One day, a young man walks up to a young woman and says:
I love you and I want to marry you. I know we have never met before, but I really, really, really love you, and if you will love me back, I have a wonderful plan for your life. I will be right by your side twenty-four hours a day. In fact, you will never be free of me because I promise to never leave or forsake you. I know you don’t know me from Adam, but if you will love me and never forsake me, I will be your BFF.
Suddenly, the young man’s face turns dark, and with a stern, threatening voice he says to the woman:
And if you don’t accept my proposal of love and lifelong commitment, I promise to make your life miserable. I will afflict you, burn your house down, and reduce your life to Job’s ash heap. I will make your life so miserable that you will wish you never had been born.
Any normal woman would recoil and run from such a man. Who would ever want to love such a person, one who offers conditional love, a love that promises violence and death if not requited? Yet, this is exactly the love that many Evangelicals try to sell to non-Christians.
Osterhus Publishing Tract, FrontOsterhus Publishing Tract, Back
Is this not the essence of the gospel many Evangelicals preach? God says, “Love me or you’ll wish you had.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
A letter submitted to the editor of the Defiance Crescent-News
Dear Editor,
Public education is foundational to success and progress. While parents are free to homeschool their children — as my partner and I did — or send them to a private school, we must not starve, neglect, or demonize public schools.
Public schools are government institutions, governed by local, state, and federal laws. Children from all walks of life attend public schools. Tolerance and inclusion are expected when our children or grandchildren attend school. My partner and I have sixteen grandchildren attending the Stryker, Tinora, Fairview, and Defiance school districts. We expect our grandchildren to receive well-rounded educations, taught by teachers who understand the importance of secular education and the concept of separation of church and state. Alas, a few teachers and administrators have attempted to proselytize our grandchildren or push their Evangelical beliefs. This, of course, should never happen. Christians are free to be school teachers and school administrators, but their personal beliefs should play no part in instructing students.
Recently, I attended a high school graduation — one sponsored and directed by a local school district. What a proud day for our family as one of our older grandchildren graduated with honors. In the space of three generations, we have gone from me being the first person to go to college, to our grandchildren going off to study at major universities. We owe their success to our public school system and its dedicated teachers.
As a non-Christian, I am accustomed to school districts trampling over the First Amendment and the wall separating church and state. I recently told a lawyer for the Freedom From Religion Foundation when speaking with her about the increasing encroachment of Lifewise Academy in Ohio’s schools, that there were enough church-state violations in rural northwest Ohio for FFRF to set up a full-time litigation office in this area.
The graduation ceremony featured a local clergyman who felt duty-bound to put in a good word for Jesus and his peculiar version of Christianity. Using the J-O-Y acronym, he reminded graduates of the importance of putting Jesus first. Never mind the fact that many of the graduates and attendees are not Christians. To be told that rightly ordering one’s life requires Jesus is beyond offensive. Such talk belongs in church, not secular public school graduations. I told a family member later that I live by the Y-O acrynym: yourself first, others second — no Jesus needed.
What are the core fundamental beliefs of Baptists that are shared with these “non-denominational” churches? Also what separates Charismatics/Pentecostals from Baptists? They look mostly the same.
Nondenominational is Greek for Baptist. Theologically, there is little to no difference between nondenominational and Baptist churches. Go to a nondenominational church’s website, read their official doctrinal statement, and then compare it to the official beliefs of the National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention. Any deviations are minor/insignificant. On secondary issues such as eschatology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, Calvinism, and Arminianism, there are differences of opinion, but none of which should cause the other to say, “You are not a real Christian.” Of course, there are always outliers, especially when you reach the outlands of Evangelicalism. I knew Calvinists who believed that Arminians were lost or Pentecostals who thought that you had to speak in tongues to be saved. All these exceptions do is prove the rule.
I should note, in passing, that many Charismatic churches are nondenominational. While their services may resemble a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, their core doctrines are as Baptist as any of the churches I pastored. Word of Faith churches and prosperity churches are an exception to this observation. Quite frankly, most of these churches are either heterodox or downright heretical.
There’s a difference between Charismatic churches and Pentecostal congregations, though that line has blurred somewhat over the years. I have attended numerous Charismatic and Pentecostal church services. I even preached for several Charismatic/Pentecostal churches. I generally found that Pentecostal churches were deeply influenced by the holiness movement, and many of them were appalled by what they saw in Charismatic assemblies. Charismatics seem to have no guardrails. “If God is moving, who are we to object?” the thinking goes. What started with speaking in tongues, has turned into all sorts of crazy, including raising the dead, hysterical laughing, and gold fillings magically growing in mouths. Just go to YouTube and search for Charismatic church services for evidence of my claims. Lots of cray-cray.
Sameness is in the eye of the beholder. I admit I have a sharply critical eye, so I tend to spot differences that casual church attendees might not see easily.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
“Their rape-and-pillage policy left carnage and destruction in its wake, not unlike the Charismatic movement during the same time period.”
What did the Charismatic movement do? Also, unrelated, do you have any recordings of your old sermons from your IFB days, Calvinist days, and liberal days? It would be interesting to hear the progression and changes.
I began my ministerial career in the late 1970s. The Charismatic movement was in its infancy at this point, with little difference between them and their Pentecostal brethren. Charismatic churches advertised themselves as “alive” and “filled with the Spirit.” Why go to a dead Baptist church when you can come to a church where God is “moving,” souls are being saved, and people are being healed and delivered? the advertising said. And for many staid Protestant churches, the advertising had a deep, lasting, deleterious effect. Seemingly overnight, stable churches were destabilized as scores of people left for Charismatic congregations — looking for life in all the wrong places.
In the 1980s in rural northwest Ohio, large Charismatic churches were common. Most of their new members came from established Protestant churches. People are free to go to church where they want, but this church growth was the result of advertising and manipulation, and not some sort of move of God. Today, these once-large Charismatic churches are shells of what they once were, often looking like the dead Baptist churches they condemned decades ago.
Where the Charismatic movement made a lasting mark on Christianity is music. Charismatics were one of the first sects to use contemporary Christian music and praise and worship teams and bands. Today, many churches have praise and worship teams — even mainline churches, regardless of how atrocious the music is. Hymns have been marginalized, giving way to syrupy, Jesus-is-my-boy-friend choruses and songs.
I have tried to find recordings from my preaching days, without success. I have contacted former congregants, asking them if they had any cassette tapes of my sermons. There should be thousands of cassettes floating around, but I suspect most of them have been discarded or recorded over with music from AC/DC or Twisted Sister. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Note: I do not think the world is in moral decline. Different? Changing? Yes, but not in moral decline. What we consider moral or immoral is changing, and entrenched, unmoveable Evangelical Christians think this is a sign of moral decay. I am addressing the common Evangelical belief that the world is getting morally worse by the day, especially as the second coming of Christ approaches, and the unsaved are to blame.
Evangelical apologists are fond of blaming non-Christians for the world’s ills. If everyone would only get saved and worship the Evangelical deity, Christian nirvana would arrive. The various culture wars would be fulfilled, with Evangelical churches filled to the brim with people. All would be love, joy, and peace, right?
The Bible puts the blame for the world’s ills on different people; namely Christians. That’s right, Christians are to blame for the sorry state of the world. Second Chronicles 7:14 says:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Let me break this down. God promises to forgive our sins and heal our land IF and when — and only if and when — Christians (who are called by his name) humble themselves, pray, seek the face of God, and turn from their wicked ways.
Instead of putting Second Chronicles 7:14 into action, Evangelicals blame everyone but themselves for the state of the world. Look at Dr. David Tee’s behavior in the comment section of his post, Is Providing Unbelievers “Evidence” a Waste of Time? By Derrick Thiessen. He accepts no responsibility or accountability for anything. This is standard Evangelical fare. Atheists are to blame. Agnostics are to blame. Catholics are to blame. Pagans are to blame. Humanists are to blame. Liberals are to blame. “Abortionists” are to blame. LGBTQ people are to blame. Immigrants are to blame. Democrats are to blame. Science is to blame. Mainline Christians are to blame. Muslims are to blame. Hollywood is to blame. Rock music is to blame. Satan is to blame. Demons are to blame. Pornographers are to blame. Feminists are to blame. Elvis is to blame. Illegal drugs are to blame. Public schools are to blame. Joe Biden is to blame. Blame, blame, blame, with zero personal accountability.
God will not be mocked, Evangelicals. Whatever you sow, you will reap. Want the world to change? Humble yourself, pray, seek the face of God, and turn [repent] from your wicked ways. And if you do that, not one of you will vote for Donald Trump. That upwards of eighty percent of Evangelicals plan to vote for Trump in November tells me that they haven’t read Second Chronicles 7:14 in a while. Either that or their lust for political and social power drowns out all sense of duty to God and love for their fellow bipeds.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Listen to notable Evangelical apologists and you will think that all eight billion people on Earth “long to know the meaning of life.” This line is repeated over, and over, and over again. No one ever asks apologists what evidence they have for this claim. They assume that, because they long to know the meaning of life, everyone does.
.his may be true for many people, but not all of us. I, for one, don’t waste my time pondering the meaning of life. There’s an assumption made by apologists that searching for meaning means looking for someone bigger than us: namely God. In their Bible-addled minds, mere mortals cannot have meaning and purpose in their lives without acknowledging the existence of God. And make no mistake, when they speak of God, they are talking about the Evangelical God of the Bible.
My advanced age, poor health, and love of family lead me to focus on the present, the here and now. Sometimes, I might even think about next week or next year, but to sit around pondering life’s meaning? I simply don’t have the time or ambition to do so.
Several months ago, an Evangelical tried to goad me into a debate about the existence of God; about what happened before the Big Bang. His balloon quickly deflated when I said to him, “I don’t care.” And I don’t. I don’t criticize others who do, but, for me, I am content to live in the present.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Have you ever read or studied non-canonical texts such as The Gospel of Thomas, the Didache, The Shepherd of Hermas?
What is your thought on alternative universe Christianity, for lack of a better term? I mean how things might have turned out had some or all of these books had been included in canon, or if say the Reformation had never happened or the Pope had listened to Martin Luther, etc.
I have perused some of the non-canonical texts, but I wouldn’t say I have studied them as I have the Protestant Christian Bible. For reference, I have Dr. Bart Ehrman’s book, The Apocryphal Gospels: Text and Translations.
The non-canonical texts tell me one thing for sure: numerous Christianities were floating around during the first few centuries of the church. This process continues to this day. Certainly, Christianity would have looked different had non-canonical books been added to the canon, the Reformation never happened, or Martin Luther had succeeded in reforming Catholicism. Better? Worse? We will never know. All we have is Christianity as it presently exists. I am confident that Christianity will be very different in 2100 — if the Earth has not been destroyed. Secularism, postmodernism, and science will continue to have their way with Christianity. It will be up to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to determine whether this is good.
Nothing in the non-canonical texts that I have read has changed my mind about the existence of God or the supernaturality of Jesus.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
By John MacFarlane, pastor of First Baptist Church, Bryan, Ohio, Truth? or TRUTH!
Though worldly ideas and “truths” may change, the truth of God’s Word never changes. For the truth of God’s Word to change, God would have to change. His nature would have to change and that’s never going to happen.
….
God tells us in Malachi 3:6, “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” Since His attributes and nature never change, God is ALWAYS truth, therefore, His WORD is always truth and that truth “endureth forever.” (Psalm 117:2)
There will never come a time where better or more current information will rectify some previous Biblical error. What God’s Word taught 2,000 years ago will be the same, valid truths needing to be taught 2,000 years from now, should the Lord tarry.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Smart is a person who does not read social media comments. Alas, I am not too smart, it seems. I have given numerous interviews over the past two years. You can watch one or more of them here. Lots of people comment on these videos. Many of the comments are complimentary. Others are personal attacks. On occasion, viewers will complain about me hesitating too often or saying “You know.” They suggest I am either a terrible speaker or that my interviews are unwatchable.
Do I pause too often or say “you know” too much? Yep, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I am sixty-seven years old. I have osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, degenerative spine diseases, gastroparesis, and exocrine pancreatic insufficiency — all incurable and debilitating. Last Friday, I had yet another MRI, this time on my lower back. Currently, I am in so much pain in my neck and spine that I am unable to walk longer than short distances (“short” meaning walking from the living room to the bathroom). I suspect that my latest MRI will show more disc and spine damage. I live every day with excruciating pain, so much so that there are days I want to kill myself. I don’t have pain-free days; only bad days, less bad days, and fucking I-want-to-stab-myself-in-the-head-with-an-ice-pick days. Before judging and condemning me, I wish people would walk in my shoes or at the very least consider what a challenge it is to live with pain from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. I am not whining or complaining. I have accepted that this is the way it is for me; that this is my new normal. I went to granddaughter number two’s graduation on Sunday. Two days before, I had my MRI in Auburn, Indiana, and then we drove to Attica Raceway Park to watch 410 sprints, 305 sprints, and late models dirt track race. I knew that doing these things would extract a heavy price from me. At the graduation, someone said she was surprised I was there. Polly laughed and said, “He wouldn’t miss this for the world.” And I wouldn’t, even if I had to crawl up the steps to the stands. If that were the last thing I did in life, so be it.
Chronic, unrelenting pain has affected every aspect of my life. And I mean EVERY. Thus, when it comes to giving interviews, I don’t, all of a sudden, become pain-free. Typically, when I sit for an interview, I take extra narcotic pain meds and muscle relaxers. I don’t take cannabis because it negatively affects my thinking abilities. I only take cannabis after I am done writing for the day.
When I talk during an interview, pain affects my ability to speak. So, I often pause or say “you know” to manage my pain. I am well aware that my interviews would be better without this glitch, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Most viewers don’t have a problem with this. Those who do might be better served if they don’t listen to my interviews. I am doing all I can do to give thoughtful, engaging interviews. That hundreds of thousands of people have listened to them suggests that they resonate with people — speech impediments and all.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Revival Fires is like an incurable rash. It comes and goes, but never completely goes away. All I can do is apply the ointment of reason and common sense, hoping that the rash will recede. Revival Fires has been commenting on this site for several years. He also sends me emails and social media messages. I have repeatedly reported Revival Fires to Facebook — without success. He routinely violates Facebook’s terms of service, using fake email addresses and fake names to set up new accounts so he can harass me.
Lately, Revival Fires is using the “John Younger” moniker. He left numerous comments on my business Facebook page. In the past, he has contacted my partner, Polly, our children, and even their friends. In particular, he continues to harass my youngest son’s transgender friend.
Yesterday, Revival Fires sent me the following message:
Much like Dr. David Tee and countless other apologists, Revival Fires arrogantly thinks that beliefs=truth; particularly that his personal beliefs are the same as “truth.” This, of course, is patently untrue. Just because we believe something doesn’t mean it’s true. Consider all the things MAGA devotees believe about Donald Trump. Are their beliefs true? No, yet Trump’s followers are certain he is the greatest president in the history of the United States. Factually, he is not. I saw similar behavior in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement when it came to Jack Hyles, then pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana. The evidence (the truth) against Hyles was overwhelming, yet, even today, years after his death, some people believe Hyles was the greatest preacher since the Apostle Paul. (Please see The Legacy of IFB Pastor Jack Hyles.)
Revival Fires says that I am not interested in the truth. Of course, when he uses the word “truth,” he is referring to his personal beliefs. He thinks that people who are sincerely interested in truth will believe as he does. I am sure you have noticed this same attitude with Dr. David Tee. He’s not interested in honest debate and discussion. God gave him the words to say in his post on this site, so everything he wrote is “truth.” Anyone who disagrees agrees with him isn’t interested in knowing the truth.
In John 18, Pilate said to Jesus, “What is truth”? That’s a good question. Revival Fires, Dr. David Tee, and other apologists believe that the Bible, from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, is truth; that the Bible is divinely inspired, inerrant, and infallible. There are books and then there’s the Bible. It is different and superior to ALL the books ever written.
While the Bible does contain truth, to suggest that it is the sum of truth, perfect in all that it says, is absurd. The standard definition of the word truth is “that which comports with reality.” Does everything the Bible says comport with reality? Only a rabid Fundamentalist would say yes.
Let me be clear, as a skeptic, humanist, and atheist, I am deeply committed to truth. I want to believe as many true things as possible. One of the reasons I left Christianity is because its teachings did not comport with reality. I weighed the central claims of Christianity in the balance and found them wanting. I am more than willing to confess my faith in Christ and follow him. All I ask for is sufficient empirical evidence for core Christian beliefs. I am willing to follow the path wherever it leads. The journey is what matters to me, not the destination.
I am confident that I have carefully and satisfactorily examined the claims Evangelicals make for the existence of the Christian God and the veracity of the Bible. I find these claims lacking. Until apologists come up with new or better arguments, I see no reason to pay them a moment’s notice. I am open to truth Christians, but not the shallow, irrational, contradictory truth you are currently peddling.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
