Readers who have deconverted have likely heard believers tell them countless times: God loves and cares for you. (God being the Christian God of the Bible.) I know I have. Rarely does a week go by without me receiving an email or blog comment from an Evangelical Christian saying that God loves and cares for me. How do they KNOW God loves me? How do they know God cares for me? Just because the Bible says something doesn’t mean it’s true. Saying God loves and cares for me is a claim, as is the all of the Bible. Evangelicals wrongly think Bible verses are evidence for the truthiness of a belief, when in fact, they are claims. What a claim requires for justification is EVIDENCE. Actual empirical evidence, not just saying “the Bible says.”
Saying the Bible is the Word of God is a claim. Saying the Bible is supernaturally inspired, inerrant, and infallible are claims. I’ve engaged Evangelical apologists for almost twenty years. Without question, these apologists are long on claims and short on evidence. In fact, they are so short on evidence that it requires an atomic microscope to see it. Saying God loves and cares for me is an empty claim for which no evidence is forthcoming.
God could prove his love and care for me, but he chooses not to. Either that, or he can’t because he is a mythical being, powerless to act in the natural world. Everything I have seen, both as a Christian and an atheist, suggests that God is deaf, blind, and indifferent to the cries of his creation. “God loves and cares for us” is a grand ideal, but one that is not borne out in real life. God was silent when I prayed and silent when I didn’t. Pray tell, if there is no difference between God interacting with me as a Christian and as an atheist, how can I possibly know he exists and has a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious plan for my life? I am an atheist today because I see no evidence for the Christian God’s existence. If God truly wants everyone to love, know, and follow him, you would think he would, in a no-doubt way, make himself known to us. That he doesn’t suggests that he doesn’t give a shit about us, or he doesn’t exist.
But, Bruce, you were a Christian for fifty years. Surely you believed God loved and cared for you. Sure, but the question that must be asked is this: Why did I believe God loved and cared for me? I spent most of my life in the Evangelical bubble; an environment where every aspect of my life was controlled by my parents’ chosen religion. I was never allowed to examine and judge the central claims of Christianity for myself. I was indoctrinated and conditioned to such a degree that I believed that whatever my pastors, youth directors, and Sunday school teachers taught me was true. This indoctrination and conditioning continued during my college years at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. I was taught WHAT to think, not HOW to think. While I later learned that my pastors and professors lied to me — deliberately or out of ignorance — I still held on to the belief that the Bible was the Word of God. It would be many years before I took a hard look at my beliefs and the claims I made about God’s presence in my life. I wanted to believe God was ever-present. I wanted to believe God loved and cared for me and had a wonderful plan for my life. Oh, there were times when I was certain God was talking to me, meeting my needs, or using me to advance his kingdom. However, a post-Jesus examination of my life revealed that my life was built upon a fiction taught to me by my parents, pastors, and professors, and passed on by me to church congregations I pastored.
If God wants me to believe he loves and cares for me, all he has to do is show me. Those of us who are married know that we show our love and care for our spouse by what we do, and not by what we say. The Bible says God loves and cares for all of us, but these claims are mere words — no different from a man telling his wife he loves her, even though he beats her every day. His behavior says that he doesn’t love his wife. So it is with God. If he wants me to love and follow him, is it too much to ask for God to make himself known to me? If God truly wants to save the world, wouldn’t this goal be best served by him sending Jesus back to earth to make a physical appearance — say, a yearlong show at a Las Vegas casino? Instead, Evangelicals tell us God speaks with a whisper, and if we listen closely, we will hear him. Welp, I am deaf, so perhaps God will text me or send me an email. Better yet, maybe Jesus will knock on my door and invite me to lunch. Now, that will get my attention. Alas, God remains silent, suggesting, at least to me, that he is dead or on vacation.
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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If I were communicating with someone online, someone with whom I felt a good connection, eventually we would want to meet in person. There’s only so far a relationship can go that isn’t in person. This is so true in sales – we emphasize the necessity and importance of meeting the clients in person. We pick up so much more reading body language than we can interpret (or assume) from written correspondence.
Christianity tells us that our relationship with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit is the most important relationship we can have. Yet we can’t meet in person. No amount of praying or church-going or Bible reading can make up for an in-person meeting. Yet, what Christian can tell us with all sincerity that they’ve met God/Jesus/Holy Spirit in person?
Bruce, if God loved and cared for you so much, why didn’t he support you more when you devoted your life to him?
I can still remember the last time I prayed. It was “if you are out there, now’s the time to make yourself present”. Crickets!
The only sign that would convince me of a god is a bolt of lightning striking a certain 🍊 person on the golf course, while a booming voice from the heavens shouts “I do not support MAGA!” Or, it could be an alien. At this point, I don’t care.