Repost from 2015. Edited, rewritten, and corrected.
Evangelicals are primarily known for the things they are against: abortion, same-sex marriage, homosexuality, premarital sex, pornography, socialism, atheism, humanism, liberalism, Democrats, and former U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, and Joe Biden. The further you move to the right of the Evangelical scale, the longer the list becomes. Growing up in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, I heard countless sermons about this or that “sin.” Years ago, I heard a preacher deliver a sermon based on the text, neither give place to the devil. After reading the text the preacher spent the next forty or so minutes listing all the things he was against. (Please see An Independent Baptist Hate List.) Most of the preachers of my youth believed the following were sins: women wearing pants/shorts, men having long hair, dating couples having any physical contact before marriage, listening to rock music or contemporary Christian music, going to the movie theater, using non-King James version translations, and cursing. Awful sins, right? As a teenager, I believed that my pastors were against e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. I am sure the teens of the churches I pastored said the same about me.
One of the first challenges I faced after leaving Christianity was determining a moral/ethical framework by which to govern my life. Let’s face it, having an inspired, inerrant, infallible Bible as your moral arbitrator makes life easy. No need to think about or ponder certain behaviors. God said ____________________, end of discussion. Lost on people who think this way is that it is not God speaking. If sermons are anything, they are preachers giving their personal opinions about what this or that Bible verse means. Opinions vary wildly, leading to one group of preachers saying particular behaviors are sinful and other groups of preachers saying they aren’t. They fight among themselves, each certain their interpretation of an ancient religious text is infallible.
When I first deconverted, I was blessed to have for a friend a charismatic pastor who had also told Jesus to take a hike. He and I spent countless hours together, talking about Christianity, the Bible, and the ministry. We both laugh at how we acted and reacted back then. My friend got his ear pierced. He also got a tattoo. One day we were out and about and we saw a sign in a church parking lot that said, Parking Reserved for Pastor. A photograph was taken of middle fingers extended as we stood in front of the sign. I know, quite juvenile. But remember, Evangelicalism robbed us of much of our lives. We came of age in the late 1960s and 1970s. While our non-Evangelical schoolmates were enjoying free love, drugs, and rock and roll, we were in church praising Jesus. So in many ways, we are living our teenage and young adult years now. We are experiencing things that our contemporaries experienced forty-plus years ago.
Now that Jesus, the Bible, and the screaming voices of preachers no longer guide us, we are free to do what we want. Several years ago, Polly’s Fundamentalist Mom asked me why I was growing my hair so long. My response? Because I can. And when Mom saw me again and noticed that I was now sporting a bald head again, she asked me why I shaved my head. The answer was the same. Because I can. The answer to every behavioral question is the same: because I can.
Now, lest Evangelical zealots say I am preaching nihilism or licentiousness, I want to be clear: just because I can, doesn’t mean I will. What I am saying is that I don’t need a deity, a religious text, or pompous, self-righteous Evangelical preachers to tell me how to live. Using reason and common sense, I weigh each and every choice and decide accordingly. Well, most of the time, anyway. I can, at times, be impetuous, making decisions without taking time to weigh the consequences. Most of the time, I survive my impetuous behavior with nary a scratch. There are, however, those times when making rash decisions has had poor outcomes. When this happens, hopefully, I learn from it. If my poor judgment harmed someone else, I do my best to make things right.
I think I will end this post here. Why? Because I can.
Do your Evangelical family and friends “question” some of your post-Jesus decisions? Have you ever said, because I can? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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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‘Evangelicalism robbed us of much of our lives.’ That sums it up for me, Bruce.
I so enjoy being me now… because I can.
I’m guilty as charged.
Jesus is the answer to every question. Once you accept this truth then you can safely say: Jesus helped me do what a person can often not accomplish on their own, true self-harm, failing to believe in their own simple humanity, failing to believe that they are worth even the breath they use to survive, failing to remember how to imagine that another human being could think one good thing about them. Jesus changes all that by saing it is true and we are worthless. He deserves all, not you. Christianity in the cloak of fundamental evangelical life is a virus under which countless children succumb, generations of lost lives. The most powerful government in the world is so afraid of this virus that they have not found even the courage to tax those who breed it in churches.
Brian,
Your comment took my breath away. MAN~ as true as Bruce’s post!
I merely witnessed a crime, the kind you did, kittybrat. I played a part in it too but when I realized how sick it all was, how much I was crushed in it all, nobody seemed to hear my complaints. I have never been so alone, except perhaps very early on in my life when I realized that I did not matter a hoot compared to the sweet Jesus that everybody worshipped. I was nothing and not worthy. I learned to be nothing and escaped as nothing but tears and loss. I am so thankful that there were a few people, some of them therapists, who helped me to know that people can put humanity first, can love one another as mortal bipeds. That was how my life began again. Thank-you for hearing me, kittybrat. It means much to me to that somebody else relates in some way. When it comes to the early harm, I can never be more than a weeping child, crying for my mommy. I know now how she could never be with me and hold me in the way I wished because she was not held herself and was trained up in the way she should go. This is why I have a special place in my heart for the children of evangelical fundies. They suffer daily torture ibeinbg trained up as Christian soldiers. As I grow older, I also find more and more compassion for my mom, how she must have suffered so to give up her children, her own. How does Jesus save exactly? Whom does he free? He wrecked my whole family.
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Since I am no longer a believer, nothing I do or say is to be taken as worth anything by many of my fundamentalist friends and family. Speaking out against war? Well, I’m reminded to “lean not to thine own understanding”, because we can only truly understand truth through the eyes of God in Christ Jesus via His Word…. YIPES!
“I know, quite juvenile. But remember, Evangelicalism robbed us of much of our lives.”
Amen! That’s exactly what it did. And it makes even small things such as reading Harry Potter feel so rebellious 🙂
Using reason and common sense? How dare you?!? ???
I’ve been pretty lucky. Haven’t run into many former fundagelical friends to question me. None in my family, either. The ones who I have seen ask where I’m going to church, so I get out my standard answer: Nowhere, because I was treated like crap because I was single and divorced, so I will never go back. They don’t have much to say to that (because they know it’s true) so they let it drop.
Fortunately my family weren’t as strict in rules as the fundamentalist Christian school I attended was. The Southern Baptist church I attended was less strict than the school, so while the preachers at school railed on and on about the dangers of the “world” (media, music, books, etc) and had a super strict dress code for students, the church was more lax. There was an unwritten rule that women should wear skirts/dresses to Sunday morning services, but they could wear pants to all other services.
It’s nice not having to deal with all the unnecessary rules about dress, music, books, etc, which have no bearing on whether I treat others with respect and kindness.