An Evangelical man using the pseudonym Victor Justice continues to leave comments on this site and send me emails. If you are not familiar with Justice, please read Victor Justice: The Cancer Spreading in Evangelical Christianity. Over the weekend, Justice sent me the following email (all spelling and grammar in the original):
Little Bruce,
You are truly a pathetic, lazy slob with a reprobate mind. When I read the vulgar things that you write here, I have no doubt that you never loved GOD Almighty…never experienced regeneration through the precious blood of the LORD Jesus Christ!
Preaching was the easiest way for you to get the attention you craved. You pastored exclusively in “one pastor rule” settings that fed your oversized ego. You should have (if you were actually saved) been in churches that had a plurality of Elder rule. This biblical form of church governance is far more likely to smoke-out heretics, lunatics, and craven, egomaniacal termites like yourself.
It’s quite obvious that you’re OCPD and your piss-poor attitude have destroyed your satanic blog. Little Bruce has to be in CONTROL, Little Bruce has to prescreen every comment, Little Bruce can only allow the most retrograde, degenerates, sycophants, haters, and trolls to make comments! So now you have an echo chamber of maladjusted riff raft conversing with one another, instead of a robust forum of ideas and opinions. Does this sound familiar to you, boy?
You’ve ruined EVERYTHING that you ever touched, every church you’ve ever pastored, every normal relationship that you’ve ever been involved in. My humble advice is for you to just sit down and shut up for once in your miserable existence! Everything that you touch—wilt’s away and dies.
Most sincerely,
I have heard from a plethora of Victor Justices over the past fifteen years. Along with Justice, I am currently getting emails, social media messages, and blog comments from men such as Revival Fires, Daniel Kluver, and Dr. David Tee (who mainly writes blog posts about me). While these so-called Christians are my latest hemorrhoids, they are not the only ones I have dealt with over the years. Such people come with the territory.
By far, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) adherents are the most hateful, nastiest people I deal with. Not all of them, of course, but enough of them to conclude that the IFB church movement has an outsized number of people who aren’t good people. Another group that seems to produce meanspirited followers is the Evangelical Calvinist movement. Victor Justice is one such person.
While Justice never claims the Calvinist moniker, his writing reveals his Calvinistic theology. Note the Calvinist buzzwords Justice uses: reprobate, regeneration, plurality of elders rule. Ding! Ding! Ding! One of John Calvin’s boys is in the house. I can spot Calvinists from a mile away, much as I can IFB adherents. This information about Justice goes a long way in explaining why he is so hateful and nasty. In his mind, I am a reprobate — someone whom God has turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Justice views my life through this paradigm, thus he sees no need to treat me kindly or with respect. I am just a “dead” human being waiting in the anteroom of Hell, awaiting final judgment and eternal punishment.
I have long believed that many of my critics put me in a special category of unbelievers: those undeserving of respect, kindness, and decency. Justice extends this ill-treatment to my wife, Polly, and our family. Evidently, if I am a reprobate everyone in my family is a reprobate. Justice even extends this further to the readers of this blog — even though many of them are Christians. It is safe to conclude, then, that there is some sort of rot in Justice’s mind that has robbed him of the ability to be a decent human being to anyone except people who believe as he does.
Let me conclude by correcting several of Justice’s errant opinions about me.
First, two of the churches I pastored had a plurality of elders. Evidently, even after allegedly reading most of my blog, Justice missed the fact that I was the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas. Community, a Calvinistic Baptist congregation, had a plurality of elders. That said, having a plurality of elders cures nothing. Even when a church has multiple elders, one man typically is the elder who runs the show. One need only look at John MacArthur’s church to see how this plays out in real life. (The reasons for this are many, but I don’t intend to address them today.)
Second, I loved the Lord with all my heart, soul, and might for most of my life. This fact is incontrovertible. Only those who are hellbent on trying to discredit or marginalize me say the things Justice does in his emails. Further, my lived life proved the truth of my claims. Just ask Polly, our six children, friends, or former parishioners. You will find a few people with an axe to grind, but everyone else will admit that I was a devoted follower of Jesus Christ; that I dedicated my life to building churches, winning souls, preaching the gospel, and teaching God’s people. These people may grudgingly admit this, knowing it raises theological problems for them, but if they are honest, they will say, “Bruce Gerencser was a Christian.” As a Christian family member once said upon hearing of my loss of faith, “if Butch (a family nickname) is not a Christian, nobody is.” I had my frailties and faults. I “sinned,” but the bend of my life was towards holiness.
Third, I am not sure what Justice means when he says I “have destroyed my Satanic blog.” In what way? Thousands of people read my blog. This site will yet again pass one million page views this year. I have given numerous interviews this year, with more planned in the coming months. So, by every metric, my “Satanic” blog is doing just fine. All praise be to Lucifer. 🙂
Fourth, Justice decries that I won’t let him say whatever he wants on this site. Tough shit. Justice could have played by the rules as countless Evangelicals have done, but he chose not to. That’s on him, not me.
Justice will eventually slither into his hole never to be heard from again. But others will pick up where he left off. In doing so, they remind the readers of the blog why they are glad they left Evangelical Christianity.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 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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Bruce, it’s one thing for someone to question whether you ever were a Christian. (Of course, I won’t.) But why do those IFB folks, and some other Evangelicals, who believe themselves to be the only true messengers of Jesus’ love, have to be so vicious–to the point of making ad hominem attacks?
MJ, having been in that world for far too long, it was/is my opinion that the “why?” is found in their scriptures. Throughout both the old and new testament you find violence and judgement and a war between their god and their satan. We are not humans to them. We are evil entities. Note the emphasis on “Satanic blog.”
He can’t see it any other way.
MJ, I’m guessing that making vicious attacks that are so wrong (including about blog readers, of which I am proud to be one) makes these nasties (what to call them?) feel better. They read one post in Bruce’s background and feel upset that Jesus love didnt stick to him. Maybe they feel threatened?
I know that I sometimes have trouble reading essays that I think are just wrong. Maybe if I read blogs by these nasties, I would want to push them away, tell them how incredibly wrong they are, make them see how WRONG they are! They look at our world through… broken warped lenses, and they think I’m the one wearing those lenses. Would it help me to give them a piece of my mind? Probably not. Would it make me look good to people like me? Maybe, but I don’t care. Do these thoughts help explain? Can’t know unless I ask them, and I’m not sure that I could get a real answer. These nasties are playing by the rules of a whole different game.
These types of Christians are pushing people away. They don’t really want to save you Bruce, because they hate you. And instead of shaking the dust off their feet and metaphorically leaving your town (blog), instead they tromp around, causing more and more dust to rise, helping no one and doing nothing of value.
Victor and his ilk have ugly hearts. They are also deeply insecure. Their confidence in their faith is so shaky, that a few words from Bruce can threaten to bring it all down.
Victor, by now even you must realise that you have no power over Bruce, nor the people who frequent his site. You are being a cowardly troll, and I wonder what you expect to accomplish, by behaving in a manner that will actually turn people away from your version of Christianity?
Proud member of the Reprobate Riff Raffs here. My fellow Riff Raffians are a diverse group unified in our opposition to fundamentalist religion, particularly fundamentalist Christianity. We don’t doubt that Bruce was a devoted Christian for many decades, asall evidence points to that.
Victor seems to get his jollies by saying scathing things about Bruce and his wife and grown children – people who have not written on this blog in their own words, I might add. I assume that Victor is a US citizen who subscribes to the notion of rugged individualism. Which is it, Victor, that each person is responsible for their own actions or that the family patriarch is responsible? I suppose one could find support in the Bible for either stance.
I tried looking for Victor Justice⚓and found that the above name is actually a legal term- ” victor’s justice.” I suspect that schizophrenia is behind his way with speech. And yes, they don’t care that they make God look bad. Now, if they love God so much, why do they do things they know will harm God’s reputation ??
Yulya, I again, tend to look at this from a Biblical position. Consider that all through the Bible, “God” Himself/Herself/Whateverself ruins their own reputation. HeSheWhatever puts a snake/serpent in paradise. Later gets so angry HeSheWhatever drowns almost every living thing. Consider the book of Revelation. Justified slaughter appears throughout the 66 books.
Many Christians aren’t thinking about a loving God and hurting HisHerWhatever reputation. They are immersed in good vs evil. God vs Satan. They are justified in their attack based on their “God’s” own judgement. Their is no room for anything other than judgement, condemnation and dehumanizing. Their scriptures support their behaviour and they wear it like a badge.
Then we add in personality, trauma, illness, perhaps mental and throw into the pot literalism/legalism and it seems to me to end up being a rather chaotic mess of rigidity that one can’t escape from . . . or so it appears.
I can only imagine the absolute rage Victor must feel as he pounds his keyboard firing off his crazed missives. As I point out, the reason people are leaving religion in droves (besides the absolute nonsensical drivel purported to be fact) is the hateful attitude of the a majority of the adherents. I was prodded in my early years by things that didn’t make sense and when I asked I was told it was just because. Or my favorite, it is god’s plan. To this day nobody has been able to successfully explain the god-knows-everything-about-us and-what-we will-do but we have free will conundrum. I appreciate Bruce’s writing as it reinforces my own thought process and considering he was an “insider” it affirms I was on the correct path. Also proud to be a part of the retrograde, degenerates, sycophants, haters, and trolls brigade. See my fellow riff raffians around!
I’ve got to say that I’m a big fan of the 6-point Calvinist cartoon. Simply perfect.
Victor: “Little Bruce,
You are truly a pathetic, lazy slob with a reprobate mind. When I read the vulgar things that you write here, I have no doubt that you never loved GOD Almighty…never experienced regeneration through the precious blood of the LORD Jesus Christ!”
Zoe: Do you mind Bruce? No? Okay, thanks.
Is that your mortal wounding Victor? Or have you got more?
Victor: “Preaching was the easiest way for you to get the attention you craved. You pastored exclusively in “one pastor rule” settings that fed your oversized ego. You should have (if you were actually saved) been in churches that had a plurality of Elder rule. This biblical form of church governance is far more likely to smoke-out heretics, lunatics, and craven, egomaniacal termites like yourself.”
Zoe: Oh, there is more? Okay.
Speaking of needing attention . . .
Victor: “It’s quite obvious that you’re OCPD and your piss-poor attitude have destroyed your satanic blog. Little Bruce has to be in CONTROL, Little Bruce has to prescreen every comment, Little Bruce can only allow the most retrograde, degenerates, sycophants, haters, and trolls to make comments! So now you have an echo chamber of maladjusted riff raft conversing with one another, instead of a robust forum of ideas and opinions. Does this sound familiar to you, boy?”
Zoe: Narcissistic projection much?
Echo, echo, . . . e c h oooooooo
Victor: “You’ve ruined EVERYTHING that you ever touched, every church you’ve ever pastored, every normal relationship that you’ve ever been involved in. My humble advice is for you to just sit down and shut up for once in your miserable existence! Everything that you touch—wilt’s away and dies.”
Zoe: Have you ever noticed Victor that people who think they have no rage in them are full of it?
Victor: “Most sincerely,”
Zoe: Sincerely.