If is carrying a lot of weight in this question. How would one go about “proving” Christianity? So far, every argument I have heard from believers allegedly “proving” Christianity comes up short. Quite frankly, many of the arguments Christian apologists use are fantastical or absurd. These arguments may work with people already predisposed to Christianity, but they won’t usually work atheists. Apologists continue to churn out books defending Christianity, but these books aren’t for unbelievers. The target audience is believers, and the goal is to provide them with “evidence” to reinforce and justify their claims, along with settling their nerves after having an atheist eviscerate their beliefs. (Many atheists are former Christians themselves. They know the Bible inside and out.)
Is it possible that someone could convince me that Christianity is true? I would like to say yes, wanting to keep an open mind, but knowing all I do about Christianity, the Bible, and the various arguments used by apologists to defend the faith, I can’t imagine any Christian being able to convince me that I should return to Christianity. If you are a Christian, you are welcome to try to convert me, but I hope you can handle rejection and disappointment; that’s likely what you will experience by trying to put another notch on your gospel six-shooter.
Will this post stop apologists from trying to evangelize me? Of course not. As sure as the sun comes up in the morning, a believer will leave a comment on this site or send me an email detailing their supercalifragilisticexpialidocious argument they are sure will lead me to the light. Sorry, but I was a Christian for most of my life. I spent five decades in the “light.” I was a pastor for twenty-five years. I am confident that I have heard every possible argument for the existence of the Christian deity and the alleged veracity of Christianity. What could you possibly say that I haven’t heard countless times before? Feel free to advance whatever argument you think will reach me, but understand that there is little doubt about whether I have heard it (or used it myself) before.
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.
Every day, I learn things about science I didn’t know before. I am always learning new stuff, but make no mistake about it, I know very little about science. I know the basics, and I continue to educate myself through reading and listening to podcasts, but I am not, nor will I ever be, an expert. This is what happens when you spend most of your life thinking the King James Bible is a science textbook and the universe as created in six twenty-four hour days, 6,029 years ago. It was not until I deconverted that I read books about biology, cosmology, and evolution.
Since I am not an science expert, I do what I always do; I rely on people who are experts to teach me and explain what I don’t know. This doesn’t mean experts are infallible, but, generally, experts can be trusted to tell us the truth (as they understand it at that moment). I try to check new things I hear against scientific consensus. I learned years ago as a pastor that if I came up with a novel interpretation of the Bible, it was likely that I was wrong. I still live by this principle today.
Sadly, way too many Evangelicals think that they know more than scientists do because the Holy Spirit is their teacher and guide. Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, illustrates this point when he says:
As usual, he [Bruce Gerencser] thinks unbelievers can understand the Bible even though the Bible clearly says they can’t because they do not receive the Spirit of Truth. Everyone needs the Spirit of Truth to find what God is saying and so that everyone gets the same message.
In other words, the vast majority of humans can’t understand the Bible. Regardless of how much education they have, Bible knowledge is impossible for them because they are not indwelt by the Holy Spirit. This is why a man with a Bible college education from an unaccredited college thinks he knows more about the Bible than most unbelieving scholars, even if they have PhDs and extensive knowledge about the Bible.
Sunday after Sunday, Evangelical preachers — many of whom who have no relevant college training in the Bible, particularly the original languages — stand confidently before their congregations and say, THUS SAITH THE LORD. I have heard scores of sermons preached by men who have either no secondary training or have degrees from institutions focused on teaching preachers what to think, instead of how to think. These preachers stand before their congregations, preaching a book that they don’t know much about. Often, they just regurgitate what they heard in church or college. The next time you get a chance, check out the curriculums of several Evangelical Bible colleges. You will quickly learn how little they are taught about the Bible. Most preachers will exit college without comprehensively studying most of the books of the Bible (and survey courses don’t count).
That’s not to say that all Evangelical preachers are uneducated. I know more than a few Evangelicals who have educations from major universities. Why they are still Evangelicals befuddles me, but it would be wrong to judge all preachers by the ignorant hillbillies who comment on this site.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I love it when a new reader assumes that I am just an illiterate atheist who doesn’t know anything about the Bible. Typically, such people lack curiosity, so they don’t read my ABOUT page. Then I let them know that I was part of the Evangelical church for fifty years; that I spent twenty-five years pastoring churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. When told this, their arguments switch to questions about what I “really” believed or what hurt me enough to cause me to leave Christianity. Sometimes, Evangelicals, with a wave of their sanctimonious hands, dismiss my story out of hand, saying I never was a believer. What they never do is engage me on what the Bible actually teaches.
Sometimes, when confronted with posts by me that challenge their beliefs, Evangelicals dismiss me by saying that it is evident I have never read the Bible. I snicker when someone says this to me. I have read the Bible from table of contents to index numerous times — more times than MOST Evangelical Christians. Further, I spent 20,000 hours of my life reading and studying the Bible, reading countless (well, I could count them if I were inclined to do so) theological tomes in my studies. Years ago, a Christian school student walked into my study and looked at all my books, saying, “Preacher, did you read all of these books?” I smiled and said, “most of them.”
Recently, I bought an NRSV study Bible. I plan to re-read the Bible as time allows. I am interested in seeing how my thinking about the Biblical text has evolved over the past seventeen years. Granted, some atheists are illiterate about the core teachings of Christianity. Believe me, I find their pontifications embarrassing too. Atheism is not well served by apologists who are too lazy to study and understand that which they criticize. The good news is that many atheists are former Christians. We are not ignorant of what the Bible teaches.. Contrary to what Thiessen said above, We know the Bible inside and out — no Holy Ghost needed. We are living testaments to their false claim that people deconvert because they were poorly taught or lacking knowledge about the Bible. If you happen to think all atheists are stupid, by all means press your claims in the comment section. Let’s see who is stupid.
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 local Evangelical man responded to my recent letter to the editor of the Defiance Crescent-News about the LifeWise Academy release time program. His letter was published today. Here’s what he had to say. The title, by the way, is added to the letter by the editor of the newspaper. He is also a Christian, so I expect he agrees with its sentiment.
Pray for this man
The Bible (Matthew 24:10-12) speaks of a falling away of the church as we approach the end of an age. I can’t think of more classic example of that than an ex-pastor of decades long dedication maligning the Bible, the Church and a religious organization. [Ooh, I am a classic example of the “great falling away” the Bible speaks of.]
That is the rotted fruit of freewill that God has given us. I cannot imagine the turmoil faced by this man that has caused such a gigantic swing in his spiritual thinking. [Note the straw man he has built in his mind about me: a man with a life filled with turmoil. As far as freewill is concerned, it is a myth. I will gladly debate any and all local Christians on this issue, especially since the Bible does NOT teach humans have freewill.]
But I don’t take that away from him. It is his choice, and it will be his consequence for it. The sad fact is by his public announcement he may well lead others to follow his path, and that too will have serious consequences. [I can only hope.]
The organization which he berates not only leads children to the Cross of Jesus, but it also builds character and honesty and fosters love, something that is missing in some of the homes these children come from. [And they do so by hiding their true agenda.]
Matthew 18:6: “but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, It would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” [Awesome. No Hell for me. This man suggests putting a millstone around my neck and throwing me in the sea to drown. What an awesome God he serves.]
Please, may every Christian who reads this, pray for this person. [Thousands of Evangelicals have prayed for me over the past seventeen years, without success. Either God ain’t listening or he doesn’t exist. My money is on the latter.]
Ron Bliss Wauseon
— end of letter
Today, I also received an email from a local man praising me for my letter to the editor. And for that I am grateful.
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.
Ohio, one of a handful of states without comprehensive sex education taught in schools, has a higher teen birth rate than the national average.
The national birth rate for females 15-19 years old was 13.1 per 1,000 females and Ohio’s teen birth rate is 14.6 per 1,000 females in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than half (61%) of Ohio’s chlamydia cases in 2023 were people between the ages of 15-24, according to the Ohio Department of Health. Ohio’s syphilis rate (16.3 per 100,000) was higher than the national average (15.8 per 100,000) in 2023, according to the CDC.
“What we’ve seen is states that have no sex ed or poor sex ed policies, they typically fare worse on health indicators such as (sexually transmitted infections) rates, teen birth rates, having lower contraceptive knowledge, and other existing health disparities,” said Nawal Umar, senior policy analyst for Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
“These states are also putting their young people at higher risk for sexual violence victimization and having poor mental health outcomes because sex education provides really critical instruction, consent and communication and healthy relationships and so much more,” Umar said.
Ohio’s curriculum stresses abstinence as a general policy and requires some instruction about sexually transmitted infections, according to the Ohio Revised Code.
Schools are required to “emphasize adoption as an option to unintended pregnancies” and “teach the potential physical, psychological, emotional, and social side effects” of sex outside of marriage, according to Ohio’s law.
Because Ohio lacks comprehensive sex education, it’s ultimately up to each school district on how they decide to teach it.
“When there’s not a sex education policy in place at the state level, one of the major consequences of that is that teens across the state can have very diverse experiences when it comes to the kind of instruction they’re receiving about their bodies because there’s a lack of uniform policy,” Umar said.
The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce is required to conduct an annual audit to ensure school districts are in compliance with the state’s law.
Every district completed the 2023-24 audit and all but three school districts were found to be overall compliant. Jefferson Township Local School District (Montgomery County), Ridgewood Local School District (Coshocton County), and Washington Local Schools (Lucas County) were non-compliant.
In explaining why it didn’t meet the standards, Ridgewood told the state “many family structures exist today, and all can provide children with a loving and supportive environment.”
“We have school staff and students who come from single-parent households, same-sex couples, and traditional married couple families alike,” the district said. “This highlights the importance of recognizing and respecting all family types. Furthermore, sex education should never be used to shame students for their family background.”
Jefferson Township’s district said it only have 255 students and was unable to find someone to teach sex ed, according to ODEW’s audit.
“We do not teach children that if they were born out of wedlock there are harmful consequences for society,” Washington Local Schools wrote in their explanation. “All children have opportunities and are valued by our school district.”
Ohio is the only state without its own state health education content standards. Ohio lawmakers decide curriculum requirements, so the State Board of Education can not require health education standards.
“It’s maddening that the State of Ohio has refused to implement this after decades of experts, educators, even religious communities, asking for this curriculum to be delivered in public schools because, unfortunately, some students don’t have families who are able to provide them with this information,” said Abortion Forward Executive Director Kellie Copeland.
Comprehensive sex ed is medically accurate, age-appropriate information that teaches about sexual health, healthy relationships, and consent, said Jenna Wojdacz, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio’s senior director of strategy and community engagement.
“Access to accurate sexual health information should not be political,” Wojdacz said. “It’s certainly what our young Ohio students need.”
The Ohio Center for Sex Education is the education arm of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio that teaches comprehensive sex education in schools and community organizations.
The center currently teaches in six school districts — Cleveland Metropolitan School District (Cuyahoga County), Akron Public Schools (Summit County), Lakewood City Schools (Cuyahoga County), Berea Schools (Cuyahoga County), Shaker Heights Schools (Cuyahoga County), and Columbus City Schools (Franklin County).
A 2021 report from the Journal of Adolescent Health reviewed three decades of research and determined there is strong support for comprehensive sex education.
“When we don’t have comprehensive sex education, we know that learners are getting misinformation that is basically values laden by somebody else’s propaganda agenda,” Wojdacz said.
Benefits of teaching comprehensive sex ed include reduced teenage birth rates, reduced STI rates, increased contraceptive usage, and delayed sexual activity, according to Umar.
Students who received comprehensive sex education were less likely to have a teen pregnancy than those who received either no sex ed or abstinence-only programs, according to a 2008 report in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Advocates spoke out against having abstinence-only as a general policy.
“It’s ineffective,” Umar said. “It also tends to be pretty heteronormative.”
“A lot of the abstinence-only curriculum teaches this purity idea that if something sexually happens to you, then you’re not pure,” Copeland said. “That is so damaging to the psyche of people who have either become sexually active because they wanted to or because they didn’t want to.”
Ultimately, Copeland said, teaching abstinence-only as a general policy does not work.
“It leaves (students) without vital information for when they do become sexually active later in their lives,” she said. “It’s really important for people to understand how their bodies work, how pregnancy works, and how sexually transmitted infections work.”
Receiving comprehensive sex education does not encourage students to engage in sexual activity, Wojdacz said.
“In no way does our curriculum promote giving it a try or encouraging people to engage in any activities,” she said. “There’s no prescriptive aspect to comprehensive sex ed. … It’s reductive to suggest that accurate information is going to suddenly trigger a bunch of destructive behavior in people or a bunch of ill-advised behavior.”
Ohio is one of 13 states that received an “F” on SIECUS’s state profiles on sex education policy. Washington, Oregon, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Rhode Island all received an “A.”
Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have laws requiring sex education, according to SIECUS.
Umar urges Ohio lawmakers to push for better sex ed policies.
“There’s so many benefits that could be achieved by improving sex education,” she said.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I recently received an email from a seventy-five-year-old attorney — a former atheist — who wanted me to know exactly what he thought about me and my deconversion from Christianity. Much of the letter was spent on the man telling me how smart he was and how he came to learn that materialistic atheism (his definition) is “the one ism I can say with near-certainty is flat-out false.” What does he believe?
I am content with a belief in a higher intelligence, a genuine meaning and purpose to human existence, and the continuation of consciousness after physical death – all because this is where I believe the best evidence firmly points.
Okay? And he felt the need to share this with me why, exactly? I have been an atheist for seventeen years. In all those years, I have never gone to someone’s blog or social media page unsolicited to attack their religious beliefs or deconstruct their story. I don’t understand the logic behind such behavior other than it makes the person passing judgment feel right or superior. Explain his motivation for saying things to me such as:
No need to respond, because I’m not really interested in you either!
I am somewhat older than you (75), highly educated, and have traveled a not-dissimilar path. However, my landing spot was entirely different and has left me, I hope, less bitter and consumed by anger than you seem to be.
The posts of yours that I have read strike as exemplifying the familiar figure of someone who once bought into beliefs that are patently silly, felt angry and betrayed when the silliness finally became apparent to him, and now harbors deep anger and bitterness beneath a not-very-convincing facade of “atheist liberation.”
I have to wonder to what extent your current position reflects an atheism that is more a knee-jerk embracing of beliefs that are the polar opposite of what you formerly believed (or at least pretended to believe) than a genuine commitment arrived at after a diligent exploration of the best evidence and arguments.
As much as I have enjoyed Bart Ehrman’s work, this was definitely his path as well – “If what I formerly believed isn’t 100% true, none of it is true.” This is a very lazy and short-sighted approach to the big questions.
To summarize, this man thinks:
I am bitter (stated twice)
I am consumed by anger (stated three times)
My deconversion was a knee-jerk reaction to Christianity
I took a lazy and short-sighted approach to the big questions of life
None of these claims is true, as I have made abundantly clear in numerous posts over the years. This means that this man has either not invested much, if any, time in reading what I actually wrote about my journey or he has constructed in his mind a straw man of the Evangelical-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser. I suspect both are likely true.
This man declared, “All I care about, or have ever cared about, is what is ultimately, ontologically True.” To that I reply, “Not me.” I care about a lot of things of life, but “what is ultimately, ontologically True” doesn’t make my top ten list of important things to care about in life. Sorry, but I am sixty-eight and in poor health. I am on the short side of life. Knowing this, I focus on that which matters the most to me: my partner of forty-seven years, our six adult children and their spouses, our sixteen grandchildren, and, yes, our cats — both the four inside cats, and ten or more outside cats (all of which are either stay or feral animals).
Christianity told me that the Bible had the answers to the big questions of life. I learned that this claim is false; that religion has no better (and sometimes worse) answers to these questions than secular worldviews. People are free to ponder their purpose, meaning, and whether there is life after death, but we are under no obligation to do so. For me personally, life is too short to spend much time pondering what life might be instead of living life every day to its fullest.
My reply to this man was direct:
Why did you write me? Your email is no different from those I receive from Fundamentalist Christians. Your false judgements reveal you haven’t read much of my autobiographical material.
Try harder, friend.
As of the writing of this post, I have not received no response from him.
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.
Dr. David Tee, an Evangelical preachers whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, continues to churn out posts about me, most of which I ignore. This one was impossible for me to ignore. The post in question is titled Do Not Listen to Unbelievers. All spelling, grammar, punctuation, and irrationality in the original.
If he [Satan] can bring down a dedicated Christian like BG [Bruce Gerencser] through an unbeliever like Bart Ehrman, he can do it to anyone who is unwary and thinks unbelievers know more than Christians do.
….
BG [Bruce Gerencser] serves as an example of what happens when one listens to unbelievers over godly people and God’s word.
….
The first question every Christian should ask themselves is ‘Why would unbelievers know more about the bible than Christians or God do?‘ They do not believe, thus how would they have the truth about the bible?
Shouldn’t the first question asked by Christians be, “How can anyone empirically know that the Bible is the Word (s) of God, and is inerrant and infallible in all that it says?”
In other words, Thiessen, knows more than renowned scholar, Dr. Bart Ehrman. In fact, he knows more about anything compared to what unbelieving experts know. Imagine all the unbelieving experts Thiessen dismisses with a wave of the hand, all because they are either atheists or worship a different deity from the Christian God. Imagine how empty and ignorant life would be if we automatically dismissed every expert that didn’t hold to the same beliefs as ours. For example, most of my doctors are religious. My primary care physician is an Evangelical Christian. Outside of comments made that assume I am a Christian, I have never questioned the knowledge and skill of these doctors. All that matters to me is their competency. I couldn’t care less about where they sit their asses on Sundays.
Unbelievers deny clear evidence supporting the bible, so how would they be in a position to determine if the Bible is accurate or true or not?
Time to put up or shut up, what “clear” evidence supporting the Bible am I ignoring? I have challenged Thiessen several times to a written or public debate on these and other issues. Instead of justifying his claims, Thiessen’s dismisses all challengers by asserting that unbelievers don’t know anything about the Bible. This, of course, is empirically untrue. One can know the Bible inside and out without ever being a Christian. And when I deconverted, I didn’t magically lose all the Bible knowledge I gained from fifty years in the Evangelical church. I am sure it pisses Thiessen off when former Evangelical preachers, missionaries, and professors speak authoritatively on the Bible. He’s convinced himself that he is intellectually superior to these men and women, despite giving evidence for being anything but.
They do not, and they are not. It is the unbeliever who is deceived and blinded by evil, so how would they know the Bible is false?
I know the Bible is errant and fallible based on extant information available to us; a position held by almost ALL Bible scholars apart from those who are Evangelicals. I know that the claims Thiessen and other Fundamentalist Christians make for the Bible are false because the evidence at hand says so. For Thiessen, the issue is not evidence as much as it is fealty to certain Evangelical dogmas. Simply put, Thiessen’s circular logic leads him to believe that the Bible is inerrant and infallible because it (allegedly) says it is. No amount of evidence will change his mind. Why? Because the Bible says, Let God be true and every man a liar.
The Christian is the one who is free from deception and lies and knows the truth; thus, any Christian who takes an unbeliever’s word over God’s is asking for destruction and other trouble.
Thiessen defines Christian thusly: a person who is free from deception and lies and knows the truth.🤣 This definition is found nowhere in the Bible.
Thiessen assumes there is one truth [his]. Believe as he does and you will not be deceived. Now, he will object to me saying this, but did he not say that his intellect and knowledge is superior to that of ALL unbelieving Bible scholars and scientists?
Here’s a man with only a Fundamentalist Bible college education and (allegedly) a ThD (not a PhD)from an unaccredited Christian college he refuses to name, declaring himself smarter than thousands and thousands of non-Christian Bible scholars and scientists. Thiessen thinks his wooden, literalistic interpretations of the Bible are superior in every way to the intellectual giants of this and past generations — the unsaved ones, anyway.
Time and again all the sciences have proven the Bible true and have failed to find one error or contradiction.
Anyone with a modicum of understanding of the Bible and science knows that Thiessen is either delusional — the result of seven decades of Evangelical indoctrination and conditioning — he’s secretly an atheist trying (and succeeding) to make Christianity look bad, he suffered brain damage as a child and never recovered, or he is a liar.
Thiessen claims that no one — not one time — has ever found an error or contradiction in the Bible. This, of course, is patently false. I have pointed out a few of these errors and contradictions over the years, and there’s a plethora of blogs, videos, and podcasts that disabuse Evangelicals such as Thiessen of their beliefs about the Bible. Just remember, Google is God. Pray to it and it will answer your prayers.
Granted, Evangelicals have “explanations” for most Bible contradictions and errors — but not all, and many of these explanations are intellectually lacking, and, at times, fantastical. And we must always be aware of the answer to every question and challenge Evangelicals can’t answer: Faith. Faith is a discussion stopper because it is belief without evidence (as taught in Hebrews 11).
….
We have recorded in our books our words which state that . . . no archaeological discovery has been made that proves the Bible false.
Dr. Ehrman and other unbelievers are all part of that system of ideas, creating false tales about the bible, not out of facts but out of their unbelief and denials.
According to Thiessen, unbelieving Bible scholars create false tales about the Bible, not based on facts, but on their unbelief and denial of Biblical truth.
….
Why would Christians lie [about the Bible]? Every Christian knows that if they lie, they will lose souls, so what is the purpose of lying about God’s word? Plus, the Bible tells us in both the OT and the NT not to bear false witness or lie one to another, so why would Christians lie? They would be committing sin and ruining the work God wants them to do.
A “lie” is an untruth. People can and do lie without intending to do so. Christianity is a 2,000 year old lie; one passed on from generation to generation, with each generation interpreting the Bible differently from previous ones. Sunday after Sunday, preachers preach this lie as supernatural truth, and those sitting in the pews say AMEN with nary a thought about whether what they are hearing is true. This process of indoctrination and conditioning has been going on since the Bible was written.
Sometimes, Evangelicals deliberately lie. I have caught more than a few Christians telling lies on this site; making claims they knew were wrong. Preachers, in particular, can lie to keep their jobs, pacify their congregations, or make themselves look like “experts.” With fingers crossed behind their backs, these so-called men of God preach one thing from their pulpits and believe something different when in the privacy of their studies or when shooting the breeze with their colleagues in the ministry.
There is no point in lying to anyone about the Bible. If anyone is going to lie, it would be the unbelievers who have no objective moral code to live by.
Thiessen has a lack of imagination if he can’t think of any reasons preachers might lie about the Bible. Unbelievers are the liars, according to Thiessen, and we lie because we have “no objective moral code to live by.”
Thiessen thinks he lives according to an objective moral code; that code being his personal, and, at times, perverse interpretations of the Bible. However, like all of us, Thiessen has a subjective moral code. If Thiessen disagrees with me on this claim, I am more than happy to disabuse him of his moral claims.
This brings up the problem of young Christians who lose their faith because of what their unbelieving professors say in class.
The young Christians take the word of the unbelieving professors over God and their pastors because they have been taught wrong about science and scientists. They also did what BG [Bruce Gerencser] did, take the word of unbelievers over the Holy God of the Bible.
There’s an obvious problem with Thiessen’s claims. I was not a young Christian when I deconverted. I was a fifty-year-old man when I walked away from Christianity, after having spent twenty-five years preaching and teaching the Bible.
Unlike Thiessen. I value expertise wherever I find it, regardless of the religion of the expert. Of course, Thiessen grants the Bible supernatural power it does not have. The Bible is an ancient religious text written largely by unknown authors. There is no evidence for God’s authorship of the Bible, other than a handful of Bible verses that claim at least parts of the Bible are supernatural in origin.
How would unbelievers know if God lied? Science and scientists cannot see into the past and cannot tell anyone what did or did not take place. Dr. Craig Evans and many other Christian scholars have proven Ehrman to be wrong every time they discuss the latter’s points.
Thiessen can’t see into the past and cannot tell anyone what did or not take place either, but he believes he can when it comes to the creation of the universe and other Biblical claims.
If God wrote the Bible, as Thiessen claims, then God repeatedly lied about all sorts of things. Again, there is a plethora of evidence available that shows God saying one thing in one place in the Bible, and something completely different elsewhere.
As far as Dr. Ehrman is concerned, most of his scholarly critics — which doesn’t include Thiessen — agree with the data he presents, but disagree with his interpretations of said data. Is Ehrman wrong just because he is an agnostic atheist? Of course not. Instead of wallowing in the meta, Thiessen would better serve Christianity if he responded to Ehrman academically. If Ehrman is wrong, show it. Instead of focusing on inconsequential minutiae as Thiessen is wont to do, how about directly and comprehensively challenging and rebutting his claims? I doubt if Thiessen is up to the task. I know I am not. While I have extensive knowledge about Evangelicalism and its doctrines, I don’t know everything there is to know about Christianity. And this is why I rely on experts such as Ehrman to fill in the gaps in my understanding.
The unbelievers do not have the truth about the past or the Bible. It is only fools who stop listening to God and listen to those who do not believe. God is the only one who knows what took place in the past, and it is better to listen to him than those who have no knowledge of past events and reject the evidence supporting the Bible.
According to Thiessen, only the God of the Bible knows what happened in the past. What he means is that only his peculiar God knows the past. This, or course, is untrue. Thanks to science, we can peer into the distant past and make observations about the universe. Now, if God wrote a book that detailed what took place millions of years ago, I would read it, but God (nor Jesus) has never written one word about anything. All we have is what humans say about God. God, himself, is silent. So the question that must be asked is WHY should we believe anything the authors of the Bible say?
If you want the truth, then you follow the Holy Spirit to it, leaving behind interpretation so you can see the truth clearly. The physical evidence does not support unbelievers’ alternatives. It only supports the Bible.
I thought the Bible was “truth,” and all we had to do is read it to get understanding? Thiessen is now saying that understanding the Bible requires the Holy Spirit (God) leading us to the proper interpretation of the Good Book. Don’t you have to have the Holy Spirit living inside of you to be a Christian? This means, then, that no unbeliever, according to Thiessen, can understand the Bible. This also means that the moment I deconverted, God wiped my mind of all knowledge of him and the book he allegedly wrote.
I am not sure what we do with someone that says, “The physical evidence . . . only supports the Bible.” This statement is not a matter of difference of opinion; it’s a delusion, one born out of a lifetime of Fundamentalist indoctrination and conditioning. No amount of contrary evidence will change Thiessen’s mind, so I no longer try to do so. The main reason for sharing his post on this site and replying to it is to give readers examples of the bad thinking that permeates Evangelical Christianity,
Why do you think there are over 150 ancient flood and creation myths and not one ancient evolutionary myth? Any ancient person mentioning a non-supernatural creation does so without any physical evidence and only uses personal denial and unbelief to make their claims.
The Bible is true and unbelievers should never be listened to as they do not have the truth about the Bible.
Is Thiessen really this stupid? Of course there is “not one ancient evolutionary myth.” Our understanding of evolution only dates back to the nineteenth century, so it’s impossible for there to be an evolutionary myth. Creation stories are based on pre-science myths, evolution is based on a progressive, scientific understanding of our biological world.
Note that Thiessen claims there is NO physical evidence for evolution, only young earth creationism — the universe was created 6,029 years ago in six literal twenty-four days. Science tells us these claims are false, but until Thiessen grants science its due, he will continue to believe one of many mythical creation stories.
Derrick, please say Hi to Fred and Wilma. 😜
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.
From 1995-2002, I pastored Our Father’s House, a nondenominational church in West Unity, Ohio. One Sunday, the following discussion took place between an old woman in the church and one of my younger children.
Old Woman: So, how much candy did you get trick-or-treating?
Child gives Old Woman an embarrassed look.
Child: I didn’t go trick-or-treating.
Old Woman: Really? Why not?
Child: Our Dad doesn’t believe in Halloween.
Old Woman: Hmm, that’s interesting You mean you have never gone trick-or-treating?
Child: No.
Any of my six children could have answered the old woman’s questions. None of them was allowed to go trick-or-treating. Not one time. And they knew not to ask. Ever.
As a true-blue, bought by the blood, sanctified, sold-out, consecrated, committed follower of Jesus, I believed Halloween was a Satanic holiday, and Christians, if they were right with God, should never, ever practice Halloween. For a few years, I took the same approach with Christmas. We didn’t put up a tree or decorations, nor did we exchange gifts. We spent Christmas Day at a Columbus, Ohio rescue mission serving meals to the homeless. (We did go to Polly’s parents’ home for Christmas Eve.)
I firmly believed Halloween was a thoroughly pagan and Satanic holiday. I could not, in good conscience, allow my children to participate in a holiday I considered an act of Satan worship. One year, when my oldest son was in elementary school and before we started sending him to a Christian school, I kept him home from school because of the Halloween celebration his class was having.
Both Polly and I have many fond memories of trick-or-treating when we were children, but I thought our parents were ignorant of the real origin of Halloween, and this is why they let us go trick-or-treating. As I look back on it now, I suspect Polly thought I was crazy about Halloween. I recently asked her if she really believed like I did about Halloween. She said, uh, No. 🙂 Why, then, didn’t she say anything? Simple. She was a dutiful wife of an Evangelical pastor, a woman who was taught that her husband was the head of the home and had the final say on everything; and “everything” included Halloween and trick-or-treating.
My view on Halloween was similar to the view of Karl Payne who wrote the following at World Net Daily:
As a child growing up in a small town in Nebraska, Halloween was not viewed as a sinister day promoting demonism, spiritism, occultism, Satanism, hedonism, witches, zombies or an invitation to walk on the dark side with demons. It was a day to collect as much candy as possible. The routine was simple. I put on a clown suit that had been passed down through my brothers, grabbed an empty pillow case and filled it up with candy as quickly as possible as I systematically worked my way through the neighborhood. At a halfway mark, I stopped back at home, emptied my pillow case on the front room floor to be sorted later and headed back out to refill the bag a second time. The goal was to have more candy than any of my brothers by the end of the evening, and then see how much I could eat before my mom began rationing my daily consumption.
Times were innocent in the ’50s and early part of the ’60s. We never worried about razors in apples or poisoned pixie sticks. We walked for blocks without a fear or concern for our safety. Tricks, at the worst, were limited to throwing eggs or toilet paper and knocking over a pumpkin or two. And if that happened, it only occurred selectively because many of our parents knew each other, and getting caught could mean a scolding from your neighbor and then a spanking from your dad when you got home.
To make the observation that things have changed culturally in the 21st century from the post-war innocence experienced by many in this country is an understatement. Today we exist in the midst of the loss of innocence and the joy of age-appropriate discovery. Hedonism, in a context of amoral and ethical relativism, is celebrated and force fed from the womb to tomb through a media that more represents an ideological water cannon than a responsible public trust. The secularization of this once great country is complete. The only real question now is how far it will fall in its depravity before, if or when people in the public square turn their gaze up rather than in.
Today Halloween for many is a horror show providing an excuse for people to glorify the deviance and decadence they watch ad nauseam in movie theaters and on public and cable television screens seven days of the week. Everything is a game that can be reset and started over at the click of a mouse. It’s just harmless entertainment that can be enjoyed or ignored. If you don’t like it, don’t turn it on. Who are you to dictate what is right or wrong for others?
Why am I concerned about the way Halloween, the media and our current culture encourage the celebration and trivialization of spiritism, occultism, Satanism, hedonism, witches, zombies and walking on the dark side with demons? Because the supernatural world is real, and no one is immune to it regardless of their education or worldview. God is real. Angels are real. Satan is real. Demons are real. Real gladiators and real Christians died in the Colosseum and circus even though many Roman leaders and citizens just considered their destruction an evening of entertainment.
I have worked for over 30 years with men and women who have been demonized. I wrote a book entitled “Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization and Deliverance,” published by WND Books, addressing the subject as clearly as I was capable of doing. Why? Because real people and real families are being attacked by real demons, and their conditions are largely ignored, often because the subject has been redefined or trivialized, even within religious circles.
I have witnessed the reality of demonic bondage hundreds and hundreds of times. I have also witnessed individuals being set free through deliverance from demonic bondage hundreds and hundreds of times. Christian missionaries who live in the midst of this reality have thanked me many times for writing this book. Religious academics as well as atheistic secularists are more inclined to ridicule or ignore the subject. Curious.
Ultimately, bondage and deliverance both represent choices. In my book I have attempted to outline how a Christian can move from bondage to deliverance in a clear, step-by-step fashion. The New Testament addresses the subject forthrightly, so why should we run from it?
It should not come as a surprise that a secular culture would either ignore this subject or make a celebration out of it. 1 Corinthians 2:14 clearly states that spiritual truth and supernatural realities, be it God or the devil, represent nonsense to a natural man. But it should come as a disgraceful surprise that some professing Christians are so fearful of this subject that they would prefer to cast their lot on this subject with the naturalist or secularists rather than with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostles and the New Testament they study. Apparently, it is preferable to leave real human beings made in the image of God in bondage than face the possible ridicule of those whose ultimate loyalties are to time rather than eternity, to the creation rather than the Creator.
Naturalists redefining the subject do not change the reality of the subject. A holiday celebrating the subject, promoting it as nothing more than a day to collect candy, celebrate the dark side, or mock God, does not change the reality of the subject…
(Please see Jack Chick’s tract, The Devil’s Night to get a bird’s eye view of how some Christians view Halloween.)
Jack Chick Tract on Halloween
It was not until I left the ministry that I learned the REAL story behind Halloween and it’s pagan and religious roots. As with many things, I regret not allowing my children to go trick-or-treating. I regret not allowing them to enjoy the fun of Halloween or the wonder of a family Christmas. I know there is nothing I can do about the past. I now immensely enjoy watching my grandchildren practice the evil, wicked, pagan, Satanic holiday of Halloween. I encourage them to sin with gusto . . . and bring Grandpa some candy when they are done making a sacrifice to Satan. Besides, my grandchildren have nothing to fear from Satan. My oldest grandson is a super-hero. Or he was until he became a grown-up teenager.
Someone will be sure to ask if I did alternative Halloween activities like Fall Festival Day, Trunk-or-Treat, or other alternatives to Halloween. I did not. I never believed in the replacement theory: that if we took something away from our children we had to replace it with something better or spiritual (The Evangelical Replacement Doctrine and The Replacement Doctrine: How Evangelicals Attempt to Co-opt the “World”). I believed Christians were put on this earth to be a light in the darkness and we didn’t need replacements for things that were sinful.
How about you? Did you practice Halloween? Did your Fundamentalist parents allow you to go trick-or-treating? If they did, how did they deal with the origin of Halloween?
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I spent the first fifty years of my life in the Evangelical church. Twenty-five of those years were spent pastoring churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. I have met thousands of Christians in my lifetime. Even now, seventeen years removed from the last time I attended a Christian church, I continue to meet Christians and interact with them on this blog, through email, and on social media. My exposure to the personal lives of hundreds of Christians allows me to draw some conclusions about Christianity. I include myself and my family in the sample set. My conclusion is this: For all their talk about being Spirit-filled, it seems that Christians are anything but.
According to the Bible, all Christians have the Holy Spirit living inside of them. The Holy Spirit is their teacher and guide. He teaches them everything that pertains to life and godliness. Why is it then that most Christians live lives contrary to the basic, foundational teachings of the New Testament? WWJD, what would Jesus do, is rarely seen among Christians. Christians are commanded to follow the Lamb (Jesus) wherever he goes. How many times have Christians heard their pastor say we need to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, yet any casual observer can see that most Christians seem to walk wherever the hell they want. If Jesus wants to follow along, that’s okay, but if not, fine, because the mall has some great sales going on.
The passage at the top of this post says, “the fruit of the Spirit is.” The fruit of the Spirit is the evidence, the proof that a person is a Christian. Notice that it says IS. This is a very important word. According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and Greek Dictionary, the word IS in this verse is “third person singular present indicative.” Simply put, the fruit of the Spirit is not some lofty objective to hope for or aspire to; it is the proof, the evidence that a person is a Christian. Since the Holy Spirit lives inside every Christian, shouldn’t it be readily evident in the lives of EVERY Christian? The lives of Christians should evidence the fruit of the Spirit every moment of every day. With such a great power as the Christian God living inside them, surely this should not be a difficult way of life to maintain, right? After all, according to the Bible, he that is in the Christian (the Holy Spirit) is greater than he that is in the world (Satan).
However, when we critically look at how Christians live their lives, what do we find? We find that Christians are not much different from the uncircumcised, unwashed Philistines of the world whom they judge and condemn to Hell. It is chic these days for Christians to admit that they are just sinners saved by grace or that they are a work in progress. A popular bumper sticker says, Don’t judge me, God isn’t finished with me yet. However, such statements are directly contrary to what Galatians 5:22, 23 says.
The Bible is very clear…every Christian should evidence the following each and every day of his or her life:
love
joy
peace
long-suffering
gentleness
goodness
faith
meekness
temperance
A wonderful list of admirable character traits, to be sure. Every one of us would do well to strive to live lives that demonstrate these traits. However, we know, even on our best days, we fail miserably in demonstrating these character traits. We are, after all, human. We recognize that all of us have flaws and weaknesses that can and do affect the relationships we have with others. I don’t know of any non-Christians who think they are perfect or a beacon of morality and virtue. While many non-Christians certainly evidence the fruit of the Spirit, none would be so foolish to say that they perfectly do so.
Christians aren’t given the luxury of claiming they are human. Remember, the fruit of the spirit IS. There is no place in the Christian life for anything less than perfect obedience to the Christian God. After all, Christians have EVERYTHING they need to live a life of perfection. Surely God did not leave them lacking in any way, right?
Within Christianity we find many reactions to what I have written above:
Some Christians believe in perfection. They are entirely sanctified and cannot and do not sin.
Some Christians think there are two classes of Christians: ordinary everyday Christians and Spirit-filled Christians. Most Christians are the former and very few become the latter.
Some Christians think every Christian has two natures, the Spirit and the flesh, and these two natures continually battle against each other. Which nature you feed the most is the one who wins the battle. Christians are classified as either Spirit-filled or carnal/fleshly.
Some Christians think they are saved by grace and how they live doesn’t matter. While they certainly think a believer should evidence the fruit of the Spirit, if they don’t they are still Christian. Their ticket to Heaven is punched, their fire insurance is paid up, and a home in God’s Motel 6 awaits them no matter how they live their lives.
Some Christians think that God gives a special anointing of the Spirit to some people. All the TV preachers have this anointing (along with the ability to extract large sums of money from the bank accounts of gullible Christians) Some sects call this being baptized with the Holy Spirit, while others call it a second definite work of grace.
Some Christians believe in progressive sanctification. They believe that the Christian life is a long process where sin is progressively dealt with and forsaken. It is a wash, rinse, and repeat kind of process.
All of these reactions, except the first one, reject the clear teaching and meaning of Galatians 5:22,23. Again, the fruit of the spirit IS! Of course, the first reaction is ludicrous. There is no such thing as a Christian who doesn’t sin. The evidence of this is everywhere we look. Here’s a dirty little secret that many Christians don’t want non-Christians to know: for all their talk about God, Jesus, and Spirit-filled living, they live just like the rest of us. While they may be experts at putting on the good Christian act, underneath the façade, they are no different from Atheists, Humanists, Buddhists, Muslims, Mormons, Shintoists, Pagans, or Satanists. Try as they might, they still live lives that are an admixture of good and bad behavior.
All I am trying to do is knock Christians off their high horses and get them to see that they are not, in any way, different from the rest of us. I am trying to get them to see how offensive it is when they try to force their moral code on others when they themselves can’t even keep it. Even with God living inside of them, they “sin” just like everyone else. Christianity would be better served if Christians presented their moral code as one code among many, worth aspiring to and not as a “God says, Do this or else.” Not many atheists are going to disagree with Christians about the value of the character traits listed in Galatians 5:22,23. The world would be a far better place if we all tried to evidence these character traits (and others) in our lives.
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.
After reading my first response to him, the young Evangelical pastor sent me two follow up questions:
What interested you with Bart Ehrman?
Did something happen in your life that made you question your former reality?
I have long praised Dr. Bart Ehrman for playing an instrumental part in my loss of faith. Remember, I was an Evangelical Christian; a devout follower of Jesus and preacher of the gospel for most of my life. As an Evangelical, I believed the Bible was literally the Words of God, inerrant and infallible. Imagine spending the first fifty years of your life believing an ancient religious text is different from all other books ever written; a supernatural text written by a supernatural God. I believed the Bible was true in all that it said, containing instruction in life and godliness.
I was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years, pastoring Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB), Sovereign Grace Baptist, Christian Union, Southern Baptist, and non-Denominational congregations. What was the one thing these denominations and churches had in common? To the person they believed the Bible was inspired, inerrant, and infallible — both at the textual and translation level. Not faithful; not reliable; the very words of the thrice holy God.
Dr. Ehrman (and others such as John Spong) educated me about the nature and history of the Bible. I came to the conclusion that Bible inerrancy and infallibility cannot be rationally sustained. All one needs to do is show one mistake or contradiction in the Bible, and inerrancy collapses. If Ehrman’s books taught me anything, they taught me that my pastors and professors lied to me about the Bible, as did countless Evangelical authors I read whose books/sermons claimed the Bible was a supernatural text in both its formation and message. These beliefs about the Bible were shattered by Ehrman’s thoughtful dismantling of inerrancy and infallibility. Once the Bible lost its divine authority over me, I was free to question, challenge, and, if warranted, repudiate its teachings.
I spent most of life adult life with my nose in the Bible. All told, I spent over 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. I preached 4,000 sermons. I breathed in and breathed out the Word of God, so imagine my shock to learn that the Bible was not what I claimed it was; that it was a book that contained wisdom and moral teachings here and there, but it was a collated religious text written by mostly unknown authors, who made thousands of textual errors (most of which are insignificant, but some, if believed, contradict the beliefs and moral values held by most Evangelicals).
Knowing these things forced me to reexamine my sincerely-held theological beliefs. Over time, I reinvestigated the central claims of Christianity and found them to be false. I recognize that Evangelical apologists can and do have explanations and justifications for alleged errors and contradictions in the Bible. Christians have had 2,000 years to explain and justify what I call their “Book of Claims.” Not evidence, claims. As I was going through the deconversion process, I found the arguments of apologists for the claims of the Bible to be intellectually lacking, if not outright dishonest. Worse, apologists are forced to defend God’s violent, immoral behavior because to do otherwise causes people to question and doubt the Bible. Can’t have that, right?
Let me be clear, I read dozens of books during the deconversion process, written by mainline Christians, atheists, agnostics, and humanists. I didn’t need to read Evangelical authors, because I had already done so. Sadly, some Evangelical apologists think that if I just read or listened to the pablum of men such as Lee Strobel, C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, or William Lane Craig, to name a few, I would, in short order, return to Christianity. This is laughable, to say the least. I have read these authors and others, so there’s no reason for me to re-read their books. Worse are Evangelicals who claim that I am an atheist because I read too many books; that I should stop reading books and only read the Bible — preferably the King James Version.
Granted, millions of Christians don’t believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible, but they still worship Jesus. I have dinner once a month with three friends of mine: a retired United Church of Christ pastor, a former Lutheran pastor, and a Buddhist. The concept of inerrancy is foreign to them. Errors and contradictions in the Bible don’t faze them as they do Evangelical Christians. Thus, learning that the Bible was not what I claimed it was caused the collapse of my house of faith. How could it be otherwise?
Let me conclude this post by answering this young pastor’s second question: Did something happen in your life that made you question your former reality?
The short answer to this question is “no,” but I want to address the motive behind asking this question. I have been blogging since 2007. I have repeatedly answered questions about why I deconverted. The Why? page contains numerous posts detailing how and why I left Christianity. If I make one thing clear it is this: I divorced Jesus for primarily intellectual reasons. I didn’t deconvert because the church hurt me or I had bad experiences. Was I ever hurt or did I ever have bad experiences? Sure, as all of us do, but these things had little to do with my loss of faith.
When this young pastor and other Evangelicals ask me this question, he is really asking me, “What is the REAL reason I left the ministry and deconverted?” Unable to wrap their minds around my story and the stated reasons for deconversion, Evangelicals wonder if there is some sort of secret reason for me being an atheist today. Let me be clear, I am an atheist because I no longer believe the central claims of Christianity. Simply put, Christianity no longer makes any sense to me. I find the Bible’s supernatural claims to be irrational and absurd. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
It is true that emotions played a part in my deconversion, as they do in all decisions I make, but I can’t point to one hurt or emotional experience that provided grounds for walking away from everything I held dear. That said, my experiences with Evangelicals post-Jesus have largely been negative, causing more than a little emotional hurt. Evangelicals routinely lie about me, distort my story, threaten me with judgment and Hell, and go out of their way to discredit me. Worse, they threaten me with violence, and even murder. These lovers of Jesus attack my partner and our six children. Preachers preach sermons about me and use me as a cautionary tale, an illustration of what happens when you no longer believe the Bible is true. While these experiences are not sufficient to justify my deconversion, they are enough for me to conclude that Evangelicalism is morally bankrupt. Why would I EVER want to become a Christian again?
The aforementioned pastor concluded his email with the following: I pray that this conversation can go in the right direction of the Lord’s will.
What, exactly, is the “right direction of the Lord’s will?” This suggests that there is some sort of agenda, other than knowledge and understanding. My only agenda is to openly and honestly answer his questions. It is up to this pastor to declare his motivations. I am more than happy to answer whatever good faith questions he might have, but if there is some sort of ulterior motive lurking in the shadows, I can quickly become an arsonist.
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.
