My Brief Email Interaction With an Evangelical Christian

What follows is a short email “discussion” I had today with an Evangelical Christian named Shirley from North Carolina. Enjoy!

All spelling and grammar in the original.

Shirley:

And you are trying to “whip,up the crowd” for your own personal gain.

As you stated that you do not want or need prayers, I won’t waste my time with you either, however I do feel bad for you that you will miss the boat

Bruce:

Shirley,

And what, exactly, would I “personally gain”? Readership? Sure. Thousands of people read my blog. Money? Nope. What is it that really rubs you the wrong way? That I dare to tell my story? That I dare to speak the truth and share the secrets of the IFB church movement?

You won’t “waste” your time, yet you emailed me to tell me I’m headed for Hell (I get the boat 🚤 imagery). Why is that? Holy Ghost tell you to email me? Or are you just pissed off over what I wrote (I know what posts you looked at)?

Be Blessed.
Bruce Gerencser

Shirley:

Bruce, you would gain an eternal life with Christ, not an eternal life in hell with Satan. I am not ticked off about anything you wrote, that is your right. I don’t care about how many people read your blog. That is not my concern. Money?–not my concern either.Evidently, at one point in time, you, supposedly, long for a personal relationship with our Savior. Don’t know what caused you to do a 180 on that.

It also doesn’t bother me that you know which articles that I do or do not read. It bothers me that you are in the same boat that Mr. Reagan, who is a ‘proud’ atheist

I don’t consider it a waste of my time praying that you will return to the saving grace of Christ, so I will pray for you.And it looks from your sign off of me being blessed that you may still want to have a relationship with God.That is where blessings come from/

Thank you for your response.John 3:16

Shirley ******

Bruce:

Shirley,

You said I was blogging for “personal gain.” So what am I “gaining” by blogging, outside of the fact that I have helped thousands of doubting Christians and people who have left Christianity?

My point on knowing what you read is to show that you lazily made no effort to understand my story. Had you bothered to show even a bit of curiosity, you would have known why I deconverted. https://brucegerencser.net/why/

“Be blessed” has nothing to do with Christianity.

Hell, eternal life, Satan, personal relationship with Jesus, saving grace, “praying for you,” . . . you got all the buzzwords in. And to what end? I was in the Christian church for 50 years. I was an Evangelical pastor for 25 years. I was a devoted follower of Jesus for most of my life. What could you possibly say that I don’t already know? I suspect your emails are more about “you” than “me.”

Let me leave you with a message straight from God: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude. (Proverbs 18:13)

Bruce Gerencser

Shirley:

Wow Bruce, you went from semi-demented to full blown cut throat attack.

I will go back to my first post in stating that you are not worth me wasting my time.

I am not going back and forth with you so you have a nice life, if you can.

Bruce:

Shirley,

Remember, you are the one who emailed me. What in my responses to you are demented or a cutthroat attack?

As long as you keep hitting “send,” I will respond. You can stop embarrassing yourself at any time

You have been passive-aggressive — a common Evangelical/IFB trait — from the git-go. Why else would you say, “have a nice life, if you can.” Why wouldn’t I have a “nice” life? Are you suggesting I can’t have a “nice” life without your peculiar version of Jesus? I’ve been married for 43 years. I have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. We own our own home, drive a 2020 Ford Edge, and, by all accounts have a “nice’ life. I live with chronic, unrelenting pain from gastroparesis (an incurable stomach disease), fibromyalgia, and osteoarthritis. I have four herniated discs in my upper back. I am slowly dying, but that aside, I have a “nice” life. Awesome wife, wonderful children, and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious grandchildren. All without God, Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible. Nice, right?

Thank you for emailing me. Your emails will make for a “nice” blog post later tonight.

Be well.

Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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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Comments

10 responses to “My Brief Email Interaction With an Evangelical Christian”

February 26, 2022

BJW

They NEVER learn. Ever. I believe I may have been similarly judgmental back in the day, but not to the point of sending messages to strangers I disagreed with. OTOH, that was before the internet was widely used, and no such thing as social media or blogs. But damn. Posting messages to strangers shows that there are a LOT more sociopaths than we ever knew.

February 26, 2022

amimental

Miss the boat, huh?
I know she doesn’t realize it, sitting on her pinnacle of righteousness, but the prospect of sailing through eternity on a boat with a bunch of stupid christian assholes like Shirley isn’t something most people are interested in.

1. February 26, 2022
  
  Kel
  
  I suspect that for too many Christians, the idea of eternal hell is never repulsive because they secretly revel in the prospect of their enemies being burned to crisp. As long as they themselves, their families, and loved ones are exempt, to hell with the rest (literally). It’s revenge fantasy and rarely, if ever, pure submission to the (supposed) word of God. As BJW noticed, empathy is in short order and psychopathy seems to be more prevalent than we ever thought.
  This is also probably the reason why some conservative Christians only become more accepting of LGBT people once members of their inner circle start “coming out”.
  
  And these people always lack the self-awareness to consider the possibility that they are the ones “missing the boat” from the perspectives of other sects of Christians.
  
February 26, 2022

Yulya Sevelova

I would like to ask this Shirley person directly, by now, if you have read Bruce’s blog and his posts for a while, you would realize that such nagging, as you are doing right in this column here is only going to have the opposite effect,anyway. If you want to pray,and you are fairly certain that your prayers will get answered,then fine,please do. But things like ” I wouldn’t waste my time with you,” and ” I’m afraid you’ lol miss the boat”( no you’re not)only proves that toxic interactions are fun for you. If you actually cared about Bruce, you’d pray only,and that’s all you would do . This was just a Southern lecture on your part.

February 26, 2022

Karen the rock whisperer

I’m gonna get to Heaven and you’re gonna go to Hell, I’m delighted! Oh, wait, I’m not supposed to be delighted. I’ll send you a message to make my conscience happy, and now I can be delighted! Yay, email!

February 26, 2022

Troy

These kind of responses remind me of a story I saw about an inner city principal who had success at his school by repetitive drills. The result is everything is learned from rote but with little comprehension as to the why and the wherefore. So he’d see a kid in the hall and ask the student something from the multiplication table, and the student would fire back the correct answer. So in analogous fashion when evangelicals confront Bruce the atheist, their knee pops up as the little hammer hits the patella. It is not so much that they are even consciously moving their knee, it is just a reflex arc and up the leg pops.

Some time Bruce, you should ask such people if they keep garlic over their door. If they ask why, well of course to keep away vampires! Then if they scoff at the notion of vampires, perhaps they can see a crack in the door to their own folly.

February 27, 2022

ObstacleChick

It takes some extra effort for someone to find Bruce’s email address and then to keep engaging. Apparently this Shirley gets something out of emailing to say Shirley is right and Bruce’s is wrong. What does he get? Patting himself on the back? Feeling like he’s reaching out for Jesus ? Getting in a passive aggressive dig? What, did he think Bruce would email back and say, thank you, I have now seen the error of my ways thanks to your eloquent missive and am now a follower of Jesus again?

February 27, 2022

aylogogo77

Every time I see a post about comments from someone like Shirley, I am even more relieved and glad to be a functional atheist. One day I’ll come out of the closet–I just read an article about atheism and agnosticism being the last closet people come out of–but for now, it’s a relief to know that I don’t have to deal with people just like this. As you’ve said before, Bruce, she and others like her are doing more to create atheists than you ever could.

February 27, 2022

John Arthur

Shirley,
Where is the compassion, mercy and lovingkindness that you are supposed to show? Where has it gone to, if you ever had it? Isn’t the fruit of the Spirit, love? If you are a so-called Christian “saved by grace”, where is your graciousness?

Fundamentalism has made you self righteous and bigoted. You need to leave the psychological horrors of evangelicalism and be freed by non evangelicalism.

Your problem stems from believing that bloodthisty, barbaric and very violent book that was written by ancient savages. Your foolishness stems from believing that the bible is the Word of God, instead of the words of ignorant humans.

February 28, 2022

clubschadenfreude

“I don’t consider it a waste of my time praying that you will return to the saving grace of Christ, so I will pray for you.”

and yet one more Christian who has failed, and thus needs to be ask why she failed? Was it because her god loves Bruce more than her? That her god hates her? or that her god is imaginary?