You Can’t Believe Something Just Because Someone Else Desperately Wants You To . . .

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Evangelicals are known for pleading with non-Christians to put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Evangelicals have a very narrow view of the world and who will make it to Heaven after they die. Evangelicals are clear on the matter: Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Liberal Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, humanists, pagans, and, well, anyone who is not an Evangelical, will end up in Hell after death. Unless these people, by faith, repent and believe the Evangelical gospel, they are doomed, headed for eternal torture, pain, and suffering in the Lake of Fire. This is why Evangelical zealots plead with non-Christians to ask Jesus to save them. Evangelicals genuinely don’t want non-Christians to be tortured by God for eternity. Well, most Evangelicals, anyway. I have received countless emails and blog comments from Evangelicals who find it quite satisfying knowing that I will one day meet Jesus face to face and be punished for my sin. Several of them have even prayed for my soon demise. The sooner in Hell the better for Bruce Gerencser, right?

So many Evangelicals beg and plead with family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers, hoping that they will be convicted by the Holy Spirit and ask Jesus to save them. Yet, despite this pathos, we unbelievers can’t or won’t embrace Evangelical Christianity. Just because Evangelicals really, really, really want us to be saved doesn’t mean that we can lay reason aside and get saved. What kind of salvation would it be if we could be argued, badgered, or emotionally manipulated into believing?

You would think that Evangelicals would support the full disclosure of what becoming a Christian requires. Shouldn’t unbelievers have all the evidence and facts before deciding whether to believe? As with many con artists, however, Evangelicals frequently withhold truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Instead, evangelization targets are given just enough information — Four Spiritual Laws, The Romans Road, Chick Tracts — to get them to pray the sinner’s prayer. (Please see The Top Five Reasons People Say the Sinner’s Prayer) All the other stuff is withheld until converts can be thoroughly indoctrinated. Why not disclose everything upfront? Simple. Evangelical pastors and churches know that doing so would result in far fewer converts. Telling people upfront that they will be required to give ten percent of their gross income to the church, along with other offerings, would quickly run off most prospective Christians. Better to tell them AFTER they are saved that the church and pastor — I mean GOD — require ten percent of their income each and every Sunday, no questions asked.

Those of us who spent years and years in the Evangelical church realize that this withholding of information doesn’t work. I was part of the Christian church for fifty years, an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five of those years. I know all there is to know about Christian theology and church history. I know what goes on behind closed doors, and I know where the proverbial bodies are buried. My unrepentant unbelief is not due to a lack of knowledge. I know all I need to know, and it is for that reason I reject the Christian gospel. I know there are people who really, really, really want me to believe, but I can’t. Doing so would run contrary to what I know about Christianity in general and Evangelicalism in particular. I have weighed Christianity in the balance and found it wanting. And so it is for many of the thousands of people who read this blog. (Please read The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)

Winning me over to Jesus requires more evidence than what Christians currently possess. I know my believing would make lots of Christians happy, but I can’t violate my conscience. I know what I know, and until new evidence is presented, I will remain an unwashed, uncircumcised Philistine. (Please see the WHY page for other posts about why I am no longer a Christian.)

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

12 responses to “ You Can’t Believe Something Just Because Someone Else Desperately Wants You To . . .”

February 1, 2019

BeckyW

But they don’t believe that, do they? Don’t they really believe that everyone who isn’t IFB is rebelling, angry at God and refusing to follow him? They can’t conceive of a world where their God doesn’t exist to everyone. They are caught up and refuse to see reality.

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February 1, 2019

GeoffT

The issue of belief is one of the aspects of religion that I find most troubling. If I’m to be held to account for my beliefs, rather than for my actions, then I’m being treated unfairly. We are told that god gave us free will (that’s another issue for another time!) yet if we don’t believe in him then we are doomed. Just where is the free will in that? If the choice is genuinely between eternal salvation (assuming that’s good) and eternity in hell (assuming unpleasant) then it’s not a free choice.

Of course, the whole thing is made much more complex for the outsider by making it so unreasonable, as the Michael Mock rule shows. I’d argue that it’s so unreasonable that no person of normal rational function could possibly believe it if they aren’t first culturally immersed in it; if it were otherwise then people from outside the Christian world would be flocking to it.

So I’d say to an apologist, rather than trying to make me believe in one fell swoop, present me with some evidence, just one thing, that suggests your belief might be true, let me consider and challenge it, then I’ll decide whether to pursue the matter. I’ve thrown down this challenge many times and I’m still waiting.

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February 1, 2019

ObstacleChick

I despise the Christianese word “convicted”.

When I look back on my years in fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, I recall the feeling of bring trapped. There was so much about our condition we were taught was out of our control, such as our “sinful nature”, that God couldn’t countenance our existence except if we accepted the blood sacrifice of himself/his son, that we were then bound to be his worshipful servants for all eternity and better like it, that everything should be surrendered to his service, that our friends who were different (gay, bisexual, of other religions, etc) were evil sinners bound for hell and we shouldn’t be with them except to proselytize, that all media were corrupt, etc. Pastor Bruce out there preaching at people on the street corner was literally what we were supposed to be like under this system, and I didn’t want that for my life. As a teen, I was depressed and angry but couldn’t articulate why. As an adult I understand why.

But really, if one truly believes all that, where is the choice?

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February 1, 2019

Brian

I am not sure that this is true, the title of this entry, Bruce. In fact, I did as a child desperately believe what was wanted of me and feared hellfire so much that I begged to be saved, wept and shook and begged. As an adult of course it all fell apart but I would say that children born into delusionary worlds are not able to simply not-believe and instead readily adopt the wild untruths of their world, their caregivers. They know they are being harmed but the delusion demands it and preaches it with scripture! I call it child-abuse now that I am free of the delusion but I fucking believed every bit of it as a little kid and tore my fingernails out to comply! Later, as ObstacleChick has shared, I too became angry and depressed. The human body is not meant for the harm brought on by Christianity.Dear Jesus of Nazareth, I honestly think you were a fucking bully and that your father was a prick of the first order. Why couldn’t you have encouraged healthy living without telling people to sheep-up and flock behind you? You should have told your father to fuck off long before he put you on the Cross, huh? Instead of bullshitting about dying for others. You died for sick daddy, not me.

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1. December 23, 2022
  
  clubschadenfreude
  
  Amen. no one wanted a blood sacrifice by torture except for this god, per the story.
  
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February 1, 2019

Troy

Maybe some of the Christian visitors can explain something to me. Why does Christianity/salvation have to be believed to be effective? It reminds me of the way Wile E. Coyote doesn’t fall down until he looks down. While that is fine for cartoons, in the real world gravity works whether you believe it or not. If we assume God, though allegedly supernatural, is as much a part of nature as something like gravity then why does it ONLY work if you believe it?

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February 1, 2019

Dave

So how can any person who believes even one of their family or close friends is destined for eternal torture experience any happiness or peace in believing in their own salvation? Will they still have memories of their loved ones in the next life or will these relationships be wiped from their memories forever lest they cause psychic pain, which certainly can’t exist in heaven? These are logical issues with religion that along with countless others cannot be satisfactorily resolved, so are just ignored. Now that I have rejected religion I can look at these and see how crazy it all is

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1. December 23, 2022
  
  clubschadenfreude
  
  “Will they still have memories of their loved ones in the next life or will these relationships be wiped from their memories forever lest they cause psychic pain, which certainly can’t exist in heaven?”
  
  aka what C.S. Lewis invented to excuse his evil god.
  
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November 11, 2020

Carhy

Realizing this article is old won’t stop me from chiming in.

My parents weren’t church goers and so our Evangelical family nearly shunned us. Oh, they’d be polite enough when we got together, but they just made sure we seldom got together. My dad’s Evangelical family treated my mother like shit for my parent’s entire marriage due to my Mom being a divorcee with a baby.

When my dad’s family was around we kids would have nightmares about the devil coming to get us. So naturally, this made my Mom quite angry when one of we kids woke screaming in the night. Mom would soothe us then give my dad an earful about Every.Time.They.Arrive my kids have nightmares.

It got worse. My parents split and we kids, now teens, ended up in the Evangelical family fold.

Oh. My. God. I had nightmares into my 30s over the crap I was taught. I’d beg God to forgive me and cleanse me and give me a pure heart…

I’m in my mid 60s and can see just how much that Pentecostal church hurt me.

Thundering from the pulpit the preacher would scream, you don’t need health insurance, you need Jesus. You don’t need an education, you need Jesus. Now just think what those words would do to a child who believed it. Why not drop out? Because Jesus was going to take care of everything. Don’t worry about insurance for your house because you’re in the hands of God.

I just can’t describe the hell my life has been because I believed what the preacher said and acted accordingly.

My stance today is this: I believe something got this universe up and running and no I don’t believe dust particles eventually created our world. Yes, I believe in a creator but that’s all I can honestly say about it. I don’t believe in any earthly religions and reading through the Jewish Talmud, the Christian Bible, or the Muslim Koran just turns my stomach. The filth in those books are beyond description. Now, a Christian would say I had itchy ears, am a Jezebel, and need repentance to avoid hellfire. And as a wise man once said, I refuse to believe this rubbish but IF it’s true and I go to hell, I’ll go knowing I had more morality than the Abrahamic God.

Evangelicals always say to read the Bible for yourself and not let others (unless their Pentecostals) tell you what’s in it.

So finally in my early 30s I sat down and read the entire Bible in about 3 months. Sure there were some beautiful passages, but that doesn’t justify believing in a God who tells you the price for your slaves.

The clincher? The very bottom line that disgusted me above all else was God telling the Israelites to kill every man, woman, child, and animal in the land God was giving them.

Oh! Except for the young virgin girls, you can take them home to marry. Today we call that kidnapping and rape.

But be holy for your father in heaven is holy.

Give me a fucking break. And fuck you you damned Evangelicals, you’ve destroyed far to many lives. And fuck you also you GD jews and muslims too.

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December 22, 2022

Dennis Marr

Thank you! It is incredibly hard to be an atheist for me, when most of my family, and friends are evangelicals. What astounds me, is that these are intelligent people who can not think outside their indoctrinated faith box.
Keep up the good work, and hopefully some day, we will be in the majority.

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December 23, 2022

clubschadenfreude

my favorite quote from C.S. Lewis:

“And secondly, I think we must admit that the discussion of these disputed points has no
tendency at all to bring an outsider into the Christian fold. So long as we write and talk about them we
are much more likely to deter him from entering any Christian communion than to draw him into our
own. Our divisions should never be discussed except in the presence of those who have already come
to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son.” preface, Mere Christianity

all liars for christ.

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December 23, 2022

ObstacleChick

Am I “saved”? I guess it depends on your particular theology on soteriology. The “once saved always saved” crowd would say that I am saved because I prayed the “sinner’s prayer” and meant it (I did it dozens of times, just in case). Others would say that I was saved but lost my salvation due to my wilful apostasy. Others would say that I was never saved in the first place as evident in the fact that it didn’t “stick”. And yet others would say that Jesus died for everyone, and we’re all saved whether we know it or not.

So there we are. Frankly, I think it’s all bull shit and lies. Live your life taking responsibility for your actions, being kind to others, and not doing harm.

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