The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

IFB Pastor David Bulka Preaches at Me and Says “See You Later”

Written by

Bruce Gerencser

in

,
midwestern baptist college sophomore class 1977
Sophomore class, Midwestern Baptist College, Pontiac, Michigan 1977. Polly is in the first row, the first person on the left. Bruce is in the third row, the eighth person from the left

Last week, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor David Bulka stopped by to preach to me his peculiar version of the Christian gospel. Bulka left the following comment on the post titled Seven Reasons People Get Saved. He didn’t bother to engage my writing, choosing instead to preach and testify.

I am not sure what Bulka hoped to achieve. We both went to Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan at the same time in the late 1970s. I only knew him in passing since he didn’t live in the dorm. Bulka surely knows that I was a pastor for twenty-five years, so I am at a loss to understand what value his comment may have to me or the other readers of this blog.

SEE YOU LATER”. I am 69 years old.

Burba tells me “SEE YOU LATER” four times. See me later, where and why, exactly? Is he meeting me at the strip club?

I want to ask you these Questions. Did Jesus Christ Rise from the dead after he was crucified?

No. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is a myth.

Is He the son of God?

No.There is no God. No God, the Father, no, God, the Son, and no God, the Holy Spirit.

Is He the way the truth and the life as He said He was?. John 14:6.

No.

You will respond, either, yes , no or I am unsure.

You do know these are claims, and not evidence, right? If you want me to believe a Jewish apocalyptic preacher was executed and resurrected from the dead, you are going to have to provide evidence for your claim. Not the Bible, either. The Bible is a book of claims, and if you want to convince unbelievers of the veracity of your claims, you are going to have to do more than preach sermonettes and regurgitate prooftexts.

My personal experience, and Faith, say YES. and since Jesus Christ has changed my life to a better life and I have seen Him work miracles in my life and others. I have decided, What Jesus is, was and will be…. I will follow and encourage others to do like wise.

Surely you know — well, maybe not since you went to Midwestern, with its Sunday school-level classes — that personal and anecdotal stories aren’t evidence. Your testimony applies to you alone. I have no way of knowing whether it is true.

You said, “I have decided.” All well and good. Go with God, right? But, I have no intentions of following after a Christian pied piper. You want me to follow along? Please provide actual evidence for your claims.

My advise after studying the Bible for over 55 years. Is Doubt your Doubt, and have child like faith. I respect all people, but warn them not to risk being wrong, especially in believing HELL is real or not.

Childlike faith has led many people to deconvert. A childlike faith is no match for rigorous arguments against Christianity. That may play well within the walls of the church, but here in the real world, lambs with “childlike faith” tend to get eaten alive by wolves like me.

It was created for the devil and his angels. John 8.

No Hell, either. According to your theology, most of the people in Hell aren’t devils or angels. Hell is filled with your friends, neighbors, and church members. It seems, then, that Hell was created for humans too.

I have enjoyed the Christian life.

And I enjoyed the Christian life too, but not as much as I enjoy my life as an agnostic atheist and humanist. Sleeping in on Sundays, watching NFL games, sex in positions other than the missionary position, watching nudity on TV and not feeling guilty, drinking a shot or three of whiskey, and making liberal use of curse words — ah, the wonders of a secular life.

The Kingdom life which gives peace, Joy, righteousness.

Okay? I have similar feelings, as do most atheists (and other religious practitioners). Do you really think these character traits are reserved for your brand of Christianity alone?

My faith in a Holy , loving God, the God of Abraham, Issac Jacob, Sarah…etc has worked for me.

Okay? Your anecdotal stories are unable to provide evidence for the truthfulness of your claims. That’s why you ultimately appeal to childlike faith.

…. SEE YOU LATER….when we stand before the JUDGE of ALL CREATION. If you do not believe, Then thats on you. SEE YOU LATER…If it is not true… At least I have enjoyed life basking in peace, Joy, righteousness loving and serving the LORD Jesus Christ. A Atheist might say, in their faith…”.you Christians were wrong.” We will have to wait and see. But I have enjoyed the Kingdom Life, no regrets. “SEE YOU LATER”

There is no afterlife; no final judgment either. One life, twill soon be past, and then you are dead. Are you a Muslim? Are you a Buddhist? Why not? You using Pascal’s Wager reveals a fatal flaw in your argument. You only want to apply this to your particular flavor of Christianity, when you must apply it all of man’s extant religions. Surely, you want to cover all of your bases. If not, why are you unwilling to do what you are asking me to do?

You seem to ignorantly think that there is no life (meaning and purpose) outside of faith in Jesus Christ. This is patently untrue. I live a good life. I have a wonderful partner. We’ve been married for forty-seven years. We are blessed to have six children and sixteen grandchildren. All of our children are gainfully employed and generally live good lives. Two of our grandchildren attend college, one at Miami University (Ohio) and the other at Ohio State University. Our four inside cats are fat and happy, and we do everything we can to give our outside feral/stray cats a similar life (Tonight we put lights in their crates (27 gallon plastic tubs with a cut a hole inn for the cats to enter, and then put straw in tubs to keep the cats warm).

David, you have been lied to about unbelievers. Either that, or you have constructed a straw man in your mind, one that bears no resemblance to non-Christians like me.

Let me be clear, I don’t need God, Jesus, the Bible, the church, or saving faith to live a good life. You seem to forget that I was a pastor for twenty-five years. I pastored scores of born-again Christians; that I had numerous ministerial colleagues. I know first hand that things within the church are not as you seem to think they are. I’ve concluded that there is little to no difference between the lived experiences of Christians (of all stripes, including IFB believers) and those of the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world.

I am more than happy to discuss or debate these issues with you, David. All I ask is that you provide actual evidence for your claims, and not anecdotal stories, sermons, and prooftexts.

Be well.

signature

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.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Comments

20 responses to “IFB Pastor David Bulka Preaches at Me and Says “See You Later””

  1. Avatar
    GeoffT

    Around 150,000 people die each day worldwide. If God is going to give judgement to each person individually then I’m not sure how long the line is going to be!

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      Bruce Gerencser

      Theologically, judgment doesn’t happen until the end of time. Evangelicals, with their dispensational, premillennial, pretribulational eschatology, are a minority within Christendom. Most Christian sects teach a general resurrection and general judgment. On the appointed day, God will resurrect the just and unjust, raise the dead and the living and judge them. This even strengthens your point.

      Google says:

      “Approximately 108 to 117 billion people have ever lived on Earth, according to various demographers. Estimates vary depending on the starting point for “human history,” but a widely cited figure from the Population Reference Bureau places the total at around 108 billion since about 50,000 B.C. The number is an estimate based on factors like population size, birth rates, and life expectancy throughout history.”

      So, on judgment day, God will judge 117 billion people? Imagine the amount of time it will take God to just every human based on their works. 😜 This is fantastical, to say the least, especially if judgment is like that portrayed in the famous Chick tract, This Was Your Life. In the tract version of judgment, God plays a video recording of your life, especially your dark, secret sins like premarital sex and masturbation. Talk about a porno flick. 😜😜

      Reply
      1. Avatar
        matilddaa

        I once wrote a guest post here, telling of a fundy small child whom I taught in primary school. He showed me a new toy spaceship and disengaged the landing capsule which he said was coming back to earth. Two astronauts in it were bringing the body of a third one to bury ‘with a shovel’. I asked why the shovel and he said he was a x-tian atronaut and would need it to dig his way out of his grave on judgement day! I didn’t feel able to discuss the nature of decomposition of a human body in the ground for centuries – or the fact that most of my x-tian relatives have been cremated and ashes scattered at a place they liked! Yup, makes no sense…..and am just imagining all those deluded folk who thought they were getting raptured in September and advised wearing clean underwear, they wouldn’t want the knickers they’d been wearing all day to rain down on the heathen left behind.

        Reply
  2. Merle

    I suppose you should tell him that it makes you feel so good to believe that Elvis rose from the dead. Therefore, Elvis rose from the dead.

    Same nonsense argument.

    Reply
  3. Avatar
    Jeff Bishop

    I think David Bulka should watch some Bart Ehrman You Tube video’s.

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      JT

      Jeff,

      That may not be as “educational” as you think. I took this advice after reading several posts and articles on this site about Bart. I actually paid for several of his courses and signed up as a silver member on his blog site. Bart is an intelligent person, but many of his arguments fall well short of the same proof he requires from Christians. For just one example, in his discussions about Peter he states that most fishermen of the time period could not read or write, so that basically means that Peter couldn’t either. As a result, there’s no way he could have written a book in the Bible.

      Using that same argument on myself, based on my family history, I do not have a college degree. No one in my family ever went to college, so I couldn’t have gone either (same logic Bart uses). In reality, I have two degrees and work in a field that requires factual data for projects to be approved and funded. I guess what I’m trying to say is that many of Bart’s “facts” are no more provable than the beliefs held by Christians. I can’t prove that Peter knew how to read and write, but he can’t prove that he didn’t.

      JT

      Reply
      1. Avatar
        Bruce Gerencser

        Dr Ehrman says:

        “In my previous post I indicated that I didn’t think Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter. One of my main reasons for thinking so is that I’m pretty sure Peter could not write. These books were composed in highly literate Greek by someone skilled in Greek composition. To be able to compose a book took years and years of training starting with childhood. Everyone we know like that was elitely trained and connected with a wealthy family, almost always in an urban area. Not, for example, a rural Aramaic-speaking daylaborer from a remote part of Galilee.

        But couldn’t Peter have “written” these books some other way — e.g., by having a secretary or scribe do it for him? I dealt with that question many years ago on the blog (based on much fuller discussions in my books Forged and Forgery and Counterforgery, if you want to see more of the evidence and logic) and still think the same thing. As it turns out, there is New Testament evidence about Peter’s education level. According to Acts 4:13, both Peter and his companion John, also a fisherman, were agrammatoi, a Greek word that literally means “unlettered,” that is, “illiterate.”

        And so, is it possible that Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter? We have seen good reasons for him not writing 2 Peter, and some reason for thinking he didn’t write 1 Peter. But it is highly probable that in fact he could not write at all. I should point out that the book of 1 Peter is written by a highly educated, Greek-speaking Christian who is intimately familiar with the Jewish Scriptures in their Greek translation, the Septuagint. This is not Peter.”

        Reply
        1. Avatar
          GeoffT

          That’s a much better response than I could ever have given Bruce, though I’ve been a member of Bart Ehrman’s blog for a few years and know his way of thinking. I can’t completely buy into JT’s claim that he followed Ehrman for a period of time, as Ehrman is very much Bayesian in his views, referring only ever to probabilities and not facts or certainties. Levels of probability for me range from 99.999% certain that evolution is true, and 99.999% probability that Jesus did not resurrect.

          Reply
          1. Avatar
            JT

            I never claimed how long I have followed Bart, but the answer is only a few months, and I just hit one month on his blog as a subscriber. I can assure you that I am nowhere close to reading all of his posts or watching his videos. I was just saying that I have read and paid for a couple of his classes. He is extremely smart in his wording that he uses terms like “highly probable”, but then closes with certainty that his position is factual. It’s a small but effective play on words. I think I’ve told you this before in another discussion several months ago, but I am open minded to learning and willing to invest some time and money into doing it. However, being that my Christian beliefs are rooted in faith, it does take a little more than “highly probable” to convince me.

            If Bart spells this out better with a more detailed level of facts, please advise. I may be willing to part with a few dollars to read a book if you feel there is evidence therein.

          2. Avatar
            Bruce Gerencser

            As I told JT, Ehrman doesn’t talk in absolutes. If the apostles were fishermen and only three percent of people could read and write, it seems likely many, if not all, of the apostles were illiterate.

        2. Avatar
          JT

          Thanks for referencing the exact wording Bruce, I was paraphrasing from memory. However, I would still argue that the elaborate wording is pretty much equal to my short summary paraphrase of what he said. In all fairness, I have not purchased any of his books that he constantly references, so maybe he gives more detailed information in those… He wouldn’t be the first to require a book purchase for the detailed version. He may be 100% correct, but we just don’t know for sure.

          Reply
          1. Avatar
            Bruce Gerencser

            I own and have read all of his books. Ehrman rarely, if ever, uses absolutes. I agree with him on Peter. Most of the apostles were fishermen. It is unlikely they could read or write since only three percent of people could.

          2. Avatar
            GeoffT

            Hi JT, I just wanted to put in my twopence worth, adding to Bruce’s comments. The history of the bible and of Christianity is basically no different to the study of anything else in history. What are the sources, do they match up, can discrepancies be easily accommodated, what does the archaeological record show?; in short, evidence.

            You refer to ‘100% correct’. Nothing ever achieves this level of certainty, other than axioms such as 2+2=4, and even these are subject to philosophical discussion. Criminal courts of law require ‘proving’ a defendant guilty, but the word ‘prove’ is actually “that the evidence is sufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt”. So not beyond any doubt, just reasonable doubt.

            When it comes to religious belief somehow the apologists throw the rule book out of the window. They twist and they squirm and Gary Habermas writes countless thousands of words defending the truth of the resurrection when almost everything he, or other apologists, say is easily rebutted by historical authors, like Ehrman. Non specialist theologians then pick up the arguments and start saying things like “well they’re atheists, what do they know?”. The label atheist doesn’t matter, it’s what are their arguments. There are Christian believers who are actually reputable historians, but they struggle when it comes to defending their faith views. The best theologians are the ones like Erhman, or like Francesca Stavrakapoulou (I wonder if I got that right?), or Alex O’Connor, who simply look at and weigh the evidence and find it wanting. Yes they are atheists because that’s where the evidence led them. Too many apologists are too mired in their desperation for their beliefs to be true that they ignore historical rigour.

          3. Avatar
            JT

            Bruce/Geoff,

            Through my Amazon Kindle, I have access to two of his books for no additional cost:

            1) How Jesus Became God
            2) Jesus Before the Gospels

            Instead of flipping a coin, I’ll let you advise on the one you think I should read. Thanks.

            JT

          4. Avatar
            Bruce Gerencser

            I would read How Jesus Became God. Let us know what you think.

          5. Avatar
            GeoffT

            I’ve only read Jesus Misquoted of Ehrman’s books, but Bruce has read them all and can better advise. He’s a thousand times more qualified to answer than I am in any case.

  4. Avatar
    Dave

    Yet another Christian who claims his beliefs must be true since his life has been changed for the better. By his logic the countless people who have suffered horribly despite their faith have every reason to reject it.

    Reply
  5. Avatar
    … Zoe ~

    Bruce: “All well and good. Go with God, right?”

    Zoe: They sure have trouble going, right? sigh

    Reply
  6. Avatar
    Karuna Gal

    David Bulka doesn’t know how to write well at all. He uses grammar and punctuation incorrectly and doesn’t follow basic capitalization rules. Out of charity, let’s not even mention his lack of coherence. (Oops, I mentioned it! Am I naughty or what?) Please, Mr. B, take a remedial English writing course to learn how to write properly. We might take your fulminations a tad more seriously if you do.

    Reply
  7. Avatar
    ObstacleChick

    Honestly, I wish Christians would take a “live and let live” approach. But us ex-Christians know that for many Christians, this simply will not happen. Armed with the command to “go ye therefore and preach to all nations” so-called Great Commission, many believe they are by command required to, well, preach to all nations. That includes preaching to those of us who are deconverts, many of us as well-educated as we can possibly be in the gospel message. Heck, we even have the current VP of the US bemoaning the fact that his wife isn’t Christian and wishing for her conversion.

    Reply

Want to Respond to Bruce? Fire Away! If You Are a First Time Commenter, Please Read the Comment Policy Located at the Top of the Page.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More posts

Discover more from The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading