Menu Close

Angels: You Can’t See Them but They are Real

Bruce Gerencser 15 Comments

Sometime before the Christian God created the world, he created angels. Created higher than humans, angels are God’s gofers — doing whatever God commands them to do. Angels are sexless beings, spirits that cannot be seen unless they take on a corporeal (i.e. human) form. The most famous angel in the Bible is Lucifer (Satan, Devil, Beelzebub, Dragon, Serpent, Abaddon, Morningstar). Lucifer, along with one-third of the angels in Heaven, rebelled against God. The rebellion proved to be a failure. God cast Lucifer and his followers out of Heaven. These fallen angels (demons, devils, unclean spirits) made earth their home. According to the book of Job, Lucifer, called the accuser of the brethren (Christians), still has access to Heaven. He’s considered the god of this world, the prince and power of the air. Lucifer walks to and fro on the face of the earth, looking for people whom he may fuck up (devour). Some day, Lucifer will once again wage war against God. This war will fail, just as the last one did. After Lucifer is defeated, and Jesus renovates — what a great show for the Home and Garden TV channel! — the heavens and the earth, Lucifer will be cast into the Lake of Fire — the final home for Lucifer, fallen angels, Christopher Hitchens, Steven Hawking, Steve Gupton, Bruce Gerencser, and all (billions and billions) non-Christians.

I typed the previous paragraph from memory. It’s been fourteen years since I preached my last sermon, but the vestiges of a lifetime of serving Jesus live on in my mind. I can’t remember what I did an hour ago or yesterday, but religious beliefs learned over the first fifty years of my life live on. Some days, I wish I could have a Men in Black mind wipe, erasing all the religious nonsense that clutters my mind. Other days, I am glad I still remember this stuff. Thanks to a lifetime of reading and studying the Bible, I don’t have to spend much time researching Bible verses or Christian theology. I may be an apostate reprobate, but Christianity lives on in my mind.

Ask Evangelicals about what Mormons, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus believe, most of them will tell you that these groups are cults, sects that believe all sorts of crazy nonsense.  When asked if their beliefs are just as crazy, Evangelicals will take offense, saying that their God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is the one true God, and there is nothing bizarre, fantastic, or foolish about Christianity. After reading what I write next, readers are invited to decide whether a room should be booked for Christianity at an insane asylum.

Evangelicals believe that there is a spiritual dimension all around us. We can’t see or hear what goes on in this dimension, but it is as real as the Twilight Zone. How do Christians know this spiritual dimension exists? The Bible, on more than a few occasions, speaks of this dimension. Christians are already used to believing in an imaginary God, so it is not a stretch for them to believe in the existence of a non-corporeal spiritual dimension.

Evangelicals believe that this spiritual dimension is inhabited by Lucifer, fallen angels (demons), and heavenly angels. Day and night, God’s angels and Lucifer’s angels fight one another. Think of it as an endless MMA match. According to the Bible, non-Christians are influenced and controlled by Lucifer and his minions. These fallen angels can and do possess humans, causing them to do all sorts of abominable things — you know, like voting Democrat. Evangelicals are fond of blaming Lucifer and fallen angels for much of the evil we see in the world. Never mind the fact that the book of Job teaches that Lucifer can’t do anything unless God gives him permission to do so. Remember that the next time an NRA-loving Republican senator blames Lucifer and his followers for a mass shooting. Lucifer may have pulled the trigger, but it was God who gave him the order to fire.

Lucifer also tempts, corrupts, influences, and leads Christians astray. While most Evangelicals don’t believe fallen angels (demons) can possess followers of Jesus, they can and do oppress them. In fact, the more godly Evangelicals are, the more likely they are to come under demonic attack. Charismatics, in particular, have wild imaginations when it comes to Lucifer and his influence over Christians and non-Christians alike. Spend an hour or two reading the CHARISMA website and you’ll come away wondering how the whole lot of them haven’t ended up being locked up in padded cells.

I am sure many Evangelicals believe that I am under the influence of Lucifer; that I am more than likely demon-possessed. Maybe I am, but just remember that if I am, it’s Jesus’ fault. He’s the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He holds the world in the palm of his hands. He possesses the keys to life and death. No one, according to Evangelicals, is born or dies before God says so.

Take a moment to stand in your front yard or in the middle of your living room. Glance left, right, forward, back, up, and down. According to Evangelicals, all around you is a spiritual dimension filled with God’s and Lucifer’s angels. Sure would be nice to see these angels and not have to take their word for it. If an angel showed up at my bedside tonight with an authenticated message from God, why I might, for a moment, ponder the existence of spiritual beings. I say “for a moment” because if I do happen to see an angel, it is more than likely that I am either drunk or high on drugs.

Rational, skeptical humans know that there’s no such thing as angels. Believing in the existence of such beings is a hangover from our pre-science past; back in a time when the unexplainable was attributed to God, Satan, or angels. We now know better — well some of us do anyway. Sadly, millions (billions?) of people believe that we are surrounded by invisible angels. They have never seen an angel (and if you say you have seen one, pictures or I don’t believe you) but because of religious indoc . . . as I was typing this, my browser crashed. Was this an angel trying to stop me from making fun of him? Anyway, because of religious indoctrination, Christians believe without seeing. That’s the essence of faith. If people believe in a virgin-born, resurrected-from-the-dead Jesus whom they have never seen, believing we are surrounded by angels is not too much of a stretch for them.

Just remember, with FAITH all things are possible.

What were you taught by your parents and pastors about angels and an unseen spiritual dimension? Did you read books such as  Frank Peretti’s novel, This Present Darkness? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

About Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.

Are you on Social Media? Follow Bruce on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.

Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.

Found on Facebook: Evangelical Mohammad Yamout Rages Against Homosexuality

Bruce Gerencser 20 Comments

mohammad yamout

What follows is a comment I saw on a Facebook friend’s timeline from a Middle Eastern Evangelical by the name of Mohammad Yamout. Yamout, trained at uber-Fundamentalist Bob Jones University, spends his days evangelizing Lebanese Muslims and non-Christians. I thought it would be interesting for readers to see how Yamout views the world and LGBTQ people — especially those who don’t worship his version of the Christian deity.

My Facebook friend is a former heterosexual Evangelical who is now a gay atheist. Yamout said:

mohammad yamout (1)

Yamout’s screed accomplishes what, exactly? As a former Evangelical, my friend already knows what the Bible says about homosexuality. He already knows what the Bible says about the human condition and our “supposed” need of redemption. Yamout comes off as an insufferable troll who loves to hear himself talk. He can’t seriously believe that his words will have any meaningful effect on my friend other than to remind him of how glad he is to have left Evangelicalism in the rearview mirror. No, I suspect the real reason that Yamout — a Trump supporter — goes after my friend is that he needs to assert his “rightness” or he wants to let his fellow homophobes know that he is on the same team as they are. Either that, or he is a deeply closeted homosexual who rages against LGBTQ people in an attempt to hide who he really is. If the past decade has taught me anything, when Evangelical preachers scream, holler, and preach against a particular sin, you will find buried deep in their closets the very “sin” they preach against. Is this true of Yamout? Who knows?

About Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.

Are you on Social Media? Follow Bruce on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.

Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.

Nothing by Angie Jay

Bruce Gerencser 10 Comments

angie jay

Nothing

I used to talk to nothing
Not knowing it was nothing.
I was told it was love.
Sacrificial love. Unconditional love.
Life-changing, whole-making love.

But it turns out, it was nothing.

The silence of the nothing broke me.
Upended me. Toppled everything over, onto me.
Crushed under the weight of what was gone.
Devastated that it never existed.
Barely breathing.
Arms clutched to my chest.
Holding the emptiness where beliefs once dwelled.
Beliefs once tightly held
Wrenched from my fingers
When I screamed out desperately into the abyss and in return
Nothing came.

Not the love that was promised.
Nor wholeness.
My brokenness remained.
Unchanged.
No savior to heal the wounds
Un-rescued, abandoned
Utterly alone in random chaos.

The silence of nothing echoes so loudly.

But

Listen closely to the silence.

“You are depraved!” is missing, too.
Worthy-of-eternal-torment-for-being-born no longer the mantra
Berating me over and over
And over.
Not even a murmur declaring me
Evil, sinful, wicked, debased, weak, less-than.
Every condemnation for merely being human is muted.
Beautifully quieted.

The crushing weight of silence almost feels like wings now.

In every empty place
There is now space
To love, to forgive, to change
Myself.

In place of the nothing there is me
And always was.
I could have flown sooner if only I had known.
The thing holding me back
Keeping me down
Damning my soul
was actually . . .
Nothing.

— Angie Jay, Twitter, August 29, 2019

Follow Angie on Twitter and check out her Devoutly Human Facebook page.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Secularism and Evolution to Blame for Mass Shootings

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments

I mean look, we’ve taught our kids that they come about by chance through primordial slime and we’re surprised that they treat their fellow Americans like dirt. It’s time we talk about the result of the Left’s systematic march through our institutions, driving religious expression from the public square.

It’s tragic and at some point we have to realize we have a problem as a nation, and the problem is not the absence of laws, it’s an absence of morality — really, the result of a decades-long march through the institutions of America, driving religion and God from the public square.

— Tony Perkins, Talking Points Memo, Fox News Guest Blames Mass Shootings On Fact That Evolution Is Taught In Schools, September 2, 2019

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: The Earth is 6,024 Years Old

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments

Where Did a Young-earth Worldview Come From?

Simply put, it came from the Bible. Of course, the Bible doesn’t say explicitly anywhere, “The earth is 6,000 years old.” Good thing it doesn’t; otherwise it would be out of date the following year. But we wouldn’t expect an all-knowing God to make that kind of a mistake.

God gave us something better. In essence, He gave us a “birth certificate.” For example, using a personal birth certificate, a person can calculate how old he is at any point. It is similar with the earth. Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:1–5). From there, we can begin to calculate the age of the earth.

Let’s do a rough calculation to show how this works. The age of the earth can be estimated by taking the first five days of creation (from earth’s creation to Adam), then following the genealogies from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, then adding in the time from Abraham to today.

….

When we start our thinking with God’s Word, we see that the world is about 6,000 years old. When we rely on man’s fallible (and often demonstrably false) dating methods, we can get a confusing range of ages from a few thousand to billions of years, though the vast majority of methods do not give dates even close to billions.

Cultures around the world give an age of the earth that confirms what the Bible teaches. Radiometric dates, on the other hand, have been shown to be wildly in error.

The age of the earth ultimately comes down to a matter of trust—it’s a worldview issue. Will you trust what an all-knowing God says on the subject, or will you trust imperfect man’s assumptions and imaginations about the past that regularly are changing?

— Bodie Hodge, Answers in Genesis, How Old is the Earth?, September 2, 2019

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: The Spells in the Harry Potter Books are Real!

Bruce Gerencser 12 Comments

These books [Harry Potter] present magic as both good and evil, which is not true, but in fact a clever deception. The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.

— Dan Reehil, pastor of St. Edward Catholic Church and School in Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville Tennesseean, August 31, 2019

Pastor Reehil removed all of the Harry Potter books from the St. Edward School library.

Is the Main Point of the Bible to Point People Towards Faith in Jesus?

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments

it is all about jesus

Recently, Charles S. Oaxpatu, who writes a blog called Flee from Christian Fundamentalism, and who calls himself a liberal mainline Christian wrote:

We also know the Holy Bible is not infallible—and neither are many of the fundies who read and study it.  The main purpose of the Bible is to point all people toward faith in Jesus Christ and invite people into reconciled discipleship and fellowship with God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. However, millions of Americans read the Bible, put it down, and reject the Holy Trinity, reconciliation, and discipleship.

The sentiment expressed by this man about the Bible and its purpose is quite common among liberal Christians. In their minds, the Bible was written for the purpose of pointing “all people toward faith in Jesus Christ and invite people into reconciled discipleship and fellowship with God the Father, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit.” Everything else found in the Bible is minutiae that can be ignored or disregarded without a second thought. When asked how they come to this hermeneutic, rarely, if ever, do liberal Christians give a cogent, rational answer. As with their Fundamentalist brethren, liberals just believe. The only difference between them theologically is WHAT each of them believes; which foods they put on their plates from the Christian Buffet and which foods they leave behind. (Please see Is Liberal Christianity the Answer for Disaffected Evangelicals?)

While the author of the above quote despises Christian Fundamentalists, he fails to see that he is, to some degree, a theological Fundamentalist too. While he rejects much of what Evangelicals believe and practice, he does have infallible, non-negotiable beliefs, starting with the belief that the Christian God is three-in-one — what he calls the “Holy Trinity.” He also must believe that humans are sinners. If not, there’s no need for reconciliation or restored fellowship with God. So, he does have theological beliefs in common with Evangelicals.

Christians, regardless of their labels, have cardinal, infallible beliefs that are foundational to their faith. From an atheistic perspective, I find this man’s Christianity just as intellectually lacking as that of the most ardent of Baptist Fundamentalists. Both groups operate under a certain set of presuppositions. That’s not to say that both are equally harmful — they are not. But, those of us who are skeptical, rational non-believers find the entire spectrum of Christianity intellectually lacking.

One question I have often pondered is what the outcome of my life might have been had I been exposed to liberal Christianity instead of Evangelicalism. Would I have still entered the ministry? Would I still have given myself to the service of others? Maybe, but then maybe not. Evangelicalism presented a very narrow path for my life, so my conversion at age fifteen, call to the ministry, and the twenty-five years I spent pastoring Evangelical churches is unsurprising. Liberal Christianity would have, I believe, presented me with a wide-open path career-wise. Instead of a pastor, I might have become a social worker, high school teacher, or a college professor — all of which I have thought I would have liked to do had I been raised differently.

I am in no way trying to disparage the liberal Christian readers of this blog. I appreciate your support and all that you have done to make this site a friendly place to hang out. But we both can be honest, can we not, that we love and respect one another, not because of our beliefs, but because of how we live our day-to-day lives. Atheist or Christian, we both try to live meaningful lives and help others. Is that not all any of us can do?

About Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 62, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 41 years. He and his wife have six grown children and twelve 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. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.

Are you on Social Media? Follow Bruce on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you for reading this post. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. If you are a first-time commenter, please read the commenting policy before wowing readers with your words. All first-time comments are moderated. If you would like to contact Bruce directly, please use the contact form to do so.

Donations are always appreciated. Donations on a monthly basis can be made through Patreon. One-time donations can be made through PayPal.

The Silly Things Fundamentalist Christians Worry About

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments

Found on a Baptist discussion forum. In a world dominated by mass shootings, global climate change, white nationalism, militarism, trade wars, Brexit, and all things Trump, this Baptist man is outraged over men adjusting or scratching their balls. This man wants to — I kid you not — address this pecker problem in one of his sermons. I wonder what proof text he will use to justify his obsession with male genitalia? Maybe Luke 22:34? And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. Or maybe, the real problem here is penis envy, and this preacher is bothered by well endowed men adjusting their junk. Perhaps, he could preach from Ezekiel 23:20: For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

Just another day in the out-of-touch world of Fundamentalist Christianity; a world where crotches crouch.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Masturbation is a Soul-Threatening Sin

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments

sin of masturbation

The reasoning in favor of masturbation is quite curious: if we tell people it is wrong and that God disapproves, what happens to those [implied multitudes] who aren’t able to stop? They grow up thinking God hates them or that they are some miserable, shameful, dirty creature that belongs under a rock. Therefore, let them do it . . .

It’s essentially a secular libertarian, or even utilitarian argument, not a Christian one. It’s contradicted whenever the same advocates decry pornography and contend that exposure to it might begin a terrible and perhaps lifelong addiction. As pornography is addicting, so is masturbation, and often they coincide. So do we also argue that pornography ought to be freely available, as a good thing, lest those who can’t break the habit feel condemned and worthless and turn against God as a result?

Do masturbation champions advocate free availability and moral sanction of cocaine and heroin, or approve of alcoholism (or oppose remarkably successful programs like AA)? Do they also take a position that homosexual acts are permissible and moral simply because the lifestyle is extremely hard to break (as we know it is)? Why make an exception for masturbation?

The Catholic Church disagrees, of course, It regards masturbation as a mortal, soul-threatening sin. And it will continue to do so, no matter what the prevailing zeitgeist may be. If something is wrong, it’s wrong. What period of history (or cultural decadence) we happen to be in has no bearing on that wrongness. Strong Church authority is precisely what prevents these “slippery slope” descents into sexual compromise.

Masturbation is a form of non-procreative sex. It perverts sexuality and has an adverse effect on proper, healthy sexual development. It turns sex into something entirely selfish, rather than giving and other-directed. This “if it feels good, do it” mentality is in perfect harmony with the sexual revolution and humanist ethics and hedonism, but in perfect disharmony with traditional Christian sexual morality.

— Dave Armstrong, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, Masturbation: Thoughts on Why it is as Wrong as it Ever Was, August 14, 2019

Bruce Gerencser