Menu Close

Category: Guest Posts

The Bible and Self-Esteem — Part One

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments
guest post

Part One

Part Two

Guest Post by Merle Hertzler who blogs at The Mind Set Free

Self-esteem is important. We need our self-esteem to be positive; else, we might become depressed. We also need our self-esteem to be realistic; else we could make bad decisions based on our misunderstandings. Sometimes those goals are conflicting. But I find it possible to achieve both.

My self-image is based on naturalism and humanism. This I find to be both realistic and positive.

You may have found other ways to build your self-esteem. Is your way realistic? Is your way positive? These are important questions to ask.

Many value the Bible as their basis for self-esteem. This has been confusing to me. The Bible never specifically mentions self-esteem. It often has a low view of human nature and strongly condemns pride. The Bible even praises Job for abhorring himself (Job 42:6) and speaks in favor of people loathing themselves (Ezekiel 20:43). So, how can you turn to the Bible as your source for self-esteem?

I came from a religious background that shared the Calvinist view known as “total depravity.” When it comes to our inner self, this view offers little to feel good about. This view tells us we are innately bad.

Years later, I met Christians who had a much higher view of human nature. They also based their views on the Bible. Who was right? Struggles over this issue led me to study the Bible and self-esteem. Eventually, this was one of the keys to my deconversion. I tell the story here.

In the first chapter of his online book, Beyond Born Again, Robert Price documents these two contrasting Christian views on solving life’s psychological problems. First, there is a hardline, traditional view that sees the Bible alone as our source for human living. It has little need for psychology. Proponents such as Jay Adams and Martin Bobgan often take a negative view of the value of self-esteem. They see humans as justly deserving Hell because of who we are. Our problems are essentially spiritual. Christ is the answer.

By contrast, other sites such as this one rely heavily on psychology. Advocates of this view seek cures such as promoting self-esteem. They adopt opinions that are often consistent with humanism. They have many proof texts, but are they really learning this from the Bible? I contend they are often drawing from secular humanism and science, not the Bible.

If you trust the Bible, should you adopt the hard-line view or the soft-line view? Or is there, perhaps, a better way, one that is built honestly on a secular foundation?

I contend that the hardline, anti-psychology view is neither realistic nor positive. The soft-line, pro-psychology Christian view is positive but also often unrealistic. I contend that humanism and science point to the best way.

Are We Evil?

Let’s begin with a simple question. In a moral sense, are we humans good, or are we evil? Many Christians say we are innately bad. If so, then how could we possibly have a positive image of the self?

Christian doctrinal statements have generally seen us humans as evil. For instance, the Westminster (Presbyterian) confession of faith says:

They [Adam and Eve] being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity…

From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil…

Every sin…does in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal. Westminster Confession of Faith

We find we are descended from corrupted people and that we now have a corrupted nature. In fact, we read here that we are “opposite of all good,” “wholly inclined to all evil,” and properly deserving of God’s wrath. Why is God angry with us? According to this document, it is because we deserve it.

Similarly, the London Baptist Confession says we have all become, “dead in Sin, and wholly defiled, in all the faculties, and parts, of soul, and body.”

The Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church says, “man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.”

Those statements leave little room to feel positive about ourselves.

John Calvin not only agreed with this low view of humanity but went so far as to call self-love a noxious pest that engenders all sorts of foul behavior. He said the only way to live a good life is to leave off all thoughts of yourself. He wrote:

This is that self-denial that Christ so strongly enforces on His disciples from the very outset (Mat 16:24), which, as soon as it takes hold of the mind, leaves no place either, first, for pride, show, and ostentation; or, secondly, for avarice, lust, luxury, effeminacy, or other vices which are engendered by self love (2Ti 3:2-5). On the contrary, wherever it does not reign, the foulest vices are indulged in without shame…

There is no other remedy than to pluck up by the roots those most noxious pests, self-love, and love of victory. This the doctrine of Scripture does…

How difficult it is to perform the duty of seeking the good of our neighbor (Mat 12:33; Luk 10:29-36)! Unless you leave off all thoughts of yourself and in a manner cease to be yourself, you will never accomplish it. Calvin on Self-Denial, by John Calvin, pp. 4, 7, 8. (Click here to download as PDF.)

So, if Calvin is right, we should not even love ourselves, for self-love is the source of the vilest of vices. Many Christians have historically agreed with Calvin on this. Did they get this from the Bible? Let’s look at what it says.

How Does the Bible See Us?

Many verses see humans in a negative light. As I mentioned above, Ezekiel approves of self-loathing. He writes, “And there you will remember your ways and all your deeds by which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done.” (Ezekiel 20:43)

As another example, the book of Job is a drama discussing various reactions to Job’s suffering. At the end of the book, God steps in and lectures everybody on the true answer. (Job 38-42) It turns out that God is so much greater than people, and people just would not understand why they suffer. So Job and his friends better just accept what comes to them. Humans just wouldn’t understand, so don’t even ask. Job responds to this lengthy reprimand by saying, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:6 KJV) The book of Job implies God approved of this response.

And Isaiah 64:6 tells us “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment”

These verses are not merely telling us to recognize that we did bad things. They are telling us we are bad to the core. We should loathe ourselves, abhor ourselves, and understand that our best deeds are nothing more than filth.

What about the New Testament? Jesus says we are evil (Mat 7:11, Luk 11:13). He tells us, “when you do all the things which were commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’” (Luke 17:10) I see nothing there about intrinsically being worthy of self-love. We are simply unworthy slaves who better do what we are told to do.

John 15:5 says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Are we that helpless on our own?

Paul expands on this view. In Romans 3:11-19 he tells us that all have become unprofitable and that none is good. Our tongues are full of lies, our feet are swift to shed blood, and we don’t know the way of peace. Paul even tells us the whole purpose of the law is to make us feel guilty before God. Guilt? God wants us to feel guilty? That is far from the modern Christian psychological view that encourages us to accept our inner selves and minimize our feeling of guilt.

Total Depravity and Self-Esteem

Based on verses like the ones above, many have adopted the doctrine of “total depravity.” Total depravity is the first point of the popular Calvinist TULIP acronym. Here is an example description of total depravity from a Christian site:

The doctrine of total depravity is an acknowledgment that the Bible teaches that as a result of the fall of man (Genesis 3:6) every part of man—his mind, will, emotions, and flesh—have been corrupted by sin. In other words, sin affects all of our being including who we are and what we do. It penetrates to the very core of our being so that everything is tainted by sin and “…all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” before a holy God (Isaiah 64:6). It acknowledges that the Bible teaches that we sin because we are sinners by nature. (Source)

It appears to me that total depravity is devastating to one’s positive self-esteem. Can a Christian believe in total depravity and also seek to build his self-esteem? Or are these incompatible? Recently I asked these questions on a thread on the Christian Forums website. Many on that thread could see the conflict between those two concepts.

Some people there resolved the conflict by rejecting the need for high self-esteem, clinging strongly to the traditional view of total depravity. One person wrote that self-image, self-love, self-esteem, and self-confidence are incompatible with his theology. This is one way to solve the conflict, but it is a little depressing. If I had to give up either self-esteem or total depravity, I would give up total depravity.

Others did indeed reject the idea of total depravity or watered it down to the extent that it lost its original meaning.

Dropping total depravity may seem like the natural way out of the dilemma, but there is a problem. If you reject total depravity, then why does Hell exist? The hard-line view says people are in Hell because they deserve it. Total depravity takes God off the hook. People that are in hell deserve it. Don’t blame God. But that also destroys self-esteem. If we are so rotten that we deserve Hell, how can we feel positive about ourselves?

If you instead decide to reject total depravity, how can your God justify Hell? Those that deny total depravity tend to justify Hell on a technicality. They will tell me that their God has a list of demands. And if your score on life’s test is not 100%, then sorry, you go to Hell, that’s the rule.

Oh, but they also say believers have an exemption. Don’t forget that.

But what about everybody else? What about those who never heard? Sorry. If they don’t believe in Jesus, they need to score 100% on the test.

One wonders why a loving God would make this the rule. If any schoolteacher were to fail every student that ever scored less than 100% in his class, we would regard his expectations as unrealistic. So how could God make such a requirement?

And if you say we can’t blame God for that requirement, for the nature of reality is such that God had no choice but to enforce this rule, then God is not all-powerful. Whatever it is that made this rule that demands perfection is then more powerful than God.

If some people go to Hell, not because they are depraved people who deserve it, but because they failed to be 100% perfect, and they never heard of Jesus, one wonders why God would not be more tolerant. If people don’t really deserve Hell, and they are just slightly off course, why doesn’t God stop the suffering? If we deny total depravity, then we are left with people that deserve to feel good about themselves being condemned forever as utter trash. That makes no sense.

Those that have taken this course to promote self-esteem and abandon total depravity often find the doctrine of Hell is the next to go. If people aren’t totally depraved, a God who enforces such punishments on good people who are not perfect is not easy to accept. So the doctrine of Hell is frequently ignored or even argued away.

Some people on that Christian Forums thread went through mental contortions to make total depravity and self-esteem compatible. One person suggested that “total depravity” simply means that we are good people that sometimes make mistakes. That is not total depravity.

Another person on that thread suggested that total depravity was just another way to say we were not good enough for God. But not being good enough for God is not the same thing as being totally depraved. For instance, I am not good enough to play chess in a tournament with grandmasters, but I do have significant chess skills. The fact that I could not play competitively with Magnus Carlsen does not mean I am totally deprived of chess skills.

We cannot water down “total depravity” by saying it just means “good but falling a little short of the standard.” That is an abandonment of total depravity.

Another person told me I could have positive self-esteem if I ignored my human, evil nature. That is ersatz self-esteem. The self-esteem that comes from ignoring reality is not true self-esteem. But this is the best self-esteem this believer in total depravity could come up with for unbelievers.

So, if one adopts a view of total depravity, based on the Bible and on the need to explain Hell, one is left with a struggle to have any meaningful positive self-esteem.

In the extreme, groups like the Independent Fundamentalist Baptists, of which I was once a participant, see people as little more than a spec of worthless dust.

And so, I find traditional Christian doctrines of depravity are at odds with the modern emphasis on self-esteem. Many who were once trapped in these depressing doctrines of human depravity have expressed tremendous psychological relief when leaving these doctrines of faith.

Pride

The Bible repeatedly mentions pride. Here are links to the many verses that mention pride; verses that mention the proud; and verses that mention the haughty. The Bible tells us that we are to hate pride (Pro 8:13); that pride leads to dishonor (Pro 11:2); that pride leads to destruction (Pro 16:18); that it brings us low (Pro 29:23); and that God humbles those who walk in pride (Dan 4:37). In Mark, pride is listed as one of the evil things that defile a man (Mark 7:21-23). And Pro 16:5 tells us, “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD.” Other verses tell us God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble (Jas 4:6, 1Pe 5:5).

And Isaiah tells us:

Moreover, the LORD said, “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with heads held high and seductive eyes, and go along with mincing steps and jingle the anklets on their feet, the Lord will afflict the scalp of the daughters of Zion with scabs, and the LORD will make their foreheads bare.” Isaiah 3:16-17

You do not want your scalp afflicted with scabs or your forehead bare. Isaiah says if you are haughty and walk with head held high, this will happen. Will you no longer walk with your head held high? Or will you ignore this warning?

Christians who want healthy self-esteem will tell us that high self-esteem and pride are not the same thing. One website says pride is the notion that we don’t need help, or that pride is the notion that one is superior. Where do they come up with these definitions? Nowhere does the Bible tell you that is what it is talking about. One would think that authors who wanted us to think highly of ourselves, but to avoid certain errors, would be clear that they are actually praising high self-feelings, and that their condemnation applies only to certain wrong extremes of pride. The Bible does not do this. It declares a blanket condemnation of pride. It sure looks to me like it is condemning the very essence of high self-esteem.

Biblical Self-Esteem

Despite the conflicts between the Bible and Christian teachings, many modern Christians have found ways to promote high self-esteem. You will find many Christian sites arguing for the virtue of self-esteem, such as this site and this one. You will find lists of Bible verses supposedly supporting self-esteem here and here. Yet the verses they list have little to do with self-esteem. None of these sites shows a verse warning of the problem of low self-esteem. None lists a verse telling us to think generally more positively about ourselves. None can find a verse stating the need for high self-esteem.

But there are many verses that say the opposite. Romans 12:3 tells us not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. Galatians 6:3 warns people that think they are something when they are nothing. No verse warns us about thinking we are nothing when we are actually something. 2 Timothy 3:2 warns us that the last days will be terrible. It gives a long list of evils, beginning with “lovers of their own selves.” Low self-esteem or lack of self-love didn’t make the list of evils. But loving oneself is on that list. As I said at the top of this post, it is important that our self-esteem is both accurate and positive. As a humanist, I find everything that I need to build healthy self-esteem. After all, we are all humans with all the inner capacities that this involves. We humans can accomplish great things. We can fly to the moon, make great works of art, and build great nations. And so, we can look at ourselves without looking through the veil of total depravity, and we can see ourselves as humans with innate worth.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

An Evangelical Pastor’s Wife Loses Her Faith and Finds Herself

Bruce Gerencser 8 Comments
guest post

A Guest Post by Sarah

I was raised in a Fundamentalist Baptist church. I was saved and baptized at about the age of six. Throughout my youth, I remember being wholly devoted to Christianity. I remember family praising me as a young child for the example I set because I wouldn’t eat a bite at meals until I made sure everyone prayed together. I also remember being the “good Christian girl” through high school and college. I prayed, faithfully attended church — even by myself after I started driving — and read the Bible voraciously. I sought to be completely devoted to Jesus. I said all the right things and did all the right things. I sang, led Bible studies, and served God. All my extracurriculars were associated with the church or faith-based things, other than being involved in my community arts organization as a teenager, mostly acting in plays. I was so certain about Christianity until the moments in which I wasn’t. In my late teens, I began to incorporate the following story into my salvation testimony to prove I had truly been born again and to use it to allay any doubts I or anyone else might have about the authenticity of my faith.

Baby Sinner

My mom has always talked about how I was such a headstrong young child, so much so that she didn’t know how to parent me. Mom told me she once went to our pastor crying about me because she didn’t know what to do with me. Recently, she told me a story I had never heard before — that she remembers the first time she really connected with me was in a Pizza Hut when I was about four years old. It made me sad because my daughter is almost four.

My daughter is so much like me. My relatives who knew me as a child say being around my daughter is like being around me again when I was her age. Even though she’s headstrong and hard for me to manage sometimes, I feel we have more moments of connection than I can recount from my own childhood. To hear my mom say she distinctly remembers not having a real moment of connection with me until I was four years old makes me question what was really going on with me back then.

Mom said I was difficult until I “asked Jesus to come into my heart” then it was like a switch was flipped on in me and I became “better.” Now that I’m a parent of a toddler, I realize that my issues as a toddler and young child weren’t the spiritual issues of a hell-bent sinner, but that I was lacking something somewhere, stability or attention or love or something. I was well cared for as a kid and I had a good childhood. I don’t think I was neglected or abused, but whatever was lacking, the problem wasn’t spiritual or that I needed Jesus, but it was behavioral, that I needed something real from my parents, whatever it may have been.

Seeds of Doubt

In my teens, and especially college years, I struggled with doubt. I have a lot of questions. My mind dissects things, deconstructs things to the minutest details, and rebuilds them to understand what’s happening, how things work, and what is the logic behind them. But I’m also naturally loyal. I was loyal to the presuppositions of my faith that were ingrained in me since before I can remember. I questioned, but I never sought answers outside of my faith community, even in college.

One of my biggest regrets is that in college I did not lean into and explore all kinds of thinking. I dabbled in things because I went to a state school. I couldn’t get away from it in mandatory philosophy classes and English classes where I was introduced to secular ideas. I learned what ideas were out there, but I never truly considered them. I observed them from behind the hazmat suit of Fundamentalist Christianity I wore. In fact, I remember driving two hours to my home church to attend a special service where a visiting preacher preached a sermon he called “Babylon University.” He used the story of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Babylonian captivity to set a principle for those of us going to college to be “in the world, but not of the world.”

Marriage Obsession and Denied Sexuality

As a teenager, I was obsessed with getting married. My church’s worldview, and being a child of divorce, as well as my dad dying from suicide two years after my parent’s divorce when I was 13, caused me to desire stability that was foundational to my obsession with marriage, along with my natural sexual desires that wouldn’t be satisfied until I got married.

Even though I was raised by a single mom who dated and had boyfriends with whom she was having sexual relationships, I was sexually and relationally conservative because I held so closely to the teachings of the church, even more so than to my mother’s parenting. I remained a virgin — mostly — until I got married at 28.

At 18, I began a “courtship” (think Josh Harris “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and Elisabeth Elliot’s romance with Jim Elliot) with a man in my church who was 15 years older than I. He was 33 at the time. This was my first serious relationship. This relationship was supposed to be a “courtship” overseen by our parents, but considering he was 33 and my only parent was a single mom who, along with her boyfriend, (eventually my stepdad), thought the whole thing was super weird, it was mostly overseen by my youth pastor and his wife and my church’s pastor and his wife. By the way, the whole thing top to bottom makes me cringe today and I’m so grateful I did not marry that guy.

I became engaged or “betrothed” (ugh!) but thankfully my mom, and eventually, my church, helped me end the relationship before it got to marriage. After our engagement, my husband-to-be began acting strange — overbearing and potentially abusive. My mom and youth pastor encouraged me to move away to live on campus at the college I was currently attending.

I didn’t want to move away, but I heeded my mom. Living on campus, this was the first time I became depressed. However, I got involved with a church and made good friends and when I left campus for the summer, I realized I was sad to leave and couldn’t wait to go back. I had a great college experience. My friend group grew beyond the church. I became a resident assistant and really enjoyed my friendships with my fellow housing employees. Looking back, I have some regrets about missed opportunities, but nothing that makes me hate my time there. I didn’t date anyone in college, but I wasn’t without my crushes. I literally fell in love with one man, but we never dated, surprisingly. At one point I did feel like God told me I would marry a pastor. Good to know, God.

Not long after college, I moved back to my small town because I missed my church. I eventually connected with a former high school classmate that ended in another broken engagement after three years of an on-and-off-again relationship. After one final rebound boyfriend to whom I nearly lost my virginity, I met my husband.

My husband and I have an amazing relationship and chemistry. If I have any belief left in miracles, then the one miracle I have in my life is Matthew. When I lost belief in God, I felt free to say, “I believe in Matthew and in our love,” but also, I believe in myself and my place in the world.

During that strange time, especially as an unmarried, 20-something, between graduating college and meeting Matthew at age 28, I fell into a deep depression that lasted years; I don’t think it ever fully lifted. This is when I started to lose my faith, though I didn’t talk about it. I had suicidal thoughts. The loneliness facilitated by my church’s beliefs as I waited for marriage was debilitating and I believe denying my sexuality gave me sexual frustration that contributed to my depression. I suspect if I had a different worldview at the time that would have allowed me healthy sexual expression outside of marriage, then I would have carried a lot less shame and guilt about masturbation, which I discovered in college.

Meeting my husband lifted my depression. We had a quick romance. We met and were married between February and November of the same year. I was so happy. Within three years we had two children. My life up until I met Matthew felt so slow and especially those last few years in my 20s felt like a slow grind. Since meeting Matthew, change keeps coming and coming. Big stuff — marriage, babies, becoming a pastor’s wife, losing my faith as a pastor’s wife, moving from a very rural area to a city. When we got engaged, we were looking at a decent combined annual income, but halfway through our engagement, we both lost our jobs. We started marriage and had babies living in extreme poverty and mutual depression over our situation. It was traumatic, but our relationship remained strong.

Loss of Faith

In October 2019, I remember really struggling with doubts about my faith, and that’s the first time the thought entered my head, “I’m not a Christian.” I thought God gave me that thought. The next day, I was emotionally moved by a sermon my husband preached to respond with a recommitment to my faith and I was baptized again.

But doubts resurfaced and I began struggling with deep depression again. Around January 2022, I told my husband that I wanted to take some breaks from attending church, like maybe one Sunday a month, I don’t go, or I visit another church. He was supportive of me doing that. However, I never followed through on it because someone in the church broke her back and I stepped in to fulfill her responsibilities. It put my plan to take a break from church on hold as I needed to be there for these things. I didn’t mind it. It helped me a little because I felt I had more purpose with church than just getting the kids dressed to go and wrestle them into a pew and fight to keep them quiet.

Then in May 2022, my stepdad asked my mom for a divorce after 15 years of tumultuous marriage. It was with this backdrop that I just got tired of pretending that prayer did anything, that faith had any meaning, that Christianity was true, or that maybe God was even real, and if he was real, that he (or she or them) even cared about things the way my church said God did.

At the end of July 2022 and with the help of Bruce’s blog, I told my husband I considered myself a Christian agnostic. Christian in that I am content to practice a social Christianity for the sake of his ministry. I sincerely don’t want my faith status to disrupt his profession and passion and I sincerely love my Christian friends. I don’t want to cause him controversy and pain within the church.

I would be socially Christian in the outward trappings, but I told him that I refused to pray privately. I decided to act as if God didn’t exist, and if he did, then let him reveal himself clearly to me. So far, God hasn’t. I haven’t been struck by lightning. I’m the same person I’ve always been. I cuss more and pray less. My thoughts on abortion and sexuality are changing. But I’m essentially the same person. Better, I think, in how I treat others and how I treat myself.

I’m happier and more at peace with myself and the world as I face depression as essentially an atheist. I would much rather face depression without faith than face it with faith, as if I’m thrown into a fight with a demon with a bag over my head.

Moving Forward

I don’t know what the future holds for me as a non-Christian married to a devoted Christian who still feels a special call to be in church ministry. We have toddlers so we have many years ahead of raising children. My husband has resigned from the ministry for the time being for reasons not related to me. He is excited about finding a new church to join in our new city. I told him that I don’t think I’m eligible to become a new member of a church and that I don’t intend to hide the truth about my faith status from people we meet in churches. I don’t mind attending church with him some, because I enjoy having that connection with the whole family, but I’m also looking forward to exploring slow Sundays with no expectations except to truly rest.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

The Preventable Death of a Follower

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments
guest post

Guest post by Troy

My brother’s story, an indictment of the Evangelical church’s response to Covid vaccinations.

In early December 2021, I got a call from my mother. “Jason has Covid and is in the hospital. When he takes off the oxygen, he can’t breathe at all.” When my mother asked him why he wouldn’t get vaccinated, his response was “God will take care of me.” And while I thought his prognosis was good, two weeks later he died. He was in his late 40s, the baby of our family, the father of two adult children, and the father and provider of three young children.

Jason had a hard start in life. He was my stepbrother, a part of the joining of two families who had both lost parents in accidents; he lost his mother when he was a toddler. He had some issues with auditory processing, and I think he had trouble with conversational nuance and connecting the dots. He’d end up telling people what he thought they wanted to hear. Possibly this was his path to becoming a follower. High school was tough on him academically, college was out, so the army looked like his only option. Just before going to the army, Jason was arrested for drag racing. It’s laughable to me, he had a junker car, and I don’t know the details, but I can’t imagine he was out challenging people to race . . . but it all makes sense if it is yet another instance of following. The judge dismissed the charges since he was going into the army. But despite “following orders” being the army mainstay, following didn’t help him in the army. His testing limited him to infantry, and along with this his infantry comrades, he (nor they) wasn’t always the most upstanding of characters. The example I’ll cite is that he was with someone who looked into a car and saw a set of golf clubs, checked the door handle, found it unlocked, and took the clubs. Of course, most people would argue with someone stealing from a stranger’s car, but not a follower. Apparently, there were other missing things, and guilt by association ended Jason’s stint in the army with a less-than-honorable discharge.

After the army didn’t work out, he ended up working at McDonald’s. This is where he met his wife and also where he ended up joining her Evangelical church. (Parents of one of my friends wondered if their misguided marriage was because they both got mad cow disease by working at McDonald’s!) The follower had found his bliss. He didn’t have to try to guess what people wanted of him, no nuance or inferences, just obey the simple, easy-to-follow instructions. He also finally had a church family of people that would accept him; his disability didn’t really matter, he was “Brother Jason” and all that mattered was the remarkable zeal that is unique to the convert. While the extremes of his church were completely out of the mainstream, my mother confided in me that she was glad, because he was a follower, that he had landed there. As the army experience demonstrated, there are worse people he could be following. There are always nefarious people who will take advantage of followers.

Things turned around for Jason when our dad got him a temp job at his union shop. Dad impressed upon him what he needed to do: work hard, always be on time, and you will become a fully contracted employee. He now had a high income to lavish upon his beloved church. He was living for the LORD, and while we were on opposite sides of the religious spectrum, I certainly was happy that he finally had success in life. That said, the church truly taxed him financially. He gave 20% of his income to the church, and ended up living hand to mouth, and had his house foreclosed upon. While he listened to Dad to get and keep the job, Dad couldn’t impress upon him the abstraction of good credit.

Sadly Jason’s wife passed away 15 years ago, which led him to the Philippines, where he remarried. He ended up getting hepatitis during a return trip to the Philippines. While he recovered enough to go back to work, there were lingering health effects that no doubt made him very susceptible to Covid.

Before I proceed with my indictment, I want to reminisce back to when we were kids. It’s the late 1970s and our family is off to church. If it were Sunday, we were packing six boys into the Suburban and we were in the pews, never early unless we forgot to change our clocks back to standard time, but we were there. We pull into the parking lot and I recognize some of the teens who were active in the youth group. They wave us over, “Good morning,” “Are you guys wearing seat belts?” The answer was a big NO; for one thing, absolutely nobody wore seat belts, and if we tried, we weren’t going to squeeze everyone comfortably into even a large vehicle like a Suburban. “Oh, okay, well, we’re going to have to give you a ticket! My dad grumpily reaches for his wallet and pays the few dollars for the “offense.” “We care about you, and we want you back next Sunday.” Believe me, next Sunday we all had our seat belts on.

Now let me contrast this with the Evangelical church. While some on the religious right (in particular Franklin Graham) advocate for the Covid vaccines, most are either neutral or actively — and sometimes vehemently — hostile to the vaccines. Currently, around 500 people die every DAY from Covid — about three times the number of people who die in traffic accidents. My indictment is as follows: The Evangelical church has failed its followers. By not encouraging their “flocks” to get vaccines, they have failed them. My brother isn’t the only one; earlier in the pandemic I’d routinely see go-fund-me campaigns for large families who had lost one of their (Evangelical) unvaccinated parents. I do know that some people at my brother’s church did get vaccinated. But was it actively encouraged? Did it make the sermon every week as alcohol did? What, then, is their excuse for this failure? Ignorance? I have a lot of problems with religion. But I have zero problems with “We care about you, and we want you back next Sunday.”

One of Jason’s adult sons wistfully wondered (on Facebook) if he was off to the Paradise he had always told them about. But if Evangelicals don’t know the here and now, I have zero confidence they know the hereafter.

Evangelical pastors, redeem yourselves; I implore you to encourage your followers to get vaccinated. Heaven will wait.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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 God in Control?

Bruce Gerencser 2 Comments
guest post

A Guest Post by Merle Hertzler who blogs at The Mind Set Free

On September 11, 2001, millions of people watched in horror as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Why did God allow it to happen? Many were praying for God to protect their loved ones. And yet they watched the dreadful destruction occur. Why did this happen? Did God not love those people in the towers and in the planes? Did God not have the power to stop it? Christians would certainly say he had the power to prevent it. But he did not.

What about the thousands that died that day? You might suggest that God had some mysterious purpose in letting them die. Perhaps their time on earth was done.

Imagine the details that God would have had to control to assure that only those people whose time had come were killed. What if the planes had hit several stories higher or lower? What if the flights had been delayed 10 minutes? What if somebody in the towers had gotten stuck in traffic that morning? What if the planes had hit at a different angle? All these things would have altered the death toll. If God had planned for certain people to die that day, then he must have guided all these details. He must have guided the planes to hit the buildings exactly where they did. In other words, God would have had to have been in control of those airplanes, and the terrorists were merely doing what God directed. All of this is of course absurd. Such a God is a micro-manager. Such a God wanted those planes to hit the towers where they did.

And so, I conclude that the reason these people died had nothing to do with God having a purpose in them dying. It just happened. Random forces were at work. God was not in control.

Some would tell me he allowed it to happen to punish people. Did all those that died that day deserve to be punished? How did God control it so only those who deserved to die were killed?

Why does God allow suffering? Why do 3 million children starve every year? Why is there so much disease? Why does God not stop terrorists? These questions have been asked many times.

And it is good to ask such questions. A good God would expect us to ask questions.

Somehow, God is said to have a reason for it all. If a car misses us, that must have been God’s protection. If it hits us, somebody will say God is trying to teach us something. Everything must have a purpose. Otherwise, we are left with a God who refuses to help.

You and I would not respect a policeman who sees a rape about to take place and did nothing. It would be hard to respect someone who could help and refuses to do anything.

Where was God on 9/11? People cannot bear the thought that God might have just stood back and not cared. So, we are told that God must surely have had a purpose.

If God was in control of what happened to the people in those planes on September 11, and if he wanted them to die this way, then this event was not a tragedy. It was God’s will. But we all agree that it was a tragedy. So it, therefore, was not a good God’s will. Things happened that a good God would not have wanted. For whatever reason, God, if he exists, did not take control.

Now if God did not want it to be this way, and could have stopped it, how can you explain his actions? Many people have been blamed for that day. We have heard the pundits criticize the FBI and CIA. We have heard how airport and airline security was lax, and that airplane doors were not designed correctly. What about God? He apparently could have stopped it all, wanted to stop it, and did not stop it.

Likewise, disease has destroyed many lives throughout history. What did God think in the past when he looked down on children in polio wards? Did he look at the pain and suffering of innocent children, and think it was good? Did it have a purpose? No, I think not.

Many people were sure that this suffering was pointless. They thought that nature was acting by itself and causing this suffering. They wanted to stop it. They looked for a natural cause, and they found it. Then they looked for a way to overcome that natural cause, and they developed a vaccine. When the vaccine and other preventions became readily available, the illness was controlled. If God had a purpose for polio, were these people right to try to prevent it? Yes. They were very right. Polio was bad.

Did God cease to have a purpose for polio the moment prevention became readily available? Does God still have a purpose in allowing underprivileged children to suffer who do not have access to medicine? Isn’t it odd that the probability that God will have a purpose in a child being crippled by polio has a direct correlation with whether the child has access to modern medicine and sanitation?

Suppose that firemen arrive at a burning house with a child inside that they could rescue. Is it possible that God wants this child to suffer? If God wants the child to suffer, are they doing the child a disservice by rescuing her? Of course not. The firemen would not think that for a minute. They would do everything they could to rescue the child. They would assume that the suffering was bad.

Tomorrow, almost everyone will be doing something to prevent others from suffering. Nurses will care for the sick. Policemen will protect us. Road workers will fill in potholes. Researchers will look for cures for diseases. Truckers and sailors will bring us lots of cool stuff — all the way from China. We will go about our lives hoping to minimize the suffering of others. We all know suffering is bad. And so, we will try to stop it.

Which brings us to God. Suffering will happen tomorrow. God, if he exists, will not stop it. People will get sick. Accidents will happen. And where will God be? For whatever reason, he will not stop it. But people will know that it hurts. They will know it is bad, and they will try to stop it. Even if you tell us that suffering has a purpose, we will assume it is pointless, and will try to prevent it. But God will not stop it.

Do you think that he sometimes helps? Fine, but why is there all that suffering that he does not stop?

Some would argue that God is there comforting the suffering people. But how does that solve the problem? Would a fireman be excused for ignoring a fire if he later comforts the survivors? It is a good thing to comfort the suffering, but when it is completely within somebody’s power to stop suffering, and he does not do so, his comfort is small consolation to the victims. Has God been demoted from Supreme Ruler to Comforter-in-Chief?

It appears that God was not in control of the circumstances when those planes hit the towers. So why think that he is in control when somebody takes your parking space, a tree falls on your house, or a loved one has cancer? Why try to answer the agonizing question about why God did this? Is God trying to teach you patience? Is he trying to win people to himself? Is he punishing you, or teaching you to rely on him? No, it would seem to me that it just happens. And it seems that our minds can be much more at peace when we realize this.

I don’t think God has a purpose when bad things happen. I do not see a strong wind or a mighty movement of the earth when I need it. Random events cause random suffering. I accept that. God is not in control.

Or maybe God doesn’t even exist.

Some people might say that I should not be looking for God to intervene in might or power, but I should be listening instead for a still, small voice. I discuss that next.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Not A Conservative Anymore

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments
guest post

A Guest Post by Dia Wright

I have always been a sensitive girl, and life hurts. Life hurts me at every twist and turn. Not because of the screaming, people throwing things, overturning chairs, slamming doors—not because of the violence and heartbreak and tragedy I grew up with, even though I saw one small tragedy after another for so many painful growing-up years. No, it’s not because life sucks that I hurt. It’s not even because of the things people tell me about myself. Well, maybe that’s part of it. But what hurts me most of all is realizing that the world I trusted to keep me safe and secure from evil doesn’t even know me, and I have no protectors. Nobody understands. I am truly alone in the universe, just like everyone else is. For me, the hurt of wrecked illusions is a pain that pierces the core of me, the place where thought and feeling and emotion struggle for a voice, and this pain goes deeper and deeper until I want to die. I can only curl up with my head in my knees, feeling slow tears slip through my hair, wishing to God that I wasn’t so sensitive. Sensitive. What does the word even mean? Can I stop being sensitive and grow a backbone and not care about my feelings anymore? How can I stop hurting and letting life stomp all over me? Since when did life have to kick me in the face, anyhow? Who am I?

In my early years, I gave in to every emotion and cried all the time, about nothing, about everything. My rebellious, defiant, tantrum-throwing stub of preschool self was thrown behind locked wooden doors, pounding and shrieking, out of my mind, losing control. Thrown back behind the doors to cry it out alone. Whipped up and down with a belt buckle. Sometimes, I didn’t understand why I went crazy and shrieked and screamed and threw myself on the floor. It just happened and there didn’t seem to be any way to stop. I felt very crazy and ashamed of myself as a tiny girl with huge emotions. There were these three stages to the end of any bad day: the crying, the screaming, and then the punishment.

I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian and taught about Jesus from the start. The older I grew, the more intense the Christian talk became. Teachers and parents begged me to ask Jesus into my heart. They said it would be a gift to my mother on Mother’s Day, a gift to Jesus on Christmas. By the time I was seven, I had heard those childish altar call requests about a thousand times. By the time I was ten, I couldn’t resist the call of Christ anymore, and I was baptized. Really, I had been privately struggling with the huge and scary doctrines for several years, trying to fit them into my big little-girl mind, and nothing seemed to work. I was a sinful girl, but Jesus died to save me—whatever that meant. So I asked Jesus into my heart. I read the tracts and my Adventures in Odyssey Bible and I thought about Hell and the Rapture all the time. I served myself communion when no one was looking. I prayed when my anxious little stomach twisted in knots of fear. Still, I was getting bigger, and my spiritual responsibility loomed before me, as I reached the point of no return—the Age of Accountability. 

“You must believe in Jesus,” the people told me, their faces so serious and stern that I was scared. My parents. My brother. My Sunday School teachers and AWANA leaders, when they were done with the fun and games part of church. They wanted me to get spiritually serious. But I was a silly girl—they called me Her Silliness. I didn’t understand, and it made me upset. I just wanted to laugh and joke and make my friends happy, so they would laugh and joke as well. I wanted to run and be silly and throw sofa cushions, break candy piñatas, throw parties, run through the sprinkler. Why did I have to be serious at the end of it all? I tried to put my jokes into their serious spiritual discussions, but sometimes, they rebuked me for it, and that just ended in hurt and pain.

Why must I be so serious? They said they didn’t know what was going on in my mysterious little mind.

Being Serious was a strange business. Though I loved to laugh, to be silly and giggle and play pretend, as I grew bigger, being serious held a strange and deep fascination for me. So I started being serious when nobody was around. So serious they’d be shocked. I was very private and alone and serious behind my silly façade, and this side of me, also, I felt I must be protected from adults. They couldn’t know who I was inside.

When I listened to Mom’s Christian songs, this part of me that was mystical and strange and serious bubbled up like a fountain from a pool, and I shivered all over. Deep down, I was just thinking about me and how good it felt to be serious, but the music was my only connection with these high-flying feelings. I loved music—Christian music, radio pop songs, silly music, all music. The music made me feel and feel and feel.

Even then, I was looking for the beauty in song, in story, in film, in laughter, to fill me up like a cup and turn on all the lights in my darkening mind. I was a sensitive girl and clutched at any emotion, all emotion, wanting to feel and feel deeply. Needing to feel.

Now, I know the end of the story. That little sensitive girl who just wanted to stare at the sky from the windows of her mother’s car and listen to music and feel—she was never part of the plan for salvation. She would use anything to fill up her sensitive neediness, so she clutched at religion, though she was years from learning what this religion really meant to her. She was manipulated and pressured into accepting religion at a young age, leading to an excruciating teenage faith crisis that stripped her illusions as raw as exposed wire.

So slow is my tomorrow, gone to sorrow. I will forget who I am and breathe out a prayer of dishes. What do you know? The sun may find me running into a thousand other suns and the moon will crack like a magnifying glass and what do you know, not where the sun has been dancing on her stick the wall above my bedside swims with vacant colors. At night there was a storm and I spilled my water when I was too thirsty. Numbly I prayed for salvation, begged not to die and go to hell tonight. Fearful as a child, creeping around in the darkness. Flashes of light and rain fused to air and I was alone and so alone dreaming of drifting from the tropics to Antarctica on a map as flat as a rock. We have loved the slow snow at the windows and fell into piles of swans and leaves. On the dawn you breathe your storms of eyes into the stillness that always pervades your mind and keep it up and keep it up and keep dancing because you will dance your evergreen death in a million light years the ballet of lines on pages serenade your old selves all you can ever hope to find the syncopation of the rhyme you can’t grasp like old puppet shows. Dancing blues. Dancing like the walls and floors dance. Dancing like the apricots in heaven dance from the leaves of the trees. Me and you. Dance in the greyhound station forever and I pray they never stop and I pray you never stop and kiss me before bedtime every night and sleep on my dog bones and serenade my flowers to unopened grandeur and the sugar flower on the map of time will keep it up till the dawn of all that you’ve not been feeling and get rid of the bugs and write your sorrows into the people friendly people persons on the road to the universe of muddy footprints joy in the living night that swallows the embryonic moon from the highway…

The AWANA club is run by a guy named Mr. Zeto who has a long white beard. He has a big red handkerchief that he mops his nose with, and that’s gross. Every week he calls up two kids to hold the flags—the American flag and the AWANA flag. We have to sing a dumb song about AWANA every week and shout, “Youth on the march!” louder and louder, until he’s properly satisfied. He can’t sing at all. Reminds me of a robot. Mr. Zeto really doesn’t like kids, but he wants them to know Jesus and memorize their Bibles. He says if you ask Jesus into your heart you go to Heaven when you die. Mr. Zeto angrily surveys our toes which aren’t lined up correctly on the masking-tape line. I am usually scrunched almost to the point of invisibility within the smashed-up line of sweaty big kids. He screams at us loud and nasty to put our toes on the line but our toes never quite satisfy him. Yelling yelling yelling.

But my mommy and daddy are always waiting outside the door for me. When Mr. Zeto is done yelling at us, we can go home. I like talking to my mommy and daddy on the car ride home. I feel happy and peaceful now that there is no more noise and no more dodge ball for another week. The world is dark and loose and coming apart with stars. There are streaks of light in the rain around every passing street light and I am small, small, small. Small before the timelessness of history and Noah’s Ark and Adam and Eve and Jesus dying on the cross and all the distant dark obscure things of the past I’ve just learned about. Smaller than anything I could imagine. Like I’m always looking at myself through a telescope. I am far away. And moving farther away. They say I am like a big girl trapped in a little girl’s body.

I want many things. I want there to be another short girl at AWANA who will understand me. I want Mr. Zeto to take a train (peanut brain!) I want to spy on everyone. I want paper dolls and lollipops. I want to understand this thing about there being a little Jesus in my heart I can’t see. I guess if He’s in my heart he’s out of sight pretty much and you can just keep him there like a paper doll in a paper dollhouse and you don’t have to worry about Him falling out. Once you sign the back of the tract he’s there to stay. I like to read the tracts they have in a big box on the wall. They say things like Does God Really Care? and there are pictures of ladies with haunted-looking eyes staring at the stars and forgotten gravestones that have the inscription Forgiven. I feel like that haunted lady but I am a very little girl and they say I am too young to make a faith decision. I feel very still and solemn but there’s a part of me that scrunches shorter and shorter on the line where I am properly hidden and within my own mind.

When I am first to come at AWANA that is best of all. Then I make up plays with myself and act them out in the darkened church sanctuary. Dark, wide, empty, fathomless. So empty empty empty of short people and tall people and Mr. Zeto and the rest of the folks. There’s only God in there but you can’t see him. You aren’t allowed to climb under the stacks of chairs or play the piano or run on the stage. But nobody stops you from running alone.

I am the dark center of a flower of darkness. Everything is the same. It is like before God made the world and there was nothing but water and dark and no sin at all.

Run, twirl, fall down, sing a song, live and die, listen, spin, spin, spin…

There is no freedom like being alone in the sanctuary.

But there were other church basements. There were other long Sunday and Wednesday nights learning how to be a good evangelical girl. Time may come and time may go, but there will always be church basements. Water damage, spiders, corners, kids, adults. And me.

When I was fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, I was looking across the parking lot of a church called Fox River Lutheran. When I was sixteen, I was on my own there. My parents had stopped going to the church, but I still went to the youth group on Sunday nights. They played songs to the beat of a middle school girl band thumping and clunking and half-singing and giggling their way through bland top 40 worship hits. I still went to the youth group and I couldn’t tell you why. I didn’t like the church at all. But I wanted to go to that youth group and I came clawing for redemption and God time and time again.

There was a ping-pong table and a pool table and that whatever-you-call-it game you play when you’re bored in the church basement at youth group. But the middle school boys were obnoxious and got on my nerves. One of the kids got up when I decided to eat at his table. I must have smelled bad or something. But I kept going.

Looking across the church parking lot, there were cars flying by in the darkness. And the field behind the church was darkness. All was darkness with faint streaks of light and I was cold. And I didn’t want to play games with the other kids. They beat each other with dodge balls and captured the flag and played four-square endlessly till I couldn’t stand it. I just wanted to sit outside their games. I wanted to watch the sun spilling over the clouds like an over-filled pot of spaghetti and write in my journals and make up a story. I always made up my best stories when I was watching other people and ignoring them from the sidelines.

I was alone and afraid and confused. I was doubting. I felt distorted, warped, stricken, conflicted, tearful, isolated. Contagious. Different. Unsaved. Not understanding. Not yet.

All the church seemed to preach about was Donald Trump and conservative values. But I was years from myself. Flung into a deep, solemn, half-redeemed night of adolescence. The smallness and fragility of my sixteen-year-old soul was lost from church basement eyes. I was short and not popular and I was peculiar. I didn’t know what to think. Stars and grass and alone and my parents and me. And me. I came to test who I was. And I don’t know. I lost track. Weeks turn to months and years. And scribbled poems. And church basements.

Somewhere along the line, I realize that I am not a conservative anymore. I can’t even remember how I used to think. How I used to understand.

Churches we were years from understanding. The stretches of road leading to this church and that church. My childhood, on the road to church. On the road to redemption. Christian radio droning away. Voices of my friends. A sanctuary of peace and light. Hope. Hope. Faith. Let me never end. I want to be everlasting. I don’t want to die. Don’t want to go home. Want something of my own. Want my reflection in these windows. Give me this.

Give me this.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Better without God

Bruce Gerencser 10 Comments
guest post

A guest post by John

I was having a meal with a friend recently. He is a really nice guy and fun to be around. We’ve known each other for at least 17 years. He grew up as a Southern Baptist, but is now an atheist. I’ve been an agnostic atheist for about 6 years. Prior to my deconversion, I had been a Christian for 36 years, mostly in the evangelical/charismatic world. It turns out that my friend and I went through our deconversion process basically at the same time, but neither of us knew about the other. Both of us are still mostly closeted atheists. My wife doesn’t even know the full extent of my “change in some beliefs.” As with my friend, most of my friends and family are Christians and, like him, I’m not ready to go full-on just yet.

It wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that I noticed some of his posts on social media that made me go, hmmm. There weren’t many and they were subtle, but they made me think that he might be questioning his Christian beliefs as I had. I decided to ask him about it. I knew he was a Christian, but I also knew he was not really hardcore. So even if I was wrong and told him where I was in life, it would probably be fine. Once I brought it up and we both came clean, so to speak, we spent about 4 hours talking about our deconversion experiences. We still talk about them to this day as we proceed down this road.

One thing I noticed about my friend is that he is just as great a human being now as he was as a Christian. In fact, he is probably a better human in many ways. I feel the same about myself. I know I’m a better human being now as an atheist than I was as a Christian. I’ve found this to be a pretty common theme among people who used to believe in a God but are now atheists. I’m less judgmental, I have a lot less fear in my life, I don’t have any hidden agendas to get people to my church or my Jesus, I’m more compassionate and empathetic towards myself and others, and when I give (time, money, etc.) it’s because I want to, not because I feel like I have to. And not because I think I’ll get something in return. Yep, the prosperity gospel (BIG eye roll).

One thing that helped me become a better person is that now I feel free to study other ways of viewing life and the world. I enjoy learning about secular Buddhist and Taoist philosophy. I have picked up many tools from both philosophies that better help me navigate life. My overall mental and emotional state is better now than it ever was when I was a believer.

I can also say that life in general is better. I have more money because I’m not giving 10%-20% of my income to religious organizations. I’m free to focus on my job without thinking I am doing so until I can do full-time ministry. Ugh! It makes me cringe just typing that out! I’m much more chill now and worry less about things that used to worry me. Not praying anymore really helps! People pray because they want things to change or turn out a certain way. It’s an illusion of control. So much wasted energy. And, in my opinion, praying often takes the place of people doing things for themselves and others. Now, if I can change something that I think needs changing in my life, I do it. If I can’t change it, I adapt the best I can — using the tools that I have picked up along the way. Tools that I did not have when I just prayed about most things, hoping God would somehow fix them.

I was listening to a podcast a while back and the hosts were talking about what didn’t happen in their lives after they left religion. Their pets didn’t die, their cars didn’t break down, they didn’t get sick, their marriages didn’t fall apart, they didn’t lose their jobs, and life pretty much went on as normal. Even better than normal. I remember being told in multiple churches that if you decide to leave God, all kinds of bad things will happen to you. I’m not saying life is perfect, but most of those bad things I was told would happen never took place; not any more than they were happening when I was still a Christian. Cars break down, jobs change, pets die, loved ones die, people get bad news from the doctor, and people get divorced. Life happens to everyone, theist and non-theist alike.

Here is an example of what I believe is me being a better human now than I was as a believer. Not to toot my own horn, but simply an example of how I’ve changed since leaving religion. A close relative came to me recently and told me she was gay. I was thrilled for her! I was so happy that she had discovered this about herself. I pretty much knew, based on clues over the last couple of years, and was very humbled and happy that she trusted me with this news. She has been pretty careful about whom she shares this with, and I don’t blame her a bit for that. She did tell another close relative who happens to be a very devout Christian and it did not go well. I’m so glad that I have been away from religion long enough, and have grown as much as I have, that I could celebrate with my loved one instead of judging her for what I once considered to be wrong and “sinful.” I plan on continuing to change and to grow to be the best human I can be during the time I have here on this planet. No God needed.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Racist Christians in a World of Wokeness

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments
guest post

A Guest Post by Dia Wright

People didn’t used to be so brazen about it. The topic used to be one that caused feelings of shame, grief, and embarrassment. Much like sex and cancer and death, the topic of racism used to be one that Christian parents were reluctant to discuss with their kids. They wanted to make sure they said the right thing. Parents were careful to point to Martin Luther King, Jr., as somebody who fought racism with integrity and sought a society where color would not matter. They focused solely on “good” Black activists like King and Rosa Parks, as examples of Christians fighting racism in socially acceptable ways. Staying within a safe, comfortable vision of idealistic America, while nevertheless acknowledging the shame of racism, these parents thought they were doing the best they could. They tried not to think about it too hard.

All this has changed. It’s 2023, and massive changes have swept through America. With right-wing Christian extremism on the rise, more and more Christians are showing their ugliest sides. Well-meaning white believers have abandoned their façade of caring about justice, and now openly display racist rants on social media, listen to racist pastors, etc. Really, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who are well tuned in. It is nothing to be surprised about—nothing that has not been a long time in the making.

Nevertheless, as someone who still considers herself a Christian, it is shocking and disturbing to come across racist Christians online and in the real world. It is shocking when the church you once attended weekly sends out a bus to Washington on January 6th, 2021, when a person who went to this church is rumored to be running a brazenly racist Trump merchandise stand out by the highway, when the pastor claims that slavery was a small part of American history and that George Floyd died of a drug overdose. It is shocking and disturbing when your parents’ friends online are all rabid conservatives who call liberals horrible names, saying that you cannot be a Christian and vote differently from the way they do. I have seen violent threats, profanity, rage, hysteria, and hatred—all coming from people who, in the same breath, promote Bible verses about God’s love and devotional excerpts. There is an ugly stain of racism spreading and spreading among white Christians I know, and it is doing more harm than we can possibly imagine in our smug, self-righteous state of mind.

White, right, salt and light…that’s their life philosophy. They used to not be so obvious about it, as I said. They used to quote King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and share heartwarming stories about Black people uniting with white people. Even if their anti-racism was superficial, it was better than nothing. They used to quote clever clichés such as “It’s not the race, it’s grace. It’s not the skin, it’s sin.” They used to say that there is no Jew or Greek with Christ, so there should be no Black or white, either. They used to plaster over Black people’s anger by saying all lives matter. Not anymore. Now, they’re coming ever closer and closer to saying that Black lives don’t matter.

I came across this obscure, redneck IFB pastor in a cowboy hat, who posted a YouTube video called, “WHITE PRIVELEDGE.” The video’s seemingly ignorant and misspelled title was absolutely done on purpose. The video was nearly twenty minutes long, and the comment section dripped with “amens.”

I regretted watching the video. I wanted to throw up, more like it. He started out calling Black people thugs, then listed the ways in which he apparently had it worse than Black people when he was growing up, because he was raised tough and old-fashioned on a farm and got “whupped” and had to work for every privilege he got. After he was smug for a good ten minutes, he listed off every imaginable negative stereotype about Black people. Among them, he told Black people to stop wearing hoodies, stop listening to rap music (“nobody likes it”), stop “murdering your children at Planned Parenthood,” stop singing loudly and dancing in church, stop rioting and burning buildings, stop “whining,” stop “smirking,” stop being deadbeat fathers, stop getting unearned government benefits…and on and on and on. The only Black people this pastor approved of, in fact, were a select few with conservative views similar to his, who never challenged his white American authority in any way. In addition, he wasn’t too kind about poor white people who rely on welfare (such as my family when I was a kid).  He was proud that his ancestors came from the British Isles and they brought the good old-fashioned Bible with them and they built this nation and they taught him values—unlike those low-born, urban thugs out there.

Don’t tell me that white Christian conservatives aren’t racist today!

Racism hides behind code words. These code words are known as “dog whistles” to some, but they’re mostly just thinly veined propaganda. Here are some code phrases to watch out for: “Western civilization was built on Christian values,” “In the good old days of the 1950s,” “When America was great,” and even “Biblical values” and “family values.” Yes, “family values” is a racist code phrase. Because these people believe that the Black family is dead, and that Black people cannot form successful families, they think that a Bible-believing, white family is the answer to everything. This reasoning mirrors American history, in which slave families were ruthlessly split up to be sold because the slaveholders believed that Black people inherently lacked family instincts. Also, they mourn the fact that these family values began to fade out during the cultural revolutions of the 1960s—the decade in which both of the main cultural revolutions, the Civil Rights Movement and the emergence of rock and roll, were fueled by the Black community. They may try to skirt the fact that they believe upholding Black civil rights has ruined America, but they really believe it, deep down inside.

And there are many more racist code phrases. The best thing to do if you encounter them is to contradict them as outright falsehoods.

As conservative Christians in the 2020s, we have invented a whole new list of sins. These sins are nothing like they were in previous decades. Here are the top sins: social distancing, wearing a mask, getting vaccinated, voting Democratic, and being “woke.” What exactly does it mean to be woke? It is another one of those code words that is thrown around vaguely to mean whatever the speaker wants. Yet it causes extreme emotional reactions because of the strong images it brings to mind. Many Christians who are forever calling other people “snowflakes” for not tolerating their conservatism, at the same time, have a “cancel culture” of no longer associating with anyone they consider “woke.” The Salvation Army may be on the “woke” list one day for seeming to support BLM, and the next day, it may be a popular preacher who shows empathy for BLM protesters. The next day, it may be a longtime friend who disagrees with the generally accepted view of racial reconciliation. Peaceful disagreement doesn’t exist anymore. Now, the question that God will ask everyone on Judgment Day, is, apparently, “Were you woke or were you not woke?” (My fingers are sore from all these air quotes.)

Just today, I saw a Facebook post on a Christian “discernment” page. It showed a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters shrouded in darkness, holding signs that read STOP WHITE OPRESSION. Facing off against the evil protesters was one lone, brave, white Christian, holding a cross high. Written in small letters above the pictures were the words “Viking Christian.” This left little doubt as to what the creator of this post thinks about racial reconciliation and Black people in general. Sure, isn’t that being Christlike, to demonize all Black people and glorify all white people?

Do you want to know what the top deplorable sin is in the eyes of God? Pride. Check out the book of Proverbs. There are also plenty of verses in there about the righteous person standing up against the poor being oppressed. Don’t let people kid you—not even your church. There is no “sin of the year.” Wokeness is not necessarily a sin. White American nationalism is a sin because it can’t be separated from pride.

But it’s impossible to talk very long about this touchy subject. The white Christians I know are very eager to stand up for truth. They are so eager to stand up for truth that they annoy the shit out of me. I wish they’d stop standing up for the truth for three seconds and listen to what I have to say. I’m not asking them to agree with me or change their minds—I just wish they’d understand me in some way. I wish we could get across this impossible woke-versus-anti-woke barrier in some way! Ugh! Instead, they bully and intimidate everyone and anyone who shows the teeniest little smidge of liberalism. Paranoid and seizing upon every conspiracy theory they can find, they cling to morally bankrupt former presidents, tout sketchy agendas in all capital letters, call their opponents stupid; and yes, of course, take out all their pent-up, narrow-minded frustration on Black people along with other minorities.

People didn’t use to be so brazen about it. They didn’t used to be so bitter, either. There is a spirit of harshness, meanness, and bitterness that is ripping relationships to shreds, leaving cold silences for former friends, and screaming on the street corners. People are so bitter and sure of themselves these days, that the only way to stay safe is to make sure you don’t empathize with anyone different from you. Don’t spend too much time with people of different backgrounds. They might change your mind about the deeply-held views you’ve had since childhood. If you see them as people just like yourself, then you will no longer have a basis to be divided. So stay unified—and stay white! We built this country, anyhow, didn’t we?

I guess that’s the reason the Christians I know are so insistent that they’re fighting a culture war. It’s part of human nature to want to stay divided, at war, and on the winning side. Yet they’re pitifully wrong. If they look too closely at the culture war they’re fighting, they’ll see that they’re fighting for all the wrong things. It’s not Christian at all. In fact, it’s a race war, and they either unconsciously or consciously see Black Americans as their opponents.

We are not the light, and they are not the darkness. I am surrounded by racist Christians in a world of wokeness, in which nobody listens to each other or cares about each other. And I’m still trying to find my place in a world that doesn’t understand.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

The Age of Consent

Bruce Gerencser 9 Comments
guest post

A Guest Post by Bob who blogs at Some Questions for God.

This post is the result of a short email encounter that I had with a Church of Christ minister after I challenged him to give me a biblical pronouncement against pedophilia – to which – he immediately responded . . .”you seriously defending pedophilia?” – to which – I immediately responded . . .”No, I am seriously asking you to tell me what the bible (God) has to say about pedophilia”  — to which the Church of Christ minister had nothing to say.

My request to him was, ” . . . give me the exact age at which a child is no longer a child – and give it to me from your “Holy Book” where God lays down the law as to the age a child should be in order to be old enough to marry — old enough to have sex.”

Pedophilia is defined as sexual feelings directed toward a child.  I guess we can’t pass laws against what a person “feels,” but once they act on those feelings, those acts should rightly be considered unlawful and immoral violations against a child, as prescribed by the society(s) that we live in. I do not subscribe to the notion that pedophilia is a “sin” (and it looks like a lot of Christian ministers don’t either, based on the number of them who sexually assault children in their own congregations). “Sin” is a religious term used to control the ignorant masses.

We know that the God of the Bible is concerned with the eating of shellfish, the mixing of fabrics, as well as working on the “Sabbath”, but what about a 10-year-old girl – show me in the bible where God is concerned for her?

Since so many Christian enthusiasts claim that the Bible is the source book for moral standards, I just want to know where God lays down the laws as to the age children should be before they are old enough to marry – old enough to have sex?

If anything, it seems that the God of the Bible actually approves of pedophilia:

And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. (Numbers 31:15-18)

Do I need to explain these verses, or can you, dear reader, just let your imagination take over and picture what was going to happen to these poor girls, female children, virgins, in the hands of these Hebrew soldiers, at the command of the Lord’s representative, Moses.

From the Wikipedia page on Age of Consent: In traditional societies, the age of consent for a sexual union was a matter for the family to decide, or a tribal custom. In most cases, this coincided with signs of puberty, menstruation for a woman, and pubic hair for a man.

The first recorded age-of-consent law dates from 1275 in England; as part of its provisions on rape, the Statute of Westminster 1275 made it a misdemeanor to “ravish” a “maiden within age,” whether with or without her consent. The phrase “within age” was later interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke (England, 17th century) as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was twelve years of age.

The American colonies followed the English tradition, and the law was more of a guide. For example, Mary Hathaway (Virginia, 1689) was only nine when she was married to William Williams. Sir Edward Coke “made it clear that the marriage of girls under 12 was normal, and the age at which a girl who was a wife was eligible for a dower from her husband’s estate was 9 even though her husband be only four years old.”

In 17th-century Spain an official legal document of the central council of the Inquisition of Madrid (The Suprema) written in 1614 stated that “adults” were then considered to be “women over twelve and men over fourteen”.

In the 16th century, a small number of Italian and German states determined the minimum age for sexual intercourse for girls, setting it at twelve years. Towards the end of the 18th century, other European countries also began to enact similar laws. The first French Constitution of 1791 established the minimum age at eleven years. Portugal, Spain, Denmark, and the Swiss cantons initially set the minimum age at ten to twelve years.

Age of consent laws were, historically, difficult to follow and enforce: legal norms based on age were not, in general, common until the 19th century, because clear proof of exact age and precise date of birth were often unavailable.

In the USA the age of consent has been all over the place – In 1895 the state of Delaware’s age of consent was 7 years old.

My great-grandmother was married at age 15 in 1891. 

My great, great, great grandmother was married at age 12 in 1841.

Now that I think about it, perhaps it’s a good thing that the bible doesn’t offer any guidance on the age of consent, because if it did, in the US we would likely have 13-year-old girls forced to marry 40-year-old preachers.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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.

Born-Again Atheist, No Turning Back!

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments
born again atheist
Cartoon by Mark Lynch

Guest Post by Lon Ostrander

People often ask, how did you go from preacher to atheist. What happened? What caused you to change your mind? Many of us are familiar with the chorus: “I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, No turning back, No turning back.” The song seems to suggest that a U-turn was always a possibility that needed to be constantly and intentionally resisted. There are U-turns and then there are U-turns. For me, it wasn’t like an instant realization that I was heading in the wrong direction and executing a sudden handbrake turn in the middle of Main Street. No, it was more like a huge, gradual, barely discernible arc away from the straight gate and narrow way until I found myself traveling a sparsely trafficked wide road marked by rational thought and naturalistic explanations. Though I hardly noticed, the arc was complete, and six years after leaving the pulpit, I had only to execute an easy and liberating merge onto the Atheist Highway.

Decades earlier, my parents permitted our Pentecostal lady co-pastors to take eight-year-old me to a fire-and-brimstone tent meeting where the thundering music and screaming evangelist had me convinced that Jesus was returning that very night and that the end of my world was upon me. The possibility loomed that I would never get home alive and may never again see my parents and siblings. Well, Jesus didn’t return that night. The rapture did not happen, and I was not left behind. Much to my relief, I even survived long enough for the preacher ladies to get me back home with only minor psychological damage. Well, that’s just my opinion. The preacher ladies happily reported that I had decided to follow Jesus. Well, it was more terror than decision. The seed of doubt was planted that very night but would lie dormant for years.

Later in life came opportunities for repeated salvations, reaffirmations, and total immersions.

I had theological questions but more particularly, eschatological questions. Malevolent eschatology had gotten me into this mess, and I hoped that a better understanding of scriptures would eventually help me make sense of it all. When I began my ministerial studies at the age of forty-one, my concerns only increased. Especially concerning were the words attributed to Jesus as recorded in Matthew 16:28, “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom” There are similar statements in the other gospels and it looked like Jesus lied, was mistaken, or couldn’t tell time. My quest for understanding eventually led me to discover the preterist movement which essentially teaches that every event associated with the end times, Jesus’ second coming, the tribulation, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, had already happened. Jesus’ return to earth was a “spiritual” return and the establishment of the Kingdom of God was likewise spiritual. I had only to check my spiritual rearview mirror to see it. Preterism was briefly satisfying, but as we all know, eschatology is a bitch, and then we die. Atheism ahead. Take the next exit.

In 2007 my secular work took me to Osaka, Japan. Six years before, I had given up the ministry, as ordination of a divorced and remarried matrilineal Jew was just not happening in the Central New York District of the Wesleyan Church. So, I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I was never “caught in the pulpit” as a nonbeliever. My questions and doubts while pastoring were primarily theological and not really an obstacle.

In Japan, Christians are a small minority but while there I attended a local Christian church and found the Christians there to be just as petty and disagreeable as they were back home. The predominantly non-Christian Japanese people were, by contrast, always friendly, polite, and cordial. It was in Japan that I visited a local bookstore and picked up copies of Richard Dawkins’ “God Delusion” and Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great.” My “spiritual” journey had already taken me to a place of practical deism with brief stops at preterism, liberalism, and universalism. I realized that what little was left of my faith was not only far less toxic, but also entirely without value. It is only a matter of practicality to discard worthless trash. From there merging onto the atheist highway was easy. I was no longer a believer. It was also during my assignment in Japan that my father died. I returned home for the funeral, no longer a believer. I attended my father’s funeral and burial as an atheist, with more anger than empathy for the Christian hopes and fantasies expressed at my father’s funeral service and burial.

Since embracing the atheist and existential nihilist labels, have I ever experienced any doubts? No, never a doubt in my mind. I cannot imagine any scenario that could possibly motivate me to turn back to religious woo of any description.

Do I have any regrets? To borrow a few lines from Ol’ Blue Eyes, “Regrets, I’ve had a few, But then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption.” Certainly, I regret that I spent more than half of my life believing in a myth as though it were true. I regret the negative church experiences that my family had to endure as they were uprooted from home in New York to experience rather nasty church situations in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and then back home again. Finally, I regret the anguish they experienced coming to grips with the reality that preacher and believer dad was no longer either. Dad had changed his course. Husband had changed his mind.

On the other hand, I am encouraged that we’re seeing it through together. Susan and I just celebrated our forty-fifth anniversary on December ninth. Our sons and their families are very much a part of our lives. Our sons and their step sibs by a previous marriage are all friends. I have made the big U-turn. About religious faith, I have most certainly changed my mind, yet life is good, ever challenging, and much too short.

For five years now, I have had the unique privilege of serving as president of The Clergy Project, our online community of current and former religious professionals who have changed their minds. With the rarest of exceptions, that only prove the rule, we will not be turning back. We are not flip floppers. We are not wavering or vacillating. We have changed our minds, all 1,222 of us, and now we are seeing this thing through together, providing mutual support, community, and hope to each other. We hail from more than fifty countries and include former Christians of all stripes, Jews, Muslims, a Buddhist here and a Hindu there, a couple former Wiccans, a Raelian, a Moonie, and even a Zoroastrian. We dared to question. We dared to examine the evidence. We dared to face the truth, and sooner or later we dared to let others know we have changed our minds. For many of us, coming out as nonbelievers came at great cost, but as Winston Churchill quipped at the end of the movie, Darkest Hour, “Those who never change their minds never change anything.”

Well, that is my story. Twenty-one years after leaving the pulpit, and fifteen years after becoming a born-again atheist, I’m still easing on down that atheist highway. Turning back is not an option.  It’s not the “Highway to Hell” (AC/DC), but more like the “Road to Nowhere” (Talking Heads). It is the road travelled and the people we share it with that make it all worthwhile.

Leonard (Lon) Ostrander, born atheist on October 22, 1949, in Elmira, New York, former Wesleyan Pastor 1995-2001, quality assurance representative, current president of The Clergy Project

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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 You Interested in Writing a Guest Post?

Bruce Gerencser 0 Comments
guest post

I am always interested in having people write guest posts for this site. If you are interested in writing a guest post, please use the contact form to email me. You can choose any subject. If you are a Christian, you can even write a post about how wrong I am about God, Christianity, and the Bible.

Have a story to tell about your life as a Christian and subsequent deconversion? Testimonies are always welcome. I have found that readers really appreciate and enjoy reading posts about the journey of others away from Evangelicalism. Perhaps you are someone who has left Evangelicalism, but still believes in the existence of a deity/energy/higher power. Your story is welcome too.

If you worried about grammar or spelling, don’t be. Carolyn, my ever-watchful friend and editor, edits every guest post before it is published. If she can turn my writing into coherent prose, trust me, she can do the same for yours.

Anonymous posts are okay, as are articles previously posted elsewhere. If you have written something for your own blog and would like to post it here, please send it to me.

If you have previously written a guest post, I am more than happy to publish another one from you. Some readers have become regular contributors. It’s important for readers to hear from other writers from time to time.

Several readers have emailed me in the past about writing guest posts. I am w-a-i-t-i-n-g. 🙂 Seriously, if you have something you would like to say, I am more than happy to post it here. The ball is in your court.

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.

Connect with me on social media:

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 Gerencser