Amanda and Davey Blackburn
On November 10, 2015, Amanda Blackburn, 3 months pregnant, was shot to death in an Indianapolis, Indiana home invasion. Blackburn’s killer, Larry Jo Taylor Jr.,18, and his accomplice, Jalen Watson, 21, have been charged with murder and a host of other crimes.
Amanda Blackburn’s husband, Davey, is the pastor of Resonate Church in Indianapolis. Last Sunday, Pastor Blackburn told the church that he plans to step away from the pulpit to grieve and to figure out, going forward, what’s best for him and his son, Weston.
According to Leah Marieann Klett, a reporter for the Gospel Herald, Davey Blackburn wanted to make sure his wife’s death is not in vain. Blackburn stated:
“I don’t want this tragedy to be wasted, so I want to capitalize on seeing more and more people coming to know Jesus as their personal savior.”
Blackburn went on to say:
“It’s difficult to process through everything right now. One thing I do know and that I’m confident in is that through this entire season, what the Lord wants us to do and what Amanda would want us to do is not give up any ground. I wholeheartedly believe that God has still called me to Indianapolis, that He called our family to Indianapolis, and Amanda gave her life to see Indianapolis changed.”
It’s been four weeks since Amanda Blackburn was murdered, and I think I can safely say that her husband’s aforementioned words were not uttered in a moment of extreme grief. While I’m sure Pastor Blackburn is still grieving, his words reflect the calculations of a preacher who doesn’t want to waste an opportunity to use his wife’s murder as a motivational tool or a “teaching” moment.
Evangelicals are taught to always look for the bigger picture. When life turns on them, Evangelicals are expected to divine God’s purpose and plan. This is why Davey Blackburn said, “I don’t want this tragedy to be wasted, so I want to capitalize on seeing more and more people coming to know Jesus as their personal savior.” Blackburn believes there MUST be some sort of greater meaning or purpose for his wife’s murder. Pastor Blackburn hopes that, like Jesus’ death, his wife’s death will have a salvific effect on sinners.
My wife’s Evangelical family responded in similar fashion to her sister’s 2005 death from a motorcycle accident. If one soul gets saved through this, it is worth it all. “This” being the tragic death of a wonderful daughter, sister, aunt, wife, mother, and grandmother. Several months ago, I wrote a post about Kathy’s death. Here’s what I said then, about the value Polly’s Evangelical family put on her sister’s death:
No, it’s not. How dare we reduce the worth of a life, this one precious life, to that which God can use for his purpose. A husband has lost his wife and his children are motherless. Her grandchildren will never know the warmth of her love. Her sister and parents are left with memories that abruptly stopped the moment their sister and daughter hit the pavement.
No, I say to myself, I’m not willing to trade her life for anyone’s salvation. Let them all go to hell. Give us one more day when the joy and laughter of family can be heard and the family is whole; one more day to enjoy the love and complexity she brought into our lives…
And I say the same thing now to Pastor Blackburn and Resonate Church. Using Amanda Blackburn’s death as a motivational tool cheapens her death, reducing her to little more than a prop to be used in the evangelization of sinners.
Blackburn’s death is a tragic waste of precious human life. There’s nothing redeeming about her murder. There’s no possible way to turn this tragedy into rainbows and fireworks. While I certainly understand, as a former pastor myself, the need to comprehend some greater cosmic purpose in senseless tragedies like this one, I can’t think of one redeeming aspect of Amanda Blackburn’s death. In fact, to put Davey Blackburn’s theological pronouncements to the test, I suspect that Pastor Blackburn would be quite willing to let all of Indianapolis go straight to hell if it meant he could once again wake up in the morning and find his precious wife busily doing her hair and makeup as she prepares to face another day.
Dan Phillips, pastor of Copperfield Bible Church, Houston, Texas, shows his usual intellectual brilliance in a short ditty posted on the Pyromaniacs blog. Phillips writes:
How can God cause a(n) [natural disaster] in ____ that kills ____?
Response: You mean, why doesn’t He do the same every day in every city on every continent? Why hasn’t he done that to you? Excellent question! Those days are coming. But God is showing that He is long-suffering, giving the same opportunity for repentance that the people in _____ had enjoyed.
You see, according to Phillips, God really is good to us. That he killed others and not us is a sign that God is long-suffering and he wants us to repent. Never mind those other unrepentant, non-elect men, women, and children who were slaughtered today by the merciful, loving God. They had their chance. You have your chance now. Well maybe not. It depends on whether you are one of the elect (Phillips is a Calvinist). According to Calvinists, the world’s population, past, present and future, was neatly divided by God into two categories: elect and non-elect, chosen and non-chosen, saved and lost. For those whose names are under the non-elect column, this means they have been on God’s slaughter list from before the foundation of the world. For these people, it was too late for them before they were even born. But, that’s not God’s fault. God may have created us and he may control every aspect of our lives, but because our distant relative Adam broke God’s Garden of Eden Dining Rules, we have been deemed guilty by God.
Wait a minute? Didn’t God create Adam? Couldn’t God have kept Adam from eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?? Isn’t God Sovereign? These are rhetorical questions, yes? The answer to all of these questions is yes. How then is God not responsible for everything that follows?
In an earlier blog post, The Dogma That Followed Me Home, Cat Givens described the horrifying abuse she suffered at New Bethany Home for Wayward Girls. This school used the Accelerated Christian Education/ School of Tomorrow curriculum. I too attended an ACE school, and abuse was rife there too. While New Bethany was a particularly extreme example, physical abuse is endemic to Accelerated Christian Education. It is at the heart of the theology that inspires the curriculum. Their beliefs about the nature of the child inform the whole way the schools are built.
Accelerated Christian Education believes that children are inherently wicked, full of original sin, and that this must be driven out of them by breaking their spirits. This results in ruthless discipline. Among the Scriptures that inspire this belief are:
“Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.”
Proverbs 22:15
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Jeremiah 17:9
Several years ago, I had dinner with a supervisor from my old ACE school. She told me, as though it were completely natural, “sometimes when you look into the eyes of a child that’s being naughty, you can just see this spirit – it’s demonic.”
It’s this theology that leads to ACE’s system of separating children into carrels, with high partitions on each side to stop them from communicating with their neighbors, shown in this ACE promotional video. The message is simple: With your inherently sinful nature, child, you cannot be trusted.
This need to break the child’s will is a staple of Christian Right thinking, says Arizona State University’s Professor David Berliner. In “Educational Psychology Meets the Christian Right,” (website link no longer active) he quotes extensively from fundamentalist literature on child raising. This is John Robinson, leader of the Puritans and hero to modern fundamentalist educators:
“Surely there is in all children … a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down; that so the foundation of their education being laid in humility and tractableness, other virtues may, in their time, be built thereon.”
Who is more a fundamentalist icon than John Wesley? This is his mother’s view on child-rearing:
“A child must be conquered. . . . And when the will of a child is totally subdued, and it is brought to revere and stand in awe of the parents, then a great many childish follies … may be passed by. . . . I insist on the conquering of the will of children betimes, because this is the only strong and rational foundation of a religious education … [and] when this is thoroughly done, then a child is capable of being governed by the reason and piety of its parents.”
The tone has barely changed in the intervening centuries. Berliner cites Jack Hyles, from 1972:
“The spanking should be administered firmly. It should be painful and it should last until the child’s will is broken. It should last until the child is crying, not tears of anger but tears of a broken will. As long as he is stiff, grits his teeth, holds on to his own will, the spanking should continue.”
Berliner notes that this way of thinking is utterly opposed to the healthy development of the mind. “Various subject matter fields now require of a learner curiosity, agency, and thoughtfulness – characteristics that cannot develop well when obedience is the primary goal of child rearing.”
This view of the child as needing to be broken, like a horse, led to hideous abuses at my school. It was not only spanking. In drama classes, if a movement was painful, the teacher made students repeat it endlessly. A classmate recently emailed me to describe a time her sibling was made to snap his fingers until they were covered in blisters. In a choral verse class, children had to hold contorted positions on stage for 10 minutes or more at a time, and the teachers screamed at them if they were seen to move at all.
The same student also described the experience of being paddled at an ACE school:
“I was at [the ACE school] aged 3 – 7, and i cant remember what happened exactly when, but i got paddled a lot and remember having big red marks on my thighs from it and it hurt and was really terrifying! And straight after being paddled [the teacher] asked ‘do u believe that i love u?’ and i said ‘no’, cz obviously i knew that she hated me, and she said ‘YES I DO LOVE YOU!’ and it was just weird and confusing for a small child! and the things i remember getting paddled for were dragging my gym bag along the floor cz it was too heavy, and for drawing a cat on my pace, and for saying i havent had a biscuit when actually i had had a biscuit, which was a malicious lie!
“And [the teacher] would make you say a prayer after being paddled to apologize and I said ‘I wont do it again’ in my prayer and she interupted and said ‘YES YOU WILL DO IT AGAIN’! again, weird and confusing for a child!!”
Earlier editions of the School of Tomorrow Procedures Manual have clear instructions for supervisors on how and when to use the paddle to administer spankings (cited, for example, in Roger Hunter’s “The Shock of the Old: The Militant Church and Education”). The Catholic Herald (website link no longer active) described the paddle in one British ACE school as “a cricket bat-shaped US import.” The latest edition of the manual is sanitized, and only says that students who receive more than six demerits should be referred to the school administrator for appropriate punishment. It then quotes three of the Scripture verses most commonly used to justify corporal punishment, including Proverbs 22:15.
The probable reason for this sanitization is that school spankings are now illegal in a majority of territories where ACE is sold. That doesn’t mean spanking is entirely a thing of the past. My school ran a discipline policy that required parents to come in and paddle their own children if the teachers deemed it necessary. If parents declined, their children could not attend the school. The Branch Christian School is one school running a similar policy today.
In places where paddling is still legal, including 19 US states, of course, it happens openly. You can read online the policy at Victory Christian Academy, Florida, (link no longer active) for example. It’s almost word-for-word the same at each school that uses it, because it’s lifted from the School of Tomorrow Procedures Manual. The same discipline policy appears in ACE schools across the world.
What can students get paddled for? That’s for the school to decide, although past ACE manuals have included suggestions. One of the schools that has posted a non-exhaustive list is Cornerstone Academy, Amarillo (link no longer active). The punishment can be awarded for such obscenities as (this is just a selection):
Disobedience to school authorities and school policy
Being disrespectful to proper authorities
Cheating in any manner
Lying in any manner (word or deed)
Stealing or borrowing without owner’s permission
Griping and complaining or chronic bad attitude after being cautioned
Being disruptive in class after being cautioned
Touching any student in an inappropriate manner
Vulgar or offensive slang expressions
Consistent failure to have required items for school activities
If there is any question over whether religion can make good people do evil things, fundamentalist child abuse is the answer. My ACE supervisor used to tell the class all the time how much it hurt her to have to paddle us, how awful and painful it was, but she had no choice because God commanded it. No evidence that it might be harmful was considered. No alternative interpretation of the the Bible was countenanced.
It is this doctrine of the child as naturally rebellious against God that must be challenged. It is the idea that the child must be made unquestioningly subject to the teacher’s authority that is the problem. That, and the interpretation of Scripture that makes corporal punishment a non-negotiable imperative, are the great danger. Any attempt to improve fundamentalist curriculum content is a treatment of the symptoms, not the disease.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
The Evangelical church talks a lot about the ungodly. What exactly does it mean to be ungodly? The dictionary defines ungodly this way: characterized by iniquity; wicked because it is a sin. While the word is used as an adjective, in the Evangelical church the word is most often used as a noun to describe all those who do not worship the Christian God.
Lest you think that the term ungodly describes a special kind of sinner, consider the fact that 2 Peter 3:5 uses the word to describe the millions of people God drowned when he covered the world with a flood (Genesis 6-9). According to Romans 1:18: the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Any cursory reading of the Bible reveals that the Christian God has it out for the ungodly. While God sure would love to save them, (that is if they are one of the elect), he is quite willing to rain holy terror down on their heads. From Noah’s flood to the fire and brimstone of Sodom and Gomorrah, from the suffering of Jesus on the cross to the destruction of the universe in the book of Revelation, God has it out for the ungodly. He seems quite willing to use any means necessary to rid the world of the sinful, wicked people he created. Sometimes I wonder if God made a genetic mistake of some sort while creating us and he has been trying to fix it ever since. But, like cockroaches, we humans are hard to kill off.
According to Evangelicals, the ungodly, those who are anti-God, anti-righteousness, and anti-holiness, will face death, judgment, Hell, and the Lake of Fire. On judgment day, also known as the Great White Throne Judgment, God will gather together everyone who has ever lived and pass judgment on their works. Wait a minute, works? Yes, works. If you listen to Evangelical preachers preach you’ll likely come away thinking that the standard of final judgment is whether a person accepted Jesus as their “personal” valet, uh, I mean Savior. However, the Bible says this:
When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:31-46)
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. (Revelation 20:11-15)
Let the Bible gymnastics begin as Evangelical readers fall all over themselves trying to explain how these verses don’t really mean what they seem to say. Evangelicals, despite all their talk about salvation, right-living, following Jesus whithersover he goeth, and holiness, also want to enjoy the “world” with its temptations, pleasures, and entertainments. Ask yourself, how many Christians do you know who live according to the teachings of the Bible? Many Christians say they do, but how they live their lives tells a far different story. While some studies suggest that having religious beliefs makes people happier, other studies suggest that Christians pretty much live like the rest of us do (Just this week, a study done by LifeWay, an Evangelical Christian organization, showed that the majority of women who get an abortion attend a Christian church). Here’s what we know for sure: outside of what Christians do on Sundays from 10:00 AM to Noon, godly men are every bit as ungodly as those their Holy Book consigns to the flame of Hell. This is why every time the WordPress spellchecker gives me the following I snicker and nod my head in agreement:
Cliche, indeed!
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Steve Van Nattan, the purveyor of a blog aptly named Balaam’s Ass, thinks Muslims can’t be “real” Americans. Van Nattan posed the question, Can a Muslim be a good American?, to a friend of his who worked in Saudi Arabia for 20 years. What follows is his response:
Theologically – no, because his allegiance is to Allah.
Religiously – no, because no other religion is accepted by His Allah except Islam (Qur’an 2:256).
Scripturally – no, because his allegiance is to the five Pillars of Islam and the Qur’an.
Geographically – no, because his allegiance is to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer five times a day.
Socially – no, because his allegiance to Islam forbids him to make friends with Christians or Jews.
Politically – no, because he must submit to the mullahs (spiritual leaders) who teach the annihilation of Israel and the destruction of America, the great Satan.
Domestically – no, because he is instructed to marry four Women and beat his wife when she disobeys him (Qur’an 4:34).
Intellectually – no, because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is based on Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.
Philosophically – no, because Islam, Muhammad, and the Qur’an does not allow freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist! Every Muslim government is either dictatorial or autocratic.
Spiritually – no, because when we declare ‘one nation under God,’ we are referring to the Christian’s God and not Allah.Therefore, after much study and deliberation, perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. They obviously cannot be both ‘good’ Muslims and good Americans/Canadians; they cannot and will not integrate into the great melting pot of America.
The religious war is bigger than we know or understand. Muslims everywhere have said they will destroy us from within.
As I read this, I thought, are Fundamentalist Christians really this stupid? I know, that’s a rhetorical question. Let me show how easy it is to destroy Van Nattan’s position on American Muslims:
Let me pose this question to you, can a Fundamentalist Christian be a good American?
Theologically – no, because his allegiance is to Jesus.
Religiously – no, because no other religion is accepted by His God except Christianity.
Scripturally – no, because his allegiance is to the Bible.
Geographically – no, because his allegiance is to heaven, to which he turns in prayer without ceasing.
Socially – no, because his allegiance to Jesus forbids him from being unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
Politically – no, because he must submit to the pastor who teaches the protection of Israel and the destruction of the world.
Domestically – no, because he is instructed to marry one woman at a time and beat his children when they disobey him.
Intellectually – no, because he cannot accept the American Constitution unless it is properly interpreted through his fundamentalist worldview.
Philosophically – no, because Fundamentalist Christianity, Jesus, and the Bible does not allow freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Fundamentalist Christianity cannot co-exist! Every Fundamentalist Christian government is either dictatorial or autocratic.
Spiritually – no, because when we declare ‘one nation under God,’ we are referring to a our particular version of the Christian God.
Therefore, after much study and deliberation, perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL Fundamentalist Christians in this country. They obviously cannot be both ‘good’ Christians and good Americans/Canadians; they cannot and will not integrate into the great melting pot of America.
The religious war is bigger than we know or understand. Fundamentalist Christians everywhere have said they will take back America for God, using force if necessary.
Jeri Massi recently asked me if I would do a write-up for her latest book, TheBig Book of Bad Baptist Preachers. I am delighted to do so. While Jeri and I are philosophically as far apart as two people can possibly be, we both share a desire to expose sexual predators and child abusers who just so happen to be Baptist preachers. Thanks to an ecclesiology that turns pastors into rulers, potentates, and kings, many abusive Southern Baptist and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preachers have ready access to potential victims. Accountable only to themselves, these predator pastors molest, rape, and assault with impunity. Church members are conditioned to not question the man of God’s behavior, out of fear of God’s judgment if they do.
Often, acts of abuse are quietly swept under the rug. The offending pastors, under no ecclesiastical authority but their own, leave, move down the road to a new church, and start over. In many instances, the new church is not aware of past misconduct. This is especially true when the predator pastor starts a new church. Since there is no central database for checking whether a pastor has committed sexual crimes or been fired for alleged misconduct, church members are often unaware of their pastor’s checkered past. And sometimes they know, but like sheep to the slaughter, they consider their pastor’s past “sins” as “under the blood of Jesus” and forgiven. (please see Blood Washing the Past) Sadly, this allows these pastors to continue to abuse. In some cases, like with the late Bob Gray, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Florida and David Hyles, the son of Jack Hyles, the abuse goes on for decades, all because those who knew what was going on said nothing.
The Big Book of Bad Baptist Preachers is a compendium of 100 pastors who were accused and/or convicted of sexual misconduct. Each pastor’s crimes are listed, along the outcome, if any, with regard to their predatory behavior. If you are looking for a summary of the notable sex scandals that have rocked the Southern Baptist Convention and IFB church movement over the past two decades, TheBig Book of Bad Baptist Preachers is the book for you.
Jeri plans to update the book next year. One thing is for certain: the abuse will continue until churches and denominations decide to aggressively expose abusive pastors and make sure they can never preach again. And this means Jeri will have more sordid stories to add to The Big Book of Bad Baptist Preachers.
The Big Book of Bad Baptist Preachers is available at Amazon.com
I believe in having all my bases covered, so I’ve added The Church of the Latter-Day Dude to my collection of ordination certificates. In 1983, I was ordained through Emmanuel Baptist Church in Buckeye Lake, Ohio.
Bruce Gerencser Ordination, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Buckeye Lake, Ohio April 2, 1983
Bruce Gerencser, Church of the Latter-Day Dude Ordination, November 28, 2015
Bruce Gerencser, Ohio License to Marry, May 2,1983
Bruce Gerencser, Ohio License to Marry, March 22, 2011
A local Christian zealot by the name of Daniel Gray has taken issue with the fact that I can still marry people. In a July 2013 letter to the Defiance Crescent-News, Gray wrote:
Bruce Gerencser should use facts in his letters. His latest rant is so full of errors as to make his point completely obtuse. Here are a few examples…
…The fact that Gerencser can marry anyone is laughable. He received his claimed ministerial credentials by professing a faith in a deity and swearing to follow that religions teachings. So unless he does so, then his authority to marry anyone under the same is null and void. Anyone he marries could actually find that they are not and never have been married. And last, the only way to change our Constitution is by a constitutional amendment…
…History and facts yet again destroy the views of Gerencser. He should be used to that by now.
For the third time Gray suggests that I am not legally able to marry people and that anyone married by me is in danger of having their marriage invalidated. Gray seems to not understand the legal requirements for being licensed to marry people in Ohio. I meet all the statutory requirements and I am duly licensed to marry people in Ohio. Anyone can verify this by doing a ministerial license search on the Ohio Secretary of state’s website.
Ohio has no statutory requirement as far as what type of ordination is acceptable when applying for a state license to marry people. Knowing that my Baptist ordination might not “technically” fulfill the letter of the law, I decided to seek ordination through the Universal Life Church. Before I submitted my ordination and license application to the state, I called the Secretary of State’s office to find out if I really could use ANY ordination when applying for a license to marry. They assured me that Ohio makes no judgment concerning the suitability of a licensee’s ordination. In other words, I could, if I wanted to, use my The Church of Latter-Day Dude ordination to get a license. Awesome, right?
Bruce, are you making a mockery of religion? Duh, of course I am.
Did you know that I also have a doctorate in Biblical studies? Yep, I “earned” my doctorate through God’s University. Here’s proof:
Bruce Gerencser, Doctorate of Biblical Studies, 2015
My degree is personally signed by Dr. Jack Hyles and Dr. Tom Malone. Surely, this is proof that my doctorate is the real deal (Even if they had to come back from the dead to sign it). If you’ve not read, IFB Doctorates: Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Everyone’s a Doctor, please do so.
Not only am I a thrice-ordained, state licensed marrying Sam with a doctorate from God’s University, I’m also Santa Claus. That’s right, I’m Santa Claus. How dare you doubt me, oh skeptic! Here’s proof that I am the one, true Santa Claus:
Take THAT, skeptics!
Notes
You can make your own fake stuff at PhotoFunia. Are you interested in becoming and ordained priest with The Church of the Latter-Day Dude? Click here for further information.
I received the following email from a woman with the moniker Jesus First in her email address:
So glad that you read every email. I agree with the “older” Florida woman who told you the truth. There was No evidence that Jack Hyles ever did anything wrong or he would have been fired too. There was No affair. How sad that you spend alot (sic) of time writing and writing and writing about the sins of others and never consider that God will judge you one day. You look sickly, are you leaving this earth soon?. Also Linda Hyles’s damnable statements about her family would be thrown out of a law of court. There is no truth to her sick boring speech. She is in a cult now, that stupid fool. She ran to her father’s funeral to get her “share” of money, I sure hope she didn’t get any. Johnny couldn’t stand her lies and divorced her 19 years ago. Apparently she couldn’t get another man since she uses her ex’s name.
I continue to be amazed by those who live in denial over what Jack Hyles did years ago. The evidence of his infidelity is there for all to see and either Jack Hyles was an adulterer or there was a colossal conspiracy to make him look like one. My money is on GUILTY as charged for the late Jack Hyles, the narcissistic, megalomaniac former pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond Indiana. Hyles’ son David and son-in-law Jack Schaap followed in his adulterous footsteps. While David Hyles escaped punishment for his crimes, Schaap is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for his. Jack Hyles escaped punishment for his adulterous behavior. He was instrumental in facilitating his son’s philandering by securing a new church for him to pastor after his illicit behavior with female First Baptist congregants was revealed.
As is often the case with Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) sexual predators, they escape prosecution, only to set up shop again in a new town or state. With a fresh pool of potential victims, these men continue to abuse until someone, be it a church member or an abuse victim, says ENOUGH and goes to law enforcement authorities and reports the abuse. Even then, the statute of limitation frequently precludes abusive pastors from being prosecuted for their crimes. Often, their victims turn to the internet and public sites like this blog to expose the offending pastor’s criminal behavior. In doing so, they hope that this will keep the pastor from ever being able to use a church as a cover for his crimes.
I find it interesting that most of the email I get from defenders of Jack Hyles comes from women. I can’t quite figure out why this is so. Maybe some of the women who read this blog can help me with this.
If this email is an example of putting JESUS FIRST, I shudder to think what would be written if someone put JESUS SECOND.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
What follows is an email I received from a Christian who felt the need to show me the error of my way. My response is emboldened and indented. I get letters like this quite often. Unfortunately, many Evangelicals have a pathological need to be right. Not only do they have the need to be right, they are driven to make sure everyone else thinks and believes exactly as they do, They can’t conceive in their minds of any reason why someone would believe differently. Jesus becomes the perfect man or woman every person should want to marry. When confronted with stories like mine, many Evangelicals lack the capacity to wrap their minds around the notion of someone purposely walking away from the most a-w-e-s-o-m-e God e-v-e-r. (Please read last three words out loud with a valley girl voice.)
Email begins here
I was just reading your blog and my heart was touched. The Father definitely loves you, and his children should also. I want to apologize sincerely for every person who has spoken harshly to you in the name of Christianity. Please do not mistake there words or feelings for God’s. Jesus loves us all so much that when we sin and mar ourselves with the grime of this world He consistently reaches for us and continues to ask us to take his hand so that He can rescue us. I’m sure you’ve heard some of this before, and if not, i would guess that this is probably the reason you have “fallen” away. Just know that it is never too late to grab His hand. He doesn’t care how long it takes to win your heart, just as long as you receive and believe in Him.
So, what you are saying here is that I should ignore what Christianity is and instead embrace some form of hypothetical Christianity. Here’s the deal, and Christians need to understand this….It doesn’t matter to me what the Bible says, what you believe, or what you say your church believes. All that matters how you and your fellow Christ-followers live your lives.
If Jesus is all you say he is then it seems to me he would make a big difference in the life of Christians. But he doesn’t. For all your preaching and Bible verse quoting, the truth remains that there is little to no difference between an atheist and a Christian. Outside of where one sits on Sunday Morning the difference is nil.
Why would I want to embrace a religion that makes no difference in my life? Look around. Christians bicker and fight amongst themselves. They argue over the most trivial of things. Christians don’t agree on anything. Christians can’t even agree on salvation, baptism, and communion. If you can’t get those things right, why should I believe that you are right on anything else?
I would like to caution you though, because teaching people to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is a serious offense to God.
Since I don’t believe your God exists or the Bible is truth, your threat carries no weight. This might work for people who are still Christian, but not with me. I gladly and willingly blaspheme your God. He knows where I am. If he wants to kill me, here I am.
Imagine if you had 3 children, and one of them gets upset with you because you wouldn’t do things their way, so out of anger, frustration & disappointment that one decides to run away and tell everyone how horrible you are, or better yet, tell people that you never existed, that your other children made you up in their minds because they needed to feel secure and were not intelligent enough to take care of themselves. Now, say if you came back to that parent’s home and found a way to sneak in and convince the other 2 children that the lies you have been spreading about that parent are true. If you convinced them to join you in running away, can you imagine how that parent would feel? They would be enraged because you not only put yourself in danger, but you drug their other children into the situation and now they will be out of a home, without food and security. You all would be exposed to horrid things that the parent was only trying to protect you from in the first place. He would have to punish you.
I have no idea what you are saying here. It makes NO sense. That said, I encourage people to think for themselves.
A just God cannot just tolerate sin, that is why He made a way for them to be pardoned. He sent His Son to live a sinless life, and at the end take a punishment that anyone who sinned deserved [brutal death]. Afterward He rose from death to prove that He had power over it and went before the Great Judge [God] so that if anyone believed (so wholeheartedly that they would openly confess it before anyone) that Jesus indeed was the Son of God and subjected Himself to murder that He would trade what He [rightfully] deserved [eternal life enjoyed with the Father] for what we [rightfully] deserved (brutal death). He’s coming back to earth again, and this time he will be stripping the planet of every evil so that His people can live in freedom and in close relationship with Him. He can’t rid the earth of evil without being extremely severe because evil does not play nice or fair. Besides that, his anger is burning because of the suffering of not only human beings, but all creation, as a result of our sin. God is righteous and so are His judgments! Holy Spirit, please open their eyes to see the truth!
A just God cannot tolerate sin? Really? Look around. Your God is tolerating all sorts of sin. In fact, it seems God doesn’t care about sin at all; even among his followers: they sin willfully and often. When’s the last time there has been an Ananias and Sapphira report? Christian TV is proof that God is not serious about sin.
God’s anger is burning over suffering? How do you know this? What proof do you have? In the Bible when God was angry he acted out. I don’t see God anywhere today. Suffering abounds and your God does nothing.
You are parroting the Bible. You believe that it is truth. I get that, but you need to understand that I believe what I can see. When your God shows up and does some real God work then I will believe. Until then, I remain unconvinced that your God is anything more than a fiction concocted by people to explain their understanding of a pre-science, pre-modern world. Perhaps it is time to create a new God that is modern and understands science.
Whether you believe God is real or not, He is! And I will pray that you will have an encounter with him for yourself that will change your heart toward the Lord. I pray that your eyes will be opened to the truth. God is real, His love is real and a true encounter with Him is life changing. Prayerfully you will truly meet the King and willfully submit to Him without Him having to force you to. The bible does say that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus, the Christ [Anointed One] is Lord. There is a great judgment coming to all who deny Him. I pray that you will not have to be judged in that day.
So God is real because you say he is. Awesome. End of discussion. Do you believe faeries are real? Why not? Whether you believe or not, faeries exist! I have never seen one BUT I read about them in a book so they must be real. Believe!!
I love you Bruce, although I have never met you and my hearts desire is that you will give in to the wooing of our Lord and savior Jesus the Christ. He loves you soooo much, I just wish you could see it. He won’t condemn you, if you would just turn to Him and admit your need for His forgiveness. He needs you to recognize that you have wronged Him, but He’ll treat you like nothing ever happened once you repent. Repent, for the Kingdom is at hand and the hour of destruction is approaching quickly.
No, you don’t love me. Don’t give me this syrupy, cheap Christian love. My wife, kids, grandkids, family, and friends love me. They don’t have some fucked-up Jesus-love for me. They love me for who I am. You can’t do that. Unless I become like you, you can never accept me for who I am. Just as your God does not love everyone, you really don’t love everyone either, and you need to stop telling yourself that you do. Your email to me is filled with invective and judgments. You, a total stranger, think you have the right to speak to me like this. Such arrogance.
I wronged God and need to confess it to him? It will be a cold day in a mythical hell before that happens. The people doing the wrong are people like you. You come preaching a religion and a God I want nothing to do with. You offer me no tangible proof for God other than “you say so.” You shit all over my front porch and then say to me, isn’t that wonderful!
You say the hour of destruction is approaching quickly. Today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next year? When? Christians keep threatening nonbelievers with “God is coming to whip your ass,” but he never shows up. Either God is a coward, he’s dead, or you are misrepresenting him. Perhaps your God is like the God Baal Elijah mocked in 1 Kings 18:27:
And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them (the prophets of Baal) , and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
Perhaps your God, like Baal, is busy talking, using the toilet, on vacation, or asleep.
I am sure you mean well, but I am to the place in life where I am no longer willing to ignore people like you. I have had enough. When people like you come into my house and throw around feces covered in a veneer of love, I’m going to expose you and your God for who you really are: arrogant control freaks who demand everyone be like them lest they suffer eternal damnation and torture in hell.
What a wonderful God you serve. On behalf of my fellow atheists, let me say, NO THANKS!
It seems to me that there are three approaches to certainty. These would be, science, philosophy, and faith. I will delineate what I mean by these terms and discuss their relative merits and weaknesses. I recognize that my use of these terms may not accurately reflect how someone else thinks about them, but I have tried to think clearly. How well I have succeeded in this I leave to the reader.
Faith basically means accepting that which cannot be investigated, that which you do not choose to investigate, or that which has been investigated with results contrary to the proposition accepted by faith. The strength of faith is that it requires little work to attain. You simply accept what you have been told, or accept that your own thinking about the matter is sufficient and true. A weakness of Biblical faith is that great apologetic effort is required to protect faith from facts (some support of this contention to follow). Another weakness of Biblical faith is that the emotions of hope and fear are used to inculcate and reinforce it, emotions being less reliable means of knowing than reason. A weakness of faith in general is that a bias is established in the mind in favor of the proposition believed, clouding judgment. So that, as is often observed, the person attached to a faith proposition tends to seek information confirming the bias, and downplay information that disconfirms it. Faith often attempts to use the other approaches to certainty for confirmation, but generally misuses them because of the bias faith entails.
Philosophy is simply thinking more in-depth about things than accepting what you are told, or believing your first thought about the matter in question. It uses logic and constructs arguments (in the logical sense, not the disagreement sense, although logical argument often is used in disagreement arguments!). Philosophy thus has the merit of using logic and order to organize the thinking. But philosophy as generally understood (or misunderstood) means thinking about things without empirical testing. Some will object, and say science is a branch of philosophy. This may well be technically true, but my usage here reflects a rather common view of philosophy: sophisticated thought not necessarily grounded in the tangible world. It is stronger than faith by virtue of using the tools of rationality, but weaker than science by being divorced from empirical confirmation.
Science is basically applied common sense. It should thrive in Missouri, the ‘show me’ state. It recognizes that we all have biases, and strives to minimize their effect using investigation and logic. (Of course science doesn’t do this, men thinking scientifically do.) Thinking in a scientific manner means subjecting the mental model to empirical test. It is thus stronger than philosophy (as used herein) by virtue of seeking confirmation in the real world. One observes some aspect of reality, or some proposition. One thinks, ‘how can I go about learning why that phenomenon occurs, or whether that proposition is true’. The thinking will then consist of, ‘If X is true, I would expect Y’. Examination of the real world seeks to observe Y or ‘not Y’. There cannot be certainty about X. Finding Y offers confirmation of hypothesis X. Finding Y repeatedly, while never finding ‘not Y’, is greater confirmation of X, but always some miniscule possibility of a ‘not Y’ result remains. Thus all knowledge is provisional, with the level of confidence proportionate to the amount of evidence. While this is true, vast, overwhelming quantities of evidence support most established science, so that withholding belief in well established science is not reasonable. Out on the frontiers of science, there is less confidence because the evidence is less.
But nota bene: in science, ‘not Y’ results have equal power and serve to disconfirm proposition X. More investigation is then indicated to attempt to learn if this investigation is flawed, or proposition X is flawed. One application of this principle to the faith proposition that there was a Christ who was crucified and resurrected approximately 30 AD is as follows. Earthquakes, and the resurrections of many dead saints are said to accompany this occurrence. If X is the proposition that these things occurred, then Y would be the expectation that they are so remarkable that some contemporary non-Christian historian or writer about natural phenomena would have noticed them and written about them. Since we in fact have ‘not Y’, proposition X has disconfirming evidence and is questionable. Though this be but one example (brevity for the sake of a blog post), instances of disconfirming evidence to Bible story elements are plentiful, to the extent that belief in the Bible as a reliably true document is not reasonable. The more so, as incredible rather than credible stories are predominant.
In recognition of many such weaknesses in Biblical accounts, and in response to enlightenment thinking, some Christians have resorted to ‘metaphor’ and ‘allegory’ to exculpate Bible elements that are clearly contradicted by real world observations. They then are apparently Godlike in their ability to rightly discern what is metaphor and what is not. The fact that other equally sincere and equally intelligent Christians divide the Word differently, so that Christianity disintegrates into myriad sects and factions, troubles them not. Those more scientific and skeptical entertain the proposition X, that if the Bible were a revelation of a God who wanted us to understand it and worship It, then Y, it would be clear and understandable, as evidenced by the one united church. We see instead ‘not Y’, another disconfirming evidence.
We thus observe that science works, and that as more and more scientific study is conducted on the world around us, hypotheses converge into one theory accepted by the vast majority of scientists. While as more and more people perform exegesis (or eisegesis) on the Bible, division of thought, and more and more sects, ensue. This is in contrast to the results of the most effective approach to knowing.
