Depending on what religion you come from, and what flavor within that religion, this question can be confusing to answer. Each religion believes that God has a favorite group of people and most of the time, the followers of that religion happen to be in his favorite group. What a coincidence!
As far as the Christian God goes, there are many verses throughout the Bible that talk about God’s mercy, favor, protection, intervention, kindness, etc. But there are other verses that talk about His jealousy, wrath, sorrow, anger, etc. Like the time where He killed 99.9% of all humans and animals on the planet because He didn’t like the way the humans He made turned out. Or all the times He told the Israelites to kill whole groups of people because they didn’t believe in the right God. And there was that time where He killed all the firstborn sons in Egypt to soften the heart of Pharaoh, after He hardened his heart to start with.
I hear Christians talk about how God helped them find their lost keys, or get a good parking spot at the store. They (and I used to do the same!) talk about how God kept them or loved ones out of accidents, healed them of some illness (always curable), helped them get a raise at work, and other wonderful things. But at the same time, 25,000 people around the world die every day from hunger or hunger-related issues. Just a day ago, earthquakes in Turkey and Syria killed more than 20,000 people. Recently, a pastor and his staff were flying from Memphis to Texas and the plane crashed, killing the staff. Since April 1999, there have been 23 fatal Christian church shootings. I hear people all the time saying that issues in schools are because we “removed God” from our schools. Ok, what about all these church shootings? It reminds me of George Carlin’s talk about religion being bullshit. Here is a small segment from that routine: “So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he’s at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn’t give a shit. Doesn’t give a shit, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results.”
I’ve had a few instances where I narrowly escaped what probably would have been a bad event: a car accident that didn’t happen, a tornado that missed my house, a tree branch that fell and missed my car by inches. And in the past, I attributed these things to God watching out for me. But what about the countless Christians or Muslims or Hindus or whatever faith who weren’t so fortunate? Are they depending on the wrong God? Did they have a lapse in faith that took away the protection or favor of their God? Is their God testing them? Or, maybe their God doesn’t exist. Maybe no God exists? If there is a “God,” I tend to believe that it’s the type of God that Alan Watts and many others describe as, everything is a manifestation of God. This link explains it a bit: https://iawia.net/observations/god-playing-hide-and-seek/
But in my day-to-day life, I no longer believe that there is a God who cares about us. There is just too much evidence to the contrary. And people who try to explain away the mountains of evidence to the contrary have to go through so many mental gymnastics that it just gets silly. Good things happen. Bad things happen; often in seemingly unfair ways, and sometimes in what we would think of as fair ways. Karma; reaping what you sow — however you want to label it. Life happens. If we believe there is some sort of divine being who should be looking out for us and caring for us and doing things for us that we judge as good, life gets very confusing. I think if we can accept life as it is, the good and the bad, it takes a lot of the confusion, anger, and frustration out of life; not all of it, but a lot of it.
To clear up something that people might question, just because I no longer believe that there is a God who cares about us doesn’t mean I have a negative outlook on life. I actually have a better outlook on life now than I had when I was an Evangelical Christian. I like who I am and where I am in my beliefs about the world. I wasn’t able to say that as a Christian, for various reasons. It’s really nice and liberating to like who I am and who I am becoming.
I hope you and yours are doing as well as can be. Peace.
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.
I recently stumbled upon a Dr. David Tee-like apologist by the name of Robert Clifton Robinson. What follows is a quote from one of the many articles he has written about New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman. Enjoy. 🙂
Bart Ehrman is considered by many as one of the world’s most preeminent New Testament scholars. The problem is that Ehrman doesn’t believe the New Testament is true, that God exists, or that the writers of the New Testament have told us the truth about Jesus. The problem with Bart Ehrman is that he rarely presents any evidence to support his suppositions and criticisms of the New Testament. [As someone who has read most of Ehrman’s popular books, I can confidently say that this is a bullshit claim.]
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We might ask why a man would seek to obtain a Phd and become a New Testament scholar, if he doesn’t believe God exists in the first place? The answer is quite obvious. There is tremendous academic and financial recognition for anyone who claims to be a former evangelical Christian, and is now an atheist. [Really? I would love to see Robinson’s evidence for this claim. He sounds like a man who is jealous of Ehman’s fame and wealth. That said, I made $1,666,666.69 off this blog this year! Claiming to be an Evangelical-pastor-turned-Satanic-atheist sure has paid off for me.] Bart Ehrman achieved international acclaim and became a very wealthy man by assuming this role for himself.
If we conduct a personal examination of the persons who are held up as critical scholars, we learn that many are atheists who do not believe God exists, or that the Bible is true. It is not difficult to imagine why a person who doesn’t believe in God, would want to acquire an advanced education that would enable them to be recognized as a New Testament scholar. The adversaries of Jesus and His Gospel have used many tactics in order to try and impeach His death and resurrection.
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There are many like Bart Ehrman who freely admit they are an atheist, and don’t believe the New Testament, while asking us to believe them when they assure us that the New Testament is not a reliable narrative of Jesus.
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Although Ehrman defines himself as an atheist, it is unclear why he would seek to achieve a doctorate in Divinity only to use his education to refute and discredit Jesus. The entire point of gaining knowledge of the Bible is to be able to communicate the truth of who Jesus is to the world.
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It would have been better that after Dr. Ehrman discovered he no longer believed in Christ, that he chose a different career. By remaining a New Testament Scholar and writing books that cause people to reject Jesus and lose their salvation, he has assigned himself to the same destiny as Judas Iscariot. [Judas was predestined to betray Jesus, so, using Robinson’s logic, Ehrman was predestined to become an atheist New Testament scholar. Want to blame someone? Blame God.]
In searching for further information about Robinson (particularly his educational background), I came across a sixteen-minute video by a former Evangelical named Ben. Ben, who comes from a similar background as mine (Pensacola Christian College, King James-only, IFB, Southern Baptist, etc.), has had some interaction with Robinson. I found his response to be, how shall I put it? Awesome. Hilarious. Snarky. As a man who has spent decades earning advanced degrees in snark — degrees that are every bit as real as Dr. David Tee’s doctorate — I found Ben’s takedown of Robinson to be top-shelf. I have added his site and channel to the list of people I follow. I hope you will do the same.
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.
Gary has his very own ‘Doctor Tee‘ — all atheist/agnostic bloggers have them, though admittedly Bruce seems to have more than most — and ‘Swordmanjr’ leapt to God’s defence. The Almighty Creator-Of-All-Things, you see, needs fallible, flawed human beings to do this for him. Swordmanjr accused Gary of scapegoating God who, apparently, is not really responsible for suffering, nor indeed anything horrible.
I guess God could be being scapegoated if it weren’t for the fact his Son, God Incarnate according to some, tells us he cares for human beings much more than he cares for sparrows (which is, admittedly, not much at all), that he is concerned to the extent that he numbers each and every hair on individuals’ heads (Matthew 10:29-30). This must be before he allows so many of them to die of starvation and in natural disasters.
The evidence is that God does not care. He doesn’t care if you’re a child born into poverty who then dies a slow, miserable, painful death through malnutrition. He doesn’t care if you’re caught up in a natural disaster like the recent earthquake in Turkey (which, according to some Christian nutjob, was God’s response to Sam Smith’s satanic performance at the Grammy’s) in which your entire community and you yourself are wiped out. He doesn’t care if you die of a nasty virus, which ultimately he’s responsible for, as millions, including Christians, did during the pandemic. He doesn’t care that you die, when, or how horribly. He – just – doesn’t – care, period.
Jesus, as he was about so much, was plain wrong about his Father’s caring. The real world does not and will not match up with this early Christian fantasy.
Believers who leap to God’s defence invariably do it by launching vitriolic ad hominem attacks on non-theists who dare to criticise his shoddy performance. In doing so, they demonstrate yet another of Christianity’s disconnects: its promise that it makes new creatures of people, filled with love and compassion (2 Corinthians 5:17).
‘By their fruits shall ye know them,’ proclaims Jesus in Matthew 7:15-20. If the Christians who lurk around atheist blogs are anything to go by, those fruits are often pretty rotten: spiteful, vitriolic, hateful . . . ‘evil,’ Jesus calls it. These Christians frequently end their comments with a threat: one day the atheist will stand before God’s judgement throne and then they’ll be sorry; Hell awaits!
God is not there in this kind of behavior. He’s not there when humans suffer and die, frequently horribly. He’s not there in the Bible verses that promise he is there in such circumstances. God is not there.
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.
How can one look at the Bible and promote high self-esteem? Many Christians turn to verses such as the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. They say that is telling us to love both our neighbor and ourselves.
Actually, the verse is not a command to love yourself. It assumes you already love yourself. How can it assume that? Simple. It is talking about how we treat people. It assumes that all people are nice to themselves. It tells us to also be nice to others.
As Rom 13:9 puts it, the command to love neighbors is simply summing up all the other commandments, such as the one forbidding murder and the one against stealing. It is telling us to treat others nicely, just as we already try to treat ourselves nicely.
So no, the command to love our neighbor is not primarily about respect. And no, this verse does not tell us to respect ourselves more. It is about treating people nicely. It assumes we are already nice to ourselves and should also be nice to others.
Made in God’s Image
Ah, but you might tell me that God made us in his image and that this is something to feel good about. And how do you know that? You read it in a book that I think is often mistaken.
Yes, you may have read that God made you in his image, but reality tells a different story. We are close to the image of a chimpanzee, sharing much of its DNA and body structure. Yes, we are significantly different from other apes. There was a series of evolutionary pressures that gave us an enormous concentration of brain power and enhanced abilities to cooperate with others, but inwardly, much of our structure is like that of the ape; a grand and glorious ape that can engineer the Internet, build great civilizations, and create wonderful works of art. But still, biologically we are apes, made in the image of apes–utterly amazing apes.
But even if it is true that God made us in his image, the Bible does not stop there. It proceeds to tell us of a fall into sin for which our ancestors were cursed and removed from the garden. A few chapters later, “the Lord saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5) There is not much room there for feeling positive about being human.
Again, we need our self-esteem to be realistic. I find it easy to have high self-esteem based on the reality found by science. We are mammals that have special abilities that make our species truly worth loving.
A New Nature
Many will argue that they are “in Christ,” and so have become a new person (2 Corinthians 5:17). They call this process regeneration. They say it gives them a new nature that makes them want to do good. Does this give them something to feel good about?
My first response is to ask, “How do you know this is true”? Many Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, and others also live moral lives. And many, if not all, Christians fail to live up to Biblical standards. So, if you really have a “new” nature that makes you better than me, where is the evidence?
Even Paul admits that his life is far from this new standard. He argues that he actually has two natures, the flesh and the spirit (Gal 5:17). The word translated flesh literally means the body. So Paul is saying he has a body that wants to do bad things, but he also has a new spirit inside him that wants to do good. And he sees that the two natures are constantly fighting each other. He writes:
For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold into bondage to sin. For I do not understand what I am doing; for I am not practicing what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate. However, if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, that the Law is good. But now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I do the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me.
I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully agree with the law of God in the inner person, but I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, the law which is in my body’s parts. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Romans 7:14-24
So yes, Paul claimed to have a new nature, but in this moment of honesty, he admits that it really is not making that big of a difference. His flesh, his body, his natural self still does what it wants.
Paul talks about a spirit inside, but it doesn’t really seem to be working. If this new creation that he has become is really not winning out, how could he rightfully claim that his new, regenerated self gives him a reason for self-worth? And can he really claim that the regenerated person is so much better that he can feel real self-worth, but that others cannot?
Paul ended his confession above on a most dismal note: “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” That is depressing.
But wait, don’t stop there. Read on. He answers this rhetorical question: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25) So now we find it actually works and ends with triumph in Jesus Christ.
Or does it? Read on. “So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.” Paul could have ended on the first sentence of v25, declaring victory in Christ, and the whole thing would have a positive tone. But he doesn’t. He can’t help himself. In a moment of honesty, the truth comes out. Yes, he does include that note of triumph in Christ, but he immediately goes back to despair: “with my flesh I am serving the law of sin. In reality, that new life he claims does not really work that well.”
Realizing that the flesh — the body — keeps on wanting to do things he considers wrong, Pau has a constant answer: Don’t listen to the flesh. (Rom 8:13, Rom 13:14, 2Co 7:1, Gal 5:16, Gal 5:24) Crucify it! But as he himself admits in Romans 7, this strategy does not work well.
By way of comparison, the Noom weight loss program also speaks of two natures, a “rider” and an “elephant.” The elephant is the part of you that wants to eat anything in sight. The rider is the part that wants to lose weight.
If somebody is actually riding a real elephant, the goal is to get the elephant to go where the rider wants. To do that, the elephant needs to know there is something in it for him; that when the elephant reaches the end of the journey he will be fed and cared for. If we have trained the elephant to know this, the elephant will go where the rider wants.
But what happens if you hop on an elephant when there is nothing in it for the elephant? The elephant then has no desire to cooperate. It will do what it wants. And you then, like the Apostle Paul, might cry out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?!”
In the Noom program, the idea is for the metaphorical rider to get the metaphorical elephant to cooperate. To do that, we need to be nice to our “elephant” — our inner bodily desire for many food calories — with the understanding that the elephant must in turn allow us to control the overall ride. The rider must bargain with the elephant.
Paul’s reaction to his flesh is nothing like Noom’s. Paul makes no room for finding ways to please fleshly desires. No, what the flesh wants is wrong. So, the flesh must be crucified. There must be a firm, “No!” But, in reality, as Paul admits in Romans 7, his plan simply does not work.
We all have fleshly desires that may want us to do socially undesirable things. And we all have an inner desire to do moral, socially acceptable things. Christians and non-Christians share this. When one claims that only Christians have a good nature, one is making a claim that the evidence simply does not support.
And when one assumes that the fleshly desires are all bad, and the “spirit” is all good, one simply is not being realistic. For we cannot channel all our desires for either good or bad. We are a mixture of conflicting thoughts and emotions. They are the natural result of being human. The best course of action is to rationally think through all of this and find ways that best meet all our desires in ways that are morally acceptable.
I find that the assertion that believers have a spirit in addition to the flesh, but unbelievers have only the flesh, is wrong. And in practice, following this two-natures approach is not realistic. If we want our self-esteem to be based on reality, then telling ourselves that Christians have these two natures is not realistic. And it is not practical.
If our self-esteem depends on this theory of transforming grace, and that grace doesn’t seem to work in reality the way it is claimed, we are setting ourselves up for discouragement. If our self-esteem is not rooted in reality, we are asking for trouble. The human mind does not like to hear that it must ignore reality.
God Loves Me
Others have told me that God loves them, and this gives them self-esteem. Bill Cooke describes this method of building self-esteem:
Many accounts of pious converts tell of suffering low self-esteem that was then resolved by being told that they did indeed matter; that despite being one biped among millions on one planet among millions, the creator of this entire universe is interested in their welfare. The success of religious conversions and apologetic arguments consist of religion’s ability to inject people with such quantities of anthropocentric conceit that it almost becomes plausible. Religion’s Anthropocentric Conceit by Bill Cooke
The first problem with basing self-esteem on God’s love is that it is unrealistic. If there is indeed a Creator of the universe, I see no reason to believe he takes a special interest in us.
A second problem with using this as your basis for self-esteem is that this is nothing more than an argument from authority. It says somebody says I have worth; therefore I must have worth. Couldn’t you just figure that out for yourself? Many humanists have long seen the worth and value of being human, without needing somebody to tell us we have worth.
It is like a teenage girl saying that she has worth because her boyfriend loves her. It would be better if she recognized that she had worth because there is within her a core of human goodness. Then she would not be dependent on some authority telling her she is good. If the teenager knows she has worth because of the goodness she sees within herself, she will find it easier to escape an abusive relationship.
If, on the other hand, her only reason for valuing herself is because her boyfriend loves her, abandoning that relationship would remove her source of self-esteem. The need for positive self-esteem is so strong it can drive people to do anything to keep that self-esteem up. She might hesitate to give up her only hope.
Likewise, if the only reason one has for feeling good about herself is that God says she has worth, she might be less likely to explore if this is really the case. Too much relies on it being true. So, she avoids questions about her faith. But, if we cannot explore and ask questions, we are not really free.
And besides, if we base our self-esteem on what the Bible says about us, it is not very complimentary.
All flesh is like grass, and all its glory is like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off. 1Pe 1:24 (See also Romans 3:11-19, Isaiah 64:6)
As a humanist, I readily see the worth and value of all humans, including myself. I do not need an external authority to tell me I have worth. I can see it in myself.
Conclusion
I conclude that many of the problems that Christians report with self-esteem may well be rooted in the Christian religion itself. The Christian view that we are naturally sinful and depraved is degrading. Attempts to balance this teaching with the teaching of a transforming grace needlessly complicate the efforts to reach a healthy self-image. Those attempts succeed only in the proportion that the resulting self-image approximates reality. But if a self-image based on reality is our goal, should we not start our search with science?
There is a better way. In humanism and naturalistic science, you can simply look at the facts — at the intrinsic value of all humans including yourself — and then you can feel good. You can then move on and start living.
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.
Self-esteem is important. We need our self-esteem to be positive; else, we might become depressed. We also need our self-esteem to be realistic; else we could make bad decisions based on our misunderstandings. Sometimes those goals are conflicting. But I find it possible to achieve both.
My self-image is based on naturalism and humanism. This I find to be both realistic and positive.
You may have found other ways to build your self-esteem. Is your way realistic? Is your way positive? These are important questions to ask.
Many value the Bible as their basis for self-esteem. This has been confusing to me. The Bible never specifically mentions self-esteem. It often has a low view of human nature and strongly condemns pride. The Bible even praises Job for abhorring himself (Job 42:6) and speaks in favor of people loathing themselves (Ezekiel 20:43). So, how can you turn to the Bible as your source for self-esteem?
I came from a religious background that shared the Calvinist view known as “total depravity.” When it comes to our inner self, this view offers little to feel good about. This view tells us we are innately bad.
Years later, I met Christians who had a much higher view of human nature. They also based their views on the Bible. Who was right? Struggles over this issue led me to study the Bible and self-esteem. Eventually, this was one of the keys to my deconversion. I tell the story here.
In the first chapter of his online book, Beyond Born Again, Robert Price documents these two contrasting Christian views on solving life’s psychological problems. First, there is a hardline, traditional view that sees the Bible alone as our source for human living. It has little need for psychology. Proponents such as Jay Adams and Martin Bobgan often take a negative view of the value of self-esteem. They see humans as justly deserving Hell because of who we are. Our problems are essentially spiritual. Christ is the answer.
By contrast, other sites such as this one rely heavily on psychology. Advocates of this view seek cures such as promoting self-esteem. They adopt opinions that are often consistent with humanism. They have many proof texts, but are they really learning this from the Bible? I contend they are often drawing from secular humanism and science, not the Bible.
If you trust the Bible, should you adopt the hard-line view or the soft-line view? Or is there, perhaps, a better way, one that is built honestly on a secular foundation?
I contend that the hardline, anti-psychology view is neither realistic nor positive. The soft-line, pro-psychology Christian view is positive but also often unrealistic. I contend that humanism and science point to the best way.
Are We Evil?
Let’s begin with a simple question. In a moral sense, are we humans good, or are we evil? Many Christians say we are innately bad. If so, then how could we possibly have a positive image of the self?
Christian doctrinal statements have generally seen us humans as evil. For instance, the Westminster (Presbyterian) confession of faith says:
They [Adam and Eve] being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity…
From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil…
Every sin…does in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal. Westminster Confession of Faith
We find we are descended from corrupted people and that we now have a corrupted nature. In fact, we read here that we are “opposite of all good,” “wholly inclined to all evil,” and properly deserving of God’s wrath. Why is God angry with us? According to this document, it is because we deserve it.
Similarly, the London Baptist Confession says we have all become, “dead in Sin, and wholly defiled, in all the faculties, and parts, of soul, and body.”
Those statements leave little room to feel positive about ourselves.
John Calvin not only agreed with this low view of humanity but went so far as to call self-love a noxious pest that engenders all sorts of foul behavior. He said the only way to live a good life is to leave off all thoughts of yourself. He wrote:
This is that self-denial that Christ so strongly enforces on His disciples from the very outset (Mat 16:24), which, as soon as it takes hold of the mind, leaves no place either, first, for pride, show, and ostentation; or, secondly, for avarice, lust, luxury, effeminacy, or other vices which are engendered by self love (2Ti 3:2-5). On the contrary, wherever it does not reign, the foulest vices are indulged in without shame…
There is no other remedy than to pluck up by the roots those most noxious pests, self-love, and love of victory. This the doctrine of Scripture does…
How difficult it is to perform the duty of seeking the good of our neighbor (Mat 12:33; Luk 10:29-36)! Unless you leave off all thoughts of yourself and in a manner cease to be yourself, you will never accomplish it. Calvin on Self-Denial, by John Calvin, pp. 4, 7, 8. (Click here to download as PDF.)
So, if Calvin is right, we should not even love ourselves, for self-love is the source of the vilest of vices. Many Christians have historically agreed with Calvin on this. Did they get this from the Bible? Let’s look at what it says.
How Does the Bible See Us?
Many verses see humans in a negative light. As I mentioned above, Ezekiel approves of self-loathing. He writes, “And there you will remember your ways and all your deeds by which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done.” (Ezekiel 20:43)
As another example, the book of Job is a drama discussing various reactions to Job’s suffering. At the end of the book, God steps in and lectures everybody on the true answer. (Job 38-42) It turns out that God is so much greater than people, and people just would not understand why they suffer. So Job and his friends better just accept what comes to them. Humans just wouldn’t understand, so don’t even ask. Job responds to this lengthy reprimand by saying, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:6 KJV) The book of Job implies God approved of this response.
And Isaiah 64:6 tells us “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment”
These verses are not merely telling us to recognize that we did bad things. They are telling us we are bad to the core. We should loathe ourselves, abhor ourselves, and understand that our best deeds are nothing more than filth.
What about the New Testament? Jesus says we are evil (Mat 7:11, Luk 11:13). He tells us, “when you do all the things which were commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’” (Luke 17:10) I see nothing there about intrinsically being worthy of self-love. We are simply unworthy slaves who better do what we are told to do.
John 15:5 says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Are we that helpless on our own?
Paul expands on this view. In Romans 3:11-19 he tells us that all have become unprofitable and that none is good. Our tongues are full of lies, our feet are swift to shed blood, and we don’t know the way of peace. Paul even tells us the whole purpose of the law is to make us feel guilty before God. Guilt? God wants us to feel guilty? That is far from the modern Christian psychological view that encourages us to accept our inner selves and minimize our feeling of guilt.
Total Depravity and Self-Esteem
Based on verses like the ones above, many have adopted the doctrine of “total depravity.” Total depravity is the first point of the popular Calvinist TULIP acronym. Here is an example description of total depravity from a Christian site:
The doctrine of total depravity is an acknowledgment that the Bible teaches that as a result of the fall of man (Genesis 3:6) every part of man—his mind, will, emotions, and flesh—have been corrupted by sin. In other words, sin affects all of our being including who we are and what we do. It penetrates to the very core of our being so that everything is tainted by sin and “…all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” before a holy God (Isaiah 64:6). It acknowledges that the Bible teaches that we sin because we are sinners by nature. (Source)
It appears to me that total depravity is devastating to one’s positive self-esteem. Can a Christian believe in total depravity and also seek to build his self-esteem? Or are these incompatible? Recently I asked these questions on a thread on the Christian Forums website. Many on that thread could see the conflict between those two concepts.
Some people there resolved the conflict by rejecting the need for high self-esteem, clinging strongly to the traditional view of total depravity. One person wrote that self-image, self-love, self-esteem, and self-confidence are incompatible with his theology. This is one way to solve the conflict, but it is a little depressing. If I had to give up either self-esteem or total depravity, I would give up total depravity.
Others did indeed reject the idea of total depravity or watered it down to the extent that it lost its original meaning.
Dropping total depravity may seem like the natural way out of the dilemma, but there is a problem. If you reject total depravity, then why does Hell exist? The hard-line view says people are in Hell because they deserve it. Total depravity takes God off the hook. People that are in hell deserve it. Don’t blame God. But that also destroys self-esteem. If we are so rotten that we deserve Hell, how can we feel positive about ourselves?
If you instead decide to reject total depravity, how can your God justify Hell? Those that deny total depravity tend to justify Hell on a technicality. They will tell me that their God has a list of demands. And if your score on life’s test is not 100%, then sorry, you go to Hell, that’s the rule.
Oh, but they also say believers have an exemption. Don’t forget that.
But what about everybody else? What about those who never heard? Sorry. If they don’t believe in Jesus, they need to score 100% on the test.
One wonders why a loving God would make this the rule. If any schoolteacher were to fail every student that ever scored less than 100% in his class, we would regard his expectations as unrealistic. So how could God make such a requirement?
And if you say we can’t blame God for that requirement, for the nature of reality is such that God had no choice but to enforce this rule, then God is not all-powerful. Whatever it is that made this rule that demands perfection is then more powerful than God.
If some people go to Hell, not because they are depraved people who deserve it, but because they failed to be 100% perfect, and they never heard of Jesus, one wonders why God would not be more tolerant. If people don’t really deserve Hell, and they are just slightly off course, why doesn’t God stop the suffering? If we deny total depravity, then we are left with people that deserve to feel good about themselves being condemned forever as utter trash. That makes no sense.
Those that have taken this course to promote self-esteem and abandon total depravity often find the doctrine of Hell is the next to go. If people aren’t totally depraved, a God who enforces such punishments on good people who are not perfect is not easy to accept. So the doctrine of Hell is frequently ignored or even argued away.
Some people on that Christian Forums thread went through mental contortions to make total depravity and self-esteem compatible. One person suggested that “total depravity” simply means that we are good people that sometimes make mistakes. That is not total depravity.
Another person on that thread suggested that total depravity was just another way to say we were not good enough for God. But not being good enough for God is not the same thing as being totally depraved. For instance, I am not good enough to play chess in a tournament with grandmasters, but I do have significant chess skills. The fact that I could not play competitively with Magnus Carlsen does not mean I am totally deprived of chess skills.
We cannot water down “total depravity” by saying it just means “good but falling a little short of the standard.” That is an abandonment of total depravity.
Another person told me I could have positive self-esteem if I ignored my human, evil nature. That is ersatz self-esteem. The self-esteem that comes from ignoring reality is not true self-esteem. But this is the best self-esteem this believer in total depravity could come up with for unbelievers.
So, if one adopts a view of total depravity, based on the Bible and on the need to explain Hell, one is left with a struggle to have any meaningful positive self-esteem.
In the extreme, groups like the Independent Fundamentalist Baptists, of which I was once a participant, see people as little more than a spec of worthless dust.
And so, I find traditional Christian doctrines of depravity are at odds with the modern emphasis on self-esteem. Many who were once trapped in these depressing doctrines of human depravity have expressed tremendous psychological relief when leaving these doctrines of faith.
Pride
The Bible repeatedly mentions pride. Here are links to the many verses that mention pride; verses that mention the proud; and verses that mention the haughty. The Bible tells us that we are to hate pride (Pro 8:13); that pride leads to dishonor (Pro 11:2); that pride leads to destruction (Pro 16:18); that it brings us low (Pro 29:23); and that God humbles those who walk in pride (Dan 4:37). In Mark, pride is listed as one of the evil things that defile a man (Mark 7:21-23). And Pro 16:5 tells us, “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD.” Other verses tell us God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble (Jas 4:6, 1Pe 5:5).
And Isaiah tells us:
Moreover, the LORD said, “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with heads held high and seductive eyes, and go along with mincing steps and jingle the anklets on their feet, the Lord will afflict the scalp of the daughters of Zion with scabs, and the LORD will make their foreheads bare.” Isaiah 3:16-17
You do not want your scalp afflicted with scabs or your forehead bare. Isaiah says if you are haughty and walk with head held high, this will happen. Will you no longer walk with your head held high? Or will you ignore this warning?
Christians who want healthy self-esteem will tell us that high self-esteem and pride are not the same thing. One website says pride is the notion that we don’t need help, or that pride is the notion that one is superior. Where do they come up with these definitions? Nowhere does the Bible tell you that is what it is talking about. One would think that authors who wanted us to think highly of ourselves, but to avoid certain errors, would be clear that they are actually praising high self-feelings, and that their condemnation applies only to certain wrong extremes of pride. The Bible does not do this. It declares a blanket condemnation of pride. It sure looks to me like it is condemning the very essence of high self-esteem.
Biblical Self-Esteem
Despite the conflicts between the Bible and Christian teachings, many modern Christians have found ways to promote high self-esteem. You will find many Christian sites arguing for the virtue of self-esteem, such as this site and this one. You will find lists of Bible verses supposedly supporting self-esteem here and here. Yet the verses they list have little to do with self-esteem. None of these sites shows a verse warning of the problem of low self-esteem. None lists a verse telling us to think generally more positively about ourselves. None can find a verse stating the need for high self-esteem.
But there are many verses that say the opposite. Romans 12:3 tells us not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. Galatians 6:3 warns people that think they are something when they are nothing. No verse warns us about thinking we are nothing when we are actually something. 2 Timothy 3:2 warns us that the last days will be terrible. It gives a long list of evils, beginning with “lovers of their own selves.” Low self-esteem or lack of self-love didn’t make the list of evils. But loving oneself is on that list. As I said at the top of this post, it is important that our self-esteem is both accurate and positive. As a humanist, I find everything that I need to build healthy self-esteem. After all, we are all humans with all the inner capacities that this involves. We humans can accomplish great things. We can fly to the moon, make great works of art, and build great nations. And so, we can look at ourselves without looking through the veil of total depravity, and we can see ourselves as humans with innate worth.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
I have been thrice vaccinated, yet I contracted COVID in August 2022. I was quite sick, but I survived. Today, I tested positive for the virus again. I’m sicker than I was the first time — mainly respiratory problems.
I will likely not do any writing this week. If you are sitting on a guest post, now would be a good time to send it to me.
I was raised in a Fundamentalist Baptist church. I was saved and baptized at about the age of six. Throughout my youth, I remember being wholly devoted to Christianity. I remember family praising me as a young child for the example I set because I wouldn’t eat a bite at meals until I made sure everyone prayed together. I also remember being the “good Christian girl” through high school and college. I prayed, faithfully attended church — even by myself after I started driving — and read the Bible voraciously. I sought to be completely devoted to Jesus. I said all the right things and did all the right things. I sang, led Bible studies, and served God. All my extracurriculars were associated with the church or faith-based things, other than being involved in my community arts organization as a teenager, mostly acting in plays. I was so certain about Christianity until the moments in which I wasn’t. In my late teens, I began to incorporate the following story into my salvation testimony to prove I had truly been born again and to use it to allay any doubts I or anyone else might have about the authenticity of my faith.
Baby Sinner
My mom has always talked about how I was such a headstrong young child, so much so that she didn’t know how to parent me. Mom told me she once went to our pastor crying about me because she didn’t know what to do with me. Recently, she told me a story I had never heard before — that she remembers the first time she really connected with me was in a Pizza Hut when I was about four years old. It made me sad because my daughter is almost four.
My daughter is so much like me. My relatives who knew me as a child say being around my daughter is like being around me again when I was her age. Even though she’s headstrong and hard for me to manage sometimes, I feel we have more moments of connection than I can recount from my own childhood. To hear my mom say she distinctly remembers not having a real moment of connection with me until I was four years old makes me question what was really going on with me back then.
Mom said I was difficult until I “asked Jesus to come into my heart” then it was like a switch was flipped on in me and I became “better.” Now that I’m a parent of a toddler, I realize that my issues as a toddler and young child weren’t the spiritual issues of a hell-bent sinner, but that I was lacking something somewhere, stability or attention or love or something. I was well cared for as a kid and I had a good childhood. I don’t think I was neglected or abused, but whatever was lacking, the problem wasn’t spiritual or that I needed Jesus, but it was behavioral, that I needed something real from my parents, whatever it may have been.
Seeds of Doubt
In my teens, and especially college years, I struggled with doubt. I have a lot of questions. My mind dissects things, deconstructs things to the minutest details, and rebuilds them to understand what’s happening, how things work, and what is the logic behind them. But I’m also naturally loyal. I was loyal to the presuppositions of my faith that were ingrained in me since before I can remember. I questioned, but I never sought answers outside of my faith community, even in college.
One of my biggest regrets is that in college I did not lean into and explore all kinds of thinking. I dabbled in things because I went to a state school. I couldn’t get away from it in mandatory philosophy classes and English classes where I was introduced to secular ideas. I learned what ideas were out there, but I never truly considered them. I observed them from behind the hazmat suit of Fundamentalist Christianity I wore. In fact, I remember driving two hours to my home church to attend a special service where a visiting preacher preached a sermon he called “Babylon University.” He used the story of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Babylonian captivity to set a principle for those of us going to college to be “in the world, but not of the world.”
Marriage Obsession and Denied Sexuality
As a teenager, I was obsessed with getting married. My church’s worldview, and being a child of divorce, as well as my dad dying from suicide two years after my parent’s divorce when I was 13, caused me to desire stability that was foundational to my obsession with marriage, along with my natural sexual desires that wouldn’t be satisfied until I got married.
Even though I was raised by a single mom who dated and had boyfriends with whom she was having sexual relationships, I was sexually and relationally conservative because I held so closely to the teachings of the church, even more so than to my mother’s parenting. I remained a virgin — mostly — until I got married at 28.
At 18, I began a “courtship” (think Josh Harris “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and Elisabeth Elliot’s romance with Jim Elliot) with a man in my church who was 15 years older than I. He was 33 at the time. This was my first serious relationship. This relationship was supposed to be a “courtship” overseen by our parents, but considering he was 33 and my only parent was a single mom who, along with her boyfriend, (eventually my stepdad), thought the whole thing was super weird, it was mostly overseen by my youth pastor and his wife and my church’s pastor and his wife. By the way, the whole thing top to bottom makes me cringe today and I’m so grateful I did not marry that guy.
I became engaged or “betrothed” (ugh!) but thankfully my mom, and eventually, my church, helped me end the relationship before it got to marriage. After our engagement, my husband-to-be began acting strange — overbearing and potentially abusive. My mom and youth pastor encouraged me to move away to live on campus at the college I was currently attending.
I didn’t want to move away, but I heeded my mom. Living on campus, this was the first time I became depressed. However, I got involved with a church and made good friends and when I left campus for the summer, I realized I was sad to leave and couldn’t wait to go back. I had a great college experience. My friend group grew beyond the church. I became a resident assistant and really enjoyed my friendships with my fellow housing employees. Looking back, I have some regrets about missed opportunities, but nothing that makes me hate my time there. I didn’t date anyone in college, but I wasn’t without my crushes. I literally fell in love with one man, but we never dated, surprisingly. At one point I did feel like God told me I would marry a pastor. Good to know, God.
Not long after college, I moved back to my small town because I missed my church. I eventually connected with a former high school classmate that ended in another broken engagement after three years of an on-and-off-again relationship. After one final rebound boyfriend to whom I nearly lost my virginity, I met my husband.
My husband and I have an amazing relationship and chemistry. If I have any belief left in miracles, then the one miracle I have in my life is Matthew. When I lost belief in God, I felt free to say, “I believe in Matthew and in our love,” but also, I believe in myself and my place in the world.
During that strange time, especially as an unmarried, 20-something, between graduating college and meeting Matthew at age 28, I fell into a deep depression that lasted years; I don’t think it ever fully lifted. This is when I started to lose my faith, though I didn’t talk about it. I had suicidal thoughts. The loneliness facilitated by my church’s beliefs as I waited for marriage was debilitating and I believe denying my sexuality gave me sexual frustration that contributed to my depression. I suspect if I had a different worldview at the time that would have allowed me healthy sexual expression outside of marriage, then I would have carried a lot less shame and guilt about masturbation, which I discovered in college.
Meeting my husband lifted my depression. We had a quick romance. We met and were married between February and November of the same year. I was so happy. Within three years we had two children. My life up until I met Matthew felt so slow and especially those last few years in my 20s felt like a slow grind. Since meeting Matthew, change keeps coming and coming. Big stuff — marriage, babies, becoming a pastor’s wife, losing my faith as a pastor’s wife, moving from a very rural area to a city. When we got engaged, we were looking at a decent combined annual income, but halfway through our engagement, we both lost our jobs. We started marriage and had babies living in extreme poverty and mutual depression over our situation. It was traumatic, but our relationship remained strong.
Loss of Faith
In October 2019, I remember really struggling with doubts about my faith, and that’s the first time the thought entered my head, “I’m not a Christian.” I thought God gave me that thought. The next day, I was emotionally moved by a sermon my husband preached to respond with a recommitment to my faith and I was baptized again.
But doubts resurfaced and I began struggling with deep depression again. Around January 2022, I told my husband that I wanted to take some breaks from attending church, like maybe one Sunday a month, I don’t go, or I visit another church. He was supportive of me doing that. However, I never followed through on it because someone in the church broke her back and I stepped in to fulfill her responsibilities. It put my plan to take a break from church on hold as I needed to be there for these things. I didn’t mind it. It helped me a little because I felt I had more purpose with church than just getting the kids dressed to go and wrestle them into a pew and fight to keep them quiet.
Then in May 2022, my stepdad asked my mom for a divorce after 15 years of tumultuous marriage. It was with this backdrop that I just got tired of pretending that prayer did anything, that faith had any meaning, that Christianity was true, or that maybe God was even real, and if he was real, that he (or she or them) even cared about things the way my church said God did.
At the end of July 2022 and with the help of Bruce’s blog, I told my husband I considered myself a Christian agnostic. Christian in that I am content to practice a social Christianity for the sake of his ministry. I sincerely don’t want my faith status to disrupt his profession and passion and I sincerely love my Christian friends. I don’t want to cause him controversy and pain within the church.
I would be socially Christian in the outward trappings, but I told him that I refused to pray privately. I decided to act as if God didn’t exist, and if he did, then let him reveal himself clearly to me. So far, God hasn’t. I haven’t been struck by lightning. I’m the same person I’ve always been. I cuss more and pray less. My thoughts on abortion and sexuality are changing. But I’m essentially the same person. Better, I think, in how I treat others and how I treat myself.
I’m happier and more at peace with myself and the world as I face depression as essentially an atheist. I would much rather face depression without faith than face it with faith, as if I’m thrown into a fight with a demon with a bag over my head. Moving Forward
I don’t know what the future holds for me as a non-Christian married to a devoted Christian who still feels a special call to be in church ministry. We have toddlers so we have many years ahead of raising children. My husband has resigned from the ministry for the time being for reasons not related to me. He is excited about finding a new church to join in our new city. I told him that I don’t think I’m eligible to become a new member of a church and that I don’t intend to hide the truth about my faith status from people we meet in churches. I don’t mind attending church with him some, because I enjoy having that connection with the whole family, but I’m also looking forward to exploring slow Sundays with no expectations except to truly rest.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
According to many Evangelicals, getting “saved” is better than any experience humans could possibly have. Is this really true? Or is it, perhaps, essential for Evangelicals to convince themselves of this in order to justify claims that Jesus is the best friend, spouse, and lover anyone could ever have? Evangelicals are convinced — outwardly anyway — that their Jesus is the most awesome dude that ever walked on planet Earth; and even now from his Father’s third heaven, he continues to show that he is the best-God-ever. According to those who are saved and sanctified by the mighty blood of Jesus, their Savior, Lord, King, and Vending Machine Operator is da bomb. No matter how good, kind, and loving someone might be, no one is a match for J-E-S-U-S. Jesus H. Christ is the sum and end of everything. If Jesus was in the running for Man of the Year, he would win every year. No man, woman, or deity can compare to Jesus. Or so Evangelicals say, anyway.
What’s odd here is the fact that not one Evangelical has EVER seen Jesus. Two thousand years ago, Jesus was nailed to a Roman cross and crucified. While Jesus purportedly made a surprising return to life after being dead for three days, he disappeared a short time later, never to be seen again. Evangelicals allege that Jesus is now sitting on a throne in Heaven, busily hearing and answering their prayers; but they have no evidence outside of the Bible for this claim. Imagine a friend telling you that her spouse/boyfriend is an awesome person; that he is quite the lover; that no one in the entire world is as good as he is. Yet, when you ask, I would sure love to meet this hunka burning love of yours, she replies, You can’t. He’s invisible. What would your next thought be? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. Rational people would encourage their friend to seek out professional psychiatric help. Yet, because loving the invisible Jesus is a religious belief, we are expected to, without judgment, smile and say, that’s nice.
Most Evangelicals enter into a saving relationship with Jesus one of two ways: either they grow up in the church or they have a crisis in their life and someone tells them, Jesus is the cure for what ails you! The latter tend to have powerful emotional experiences that they believe is Jesus delivering them from their crisis (sins). Sunday after Sunday, Evangelical preachers present Jesus as the elixir for the soul. Never mind the fact that humans don’t have souls. Most people believe they do, and that’s what makes them perfect targets for preachers promising invisible fixes for their invisible, sin-blackened souls.
Once people are convinced that Jesus has awesomely saved them from their sins, it is not much of a stretch to believe that their conversion experience is the best thing that ever happened. And people who have been conditioned this way go through life believing that nothing will ever measure up to that moment they prayed the sinner’s prayer and Jesus, by and through the power of the Holy Spirit, saved them. Making love, watching your first child be born, holding your first grandchild in your arms, and countless other awesome emotional experiences we humans have — none of them measures up to mouthing a prayer at a Baptist church altar or praying to the TV at the end of a Billy Graham Crusade.
Sunday after Sunday, the “Jesus is Awesome” trope is preached, sung, and reinforced. Is it any wonder, then, that many Evangelicals truly believe that getting saved is better than any other experience they could have? Even if some Evangelicals believe otherwise, they have to pretend that the three minutes of sex they had with Jesus is the best fuck ever. This, of course, leads to a paucity of experience; a life where no experience measures up the moment they were saved.
Unbelievers know, however, that life offers us all sorts of experiences — good, bad, and indifferent. And some of these experiences rise above the normality of life and make our Top Ten Experiences List. A few years ago, Polly and I attended a Darius Rucker concert in Fort Wayne. We had never been to a country concert, so we didn’t know what to expect. Boy, were we in for the time of our lives! There was a buzz in the arena from the start. When Rucker hit the stage and started singing, we found his performance to be every bit as powerful as anything we had ever experienced in church. And believe me, we had experienced the power and presence of the mythical Holy Ghost many times. Yet, here was a heathen — by Evangelical standards — bringing down the Shekinah Glory (the glorious presence of God) as he sang. For two hours, Polly and I, along with thousands of other people, were emotionally raptured away. It was an experience neither of us will ever forget.
I could spend the next hour detailing the salvation-level experiences I have had in my life; the difference being that these experiences are rooted in reality, not myth. As a retired photographer, I have witnessed and photographed moments in time that were breathtaking; every bit as awesome as walking the sawdust trail and getting saved. It’s too bad for Evangelicals that every experience in their lives post-salvation must be relegated to an inferior status. To do otherwise is to worship a false God. Anything put before the jealous Evangelical God is considered idolatry. Jesus alone deserves all the praise, honor, and glory. Yes, Evangelicals have all sorts of awesome experiences in their lives, but the praise, honor, and glory for experiencing them must always be given to Jesus. Life = Jesus. Or so Evangelicals say, anyway.
Many of us have likely heard an Evangelical preacher say, the most important decision you will ever make in your life is getting saved! Ponder that thought for a moment. Was the salvation experience I had at the altar of Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio on a fall night in 1972 of such a nature that no other decision in life would be as important? Fifty-one years have passed since I asked Jesus to save me from my sin. I can say that, while getting saved was certainly transformative, I have made countless decisions and had numerous experiences that were every bit as awesome as that moment in 1972.
As a non-Christian, I don’t have to measure life’s experiences by a momentary episode in time. My wife and I have made love countless times over the past forty-five years. Sometimes the sex was okay; other times it was good; and sometimes it was bed-frame-breaking, chandelier-rattling awesome. Imagine if I had to say that every sexual experience was not as good as the first time. While it was certainly thrilling to have sex for the first time, I have definitely experienced lovemaking that surpasses that first 100-meter dash. Awesome, but quickly over. And that’s the point I want to make to Evangelicals. Don’t make your salvation experience the end-all. Don’t believe what your preachers are telling you about life. If you are blessed with long life, you will have many wonderful experiences, experiences that are every bit as mind-blowing as Jesus. You will never feel this, however, as long as Jesus is lurking in the shadows. Don’t let Elwood P. Dowd’s pooka named Harvey get in the way of you experiencing all that life has to offer.
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.
The Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement believes that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Within its pages, True Believers® will find everything they need pertaining to life and godliness. The Bible, then, is a roadmap or a blueprint for life. Follow it and all will be well. Don’t follow it and you risk chastisement/judgment from God. IFB adherents are literalists who believe that all one needs to do to be pleasing to God is to strictly follow the commands and teachings of the Bible. Much like other sects, IFB congregants pick and choose which commands to practice and which to ignore. Their buffet line may have different foods from, say, Orthodox Presbyterians or Southern Baptists might have on their buffet, but the end result is the same: individual believers picking and choosing the foods they want to eat, ignoring the rest.
Most IFB preachers believe that while each Bible verse has only one meaning, it has many applications. It is in applying the various commands/laws/precepts of the Bible that IFB churches and pastors develop what are called standards. These standards often become an extra-Biblical law that True Believers® are expected to follow. Failing to follow these standards will cause fellow church members to question your devotion and commitment to Jesus/church, and in some instances may cause them to doubt that you are a Christian. Thus, it is not uncommon for IFB church members to outwardly conform to these standards even if they don’t actually agree with them. All that matters is that you look the part.
When it comes to sex, all IFB churches are puritanical, believing that sexual intercourse should be reserved for monogamous, married, heterosexual couples. While there are many behaviors which will bring the ire of the church’s gatekeeper (the pastor), illicit sexual activities are viewed as sins above all others. Spend three months attending an IFB church and you are sure to hear preaching against fornication, adultery, anything LGBTQ, pornography, lust, and masturbation. In the minds of many IFB preachers, it is important to frequently remind church teens and adults of what God/church expects of them sexually. Virtually everything IFB preachers say about sex runs contrary to normal, healthy sexual desires. Thus, Sunday services all too often feature preachers screaming about sexual sin while countless congregants feel guilty for violating the Bible’s/church’s/pastor’s sexual mores. Of course, the root problem is the fact that humans are sexual beings, and it is healthy and normal to want/need/desire sexual intimacy.
What happens when it becomes public knowledge that a congregant violated his or her church’s interpretation of the Bible; when a church member gives in to their worldly, fleshly desires and commits adultery or fornication? Most IFB churches are anti-birth control for unmarried people. They ignorantly and foolishly believe that teens and adults will wait until marriage to have sex, so there’s no reason for anyone to be instructed in how to use birth control, This, of course, leads to church girls occasionally getting pregnant. How do IFB churches respond when one of their “virgins” ends up pregnant?
Some IFB churches try to hide these things from view by sending offenders away to Christian reform schools or homes for unwed mothers. Out of sight, out of mind. Other churches demand immediate marriage. Believing that the sex act binds a couple to one another (it’s in the Bible), marriage is viewed as the Christ-honoring thing to do. Years ago, in one church I worked in, a sixteen-year-old girl got pregnant. The pastor told her that she had to immediately marry her baby’s father. A private, close family-only wedding service was held, with the bride forced to wear a non-white dress. The pastor told her that white was reserved for virgins, and since she was no longer “pure” she forfeited the right to wear white. This forced wedding, of course, didn’t last. After a few years, she and her husband divorced, bringing a fresh wave of condemnation from the church congregation and its pastor.
Back in my college days, one of my wife’s friends had sex with her boyfriend before they were married. They had planned to get married soon, but as was often the case, their raging hormones won out over Jesus/Bible/church. Unfortunately, this young woman bled profusely after having sex, alerting her parents to the fact that she had broken the law of God (and her hymen). Her father forced her to drop out of college and immediately marry the man who robbed her of her virginity. She never returned to school.
Some IFB churches publicly shame and humiliate teens and adults who engage in sexual sin. My wife and I were visiting an IFB church one Sunday when the congregation and its pastor had a pregnant teen stand before her family, friends, and fellow church members and confess her sins. I felt so sorry for the girl. Her bulging abdomen was not enough shame for her. It was necessary to heap Bible-inspired judgment upon her head. Of course, once she had repented with wailing and gnashing of teeth, the church body surrounded her and showered her with “love.” One might ask, what kind of love is this? IFB love. A warped love that is conditioned on obedience; an abusive love that is extended only after the person has been violently assaulted with the Bible.
It should not come as a shock, then, that there is a lot of sexual and marital dysfunction in IFB churches. From the pulpit to the youth group, you will find True Believers® who have warped understandings of human nature and sexuality. Instead of embracing their sexuality, IFB congregants are in bondage to the Bible and a fallible man’s interpretation of an ancient religious text. Giving in to the “flesh” leads to a constant cycle of sex/guilt/forgiveness. Try as they might, once IFB church members drink a milkshake at the Dairy Queen, they always want to stop for a shake every time they pass a DQ. So it is with sex. Once you have experienced raw, exciting sexual passion, there’s no going back. Instead of acknowledging this fact, IFB preachers demand offending congregants put the proverbial genie back into the bottle and live chaste, “Biblical” lives.
If I have learned anything about IFB churches it is this: there’s a lot of fucking going on. The only difference between what goes on in secret in IFB churches and what goes on in the world is that True Believers® feel guilty afterward. The unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world don’t worry about what the Bible says about their behavior. Yes, some worldlings have problems with guilt too, but more often than not, you will find Fundamentalist religion lurking in the shadows of their lives.
How did your church/pastor handle sexual behaviors deemed sinful? Did any of the unmarried girls in your church get pregnant? How did your church/pastor respond to their pregnancy? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
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.
My brother’s story, an indictment of the Evangelical church’s response to Covid vaccinations.
In early December 2021, I got a call from my mother. “Jason has Covid and is in the hospital. When he takes off the oxygen, he can’t breathe at all.” When my mother asked him why he wouldn’t get vaccinated, his response was “God will take care of me.” And while I thought his prognosis was good, two weeks later he died. He was in his late 40s, the baby of our family, the father of two adult children, and the father and provider of three young children.
Jason had a hard start in life. He was my stepbrother, a part of the joining of two families who had both lost parents in accidents; he lost his mother when he was a toddler. He had some issues with auditory processing, and I think he had trouble with conversational nuance and connecting the dots. He’d end up telling people what he thought they wanted to hear. Possibly this was his path to becoming a follower. High school was tough on him academically, college was out, so the army looked like his only option. Just before going to the army, Jason was arrested for drag racing. It’s laughable to me, he had a junker car, and I don’t know the details, but I can’t imagine he was out challenging people to race . . . but it all makes sense if it is yet another instance of following. The judge dismissed the charges since he was going into the army. But despite “following orders” being the army mainstay, following didn’t help him in the army. His testing limited him to infantry, and along with this his infantry comrades, he (nor they) wasn’t always the most upstanding of characters. The example I’ll cite is that he was with someone who looked into a car and saw a set of golf clubs, checked the door handle, found it unlocked, and took the clubs. Of course, most people would argue with someone stealing from a stranger’s car, but not a follower. Apparently, there were other missing things, and guilt by association ended Jason’s stint in the army with a less-than-honorable discharge.
After the army didn’t work out, he ended up working at McDonald’s. This is where he met his wife and also where he ended up joining her Evangelical church. (Parents of one of my friends wondered if their misguided marriage was because they both got mad cow disease by working at McDonald’s!) The follower had found his bliss. He didn’t have to try to guess what people wanted of him, no nuance or inferences, just obey the simple, easy-to-follow instructions. He also finally had a church family of people that would accept him; his disability didn’t really matter, he was “Brother Jason” and all that mattered was the remarkable zeal that is unique to the convert. While the extremes of his church were completely out of the mainstream, my mother confided in me that she was glad, because he was a follower, that he had landed there. As the army experience demonstrated, there are worse people he could be following. There are always nefarious people who will take advantage of followers.
Things turned around for Jason when our dad got him a temp job at his union shop. Dad impressed upon him what he needed to do: work hard, always be on time, and you will become a fully contracted employee. He now had a high income to lavish upon his beloved church. He was living for the LORD, and while we were on opposite sides of the religious spectrum, I certainly was happy that he finally had success in life. That said, the church truly taxed him financially. He gave 20% of his income to the church, and ended up living hand to mouth, and had his house foreclosed upon. While he listened to Dad to get and keep the job, Dad couldn’t impress upon him the abstraction of good credit.
Sadly Jason’s wife passed away 15 years ago, which led him to the Philippines, where he remarried. He ended up getting hepatitis during a return trip to the Philippines. While he recovered enough to go back to work, there were lingering health effects that no doubt made him very susceptible to Covid.
Before I proceed with my indictment, I want to reminisce back to when we were kids. It’s the late 1970s and our family is off to church. If it were Sunday, we were packing six boys into the Suburban and we were in the pews, never early unless we forgot to change our clocks back to standard time, but we were there. We pull into the parking lot and I recognize some of the teens who were active in the youth group. They wave us over, “Good morning,” “Are you guys wearing seat belts?” The answer was a big NO; for one thing, absolutely nobody wore seat belts, and if we tried, we weren’t going to squeeze everyone comfortably into even a large vehicle like a Suburban. “Oh, okay, well, we’re going to have to give you a ticket! My dad grumpily reaches for his wallet and pays the few dollars for the “offense.” “We care about you, and we want you back next Sunday.” Believe me, next Sunday we all had our seat belts on.
Now let me contrast this with the Evangelical church. While some on the religious right (in particular Franklin Graham) advocate for the Covid vaccines, most are either neutral or actively — and sometimes vehemently — hostile to the vaccines. Currently, around 500 people die every DAY from Covid — about three times the number of people who die in traffic accidents. My indictment is as follows: The Evangelical church has failed its followers. By not encouraging their “flocks” to get vaccines, they have failed them. My brother isn’t the only one; earlier in the pandemic I’d routinely see go-fund-me campaigns for large families who had lost one of their (Evangelical) unvaccinated parents. I do know that some people at my brother’s church did get vaccinated. But was it actively encouraged? Did it make the sermon every week as alcohol did? What, then, is their excuse for this failure? Ignorance? I have a lot of problems with religion. But I have zero problems with “We care about you, and we want you back next Sunday.”
One of Jason’s adult sons wistfully wondered (on Facebook) if he was off to the Paradise he had always told them about. But if Evangelicals don’t know the here and now, I have zero confidence they know the hereafter.
Evangelical pastors, redeem yourselves; I implore you to encourage your followers to get vaccinated. Heaven will wait.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
