Yesterday, I received the following email from an Evangelical Christian named Kelli Ritter. My response follows.
Hello Bruce, do you really believe that a God that created you a human has to reveal Himself to you to be real?
God didn’t create me, so there’s that. Just because Genesis 1-3 says God created everything doesn’t mean he did. That’s a claim. If you want me to accept and believe your claim, you must provide evidence to support your claim. That’s how the real world works. People make all sorts of claims — including people from my own tribe — that are not true. They are free to believe whatever they want — including religious beliefs such as yours that I consider irrational and lacking in empirical evidence.
Religion is best served when people recognize that religious beliefs are based on faith, and not science. Either someone has faith, or they don’t. In my case, I don’t. If God wants me to believe in him and embrace the central claims of Christianity, he must give me verifiable reasons to believe. So far, no reasons have been forthcoming. Instead, all I see is an ancient tribal religion — a blood cult. Currently, Israel and Palestine are at war over what verses in the Old Testament allegedly say about land given to the Jews thousands of years ago. Thousands of people have died, and for what? A myth. There’s no evidence for the existence of Abraham (or Moses), yet Jews and Palestinians alike are willing to die over words spoken by a mythical deity to a mythical tribal leader. My God, it’s 2023, yet people are dying over interpretations of the Bible.
If salvation is the end-all, it seems to me that God would be clear about the matter. He’s not. Christians can’t even agree on the basics: salvation, baptism, communion. Talk to a hundred Christians and you will find just as many beliefs about God, the Bible, and salvation. Who is right? You? The Catholics? The Baptists? Which Baptists? The Presbyterians? The Mormons? 2,000 years of nonsense and confusion. You would think God would want to settle this once and for all. Instead, according to you, he deliberately hides from us and obfuscates what should be clear to all of us.
God doesn’t require you to believe in Him for Him to be real.
While that certainly is true, I must believe in him to be saved and have life eternal. Religion can and does have value. Religion need not be true for people to benefit from it. Religion — including your flavor of Evangelical Christianity — has helped countless people, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Religion can and does have a placebo effect. If that’s what gets you through the night, so be it. I just don’t happen to need a mythical religion and God to have meaning and purpose in my life.
And He couldn’t anyways because God is so holy and perfect that seeing that kind of perfection would kill us instantly.
God could reveal himself by actually involving himself in the affairs of the human race and creation at large. As things now stand, there’s no evidence that God is involved in our lives at all. At best, he is a deity who created the universe and then said, “There ya go boys and girls, do with it what you will.”
The world looks exactly as it should without the existence of God. We are on our own.
He doesn’t hide himself to play games of believe or non belief. God hides Himself because in our fallen state we can not see His form and live. That’s why He sent His Son. So we would know everything He said from the beginning was true.
How do you know what the Bible says about Jesus is true? Again, you are making all sorts of claims — without evidence.
God’s hiddenness, in my opinion, is an insurmountable problem for Christian apologists. If God wants me to “know,” he knows where I am. He can call, text, or write me or stop by and invite me out to lunch. Instead, all I hear is silence. Well, that and the droning, preachy words of Christians like you.
God doesn’t want your religion and Christianity isn’t a religion although it’s classified that way. Christianity is a relationship with God.
Christianity is a religion, and you embarrass yourself by saying otherwise. While certainly there is a relationship aspect to Christianity, you can’t disconnect it from the fact that Christianity is a 2,000-year-old religion comprised of tens of thousands of sects with countless (and often contradictory) beliefs and practices. The Bible says there is “one Lord, one Faith, and Baptism,” yet history suggests this verse is untrue. If Christians can’t figure out what is “true,” how can they expect the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world to do so?
God saved us from Himself. God has saved us for Himself . And God has saved us by Himself through Jesus Christ. If Jesus really did do all the things the Bible says He did and He really did rise from the dead, then our quest for God stops with Him. If you’re searching for evidence you will never find evidence for God except in scripture.
Well, let’s talk about the Bible, then. You make all sorts of claims and assumptions about the Bible. I am confident I can show you that your claims are false; that the Bible is an error-filled, contradictory ancient religious text; and that its words are largely irrelevant. If you haven’t read any of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books about the history and nature of the Bible, I encourage you to do so. His books will disabuse you of the notion that the Bible is inerrant or infallible. I will gladly ship one of his books to you, without cost.
When you read the word daily it has a power in it and it starts to reveal things to you. Heavenly things. And it is an amazing feeling to be revealed things from heaven. I hope that you will consider my words and consider Jesus Christ more seriously your spirit depends on it. I will be praying for you. God bless.
I daily read the Bible for most of the first fifty years of my life. As a pastor for twenty-five years, I spent over 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. I can’t imagine there is much of anything left to learn. The Bible is no different from any other book. With so many new, interesting books to read, why spend your lifetime reading the Bible over and over and over again? That said, I have done my homework, and I am more than happy to discuss the Bible with you.
I found your words annoying, little more than a sermon. On my contact page, I ask people NOT to send me preachy emails like yours, yet you ignored my request and emailed me anyway. Why is that? Why do feel the need to seek out a complete stranger on the Internet and preach at them? What did you hope to accomplish? You didn’t say one thing that I haven’t heard countless times before. Thousands of Evangelicals have come before you, each thinking the Holy Spirit was leading them to email me. If God wants to “reach” me, I wish he would stop sending arrogant, preachy people like you (that’s sarcasm) and contact me directly.
I don’t have a “spirit.” I have a body that is broken, frail, and dying, but no soul, spirit, or other magical entity. Do you have any evidence for the existence of the “spirit?” That’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer is no. Your religion teaches you that you have a spirit or a soul (depending on whether you are bipartite or tripartite), but provides no evidence for their existence apart from a handful of Bible verses.
Thank you for taking the time to contact me. Let me know if you are interested in receiving one of Bart Ehrman’s books.
Saved by Reason,
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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Kelli Ritter : “God hides Himself because in our fallen state we can not see His form and live.”
This reminds me of my high school Greek mythology class. It had to do with Semele, the mother of Dionysus. After Zeus promised (by swearing on the river Styx!) Semele anything she wanted, Hera tricked her into asking to see Zeus in his full glory. This killed the poor girl, but Zeus took the fetus into his own body and thus was born the lord of wine and partying down.
The teacher for my Greek mythology class mused that Zeus must have some sort of dimmer switch for his divine glory. Turn it up too high and mortal, ye fry!
Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology” was the textbook for the class, highly recommend… except for Bruce who has too much to read already.
Statements. No supporting facts, but lots of statements.
Yes, if God (whichever one) wants us to believe, liberal minded folks are open to evidence of his/her/it’s existence. She emailed Bruce for the same reason they come to the door to talk about Jesus. My short effective response to them is to tell them I have no faith and any beliefs I have are based on verifiable evidence. It’s as effective as saying “not interested” and may even plant a seed of critical thought in someone’s mind.
“God saved us from Himself. God has saved us for Himself . And God has saved us by Himself through Jesus Christ. If Jesus really did do all the things the Bible says He did and He really did rise from the dead, then our quest for God stops with Him.“
The first sentence logically makes God out to be monster, the second creepy, the third is just not convincing. The fourth has no objective proof beyond her own presuppositions. If she was trying to be profound with this letter, she is failing miserably and will be unlikely to convert anyone to her take on god.
Ms Ritter, once again: – your opinions, hunches, ideas, notions, beliefs, warm fuzzy feelings about jesus are not evidence. A x-tian told me he knew god was real cos he’d walked closely with him for 40 years Well, I thought that too….I was a believer for 50 years before realising its all fiction, there is no evidence. What you, and formerly I, claim is not knowledge, it’s wishful thinking. I do hope you can begin to step out of your ‘faith’ in the fantasy and fiction world of biblical living, step out of your darkness. It’s wonderful out here in the sunshine of non-belief in imaginary beings in the sky.
“He can call, text, or write me ”
Exactly. Or get a facebook account or get on twitter.
If an Internet feed suddenly came from a distant galaxy claiming to be the source of the universe and showing an elaborate knowledge of reality, that would get a ton of interest. If that Internet feed had an email address or a blog where the source interacted with the commenters, I suspect that most of us here would be the first to ask questions. We are interested.
Instead we get claims of vague feelings of God, which is a strange way for an omnipotent being to communicate.
God, if he exists, doesn’t seem to be into social media.
@Merle, There was a hokie short lived television show “God Friended Me”. I think I watched part of one episode. I think it did make a good case that if God actually DID send a text/email/letter you’d of course be skeptical and might throw away the baby Jesus with the bathwater.
Perhaps God, as a member of the Tetragrammaton Federation, has a non-interference directive not to intervene in the natural progression of mortals and their world, but you get the occasional miracle, but of course God will no doubt be dragged onto the carpet to explain himself. (Let’s face it: That’s not any more silly than any other theology)
Kelli has a whole lot of presuppositions and unsupported claims in her missive. It’s silly that she believes an email interaction is capable of converting someone…but I guess through God all things are possible 🤣🤣🤣
Hi Kelli,
You said: “God saved us from Himself.”
Zoe: Makes you wonder about the “nature” of God doesn’t it? Why would anyone need saving “from” him?
Gee, Kelli is an ignorant twit like most, if not all, christians are. Unsurprisingly, this god of hers had no problem in showing itself and producing evidence it exists “once upon a time”. It’s only now, when people dare to doubt, that these cultists must invent reasons why their god hides.
Some time after I stopped believing, I thought about that being whom, I believed, purred like a cat who’s just been fed salmon and stroked between the ears when I said the right words and did the right things.
By then, I’d been through a couple of abusive relationships with actual humans, gone through rehab and done some therapy. And I had started to come to terms with a traumatic event in my life. (No, it wasn’t the childhood sexual abuse: I wouldn’t deal with that until much later.)
Anyway, upon reflecting on that God who loved us so much that he sent his son to be tortured for stuff our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents did to offend him, I came to the conclusion that if I’d ever met a person with the personality traits of that deity, I would turn and run. I might even find it within myself to run as fast as I could when I was a high-school senior.
Too many Evangelicals exhibit the same, or similar, qualities. And, like Kelli, they think they can badger, browbeat, cajole or simply bully people like me, you, Bruce or anyone else who may have once believed as they did, into becoming a trophy they can show off to that God.
The old relationship not a religion cliche is such nonsense. Christians need to differentiate their practices from people who follow other religions so they redefine the word religion. According to the dictionary religion is the service and worship of a god. If you’re a Christian and you’re not doing this then according to your own dogma you are a heretic.
“God saved us from Himself.” The Christian god is an abuser.
Ritter: “…God is so holy and perfect that seeing that kind of perfection would kill us instantly.”
Me: OK, whatever. But he’s got a workaround solution. He could easily send Gabriel or Michael AND we’d still be alive. It would be a win / win. It’s kind of odd that I could figure that one out, but God can’t.
It always seemed odd that God had to have a payment for our sins. After all, he created everything. Worse, why sacrifice his perfect and only son to pay for our sins? He could’ve just as easily done the job by sacrificing a good set of used snow tires.
Ah, yes: “God hides himself because his true form is so horrifying that even a glimpse of it would destroy us instantly.” This seems a bit hard to reconcile with all those scenes in the Garden of Eden when God would just swing by for a casual chat and maybe a picnic, not to mention that it means that God is functionally indistinguishable from Cthulhu.
But what really does me in is that Ritter quickly follows that up by helpfully explaining that Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship. I just… How can you have a relationship with someone who can’t communicate with you without — as we’ve just established — destroying you utterly? That’s not a relationship any more than, say, the thoughts and feelings that I have about Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings books constitute a “relationship”. (And believe me, I do have thoughts and feelings about the guy. Doesn’t mean I actually know him, though. And if you think Aragorn is a bad example because he’s fictional, substitute Barack Obama and his biography; same dynamic applies.) So no, it’s very much a religion.
Absolutely brilliant Bruce. (I had many a chuckle on this your response). In my opinion you missed your vocation in life as a barrister 🤣.
Because of the points you made which are spot-on and because of the awful hatred between Palestine and Israel currently playing out on the borders of both countries, I have this interesting information to add on the whence and how of the origins of the Israelites +/- 500 BCE
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2023-10-09/ty-article/in-first-archaeologists-extract-dna-of-ancient-israelites/0000018b-138a-d2fc-a59f-d39b21fd0000
Like any self help book, the Bible’s got some useful bits of information. I’ll give it that. But it’s laced with toxic contradictions. It’s chocolate chip cookie dough made with real chocolate chips as well as turd chunks.