The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Is it a Sin to Kiss Your Boyfriend?

Bruce Gerencser April 7, 2022 Evangelicalism 11 Comments

Every day, without fail, women somewhere in the world search for “is it a sin to kiss my boyfriend?” Thanks to the post, Hey Girlfriend: Is it a Sin to Kiss Your Boyfriend?, this blog is the number one Google search result. I can’t remember the last time I looked at search logs and didn’t see a handful of visitors coming to this site to find out whether it is okay to swap spit with their boyfriends. I say female visitors, because I’ve never seen a male come to my site as a result of a “is it a sin to kiss my girlfriend” web search. It seems that women have a lot more angst about kissing their boyfriends than boyfriends do about kissing them. I’ve often wondered what it is that drives women to seek out anonymous Internet advice about boyfriend-kissing. Are these women being pressured by their boyfriends to be physically intimate? Probably. Kissing is very much a part of the human experience. Sadly, as with most things that are pleasurable, Evangelicals have deemed kissing between unmarried men and women to be a sin. Let me explain how Evangelicals come to this “Biblical” position.

First, Evangelicals believe that, thanks to Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden 6,024 years ago, the human race is, by nature, sinful. Born into sin, every human being is at variance with God. The Bible says that infants come forth from the womb speaking lies. We don’t become sinners, we are sinners. The Bible says human hearts are deceitful and wicked, so much so that none of us can truly know our hearts. Because of our fallen nature, we desire to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. At the top of the Evangelical lust list are a variety of sexual sins: fornication, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, masturbation, petting, spooning, and looking at a woman with lust in your heart. Believing that inappropriate physical contact with the opposite sex (there are no gays in the Evangelical church) is a gateway to serious sexual sins such as fornication and adultery, many Evangelical sects, churches, pastors, and families adopt strict rules governing physical intimacy between unmarrieds. For those not raised in Evangelical churches, they will likely find the remainder of this post beyond belief, but rest assured that what I share next can be found in countless Evangelical churches and homes.

I attended Midwestern Baptist College in the 1970s — the era of free love. While hippies were smoking marijuana, listening to rock music, and exploring their sexuality, the unmarried students at Midwestern were expected to maintain a six-inch distance from each other at all times. If you have not read the post, Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule, I encourage you to do so. It goes into great detail explaining how the puritanical leadership at Midwestern made sure students kept their distance from each other. Most of the students at Midwestern came from Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches that also had some sort of prohibition against physical contact. During my teenage years, I was a member of Trinity Baptist Church, Findlay, Ohio, and First Baptist Church, Bryan, Ohio. Both churches frowned on teenagers and young adults touching one another. Violating the no-touch policy resulted in scoldings and separation during church services from your boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes, the pastors would spend time during their sermons rebuking sexually aware unmarrieds for their inappropriate touching. Time was also spent during youth group meetings drilling it into the heads of teenagers that God did not approve of them intimately touching each other. It should come as no surprise then that when unmarrieds were unable to abstain from acting on their normal, healthy sexual desires, they were often filled with guilt and fear. And I’m not talking about having sexual intercourse. More than a few teenagers found themselves ridden with guilt over holding hands with their girlfriend during church services or putting an arm around their boyfriend when no one was looking. Of course, there was certainly plenty of rounding-third and sliding-into-home sexual activity going on. In recent years, I’ve had the privilege of becoming reacquainted with several friends from my high school days. The stories they tell about their own sexual experiences during our youth group years are certainly different from mine. I’ve concluded that pretty much everybody in the youth group was sexually active except me. I was a good Baptist boy who played by the rules. While I certainly held hands with girls, put my arms around them, and kissed them, I (barely) maintained my virginity until my wedding day.

There are several verses in the Bible that Evangelical preachers use to justify their hands-off rules. 1 Corinthians 7:1-2 states:

Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

It is good for an unmarried man to NOT touch a woman, God says. Didn’t Jesus himself warn that just an inappropriate look at a woman can cause men to commit adultery in their hearts? From these verses, Evangelical preachers justified their no-touch rules; rules, by the way, that most of them didn’t keep when they were young unmarrieds.

Preachers also used what I call the kitchen-sink verses to prop up their preaching against sexual sin:

Abstain from all appearance of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:22)
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. (1 John 2:15,16)
Neither give place to the devil. (Ephesians 4:27)

Those raised in Evangelical churches know that these verses (and others) were often used by preachers to label virtually anything and everything “sin.” (Please read The Official Independent Baptist Rulebook and An Independent Baptist Hate List.)

Young women in particular were psychologically abused by Evangelical preachers who felt it was their duty to make sure that the women were virgins on their wedding day. Preachers shared horror stories about women who engaged in premarital sex. Virtually all the preaching was directed towards women. After all, they were the gatekeepers. It was up to them to keep their legs closed when horn-dog young men came sniffing around. Men are weak, the thinking goes, so it is up to Susie to make sure that both Johnny and Susie are virgins on their wedding day. And the best way to do this is to not have physical contact with each other before marriage. Just remember, the preacher says. No girl has ever gotten pregnant without holding hands or kissing a boy first! I kid you not, handholding was viewed as some sort of gateway, a gate which, once unmarrieds walked through, would lead directly to them being given over to fornication. I know this sounds crazy, but this line of thinking is still quite prominent today. This is why so many unmarried women do Google searches for “is it a sin to kiss my boyfriend?” They likely attend churches that prohibit physical contact between unmarrieds. Yet, when they are away from the prying eyes of their pastors and parents, these sexually aware young adults engage in various forms of sexual intimacy. Fear and guilt follow, so they seek out “help” for dealing with their “lustful” desires.

Here’s my advice to those who are psychologically and spiritually troubled over holding hands with their boyfriend or girlfriend. Your feelings and desires are normal. Sexually aware people naturally desire physical intimacy. The key is to embrace your sexuality and act responsibly. This means you will have to ignore what your windbag preacher is telling you. It’s highly unlikely that any of the adults who are telling you that physical contact is a sin practiced what they preach. These hypocrites should spend their time teaching unmarrieds sexual responsibility. Most young adults will have sexual intercourse before they are married. While your church may consider this a sin, those outside of the Evangelical church view sexual intimacy as a normal part of the human experience. Educate yourself about sex and make sure you always use birth control. I realize your preacher likely has said that using birth control is you preparing to sin, but I think we would all agree that unwanted pregnancies are a bad idea, and the only way to avoid them is to use birth control. Don’t allow the puritanical sexual standards of others to dictate what you will do. It’s your body, your life. And as far as kissing your boyfriend is concerned? Kiss away. A kiss is just a kiss. It can lead to more intimate behavior, but it also can be just that — a kiss. Remember, you — not your church, parents, or preacher — are in control of what you do sexually. Those who demand that you maintain your distance from the opposite sex are stunting your development.

Part of growing up is the exploration of our sexuality. This includes masturbation. Anyone who tells you that masturbation is a sin is someone you need to stop listening to. Much like the desire for physical interaction with the opposite sex, masturbation is normal, healthy behavior. I guarantee you that most of the married adults in your church masturbated before they were married. And I think I would be safe in saying that many of them still do. Masturbation is a great way to release sexual tension, especially when one is not ready to have sexual intercourse. What I’m saying here is that it is all good. Sexual want, need, and desire are very much a part of the human experience. I encourage you to embrace your sexuality and enjoy all the pleasure that comes from doing so.

Please see Hey Girlfriend: Is it a Sin to Kiss Your Boyfriend?

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.

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Here’s What I Know About Evangelical Pastors

Bruce Gerencser April 6, 2022 Evangelicalism 4 Comments

I spent the first fifty years of my life in the Christian church, mainly in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB), Southern Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Sovereign Grace Baptist, Christian Union, and non-denominational Evangelical churches. I attended an IFB college in the 1970s, and pastored churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan for twenty-five years. I have interacted with and been friends with scores of Evangelical pastors, evangelists, missionaries, youth pastors, and college professors over the years. Even now, I have dinner monthly with a United Church of Christ pastor and a former Lutheran pastor. If there’s one species of humans I know well, it’s pastors.

Many atheists, especially lifelong atheists, loathe and despise Evangelical preachers. They make no attempt to understand these men (and women), believing them to be the fruit of a poisonous tree. In their minds, preachers are evil men who promote ignorance and cause harm. While there is some truth to these criticisms, they lack nuance. Sadly, atheism is plagued by laziness. It’s easier just to wholesale mock, ridicule, criticize, and dismiss than understand preachers from a tribal, cultural, and sociological perspective.

Most preachers are raised in their parents’ sect, with its attendant beliefs and practices. I was raised in an IFB home, attended IFB churches, dated IFB girls, attended an IFB college, and married an IFB pastor’s daughter. Is it any surprise that I became an IFB pastor? At the age of five, I told my mother that I wanted to be a preacher when I grew up. Not a baseball player. Not a trash truck driver. A preacher. I never went through the angst people go through when trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up. I looked at the various preachers in my life: Tim LaHaye, Gene Milioni, Bruce Turner, Jack Bennett and countless other preachers I heard speak at revivals, conferences, youth rallies, and other church events, and said to myself, “I want to be like you.”

When I look at my life, I see the influences of my parents (primarily my mom), the churches I attended, and my pastors. I grew up in an anti-cultural world where everything revolved around the church and the Bible. Thus, I was indoctrinated and conditioned to think and live a certain way. What troubles me, and at times, irritates the hell out of me, is when atheists don’t understand how and why men become Evangelical preachers. Instead of understanding and appreciating the various factors that lead to a person becoming a so-called man of God, many atheists assume that preachers entered the ministry for nefarious reasons. This simply is not the truth.

Certainly, some preachers are sociopaths, some are even psychopaths. Some preachers are in the ministry for the money. Others love the lack of accountability provided by being a pastor. The ministry is a great place to hide when you are indolent and lazy. No time clock, no boss but God, no real performance measures. Some preachers are sexual predators. The ministry affords them opportunities to prey on unsuspecting, naive people in plain sight.

That said, most Evangelical preachers are kind, decent, thoughtful people. They sincerely desire to help others, spiritually and socially. What many atheists can’t seem to get beyond is what these preachers represent; their beliefs; their political affiliations. All they see is the culture war, believing that all Evangelical preachers are “evil.” Such thinking is not helpful.

I am not suggesting we ignore the theological, social, economic, and political beliefs of preachers. Beliefs matter, affecting not only our own lives, but the lives of others. If our goal is to meaningfully effect change, then it behooves us to understand where people we disagree with are coming from. We need to walk in their shoes. I have spent most of my sixty-four years of life in rural Ohio. I am a small town, country bumpkin through and through. I understand country life. I find myself estranged to some degree from my people. I’m an atheist, a liberal, a socialist, an environmentalist, and a pacifist. Not many of me exist here in rural Ohio. I love the slowness, openness, and safety rural life provides, but I find myself sitting alone in the proverbial corner pub on Friday nights. I have met a few people who think as I do, but, for the most part, I am surrounded by right-wing pro-gun, pro-war, Christian Republicans; people who think the Bible should be read and prayers recited in public schools; people who are anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ; people who have little experience with the world outside of rural Ohio and who think Applebees and Bob Evans are fine dining. Despite this disconnect, these are still my people — my neighbors, friends, business owners, and workers at the stores and restaurants I frequent.

Whether it’s my fellow country folk or Evangelical preachers, I genuinely want to understand where they are coming from. Of course, I want the same from them. I distinguish between preachers who come to this site spewing hate and garden variety Evangelical pastors who busy themselves preaching the gospel and serving their congregations. I have no tolerance for the former. I am more than happy to gut them and leave them on the beach to rot in the sun. However, most Evangelical preachers are never going to go to an Evangelical-turned-atheist ex-pastor’s website and shit on their doorstep. These preachers are content to minister to their flocks. We atheists may have problems with their beliefs and practices (and we should publicly and forcefully challenge them), but we must not forget that they have the same wants, needs, and desires as we do. If our goal is a better tomorrow, would it not be better for us to meaningfully engage Evangelical preachers? Of course, this requires them to do the same. It’s unlikely that we will convince them to abandon Jesus, but, maybe, just maybe, we can promote understanding.

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Help! I Am an Atheist, My Wife is a Christian, and She Wants Me to Go to Church on Easter

Bruce Gerencser April 6, 2022 Evangelicalism 6 Comments

Today, I received an email from a regular reader and supporter of this blog who is a Christian-turned-atheist. This person detailed how his deconversion made his relationship with his Christian wife stressful and difficult for a time. Over time she mellowed out and their relationship, for the most part, has been rock solid.

Recently, this man’s wife said she was thinking about going to church for Easter and got upset when he said he said he wasn’t interested in going. This reader is looking for advice on how to talk to his wife about this issue. His reasons for not wanting to go to church are simple and heartfelt: he finds going to church stressful, much like a victim returning to the scene of their abuse. I suspect that many of us have had similar experiences.

Even the best of marriages is a complex, often contradictory blending of wants, needs, and desires. It is evident that this reader’s wife finds some sort of value and meaning in going to church. Or maybe she’s looking to reconnect with an experience or feeling she once had. Many Evangelicals-turned-atheists have similar feelings. I know I do. Church, for me, as a whole, was a good experience. I had a lot of awesome experiences among the “people of God.” There are times I have wistful thoughts over the past. Hearing hymns and gospel songs will often elicit deep feelings in me. How could it be otherwise? I spent fifty years in the Christian church. These experiences made a deep, lasting impression on me. Does this mean that I secretly long to return to the church? Of course not. Evidence led me away from God/Jesus/Bible/Christianity/Church and only evidence will lead me back.

As a married couple, Polly and I had different church experiences. I was largely loved, respected, and lauded. Polly, on the other hand, was largely ignored and treated as an appendage to her preacher husband; a gopher, secretary, teacher, janitor, piano player, and nursery worker. I miss preaching and teaching, being the center of attention and the hub around which the wheel turned. I am giving a speech for a humanist group in Toledo later this month, and I have several interviews booked for April and May. I look forward to these opportunities to share my story and to “preach” the atheist/humanist gospel.

Polly and I had very different experiences in the church, yet we are both atheists today. While I don’t mind listening to preaching podcasts or gospel music from time to time, I respect that Polly despises these things and doesn’t want me to play them in her presence. Both of us listen to the podcast for the IFB church Polly’s mom attends, but only because Mom lies to us, so this is the only way we can find out what’s going on with her and our extended family. Outside of that, Polly prefers I keep my “religion” to myself and I graciously comply. Why? Because I love her, and my relationship with her is far more important than anything I do. If my writing for this site got in the way of our relationship, I would shutter it tomorrow.

I suspect the reader deeply cares for and loves his spouse. He wants to have a happy, peaceful relationship with her. I suspect she wants the same for him. The problem is that the wife wants something from him that he finds personally and morally repugnant. Should he ignore his own feelings? The short answer is no.

I am a big proponent of personal autonomy. Each of us has the right to own our own space, to walk our own journey, regardless of what other people think (including our spouses and families). Of course, living this way risks causing fractures in our relationships. That’s why many atheists go to church for the sake of their spouses. I can’t imagine doing so, but I do appreciate people who are willing to do so for the sake of their families.

My advice to this reader is straightforward: sit down with your wife and have a non-threatening conversation with her. Not an argument, not a debate, a real heartfelt, honest conversation. I’d explain why you can’t go to church; the visceral feelings you have even thinking about walking through the doors of a church. Will this bring understanding and resolve the conflict? Maybe, maybe not. What this does do is let his spouse know the score. This is very important. Nothing worse than marital conflict when all the facts are not on the table.

Marriage is filled with risk. Our choices materially affect our spouses. That’s why “mixed” marriages are so challenging. Unfortunately, many of them end up in divorce. Unable to bridge the Christian-atheist divide, their marriages fail. A number of the readers of this blog know firsthand the emotional toll of being in a “mixed” marriage. Perhaps some of them will share their experiences in the comment section.

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Family Driven Faith — Part Three

Bruce Gerencser April 6, 2022 Evangelicalism 9 Comments

gerencser family 2018 — Bruce and Polly Gerencser and Family 2018

This article was first published in 2012 on the blog No Longer Quivering. Corrected, revised, and updated.

Seventeen years have passed since I preached my last sermon and Polly was called the “pastor’s wife.” Almost fourteen years have passed since we determined to stop attending church. Now we are “unchurched”, casualties of a lifetime spent in Evangelical Christianity. Worse yet, at least according to our critics, we are now, as atheists, enemies of Christ and his church.

You see, we not only left the Church, we left Jesus. Regardless of how some Christians try to parse our lives through their peculiar theological system, we are two people who once were devoted, committed followers of Jesus. We were saved and now we are lost.

Some people leave Evangelicalism, with its attendant Fundamentalist beliefs and code of living, and try to remake their lives according to a kinder, gentler view of God, the Bible, and their fellow humans. I view this as remodeling a house where the foundation and the basic framework remain the same. What’s changed is the siding and the paint on the interior walls, but everything else is still the same.

Many people leave Evangelicalism and join progressive or liberal Christian churches. They gain new labels for themselves, but, again, the foundation of their faith remains the same. Polly and I decided that we were not willing to slap some new siding on the house and remodel the interior. Instead, we burnt the house to the ground, hauled the debris away, and started over.

Now I say we started over, but I recognize that since we think and remember, there really is no such thing as starting over with a blank slate. Deep in our minds are memories from fifty years spent in the Christian church and twenty-five years spent in the pastorate. These things will forever be with us. The good, bad, and indifferent; the wonderful experiences, and the painful, hurtful experiences too. We are the sum of what we have learned and experienced in the past. While we like to think we KNOW where we will be months or years from now, the truth is we really don’t know what the future may bring or how our lives will be.

If someone told me fifteen years ago that Polly and I would be godless heathens, I would have suggested they seek immediate psychiatric help. As far as Christians go, and as far as Christian pastors and their wives go, Bruce and Polly Gerencser were as devoted and committed as any Christian or ministry couple. Yet, here we are, numbered among the godless, the most despised people in America.

When we decided to start over, we knew that we were going to have to confront many personal and marital issues. Wiping the slate clean forced us to look at what we really believed about most everything. At times, the process made us fearful. What if we decided that we didn’t want to married to each other? Free to think and reason and to decide for ourselves what our moral and ethical foundation was, there was a real danger that this process could lead us apart.

Of great concern was how our children would view the new, and hopefully improved, Mom and Dad. They only knew us as parents who were 100% committed to Jesus and the church. They only knew us as strict, not sparing the rod, homeschooling parents. I can only imagine how great a struggle it was for them as they watched their parents not only leave all they ever knew, but repudiate it and embrace a godless worldview.

Former friends, parishioners, and fellow pastors reacted with horror and anger over our leaving the Christian faith. We have been accused of all sorts of things as our Evangelical past has been dissected, discredited, and discarded. We spent a lifetime building relationships with people, and it only took saying, I don’t believe, or I am an atheist, for all of those relationships to go up in smoke. We paid a huge price for being honest and open about the journey we are on.

Over the past fourteen years, we have slowly built our new home. Our marriage not only survived, but it has thrived. Nirvana, it is not. We still fuss and fight. We still have personality quirks that drive each other crazy. But, at the same time, we are far more accepting and loving, not only towards each other, but towards humans in general.

Our lives are very different these days. My continued physical debility has radically changed how we live, how we earn a living, and what we can and can’t do. Since our “sin” list now fits on a 3×5 card, we are free to do many things and go many places that were verboten in our previous life. We are free to dance, drink, and party, even though we very rarely do so. It is liberating to enjoy life without having to wonder what God, the church, or our Christian friends think. We’ve met new friends, mostly through this blog and social media, who allow us the space and freedom to be who and what we really are.

Some Christians are likely to suggest that we left Christianity because we wanted the freedom to live however we wanted. Some might even suggest that we had a secret desire to sin, to live immorally and that’s the REAL reason we left Christianity. To some degree, they are correct. We now love “sinning.” 🙂 However, we ultimately left Christianity for intellectual reasons. We came to the conclusion that the claims of Christianity were not true and the Bible was not in any way a divine, God-inspired book. We came to see that our lives had been built upon a foundation that was not true. Once the Bible was removed from the discussion, we were free to chart our own course; free to determine for ourselves what is moral and ethical; free to experience things and go places that were considered sinful for most of our lives.

Some readers, thinking we threw the baby out with the bathwater, will say, But Bruce, you were a Fundamentalist Baptist. Everyone knows how legalistic, how narrow-minded Fundamentalist Baptists are. This claim might have some merit IF we had remained Fundamentalist Baptists over the course of twenty-five years in the ministry. But, we didn’t. By the time I pastored my last church in 2003, I was a social-gospel-progressive-Sojourner-loving-emergent-church-friendly-Democratic-pastor. Many of my pastor friends labeled me a l-i-b-e-r-a-l.

The process that led us to where we are today began in the 1990s. Fundamentalists tend to view things in a black and white manner. Saved/Lost. In/Out. Heaven/Hell. God/Satan. They remember the date/time/place God saved them, and when people who think like this read that we are now atheists, they, judging us through their own experiences, think we had some instantaneous experience where we went from saved back to lost.

That’s not how it worked for us. It was, and remains, a process. We fully expect that the process will continue until we die. We expect our journey will have many bumps, crooks, turns, and reversals. We have no doubt there will be times when we part ways and walk different paths from each other. That’s okay. We are free to be who we want to be. We are free to follow the path wherever it leads. No more thundering sermons telling us NO. No more living a life where the Bible is the compass and guide.

This does not mean that life is now easier for us. If anything, it is harder. When the Bible was the standard by which all things were judged, we didn’t have to think as much. Just Obey. As the old song goes, Trust and Obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to Trust and Obey. Now we are forced to recognize that life is filled with gray and ambiguity and that sometimes there is no right or wrong answer. We have learned to be indifferent towards many things.

bruce and polly gerencser 2013-2 — Bruce and Polly Gerencser, 2013

This is how we have chosen to live our lives. We are happy and our love for one another endures. Our children have embraced the new Mom and Dad, even though some of them might question the path we are on. Each of our six children has charted their own course through life. None of them is Evangelical. To many people, our children are a huge disappointment, and Polly and I will answer to God for what we have done to our family. We, however, are proud of our children, proud of the lives they have chosen for themselves.

Polly and I are grateful that we have been given the opportunity to start again. We are cognizant of the fact that our story could have had a bad ending. But, it didn’t and we hope this new lease on life will be one we do not squander. We hope that our best days lie ahead.

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Is Any Man Biblically Qualified to be a Pastor?

Bruce Gerencser April 6, 2022 Evangelicalism 2 Comments

Evangelicals are fond of saying that they are people of the Book; that the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God is the standard by which they live their lives. Pastors, in particular, demand that Christians and non-Christians alike obey the teachings of the Bible. Of course, Evangelicals talk a great game, but their lives suggest that they want “others” to practice what they preach, not themselves.

Take the Biblical requirement for a man to be a pastor. The Bible says in 1 Timothy 3:

If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good! But there are preconditions: A leader must be well-thought-of, committed to his wife, cool and collected, accessible, and hospitable. He must know what he’s talking about, not be overfond of wine, not pushy but gentle, not thin-skinned, not money-hungry. He must handle his own affairs well, attentive to his own children and having their respect. For if someone is unable to handle his own affairs, how can he take care of God’s church? He must not be a new believer, lest the position go to his head and the Devil trip him up. Outsiders must think well of him, or else the Devil will figure out a way to lure him into his trap. (The Message)

Note that the text says “a leader MUST be.” Not hope to be, aspire to be, MUST be. Read the requirements carefully, asking yourselves if you know one pastor who meets these requirements? I know I don’t, myself included. Sure, I was a kind, thoughtful, caring preacher most of the time, but as my family and former parishioners can testify, there were times when I was anything but what Paul demands of bishops/elders/pastors in 1 Timothy 3.

I call on Evangelical preachers to do two things:

Admit that they are not, according to 1 Timothy 3, qualified to be pastors. These preachers should quit the ministry and get real jobs.
Admit that by continuing to be pastors, they are saying that they don’t really follow and practice the teachings of the Bible.

Of course, neither of things will happen. These preachers have businesses to run. Image matters. They will call on Evangelicals to ignore the writing of Bruce Gerencser, calling him an angry atheist who only wants to destroy “Biblical” Christianity. Lost in the discussion will be the fact that all I did was quote the Bible. If they have a beef with anyone it’s God/Jesus/Paul. Gawd, it’s awesome being able to say, hey your argument is not with me, but God. 🙂

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Family Driven Faith — Part Two

Bruce Gerencser April 5, 2022 Evangelicalism 17 Comments

bruce and polly gerencser 2008 — Bruce and Polly Gerencser 2008

This article was first published in 2011 on the blog No Longer Quivering. Corrected, revised, and updated.

As an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor, I taught parishioners that the Bible clearly defined the roles (a hierarchy) of men (husbands), women (wives), and children. The Bible, from an IFB perspective, is clear: the husband is the head of the home and the wife is commanded to submit to his authority and rule. Much like the pastor in the church, the husband is the final authority in the home. It matters not if he is worthy of such responsibility. A husband is disobedient to God if he refuses to be the head of the home. The wife, if she refuses to submit to her husband’s authority, is a Jezebel and risks the judgment of God.

I taught women that God’s highest calling for them was marriage, having children, and keeping the home. I discouraged women from going to college. After all, why waste money going to college if you are going to be busy having children and keeping the home.

I taught men that God’s highest calling is for them to be a leader. Men are called by God to lead the church, the home, and the government. The strength or weakness of any nation, culture, church, or home depends on whether men are fulfilling their divine calling to lead.

Children are at the bottom of this hierarchical system. They are under the authority of God, the Bible, the pastor, their father, and their mother. Children have one divine calling in life: obedience!

This kind of hierarchical family structure has been a part of American society since the day the Pilgrims stepped ashore on the eastern coast of America. Over time, due to social, political, and economic pressure, the hierarchical family structure has weakened. As women gained the right to vote, began working outside of the home, and began using birth control, they realized they could live without being under the control and authority of a man. Modern American women are free to pursue their own life path, free to live lives independent of men. When women marry, they are no longer considered the helpmeets of their husbands. They are equal partners in marriage. Their values, beliefs, and opinions matter.

However, in the IFB church movement, women still live in the eighteenth century. Bound by commands and teachings from an antiquated book — the Bible — they live lives strangely and sadly out of touch with the modern world. Every aspect of family life is controlled by what the Bible teaches. Better put, their lives are controlled by what authoritarian pastors and authoritarian husbands/fathers say the Bible teaches.

I have no objection to a woman willingly choosing to live and participate in a hierarchical family structure. If an Amish woman wants to live as the Amish do, then I have no reason or right to object. It is, however, difficult to determine if they willingly choose. Is it a free choice when there are no other options? So it is with women in the IFB church movement and other Fundamentalist sects.

For my family and me, moving away from a hierarchical family structure was and is difficult. We had to relearn what mattered in life. We had to examine sincerely held beliefs and determine if they still were applicable to the new way we wanted to live our lives. I realized that I had lorded over my family. I had dominated and controlled their lives, all in the name of Jesus. By doing so, I had robbed them of the ability to live their lives independent of my control. Every decision had to have my stamp of approval. Nothing escaped my purview. After all, God had commanded me to be the head of the home. Someday, I would give an account to God for how I managed the affairs of my family. I took the threat of judgment seriously. This motivated me to be a “Biblical” husband, father, and pastor.

The biggest problem we faced was that since I was the one who always made the final decision, my children and wife lacked the skills necessary to make good decisions. My children quickly adapted to their newfound freedom, shouting a Martin Luther King Jr-like FREE, FREE AT LAST. However, my wife, Polly, did not fare so well.

Raised in a Fundamentalist home, her father an IFB pastor, Polly had spent her entire life under the thumb of someone else. She rarely had to make a decision because there was always someone else making decisions for her. To say our newfound freedom was difficult for Polly would be a gross underestimation. Suddenly, she was forced to make decisions on her own. For a time, she panicked when faced with making a decision on her own. Simple decisions, like what to order at the fast-food drive-thru or whether or not to put gas in the car, were monumental decisions for her.

Over time, Polly’s decision-making skills improved. Years ago, she was promoted to a management position at a local manufacturing concern, Sauder Woodworking. One night, she came home from work all upset. She told me that she had made a decision about something and several people were now upset with her. I laughed and told her, rule number one about making decisions: you will likely piss someone off.

polly gerencser graduation 2012 — Polly Gerencser, Graduating from Northwest State Community College, Archbold, Ohio

In 2010, Polly returned to college. She struggled at first, and it took quite a bit of willpower for me not to bail her out. Over time, she adapted to using the computer (she was computer illiterate) and doing the various things necessary to be a good college student. In 2012, Polly graduated with an Associate of Arts degree from Northwest State Community College. I wept as I saw her walk down the aisle on graduation day. Her graduation was a reminder of how far both of us have come (Polly actually has five years of college credit. Unfortunately, three of those years were spent at an unaccredited Bible college).

Polly was forty-six years old before she wore her first pair of pants. Same goes for going to the movie theater, drinking alcohol, cutting her hair short, reading a non-Christian romance novel, etc., etc., etc. As many people know, the IFB movement is all about what a Christian CAN’T do. Some of these choices were fearful choices, God lurking in the shadows of the mind, ready to punish her for making“sinful” choices.”

With change comes new life. In many ways, we have been “born again.” In 2005, I left the pastorate and we began a slow, painful process of reexamining our Christian beliefs. For many years, my family believed what I believed, went to church when I went to church, and obeyed any and every command I gave, complete with proof texts from the Bible. Now it is different.

We left Christianity in 2008. I told Polly and our six children that I was setting them free. I am no longer the spiritual head of the home or the patriarch of the family. They are free to be whatever they want to be. I sincerely mean this. If they want to be Wiccan, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, or atheist, I am fine with it. The bottom line is this: I want them to be happy. If they are happy, I am happy.

This last decision has caused quite a bit of controversy and conflict. Freed from my control, my entire family quickly abandoned the Evangelical church. I am now an atheist, Polly is an agnostic, and our children, for the most part, do not attend church. Religion is still a big topic of discussion in our family and I still like a rousing debate or discussion about religion, politics, or sports. The difference now is that there is no test of fidelity. No, “did you guys go to church today?” No, “what was the sermon about?”

Our family remains a work in progress. Polly continues to work on her decision-making skills, and I’m learning that the world doesn’t revolve around me. I am learning to shut up and allow my family to make decisions for themselves, even when I think their choices are ill-advised. I have a new rule I live by: if I think someone is making a bad decision on an important issue, I will voice my opinion, but that is the end of it. I stay out of my children’s business, even when they want me to meddle. They are responsible adults and I support whatever decisions they make, even if I disagree with them.

We are far from a finished product. Polly still freezes at the drive-thru and I still know what I want before we pull into the restaurant. We still have the same peculiar character traits we’ve always had. You know, those things that annoy and bug the hell out of each other. The difference now is that we have learned to embrace each other’s peculiarities, knowing that these are what make us unique individuals.

I have Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) and Polly is happy with clutter. Ours is a match made in hell. For many years, my OCPD dominated everything. I have had to learn that while I have every right to want things perfectly ordered, everything in its place, Polly also has the right not to want things perfectly ordered, everything in its place. We each have personal spaces where we are free to practice our peculiar habits and traits. We know to stay out of each other’s “stuff”. In the common spaces, we try to find a happy medium, though I must admit I have a hard time doing this. MY declining health has helped me with my obsession with order. I simply can no longer keep everything perfectly ordered. At times, this frustrates me, but I am learning to embrace my new reality.

It is good to be free.

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Family Driven Faith — Part One

Bruce Gerencser April 4, 2022 Evangelicalism 4 Comments

bruce-and-polly-gerencser-1981 — Bruce and Polly Gerencser with son #2, 1981, at Bruce’s mother’s home. Gotta love that porn stache. 🙂

This article was first published in 2011 on the blog No Longer Quivering. Corrected, revised, and updated.

For seven months in 2004, our family attended Faith Bible Church in Jersey, Ohio, a vibrant, growing, family-oriented church in central Ohio. We thought we had finally found a church to call home. One Sunday, after the morning service, Polly, my wife, was talking with a group of women who were trying to get to know her a bit better. One of the women asked Polly what she did during the day, and she, without a moment’s hesitation, said “I work.”

In a split second, everything changed. You see, in this church, none of the women worked outside the home. The pastor taught that it was a violation of God’s divine order for women to work outside the home. They could have home-based money-making enterprises, but they were not to work outside the home. From that day forward, the women of the church were stand-offish towards Polly. Never mind that Polly had to work due to her husband’s disability. Never mind her job was the only thing that stood between us and living on the street. All that mattered was that our family was not ordered according to God’s divine plan. We stopped attending this church a short while later.

In the 1990s, I co-pastored Community Baptist Church, a growing Sovereign Grace Baptist church in Elmendorf, Texas (please see I am a Publican and a Heathen — Part One). A young woman in the church professed faith in Christ and desired to be baptized. Customarily, candidates for baptism were asked to give a public testimony of salvation before being baptized. This posed a problem for this particular woman because her husband not only believed that the Bible taught a divine order for the sexes and the home, he also believed women should be silent in church. (His wife also wore a head covering.) She wanted to give a public testimony, but she didn’t want to disobey her husband. This standoff went on for weeks until, one day, the woman came to my office in tears, lamenting that her husband was keeping her from following Christ. I agreed with her and counseled her to disobey her husband. She was baptized a short time later.

This church also believed that “church business” was the domain of men. When the church held business meetings, women were not allowed to speak. If they had a question, they had to whisper their question to a man, and then the man could ask the question on their behalf. Women were allowed to verbally ask for prayer and sing, but everything else was the domain of men. Very few of the women worked outside the home.

While I found both of these positions to be somewhat excessive and quite demeaning to women, I also believed that such positions could be proved from the Bible. While I didn’t take things as far as the aforementioned churches, I certainly believed that God had a divine order for the family and the church. I believed that God had ordained men to rule and women were to submit to male rule and authority. The highest calling for a woman was to marry, bear children, and be a keeper of the home. Children were to submit to their parents and obey every command given to them.

I believed the Bible taught a hierarchical system that must be kept to enjoy the favor and blessing of God. God, through his son Jesus, was the head over all things. Of course, what this really meant was that the Bible was the head over all things. Christianity is, above all else, a text-based religion. Without the Bible, there is no Christianity (in any meaningful sense of the word). As an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor, I believed the Bible was the inspired, inerrant, infallible word of God. The Bible was the final rule and authority for everything, the blueprint for life.

IFB pastors say that the Bible is the rule for everything, but what they really mean is that their interpretation of the Bible is the rule for everything. I cannot emphasize this point enough. At the heart of the IFB church movement, the Patriarchal movement, and the Quiverfull movement, is a literalist interpretation of the Bible by pastors. Pastors, the under-shepherds of their churches, under direct authority from God, have the singular responsibility of teaching their churches what the Bible says (or better put, what his interpretations are). These pastors, divinely called by God, empowered by the Holy Spirit, are the mouthpiece of God.

Practically speaking, the pastor is the final authority in the church. He is the law-giver, and he alone has the final say on virtually everything. The Bible is clear, the pastor is to rule the church, and church members are to submit to his rule. Pastors spend significant time reminding the church that God says he, the pastor, is the boss. The common phrase used to define this is pastoral authority.

Pastoral authority, IFB style, leads to dictatorial autocrats ruling over and controlling virtually every aspect of church members’ lives. Some churches recognize the problem with one man having so much power, so they have a plurality of elders or a board of elders or deacons. Sadly, all this does is make a group of men dictatorial autocrats ruling over and controlling virtually every aspect of church members’ lives

In a hierarchical system, God and the Bible come first. Underneath God and the Bible is the pastor. Church members are taught that submitting to the pastor’s teaching and authority is pleasing to God, and, if practiced, will bring the blessing of God.

As an IFB pastor, I taught church members that God and the Bible clearly defined the roles of men (husbands), women (wives), and children. In my mind, the Bible was clear: the husband is the head of the home and the wife is commanded to submit to the authority and rule of her husband. Much like the pastor in the church, the husband is the final authority in the home. It matters not if he is worthy of such responsibility. A husband is disobedient to God if he refuses to be the head of the home. The wife, if she refuses to submit to her husband’s authority, is a Jezebel and risks the judgment of God.

I taught women that God’s highest calling for them is marriage, having children, and keeping the home. I discouraged women from going to college. After all, why waste money going to college if you are going to be busy having children and keeping the home? I taught men that God’s highest calling for them is to be a leader. Men are called to lead the church, home, and government. In my mind, the strength or weakness of any culture, church, or home depended on whether men were fulfilling their divine calling to lead. Children, of course, are at the bottom of this hierarchical system. They are under the authority of God, the Bible, the pastor, their father, and their mother (and according to my three younger sons, their oldest brother). 🙂 Children have one divine calling in life, obedience!

Polly and I have been married for almost forty-four years. We have grown six children, ages forty-two to twenty-eight. Our older children went to a public or Christian school for a few years, but for the next seventeen years, we homeschooled our children. For the first twenty years of marriage, we followed the hierarchical system detailed above. For the most part, Polly didn’t work and I was the breadwinner. I pastored churches full-time, but, due to the notoriously low pay in IFB churches, I also worked a number of secular jobs. For years on end, I worked sixty to eighty hours a week, and in doing so, neglected my wife and children. Regardless of the neglect, I was still the authority in the home. I was the final answer to every question. I ruled our home with a rod of iron and my family feared me. Of course, I never called their fear fear. I called it a healthy respect for authority. I gave the orders and they obeyed.

For many years, my wife (I don’t like using phrases like my wife and my children. While most people see these phrases as harmless, they are a reminder of the past, a past where Polly and the children were treated like slaves and property. I try to avoid using these phrases, but in some instances, they cannot be avoided) and I followed the general tenets of the Quiverfull movement. In the early 90s, we embraced Calvinism and became persuaded that using birth control was a sin. We believed that God was sovereign and He opened and closed the womb. Who were we to stand in the way of God blessing us with more children?

Our first child born under the “let God have his way” form of birth control was a beautiful redheaded girl with Down syndrome. Two years later, almost to the day, we were blessed with another beautiful redheaded girl. Twenty months later, our youngest child, a son (should I call him beautiful too? Momma says yes!) was born.

Before we could blink, we had three more children, all in diapers. Polly was known in the family as Fertile Myrtle. I was persuaded that if I looked at her, she would get pregnant. I have no doubt that we would have had twenty children if we had continued to abstain from using birth control.

Fortunately, Polly’s doctor intervened and told us in no uncertain terms that Polly’s last pregnancy had taken a huge physical toll on her and any future pregnancies could kill her. We decided, God’s will be damned, that we were not going to have any more children. I was considered a hypocrite for not trusting God in this matter, but I had no desire to be wifeless with six children. Several years later, Polly had a tubal ligation and no more rabbits died.

In part two of this series, I plan to write about how the thinking mentioned in this post affected the churches I pastored and how it affected my family. I want to detail how this kind of thinking almost destroyed my marriage and how abandoning such thinking transformed my relationship with Polly and our children.

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Man Endued with the Power of God at Wife’s Funeral

Bruce Gerencser April 4, 2022 Evangelicalism 13 Comments

If you are unfamiliar with Jack Hyles, please read The Legacy of Jack Hyles.

Excerpt from Woman the Completer, by the late Jack Hyles, pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana:

“Dear Dr. Hyles. I am 24 years of age. I am a preacher boy whom God called to preach six months after I got saved three years ago. I felt led to go to a certain Bible college in a certain state. I attended there until God called me to pastor a small church. I was ordained. From there, God led me back to a certain city in a certain state where I got saved under Dr. Joe Doe. (I’m using ficticious names.) I worked on the staff of Dr. Doe for that summer and started to go to the Letot Bible Institute that fall.
As I started to go to school that fall, I got a full-time position in a church as assistant pastor and youth director. While I was in a certain state, I met and married a wonderful girl, a spiritual girl, a girl that loved Jesus Christ. As we lived in Letot, I was working for a church in a certain place. I seemed to be getting away from soul winning and getting deeper into the books. After awhile I was not doing what God wanted me to do and what God made me to do. I was not knocking on doors and winning people to Jesus Christ. My not being the man of God I ought to be affected my marriage. It affected my marriage to the extent that my wife told me at one time that if I didn’t become the soul winner that God wants me to be, she couldn’t respect me as a man of God, and she thinks. . . .”
“One afternoon as I was leaving from school, my wife and I seemed to be in the flesh. We didn’t have devotions that day and pray as we usually do. I walked out of the house without telling her I loved her and without telling her good-bye. As I got to school, I felt bad, so I called on the phone, and there was no answer. I knew something was wrong. I drove home immediately and found my wife had committed suicide.”
“As we had her funeral in her hometown up North, I went a half hour early before her relatives and friends viewed the body. I walked in and put my head on my wife’s chest in the casket and was hoping that she would lean up and hold me, kiss me, cuddle me, baby me and tell me that she loved me, but she wasn’t there–she was with the Lord. I then fell on my face before the casket and talked with God. Something happened to me there that I can’t explain, but for once in my life I had the full power of God, but what a price to have to pay! As her friends and relatives came by the casket, I stood there like a soldier witnessing and telling them about Jesus Christ. I feel, Dr. Hyles, that God is leading me to Hyles-Anderson College to learn more about Him and learn more about character and discipline and be the man that God wants me to be.”

Does anyone really believe this story is true? I know I don’t. Jack Hyles was a pathological liar, often spinning yarns, half-truths, and exaggerations in his sermons. Such behavior is not uncommon in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist circles.

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Quote of the Day: Six Times When It’s Better for Evangelicals to Keep Their Mouths Shut

Bruce Gerencser April 4, 2022 Quote of the Day 4 Comments

What follows is an excerpt from a post by Ellis Orozco, a Southern Baptist pastor. I suspect Orozco and I disagree on many things. After all, he’s a believer, and I am a God-hating, perverted atheist. 🙂 That said, Orozco’s post really resonated with me. I have spent the past fifteen years interacting with Evangelical Christians. These experiences have largely been hostile and negative. Why is this? Many Evangelicals refuse to listen to what I have to say, refusing to accept my story at face value. Evangelicals read one or two posts and then unload their guns on my worthless, vile atheist person. Rarely do Evangelicals listen (read) before speaking. That’s why my favorite verse to quote to such people is Proverbs 18:13: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude. I didn’t say this, God did, to quote a favorite line used by Evangelical prooftexters. 🙂

Orozco gives six times when it’s better Evangelicals to shut-up and listen. After reading Orozco’s post, this curmudgeon said AMEN! Let me know what you think in the comment section.

First, when someone is telling their story. “When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, ‘Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith” (Matthew 8:10).

Jesus heard the story of the Roman centurion and drew an astonishing conclusion: “This Gentile has more faith than any Jew I have met!”

If someone is brave enough to share their story, you should quietly listen, asking only questions that show you’re genuinely interested and encouraging them to continue.

If their story doesn’t align with your faith views on life, then it’s time to do the long and laborious work of building a friendship across that divide. Only then will you someday earn the right to speak the truth.

Second, when you don’t have all the facts. “Jesus called the crowd to him and said, ‘Listen and understand’” (Matthew 15:10).

Jesus consistently lamented that people had ears but couldn’t hear and eyes but couldn’t see. He never mentioned that they had tongues but didn’t speak. Speaking our minds is not usually the problem for Christians.

Keep in mind that life is complicated and people make poor decisions for all kinds of reasons. Make sure you have as many of the facts as possible before you jump to conclusions.

The Christian’s first posture should be to ask sincere questions and listen. Seek to understand. Look for common ground. Gather the facts and then draw conclusions with humility and an ever-present awareness that you could be wrong.

“Gather the facts and then draw conclusions with humility and an ever-present awareness that you could be wrong.”

Third, when you are out of your depth. “‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep’” (John 4:11).

Jesus stood in front of a famous well. He was thirsty, but the well was too deep and he didn’t have anything with which to draw the water. He had to ask for help.

The democratization of publishing has brought hundreds of thousands of new commentators to the global conversation. According to Internet Live Stats, a staggering 7.5 million blog posts get published daily.

Too many are rushing to publish, anxious to add their voice to the growing discord. Anyone with a computer and internet service fancies themselves an expert. Most know just enough to be dangerous.

Much of what passes as opinion pieces are simply Christians parroting what their favorite pundit is saying. Often, neither the pundit nor the parrot has done their homework.

Last year when Critical Race Theory became controversial, I was in the middle of writing a series of blog posts on the topic of women in ministry. It was an issue I had devoted a considerable amount of time to studying — about a thousand hours of reading over a 20-year period. I ended up writing more than 30 blog posts on the subject of women in ministry, totaling more than 60,000 words.

I thought about shifting for a season and writing on the subject of Critical Race Theory. It was a hot topic, and I felt that as both a Latino and a conservative evangelical I might add a different perspective.

However, I quickly realized I was out of my depth and would need to invest at least 100 hours of reading to get to the place where I could say anything valuable about it.

“Recognize when you are dealing with an issue whose complexities overwhelm your meager research.”

I didn’t have 100 hours to invest, so I chose to keep my mouth shut. There were plenty of others, far more qualified than I, who were writing on both sides of that issue.

Recognize when you are dealing with an issue whose complexities overwhelm your meager research. Rely on the professionals who have devoted thousands of hours to studying the issue at hand.

Fourth, when you just met someone. “Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ‘Legion,’ he replied because many demons had gone into him” (Luke 8:30).

Learn a person’s name before you attack them. Learn their story before you pass judgment.

My dad taught me that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. The day you meet someone is not the time to share everything you think is wrong with the world.

Most people don’t care what you think. At least, not at first. They want to know that you care about them before you start pointing out all they are getting wrong.

“Learn a person’s name before you attack them. Learn their story before you pass judgment.”

Fifth, when action is more important than words. “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18).

There are moments that call for a cessation of words and a move to action.

When a tornado hits or a child is deathly ill or depression turns to suicidal ideation, the time for words is gone. The person who truly knows how to love turns off their mouth and animates their ears, hands and feet.

Sixth, when your theology lines up perfectly with your political agenda. “Then he said to them, ‘So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s’” (Matthew 22:21b).

If God is always on your side, it’s time to reevaluate your view of God. You have most likely fashioned a god in the image of your party’s ideology. The danger is that you will lose the ability to distinguish between the rhetoric of the party line and the voice of God.

I am deeply suspicious of anyone (including myself) who always has God on their side. You should be too.

When you find yourself constantly quoting God to undergird your political views, it’s time to close your mouth and open your ears. God wants to teach you where you’re wrong.

The words of James should be plastered on every billboard in America: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19-20).

It’s difficult to estimate the damage that has been done by Christians who completely ignore the words of James.

— Ellis Orozco, pastor of First Baptist Church in Richardson, Texas, Baptist News Global, Six times when it’s better for a Christian to stay silent, March 28, 2022

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Christianity: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense

Bruce Gerencser April 1, 2022 Guest Posts 25 Comments

A guest post by John, who blogs at Shifting Beliefs.

My journey towards deconversion started slowly around 2008. I had been discussing the teaching about tithing with a friend of mine. We had some disagreements about the subject so I went into a very in-depth study about tithing. Long story short, what I had been taught in various churches, and what I had taught as well, didn’t line up with what the Bible says and doesn’t say about tithing. Then I started wondering, what else does the Bible say and not say regarding different topics? The more I read the Bible without the church lenses and learned to think critically, the less and less it made sense. I would say my deconversion probably took about eight years total. In some ways, it’s still happening.

On this side of things, Christianity really doesn’t make much sense anymore. At least not to me. Starting right off the bat with the creation story. god creates everything, ending with man and woman as the last thing created. He puts them in a utopia, creates a tree that they are not supposed to eat from, and puts it right in the middle of the garden. Then a talking snake convinces Eve, who convinces Adam, to eat the fruit from it. Thus dooming mankind to sin and sickness and death and eviction from the garden. Surely, with God being all-knowing, he knew that’s what would happen, right? So why do it? Then there is the part about them “realizing” they were naked and god having to make clothes for them. Soon after, Eve gives birth to Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, god gets pissed and sends him on his way to the land of Nod. There apparently are people here because Cain gets married and had kids. Where the hell did these people come from?

A while later, Genesis talks about the sons of god who started hooking up with human women. There is much speculation on who the sons of god were. But anyway, the women apparently gave birth to giants. Then god decided that all the humans were wicked to the bone and regretted making them. What? Again, did he not know this was going to happen? And so he decides to kill all the humans and animals on the earth, except Noah and his family, and just start over. Looking past the fact that he is committing genocide, let’s look at how he does it. He could have done a Thanos and snapped his finger and just wiped out the humans and the animals. Quick and painless. But, that’s not how he chooses to do it. He’s going to drown all the humans and animals. It’s not only a slow death, but a terrifying one as well. Can you imagine the panic and terror that all the humans and animals went through? That’s a sick mother fucker, right there! God is good, my ass!

Then there are all the people and animals that god had his people kill later on because they wouldn’t worship the right god.

Skipping ahead to the new testament: you can do a simple Google search to find all the inconsistencies in the gospels and throughout the rest of the new testament, so I won’t go into those. Do you remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira in the book of Acts? The believers had decided to put a commune together and sell all their stuff and put it in a joint account. Ananias and Sapphira lied about how much they sold the land for and god killed them for it. God will kill someone for lying but he allows thousands of children to be molested by clergy around the world on a regular basis. What . . . the . . . fuck?! The god you read about in the bible versus the god of today’s real-life doesn’t line up at all. The Bible tells about Jesus and the apostles healing people all the time. The accounts of “healing” that I’ve run into, I’m skeptical. How about some folks with ALS getting healed or amputees’ limbs growing back? That would get me back to drinking the Kool-Aid again! All the stories and “accounts” through the Bible just don’t make sense to me anymore.

The fact that there are at least 200 Christian denominations in the US and something like 40,000 worldwide doesn’t make sense. Surely if the Bible is the “word of god”, god could communicate the same truth to all Christians. Right?

And what about the idea of a literal hell. Even though god has quite a long history of killing people, the Bible states in many places that he is good and his mercy endures forever. Huh. That’s interesting. Supposedly, god is love and 1 Corinthians 13 describes what this love looks like. In case you are not familiar with these verses, they go something like this: Love is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, it is not proud, does not dishonor others, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. It keeps no record of wrongs. Oh really? Adam and Eve, the genocide of the human race, the slaughter of multiple groups of people, and the doctrine of hell all say otherwise.

And if a person studies the history of the Bible, how it came to be, the historical and scientific accuracy of the Bible (or lack thereof), and so on . . . it doesn’t make sense!

This post only scratches the surface of what no longer makes sense to me about religion, specifically Christianity. I’m not 100% convinced that there is no deity/god of any kind. I don’t think that can be proven either way. But I am pretty damn sure that if there is one god, or many, it/he/she/they are not the god of the Bible or Christianity. Or of any other holy book that’s ever existed. I think part of the reason religions exist is that they are man’s way of trying to describe something that is indescribable.

I still really like this quote by Barry Taylor, a road manager for AC/DC, “God is the name of the blanket we throw over the mystery to give it shape.”

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The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser