugly, oversized lump of flesh taking up space. My mantra was “fat, ugly, stupid”. I knew that your god loved me, I knew that Jesus died for me, and I also knew that the fact he/they loved me meant they were certifiably nuts.
Then I was properly diagnosed with depression, prescribed antidepressants, and had talk therapy. And I started looking at the evidence around me. It turns out that, yes, I’m fat. But I’m not ugly. I’m certainly not stupid. And I’ve had a lot of people in my life that definitely love me, including a wonderful husband.
So, that got me started. I got very demanding. I now want evidence for what I believe to be true. I accept that I can’t know everything, but I understand and use the scientific method. I trust scientific consensus — at least provisionally — because I understand how it was achieved. Science can’t explain everything. Maybe it will never explain everything. So what? I can use it to navigate my life here and now, and that’s all that matters.
As far as I can tell, there is NO scientific evidence for the existence of any deity. None. Nada. Zip. This “knowing in one’s heart”, having prayers answered, and whatnot are all interpretations of events that have no evidence. If you can’t imagine how the universe, or people, or goodness, or morality can exist without your deity, I suggest what is lacking is your imagination.
Nope, there really isn’t.