Yesterday, I received the following email from a Christian man named Matt:
Funny, I was in prayer the other day begging God for something and telling him what a worm I was. He told me to stop groveling and act like His child, his beloved child.
God never calls us to grovel at His feet. We go there to spend time with Him, to enjoy Him, to behold His beauty and majesty.
I hate the wrong Jesus too. But the right Jesus is the one I follow. I don’t go to church due to the wrong Jesus being worshipped there. But I still follow the right Jesus. Bruce, you’ve let Satan and a bunch of goofs in church lead you into unbelief and hate. Be smarter than that and follow JESUS.
I worshipped the wrong Jesus, Matt worships the right one
Matt follows the “right” Jesus, but doesn’t go to church
I have let Satan and “goofs” lead me into unbelief and hate
I need to be smarter than that and follow Jesus
Certainty breeds arrogance, and Matt is plumb full up with both. Here’s a guy who doesn’t go to church because he can’t find a church with “right” beliefs, yet he expects me to accept him as some sort of authority on Biblical truth. Not a chance.
Matt’s comment is all about him. Look at me, Bruce. I have the right beliefs. I worship the right Jesus. I am so pure that there’s no church good enough for me. Yet, he provides no evidence for his claims. His comment and email are long on bald assertions and short on actual evidence.
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.
You came into our home today to sell us your company’s product. We received a flyer from your company last week, touting its new, low-priced rental program for your equipment. We’ve been wanting to buy or rent your product for some time, so the new rental program was all the motivation necessary for us to call your company and schedule a sales call. What follows in this letter is a mixture of advice and critique. I hope you will learn from what I have written.
You arrived promptly for the sales call — and that’s a good thing. Tardiness — especially without notification — is a sure way to get us to reject out of hand what you are selling. If my wife and I, who are just as busy as you are, set time aside for your sales pitch, we expect you to arrive on time. And if you can’t, we expect a telephone call or text message. Last week, I offered for sale two Amazon Fire TV Sticks on a local buy-and-sell forum. The first person to say he wanted them asked if I could wait until Friday for him to pick them up. I said, sure. Friday came and went without the man picking up the Sticks. So, I offered them to the next person who wanted them. She promptly came and picked up the Sticks. The next day, the man who stood us up sent me a Facebook message, asking if he could come and pick up the Sticks. I told him no; that I had offered them to someone else. The man became upset with me, suggesting that I was a terrible person. I took a few moments to educate him on the value of timeliness and keeping your commitments. All that did was aggravate him further. The man told me that he would never do business with me again. Little did he know that I don’t give people who don’t keep appointments a second chance; even those who use the lame excuse that their grandmother was in the hospital and no one had a cell phone. He and his siblings were Millennials, so there was no chance in hell that one of them didn’t have a cell phone. So as a salesman, you get one point for being on time. Unfortunately, as this letter will detail, our interaction with you cost you quite a few other points.
You parked on the street in front of our home, directly in front of the two-foot by six-foot sign for my business, Defiance County Photo. It’s hard to miss, with its blue frame, but somehow you missed it. That’s why you were surprised when you found out I was photographer, and that I, in particular, did local high school sports photography (you proceeded to then spend way too much time telling me of your own photo prowess, complete with dick pics — also known as your “awesome” sports photos). Years ago, I tried my hand at sales. My dad was a salesman for several decades. He was as smooth as silk when it came to selling people things they didn’t need; things such as Kirby vacuüm cleaners and Combined Insurance Company supplemental medical policies. Unfortunately, I was not like my dad, and I failed miserably at selling stuff. I even tried my hand at selling the product you tried to sell us today.
One lesson I did learn from my foray into sales is that it is very important to pay attention to your prospective customers’ homes. How do they live? What’s hanging on their walls? Years later, I would use this technique in my selling of Jesus to sinners. As someone who’s been in sales for years should know, it is important to make a connection with customers. The easiest way to do that is to talk about them, and not yourself. Unfortunately, you didn’t pay attention to your surroundings as you walked into our home, and as a result you made assumptions about us that were invalid. You are much like the Amway salesman that came to our home years ago thinking that by mentioning his Cadillac sitting in our driveway and showing us his Rolex watch and diamond ring, we would be so impressed that we would immediately want to become salesman for Con-way. Nothing in our home — a mobile home — told this man that we were people who placed a premium on material wealth. He missed all the cues that our home, dress, and demeanor told him. You did the same, by not paying attention to us, and by spending way too much time talking about yourself; building yourself into a larger-than-life master of industry. One thing I have learned over my sixty-six years of life is to spot a bull-shitter from a mile away. Soon as you started regaling us with your exploits, I knew we were talking to a first-class, Grade-A biped manure spreader.
Had you been paying attention, you never would have repeatedly referenced the Evangelical God in your conversation with us. You wouldn’t have told us that God has a plan for everyone’s life or that the Christian God is in control of everything. You also wouldn’t have mentioned how my wife’s employer — for whom she has worked twenty-seven years — has gone downhill since its Evangelical founder died; that the third generation now running the company is only concerned with profits and the bottom line. What was it about how we lived, dressed, or carried ourselves that said to you we are Christians? There’s nothing in our home that even remotely suggests that we are Christian; no Jesus Junk®, no Bibles lying around, no Evangelical books in our bookcase; nothing that suggests that we are Jesus-loving, church-going Christians. I suspect you wrongly assume that everyone in rural northwest Ohio believes in the Christian God, so you thought it safe to use God to warm us up and entice us to say yes. Little did you know we are atheists. I wonder how uncomfortable that fact might have made you feel had you known.
My wife and I are kind and generous to a fault. We said nothing as you blabbered on about your omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent mythical deity. After you left, my wife even complimented me — with a chuckle in her voice — for using the word darn instead of damn in one of my responses to you. You see, I pay attention to my surroundings. I don’t go out of my way to offend Christians. When my wife’s Evangelical parents come to our home to visit, we temper our language, change the TV channel to Hallmark, and play G-rated music. We don’t want to unnecessarily offend them; even though they find plenty to be offended over by our stocked liquor cabinet, their daughter’s worldly apparel, the atheist books on my bookshelves, our children’s lack of faith, and our lack of church attendance and prayer before meals (though we do allow Polly’s dad to say a prayer before meals). You might learn something from our behavior: that unless you know a prospective customer is a member of the Jesus Club®, perhaps it’s better to not assume. You came to our home to sell us your company’s product, not to sell Jesus. Had we known that Jesus was going to be part of the sales presentation, we certainly would not have invited you into our home.
There is much more that I could say about your interaction with us; stuff that should have resulted in us saying no thanks. But, thanks to me researching your company and its product, and thoroughly educating myself about what it does, we decided to buy your product anyway. While we were turned off by your sales presentation, including the part that treated us like aged imbeciles, we had decided beforehand that if the price in your company’s flyer was indeed correct, we were going to rent your product. So then, it was your lucky day, Mister Jesus Freak, that you ran into customers who could ignore your religious drivel, and instead base their decision on whether your product would meet their needs.
Next time you go into someone’s home to sell them your product, pay attention. Your next prospective customer might not be as thoughtful and deferring as we are. Perhaps it would just be better if you left religion out of your sales pitch altogether. There’s something dirty and shallow about trying to hook prospects with Jesus talk. While I suspect my wife and I are in the minority when it comes to not wanting to hear salesmen talk about their love life with Jesus, an increasing number of local residents are choosing to label themselves as NONES — people who are atheists, agnostics, or indifferent towards religion. These prospective customers want to hear about your product, not your God. Keep that in mind the next time you start telling a customer about the God who controls everything. You might find out that the only God who controls something is the customer who has the power to say yes or no to your sales pitch; and for customers who aren’t religious, they are more likely to say no to someone who uses religion in an attempt to reel them in.
Sincerely,
Bruce Gerencser
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.
Subjectivity: The quality of being based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. An explanation for that which influences, informs, and biases people’s judgments about truth or reality; it is the collection of the perceptions, experiences, expectations, personal or cultural understanding, and beliefs specific to a person.
Objectivity: The state or quality of being true even outside a subject’s individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginings. A proposition is generally considered objectively true (to have objective truth) when its truth conditions are met without biases caused by feelings, ideas, opinions, etc., of a sentient subject. A second, broader meaning of the term refers to the ability in any context to judge fairly, without partiality or external influence.
Faith, by design, is inherently subjective. Even the writer of the book of Hebrews understood this, as evidenced by the words found in chapter eleven and verses one and three:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Hebrews 11 details the faith of Biblical luminaries such as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sara, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, David, the prophets, and even the wandering children of Israel. Believing these people had great faith requires even more faith because none of them exist outside of the pages of the Christian Bible. Hebrews 11 goes on to detail what these people of faith supposedly faced as earthly voices of the one true God:
Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
I say “supposedly” because there’s no evidence outside of the Bible for these things actually happening. Believing them to be true requires faith. And that’s the essence of faith: believing without evidence. Now intellectuals among the faithful love to argue that their faith is reasonable, but I find their arguments unpersuasive. Is it reasonable to believe a man who was cruelly executed on a Roman cross resurrected himself from the dead three days later? Is it reasonable to believe that this same man was born of a virgin, turned water into wine, walked on water, walked through walls, teleported out of the midst of a crowd, healed blindness with spit and dirt, and fed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and even fewer fish? Of course not. Believing these things to be true requires faith, a faith that rejects what we know objectively to be true. We know that virgins don’t have babies, water can’t be turned into wine (though my wife wishes this were true), people can’t walk on water or walk through walls, blindness can’t be healed through spit and dirt, and it’s impossible to feed five thousand men, and an unspecified number of women and children with five loaves of Wonder Bread and two perch filets. (Now, Jesus teleporting out of a crowd without being seen; that’s possible. SYFY channel, people. It’s all real.)
Imagine me telling you that, over a twenty- or so-year period, I was beaten almost to death five times by Buddhists, beaten with wood rods by jihadists, stoned by ISIS, and spent thirty-six hours treading water in the Pacific. Not only that, the Chinese attempted to arrest me in Hong Kong, but I escaped by climbing over a wall. Would you believe my story? Of course not. A reasonable person would ask for some sort of corroborating evidence. Live long enough and you learn that when a story sounds too good/bad to be true, it is likely a lie.
Yet, when a similar tale is told by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 11, countless Christians believe it to be true:
Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. … In Damascus the governor under Aretas the king kept the city of the damascenes with a garrison, desirous to apprehend me: And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped his hands.
The Apostle Paul knew that readers would doubt his story, so he offered up proof for its truthfulness. Are you ready for some mind-blowing truth? Here it is: The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.
God knows I am not lying. Paul’s Sunday night testimony is absurd, and most reasonable people would reject it as the rantings of a man who has spent too much time in the third heaven. You know you are in trouble when you have to call a mythical God as your witness. Yet, is this not what countless Evangelicals do when they argue that they know God/Jesus/Christianity is true because of what they have experienced in their lives? God did it, they say. Just ask him! Pray tell, how is this any different from Elwood P. Dowd’s six-foot three-and-half-inch tall pooka friend, Harvey the rabbit?
Dowd believed Harvey was real, taking him to the bar for drinks and even introducing him to his friends. Dowd even believed that Harvey had the power to stop time:
Did I tell you he could stop clocks? Well, you’ve heard the expression ‘His face would stop a clock’? Well, Harvey can look at your clock and stop it. And you can go anywhere you like, with anyone you like, and stay as long as you like. And when you get back, not one minute will have ticked by. You see, science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space, but any objections.
What an awesome, science/reason-defying rabbit, right? Maybe we should start a religion.
Harvey existed only in Dowd’s mind. He believed Harvey was real, so that means Harvey existed — even though no one actually saw him. Dowd rightly ended up in an insane asylum, yet when Evangelicals make similar claims about their God and religion, they are considered fine, upstanding citizens, every bit as rational as hardcore skeptics and rationalists.
The world has a collective cognitive dissonance when it comes to deities and religion. Instead of objectively examining and testing religious claims, billions of people accept them at face value. By faith, they just believe these things to be true. The United States is one of the most religious countries on Earth. While the U.S. is religiously diverse, Christianity is the primary belief system of most Americans. Approximately one out of four Americans claim he or she is Evangelical. Ponder that for a moment — one out of four. In some places, such as where I live in rural northwest Ohio, the percentage of Evangelicals is even higher yet. This is why a century of scientific knowledge has done little to change the minds of Americans about evolution. Three-fourths of Americans either believe God created the universe pretty much as it is described in Genesis 1-3 (creationism), or God used evolution to bring our biological world to life (theistic evolution). For hundreds of millions of Americans, when it comes to understanding the world they live in, they are content to say, God did it!
Several years ago, I had a brief discussion with an Evangelical man who wanted to know how and why I no longer believe in God. This man wanted me to know that his relationship and experiences with Jesus were real. Here’s some of what he wrote (all spelling and grammar in the original):
I am not being critical. I am talking from a heart of simple faith in my life. I became a Christian in 1979 as a young boy running away from home. I had never been to church, my parents had never been to church. I sat in class during a bible lesson and had the most incredible encounter, which at that stage I had no clue what it was. Today, I know it had to have been the Holy Spirit. I went home that day, sat on my bed, Gave my life to Christ and have never looked back.
Since then I have had the most incredible experience of Christ’s love, forgiveness, prophecies and jobs through prophecy and leading in Christ. I have seen live [sic] transformed in him.
I am now 55, serving in a Christian school and seeing lives touched. Kids from broken homes, destitute families, youngster in very difficult situations being healed. This is not a hyped experience. Our school has seen raped young girls have coming to incredible healing under Christ, girls wanting to abort their babies, deciding not to and producing awesome children and loving them, boys abused and abusers who have turned their lives around because of the love they have found in Christ and testimonies of students from our school who are making a difference in their work place because of their faith. We do not have extensive bible programs, bible lessons, etc…but simple faith in Christ.
….
For whatever has happened in your life, I know what I have received in Christ. Maybe for me it has to do with the fact that I truly met Christ, not in a Church, that I have a personal experience of His touch.
I politely responded to the man, and a short time later he sent me this:
Thanks for the honest reply. I have read some of the articles already [I sent him links to several posts, along with a link to the WHY page] . Every single article I have already read still does not disprove or prove the existence of God to me. The only proof of God to me is what I have experienced in Him.
The bible of course makes no sense in many areas! That’s what makes it so tangible for me. Only an idiot would write such rubbish trying to lead someone to believe in him regarding faith, what’s in the bible, the “stories” etc…… , unless that idiot happened to be God who knows infinitely more than I could ever understand. I cannot presume to know God’s thoughts behind what was written in the sometimes seemingly ridiculous writing’s. That’s okay for me.
Once again all I can answer to is my own experience. I have experienced Him personally.
If I am wrong in my belief then I have lived an incredible life of serving others, in my opinion, to a better life where they can live in peace (referring back to the lives I have seen transform from despair to hope). If I am right in my belief in God’s word and plan then I spend eternity with him. What you call life “anecdotes” based on scientific principles I call awesome God events. It is a matter of choice. One of us is going to be wrong at the end of the day. I think I would rather be in my shoes. That however is a matter of personal opinion.
This Evangelical man knows that what he believes is true through emotional, subjective experiences. Essentially, he is saying, I know I am right because I know I am right, no proof needed. I assume he believes that there is only one true God — the Evangelical Christian God — and that all other Gods are false. But people of other faiths have similar experiences. Shouldn’t their beliefs be accepted at face value? If this man expects me to accept his claims without evidence, shouldn’t he do the same for people who worship deities other than his?
I appreciate this man being honest about the Bible:
The bible of course makes no sense in many areas! That’s what makes it so tangible for me. Only an idiot would write such rubbish trying to lead someone to believe in him regarding faith, what’s in the bible, the “stories” etc…… , unless that idiot happened to be God who knows infinitely more than I could ever understand. I cannot presume to know God’s thoughts behind what was written in the sometimes seemingly ridiculous writing’s.
Only an idiot would write such rubbish, he said. Now, that’s an objective statement if there ever was one. Believing the fantastical claims in the Bible requires the suspension of rationality and critical thinking skills. The only way to believe the Bible is true is to faith-it. Remember what I said earlier? That when a story sounds too good/bad to be true, it is likely a lie. The Bible, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 is the greatest lie ever told. At best, it is a historical novel; a work of fiction interspersed with enough historical facts to give it a sense of believability. Until Evangelicals understand this, there is little that can be done to reach them. No matter what I told the aforementioned man, he was going to continue to believe; he’s going to continue to believe that he has had and continues to have a supernatural encounter with a supernatural God (much like being probed by aliens while you sleep); he’s going to continue to believe that God speaks to him; he’s going to continue to believe that his life’s story was written by God from time immemorial; he’s going to continue to believe that the Bible is a supernatural inerrant text written by a supernatural God, and given to fallible humans so they can know how to live their lives (without any updates or corrections for two thousand years).
But, Bruce, you were once an Evangelical. My God, man, you were even a pastor for twenty-five years! You changed your mind and now you are an atheist. See, people can and do change! Sure, I changed my beliefs concerning God, Jesus, Christianity, and religion in general. Many of the thousands of people who read this blog have done the same. But, change is hard, and the first step towards change is admitting that you possibly could be wrong. It wasn’t until I considered that maybe, just maybe Rev. Bruce Gerencser was wrong, that my mind was ready to know the truth (not in an absolute sense, but the truth about Christianity in particular). Once my mind was open to the possibility of errancy, both on God’s part and mine, I was then able to begin the journey I am still on to this day.
For a time, faith kept me from openly and honestly considering my fallibility. What if you are wrong? my inner Bruce said. Most ex-believers went through times when their lives were like a game of Pong. Conditioned by church/pastor-induced fear, it’s hard for Evangelicals to even ponder not being who and what they are. After all, thoughts of eternal torture in a pit of brimstone and fire will do that to you. I frequently receive emails from people who recently deconverted, yet are having what I call a God hangover. They objectively know that they are right about God and Christianity, but a lifetime of religious indoctrination and conditioning causes them to fear. This fear is palatable and can cause great emotional unrest. Evangelicals, of course, say that such feelings are God trying to woo us back to himself. The Holy Spirit is saying, don’t doubt. I am real. God is real. Jesus is real. Everything the Bible says is true! Of course, these thoughts and feelings are not God at all. They are vestiges of a former life, and over time they will go away, never to be remembered again. Once our minds are open to objective, rational thought, there is no going back. The proverbial horse has left the barn, never to return.
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.
Recently, a reader left the following comment on the page titled Why I Hate Jesus:
Just wondering if you believe in the Jesus that walked the streets and died on the cross, why are you an atheist?
I think Jesus was a real flesh and blood human being born in Palestine two thousand or so years ago. It is likely that Jesus was either a Jewish rabbi or teacher and attracted a small following in his thirty-three years of life. Running afoul of Roman law and teaching things contrary to the Jewish teachers of the day, Jesus was arrested, tried, and executed. His body today lies buried somewhere in an unknown grave. (I have less than zero interest in debating with mythicists over the existence of Jesus.)
I reject all the supernatural claims made for Jesus: his divinity; his virgin birth; his resurrection from the dead; his ascension to Heaven; the miracles attributed to him in the Bible.
As an atheist, I think Jesus was real because of the historical evidence for his existence. I reject Jesus’ divinity because of a lack of evidence for any of the supernatural works attributed to him. I suspect many atheists believe as I do.
One of the challenges all of us have when studying the lives of historical figures is distinguishing between fact and fiction. This is especially difficult when we are talking about people who lived thousands of years ago. It is much easier to study the lives of modern historical figures thanks to the printing press and the Internet. I have written extensively about my life on this blog. I still have things I haven’t written about or “secrets” that shall never see the light of day if I have anything to say about it. (And don’t read too much into that statement. I don’t have a secret love child, nor do I have a gay lover, and I have not been arrested for a crime. Now let your imaginations run wild.) 🙂 I suspect after I am dead, it would be fairly easy for an author to write a biography of my life. There’s plenty of source material that would be readily available to the author. That is not the case for most ancient historical figures, including Jesus.
Yes, I “believe” in Jesus, much like I “believe” in my mother who lies buried in Fountain Grove Cemetery in Bryan, Ohio. Both of them lived and died. Both of them left a legacy behind, but neither of them will be showing up for dinner on Thanksgiving.
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.
Several years ago, my editor, Carolyn, asked me a question about how my philosophy of ministry had changed from when I first began preaching in 1976 until I left the ministry in 2005. I thought her question would make for an excellent blog post.
I typically date my entrance into the ministry from when I enrolled for classes at Midwestern Baptist College in the fall of 1976. I actually preached my first sermon at age 15, not long after I went forward during an evening service at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio, and publicly declared to my church family that God was calling me into the ministry. My public affirmation of God’s call was the fulfillment of the desire I expressed as a five-year-old boy when someone asked me: what do you want to be when you grow up? My response was, I want to be a preacher. Unlike many people, I never had any doubts about what I wanted to do with my life. While I’m unsure as to why this is so, all I know is this: I always wanted to be a preacher.
Trinity Baptist Church was an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church, affiliated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship (BBF). From my preschool years forward, every church I attended was either an IFB church or a generic Evangelical congregation. When I entered Midwestern in 1976, all that I knew about the Bible, the ministry, and life itself was a result of the preaching, teaching, and experiences I had at the churches I had been part of. These churches, along with my training at Midwestern, profoundly affected my life, filling my mind with theological, political, and social beliefs that shaped my worldview. These things, then, became the foundation of my philosophy of ministry.
The fact that I grew up in a dysfunctional home also played a big part in the development of my ministerial philosophy. During my elementary and high school years, I attended numerous schools. The longest spell at one school was the two-and-a-half years I spent at Central Junior High School and Findlay High School in Findlay Ohio. All told, I attended four high schools, two junior high schools, and five elementary schools. Someone asked me years ago if I went to so many different schools because my dad got transferred a lot. I laughed, and replied, no, dad just never paid the rent. While my father was always gainfully employed, the Gerencser family was never far from the poor house, thanks to nefarious financial deals and money mismanagement. I quickly figured out that if I wanted clothing, spending money, and, at times, lunch money, it was up to me to find a way to get the money to pay for these things. There were times that I sneaked into my dad’s bedroom and stole money from his wallet so I could pay for my school lunches. Dad thought that the local Rink’s Bargain City — which I called Bargain Shitty — was the place to buy clothing for his children. I learned that if I wanted to look like my peers that I was going to have to find a way to get enough money to pay for things such as Converse tennis shoes, platform shoes, and Levi jeans. In my early junior high years, I turned to shoplifting for my clothing needs. From ninth grade forward, I had a job, whether it was mowing grass, raking leaves, shoveling snow, or holding down a job at the local Bill Knapp’s restaurant. I also worked at my dad’s hobby shop, for which he paid me twenty-five cents an hour, minus whatever I spent for soda from the pop machine. (Please see Questions: Bruce, How Was Your Relationship with Your Father? and Questions: Bruce Did Your Bad Relationship with Your Father Lead to You Leaving Christianity?)
My mother, sexually molested by her father as a child and later raped by her brother-in-law, spent most of her adult life battling mental illness. Mom was incarcerated against her will several times at the Toledo State Mental Hospital. She attempted suicide numerous times, using everything from automobiles, to pills, to razor blades to bring about her demise. One such attempt when I was in fifth grade left an indelible mark, one that I can still, to this day, vividly remember. I rode the bus to school. One day, after arriving home, I entered the house and found my mom lying in a pool blood on the kitchen floor. She had slit her wrists. Fortunately, she survived, but suicide was never far from her mind. At the age of fifty-four, Mom turned a .357 Magnum Ruger revolver towards her heart and pulled the trigger. She bled out on the bathroom floor. (Please see Barbara.)
It is fair to say that we humans are the sum of our experiences, and that our beliefs are molded and shaped by the things we experience in life. I know my life certainly was. As I reflect on my philosophy of ministry, I can see how these things affected how I ministered to others. The remainder of this post will detail that philosophy and how it changed over the course of my life.
When I entered the ministry, my philosophy was quite simple: preach the gospel and win souls to Christ. Jesus was the solution to every problem, and if people would just get saved, all would be well. I find it interesting that this Jesus-centric/gospel-centric philosophy was pretty much a denial of what I had, up until that point, experienced in life. While the churches I attended certainly preached this philosophy, my real-life experiences told me that Jesus and salvation, while great, did not change people as much as preachers said they did. But, that’s the philosophy I was taught, so I entered the ministry with a burning desire to win as many souls as possible, believing that if I did so it would have a profound effect on the people I ministered to.
I also believed that poor people (and blacks) were lazy, and if they would just get jobs and work really, really hard, they would have successful lives. Lost on me was the fact that I worked really, really hard, yet I was still poor. There’s that cognitive dissonance. I would quickly learn as a young married man that life was more complex than I first thought, and that countless Americans went to work every day, worked hard, did all they could to become part of the American middle class, yet they never experienced the American dream. I also learned that two people can be given the same opportunities in life and end up with vastly different lives. In other words, I learned that we humans are complex beings, and there’s nothing simple about life on planet earth. I learned further that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. I would much later in life conclude that life is pretty much a crapshoot.
In 1983, I started the Somerset Baptist Church in Somerset, Ohio. Somerset Baptist was an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church. I pastored this church for almost twelve years. During this time, the church grew from a first-service attendance of sixteen to an average attendance of over two hundred. The church also experienced a decline in membership over time, with fifty or so people attending the last service of the church. Somerset Baptist was located in Perry County, the northernmost county in the Appalachian region. Coal mines and stripper oil wells dotted the landscape. Unemployment was high. In the 1980s, unemployment exceeded twenty percent. It should come as no surprise then, that most of the members of Somerset Baptist were poor. Thanks in part to my preaching of the Calvinistic work ethic (also known as the shaming of people who don’t have jobs), all the men of the church were gainfully employed, albeit most families were receiving food stamps and other government assistance. During the years I spent at this church, I received a world-class education concerning systemic poverty. I learned that people can work hard and still not get ahead. I also learned that family dysfunction, which included everything from drug/alcohol addiction, domestic violence, child abuse, and even incest, often was generational; that people were the way they were, with or without Jesus, because that’s all they knew. I pastored families that had never been more than fifty miles from their homes. At one point, some members of our church took a church auto trip to Virginia, and I recall how emotional some members were when they crossed the bridge from Ohio into West Virginia. It was the years I spent in Somerset Ohio that dramatically changed how I viewed the world. This, of course, led to an evolving philosophy of ministry.
Bruce Gerencser, Somerset Baptist Church, Early 1990’s
While I never lost my zeal to win souls for Christ, my preaching, over time, took on a more comprehensive, holistic approach. Instead of preaching, get right with God and all would be well, I began to teach congregants how to apply the Bible to every aspect of their lives. I stop preaching textual and topical sermons, choosing instead to preach expositionally through various books of the Bible. I also realized that one way I could help the children of the church was to provide a quality education for them. Sure, religious indoctrination was a part of the plan, but I realized that if the children of the church were ever going to rise above their parents, they were going to have to be better educated. For my last five years at Somerset Baptist, I was the administrator and a teacher at Somerset Baptist Academy — a private, tuition-free school for church children. My wife and I, along with several other adults in the church, were the primary teachers. Our focus was on the basics: reading, English, writing, and arithmetic. Some of the students were years behind in their education. We used a one-room schoolhouse approach, and there were several instances of high school students doing math with third-grade students. We educated children where they were, regardless of their grade level. Polly taught the younger students, and was instrumental in many of them learning to read. Most of the students, who are now in their thirties and forties, have fond memories of Polly teaching them reading and English. Their memories are not as fond of Preacher, the stern taskmaster.
During the five years we operated the school, I spent hours every day with the church’s children. I learned much about their home lives and how poverty and dysfunction affected them. Their experiences seem so similar to my own, and over time I began to realize that part of my ministerial responsibility was to minister to the temporal social needs of the people I came in contact with. This change of ministry philosophy would, over time, be shaped and strengthened by changing political and theological beliefs.
In 1995, I started a new church in West Unity, Ohio called Grace Baptist Church. The church would later change its name to Our Father’s House — reflecting my increasing ecumenicalism. During the seven years I spent in West Unity, my preaching moved leftward, so much so that a man who had known me in my younger years told me I was preaching another gospel — the social gospel. My theology moved from Fundamentalist Calvinism to theological beliefs focused on good works. I came to believe that true Christian faith rested not on right beliefs, but good works; that faith without works was dead; that someday Jesus would judge us, not according to our beliefs, but by our works. While at Our Father’s House, I started a number of ministries that were no-strings-attached social outreaches to the poor. The church never grew to more than fifty or sixty people, but if I had to pick one church that was my favorite it would be this one. Outside of one kerfuffle where a handful of families left the church, my time at Our Father’s House was peaceful. For the most part, I pastored a great bunch of people who sincerely loved others and wanted to help them in any way they could.
Polly and Bruce Gerencser, Our Father’s House, West Unity, Ohio Circa 2000
In 2000, I voted Democrat for the first time. As my theology became more liberal, so did my politics, and by the time I left the ministry in 2005, I was politically far from the right-wing Republicanism of my early years in the ministry. Today, I am as liberal as they come. Politically, I am a Democratic Socialist. To some people, depending on where they met me in life, my liberal beliefs are shocking. One man was so bothered by not only my politics, but my loss of faith, that he told me he could no longer be friends with me; that he found my changing beliefs and practices too psychologically unsettling.
I’m now sixty-five years old, and come next July, I will be married to my beautiful bride for forty-five years. Much has changed in my life, particularly in the last decade, but one constant remains: I genuinely love people and want to help them. This is why some people think I am still a pastor, albeit an atheist one. I suspect had I been born into a liberal Christian home I might have become a professor or a social worker, and if I had to do it all over again I probably would have pursued these types of careers, choosing to be a bi-vocational pastor instead of a full-time one. But, I didn’t, and my life story is what it is. Perhaps when I am reincarnated, I will get an opportunity to walk a different path. But, then again, who knows where that path might take me. As I stated previously, we humans are complex beings, and our lives are the sum of our experiences. Change the experiences, change the man.
I hope that I’ve adequately answered my editor’s question. This post turned out to be much longer than I thought it would be, much like my sermons years ago.
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.
Another day, another Evangelical who thinks he is Carnac the Magnificent when it comes to knowing what atheists, agnostics, liberal Christians, and other unbelievers really believe.
A classic example is Nadia Bolz-Weber. Chapter 2 of her book Pastrix begins with citing 1 Timothy 2:11-12. At its conclusion, she thanks her parents for blessing her desire to become a pastor. Sorry Paul, Nadia did what she wanted to do.
The same can be said of Rachel Held Evans. She wrote Inspired in order to introduce her readers to an un-inspired Bible, which she insisted ought to be loved despite imperfections—perhaps like a dithering beloved family member with dementia. I guess RHE felt she needed to maintain a foot in Christianity; hence, couldn’t totally abandon it.
Bolz-Weber, RHE and a slew of deconstructionists didn’t reject Scripture because it is a fallible outdated document. They know the truth and suppress it because they refuse to submit to God’s authority.
Cengia is a presuppositionalist. In his mind, the Bible is true because it says it is true. Further, people know the Bible is true because the Bible says they know it’s true. Got that? Non-Christians, or even some Christians such as Bloz-Weber and Held-Evans deliberately, and with full knowledge, reject some of the Bible’s truth claims. Cengia believes the Bible is inerrant and infallible, so, for him, whatever the Bible says is absolute truth. People who reject Cengia’s claims do so because they reject what they know to be true. This claim, of course, is patently false.
Presuppositionalists such as Cengia think they can ignore demands for evidence for their claims because, in their minds, the truthiness of their claims is self-evident. Of course, as an atheist and a materialist, I reject such claims out of hand. If Cengia wants to convince me (and others) of his claims, he is going to have to do more than say, “it’s true because I (God/Bible) says it is.” Cengia sees no need for providing evidence for the claims he makes about the Bible. We know the Bible is not inerrant or infallible (neither translationally or in the non-existent original manuscripts). Further, I have yet to see evidence for the claim that the sixty-six books of the Protestant Christian Bible are God’s Word or written by mostly unknown men who were supernaturally inspired by God. Those are faith claims.
Cengia concludes his post by making by this fantastical claim:
One cannot find a comparable work of non-Christian faith which spans thousands of years, with multiple authors, yet telling a cohesive non-contradictory story.
The Bible tells a “cohesive non-contradictory story”? Really? In what universe? As someone who spent 50 years in Evangelicalism, pastored churches for twenty-five years, and spent over 20,000 hours (on average, 20 hours a week) reading and studying the Bible, I can confidently say that Cengia’s claim cannot be rationally sustained. I understand “why” Cengia believes what he does. After all, I once believed the same things. And as long as I only read Evangelical authors, my beliefs were safe and secure. However, once I started reading authors such as John Shelby Spong, Bart Ehrman, and other scholars, I quickly learned that my beliefs about the Bible were not true.
As far as the Bible being a cohesive narrative, if that is so, why have Christians been arguing nonstop about that “cohesive” narrative for 2,000 years? Why are there thousands and thousands of Christian sects, each believing they are absolutely right? Why can’t Christians even agree on the basics: salvation, baptism, and communion? Every sect sees a cohesive narrative, as, of course, interpreted by them. Landmark Baptists look at the Bible (and church history) and see an unbroken line of Baptist purity. Roman Catholics do the same. Some sects start their narrative in Genesis, others start with the Gospels. The claim that there is a “cohesive narrative” in the Bible simply cannot in any meaningful way be rationally sustained.
In 2008 I walked away from Christianity. While the reasons for my deconversion are many, one simple fact brought my house down: the claim that the Bible is inerrant and infallible was untrue. Once the Bible lost its authoritative hold over me, I was then free to re-investigate the central claims of claims of Christianity. I concluded that these “truths” were, in fact, myths. None of Cengia’s claims played any part in my loss of faith. Will he accept my story at face value? Probably not. Why? The Bible is true because the Bible says it is true. End of discussion.
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.
The reasons for my deconversion are many. Poor pay, psychological stress, and chronic illness and pain, all played a part in my loss of faith, as did my inability to square the indifference of God to the suffering of humans and animals alike. Ultimately, though, I left Christianity because I no longer believed the central claims of Christianity to be true.
Calvinist troll Victor Justice stumbled upon this post and decided to use it to deconstruct my life. What follows is my response. All spelling and grammar are in the original.
So let’s unpack some of this:
POOR PAY:
….
Paying fellow Christians fairly and graciously for the work that they do should be part of the love we should have for the brethren. I can see how being mistreated in this way could build great resentment. I’d also think that mature, GOD fearing men would be able to distinguish between the atrocious acts of some men, many who are fake Christians, and GOD’s real plan clearly proclaimed and commanded by His holy Word.
Justice will search in vain for a post where I say I resented the churches I pastored for any reason, let alone the income they paid me. Every church I pastored (all of which were new church plants or young churches), except two, paid me what they could. The other two could have paid me more but chose not to do so. That’s why I worked secular jobs. I was always a full-time pastor, regardless of what I was paid.
I do appreciate the fact that Justice admits he is a fake Christian. His “atrocious acts” on this site make it clear that he is not a real Christian.
You strike me as someone who wouldn’t pay those who labor in the ministry much better, unless you were personally affected. That’s the honest sense I get from reading you extensively for many years. You sound like the quintessential cheapskate from what I’ve been able to glean. OCPD is highly correlated with extreme selfishness, but the sufferer still has a choice.
Nothing I have written would lead a fair-minded reader to conclude I was a “quintessential cheapskate.” Justice is just making shit up. He continues to say that he has read my writing extensively for years when, in fact, he has not.
By all means, ask Polly, my children, grandchildren, friends, colleagues in the ministry, and former church members if I am selfish. These people will give testimony to the fact that I am a generous person, someone who has gladly suffered loss for the sake of others. Over the years, I loaned church members money (which often went unpaid), bought them groceries, paid their rent and utilities, purchased them automobiles and appliances, clothed their children, and did what I could, with my own money, to model Jesus to them. Maybe I will share some of these stories in the future.
Justice, of course, has zero evidence for his claims.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS:
I speak from experience as someone with OCD (not OCPD). Living with this type of disorder would predispose you to elevated levels of stress no matter what your chosen profession. Add to your OCPD, narcissistic tendencies, obesity, and indifference and you have a recipe for disaster that is now very much your reality. But, we both know that the real elephant in the room is trying to do this IN THE FLESH, as you are not saved, and you never were saved. End of story here.
No matter what I say or try to explain, Justice will continue to say things like this. Yes, I was diagnosed with OCPD. Yes, I am obese, though I weigh 110# less than I did two years ago. Everything else Justice says is untrue, and he knows it.
CHRONIC ILLNESS/PAIN:
Again I speak with much experience. You’re a miserable person to smear others living with severe pain, illness, disease—with the fruits of a rotten to the core, heretical, bastard like yourself! This amounts to nothing but self pity.
I have no idea what Justice is talking about. Where have I ever smeared someone else living with chronic illness and pain? Justice will, again, search in vain for evidence to bolster his claims.
TENETS OF CHRISTIANITY:
You started dabbling with leftist political thought, which is some of the most effective work of the Devil. What happened in the process of your lust for the things of the world, the flesh, and the Devil is that you got Completely Sucked IN!
Your story really isn’t really so unique or fascinating, as it is common, pathetic, and sad. It has not only cost you everything, but it’s also cost YOUR FAMILY everything…you fat, lazy, miserable slob! Your family—your children—that the LORD Jesus Christ blessed you with, are now all messed up! And they will continue to be messed up because of the sins that you have committed!
GOD Almighty blessed you in all of His graciousness and deep goodness. You have no one to blame, but yourself. Not Polly, not Polly’s family, not your parents, not your grandparents, not any trolls or haters online! Just little, sad, Bruce. You dig?
These paragraphs will be the last ones Justice will ever write on this site. The same goes for Revival Fires — Justice’s lover. Both of them are using VPNs to evade blocking technology. While I know what VPN service they are using, I can not block it due to the fact that other readers, including several regular commenters, are using this particular VPN service. I will no longer acknowledge their emails/comments, deleting them immediately. I have also deleted ALL of their previous comments. Both of these vile men only care about inflicting me with psychological harm. I plan to rob them of the power to do so.
After this post was published, Justice left the following comment on YouTube:
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.
Recently, I was interviewed by former Evangelical pastor and professor Clint Heacock for his Mindshift Podcast. Clint and I had a delightful time, sharing stories from our days in God’s coal mine. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.
You can also listen to the podcast on iOS and Android here.
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.
Well, I’m going to say something controversial that will absolutely delight atheists, ’cause they like to take… not all atheists… some internet atheists… like to take things out of context and use it to make me look bad. I don’t care… You’ve already hated me anyways. It’s not like anything changed. If anything, I’m just glad people, like, hate-follow me. Like, at least that’s there. You know, maybe they’re hearing the Gospel. Maybe, God willing, there’s, like, some truth of Christ that will eke through there…
So I’m gonna say something here: If God really told them to do it, then they were right.
If God didn’t tell them to do it, then they were wrong. And they were just a murderer. And a delusional murderer who’s blaming God, which just makes it worse.
God does have a right to tell… now, let me now let me give an analogy that might help people swallow this better, because I feel the rejection that people would have to this naturally.
Let’s say that… America gets involved in a… just war… Or… let’s just say that you have a police officer who is getting involved in… some kind of, like, school… horrible school shooting-type thing, right? And he gets permission from the government, and from the local police department and all that, that when he sees a person on campus with a gun, he just opens fire.
And so he shoots them. And then someone’s, like, “How dare you shoot that person?” And he goes, well, like, “The government told me to.” There’s an element of this that… really is the facts, like the government actually just gave him a badge and a gun and approved him and gave him policies that he’s supposed to operate by. And so, in a sense, the government just told him to, and that is an actual defense. Like, if that wasn’t in place, then you’d have to have other legal justifications other than… the government told him.
Maybe in court, they would say “No, no, this was urgent enough” or “We would we would break the normal rules,” that kind of thing. Military is the same way.
Now, the government’s flawed. So the government might tell you to do something, and they’re wrong. Like in military, there could be a war that’s unjust, and saying the government told you to isn’t a good enough excuse, because there is a God in Heaven who disapproves.
But if God Himself actually tells you, and He’s like, “Hey, I am the ultimate governor of all of life, and I have judicially said that person is going to die, and I’m telling you to do it,” yeah.
Now, historically, as a Christian, do I expect this to happen? Not really.
Biblically, does it happen? Do we have, like, is the Apostle Paul, like, every few years, he’s just, like, turns into Jason Bourne and he’s, like, “God told me to kill Simon the Sorcerer”? No. No, the worst thing the apostles have done was to tell someone you’re not part of our church anymore if you’re going to keep living in sin like that. You know, God takes care of them.
Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world, otherwise my servants would fight, so we don’t fight to establish the Christianity… to establish the kingdom.” Like, this is “God told me not to.” In other words, I don’t, because God told me not to.
So, as a Christian, in principle, if God tells you to kill someone, yes, you should. It’s God.
But in practical reality, I really don’t expect this to happen. Not that there could never be an exception, but if anybody comes up to me, and says, “God told me to kill so-and-so,” my default is to think they’re probably wrong, because there’s a lot more weirdos out there than there are people that God is telling to do something like that. There’s my answer.
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.
Bruce and Polly Gerencser, in front of first apartment in Pontiac, Michigan, Fall 1978 with Polly’s Grandfather and Parents
There come seminal moments in your life as an atheist when you learn what your Evangelical family really thinks of you. Often precipitated by a crisis, the truth comes spilling out for all to see. Such a moment happened recently . . . and now I know what one extended family member — a member of an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation in Newark, Ohio attended by Polly’s mom — really thinks of me and my wife.
Polly’s mother is dying from terminal cancer. Her death is imminent — days, weeks, or a month or two, at best. She is now living with our nephew and niece. While I won’t go into the details of what precipitated the shit storm, I can tell you my nephew — who reads this blog — recently spent twenty minutes screaming at me; repeatedly cursing at me; calling me names, including lazy fat ass, and threatening me with physical violence — twice. Of course, my atheism and this blog came up. Polly’s family doesn’t like the fact that I write about the IFB church movement and its intersection with family. When I mention family, I never use their names or any identifiers (unless they are public figures). Evidently, I have no right to tell my story. I was told several times to shut up; that I’m a “victim”; that I need to move on; that I need to mind my own business. And what I write next will only reinforce my nephew’s view of me.
As I have mentioned before, Polly’s mom has always treated our family differently from family members in Newark, where Polly’s late sister lived and raised three boys. Even when I was a pastor, we were treated differently; as outsiders; as people who didn’t quite “fit.” This led to all sorts of conflicts over the years, beginning days after our wedding day. For example, as I recently went over Mom’s finances, I noticed that she gave substantial amounts of money to her Newark great-grandchildren for their graduations, birthdays, and special events. She does not do this for our grandchildren. Granted, we live four hours away from Newark, but proximity (or lack thereof) should not preclude Mom from buying a card, writing a check, and mailing it to our grandchildren. It is literally the least she can do.
Let me give you another example. I was a pastor for twenty-five years. Every family holiday one of the preachers would give a short devotional as we all gathered in one family member’s home in Newark. Even the grandchildren from Newark were asked to give the devotional. Do you know who wasn’t? Me. Not one time. It is hard not to take such things personally. I have known my mother-in-law for almost forty-seven years. She opposed Polly and me dating, tried to break us up, attempted to derail our wedding, and voiced her disapproval and disappointment more times than I can count over the years. Out of respect for Mom, I loved her, but I didn’t like her.
In 2005, we finally had a showdown. Mom and Dad came up for Thanksgiving. As soon as Mom entered our home, she started doing her thing: moving furniture, ordering Polly around in the kitchen, and telling her how to cook this or that (Polly is a superb cook, by the way). Things got so bad that I told Mom to STOP; that she was a guest in our home. Mom called the next day and apologized, saying, “we always knew you were different.” Ah, there it is. Our relationship got better in the sense that Mom knew she could no longer bully us. In fact, Polly told her mom, “if you force me to choose between you and Bruce, I am going to choose Bruce.” Since then, Mom has taken a passive-aggressive approach to interacting with us.
Polly is widely viewed by our IFB family as an innocent, passive lamb; the submissive wife. Thus, I am always to blame for what happens in our life. Take our atheism. When we deconverted, we went from being barely a part of the in-group to being in the out-group; the group reserved for heathens, apostates, and reprobates. Over the past fifteen years, not one family member has had a meaningful conversation with us about our loss of faith. Not one . . . So my nephew’s phone call was the first time anyone has said anything to me about our atheism. Oh, they gossip about us, “pray” for us, mention us at church, and use us as sermon illustrations. But, talk to us? Naw, they leave that to God.
Until yesterday, Polly and I had been responsible for Mom’s finances. (We have since legally removed ourselves as agents.) We worked diligently to make sure her house was in order; so all her bills would be paid upon death. And then, for no good reason, Mom decided she didn’t want us to do these things anymore. She had our niece put on her account and moved all her money, $14,000, into her checking account. A large check was written to our niece. All of these decisions were made without our knowledge and consent. We had no choice but to end our legal duty to her. Over the years, Mom (and Dad when he was alive) has repeatedly asked for our help. When things don’t go as she thinks they should, she does her own thing and blames us for what happened. I have a business background. Twice, Mom and Dad, for a plethora of reasons, got themselves into serious financial straits. I helped them get their house in order. When things didn’t go as planned, she “fired” me, and blamed me when everything went south. Just remember, “Bruce is always to blame.” I am her scapegoat. This has happened so often, that we should have known not to involve ourselves in her end-of-life decisions. We did so because we love her and want what’s best for her. (According to my nephew, we are just poor people who want her money, just one of many accusations he hurled my way while verbally assaulting me.)
I am sure some of you will conclude I am leaving things out of this story. I am. I just can’t bear to rehash some of it. Maybe, someday I will. The drama and pain run deep. I was barely able to address these things with my therapist today. Here’s what I do know: this was the last straw; the period at the end of the sentence. We have done all we can do to be a loving, kind, helpful daughter and son-in-law. You can only be shit on so many times before you say ENOUGH.
I have never seen Polly so hurt, broken, and angry. As she left for work, she said “fuck all of them.” I concur. (And then she came home from work and drank beer — a first.) We have crossed the point of no return. Mom has made her bed, so to speak, with her “real” family. We have come to accept that we are not wanted; that we are outsiders; that Mom doesn’t trust or respect us due to our atheism. Polly was the dutiful, loving daughter, yet Mom could never accept and love her as she is. Mom simply could not accept that we were going to walk our own path in life. Every move away from the IFB church movement brought criticism, judgment, and estrangement. My children grew up, married, and had children. They also left Evangelicalism, got college educations, and are gainfully employed in managerial positions. Along the way, some of them got divorced, started drinking alcohol, and picked up colorful language. Recently, my youngest son came out as gay. Polly and I are proud of our children, and what they have done with their lives. We are grateful that the IFB curse has been broken; that none of our grandchildren will ever have to experience what Nana and Grandpa and their Moms and Dads experienced in the IFB cult. Yet, all my mother-in-law sees is sin, disobedience, and disappointment. From beer in the fridge to rock music on the stereo to “revealing” clothes to someone saying shit or damn, all Mom sees is what happens when people disobey her peculiar version of God and her peculiar interpretation of the King James Bible. She has no capacity to accept people as they are or love them unconditionally. Only her “real” family, her church family, are deserving of such things.
And you know who is to blame for all the choices our children have made? I am. If Bruce had only stayed in the ministry. If Bruce had only pastored the “right” churches. If Bruce had only done this or that, all would be well. Of course, one need only to look at our extended IFB family and Mom’s church family to see that such thinking is fantasy. Dysfunction and sin abound. They are every bit as fucked up as the rest of us. People are who they are, and the best way to get along in life is to accept people as they are. Polly and I have, without reservation, loved and accepted our IFB family. We would love to have meaningful relationships with them. Of course, that will never happen. Why? They are unable to compartmentalize their religious beliefs. It is. for them, a zero-sum game.
We are done with our IFB family. I am grateful that my nephew finally spoke out loud what the family has long thought about us. And when I say we are done, I mean in every way. As it stands today, we will not attend Mom’s funeral. She’s will be dead, so she won’t care. The funeral service will be all about Jesus and getting saved. The graveside service will be more of the same. The viewing will be a torturous night of dealing with Mom’s self-righteous church friends and people who despise us for daring to share secrets out of school; exposing the IFB church movement for what it is: a cult that causes untold psychological (and at times, physical) harm. (Wait until they see my upcoming podcasts about the IFB, including appearances by the former pastor’s wife, Polly Shope Gerencser. May the shit gloriously hit the proverbial fan.)
I am sure some readers may disagree with our decision to not attend the funeral. I know several of our children do. All I ask is that people understand that this is a story forty-seven years in the making. So much pain and dysfunction; so much heartache and loss. This is us saying no more, we are done. This is what is best for us. And at the end of the day, this is all that matters. We can’t control what people will think about this decision. All we can do is what will best help us sleep at night. I hope you will understand.
Have you had a messy breakup with your Fundamentalist family? Please share your experiences in the comment section. Better yet, share your story in a guest post.
