Earlier, I wrote a post titled, Catch-All Bible Verses: Is the Human Body the Temple of the Christian God? Today I want to deal with another catch-all Bible verse, Psalm 101:3:
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
Evangelical preachers love this catch-all verse because it allows them to demand of congregants abstinence from seeing and using things or having contact with people, churches, and ministries they deem “wicked.” Whether something is wicked is determined by the pastor’s personal interpretations of the Bible, social, cultural, and religious experiences, and personal preferences. In other words, something is wicked because the pastor says it is, end of story. Since he is the man of God, the one chosen by Jesus to lead and teach the church, congregants are expected to believe and follow his “Biblical” pronouncements. If he says a certain behavior or inanimate item is wicked, then congregants are expected to nod their heads up and down and say, Amen brother, preach it!
Things labeled “wicked” are considered off-limits — Kryptonite to true Christians. Congregants, wanting to be obedient to God and his man, the pastor, bow — at least outwardly — to the subjective pronouncements of church leaders. Diversity of opinion and freedom are discouraged, if not outright forbidden. Congregants are expected to fall in line, obey, and follow Pastor Pied Piper. People who dare to think for themselves and publicly disagree with the man of God are told to either conform or leave. In some churches, non-conformity is viewed as rebellion against God’s established order. Erring congregants are brought before the church to be critiqued, judged, and disciplined. People are given two choices: excommunication or submission.
In 1994, I found myself, as the co-pastor of Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas, at odds with my fellow pastor, Pat Horner. (See I Am a Publican and a Heathen.) I disagreed with Horner — the founder of the church — on a number of issues, and due to the increasing hostility of our disagreements, I decided to resign from the church and move back to Ohio. Horner informed me that I couldn’t resign and that since the church decided whether I could be a member, it was up to them to decide whether or not I could resign. I, of course, refused to obey his pronouncements. I packed up my family and our meager belongings and returned to Ohio. As we were leaving, Horner had gathered congregants together for a disciplinary meeting. The subject? What to do about the Bruce Gerencser problem. I was deemed wicked and rebellious by Horner and his sycophants, and after the “facts” were presented, the church excommunicated their co-pastor. In their minds, my refusal to play by Horner’s rules was grounds for ex-communication. To this day, the church continues to consider me a heathen. My current atheistic beliefs and lifestyle are proof to them that excommunicating me was the right thing to do. Polly and our six children were not excommunicated. Horner and the church decided that my family was under my satanic control, and should not be held accountable for my “sins.”
My excommunication is a good example of a pastor determining what is “wicked” and then demanding that congregants not set that wicked thing before their eyes; the wicked thing being a flesh-and-blood human being. This catch-all verse can be used to label people, inanimate objects, and behaviors “wicked.” Pastors, then, are able to bend and mold congregants to their wishes; that is, unless they have a rebellious member such as Bruce Gerencser. Then, church discipline is used to cull the offender from the church and put the fear of God into the hearts of congregants.
The churches I pastored, with one exception, didn’t excommunicate rebellious church members. Instead, I was the gatekeeper. I determined who stayed and who had to go. If I determined through much prayer and fasting — just kidding, my determinations were based on my personal opinions, beliefs, and practices — that someone was no longer a good “fit,” I would encourage them to seek out a new church that would better meet their needs.
Over the twenty-five years I spent pastoring churches, I ran off a lot of good people whose only crime was that they disagreed with me on a matter of doctrine or practice. Instead of embracing differences of belief and practice, I demanded fealty to my beliefs, interpretations, and practices. For many years, I believed it was sinful to own and watch TV. In my mind, if there was ever a human invention that was wicked, it was the television. I am sure Polly and my children can remember our TV being unplugged and having a piece of paper taped over the screen that said, I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.
Several years ago, I wrote a post titled, The Preacher and His TV. Here’s some of what I had to say:
My wife and I married in 1978. One of our first purchases was a used tube console color TV that we purchased from Marv Hartman TV in Bryan, Ohio. We paid $125. We continued to watch TV for a few years, until one day I decided that watching TV was a sin. This was in the mid-1980s. After swearing off watching TV, I decided that no one, if he were a good Christian anyway, should be watching television. One Sunday, as pastor of Somerset Baptist Church in Mt Perry, Ohio, I preached a 90-minute sermon on the evils of watching television and going to the movies. I called on all true Christians to immediately get rid of their TVs and follow their preacher into the pure air of a Hollywood-free world.
To prove my point, I gathered the congregation out in front of the church for a physical demonstration of my commitment to following the TV-hating Jesus. I put our TV in the church yard and I hit it several times with a sledge-hammer, breaking the TV into pile of electronic rubble. Like the record burnings of the 1970s, my act was meant to show that I was willing to do whatever it took to be an on-fire, sold-out follower of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Just before I hit the TV with the sledge-hammer, a church member by the name of Gary said to me, Hey preacher, if you don’t want that TV I’ll take it. How dare he ruin my sin-hating demonstration! I thought at the time. I gave Gary a scowling look and proceeded to knock the devil right out of the TV. I am happy to report that not one church member followed in my TV-hating footsteps. What church members did do is make sure that their televisions were OFF when the man of God made an appearance at their home.
….
From 1998 through 2005, I purchased and got rid of at least six television sets. I gave one TV to the local crisis pregnancy center. I also gave one set to my son. The rest I sold at a loss. Why all the televisions? you might ask. Simple. After watching TV for a time, like a moth to a flame, I was drawn towards watching shows that I promised God I would never watch. Dear Lord, I promise I will only watch G or PG rated programming, and if there is any nudity, cursing, or gore I will immediately turn off the TV. No matter how much I wanted to be holy and righteous, I found that I loved watching programs that contained things that I considered sin.
My “sinning’ would go on for a few weeks until the guilt would become so great that I would say to God, you are right God. This is sin. I will get rid of the TV and I promise to never, never watch it again. Out the TV would go, but months later I would get the hankering to watch TV again and I would, unbeknownst to Polly, go buy a television.
It is clear now that my beliefs made me mentally and emotionally unstable. I so wanted to be right with God and live a life untainted by the world, yet I loved to watch TV. One time, after I came to the decision to get rid of yet another TV, Polly arrived home from work and found me sitting on the steps of the porch, crying and despondent. I hated myself. I hated that I was so easily led astray by Satan. I hated that I was such a bad testimony. Look at ALL that Jesus did for me! Couldn’t I, at the very least, go without watching TV for the sake of the kingdom of God?
I have written before about my perfectionist tendencies. I wanted to be the perfect Christian. God’s Word said to abstain from the very appearance of evil. Psalm 101:3 was a driving force in my life: I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.
Television was a wicked thing, I told myself, yet I continued to battle with my desire to watch sports and other programs on TV. Needless to say, the advent of internet, brought into our home a new way for me to be tempted to sin against the thrice holy God I pledged to serve, even unto death. I’m sure that my children will remember me putting a sign above our computer that quoted Psalm 101:3. This was meant as a reminder that we should NEVER view inappropriate, sinful things on the internet.
My three oldest children, now in their 30s, continue to rib me about my TV-crazed days. One of them will periodically ask if I am ready to get rid of our flat-screen TV. Their good-natured ribbing hails back to the day when their Dad acted like a psycho, buying and selling televisions. At the time, I am sure they thought I was crazy, and I wouldn’t blame them if they did.
I replayed the aforementioned battle over TV numerous times in my life. The object of my righteous anger changed, but the end result was the same: that which I deemed wicked had to go, and if congregants really, really, really loved Jesus, they would agree with me and excise from their lives that which the man of God labeled sinful. The goal was holiness, so who wouldn’t want to be as pure and holy as possible? Congregants would try to conform to my pronouncements, but for the most part all this did was turn their lives into a game. Church members lived one way at church or in my presence and another way when away from the Holy Spirit — AKA the Preacher or Pastor Bruce. Little did they know that I did the same. Try as I might to live out the teachings of the Bible and to strictly govern my life according to my interpretations of the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, I failed too; not because of a lack of desire or commitment; but because I set for myself and others an impossible standard. I was human, as were the people I pastored. Much like the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world, Evangelicals have wants, needs, and desires. They do what they do because they are human. No matter how much Evangelicals preach, pray, and deny their humanity, in time their “flesh” wins.
And that’s okay. Life is meant to be lived, not denied. Evangelicals love to say, only one life, twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last. The humanist version, however, goes like this, only one life, twill soon be past, and then you’ll be dead. There’s no God, Jesus, church, or preacher to please. All that really matters is this present life. Love, laugh, and enjoy your brief existence on planet Earth. It’s the only one you’ll ever have. Each of us determines for ourselves how we want to live. As an atheist, I still have certain “wicked” things I won’t set before my eyes; you know, things such as women with size 20 bodies in size 10 spandex, fat men like me parading around in public with no shirt, and Fox News. That’s about it. 🙂 Each to his own, I say.
Did you grow up in a church where Psalm 103:1 was used to label things, people, and behavior wicked? Did your pastor demand congregants live according to his moralistic pronouncements? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
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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I once had a bunch of really nice tobacco pipes and a lot of really good expensive pipe tobacco.At least five hundred dollars worth that i burned up in a fire because the pastor said smoking was evil. I feel like such an asshole listening to all that kind of crap and being such a gullible nitwit.This happened many years ago and it still bothers me.
The Koolaid sure tasted great sometimes but it just left me with the shortlived sugar high and sin again. It is amazing how we are made to know the ‘truth’ and walk around stumbling, fallen creatures while telling the lost how happy we are now. In retrospect, as Geoff says, one looks back and sees such a gullible nitwit. Christianity helped me look and talk like a nitwit, a blind donkey, It is humbling to know just how subject we can be to smoke and mirrors, to crazed ideas about T.V., rock music, sports on Sunday; the list has no end.
On this hot, early summer day with a sun that burns down and is hauling the Winter long-gone, I toast myself with a Danish strong beer: Brian, you made it out alive! Look at this day, all free and breeze and the green swaths over the hills. You made it here, lad. You survived. They got four of us but two got away. I’m going to plant some kholrabi and go visit my bees. Life is so big and wide outside the harm of belief. They scared me almost to death from early on in life. I ripped at myself, tore my nails to the quick and bled for Jesus… but I got away.
My fundamentalist Christian school exhorted is to give up “worldly” music, movies, books, magazines, tv. Basically, if it wasn’t classical music or hymns, it was forbidden. If it wasn’t a Christian movie, it was forbidden (even G rated Disney movies were suspect). Teachers weren’t allowed by contract to go to movie theaters lest they be seen leaving one and destroy their witness as no one knows what movie they saw. One year students were forbidden with threat of suspension from going to the roller skating rink. It was a popular teen hangout that played rock music, and there was a drug bust once. Church mates that didn’t go to Christian school went to movies, listened to rock music, etc., like normal kids. Most even went to prom.
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Oh goodness – my family went through the busting up of eeeebil TV sets several times when I was growing up. Then when we did watch it we weren’t allowed to view commercials (or most everything really). I still get stressed around TV sets. (Non-Christian music was never allowed, of course, and even then most mainstream artists were off limits because they were “worldly.”)
And, of course, there was the whole “Turmoil in the Toybox” scare at the time, so most toys were evil and forbidden.
Oh and the whole Chick Tract anti-halloween, D&D and gazillion other scares it promoted – so no halloween and no evil Easter bunny (or even more evil Santa Claus).
Oh yes there was so much wickedness to avoid! (Funnily enough, for people who believed in the power of prayer they sure were scared of a lot!)
Ha! Just remembered that my Baptist preacher dad would not allow us to go to see a Disney film at the local theater because it was “associating with the wrong crowd” and he explained that further by saying that women appeared undressed on the screens at that location. I became an avid lover of film, of course. Thank-you Jeeezus!
this is a very familiar topic. we had tv, however many shows were off limits. I did not see any Disney movies until adulthood and having my own kids. it took some time to see that my childhood was bizarre. I now understand the questions from other kids at school and how confused they appeared as to my answers. we were part of a very strict holiness type Pentecostal religion and many times the topic of sermons would be how worldly Baptists and other denominations were. we were so holy and above it all according to all the adults at church. thanks for continuing to shed light on all of this Bruce. it helps to know that others have been through all of this and come out on the other side.
Hi Bruce. Good evening folks. In my early college years, I attended a Southern Methodist Church (SMC) in Nashville, Tennessee. I lived with my aunt and uncle each summer and attended their church. The SMC is a fundie church that was once known for hating African-Americans. My racist uncle left the United Methodist Church in which he was raised to become a member of this church because he liked its fundie qualities. It had no African-American members—that I ever saw anyway.
I will never forget the Sunday morning when a couple of SMC missionaries showed up to give a sermon about a hospital they were planning to build in Africa—and of course—they were looking for donations to help build the hospital. It has been almost 50 years since that Sunday morning, and no one can recall exact words across that time, so I will just present my best paraphrasing of the horrific thing I heard:
“Now, I want you people to clearly understand something. We are not building this hospital because we care about the diseases and sufferings of the local native peoples. Quite frankly, we do not care whether they live or die—not really. Rather, we are just building this hospital as a magnet to lure these African natives into the hospital so we can share the gospel and save their souls.”
In other words, the members of the local population were viewed as being animals of some sort, and the hospital was just animal bait to lure them in for a fire and brimstone sermon. Now, do not get me wrong. This was going to be a real hospital, and the people who came in were indeed going to receive medical care. However, their diseases, gangrene arms, and other physical sufferings were viewed as a matter of Christian love and compassion that came from the heart. Treating them was just something the hospital had to endure to get their souls saved. You would have had to have been there and actually heard the sermon to get the real flavor of it. It made me almost sick to my stomach.
I have to be honest with you—Bruce and other folks. Looking back across my 65 years of life, I cannot recall another time when I left a church service absolutely seething with bottled up rage inside—because of what I had been forced to listen to in that sermon. I was a late teenager fit to be tied—and i have to this day never forgotten the rank heartlessness and calloused souls that spoke to us that morning. Missionaries—no less.
These days I am still a Christian of the nonfundie variety. However, after listening to the crap in that sermon and reading Bruce’s blog article above, I can fully understand why Bruce or anyone else would run like Hell to get away from Fundieland. Thank you for allowing me to post this in response to Bruce’s request for real-life stories from the bowels of Christian fundamentalism. Bruce and you other folks are more than welcome to visit me any time at the “Flee from Christian Fundamentalism” blog at the following safe link:
https://faith17983.wordpress.com/
My blog is a Christian blog and does not recommend atheism to its readers for obvious reasons. However, we do not hate, preach against, or harbor hatred for atheists, agnostics, and “nones” because—quite frankly—some of the friendliest, kindest, and most loving people we have ever known are just such people. However, we do have a dislike for Russian atheist philosopher Ayn Rand—but only because the was so cold-hearted towards the people Jesus called “the least of these” and because Speaker of the House Paul Ryan worships at her dead feet while claiming to be a devout Roman Catholic—who just happens to hate the sick and poor in ways the Roman Catholic Church would never approve. Hypocrisy that bold is just too hard for any sane person to take.
I hope you are doing well Bruce—considering all of the old age aches and pains. I have them too. If you ever get down Tennessee way, I would be happy to buy dinner for you and Polly.
Sorry, I messed up a sentence above. It should have read:
However, their diseases, gangrene arms, and other physical sufferings were NOT viewed as a matter of Christian love and compassion that came from the heart. Treating them was just something the hospital had to endure to get their souls saved. You would have had to have been there and actually heard the sermon to get the real flavor of it. It made me almost sick to my stomach.
I’m surprised you recall a mission from 50yrs ago as having ‘ulterior motives.’ Every x-tian mission before or since may have proclaimed or proclaim its humanitarian aims, but at the heart, is the desire to proselytise. ‘Compassion’ was thrown out of India recently because the (admittedly theocratic) hindu government said its one aim was to convert people to x-tianity however much they cloaked it in humanitarian projects. The list is endless, teachers, medics, engineers, craftspeople, builders etc etc. have for centuries done what you quote that hospital as doing. On atheist blogs, it’s generally referred to as lying-for-jesus. I for one am pleased that I no longer live with that cognitive dissonance in my life.
I’m repeating myself after my May 2018 comment. Recent examples: Went to family’s fundy church recently. Visiting preacher told us proudly he was leading bereavement group, as so many were isolated and grieving post-Covid. He said proudly ‘We started it as a way of recruiting new people.’ And then of course he told us of Amazing Conversions in the group. I felt sick! Then, the UK government is encouraging community groups to create ‘Warm Spaces’ this winter, to open their premises to those many of us finding our heating bills astronomical this winter. So guess what? Churches are jumping on that bandwagon. I had to smile when a mosque and a church announced they were going to join this scheme….and then retracted the plan….they realised they couldn’t afford to heat their hall for that few extra hours a week! But I guarantee churches which do open, are confidently praying their socks off that it will convert the heathen local to them!
Sounds familiar. In my IFB college days, TV was severely limited and movie theatres were out of the question. Then I graduated and got a job…making televisions! I convinced myself that this would be only a few years in training until something opened up making something more worthy. When the on-the-job engineering training was less than I hoped for, I severely questioned what I was doing with my life. The combination of working on a product I despised, with no clear benefit to me for doing that, and with confusion about my faith, led to a terrible time of depression. I agree that this unhealthy disdain for television was not good for mental health.
“I agree that this unhealthy disdain for television was not good for mental health.”
It certainly has not been good for mine– especially as the preachers who have preached such disdain have used the medium to preach against the medium; utterly ridiculous, IMO.
Oh, how this takes me back . The mid- 70’s was the time I remember for the “Fundy War on TV.” Most Pentacostal sects were vehemently against any secular media, like movies and television. The ones we were involved with, they claimed that you would be sent to Hell eventually if you kept watching it. All that straining at the proverbial gnat. Meanwhile, their conduct ” out in the world” was so suspect, known as grifters and con artists. Also, there’s the hypocracy of Pat Horner, who had a TV in his place. Didn’t HE have a TV ?? Yet he preached against having one ? Of all the preacher colleagues you had, Bruce, Horner was clearly one of the worst you ever encountered. He sounds like it,at least. I will look up your blog, Charles. It sounds interesting. Hard to read on a phone,but there’s regular computers at the library. Controlling information, that’s what I suspect is the real force behind the forbidding TV. The leaders would say that the news was not true,and a sin also.
Yulya, controlling information is crucial for high-demand groups! Now that information is just a click away on a computer or smart phone, it’s increasingly more difficult for religious leaders to isolate their members.
Wait wait wait. Your old church excommunicated you…so you couldn’t come back to there…. when you were packed up and about to leave town?
Makes about as much sense as the people who boycott business who enforce mask mandates. Oh you don’t to wear a mask so you’re never coming back here? GOOD.
I wonder what they would have done if you just hadn’t showed up to church for you Public Excommunication. Send you a certified letter?