Menu Close

Category: Evangelicalism

Sacrilegious Humor: Alan Cumming on Jesus, Kindness, and Trans People

1 Comment
alan-cumming-grant-shaffer

This is the latest installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.

Today’s video is of Alan Cumming guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Video Link

Transcript:

Jesus Christ.

And talking of Jesus . . .

Even as an atheist, I’m a big fan of Jesus. I really am. What’s not to like? A tall, gorgeous man with great abs and flowing hair getting his feet washed by prostitutes. And encouraging people to love their neighbors while slaying in a loose kaftan. And Jesus was an immigrant, by the way. Let’s not forget . . .

Jesus would have loved trans people. He changed water into wine; is that not itself an act of transition? And you know how I know Jesus would love trans people? Because he loved people. He loved all people. So, of course, he would love trans people and all queer people. I mean, Jesus was followed around at all times by 12 single hot guys, all of them also sporting kaftans. You do the math. Jesus loved the gays, America. Deal with it.

The only thing our current president has in common with Jesus is that they both owe their career to their dads.

Seriously, just think to imagine what it must feel like to be trans person in America today. Our government has legislated that trans people do not exist. It is trying to erase them completely. Imagine having to stockpile your essential lifesaving medicine because your president might cut off access to it for no other reason than it makes him look strong to his base. If the government is going to declare a whole group of people shouldn’t exist, why can’t it be truly a dangerous group of people like those who take off their socks and shoes on airplanes and then go into the bathroom? Why can’t it be people who use leaf blowers at unearthly hours in the morning? Why can’t it be unkind people? Which brings us back to Jesus. Yes, of course. Jesus just wants all of us to be kind. So, for once, America, I beg you, let’s all really try to give kindness a go. Like my little mom says, “It doesn’t cost anything to be kind.” And I guarantee you any situation you find yourself in will go better with a little kindness.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

After Death, Will We Finally Know the Truth?

13 Comments
calvin afterlife

Evangelicals believe there is life after death. Every person who has ever lived will end up in either Heaven or Hell. Where you end up is determined by faith. Those who put their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior go to Heaven when they die. Everyone else goes to Hell and will be tortured forever for their rejection of Jesus.

Setting aside the fact that people do not go to Heaven or Hell after they die (no one does until the general resurrection at the end of time), most Evangelicals have extra-Biblical beliefs about the afterlife. For example, how many sermons have you heard where a preacher told you Nana or Grandpa is in Heaven, free from pain, suffering, and heartache? You are told your dead loved ones are having a wonderful time in Heaven, running, singing, and worshipping God. Life is marvelous, better than anything experienced in life before the grave. Most people will never experience this, but, bless God, Evangelicals will. Why? They are members of the right religion. They worship the right God. Their guidebook for life is the Bible, even if they rarely read it. By faith, they believe every word in the Bible is straight from the mind of God. This supernatural book says there’s an afterlife. The men who preach from this supernatural book say there’s an afterlife. Countless authors have written books about Heaven and what awaits the followers of Jesus after they die.

What Evangelicals NEVER provide is evidence for the existence of an afterlife, Heaven, or Hell. Not one shred of evidence is presented for these claims. Either you believe in life after death or you don’t. Either you believe Heaven and Hell are real places or you don’t. Either you believe that your landing spot in the afterlife is determined by believing the right things, or you don’t. All of these claims ultimately appeal to faith for justification. Any Evangelicals who tell you they died, went to Heaven or Hell, and came back to life on Earth are lying. Unless they provide a feature-length video of their time in the afterlife, their claims are not to be believed. Just because someone says something happened to them doesn’t mean their story is true. The same goes for the Bible. The Bible is a book of claims. Just because it says something doesn’t mean it’s true.

People wrongly think I am an anti-theist. I am not. I do, however, expect and demand sufficient evidence for religious claims. If you want me to believe your claims, you will have to do more than quote Bible verses or tell me to just faith-it.

I know that I will someday die, likely sooner than later. I am a sixty-eight-year-old man in poor health. My body tells me that my time on Earth is short. How I die remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: I will die. Rare is the person, especially in the sunset years of life, who doesn’t think about death from time to time. In the quiet of late nights, I will hear our clock ticking, reminding me of my frail mortality. Eventually, I fitfully fall asleep, hoping I will awake the next day. And I do, but one day the last noise I hear in this life could be the click-click- cl of our clock. And that will be it. Then what?

Since there is no evidence for an afterlife, I have no reason to believe that I will live on after death outside of whatever nutrients my ashes return to the dirt. When I die, that means the end of the only Bruce Gerencser on Earth. Yes, I am that special. 🙂 Do I fear death? No, not as far as it being the end of life. I know death awaits all of us, and since I am not immune to what afflicts us one and all, I’m confident that the way of all men will one day come calling for me. I do, however, at times, fear what may happen to me before I die; the pain, suffering, and loss that may come my way before my demise.

Most Evangelicals believe that after they get to Heaven, they will be given a resurrected body, one perfect in every way, including the brain/mind. Having a new brain/mind, Evangelicals think that they will know countless things they didn’t know on Earth, and they will NOT know many of the things/people they knew before death. You might think, as an atheist, “Who cares?” And I agree, except for this one point: Evangelicals are willing to offload knowing things to the afterlife. Who hasn’t engaged an Evangelical about this or that belief, only to have the believer dismiss your claims out of hand, saying, “One day, I will know everything in Heaven. Praise Jesus!” Sadly, Evangelicals won’t know everything. Knowledge and understanding are gained only in this life. Once dead, all learning stops. Better to have lived life seeking knowledge and passing that knowledge on to others than to make oneself deliberately ignorant, hoping that an invisible deity will one day fill you in on what you missed in this life.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Bruce, Have You Considered You Might be Demon Possessed?

3 Comments
demon of stupidity

Shannon Davis, an Evangelical podcaster who goes by the moniker Omegaman, left the following comment on Bruce, What Do You Think of the Marjoe Gortner Story?:

Bruce, did you ever stop to consider you needed deliverance from demons? Hell is Real as is the Lake of Fire. At one point in your ministry did you realize you were operating in doubt and unbelief?

Surely Davis knows I am an atheist, and as such, I don’t believe in the existence of the Christian God. Further, I don’t believe in the existence of Satan, demons, spirits, angels, or anything supernatural, for that matter. I live in a material world, one best explained by reason and science. Granted, there is much we don’t know about Earth and the universe, so I can’t say with one-hundred percent certainty that the supernatural does not exist. That said, all I have touched, viewed, and understood is material, and not supernatural. If you object to my claim, please provide empirical evidence for the supernatural. Not personal testimonies or anecdotal stories; actual empirical evidence. If you cannot provide evidence to rebut my claim, then it stands until you do.

Am I demon possessed? Of course not, silly boy. There’s no devil/demon/spirit to possess me. Any possessed behavior is one hundred percent Bruce Gerencser. This is true for all of us. No Flip Wilson saying, “The Devil Made Me Do It.” Mental issues or brain abnormalities can and do cause “possessed” behavior and other irrational deportment, as can the overuse of drugs and alcohol, to name a few of the substances that can cause people to seem “possessed.” No exorcist, preacher, or Bible needed to understand this. Science and common sense give us everything we need to understand “possession.”

Besides, what in my behavior suggests to Davis that I am demon possessed? I am a well-adjusted sixty-eight-year-old man — my medical chart says so — with a plethora of health problems, including depression. I am, by all accounts, “normal” (however one might define “normal”). Maybe the mere fact that I am an outspoken atheist and a Cincinnati Bengals fan is enough to give me the “Possessed by Demons” label. Of course, no evidence will ever be provided to justify such claims. No, the Davises of the Christian world just know what they know cuz they had a warm fuzzy feeling in their “hearts” that tells them they are right.

Davis goes on to assert, again, without evidence, that Heaven and Hell are real. How can he possibly know this? Has he physically gone to Heaven and Hell and shot a feature-length video that shows the world the wonders of Heaven and horrors of Hell? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. Of course not. The existence of Heaven and Hell are claims, for which Christians have yet to provide persuasive evidence.

Now to Davis’ question, “At one point in your ministry did you realize you were operating in doubt and unbelief?” Davis makes a false assumption: that there was a point in my ministerial career when I realized I was operating in doubt and unbelief. There wasn’t. My doubts and questions came after I pastored my last church in 2003. There were five years between my last pastorate and my deconversion in 2008. It was during these five years that I reinvestigated the central claims of Christianity and concluded they were false. It was Me and Jesus until the end.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Is Jesus Found Anywhere in the Old Testament?

4 Comments
blue eyed jesus

Is Jesus found anywhere in the Old Testament? No. Jesus is not mentioned directly one time in the first thirty-nine books of the Bible. Evangelicals will point to Old Testament prophecies that allegedly reference Jesus. However, when these prophecies are read contextually without appealing to univocality, you will find that Jesus is not talked about in the Old Testament.

Bible scholar Dr. Dan McClellan has this to say about the subject:

If you were raised in an Evangelical church, you likely heard that Jesus is found in the pages of every book of the Bible; that Jesus’ blood is a scarlet thread that runs from Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21. This sounds right to people who have never read the Bible, but if you carefully read the Old Testament prophecies attributed to Jesus, you will find out Jesus is nowhere to be found — and that includes Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 14, when read in context.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

God Has a Message for President Donald Trump and Congress

3 Comments
evangelicals and donald trump

Woe to those [politicians] who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, to make widows their spoil and to plunder orphans! What will [politicians] you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come from far away? To whom will [politicians] you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth…

— Isaiah 10:1-3 NRSV

Does this not describe Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and some Democrats?

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Are Religious People Mentally Ill?

10 Comments
fake news

Are devout Christians mentally ill because of their irrational supernatural beliefs? For those of us who were committed Evangelicals at one time, were we mentally ill? Does this mean that billions of people are mentally ill just because they devoutly worship, serve, and follow God? Listen to some atheists, and it is clear that they believe the answer is a resounding YES! Most atheists who make this claim have never been religious. To them, religion is a virus that causes mental disease. This allows them to dismiss Christianity out of hand without wrestling with and engaging their claims. In my opinion, this is lazy thinking.

We humans, religious or not, are prone to irrational belief. All of us, at one time or another, have had wonky, crazy beliefs. As a former Evangelical, I know that many of my past religious beliefs were illogical and unjustifiable. Does this mean I was mentally ill? Of course not. For those of us raised in Evangelical churches, we spent years being indoctrinated and conditioned by our parents, pastors, youth directors, Sunday school teachers, and others. We believed what we did because that’s all we knew at the time. How could I have believed otherwise?

I wish atheists would stop saying religious people are mentally ill. Christians might have mental health problems, but is religion solely to blame for this? I don’t think so, and it is uncharitable and unkind to suggest otherwise.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Can Evangelicals Turn Water Into Wine?

33 Comments
jesus turning water into wine

Here’s what I want to know: why can’t Evangelicals turn water into wine, raise the dead, or heal through sick? The miracle-working Jesus allegedly did all of these things and more. Surely, people saved, filled with the Holy Ghost, and owners of leather-bound Bibles they rarely, if ever, read, should be able to do the same miracles Jesus did.

Did not Jesus say to his disciples:

Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. (John 14:12 NRSV)

Was Jesus lying? Name one place where we see Jesus’ followers doing greater works than he did? If Evangelicals are commanded to walk in the steps of Jesus, you would think they would work a few miracles, now and again. Instead, Evangelicals are busy waging war against anyone who disagrees with them.

Of course, just because words in the Bible are red doesn’t mean Jesus said them. All we have is what an unknown author, sixty to eighty years after the death of Jesus, says Christ said. And since it is clear that Evangelicals don’t have supernatural powers, we can either conclude that Jesus lied or Evangelicals are not real Christians.

What say ye?

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Parents Are Commanded by God to Circumcise Their Sons, Says Evangelical Preacher

4 Comments
dr david tee's library
Dr. David Tee’s Massive Library

Supposedly, Evangelicals believe in salvation by grace, not by works, lest any man should boast (Ephesians 2:8,9). For those of us who spent years in Evangelical churches, we heard preachers say that we are saved by grace apart from the works of the law. Of course, these same preachers quote Old Testament verses, when needed, to justify their claims — i.e. tithing.

Recently, world-renowned theologian Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, wrote:

Circumcision was instituted by God, and that makes it a right and healthy act to do. When one circumcises their male child, they are acting in obedience to God’s instructions and not mutilating the body.

Thiessen claims Christians are commanded by God to circumcise their male children; that in doing so, they are being obedient to God.

If circumcision is commanded by God, we can conclude that it is a sin not to circumcise your male children, right?

Just another day in the wacky theology of Dr. David Tee. I have long believed that Theissen has a warped understanding of the Christian gospel. This is yet another example of this.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Have You Heard of Kundalini?

3 Comments
kundalini

Warning! Evangelicals who have never had sex with the lights on or in anything other than the missionary position might find this post offensive. The rest of us? Snicker away!

Last night, I listened to a YouTube channel called the Deconstruction Zone. Its host is a college-trained former Evangelical preacher named Justin Holmes. I love Justin’s approach when challenging Evangelical dogma and presuppositions. He regularly “cooks” Evangelicals in their own juices. 🙂

Justin has a wonderful, snarky sense of humor, which is shown below.

Spiritual Caller: Have you heard of Kundalini?

Snarky Atheist named Justin: No, but I’ve heard of cunnilingus.

Bruce rolls on the floor laughing.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.