My dear friend Zoe recently wrote the following for a blog post titled My Benediction:
Like all the years I studied to understand my former Christian belief system. At some point, I moved on from that, though I can engage, I often choose not to. Or, I limit my input. There comes a time when the sorrow attached to it all weighs heavily on the heart. The exercise has been beneficial for understanding me, mom, and a lot of humanity throughout history. I don’t have the energy anymore to go point by point to try and warn and or educate. My therapist shared something, with a caveat that at first this sounds terrible to say, but: Some people are just terminal.
Without going into more personal detail, this wasn’t about suicide or suicidal ideation. This was more about, if I understand it correctly, accepting that some people can’t be moved. And it’s more than a sense of them not wanting to move, they just can’t. They are in their own world and regardless of the reasons, some people can’t reason other than where they are at.
Over the years of recovery for me, I have read, I have studied, I have prayed my knees raw (in those years), I have listened, I have contemplated, I have educated myself and I have played devil’s advocate. If you’re going to try to educate others then you have to spend time studying the other side. Until of course, it’s time to stop. It doesn’t matter about their new tricks. There aren’t any new tricks. Actually, nothing has changed. I look at Christianity. What has really changed? Maybe that there are more denominations/sects now than when I joined up . . . but they’re still Christianity.
I met Zoe back in my emerging/emergent Christian days; my “barely” Christian days. She’s been around for the whole Bruce Gerencser Show — all five acts. Both of us have spent years interacting with abrasive, hostile Evangelical Christians with few satisfying outcomes. We have learned over time that some people are just terminal; that no amount of evidence or emotional capital is going to change their minds.
Since 2007, I have interacted with thousands of Evangelical zealots. Virtually every one of these interactions miserably failed. Why? Until a person can entertain the thought that they just might be wrong or that their beliefs might be untrue, there’s no hope for them. Most people who deconvert do so from the privacy of the shadows. One of the reasons I respond to hostile Evangelicals is to help the thousands of lurkers who frequent this site, but never comment or email me. Taking what they learn from my writing and the comments of readers, doubting believers think about their beliefs — whether they are rational and evidence-based. I love hearing from such people, learning that something I said made a meaningful difference in their lives.
Some days, I enjoy engaging Evangelical zealots for sport. I haven’t heard an original argument for the veracity of Christianity and the Bible in over a decade. When a know-it-all Evangelical thinks they can “educate” me, put me in my place, or “save” me, I lick my chops and say, “may I have BBQ sauce for the beef I’m about to shred?”
Other days, I am just content to sigh. (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh”.) I’m with Zoe when she says, “I don’t have the energy anymore to go point by point to try and warn and or educate.” Every day of my life is dominated by unrelenting pain, nausea, and bowel problems. Just getting out of bed is all I can do some days. Other days, I have a short window to do the things I want or need to do. Sunday, we went to Toledo to shop for groceries: Fresh Tyme Market, Costco, Monnette’s Market, and Meijer, finishing the night with dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Did I overdo it? Big time, as my counselor will remind me on Thursday. Two days later, I am still having a hard time moving. This afternoon, I had a steroid injection in my right hip. In two weeks, I will have an injection in my left hip. My orthopedic was brutally honest with me, saying that he was doubtful, based on the location of the pain, that the injections will be helpful. I am willing to give it a try, hoping to improve the quality of my life. Either that or maybe I’ll take up “praying.” 🙂 With these things and others as the backdrop of my life, I hope Evangelicals who want to grind on me like a stripper giving an IFB preacher a lapdance, understand if I don’t pay attention to them. For those I do, you are “special.” 🙂 Oh so “special” . . .
Are you an atheist, agnostic, or non-Christian? Have you changed the way you interact with Evangelicals over the years? Please share your experiences 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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I think it’s the nature of my personality, that I’m always doubting myself. “What if I’m wrong?”
Even when I was a zealous Evangelical, I would, every now and then, wonder if the Roman Catholics or the Orthodox were right. Also, what if Marian apparitions did actually take place? After all, for every alleged Pentecostal healing miracle or Calvinistic “miracle of regeneration/conversion”, there is at least one Eucharistic miracle or saintly visitation.
And that is before you consider other world religions. Buddhist philosophy is at least as complex as Catholic Thomistic metaphysics. What if the reason I’m not a Buddhist on the right path to nirvana is because I’m paying for my previous life’s bad karma, which prevents me from seeing the Truth?
It’s all Pascal’s Wagers version 2.
But it’s even more torturous knowing people who never even have a shred of self-doubt.
A lot of Evangelicals fall into this category. One person I know could loudly and confidently proclaim that the “stigmata” of Saint Francis came from the Devil. Out of hand.
No, I’m not defending the veracity of the account, but I find it baffling that some Evangelicals think that the sole criterion for dismissing an argument is: it conflicts with my personal interpretation of the Bible. The same person prefers to read more “direct” authors who directly tell him what “the Truth” is and what to believe without going round and round using analogy, stories, and such.
Is it faith or is it a lack of self-introspection? Is it healthy and devout confidence or delusional hubris?
I sometimes feel that the propensity to doubt is a curse that leads to alienation from one’s group. And not only in religious groups, but also non-theistic ones, which Bruce wrote about a while ago. Ignorance is indeed bliss.
‘What if I’m wrong?’ This bugged me secretly for many years. I’d overheard a young guy earnestly bible-bashing an older woman he’d trapped on a park bench. She said several times, politely and patiently, ‘Yes, dear, I’m glad it works for you but that doesn’t mean it works that way for everyone.’ I was impressed by her composure and simple rationality. I hid that thought for years before deconverting. I guess I was too deeply brainwashed and in my fundy bubble to dare to even consider that woman had it right – or that those other branches of x-tianity I was trained to look down on, or other religions might be right and I was wrong.
I’m humbled Bruce. I am glad I took the extra time to edit yesterday! 🙂
I avoid such people. When I worked with them, we interacted on a friendly level, but not at a deep level. I was known at Elder Beerman as a liberal Democrat who voted for Obama, even though I didn’t really talk about it. At all…so they must have been cued in by small comments? After I left Elder Beerman, I ended up unfriending Christians who were excited about the president of Uganda, the one who was banning homosexuality on the pain of death.
Great people. Okay, that’s sarcastic, although many of these people could be kind to a gay person in front of them, but were all in on their theoretical deaths. And they are going on a path that could certainly make them amenable to the execution of gay people at some point. That is one of the reasons that Qanon and the far right scare me. And I don’t know how we can stop them, except by fighting them at every point we can. sigh <——exhausted exasperation
Engaging with evangelicals: I am fortunate to live in an area of the country where evangelicals are the exception rather than the norm. I fled from the Bible Belt in 1994 and have no desire to move back, despite the fact that the weather there would be better than where I am. I have a few evangelical family members who I see now and then. I think we have an unspoken agreement to avoid discussions of religion and politics. My father-in-law is a far right conservative with Christian nationalists tendencies whose specific sect of Christianity I haven’t figured out yet. When he brings up one of his culture war scare topics, I ask him whether he would rather engage in a topic knowing that we do not share the same opinion and are unlikely to sway the other, or would he prefer to converse about one of the many topics where we coukd have a nice conversation. He typically chooses the nice conversation.
The “What If I’m Wrong?” question undergirds much of “teminal” Fundangelical’s zealotry and, at times, their flat-out aggression. I think that, deep down, many are very, very scared that their beliefs are exactly that–nothing more. There is no empirical, or even ontological, basis for what they believe, and they know it. But they have to hold onto that belief, especially if their identities, families, communities and livelihoods are based on it.
Although I have lost relationships because of the renunciation of any belief in a deity I ever had, there is nothing in my present life that depends on my remaining an atheist who is willing to entertain the possibility that such a deity or power might reveal him/her/itself. Perhaps that is a reason why I don’t feel a need to “convert” anybody and, moreover, why I simply don’t think it’s possible to have a meaningful exchange about belief, or lack thereof, with someone who is “terminal.”
Yes, MJ, ‘deep down they’re very very scared.’ A commenter on an atheist blog said something not long ago that was a ‘lightbulb moment’ for me. When he was fundy and knowing he should do personal evangelism, he saw now that he rarely did cos he was afraid his arguments would be weaker than the rational ones of the person he was witnessing to. God had promised to turn up and help him give zinging, irrefutable arguments for jesus….but he never did. Bruce said in a recent post that if fundies really believed what they claim, that all must be told how to get saved or suffer eternal torture….then wouldn’t they be out and about 24/7 telling folk this? Well, maybe a few obnoxious ones are, but I suggest that the vast majority…..are just plain too scared!
“Until a person can entertain the thought that they just might be wrong or that their beliefs might be untrue, there’s no hope for them.”
The unrecognized irony for many Evangelicals is recognition and repentance is the bedrock foundation of Jesus teaching. It is the first thing he preached. It is the basis of all he did and said. Somehow that gets lost.
Sick, vile comment deleted.
I just try to not let people scare me. If you resist fear, then clergymen and politicians can’t get to you as easily.