Today, an Evangelical man named Tom Howard sent me the following email:
FAKE, fake, fake, faker. 25 yrs a fake. How many people did you fake out over those years? Imagine living as long as you have and concluding life as a fake so called atheistic demoncrat. Satan has faked you out and you haven’t a clue. The gall of you calling yourself an atheist yet fully espousing the Christian world view of morality, family, marriage, lawful living, what a faker! Your poor wife and kids must really hold you in high esteem, so just find a juniper tree and self abort and confirm your fake beliefs. This is all in the spirit of 1Tim5:20
1 Timothy 5:20 says
Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear.
“Good” Christians always find a Bible verse to justify their hate.
If Heaven is where the Tom Howards of the world will be, please book me a suite in Hell.
What is it about Evangelical Christianity that turns some believers into vile, hateful people?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen 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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For a religion of peace and love, Christianity has more than their share of hateful people. And they are totally blind to it.
Bruce, can you get us a group rate for Hell Hotel? The thought of spending an afterlife anywhere near someone like Tom… [shudder]
“What is it about Evangelical Christianity that turns some believers into vile, hateful people?” And somehow they must seek out people not like them on whom to spew their hatred. Maybe your blog is a beacon for their fear. Maybe deep down, they fear that “whatever happened” to poor deluded Bruce could happen to them, so they must fight your blog and make it go away.
Yup. The very thought of once-believers turning into non-believers is apparently too much for their psyches to handle. If salvation isn’t a one-and-done, if they actually have to work to stay in the good graces of the Invisible Sky Fairy, it undoubtedly stirs up the ancient fear and trembling that their faith was supposed to protect them from.
Sad, really. The people who feel most threatened by apostates, and who make asses of themselves on this and other websites, will always be one question, one doubt, one uneasy feeling away from the total loss of their religious faith. It can happen, it does happen, and once it starts it’s usually not possible to put things back they way they were. They may not become atheists, but the things they believe will probably change enough to force them into a different faith community.
Let’s see, (a large number of) Fundies have come to your blog, a blog that offends them. And instead of ignoring it, and effectively just forgetting about it, they have to scratch that nasty Christian itch of being unkind and unpleasant. Honestly, you’re a burr in Tom’s butt. He’s worked up about your lack of beliefs regarding a deity. The fact that him and all the other fundies drop by means you reputation is spreading, and you, Bruce, can continue to be a force for good. Thank you!
Darcy, I think you nailed it. If their God was such a certainly and his love so unconditional, they would have no reason to fear the loss of their faith—and, therefore no reason to hate someone who no longer shares it—or anyone else, for that matter.
Folks like Tom Howard remind me not only of the Christian I once was, but also the homo- and trans-phone I was until I accepted, affirmed and embraced my gender identity and sexuality. I hated on LGBTQ people in a way similar to the way too many Evangelicals and Fundamentalists hate those who don’t believe as they do.
One thing I have to say about this Tom Howard dude, though: He isn’t spewing that “Love the sinner, hate the sin” nonsense. He’s as transparently hateful as, well, the God he believes in.
Morality, family, and marriage are not the exclusive domain of Christianity. Those concepts are shared by a plethora of cultures, religions, and nonreligion.
This dude doesn’t even WANT you to “get saved” – nope, he wants you to not pass Go, not collect $200, just go straight to hell. Nice fellow. ((Sarcasm))
What happened to “they will know we are Christians by our love”?
OC, I’m guessing the love part of Christianity just proved to be too hard for Tom and his ilk. They think flaying us with anger and threats is a winning combination. And yet, love actually does open hearts and soften attitudes. Conclusion: they are trying to drive us even farther away from Christianity and are just pretending.
And he should go fuck HIMself. Not that anyone else would.
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Many Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are hateful. They find bible verses that justify their venom. They believe in a God of wrath and retributive punishment who hates his enemies,
Their major problem is their false belief in the inerrancy of the bible in the missing original manuscripts. They assume that the words of the bible are God’s words and that the bible is univocal when, in fact, it is multi-vocal. So bible passages are selected that conform with their views, while others are ignored.
If they create God in their own image then, if they are spiteful and hateful persons, their God will be hateful and spiteful and they will be likely to hate those who disagree with them. If, on the other hand, they become like the god they believe in they will become hateful and spiteful persons because more of the bible seems to support barbarism than compassion and kindness.
Bruce, you have had thousands of hateful Fundamentalists come to your websites since you became an atheist. Their God is pure evil. They seem to be incapable of showing kindness.
one more christian who has been terrified by the mere existence of atheists. And poor dear, he thinks that Christians were the beginning of moral consideration of family, marriage, etc. oh the poor ignorant greedy christians.
That Tom Howard- I’d enjoy (metaphorically) killing HIM( if I could get at him). The GALL of telling you to kill yourself-if anything, he should take his own idiotic advice, and free the world, by offing HIMSELF !! You lived a very authentic life as a Christian, while you were one, and he should just TRY to match you, in his own “walk.” He’s your garden variety Euro-American fanatic, not unlike that Horner character down in Texas. There’s been too many of his ilk in the Western Hemisphere, for 400 years ! That’s what’s wrong with America, mostly. His kind brought the slaves here. Did untold damage. Dime-a-dozen in the Deep South. I’m not an atheist, but I enjoy reading your blog a few years back. Lucky for the Toms and Larrys out there, that I’m not one, too ! I figure because you validate the victims of church culture/church people, that such people see you as a threat. Seen plenty like them in person, over the years. They take pride in misrepresenting Christianity, if anything !
Actually this person who suggested that the author of this blog should kill himself showed both poor character and poor imagination. Instead of suggesting the that the author of this blog should kill himself, that person should have gone full-blown Rolfe Barnard and said” I am praying for God to either convert you or kill you.” This person this could then say that he was praying that if you would be unwilling to be converted that God would punish you by having Bruce Gerencser suffer some type of sudden, horrible (and improbable) type of death. Such death occurring due to 1. A Tasmanian Devil escaping from the Toledo zoo and then somehow locating and attacking the author of this blog 2. A bolt of lightning hitting the author of this blog ( don’t laugh, J. Harold Smith tried to convert some 15 year old boy who after refusing to be converted was killed by a bolt of lightning while walking in a watermelon patch)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExvCdjwTnlA 3. Being struck and killed by a drunken Lutheran pastor operating a motor vehicle or being severely hit by a drunken bus driver transporting a bunch of Lutheran preschool children, all of whom leave the bus and start kicking you to death. This person could pray that one of those types of deaths could occur to the author of this blog and then announce that he was doing so. Of course when none of those types of deaths occur to you the author of this blog could use that as proof that God doesn’t exist. This whole comment is full of snark and sarcasm.