Several days ago, I wrote a post titled, Bruce, Your Writing Is Nothing Compared to God’s. This post was a response to an email I received from someone using an admin email account for Fundamental Forums. After publishing my response, I received another email from this person. I posted his email and my response here — Fundamental Forums Member Responds to My Recent Post.
This man left the following comment on the post:
That felt good didn’t it? Do you know why Jesus told his disciples to shake the dust off their feet? You may not care but there is a lesson to be learned. Do you know why? It was his followers last message to them. It was a reminder of the dust they would soon become. I know you think you’re smart. I know you think you’re valuable. Ultimately, even you know you’re headed for dust and that fact will prove/show your true value. Rejecting the only message that will bring your any semblance of lasting happiness is a horrible mistake. You have nothing left.
This will be his one and only comment.
Earlier tonight, this man — who is starting to act like a stalker — sent me the following email:
Noticed you updated your response/website with my response and your comments. I didn’t get a notice and I just checked today.
It seems the only argument you have is against my “supposed” nastiness. I haven’t been nasty at all. In fact, I haven’t been remotely close to matching your common responses of “prick”, “asshole”, and etc. Nor have I told anyone to “fuck off” like your followers enjoying doing.
Again, you make more assumptions about me. You’re the one that doesn’t want to interact. I am not an IFB. I abandoned them a very long time ago. Notice I said, I abandoned them. I didn’t blame them for what was wrong with me. Sure, I might have for a short time but I realized what I did, I did willingly. They feed my own ego. Since that time, I’ve tried to restrain my ego. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Which is why I recognize your ego for what it is. You have an innate desire to feed your ego. A desire you can’t resist. Which is why you have a website telling everyone just how good you’ve become since abandoning God. You’re attracting like minded people that love to yell “fuck off”. You need them because you know…. you are nothing by yourself.
You’re dropping out of the conversation because you know it is a losing proposition for you. You can’t drive your narrative with me and you will look bad to them. Just like the good old “baptist” you once were, you know when to stop before it looks bad on you.
So. I’m still here. Appealing to your weaknesses. Talking about how you need to be “self aware”. How you have to see things for what they are….. even it it reflects badly upon yourself. After all, you are just human. A product of your surroundings. Even you can recognize an end. I think your realize just how meaningless you will become. Forgotten. Fleeting energy at the bottom of the Universe’s rectum. You can pretend to take pleasure in this or you can abandon your ego and look beyond yourself.
I don’t plan to personally respond to his email. I will leave it to the readers of this blog to assess and judge his words accordingly. While this man claims to not be an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christian, I don’t believe him. He’s active on an IFB forum, frequently spouts IFB theology, and certainly behaves and talks like someone deeply immersed in the IFB church movement. He may have changed his address, but he kept all his old furniture.
My youngest daughter and her two sons, ages two and seven months, stopped by earlier tonight. While we were in town, I bought Ezra, the two-year-old, a 2-car package of small friction cars. He proceeded to stuff them in the sound port on the back of our center channel speaker. I had to remove one of the speakers to extract the cars. Ezra — all boy, ever-moving, and a hell of a lot faster than his grandfather. Ezra and I also shared a bottle of Towne Club Cream Soda — his first drink of the nectar of the Gods. He loved it! I also spent some time playing with Silas, our youngest grandchild — a redhead.
I chopped down some weeds earlier today, cleaned part of the garage, and went to Defiance with the love of my life to do some shopping. We are remodeling our living room, and we are at the nickel-and-dime phase of the project. $10 here, $20 there. Afterward, we ate dinner — roasted chicken, asparagus, and potatoes. Later tonight, we plan to eat homemade guacamole and chips.
I am exhausted, and in a lot of pain. That’s the price I pay for admission. However, life is good, even if a clueless Fundamentalist thinks otherwise. I’m content to embrace life as it is, believing that this present life is all I have and all that matters. That the man who sent me several emails can’t or won’t understand this fact is not my problem. Why, unprovoked, he has decided to personally attack me and the readers of this blog is beyond me. Whatever his motives, nothing he’s said or done has appealed to me or caused me to reconsider my way of life. If he had not been a judgmental prick, an asshole, and a downright rude and inconsiderate man, he might have got his foot in the door. But instead he has provided a classic example of the behavior that caused many of us to leave Evangelical Christianity. If Heaven is filled with people like this man, I will take Hell with Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Hawking, Steve Gupton, and Gandhi every time.
I could die tonight, tomorrow, or a year from now. Until then, I plan to keep on living my life to its fullest. I hope you will do the same.
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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In absolute honesty, I read that like 3 times, and then went back and read the prior post with his other response, and I do not have the slightest friggin clue what he is talking about. “Energy at the bottom of the universe’s rectum?” What the actual hell does that even mean? Dude is unhinged, over and above the IFB issues.
Oh–and fuck off! I do love yelling that. He was right there.
Dude makes me tired. He has nothing to contribute, but his sheer egotism won’t let him leave it alone — and it is armor and shield against actually learning anything from people who disagree with him. He can’t tell the difference between people being nasty, and people using curse words; he figures if he never swears, he isn’t being nasty — by definition, as it were — and that’s not how it works.
And yes, since he’s so sure of logic, being an asshole about doesn’t necessarily make him wrong. (Though… it does still make him an asshole, at least here and at least towards us.) No, him being wrong — fundamentally, thoroughly, fractally wrong — is an entirely separate issue. And for all he talks about the meaning and importance of shaking the dust from his shoes and moving on, he sure doesn’t seem to know how to do it…
I do.
If he has a serious question, he can find me on my blog and I’ll try to answer. Otherwise? Eh, not worth my time.
Bruce, in what language was Jesus supposed to have said to “shake the dust off your feet,” and what words were they before English translation? The expression in English probably means “to get moving.” But IFB-denier seems to think “dust” must be mortality instead. Any proof that that is true? BTW, Ezra sounds like a lot of fun. And exhausting.
The phrase is found several times in the gospels and the book of Acts. Speaking of Matthew 10:14, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown says:
“shake off the dust of your feet — “for a testimony against them,” as Mark and Luke add (Mar 6:11; Luk 10:11). By this symbolical action they vividly shook themselves from all connection with such, and all responsibility for the guilt of rejecting them and their message. Such symbolical actions were common in ancient times, even among others than the Jews, as strikingly appears in Pilate (Mat 27:24). And even to this day it prevails in the East. “
And Ezra? Yes, he wears me out. Doesn’t take much these days. ?
Well, I did tell him to fuck off. Of course, he has no way of knowing that I’ve rarely said that to anyone. He assumes I am a Christian because I told him I believe in God.* But I don’t believe in his god, a being who would horrifically torture flawed humans for eternity. He apparently buys into that concept.
Oh, and he expects me to be miserable. I have sources of joy that are keeping me going during this pandemic, my husband and sons, music and biking. Love is the most important thing and if this dude acted in any kind of loving fashion, he’s get a far different response in general. But Bruce, I get super pissed off when people attack my friends or family. I’m more inclined to block or ignore someone going after me. Really, fuck off was the only thing I could feel towards this person.
I can’t quite remember if I commented. Admin dude is very condescending, and talks like we are his inferiors. None of these types of Christians are interested in actual people, but in a made-up evil atheist they can hurl imprecations at. Maybe the imprecations aren’t technically coached in harsh terms, but they are still rude and unkind. I can barely remember a single one of these types of Christians who believe in “loving your neighbor as yourself.” They say they “love” you, but it’s a hollow love. Undoubtedly most of them would be happy to get their guns and shoot all of us evil non-Christians liberal commie socialists, because Republican Jesus would be glad.
I told admin dude I believed in God, but he assumed that meant Christianity and Jesus. He is wrong.
To the execrably rude fundy interlocutor who’s so desperate to get in the last word, and who thinks that “Fuck off” is somehow orders of magnitude worse than his own behaviour towards Bruce:
I can do better than “Fuck off.” A lot better.
May your faith become a millstone around your neck, destroying all the joy in your life, until that faith crumbles into a vaguely troubling distant memory of something you used to believe.
May you feel deeply ashamed of the words you have spoken to us, wiping out the faux superiority you currently present with, so that one day you can rejoin humanity on an equal footing, freed from the obsession with judging and sorting your fellow travellers.
May you be free of the shackles you have put upon yourself.
My usual response to people like this…
yawn
Admin: Bruce, you’re not unique, your website sucks, you think you are an intellectual, I challenge you to a smart-off.
Bruce: Dude, I didn’t ask you to come make judgments about me, and you didn’t read enough on my site to know anything about me. I have heard your IFB arguments 57,012 times – hell,I used to say them myself.
Admin: Bruce, you’re still not special. I challenge you again to a smart-off. Your readers are mean. They told me to f$%& off. I shake them off like dust, which you will be soon. And you need Jesus. And I am not IFB.
Bruce: Dude, I am busy and have things to do. I have an awesome wife and amazing grandchildren. We’re having a good time over here. So what you don’t like the F word. I am not going to let you abuse my readers or me anymore. Bye bye.
Admin: (muffled screams into the universe)
Early yesterday morning, I went out into the garden in the crisp air. I did some dead heading of gorgeous zinnias that are still lingering in the garden and housing quite a few grasshoppers that sojourned in the gardens this year. Some of the sunflowers were ready to harvest, so I clipped them and set them out for our resident chipmunk and juvenile squirrels that are thinking their mom brought them to the right place to birth and raise them. 🙂 In case anyone wonders, I do talk squirrel and chipmunk. 😉
Then I went over to the carrot patch to see if the black swallowtail caterpillars were still systematically munching away on our carrot tops. There they were, sleeping. Exhausted probably from munching all night just to stay warm. I mentioned the temps are cooling down to them and they might want to crawl along and get hunkered down for the winter in their nice cozy cocoon.
Popped back into the house for some breakfast before her smiling face of joy arrived at grandma and grandpa’s house for a morning play. First out to visit the caterpillars again and her joy at seeing a real caterpillar outside of a book. 🙂 She made sure to add a few beet greens to the pile of carrot tops to nourish the caterpillars.
Back in for play. Then in the afternoon, off we go to feed the ducks some delicious corn.
The day was filled with beauty. The Monarchs are still here and the hummingbirds stop by for some nectar. The evening is cool. Biker Dude and I sit again on the front porch. We enjoy a conversation with a neighbour who stands at the roadside and we look ahead to the challenges of life with Covid. We are tired with joy, though our hearts are heavy too for the pain that exists around us, for the death. Our bodies ache with our own chronic infirmities and we are aware of our age, years gone, few left? We don’t know. We do know that we are here and while we are here we’ll embrace that fact for as long as we are aware and here. All around us every day, others who wanted to still be here, are gone and if anything, we live to honour them while we are alive.
One of the most difficult challenges in my life has been recovering from the trauma of spiritual abuse and dealing with the fall-out when I walked away and said: no more. Many years ago a Christian friend wrote a very long letter, attacking me and calling me “an abomination to God.” That’s just an abusive Christian’s fancy way of telling one to “fuck-off” without saying “fuck-off.” Christians swear all the time in Jesus name. They can use all sorts of biblical phrases, parts of scripture, Christianese and their own made-up phrases like “Universe’s rectum” and think they are not swearing.
Thanks for sharing your life Bruce. <3
“Rejecting the only message that will bring your any semblance of lasting happiness is a horrible mistake. You have nothing left.”
poor christian, left with being upset that someone dares disagree with him. He has to hope that no one but him is happy. How pitiful.
happily 🙂 he is wrong.
This guy mistakenly thinks his arrogance is intelligence. He’s common.
Yeah, I don’t think he’s just arrogant though. I think he’s smug, condescending, self important, proud and pretentious. I want to ask him, if I reconvert, will I have to become like that too? If so, no thanks.
Last night I was reading through that chick’s blog, those ‘Fighting Fundie Forums or whatever the hell it is. Quite educational, confirming all my suspicions. This character is not not just ‘fucked-off’, but utterly FUCKED UP as well. Talk about having an EGO. This guy,one day,will wind up wind up being hanged by the long rope of his endless diatribes. Treasur_trove has OCD,NPD and borderline personality disorder. That’s the direction his own church-going journey led him. A person always has an option of ‘returning to God,’ at any time. It won’t be because of you or what you state,Treasure_trove. People such as yourself have the opposite effect. You truly need some kind of treatment to recover from your upbringing. Until that day,you epitomize the term “a-hole” as well as howling nutcase to boot.
Hey Bruce,your dinner description made me hungry. I can’t cook where I’m staying at the moment. And Zoe,love the account of the caterpillars in the garden. We see butterflies where I live, but we haven’t seen a caterpillar in years. I always lift them out of the path of danger from cars and feet,when needed. Flies and mosquitoes took over out here. I hope you can post a photo of those caterpillars.
Thanks Yulya. I don’t know how to load a pic in the comments and I’d need to okay that with Bruce. 🙂
Sorry about my phone’s autotext acting up. Near as I know this Treasure-trove is not a chick, just a hick, from the backwoods of the South.
Reading this guy defend his offensive behavior is like listening to Trump do the same. Wanna bet he’s in that cult?
Well. Nothing pleases bullies more than getting a reaction and we have sure reacted. The man does not evoke interest, that is certainly agreed but the phenomenon of the ignorant quasi-intellectualism coming from born-agains perhaps just demonstrates that Christianity is designed to harm. When you allow God to shit on you, the fact that it is metaphor does not really matter: You have been shat on… Your fantasy shat on you, you deserved it and you liked it. Now, good Christian, go into all the world and shit on everyoneelse. Surely they will appreciate it the way you have! Tell them they are evil shits themselves, hell-bound and unworthy. Explain the verses as only you have understood them.
Now THAT phenomenon is of interest to me and I would like to know the harm that must be accomplished to allow someone to actively allow disrespect to themselves and then to say, Praise God, while they go out into the world to save others by insulting them. (What a good place to hide an injured self, contemporary American evangelical faith! No wonder people have orgasmic salvation experiences! The pain of living just suddenly goes away! (Jesus takes it!) And the human reasons for the misery of each day get buried in the new glory of evangelical belief!)
Hey, ‘Admin’ or ‘Rosy Sunshine’ or whatever you’d like to call yourself.
I won’t swear at you.
But I’ll tell you that you can smooch my donkey.
But is the donkey okay with this? We don’t know where Admin has been. 😀
I must apologize for my phone’s sneaky autotext. I think that Andmin and Treasure_Island are the same person,though I could be wrong about that. I just saw something serious in the news about Roger Stone,pardoned Party hack, now calling on Trump to declare Martial Law so he doesn’t have to leave office if he loses this election. Wasn’t expecting to see THIS with my morning coffee. Yikes. This article is on businessinsider.com, and mediamatters.com. Going to be researching more on this. It’s hard to do this type of thing by phone though. Some sotesike The Atlantic,L.A.Times,N.Y.Times,all require a subscription,which I can’t do right now. Anyway,one of these sites started out with Trump promising, ” The Church Will Have Power…..” Maybe someone can read it in full. It’s no accident that Trump stocked his Cabinet with Opus Dei and Jesuits,who are the fixers and militant wing of Roman Catholicism, and like Jeff Sharlet shows in his two books,there is some behind-the-scenes power brokering/sharing deal to rule the country with. Separation of church and state is a direct threat to this agenda,which is why all these strange events are happening now. Salemnow.com, has movies really promoting the extreme Right. Forewarned is forewarned. And where on earth is Batavia ?
An intellectual uses his or her intelligence to perceive, and logic and reason to make sense of them. By this definition, Bruce is clearly an intellectual. On the other hand, some of the folks at FF mistake their faith for intellectual acumen, and their proficiency in quoting the “right” Bible verse for a situation as reasoned argument.
You can’t use reason to justify a belief in whatever you believe in, any more than you can use faith to solve questions of science or simply phenomenology.
Those fundamentalist forums were nuts especially the fighting fundamentalist forum. It was weird all these egoists, who still were “Christian”, but putting people down. The guy sounds like an astroturfer type, never tells you WHAT he believes but all over the map. I think some on those boards just like to throw the mud.
When I was a super fundie, I used to go over there and read. It was a crazy place. It was funny to see these ultra logicians act like reason was their highest value, while clinging to the nonsense and myth pile of Christianity. it was people like this who helped me wake up out of extreme fundamentalism and deconvert. I wonder if it is a guy named “Ransom” over there visiting you. Could be someone else but I remember the personality of that fellow, so pompous from many years ago. I hope that particular one grew up and got out, but this one has a personality just like him.
Christianity can serve as a safety net for wannabes who think they are more intelligent then everyone else, playing the game of stupid called Christian apologetics.