The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Welcome

  • Black Collar Crime: Catholic Priest Charles Thessing Pleads Guilty to Drowning Kittens — No Jail Time

    charles thessing drowns cats

    The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

    Charles Thessing, a Roman Catholic priest in Little Rock, Arkansas, recently pleaded guilty to animal cruelty.

    Earlier this year, Fox 13 reported:

     A West Memphis priest is under fire after he was arrested and charged Tuesday morning with aggravated animal cruelty.

    This comes after police found the pastor was involved in improper care and treatment of an animal.

    FOX13 learned Father Charles Thessing is the lead priest at St. Michael’s Catholic Church. City officials said Thessing was allegedly involved with drowning cats.

    “The deliberate harming of an animal is 100% unacceptable,” said Kerry Facello, the director of West Memphis Animal Services. Cruel and inhumane were the words she used to describe the charges against Thessing.

    West Memphis Police said they arrested Father Thessing after he allegedly violated local and state animal welfare laws. FOX13 went digging into the Crittenden County jail log. FOX13 found the 63-year-old was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals.

    “It is an ongoing investigation, as you know,” Facello said. “There were cats involved in this situation.”

    Thessing is the priest at Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Crawfordsville, Ark., and St. Michael Catholic Church in West Memphis. St. Michael is also a school that is right next door to the church.

    Facello said her shelter takes animal cruelty cases seriously and this case will now be their top priority.

    “To see someone be actively cruel, to see neglect, to see harm come to them in any way, not only is it heartbreaking and illegal, it makes a statement for how that person lives their life,” said Facello.

    Facello said aggravated animal cruelty is a Class D felony in all 50 states.

    Earlier this week, Thessing pleaded guilty to animal cruelty. He, astoundingly, received NO jail time!

    Fox 13 reports:

     A West Memphis priest pleaded guilty to two counts of cruelty to animals after being arrested in February amid allegations of drowning cats.

    Father Charles Thessing entered his guilty plea on Tuesday and was ordered to pay $3,000 total, including a $530 fine and a $2,250 restitution payment to the West Memphis Animal Shelter.

    However, animal advocacy group In Defense of Animals called the sentence “a slap on the wrist,” saying Thessing would trap and drown cats.

    The Catholic Diocese of Little Rock removed Thessing from his church duties as the case played out.

    KTBS reports:

    At the time he was arrested, he was reportedly serving as the lead priest at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in West Memphis and Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Crawfordsville, Ark. He was removed from his posts while the case was pending.

    According to a publication of the Catholic Church, Thessing has been appointed to begin a new assignment in the Diocese of Shreveport effective Jan. 1. There is no information on what his new assignment will be. He will remain incardinated in the Diocese of Little Rock.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • Black Collar Crime: Southern Baptist Youth Pastor Jacob Barnett Pleads Guilty to Child Sex Crimes

    jacob barnett

    The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

    Jacob Barnett, a youth pastor at Catawba Valley Baptist Church in Troutville, Virginia, recently pleaded guilty to child sex crimes.

    In August 2025, Baptist Press reported:

    Authorities say Jacob Barnett used various social media accounts to solicit sexually explicit material from underage girls across state lines while serving as youth pastor at Catawba Valley Baptist Church, leading to his arrest on Aug. 7.

    Barnett, 34, was apprehended by FBI agents Aug. 6 in North Carolina and is being held at the Catawba County Detention Center in North Carolina without bond, according to media reports.

    A May 18 tip led the FBI to investigate a TikTok account appearing to beling to a teen boy named “Jodie Johnson.” That individual had contacted a 15-year-old girl in Michigan and, after leading her to exchange phone numbers and days of persistent messaging, convinced her to send a sexually explicit video of herself.

    The investigation revealed that the account belonged to Barnett, with phone records confirming he had sent the messages and routinely interacted with minors online. His TikTok account followed “thousands of young girls.” Barnett also used other social media accounts such as Snapchat and Discord to pose as a teenager and solicit sexually explicit videos from minors.

    Catawba Valley Baptist church released a statement on Aug. 8, stating the congregation was “devastated” over the news.

    “We are deeply grieved by these allegations. Our prayers are with anyone who may have been impacted, and we ask the Lord for comfort, healing, and justice,” it read.

    “As a church, we remain fully committed to the highest standards of protection, safety, and care for every child, student, and family who is part of our fellowship. We continue to take every measure possible to maintain a safe environment for all.

    “We are cooperating with the proper authorities and will refrain from additional public comment while the legal process continues. In this difficult moment, we are leaning on the grace of God and seeking His wisdom and peace.

    Last week, Barnett pleaded guilty to his crimes.

    WVVA reports:

     A youth pastor pleaded guilty Monday, December 9 in a case involving attempted child sex crimes, according to court records. 

    Jacob Ryan Barnett, 34, former youth pastor at Catawba Valley Baptist Church, was arrested by FBI agents in North CarolinaAugust 6, 2025 on charges of solicitation of sexual material from minors.

    The FBI received a tip that Barnett had attempted to groom a 15-year-old girl living in Michigan. Investigators discovered Sunday, May 18, 2025, the 15-year-old girl received a message that appeared to belong to a teen boy who called himself “Jodie Johnson”, according to court records.

    Barnett faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum punishment of life.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • Important Blogs News

    atheist blogger

    I’ve had a rough couple of days. My OCPD is on overload. As you know, I moved this site to a new host. Everything was working as it should be until yesterday. In recent years, I have used Gmail addresses to administer this blog. Thanks to Google blocking these addresses, I had to set up a domain email address: bruce@brucegerencser.net. This forced me to change and add records to my DNS records, contact support twice, and add an SMTP plugin to handle sending email. As of now, everything “seems” to be working. I have successfully received test comment notifications and contact form emails. I still have a problem to fix with WordPress.com, but after waiting two hours on chat, I gave up. Maybe tomorrow.

    Please let me know if you see anything amiss. If you emailed me or commented before I fixed things, I may not have received it. If not, please send/post them again.

    Thank you for your understanding.

    signature

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • What Do We Do When Doctors Have No Answers?

    doctor chart

    Thirty years ago — I was thirty-eight — I pastored Our Father’s House in West Unity, Ohio. As Polly and our children will attest, I was a busy preacher, a workaholic who rarely took time off from the ministerial grind. In the summer of 1995, I started feeling tired all the time. I wasn’t sleeping. My muscles ached. I wondered, “What is wrong with me?”

    I sought out the care of a primary care doctor in Defiance, Ohio, who gave me a half-assed exam, drew no blood, and decided that my real problem is that I was depressed over my mom’s death FOUR YEARS EARLIER! That, of course, was so far from the truth that it wasn’t funny. I told this medical school reject that I wasn’t depressed. My body hurt, and I needed to figure out why.

    The next year, I saw a primary care doctor in Bryan, Ohio. This man is still my doctor to this day. After months of examinations, tests, and research, he concluded that I have fibromyalgia. The past thirty years have proven this diagnosis to be true. Over the years, other diagnoses were added to my chart: gastroparesis, endocrine pancreatic insufficiency, osteoarthritis, and degenerative spine disease — all incurable. All doctors can do for me is treat my symptoms — to varying degrees of success.

    There are other health problems that I have given up on. I have been to numerous specialists, each concluding that they don’t know what’s wrong with me. I asked one doctor what I should do next. All I got was a shoulder shrug and an “I don’t know.” My primary care doctor told me that I am an enigma to him. I am oh-so-special, right?

    Americans want to believe that doctors are miracle workers. They are not. Skilled, competent practitioners of medicine? You bet. But miracle workers they are not. They all have patients like me, people they can’t do much for much for. This is especially true for chronic pain sufferers. I saw a neurosurgeon last week. More surgery may be on the horizon, though I am weighing whether I want to have it. I asked him about the severe neuropathic pain in my legs. Unbearable, at times, to say the least. He bluntly told me, “No, there’s really nothing that can be done for your pain.” Of course, I already knew that. I know my body inside and out. When doctors tell me something I don’t know, I go home and research the hell out of the subject. I know that there’s not much that can be done for neuropathic pain. Live with it, or die. Some days, the latter seems preferable.

    I have an EMG (electromyography) scheduled next week. The neurosurgeon wants to see if he can pinpoint the locus of my neuropathic pain. I am not optimistic that anything will come from this, but since I have never had an EMG on my legs, I thought it would be a good idea to have the test done. Maybe a miracle diagnosis awaits, right?

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • People Who Leave Christianity Are “Fake Christians” Says IFB Pastor Kevin Schaal

    pastor kevin schaal

    When you read articles like this who say people are leaving Christianity, they are not really leaving at all. What is happening is that fake Christians are leaving long dead churches that have the appearance of life.

    — Kevin Schaal, pastor of Northwest Valley Baptist Church, Glendale, Arizona

    Kevin Schaal would have us believe that the people leaving Christianity are all fake Christians; that anyone who deconverted is a fraud. Surely Schaal knows this claim is a lie. Surely he knows people who left Christianity who were committed followers of Jesus Christ. Does he really believe that these former Christians, who were pastors, evangelists, missionaries, youth pastors, worship leaders, deacons, Sunday school teachers, or junior church workers — all people who were devoted believers — are all frauds?

    No, the real issue here is Schaal’s Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) soteriology. Once a person is saved, they never, ever can lose their salvation. Whether called once-saved-always-saved or the perseverance/preservation of the saints, the bottom line is this: once a person prays the sinner’s prayer, they are forever saved. The problem, of course, is that born again church members can and do walk away from Christianity. Some IFB preachers claim that these scoffers are saved, no matter what; that they will lose rewards in Heaven because they weren’t faithful until the end.

    I suspect Schaal finds the very thought of people such as the Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser being in Heaven with him disgusting, so he cooks up ways to claim that these defectors were never Christians. According to the quote above, Schaal believes people like me were fake Christians. Talk about a conspiracy theory. Schaal would have us believe that these former servants of the most high God deceived everyone around them. Does he realize how absurd this is? I would have had to deceive scores of people, including close friends, colleagues in the ministry, professors, IFB family, and five IFB preachers in my wife’s family. This is about as believable as the moon landing hoax or the existence of God.

    Regardless of Schaal’s rigid theology, followers of Jesus do deconvert. They do reach a place in their lives where the central claims of Christianity no longer make any sense to them. The deconversion process is messy, but in the end, those who deconvert do so because they can no longer buy what Christianity is selling.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • Important Blog News

    atheist blogger

    Some of you may remember that I moved from Hostinger to Rocket as the host for this site. Up until two days ago, everything worked as it should. But then, I started having problems with receiving contact form submissions and comment notifications. I contacted Rocket support, only to find out that they can’t fix the problem; that the real issue was that Google decided to block the use of Gmail accounts to “send” the emails. Fixing this problem requires me to have a domain email address (i.e. xxx@brucegerencser.net instead of xxx@gmail.com) which Rocket cannot provide since they don’t provide email service for hosted domains. So, on to SiteGround.

    The site was moved tonight, so it may take a day for everything to propagate worldwide. If you notice any bugs or quirks, please let me know so I can — if possible — fix them. So far, everything works, but I have no doubt that there is a bug lurking in the shadows, waiting to bite me. 🙂

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • Should Students be Permitted to Give Bible Answers to Test Questions?

    college student bible verses

    I attended a large public high school in the early 1970s. After I became a born again Christian at the age of fifteen, I purposed to carry my KJV Bible to school every day, hand out tracts to my classmates, invite them to church, and witness for Christ at every opportunity. I was one of the most religious students in the school. I wore my Christianity proudly, even when I was mocked and ridiculed. I still remember several of my classmates “stealing” my Bible and playing keep away with it, tossing it from student to student. Eventually, they tired of their game and let me have my Bible back. Was I embarrassed? Nope. I was proud to have been persecuted for Jesus.

    I took biology in tenth grade — an anti-Evangelical class if there ever was one. My teacher expected me to give science answers to test questions, which I did. However, I also wrote Bible verses on my test paper, complete with theological commentary, making sure my teacher knew the TRUTH! I also wrote for my English class a report about the Baptists being the “true” Christian church. I got an A on the report. My teacher wrote “interesting” on my paper in red pencil.

    Recently, University of Oklahoma student Samantha Fulnecky received an “F” for giving Bible verses and personal opinions as an answer to an essay question. Fulnecky screamed PERSECUTION, and the teacher was placed on administrative leave.

    KOCO reports:

    A University of Oklahoma student is in the national spotlight for claiming religious discrimination after she failed a psychology essay.

    Samantha Fulnecky, a junior at OU, received a zero on an assignment, asking students to react to an article on gender roles. After receiving her grade, she filed a complaint with the university.

    ….

    Fulnecky is a junior at OU. She is from Nixa, Missouri, according to a biography on OU Women’s Tennis page. She was listed on the Women’s Tennis roster for the 2024-25 season. 

    She spoke to KOCO 5 after filing the complaint against the professor. 

    “I gave my opinion, and, not just my opinion, but that’s like the Bible says that God created male and female, and anything that’s not from God, is glorifying to God, is glorifying to the enemy,” Fulnecky said.

    Fulnecky said she reached out to the teaching assistant to reconsider the grade before filing a formal complaint with the university.

    “It’s that I think I should have gotten 100. I’ve gotten 100 on every single essay in this class, and I write them all the same—exactly the same. The TA has never had a problem with how I write my papers in this class. So, it has nothing to do with the title, or grammar, or how I write, or anything like that,” Fulnecky said.

    ….

    On the essay rubric, the grading was based on whether there was an understanding of the article, whether it was a clear reaction, and whether the main ideas were organized in a coherent discussion. 

    The assignment was worth 25 points.

    ….

    The graduate instructor, who did not wish the comment on the story, said the essay did not follow the assignment guidelines and was “at times offensive.” The instructor said it lacked empirical evidence. 

    “Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting points for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive,” the instructor said in the grading comments, according to screenshots posted by OU’s Turning Point USA chapter. 

    “While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs, there is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses, but using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice”

    The instructor also responded to Fulnecky’s claims that society pushing the idea of multiple genders is “demonic.” 

    “Additionally, to call an entire group of people “demonic” is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but this isn’t a vague narrative of “society pushes lies,” but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved. You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn’t change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed,” the instructor, who is a transgender woman, commented. 

    Fulnecky told KOCO that she did not mean for the “demonic” comments to be offensive. 

    A second instructor for the course also commented on the essay, saying they agreed with the grade given to Fulnecky. 

    “This paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment,” said the second instructor’s comments, according to screenshots from Turning Point USA.

    When Fulnecky received zero out of 25 points on the assignment, filed a complaint against OU, claiming her religious freedom was violated. 

    The instructor was placed on administrative leave. The university confirmed to KOCO that the essay would not count toward Fulnecky’s final grade.

    Welcome to the wonderful world for whiny, butthurt Evangelical Christians who scream persecution anytime they don’t get their way. The essay question in question required the student to access academic materials and respond accordingly. You know, materials specifically related to disciplines such as sociology, biology, and psychology. She refused to do this, choosing instead to give personal opinions and Bible proof texts. That she got an F was deserved.

    Fullnecky will be lionized by the religious right. She will soon be featured on Fox News, ONN, and platformed at Turning Point USA events. She will likely sue the teachers and the university. Why? Cuz that’s what Evangelicals do.

    This is yet another example of the preferential treatment Evangelicals demand, and if they don’t get it, there will be hell to pay. What say ye? Please leave your astute thoughts in the comment section.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • I’m Not Your Hon, Honey, Dear, or Sweetie

    server at restaurant

    Want to annoy the hell out of me? Assume familiarity with me that you do not have. I am acutely aware of this during the Christmas season when complete strangers think they have a right to touch me because I look like Santa. And when I say touch I mean stroking my beard, giving me a hug, or as one drunken 40 year old woman did at a local basketball game in front of my neighbors, sitting on my lap so they can tell me what they want for Christmas. (And let me be clear, if someone politely asks me if they can touch me or take my photo, I always say yes. Yesterday, we ate at Panera Bread in Toledo. A woman, as excited to see me as if she had just won the lottery, asked if she could take a photo with me. I said sure. I did make a snarky comment about the photo ending up on OnlyFans. I have embraced my inner Krampus, uh I mean Santa Claus.)

    I enjoy going out to eat with Polly. We are at a place in life where we enjoy fine dining when money allows. Imagine going to an upscale restaurant, only to have a server with a truck stop voice say, “What can I get for you tonight, hon, honey, dear, or sweetie?” Argh, not a good start — at least for me.

    Sadly, some servers likely picked up bad habits working at a truck stop, diner, or strip club. Missed was the lesson about not being overtly familiar with your customers, especially when you are meeting them for the first time. Well, at a strip club, overt familiarity is good for business — or so I have been told anyway. 🙂

    I know, I know, with Trump trying to destroy our country, it’s silly to talk about how servers address me. However, this is a pet peeve of mine, so this is my blog and I am going to bitch. 🙂

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • Quote of the Day: The True Cost of Military Weaponry

    dwight eisenhower

    Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of scientists, hopes of children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.

    — President Dwight Eisenhower

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.

  • Atheists Don’t Eat Babies, But Evangelical Christians Might

    jews eating people

    And I [God] will cause them [Jews] to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them. (Jeremiah 19:9 KJV)

    It is clear from this passage of Scripture that God CAUSED the Jews to eat the bodies of their children and neighbors. In other words, God (Jesus) turned the Jews into cannibals. This is no rare occurrence. Any cursory reading of the Bible reveals a God who has no problem maiming and slaughtering fetuses, babies, children, men, women, and developmentally disabled people who dare to cross him. I can’t find one story in the Bible where the punishment and judgment meted out by God is justified for any other reason than he could. And that’s the argument Evangelicals often use to justify God’s violent, immoral behavior. “God can do whatever he wants,” Evangelical shout. Does this mean that the allegedly “moral” law of God doesn’t apply to an allegedly “moral” God himself?

    Why did God judge the Jews so harshly? Jeremiah 19:3-5 says:

    Hear ye the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle. Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.

    Evidently, the Jews were worshipping other deities before the God of Israel. Is this a behavior worthy of the judgment God (Jesus) meted out upon the Jews? “Hey, you worship Baal, so I plan to cause a famine that will leave you so hungry that you will kill, roast, and eat your children and neighbors.” What an awesome God, right?

    If anything God commands is moral, just, and right, Evangelicals are forced to justify behaviors that most of us consider immoral. Evangelicals often appeal to “divine command theory” to justify their immoral behavior. “If God commands me to do something, I am duty bound to obey him, even if the world thinks I am behaving immorally.” Thus, when asked if God (Jesus) commanded them to build an altar and sacrifice their son — as Abraham did — they would do it! Why? Cuz God told them to do so!

    “Oh, Bruce, God would never command that today.” Really, have you read the book of Revelation? Talk about a violent deity, who goes to the ends of the earth to torture and murder everyone who refuses to worship him. Besides, doesn’t the Bible say that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever? If so, the God of the Hebrew Bible is the same God as in the New Testament. Did he not say, “I am the Lord, thy God, and I change not.” Sorry, but if you are Trinitarian, your Jesus is God and he is just as culpable for all the deity-driven violence in the Bible as his Father. Ditto for the Holy Spirit.

    One of the first things Evangelicals need to learn to do is say NO to God, Jesus, and their pastors. If God commands you to do something you know is unethical or immoral, just say NO. Further, just because the Bible commands you to do something doesn’t means you should. THINK before giving in to the voice that is allegedly whispering in your ear.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

    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.