Someone using the moniker Samoan Hotty sent me the following email. All spelling and grammar in the original. My response follows:
Dear Bruce,
Rain falls on all of us,every single one of us. To some it is a welcomed shower and a source of water, to others it is nothing but an annoying nuisance that is cursed at.
Okay, and this has what to do with me, exactly?
Praying for you, your wife, your kids and your sweet precious grandkids.
Sigh. One more Christian who is allegedly praying for me and my family. Instead of doing something meaningful for me — cash, checks, and credit cards are welcome — Samoan Hotty offers up a meaningless prayer to the ceiling God. Scores of Christians have said they would pray for me — without success. Either there is no God, God didn’t hear their prayers, or they lied and didn’t really pray for me. Regardless, their prayers have not led to the saving of my soul or the death of my body — for those praying imprecatory prayers.
I’m only 29 and got 2 kids of my own and knowing their souls rest in Lord Father God’s hands and not in Satan’s gives me so much joy and relief.
How do you KNOW God or Satan exists? How do you KNOW your kids have souls, let alone their souls are resting in the hand of God? God must have pretty big hands if the souls of every believer rests in his hands. Or maybe, just maybe this is a cliche Evangelicals bandy about when wanting to convince themselves and others that God really, really cares for them and has a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious plan for their lives. No evidence is provided for these claims other than faith. That’s fine, but atheists find faith claims unconvincing, so don’t expect us to come running to Jesus.
I pray for their sake your pride does not turn your family away from knowing Lord Father God and getting to spend eternity with him.
What makes you think I have a problem with pride? Do you usually seek out strangers on the Internet and psychoanalyze them? You don’t know anything about me, yet you think it is okay to judge me.
My partner and I have been married for almost forty-seven years. We are blessed to have six adult children, ages 45, 43, 40, 35, 33, and 31. We also have three adult grandchildren, two of whom are in college, one studying pre-med at Ohio State University. and the other studying zoology at Miami University. We have five more grandchildren in middle school/high school, and eight grandchildren in elementary school. What they believe about a god or a religion is up to them, not me or their heathen mother/nana. I don’t talk about God/religion with them unless it naturally comes up in discussion or they ask me a question. Currently, son number two attends the Catholic Church with his family. The rest of the family does not attend church, though they do have varied beliefs about God and the afterlife. The choice of what to believe is theirs. When Polly and I deconverted seventeen years ago, we let our children, then sixteen to twenty-eight, know that they were free to make their own decisions about belief in God. If they choose to be atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, or Christians, that is on them. We will love and support them regardless of what path they take in life. Am I pleased that none of them wants anything to do with Evangelicalism? You bet.
Like the rich man said, had he known what it was gonna be like he would lived life differently.
You know that’s just a made-up story, right? The poor man in this story lived a miserable life, yet, in the end, he was given a bunk in paradise, safe from pain and suffering. Never asked about this story is why God let the poor man suffer his entire life without helping him?
I live my life as I please, with the clear understanding and knowledge that I will one day soon die. I have a lot of health problems that are working hard to kill me. One day, they will succeed. Until then, I plan to live each day to its fullest. What matters most to me is my family. I have no interest in God/church/Bible. My life is fine just the way it is. I know you have difficulty wrapping your mind around someone who does not want or need your God, but that’s your problem, not mine.
♡ I pray it’s not too late for you ♡ God Bless
Too late for what, exactly? Outside of better health, more money, and the Reds winning the World Series, I have everything I want and need in life. Well, a heated indoor swimming pool would be nice too, and a 1970 Nova SS.
Let me ask you, what did you hope to accomplish by contacting me? You knew I was an Evangelical Christian for fifty years. You knew I was a college-trained pastor for twenty-five years. I know the Bible inside and out — probably better than you. Did you really think you were going to say something I haven’t heard countless times before? Trust me, I haven’t heard an original argument for God/Christianity in years.
It is too late for me to return to Christianity. I no longer believe the central claims of Christianity are true. They no longer make any sense to me. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) To become a Christian again means repudiating everything I know to be true, and that ain’t going to happen.
If you have any questions, please let me know, and I will do my best to answer them.
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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Gotta love the implicit threat in phrases like, “I hope it isn’t too late”. Too late for what, Hotty? What is the “or else” portion you’re warning about? It almost sounds like the mafia: “It would be a real shame if something happened to you.”
Interesting observation. Implicit threats are Trump’s modus operandi. I hear “or else” and ” you’ll see” from him regularly. It’s a bully blustering his superior status.
OC and TDG–I was thinkiing along those lines. While Trump believes he is superior in his wealth and power, Evangelicals too often believe they are morally superior and try to lord (yes, odd word choice) it over those who don’t agree with them.
‘…I’m only 29 and got 2 kids of my own and knowing their souls rest in Lord Father God’s hands and not in Satan’s gives me so much joy and relief…’
Yeah, my two small g/sons’ other g/parents are like you. They never miss an opportunity to tell them they are worthless, miserable sinners who must ask for forgiveness for their sins every night. They’re worms who should be trodden underfoot for their wickedness. That the devil is prowling around them every moment seeking their souls but jesus is protecting them from this bogeyman (what garbage!) That it’s evil not to believe that the world is 6000yo. They’re homophobes, but one of their sons is an out and proud gay man, so they say little as he’s a fun uncle to the boys….otherwise I’m sure they’d show their bigotry more and try to teach it to our g/sons!
S.H. I wonder how you’ll react if those kids of yours don’t accept jesus as their personal saviour, don’t become clones of their dad but rebel as they realise your god, your jesus and your bible are fictitious!