Suppose I woke up tomorrow morning and decided that I wanted to be a Christian. I realize that seems unlikely, but that’s not the point here. And because it isn’t the case that I want to be a Christian, we can set aside the “why” questions. What I’d like us to consider is the far more intriguing “how” questions. How would I become a Christian? Is there a series of steps I could go through that would get me there? If I got there, how would I know I was there? And if I thought I was there, would most Christians accept me as one of them?
What might be a good first step if I wanted to be a Christian?
Jack asks an excellent question, one I hope Christian readers will answer.
There are thousands of Christian sects, each with their own beliefs and plans of salvation. How can an unbeliever possibly know with certainty how to become a Christian? As a pastor, my understanding of Christian salvation changed over the years. As my theology evolved, so did my soteriological beliefs.
If you profess to be a Christian, how does one become a follower of Jesus? If you are a former Christian, what did you believe about salvation? Did your soteriological beliefs change over the years? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Grace: Hello Bruce, I read your article. You were a pastor for many years, and now you are an atheist. Is that correct?
Bruce: Yes, that’s correct. I was an Evangelical pastor for 25 years. Thanks!
Grace: And now you are an atheist? Is that correct?
Bruce: Yes. I deconverted seventeen years ago.
As you can readily see, I politely and pointedly answered her questions. Yet, Grace’s questions were just a set up for her finishing blow.
Grace: Pastors lead people to hell. So you were on your way to hell then and now.
Luther was as much a heretic as the Catholic church.
The great evangelical disaster leads people to hell.
OSAS is Unscriptural.
“by faith alone” is Unscriptural.
Tithing is not NT Scriptural.
Church buildings are Unscriptural.
But at least you worked Some for a livig [sic].
It’s a shame you led people to hell then and are still on your way there.
But, your choice.
Peace
As you can see, Grace is certain she is right and I am wrong. No discussion required. She knows I’m wrong and headed for Hell; that my entire sixty-eight years of life is a fraud; a lie.
Never mind the fact that Grace doesn’t know anything about me other than an unnamed article she read. To that I say:
It’s stupid and embarrassing to give an answer before you listen. Proverbs 18:13
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Anyone can comment on this site, even Evangelicals and Independent Fundamentalist Baptists. All I ask is that commenters follow the comment policy. Unfortunately, many followers of Jesus either can’t read or they think the comment policy doesn’t apply to them. In their minds, they are servants of Jesus, so whatever he tells them to do or say, they do it, Bruce be damned.
Over the past week, a new Evangelical commenter has been commenting on this blog. She has also sent me numerous emails. Her behavior gave me pause, but I thought I would let her continue to comment. Well, today brought the following comment which I want to respond to:
Ar the risk of being given the “boot” for mentioning prayer on here, I was just so touched, I had to send this. I wasn’t gonna say a blessed thing about prayers going up.for your health condition, 🙏 but was clandestinely putting you on every healing prayer site I could possibly find, in hopes that you would begin to regain some strength, and hope that you aren’t “destined” to continue suffering like this.
Yes, you have indeed crossed a line. I do not appreciate your conduct. Did I ask you to contact people and ask them to pray for me? No. Did I ask you to share my health problems with them? No. Yet, you felt you had the “right” to parade my name and health issues before others. You could have kept this to yourself, but you didn’t. No, you needed me to know that you and your Christian ceiling knockers were praying for me, ignoring what Jesus said about praying in secret.
I can’t stop people from praying for me. If Christians want to babble at the ceiling, so be it. However, I am not interested in being apprised of your vacuous, empty prayers. Yes, empty. Thousands of Christians are allegedly praying for me, yet my health remains the same, and I am still an unrepentant atheist. It is evident, at least to me, that prayer doesn’t work. It can’t, because the Christian God is a myth. He can no more answer a prayer than another mythical being, Satan.
That said, if I am instantly healed of gastroparesis (incurable), exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (incurable), degenerative spine disease (incurable), and peripheral neuropathy (incurable), I will repent and put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Time to put up or shut up. Surely, with all these prayer warriors praying for me, healing is but an utterance away.
This commenter gossiped about me with a pastor associated with Catch the Fire Ottawa. This pastor sent the woman a copy of what he prayed (all spelling and grammar in the original):
— begin prayer —
Lord Jesus,
We lift up Bruce to You today. You see his pain, You know every part of his body that is suffering, and You understand the depths of the times of despair he has felt at times bevause of it. He has said that if You cared enough to heal him, he would believe. Lord, we know that You do care — deeply. You cared enough to come, to suffer, and to die so that we might have life.
So we boldly ask, in Your mercy, that You would touch Bruce’s spine and body. Heal what doctors say is incurable. Bring relief where there has been only pain. Speak peace into the storm of his body and mind. Let healing flow through every part of his nervous system, his muscles, his digestive system, his pancreas — and especially his spine. Let him be able to say, “God heard me. God helped me. God is real.
But more than just healing, Lord, we ask that You would draw Bruce to Yourself. In Your gentleness, open his heart to Your love. Reveal Yourself not just as a healer, but as a Father and a Friend. God loves the fatherless. Meet him in the dark places with Your light. Give him hope not only for his body, but for his heart and inner well-being, healing from trauma and deep brokenness.
You often used healing in Scripture to bring people to faith — not just to restore their bodies, but to re-invite them into a relationship with You. Would You do that for Bruce? Not just to lessen his pain, but to show him You have never forgotten him.
We ask all this in Your powerful and compassionate name, Jesus Christ, our Healer and Redeemer. Amen.
Yes, Lord! We ask for a regenerative miracle for Bruce.
Amen
— end of prayer —
What more can I say other than “sigh.” (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh.”) Just another example of a follower of Jesus who shows no regard or respect for me or thinks she knows what is best for me. Such behavior is unsurprising. I’ve been blogging for seventeen years. I have seen this boorish behavior over and over again.
For the record, I wish I weren’t sick. I wish I weren’t in pain all the time. But wishing, like prayer, is a waste of time. Life is what it is, and no amount of babbling to the ceiling will change that fact. I accept that this is my lot in life. As I mentioned above, most of my health problems are incurable. There’s nothing doctors can do except treat my symptoms and try to alleviate my suffering.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Fifty-three years ago in September, I made a public profession of faith at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. This simple, brief, heartfelt decision became the foundation of my life for the next thirty-five years. According to my pastors, and later my professors, once an unsaved sinner gets saved, they can never, ever lose their salvation. I remember R.B. Thieme saying that once a person is saved, they can blaspheme God and deny that Jesus saved him without affecting his salvation. In other words, once you sincerely pray the sinner’s prayer, you are f-o-r-e-v-e-r saved. Nothing you do afterward can separate you from the love of God and his grace. And I mean nothing. Sure, Christians can backslide and find themselves out of the will of God, but this does not affect the state of their salvation. Once saved, always saved. If what we do affects our eternal destiny, that means we are saved by works, and not faith. Or so many Evangelical preachers say, anyway.
While the Bible certainly can be used to justify these beliefs, the Bible can also be used to show that Christians can and do lose their salvation and end up in Hell. Further, the Bible also teaches that once a person loses their salvation, they can never, ever be saved again. For Christians who believe you can lose your salvation, works are essential to saving faith.
Which soteriological position is right? They all are. Every Christian sect, preacher, and church member uses the Bible to justify and prove their beliefs. How can we possibly know which view is right? I think the best way to determine who is right is to put representatives of each position in an octagon ring and let them fight it out. The last soteriology standing is right, or, at the very least, less wrong than the other ones. You would think God would be clearer on such an important subject, but alas, God cares more about his golf score or finding Grandma’s keys for her, that he doesn’t have time to settle the terms of salvation.
Let me set up this discussion with a hypothetical scenario.
Have you ever heard preachers say, “If a person doesn’t obey the Bible, they may not be saved, even if they claim to have faith.”
But then at a funeral, the same preacher may say, “The deceased person was saved because they claimed to have faith, even though they didn’t obey the Bible.”I noticed this inconsistency when I was in high school when one of my close friends passed away.
So which is it? Do we have to obey the Bible until we die to be saved, or is it enough to have faith?
Well, I’m confident that the Bible teaches that once someone is made alive in Christ, born again, and becomes a believer, they have eternal life that can never be lost or returned.
That means a Christian who becomes an atheist will still have eternal life. They are still saved even if they fall into unbelief and disobedience.
Now, I know many of you that might be a new idea. However, it’s not an idea I invented, but instead a concept that the Bible teaches quite consistently. So I thought I would take a minute to answer a few obvious questions that the video raises.
Some opponents of this idea will say that a “true” believer will never stop believing.
But the Bible doesn’t distinguish between “true” belief and belief.
Secondly, the Bible speaks of saved people who stopped believing for a time.
….
If eternal life is given when one first believes, then obedience is not required for salvation. If receiving eternal life required a life of obedience then Jesus could only give eternal life at the end of someone’s life when they proved that they could be obedient. But that’s not what the Bible tells us.
It sounds good on the surface, but there are a few of problems with this claim. It is true that Someone’s belief in Christ can blossom into good works. In fact, that’s what we hope happens with all Christians. We hope that they add good works to their faith. We hope that they not only believe but obey Christ. So if someone is doing good works in obeying Christ it’s likely they are doing that because they have believed in him. We have to be careful here though, we can’t use good works as proof that someone has believed since it’s possible for a believer to disobey Christ. We find that in second Timothy two, first Corinthian‘s three, and a number of other places.
There is another problem with this concept still. We can’t use obedience to Christ as proof of faith since Current actions are most likely based on current beliefs. Therefore, current inaction can only be based on current disbelief but is not necessarily based previous disbelief.
You can’t prove that someone never believed in the past by how they act in the present. There was a time when I believed it was ok to drink only coca-cola all the time. I acted on that belief while I still believed it. However, I no longer drink Coke all the time. Can you infer from my current actions what I used to believe? Obviously not. The only thing that you might be able to make a guess on is what I currently believe that I shouldn’t drink Coca-Cola. Even then, I could be acting against what I believe. The point is, trying to use obedience to Christ as proof of faith is a flawed method.
Eternal life is not given after a life of belief, but at the first moment, one believes.
Therefore, present disobedience cannot demonstrate a lack of belief in the past.
….
The bottom line is if you believe in Jesus for eternal life you have it. No matter what happens after that point you still have it.
An atheist’s current unbelief doesn’t negate salvation received earlier in life.
A believer’s future unbelief or misbehavior can’t dissolve, destroy, or derail their deliverance from Hell.
Even if the Christian strays that can’t sabotage, subdue, or stop salvation.
So there ya have it, outspoken atheist and denier of the central claims of Christianity Bruce Gerencser is still a Christian! According to Kitchen, because I made a profession of faith fifty-three years ago, there’s literally NOTHING I can do to lose my salvation. And I mean nothing! According to Kitchens, I can’t sabotage, subdue, or stop my salvation! Take the men who frequent the pages of the Black Collar Crime Series, Vile, corrupt men the lot of them, but have you noticed that many of them end up back in the ministry after being punished for their crimes? How is this possible? Simple, 1 John 1:9:
If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9 NRSV)
This means that forgiveness is but a prayer of forgiveness away, and since the Bible says in Romans 11:29: For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable, not only is a pervert’s salvation irrevocable, so is his calling. And it is for these reasons that David Hyles — an IFB preacher with a long track record of immorality and crimes — is still a preacher, and people continue supporting him.
Romans 8:31:35, 38-39 says:
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
….
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Apostle Paul was clear: NOTHING can separate us [Christians] from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I wasn’t in the ministry long before I realized how bankrupt this kind of thinking really was. Guaranteed salvation gives men like Dr. David Tee (whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen), Revival Fires, John, and countless other Christians the freedom to live as they wish without fear of losing their salvation. Nothing they say or do can separate them from the love of Jesus. In those rare moments when they genuinely feel sorry for what they do, all they have to do is to sincerely repent, and God will wipe their slate clean. Awesome, right?
As a pastor, I concluded that, as James did, “faith without works is dead; that we show our faith by our works.” Think of all the Evangelical miscreants, including those mentioned above, who comment on this site, send me emails, and write blog posts about me and the readers of this site. What do their words say about their Christianity? Everything. Don’t tell me what you believe, show me. By the late 1980s, my preaching had a Calvinistic bent. No longer did I preach the truncated, bastardized gospel of my IFB upbringing and training. Sure, IFB preachers could prove their beliefs from the Bible, but so could I. I determined that a faith+works salvation best reflected the teachings of Jesus. This, of course, led to me being accused of preaching “works salvation.” Better than no-works salvation, I thought at the time.
To this day, I think there should be a connection between beliefs and how a person lives. As an agnostic atheist and humanist, I try every day to live according to the ideals reflected in the various humanist manifestos. And when I fail, what do I do? I do my best to make things right, and, if necessary, make restitution. Unlike the Evangelical Christian, who prays to God when atoning for sin, I make things right with those I’ve offended. No God needed.
Am I still a Christian? According to Kitchens, I am. And nothing I do can change this eternal fact. Once saved, always saved. After I post this, I think I will get drunk, snort some drugs, and go pick up two prostitutes for a wild roll in the hay. I am sure I will feel guilty afterward, so all I have to do is ask the God who doesn’t exist to wipe my slate clean. I can do this day after day, and God will still forgive me. What’s not to like about his form of Christianity, right?
To the thousands of heathens who read this blog, I encourage you to stop what you are doing and pray the sinner’s prayer, asking Jesus to cleanse you from your sin. No need to cross your fingers. No matter what you do, and that includes murder, rape, incest, and rooting for the Cubs, the triune God of the Bible will forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. That’s why Paul had to field the question, “Should I sin more, so the grace of God may abound?” While Paul said, “God forbid,” the Bible says differently. Sin away, Christians, God’s forgiveness is but a mumbled prayer away.
I am sure this belief sounds absurd to many of you, and I agree. I am no more a Christian than Satan himself. There’s nothing in my life that remotely suggests I am a Christian (other than I live a better life than many Christians I know). Scores of people who read this blog are former Evangelical Christians. This means they are still s-a-v-e-d! Maybe we should start an online church, First Church of Saved Atheists or First Church of Hitchens. As long as we had a momentary born-again experience, we will go to Heaven when we die. Though, when I think about it, do I really want to spend eternity praising the name of a narcissistic God? Hell is starting to sound more appealing to me. But I can’t go to Hell even if I wanted to. Once saved, always saved. I am powerless to divorce Jesus. We are forever married, regardless of what I say or do.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Kind, thoughtful Christians will often object when I reveal how I have been treated by Evangelical Christians since 2007. In their minds, they can’t fathom a Christian threatening to murder someone. Alas, deplorable conduct from Evangelicals is common; more common than polite, respectful behavior. Throw in the Evangelicals who take delight in threatening me with eternal punishment in Hell, and I’ve concluded that my writing either attracts the worst Christianity has to offer or this sort of behavior is normative.
Today, Daniel left the following comment:
I know you’re not lying, but you have seriously had “Christians” send you death threats? I’m sorry. That’s pathetic and vile. Jesus very clearly said if you hate someone in your heart it’s as if you committed murder. Wishing death on an atheist is totally opposite of what Jesus taught (I do believe His teachings myself). Can you expound on this or write an article about these threats? If you have not already.
I have had a few Evangelicals threaten to murder me. One man, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) from Detroit — 2 hours from my home — threatened to slit my throat. Others have prayed imprecatory prayers, asking God to physically and permanently silence me. And then there are the threats made against my family, including my thirty-five-year-old daughter with Down syndrome.
I have received thousands of emails, comments, and social media messages from Evangelical Christians. The majority of them were argumentative, belligerent, and hostile. Evidently, Colossians 3:12-17 NSRV is missing from their King James Bibles:
Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
These verses tell believers that they are to clothe themselves with certain behaviors. It seems to me a lot of Evangelicals are stark naked.
Here’s the thing: while their behavior is detestable, is it really much different from polite, smiling, Bible quoting Evangelicals who feel duty-bound to tell me and other non-believers that we are headed for Hell unless we get saved? While murdering me is bad, is not consigning me to endless torture and suffering in the Lake of Fire worse?
Even if I returned to Christianity, I would never attend an Evangelical congregation. The damage is done, and the behavior of too many of them is a poor reflection on Jesus. I have no interest in a religion that is known for what it is against, and is one of the most hated sects in America. The first people to object to this post will be Revival Fires and Dr. David Tee. Not surprising since they are known for abusing and attacking anyone and everyone who disagrees with them
Today, I received a long email from a Mennonite man near Somerset, Ohio. This man was a teen back in the days when I pastored Somerset Baptist Church. I befriended some of the Mennonite men who lived nearby. I found the lot of them to be good people. This man’s email reflected that goodness. It was polite and informative, a reminder of the common connections we once had. (Short Stories: Bruce and the Amish.) While a nice letter from an Evangelical man won’t convince me to return to Christianity, it does remind me that not every Christian is like Revival Fires and David Tee. I suspect the letter writer and his fellow Mennonites would condemn their behavior, as I have.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Evangelicals believe there is life after death. Every person who has ever lived will end up in either Heaven or Hell. Where you end up is determined by faith. Those who put their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior go to Heaven when they die. Everyone else goes to Hell and will be tortured forever for their rejection of Jesus.
Setting aside the fact that people do not go to Heaven or Hell after they die (no one does until the general resurrection at the end of time), most Evangelicals have extra-Biblical beliefs about the afterlife. For example, how many sermons have you heard where a preacher told you Nana or Grandpa is in Heaven, free from pain, suffering, and heartache? You are told your dead loved ones are having a wonderful time in Heaven, running, singing, and worshipping God. Life is marvelous, better than anything experienced in life before the grave. Most people will never experience this, but, bless God, Evangelicals will. Why? They are members of the right religion. They worship the right God. Their guidebook for life is the Bible, even if they rarely read it. By faith, they believe every word in the Bible is straight from the mind of God. This supernatural book says there’s an afterlife. The men who preach from this supernatural book say there’s an afterlife. Countless authors have written books about Heaven and what awaits the followers of Jesus after they die.
What Evangelicals NEVER provide is evidence for the existence of an afterlife, Heaven, or Hell. Not one shred of evidence is presented for these claims. Either you believe in life after death or you don’t. Either you believe Heaven and Hell are real places or you don’t. Either you believe that your landing spot in the afterlife is determined by believing the right things, or you don’t. All of these claims ultimately appeal to faith for justification. Any Evangelicals who tell you they died, went to Heaven or Hell, and came back to life on Earth are lying. Unless they provide a feature-length video of their time in the afterlife, their claims are not to be believed. Just because someone says something happened to them doesn’t mean their story is true. The same goes for the Bible. The Bible is a book of claims. Just because it says something doesn’t mean it’s true.
People wrongly think I am an anti-theist. I am not. I do, however, expect and demand sufficient evidence for religious claims. If you want me to believe your claims, you will have to do more than quote Bible verses or tell me to just faith-it.
I know that I will someday die, likely sooner than later. I am a sixty-eight-year-old man in poor health. My body tells me that my time on Earth is short. How I die remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: I will die. Rare is the person, especially in the sunset years of life, who doesn’t think about death from time to time. In the quiet of late nights, I will hear our clock ticking, reminding me of my frail mortality. Eventually, I fitfully fall asleep, hoping I will awake the next day. And I do, but one day the last noise I hear in this life could be the click-click- cl of our clock. And that will be it. Then what?
Since there is no evidence for an afterlife, I have no reason to believe that I will live on after death outside of whatever nutrients my ashes return to the dirt. When I die, that means the end of the only Bruce Gerencser on Earth. Yes, I am that special. 🙂 Do I fear death? No, not as far as it being the end of life. I know death awaits all of us, and since I am not immune to what afflicts us one and all, I’m confident that the way of all men will one day come calling for me. I do, however, at times, fear what may happen to me before I die; the pain, suffering, and loss that may come my way before my demise.
Most Evangelicals believe that after they get to Heaven, they will be given a resurrected body, one perfect in every way, including the brain/mind. Having a new brain/mind, Evangelicals think that they will know countless things they didn’t know on Earth, and they will NOT know many of the things/people they knew before death. You might think, as an atheist, “Who cares?” And I agree, except for this one point: Evangelicals are willing to offload knowing things to the afterlife. Who hasn’t engaged an Evangelical about this or that belief, only to have the believer dismiss your claims out of hand, saying, “One day, I will know everything in Heaven. Praise Jesus!” Sadly, Evangelicals won’t know everything. Knowledge and understanding are gained only in this life. Once dead, all learning stops. Better to have lived life seeking knowledge and passing that knowledge on to others than to make oneself deliberately ignorant, hoping that an invisible deity will one day fill you in on what you missed in this life.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I received the following email today from an Evangelical named Garry (all spelling, grammar, and irrationality in the original):
A humanist and an atheist…..That’s all I need to know about you to dismiss your opinion! My unsolicited advice to you would be to please state your belief system at the beginning of an article you write. Wouldn’t have wasted my time with your article. To be fair however; CT Townsend is a charlatan and the Holy Spirit warned me against him long ago…..just as He has warned me against you just now.
Instead of judging and evaluating my writing based on its content, Adkins dismisses everything I say because I am an atheist and a humanist. Talk about a closed mind. I read Evangelical content virtually every day. I do not dismiss Evangelical writers just because of their religious affiliation. I try to judge and critique Evangelicals based on what they say instead of who or what they are. What’s important is what people think and believe. Granted, it is sometimes impossible to ignore a person’s character and associations, but I try my best to take a person’s arguments at face value.
I am perplexed by Adkins’ suggestion that I state my beliefs at the beginning of every article. Depending on what device and operating system you use to read this site, you will see an author’s block on the top right of the page that details who and what I am. People using mobile devices won’t see this, but EVERY post has an author’s block at the the bottom. Further, there’s an About page that gives new readers everything they need to know about the man, myth, and legend Bruce Gerencser. If you want to know who I am or how to contact me, that information is easy to find.
Adkins says God spoke to him directly, warning him against me. What did God say? I want to know. I have been asking this same question for almost twenty years. Most people who claim God directly speaks to them about me are unable to tell me exactly what God said. Of course, the reason for that is that God is a myth, and the only voice in their heads is their own. Adkins cannot prove God, in the person of the Holy Spook, said anything to him about the Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser.
Much like other lazy, indolent Evangelical Christians, Adkins lacks curiosity. Either that or he thinks he already knows everything he needs to know about me.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Are devout Christians mentally ill because of their irrational supernatural beliefs? For those of us who were committed Evangelicals at one time, were we mentally ill? Does this mean that billions of people are mentally ill just because they devoutly worship, serve, and follow God? Listen to some atheists, and it is clear that they believe the answer is a resounding YES! Most atheists who make this claim have never been religious. To them, religion is a virus that causes mental disease. This allows them to dismiss Christianity out of hand without wrestling with and engaging their claims. In my opinion, this is lazy thinking.
We humans, religious or not, are prone to irrational belief. All of us, at one time or another, have had wonky, crazy beliefs. As a former Evangelical, I know that many of my past religious beliefs were illogical and unjustifiable. Does this mean I was mentally ill? Of course not. For those of us raised in Evangelical churches, we spent years being indoctrinated and conditioned by our parents, pastors, youth directors, Sunday school teachers, and others. We believed what we did because that’s all we knew at the time. How could I have believed otherwise?
I wish atheists would stop saying religious people are mentally ill. Christians might have mental health problems, but is religion solely to blame for this? I don’t think so, and it is uncharitable and unkind to suggest otherwise.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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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Warning! Evangelicals who have never had sex with the lights on or in anything other than the missionary position might find this post offensive. The rest of us? Snicker away!
Last night, I listened to a YouTube channel called the Deconstruction Zone. Its host is a college-trained former Evangelical preacher named Justin Holmes. I love Justin’s approach when challenging Evangelical dogma and presuppositions. He regularly “cooks” Evangelicals in their own juices. 🙂
Justin has a wonderful, snarky sense of humor, which is shown below.
Snarky Atheist named Justin: No, but I’ve heard of cunnilingus.
Bruce rolls on the floor laughing.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Atheists choose to limit themselves to only one cosmological option. They hitch their wagon to the wild fantasy that everything came from nothing. This foolish belief creates an irrational worldview. But unlike Christianity, which is an evidence-base faith, atheism has a religious-like devotion to the absurd belief that nothing created something.
Let me rewrite this paragraph for readers:
Christians choose to limit themselves to only one cosmological option. They hitch their wagon to the wild fantasy that everything came from a mythical deity. This foolish belief creates an irrational worldview. But unlike atheism/humanism, which is an evidence-base faith, Christianity has a religious-like devotion to the absurd belief that a mythical triune deity created everything.
Delzell went on to say:
Atheists should actually be afraid of ‘nothing.’ That is to say, atheists should fear the faulty assumption that nothing produced space, time, matter and energy at the beginning. This blind faith is rooted in a preposterous make-believe theory, without a shred of scientific evidence to support its impossible conclusion.
….
Lee Strobel posted in 2017: “To continue in atheism, I would need to believe that nothing produces everything, non-life produces life, randomness produces fine-tuning, chaos produces information, unconsciousness produces consciousness, and non-reason produces reason. I simply didn’t have that much faith.”
If an atheist follows the evidence, he or she can meet “the only true God” (John 17:3). But when atheists dig in their heels and continue trusting in their illogical ideology, they remain spiritually blind. Sadly, man with his free will can choose to close his mind to the truth he was created to understand and accept.
When an atheist faces a family crisis, he has nothing to rely upon for spiritual comfort. When atheists become disillusioned with life, there is nothing substantive to pull them out of the pit of discouragement. And when atheists stand before Jesus Christ on Judgment Day, they will have nothing good to say about why they rejected God.
A callous heart prevents a person from experiencing the appropriate fear of paying the penalty for his sins in Hell. Many atheists laugh off the notion of an actual place called “Hell,” but their laughing is tragically misguided and uniformed.
I wrote, “The man who refuses to trust God is a man who assumes he can trust his own opinions. And so he looks for ways to shore up his weak position, and to convince himself that his perceptions are in perfect alignment with the visible and invisible realities of the universe.”
If you are staking your soul on the idea that everything came from nothing, you need to wake up and snap out of your spiritual stupor. God created you with a body, soul and spirit. (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23) And it is impossible to extinguish your immortal soul.
Therefore, you would be wise to get on board with the Creator’s design for your life. If you place your faith in Jesus, God will wash away your sins. But if you refuse to adopt the fear of the Lord, you will remain on a path that leads away from God throughout eternity.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
