My story is somewhat different from others I read on Bruce’s blog.
I was born in England, and raised in the Church of England, where it has been jokingly said that “belief in God is optional.” My father died when I was young and was, I understand, quite active in the church. My Mother was fairly active but never imposed her views on us.
I went to boarding school, where church attendance was mandatory or you were punished; a quick way to turn one against attendance.
I married into a Catholic family, so I had to be indoctrinated before I was deemed fit to marry a Catholic. At some time, I must have mentioned something about the evil in the world and was then provided with much discussion about God giving mankind freedom of thought and action.
I married a girl who attended a convent school. She was indoctrinated in the one true faith (sarcasm) and we agreed to raise the children as Catholics, though subsequently the children have very little interest in Catholicism. In the words of George Carlin “they were raised as Catholics until they learnt to think for themselves.”
I have always had a great interest in European history, particularly the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Reading about the horrors of the twentieth century, I started to have doubts about my beliefs. I started to question, how much horrific behaviour god would allow before saying okay people, that’s enough.
English history is full of the most appalling Catholic versus Protestant behavior. I read with interest the pieces about the Northern Ireland nitwit (Susan-Ann White), she is quite mild, (sane?) compared to some in that country.
My shift away from religious belief has been very gradual, probably over 30 years. I live in a part of Wisconsin that is mostly Catholic or Lutheran, with very few extremists, though I am aware of several Creationist and anti-evolutionists. I see them as just people to avoid. I have a very good friend who is a Baha’i. She knows my views and doesn’t really accept them, but we don’t discuss them in detail; now as a single man, I really value her friendship.
I follow Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. I don’t agree with everything they say, and quite by chance stumbled onto Bruce’s website. I think I was searching for Atheist Pig cartoons. I have read and appreciate many items on the website, and many of the comments.
So I’m an Englishman, a great believer in science, and I just cannot accept much of the biblical nonsense: virgin birth, original sin, the resurrection, the vile vindictive god of the old testament. Come on, people!
I don’t believe in Heaven and Hell, but if there were such places, I would choose the latter — far more interesting people there. I sometimes feel that, having attended a 1950s English boarding school, I have already been to hell.
Although I am an atheist, I’m somewhat reluctant to call myself one; it seems pointless to give a name to something that occupies so little of my thoughts.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I found the following graphic today on The Christian Post website. I transformed the graphic to accurately reflect how Evangelicals view the world. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Life without God is empty. Eventually life without God comes to a very lonely and unfulfilled end – after you die. But life with God – after you die and are raised to life again – goes on forever, in indescribable joy!
The gist of this person’s comment is this . . . Atheists live empty lives that will come to a lonely, unfulfilled end.
I have given up trying to educate Christians concerning their ignorance about atheists. I have come to the conclusion that they simply do not want to know the truth.
Christians need to think that their lives matter above all others, that their worship and devotion to God will result in a divine payoff in the sweet by and by. They need to think that going to church on Sunday matters, that giving 10% of their income to the church matters, and that doing all the things the Christians do matters. To admit that atheists can have fulfilling lives that matter is to say that a person can have a good life without God. Christians will have none of that. No! No! No! GOD makes life worthwhile. GOD gives life purpose and meaning.
Here’s what I know. People are people, regardless of what they think about God. Purpose and fulfillment are not dependent on God. There are atheists who live unfulfilled, meaningless lives, but there are plenty of Christians who do the same. In fact, since Christianity is one of the largest world religions, I suspect there are far more Christians than atheists living unfulfilled, meaningless lives.
Atheists are often more focused on the present than Christians — especially Evangelicals. Christians tend to focus on the hereafter. Living and enjoying life is offloaded to eternal life beyond the grave. The present life is to be endured, with the result being that God gives Christians indescribable love, joy, and peace that goes on forever. Atheists, on the other hand, only have this life. They only have one opportunity to live life and live it well. Atheists are highly motivated to make what they can of this life, to enjoy this life, and to make the future a better place for their progeny.
Most Christians can’t accept how atheists view the world. They are too invested in their interpretation of the Bible, their worship of God, and the mansion that awaits them after they die, to admit that atheists can have a life that is, in every way, as happy as theirs.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The liberal Christian would almost certainly be a better fit with my stance on most political issues than the conservative atheist. That would be a compelling reason to select them. But of course, the conservative atheist would not be a victim of the sort of superstition afflicting the liberal Christian. That would be appealing, especially considering how rare this is. So who would I choose if I had to pick one?
My answer to this question reveals something about my priorities. Were I to say that I’d pick the conservative atheist, it might mean that atheism was more important to me than most political issues. And picking the liberal Christian might mean that atheism was a lesser priority for me than these political issues. I suppose there could be other explanations for these decisions that wouldn’t necessarily support either of these interpretations.
So which candidate would I pick? I’d pick the liberal Christian. It might not be an easy decision, especially if this was someone who seemed to be actively promoting Christianity during the campaign. But I think I’d be much more likely to pick the liberal Christian because I’d be a lot more interested in how the person would govern than what they believed about gods.
I’m with Jack on this one. As a liberal/progressive/socialist/pacifist, I am always going to vote for the liberal or progressive candidate. Currently, I am a registered Democrat, having voted for Democratic candidates since 2000. From 1976 to 2000 I always voted Republican, except in 1976 when I voted for born-again Democrat Jimmy Carter.
These days, I am what I call a disaffected Democrat. It remains to be seen how I will vote in 2022 and 2024 — if I am still alive, that is. If I am dead, I will leave it to Polly to cast my vote. 🙂 I am somewhat of a reactionary voter. I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 for one simple reason: they weren’t Donald Trump. Neither were my first, second, or third choice. I voted both times in the primary election for Bernie Sanders.
I am a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America. It is with this group my affections lie. That said, I am a pragmatist. Until we overthrow our broken, dysfunctional two-party system, there’s no chance we will elect a socialist. (And no, neither Joe Biden nor Barack Obama is a socialist. If you say they are, you are a fucking idiot who has zero understanding of socialism.)
How would you answer the question posed by Jack? Please leave your answer in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I enjoyed Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. A lot.
I saw it in the theatre twice. I have seen it many times on cable television.
A friend once took up, as a hobby, teasing me about inconsistencies in the production.
In a flashback, Butch the fighter has childhood eyes of different color than he has as an adult. After a shooting, Butch only partially wipes his fingerprints from a gun. He encounters a cab driver who has a license bearing a name the spelling of which does not fit what it should be for an immigrant from her home country.
The list goes on.
Jimmie is a brief reluctant host to a couple of friends who happen to be killers. His wall clock seems to stay at the same time from scene to scene. “Lightning fast action” my friend observed.
A microphone can be seen hanging briefly in reflection at the upper right corner of a window.
That sort of thing.
While it lasted, I had fun participating in my friend’s game. I would present him with explanations.
My own eyes changed color a few years ago. No idea why, but I had to ask for a change in my driver’s license. It happens.
Someone involved in a shooting might indeed fail to be completely diligent in removing evidence. Understandable.
Some bureaucracy misspelled a name? Or someone has a name that runs counter to prevailing culture? My name is “Burr” for God’s sake. Try that for unusual parental inspiration.
A stopped clock? Look at our kitchen. I’ve been telling my loved one for months I’ll replace the battery. I’ll get to it soon, I promise.
The movie microphone reflected in the window still has me stumped. Can’t think of an explanation. So I told him: Every home should have one. He didn’t buy it. When I think of something better, I’ll give him a call.
The bullets stopped me cold, though. Guy steps out with a hand gun and blazes away at two central characters. But at least two of the bullets are suddenly seen in the wall behind them before the guy fires a single shot. First the wall is unmarred, then there are bullet holes, then there are gunshots.
I thought about that movie incident after reading an account by former pastor and current atheist Bruce Gerencser. Bible reading Christians occasionally claim to know more than does he about why he made that transition from faith to atheism.
Bruce responds, reasonably, that he accepts at face value the stories of Christians about their own journey toward faith. He asks for similar respect in return.
All I ask is that Christians do the same, regardless of whether they can square my storyline with their peculiar theology. It’s my story, and who better to tell it than I?
Frequent correspondent Ryan adds his voice, quoting a critic:
“It is the Bible, not I, who says that you do not believe because you do not want to believe. It is because I have studied the Bible and found it to be a reliable predictor of human behavior that I tend to accept its explanation rather than your protestation.”
Who better to tell my story than I? Apparently, any stranger armed with a Bible.
Little irritates me more than people who claim to know what I think or feel or do better than I do after only a few minutes of conversation or after labeling me, especially if they think that a religious text qualifies them to do so.
As I see it, Ryan speaks wisdom.
I can empathize to the extent that I have roughly parallel experiences within my own extended family. One has, by unspoken mutual agreement, avoided contact for a number of years. It seems I am not a real Christian because I do not hate the requisite groups. And I do not realize the actual reason I only pretend to follow Jesus, while refusing to join in God’s hate for Obama, Hillary, and gays.
Another family member, a skeptic, is at the other end of the spectrum. She knows, better than do I, why I submit to my own insecurities, following sheep-like into Christian belief. Her diagnosis: It is mostly because of my inability to venture into independent thought. I notice her slowing her words way down as she gently describes to me the obvious emotional deficiency that limits my mental range.
Okay, I admit all that has the ability to irritate. I respond in what I hope is gentle sarcasm. I flatter myself, believing that I know my inward thoughts more than anyone else could. And I enjoy living in the illusion that I am capable of rationality.
My friend J. Myste teaches me that a little gentle mocking is not injurious to mental health. He once complimented me on my staggering intellect, which was evident in the mental gymnastics I showed in defending an absurd religion. He once added this:
However, I think you really believe that God has visited my heart. You could be right. Perhaps God is influencing me. Perhaps the exorcism is not yet complete.
The Bible experience to which Ryan was subjected is not that uncommon. I once watched in awe as a visitor searched frantically through his Bible for a verse he knew would settle an argument. The argument was about whether scripture is infallible.
Circular logic sometimes seems to find its orbit around me. My friends help me out occasionally, in discovering it in my own reasoning.
One zombie story from long, long ago still occasionally makes the rounds. A religious man describes to a friend how very impressed he is with a new acquaintance. The new fellow actually talks with God. The friend is curious.
“Talks with God? How do you know that?” “He said so himself!” “But maybe he lied!” “Would a man who talks with God lie?”
Unusual logic does not always flow in only one direction.
In my college days, a psych professor explained why religious beliefs are inherently absurd. Everything in the universe, including him and me, is merely an evolved combination of matter and energy. I remember suggesting that there is still wonder in our ability to analyze. If we are merely collections of matter and energy, then our universe of matter and energy is itself examined by a small number of its own collections of matter and energy. And that is a matter of wonder. There is a transcendence in consciousness.
He was dismissive. Consciousness, he said, is an illusion.
I regarded that with hidden amusement. I thought to myself, if consciousness is an illusion, who is around to be fooled?
I later discovered that he was presenting what had already become an aggressive argument when discussions of science and philosophy intersect. That aggressiveness sometimes approached antagonism. There was no room in a scientific worldview for consciousness.
Everything is composed of matter and energy. The only conclusion is that there is no such thing as consciousness.
I eventually happened upon Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest who was also a renowned paleontologist. I was amused at what I saw as an exercise in intellectual jujitsu. Teilhard agreed with a materialistic worldview. Everything is indeed composed of matter and energy. The only possible conclusion was that all matter and energy possess a sort of proto-consciousness that becomes something more as organisms evolve into complexity.
The late David Foster Wallace, in a famous commencement address, illustrated how the committed perspectives of two individuals could compel radically different conclusions. At first, I thought he was making fun of atheism. But with a little thought, I changed my mind:
There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer.
And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing.
“Just last month I got caught away from camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was fifty below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’”
And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.”
The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”
The atheist is right, from his perspective. The prayer for a winning lotto ticket may seem to be answered, but there had to have been several million unanswered prayers as well. Statistics are on his side.
My desperate prayers that our young Marine might return safely from the battle zones of Afghanistan prove only that most combat heroes come back unharmed. We don’t know how many prayers were answered only with tragedy, death, and grief.
Does prayer cast us into a sort of Schrödinger parallel timeline? How can we know what, if anything but chance, guided those Eskimos to us?
In some religious argument, I have the advantage of having no compelling case to make. I can provide what many Christians call witness to my own belief. But it does not come from a Paul-of-Tarsus-like epiphany. In fact, I experience faith as more a weakness of imagination.
I can grasp the intellectual argument made by materialists. I can envision the amazing constructs that carbon atoms can achieve when the right series of chance cosmic occurrences combine with a lucky lightning strike and a few billion years of evolution. I can see in my mind some series of combinations of matter and energy that make up my desk, my computer, me, my loved one, our children, and others whom I love.
That love represents a problem, at least for me.
I do not have the capacity to sustain that materialistic grasp in my daily life, or in the experiences that matter most to me. Am I really a group of atoms and energy swirls that loves other similarly configured groups? It is possible, but I cannot sustain that view. I measure some ethical value by my level of care for what Jesus tells me is the least of these. I care about justice and injustice. It matters to me what policies our government follows and who lives, who dies, who is provided for as a result.
In my life, there have been a few individuals I have most admired. In my best moments, I have been able to act in ways I believe might have earned their approval. At least I enjoy thinking that. They were able to maintain a materialistic worldview that supported a level of love, ethics, and meaning that I can only have aspired to follow.
But I have trouble reconciling my cares, my loves, my character, my consciousness, with a purely materialistic view.
There is nothing in my internal experience that I would expect others to find compelling, unless there exists some chance encounter with someone who finds a fit. I would guess internal evidence is often compelling only to the one doing the experiencing.
As a Christian, I do share a communal vulnerability. Our faith is historically based, at least in part. Our belief comes from our view of history.
I am not concerned with the truth or falsehood of the Virgin Birth or the astrologers traveling from points east. The census that required a trip to Bethlehem may be fictional. I enjoy the water-to-wine story and the raising of Lazarus, but neither is central to my faith. I’m okay with Jesus walking on water, or knowing which stone to step on, or surfing on a piece of driftwood, or simply standing on shore.
I do love the idea that God would come to earth as human, experiencing more temptation, pain, and struggle than most of humanity. So my faith would be shattered if it was proven to me that Jesus died running in panic from Gethsemane with a Roman spear in his back.
But even that twisting of the universe might reinforce what I already know: that the specifics of my religious faith are constructs that make a deeper truth comprehensible to me.
That may be why I enjoyed Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. It has to do with those bullets.
One of the gunmen in the path of those shots quickly decides that he ought to have been killed, that he is at the center of a miracle.
On the surface it seems absurd. He is, after all, in the business of terrifying, then killing, helpless victims. He seems to enjoy the evil he generates. He has fun destroying others. But then comes that moment of new clarity. God had come into his life.
His friend, the other gunman, disagrees.
“I just been sitting here thinking.” “About what?” “About the miracle we just witnessed.” “The miracle you witnessed. I witnessed a freak occurrence.”
The gunman explains: It doesn’t matter.
I mean, it could be that God stopped the bullets, or He changed Coke to Pepsi, or He found my … car keys. Whether or not what we experienced was an According-to-Hoyle miracle is insignificant. What is significant is that I felt the touch of God.
In the silence of the night, I can often close my eyes, look inward, and feel a presence not my own. Perhaps it is only a phantom reflection of myself, or maybe a form of prayer. It is possible that I sense only the breath and the pulse and the touch of life.
Only.
It could be that I experience the consciousness that my psychology professor called an illusion. I’m okay with the universe in which I dwell turning out to be the accidental matrix made up of molecules.
It still is my home.
In friendly argument with a friend, I mimicked traditional religious posture. After all, it seems to be the way of the world.
“We can agree to disagree,” I told him. “You worship God in your way. I’ll worship him in His.”
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Satan is not just trying to silence the next generation. He is seeking to wipe it out, declaring an all-out war on our children. They are being slaughtered in the womb. They are being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery. They are being raped and abused and neglected and used. They are being brainwashed by their teachers and bullied by their peers. They are lost and lonely, depressed and suicidal. They cut themselves and kill themselves. Their innocence is being robbed, and their security is being stolen.
….
So to every demonic spirit who is dead set on destroying our children, we say, “Take your hands off our kids! They belong to us, not to you, and you will not destroy their lives. We declare this together in Jesus’ name!” Then, in the sight of God, pledge yourself afresh to be the guardians of your children. Your words must be backed by your actions.
We must not downplay the urgency of the hour. The matter is grave, and we cannot underestimate the intensity of the battle. We must be tenacious in God if we are to win the war for our children.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The problem is that we kicked God out of our schools. Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and it says in Jeremiah that … they refused to listen to the Word of God and they ended up having no shame.
We’ve told our kids that they come from nowhere and they’re here for no purpose, they’re heading to oblivion. But that is the problem. We need to tell our kids, they were created by God, they have a gift, they have a purpose, and bring that back into the public school as a foundation.
God has left us on Earth to look for opportunities to overcome evil with good and all of us have an opportunity in front of [us].
— Republican Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois, The Christian Post, February 28, 2022
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
What follows is a short email “discussion” I had today with an Evangelical Christian named Shirley from North Carolina. Enjoy!
All spelling and grammar in the original.
Shirley:
And you are trying to “whip,up the crowd” for your own personal gain.
As you stated that you do not want or need prayers, I won’t waste my time with you either, however I do feel bad for you that you will miss the boat
Bruce:
Shirley,
And what, exactly, would I “personally gain”? Readership? Sure. Thousands of people read my blog. Money? Nope. What is it that really rubs you the wrong way? That I dare to tell my story? That I dare to speak the truth and share the secrets of the IFB church movement?
You won’t “waste” your time, yet you emailed me to tell me I’m headed for Hell (I get the boat 🚤 imagery). Why is that? Holy Ghost tell you to email me? Or are you just pissed off over what I wrote (I know what posts you looked at)?
Be Blessed. Bruce Gerencser
Shirley:
Bruce, you would gain an eternal life with Christ, not an eternal life in hell with Satan. I am not ticked off about anything you wrote, that is your right. I don’t care about how many people read your blog. That is not my concern. Money?–not my concern either.Evidently, at one point in time, you, supposedly, long for a personal relationship with our Savior. Don’t know what caused you to do a 180 on that.
It also doesn’t bother me that you know which articles that I do or do not read. It bothers me that you are in the same boat that Mr. Reagan, who is a ‘proud’ atheist
I don’t consider it a waste of my time praying that you will return to the saving grace of Christ, so I will pray for you.And it looks from your sign off of me being blessed that you may still want to have a relationship with God.That is where blessings come from/
Thank you for your response.John 3:16
Shirley ******
Bruce:
Shirley,
You said I was blogging for “personal gain.” So what am I “gaining” by blogging, outside of the fact that I have helped thousands of doubting Christians and people who have left Christianity?
My point on knowing what you read is to show that you lazily made no effort to understand my story. Had you bothered to show even a bit of curiosity, you would have known why I deconverted. https://brucegerencser.net/why/
“Be blessed” has nothing to do with Christianity.
Hell, eternal life, Satan, personal relationship with Jesus, saving grace, “praying for you,” . . . you got all the buzzwords in. And to what end? I was in the Christian church for 50 years. I was an Evangelical pastor for 25 years. I was a devoted follower of Jesus for most of my life. What could you possibly say that I don’t already know? I suspect your emails are more about “you” than “me.”
Let me leave you with a message straight from God: Answering before listeningis both stupid and rude. (Proverbs 18:13)
Bruce Gerencser
Shirley:
Wow Bruce, you went from semi-demented to full blown cut throat attack.
I will go back to my first post in stating that you are not worth me wasting my time.
I am not going back and forth with you so you have a nice life, if you can.
Bruce:
Shirley,
Remember, you are the one who emailed me. What in my responses to you are demented or a cutthroat attack?
As long as you keep hitting “send,” I will respond. You can stop embarrassing yourself at any time
You have been passive-aggressive — a common Evangelical/IFB trait — from the git-go. Why else would you say, “have a nice life, if you can.” Why wouldn’t I have a “nice” life? Are you suggesting I can’t have a “nice” life without your peculiar version of Jesus? I’ve been married for 43 years. I have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. We own our own home, drive a 2020 Ford Edge, and, by all accounts have a “nice’ life. I live with chronic, unrelenting pain from gastroparesis (an incurable stomach disease), fibromyalgia, and osteoarthritis. I have four herniated discs in my upper back. I am slowly dying, but that aside, I have a “nice” life. Awesome wife, wonderful children, and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious grandchildren. All without God, Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible. Nice, right?
Thank you for emailing me. Your emails will make for a “nice” blog post later tonight.
Be well.
Bruce Gerencser
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Evangelicals, particularly Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB), have a strict definition of what a “good” marriage is. I was taught by my IFB pastors and professors and I later taught to church members a patriarchal and complementarian form of marriage and family. Husbands are to be the heads of their homes. Wives are to submit to their husbands in all things. Husbands and wives have strict roles. Husbands are to lead their families and be breadwinners. Wives are to be keepers of their homes, bearers of children, and coin-operated sex machines. Children are to obey their parents in all things under the penalty of corporal punishment for disobedience.
I spent most of my twenty-five years in the ministry teaching and modeling a patriarchal marriage to church members. Within that framework, Polly and I had a “good” marriage. It wasn’t until we began the slow process of leaving Evangelical Christianity that we realized we had a warped understanding of what constitutes a “good” marriage. We’ve been married for forty-three years. We were virgins on our wedding day. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that our marriage began to change in appreciable ways, moving from a complementarian marriage to an egalitarian one. Our marriage is very different today from what it was forty, thirty, or even twenty years ago. Is our marriage a “good” one? Maybe. Good is such a subjective term, meaning different things to different people. The same goes for dysfunctional marriages. By what standard do we determine whether a marriage is good or dysfunctional?
Years ago, I sold insurance for United Insurance in Newark, Ohio. I had one married couple who was a client that I saw each month. I would stop by their home to pick up their insurance premium, and inevitably they would start screaming at each other. They had been married for fifty years. The first time I heard them hollering, I thought they were going to kill each other. After months of watching them holler at each other, I realized the hollering was just a part of the ebb and flow of their life together. They deeply loved one another.
Polly and I have had more fights than I can count. I explain it this way. Temperamental Bruce loses his temper and hollers. Quiet, passive Polly says to herself, “I’m not putting up with his shit!” I will draw a metaphorical line in the sand, and Polly, with few words, will step right over the line. And then we fight, albeit briefly. I can’t remember a fight that lasted more than a few minutes. I can’t remember the last time we’ve had a fight that mattered. We deeply love one another, and according to our own standard, we are 98.9 percent of the time happily married. What works for us may not work for others. That’s why I don’t encourage couples to follow in our steps. We’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years. We’ve gone through tough times, some so serious that the future of our marriage was threatened (1981-82 comes to mind, when our second child was born, Polly devoted herself to two children under three, and I was working 60-70 hours a week for Arthur Treacher’s).
I take a live-and-let-live approach to life and marriage. It’s up to individual couples to judge the quality of their marriages. What may work for one couple may not work for another. This is not to say that there is no such thing as a “bad” marriage. I counseled countless Christian couples over the years, people who had “bad” marriages; marriages filled with violence, abuse, and infidelity. Oh, they may have loved Jesus, but they treated their spouses and children like dog shit on the bottom of their shoes. Over the years, I encouraged women to separate from their abusive husbands. Sadly, none did. I witnessed child abuse, and, quite frankly, practiced it myself when I whipped my three oldest sons. Fortunately, I came to understand that it is wrong to use violence (and beating children is violence, regardless of what the Bible says) to discipline children. Unfortunately, I can’t undo what was done in the past.
What are your thoughts on good, bad, and dysfunctional marriages? How do you describe your marriage? I would love to hear what you think.
I am content to say that I am happily married. If I had to do it all over again, I would still marry Polly. We’ve had a rough-and-tumble roll in the hay all these years. When it’s my time to die, I hope I have the opportunity to tell Polly one more time that I love her. Most of all, I want to be able to tell her, “thank you, it’s been good.”
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I plan on taking some time off in the near future. I would love to have you write a guest post for this site, if you are interested. In particular, I am interested in hearing from people who would like to share their deconversion stories. Maybe you have posted your story elsewhere. I am more than happy to share it here. Perhaps you have never put your story into words. This is your chance to have thousands of people read your story! Don’t worry about whether your story is “good” enough or grammatically correct. Carolyn, my editor, will whip your story into fine form.
Posts on other subjects are welcome too. This offer is also open to my Evangelical critics, people who want to set me straight or deconstruct my life. Please send all submissions via the Contact Page.
Thanks for your help!
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
