The first step in doing God’s work to fulfill his dream is to not fall victim to the labels and lies of the unbelieving world. When you tell people they are going to hell if they are unrepentant sinners be prepared to be called a hater and a bigot.
But names like that should roll off our backs. Telling the truth in love is not hatred nor is it bigotry. The truth exposes the hatred and bigotry on the unbelieving side as they do not want to hear it.
The people who do not want to repent of their sins will feel both emotions and more when they are excluded from paradise. They do not want to follow the standards of right and wrong, etc., yet they accuse the believer of being hate-filled and bigots.
We are just the messenger letting them know what is right and what is wrong. If they do not like it, it is not our responsibility. They have had their equal opportunity to be saved and they have rejected it. Their decisions are all on their shoulders.
— Fake Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, TheologyArcheology: A Site for the Glory of God, There is Still Work to Be Done, July 31, 2022
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I recently received an email from an Evangelical man named Jason. His email was quite verbose, so I’ve edited it for clarity. Jason only read a handful of posts before contacting me.
Mr. Gerencser, I have spent time reading through some of your posts. I won’t claim to have read enough of these to have a great understanding of your views or of this blog/site. What I will claim, is that I am a born-again Evangelical Christian who feels that perhaps you might be interested in something different than what you’ve labeled as your usual detractors’ intentions or comments, etc. I get it. You’ve got a lot of history both in the faith, and since leaving it. I won’t question the path you took as you’ve made it clear how you react to folks like me doing so.
….
In one of your posts, it stood out to me that you seem to believe that you should be respectful of others’ journeys in struggling with their faith — or questioning of it, regardless of their journey’s outcome — and that you and others whom frequent this site can offer assistance through your/their writings to perhaps ease some of the burdens in their minds.
….
So, my question — or suggestion, depending on how you look at it — is this: would you consider going the other way….deliberately? What I mean to suggest is, given your experiences with your own path, and your intimate knowledge of the faith and of Churches in general, as well as the fact that every person within that faith is still a flawed human being, would you consider offering help to people who want to remain as Christians (or even other faiths) or to “convert” as it were FROM atheism or agnosticism, etc., with the goal of helping people who are within that faith (or potentially-future believers) to be fully open and frank about the questions they have, including the contradictions they observe within the people of the Church (or other faith group). In other words, would you be open to facilitating a way to help people find what I would call the true Jesus, that is, the Jesus who does not discriminate nor hates nor holds people accountable for things beyond their control? Would you — as an outsider, as it were — help the Church to become what it really ought to be, as a place where God demonstates genuine love and compassion through it’s members while also being openly self-aware and willing to face up to the problems that both individual members as well as whole congregations ought to deal with?
Jason asks:
Would you consider offering help to people who want to remain as Christians (or even other faiths) or to “convert” as it were FROM atheism or agnosticism, etc., with the goal of helping people who are within that faith (or potentially-future believers) to be fully open and frank about the questions they have, including the contradictions they observe within the people of the Church (or other faith group). In other words, would you be open to facilitating a way to help people find what I would call the true Jesus, that is, the Jesus who does not discriminate nor hates nor holds people accountable for things beyond their control?
My express purpose over the past fifteen years has been to help people who have doubts and questions about Christianity or who have left the faith altogether. Most of the people I interact with are present or former Evangelicals. This is not surprising since I was part of the Evangelical church for fifty years and a pastor for twenty-five years. Evangelicalism is what I know, so it’s the focus of my writing. That doesn’t mean, of course, that every reader of this blog is an ex-Evangelical. A sizeable percentage of readers are practicing Evangelicals, progressive/liberal Christians, or former practitioners of a variety of religious/spiritual faiths. And yes, a minority of readers are atheists/agnostics who have never been religious.
Jason wants to know if I would be willing to help people with questions or doubts move TOWARD Christianity. If someone wants to remain a Christian, yet wants to get away from Evangelicalism, then, yes, I am more than happy to help them find a kinder, gentler form of faith. While I am an agnostic atheist, I am not an evangelizer for atheism. I am not an anti-theist, though I am certainly anti-Evangelical, anti-IFB, and anti-Mormon. I don’t hate religious people, nor do I hate all religions. I can hear atheist zealots screaming now! “I knew it! Bruce is not a true atheist.” Believe what you will, but we live in a world where most people have some sort of religious faith. They are family, friends, and neighbors. I am not willing (nor interested) in waging war with the human race. I know that atheists will always be a minority. We mistake the rise of NONES with the rise of atheism. Sure, the number of atheists is increasing, but most NONES are just indifferent toward religions. They might one day become atheists, but most NONES just want to live and let live.
I oppose any religion that teaches humans are broken (sinful) and in need of fixing (salvation). I oppose any religion that teaches children are sinners. I oppose any religion that teaches some people go to Heaven and other people go to Hell after they die. I oppose any religion that teaches anyone who doesn’t believe in their deity will be tortured in Hell for eternity. I oppose any religion that teaches patriarchalism. I oppose any religion that “others” people. I oppose any religion that teaches Bible literalism.
As you can see, I oppose most organized religions. Organized religions promote division, exclusivism, and sectarianism. Not all religions, but most. When it comes to Evangelicalism (in all its forms), I can’t think of any flavor of Evangelicalism that is not inherently harmful. I am of the opinion that Evangelicalism is, at best, cult-like. In its most virulent forms, Evangelicalism is a full-blown cult. The IFB church movement, in particular, is a cult (with few exceptions). Thus, I can’t in good conscience promote Evangelicalism. When dealing with Evangelicals, I give them this piece of advice: RUN! Evangelical beliefs and practices cause psychological harm and can cause, at times, physical harm. I can’t in good conscience encourage people to stay in Evangelical churches. At best, I encourage Evangelicals to seek out kinder, gentler expressions of faith. I am friends with Jim Brehler, the pastor of St John United Church of Christ in Defiance, Ohio. I have no problem encouraging locals to attend his church. That said, I don’t know of another local church that I can recommend to people looking to break free from Evangelicalism. I am sure they exist, I just don’t know about them. (And part of the problem is that a lot of the local mainline churches are aging, have terrible — and I mean terrible — music, and far too often are pastored by men trained in conservative theological colleges.)
As far as the “true Jesus” is concerned, how could we possibly know who that person is? Jesus left no writings behind. All we have are the words of unknown authors written years after their death. Besides, Jesus allegedly said some things that are problematic, especially his views on marriage, divorce, and human sexuality.
Every generation of Christians remakes Jesus (and God) in their own image. The Jesus of first century Palestine is very different from the plethora of American Jesuses today. Which Jesus, then, should we follow? Sure, the Bible contains some wonderful teachings attributed to Jesus. The world would be better served if Christians lived according to Jesus’s teachings in Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount. However, most of the New Testament contains the writings of the founder of Christianity, the Apostle Paul — a misogynistic man, if there ever was one. Paul’s writings, along with much of the Old Testament, are a millstone hung around the neck of modern Christians; filled with bigotry, misogyny, and violence. Richard Dawkins was right when he said:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Now, to Jason’s second question:
Would you — as an outsider, as it were — help the Church to become what it really ought to be, as a place where God demonstates genuine love and compassion through it’s members while also being openly self-aware and willing to face up to the problems that both individual members as well as whole congregations ought to deal with? Would you — as an outsider, as it were — help the Church to become what it really ought to be, as a place where God demonstates genuine love and compassion through it’s members while also being openly self-aware and willing to face up to the problems that both individual members as well as whole congregations ought to deal with?
What should the Christian church be? How do we know what the Christian church should be? I assume Jason thinks the Bible should be the standard by which we answer these questions. Of course, this leads to another question: whose interpretation of the Bible should we follow? There are countless Christianities, and as many interpretations as there are Christians. Referencing what I wrote several paragraphs before, what expression of Christian faith is kind, loving, and supportive of all people, regardless of who and what they are? Years ago, my wife and I attended 125+ churches. (Please see But Our Church is DIFFERENT!) While most of these churches were Evangelical-leaning, some were quite liberal. We didn’t find one church that was truly inclusive; a church that welcomed and accepted all comers. I am sure such churches exist, I just don’t know of any.
In the short term, I am more than happy to help churches become more friendly, loving, and inclusive. I am more than happy to challenge their Fundamentalist tendencies (Are Evangelicals Fundamentalists?). I want to do everything I can to lessen the psychological trauma that takes place in most Christian churches. Any pastor who tells congregants that they are broken and in need of fixing; that there is a Heaven to gain and a Hell to shun; that the Bible is an authoritative standard, by which to govern one’s life is materially harming people. And since these churches and pastors are causing harm, my goal is to further their demise. For example, the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement has caused horrible harm. It is a movement that is in numerical decline. It is my hope that the IFB church movement dies a quick death. In fact, I wish I would still be alive when it draws its last breath. I want to be the person holding a pillow over the face of its wheezing, dying body. And when it draws its last breath, I will say with countless others, AMEN!
Over the years, I have written articles for Christian blogs and publications. (Please see Advice for Young Pastors From an Ex-Evangelical Preacher.) I am more than happy to continue to do so. In the long term, long after I am dead, I envision a post-religion world; one where the principles of humanism rule supreme. Of course, it is likely climate change, nuclear war, or the Republican Party will destroy the world before that happens, but one can hope, right? I can envision a time when humans no longer need religion to explain their lives and the world around them; that religion will be viewed as a relic from our infant, ignorant past.
I hope I have adequately answered Jason’s questions. If not, I am sure he will let me know. 🙂
Fake Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, is upset over Ben Berwick and me quoting his words. Somehow, some way, we are mispresenting him by quoting from his blog posts. Both Ben and I link to his posts so our readers can read our Tee quotes in context. We’ve yet to have anyone except Thiessen say that we have mispresented or distorted his words. Thiessen has yet to learn that when you say things in public, somebody is going to quote you or repeat what you said. I own every word I write. When I am not clear, I explain and clarify. But, when I say something that offends someone, I don’t run from my words. If Thiessen doesn’t want to be held accountable for what he says, I suggest that he stop saying nasty, hateful, inflammatory stuff.
Part of the problem is that Theissen has a god complex. He is not special in this regard. When a man thinks that he is supernaturally called by a supernatural God to preach supernatural sermons, is it any surprise that he thinks he is God, or at the very least, God-adjacent? I previously mentioned that Theissen feels Ben and I are persecuting him. He even said that he was just like Jesus standing silent before the Sanhedrin. When a person with intimate knowledge about Theissen’s past shares verifiable evidence for troubling past behavior, Theissen says nothing. Why? He’s above the fray, as God is. God doesn’t answer his critics and neither does Thiessen. Just today, Theissen said:
We never said we were the moral authority on this issue. We did say that GOD is and we write his words, not ours. Ours are not inspired but they are based on inspired words. So the problem BG and MM have is not with us but with God and his ways.
Need I say more?
Theissen continues to defend his belief that a ten-year-old (or even a five-year-old) rape victim should be FORCED to carry her fetus to term. Thiessen shows a callous disregard for the welfare of the girl. All that matters is his warped interpretation of the Bible. Theissen has written post after post defending his position. He’s done the same with his continued defense of rapists, child molesters, and abusers. It seems that his moral compass is broken. No amount of pushback from Ben or me has changed Thiessen’s mind. Why? We are atheists (though Ben has never claimed to be an atheist). Atheists have nothing to offer the human race. Our words should be ignored. Thus, he makes no attempt to engage our challenges. Instead, Theissen attacks us personally, disparaging our character and slandering our good names. Why does he behave this way? He’s “God,” so he can say and do whatever he wants.
We have 2 main detractors [Ben Berwick and Bruce Gerencser] that like reading our website. They can’t seem to get enough of our content. When we say something they do not like, their websites are filled with their ‘opposing’ points of view.
We know about them because they make sure they link to our articles in their content. What we have found is that despite their demands that Christians present rational, logical, and evidence-filled (their definitions, of course), content in rebuttal to their arguments, these detractors do not do the same thing.
They would rather use innuendo, lies, misleading comments, and false declarations as if they are an authority.
….
His words imply something we never said, implied, or hinted at. BG misleads his readers YET not one word is found in either article that presents a rational, logical, and evidence-filled opposing view.
He has to stoop to insults, inferences, and clever wording to get his readers to think negatively about us and our content. MM is just the same.
….
Nothing rational there or even logical. He resorts to name calling, abusive language, and lies and he continues to try to read our minds. Of course, he makes the excuse of not presenting anything rational, logical, or evidence-filled by insulting us and using that as justification for his failure to make his point.
Both MM and BG like to attack the messenger so they do not have to deal with the truth.
….
MM & BG just want negative fodder to continue to attack us in their own sinful ways. They won’t be rational. logical or even produce evidence to support their views. Everything they have written or alluded to points to the validity and truthfulness of our content.
We never said we were the moral authority on this issue. We did say that GOD is and we write his words, not ours. Ours are not inspired but they are based on inspired words. So the problem BG and MM have is not with us but with God and his ways.
….
They do not like those ways, so they advocate for everything sinful. Their denial of both God and sin just shows that their arguments are never rational,. logical or even evidenced-filled. They are not honest either.
Their arguments are personally based, subjective and according to their own desires and thoughts. Unbelievers are never rational, logical, or evidence-based because they dismiss the truth in favor of their own deceived opinions.
They are not our enemy, but the evil in and behind them are. We do not wish them ill-will and are saddened that they hold onto evil in spite of hearing the truth. We also do not spread misinformation, or lies and do other things to them as they do to us.
Our actions prove we are more moral than they can ever hope to be.
Here’s my challenge to Derrick Thomas Thiessen. Want to debate the issues, Derrick? I will gladly debate you on YouTube. I will make the debate available on my YouTube channel. All that I ask is that you use your real name and visage. No hiding behind fake names and avatars. Want to defend your views on the Bible, abortion, and defending child molesters? I will gladly provide you with a forum to do so. I am not inclined to continue this back and forth via blog posts. I will respond if you personally attack me, but outside of that, I am content to leave you to your own devices.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Unbelief is essentially your spiritual mistress. And like any mistress, she is untrustworthy and unfaithful. You are not her only lover; not by a long shot. Your mistress gives herself to anyone who will join her in rejecting the Messiah.
God commands you to break off your sinful relationship with your mistress of unbelief. Tell her the affair is over. Leave her once and for all. Turn to God in repentance and trust in the sacrifice that Jesus made on your behalf when he died for your sins on the cross. You owe him everything. You owe your mistress nothing.
And besides, your mistress does not care about you in the slightest. She is not even a person. She is simply a perspective that you happen to find alluring. You have been seduced by her mind as you have bought into her enticing definition of personal freedom.
She whispers to you:
“Be your own person. Forget about God and all that mumbo jumbo about sin and the cross and salvation. You deserve to be free of any interference from God. Heaven and Hell are merely make-believe concepts used to control weak people. You, however, are strong, independent and enlightened.”
One lie after the other, and so far, you have taken the bait as evidenced by your persistent unbelief and refusal to accept Jesus as your Savior. Your infatuation with your mistress will disappear once you end the affair.
….
Do you realize that her tantalizing lies come with strings attached? These strings ultimately drag souls into far greater misery than you can even imagine. Affairs never end well, but the consequences of this particular affair take things to a whole other level. Hell is a real place in a different realm and is a deep dark pit of never-ending agony and despair. (Luke 16:19-31)
….
Why continue to lust after your mistress when the One who truly loves your soul is willing to forgive your unfaithfulness to him and give you peace and joy today and forever? Did your mistress suffer hours of agony on a cross to pay for your sins? Of course not. A real person suffered and died for your sins so that you can go to Heaven when you die. Christ loves you, but he will not force you to receive his love, forgiveness and salvation.
You get to make the choice. Faith in Jesus, or unbelief? Truth or spiritual lies? Heaven or Hell? No man can serve two masters, just like no man can love both his wife and his mistress.
You should be mad at your spiritual mistress because of how badly she has corrupted your soul. Unbelief is a dark and shady character. I suppose this is one reason you feel drawn to her. You find her seductive words of unbelief exhilarating in some twisted way. But one day she will leave you. And you will be left with nothing.
….
You would be smart to have the awkward discussion with your mistress immediately and break off that doomed relationship. After all, she doesn’t care about you, but Christ does. You are simply under her spell. Your affair has taken you far from God.
If this sounds ridiculous to you, it is only because your mistress is blinding you from the truth. You tell yourself you love her, but even that is a lie. If you end up in Hell, you will hate what your mistress did to your soul. And yet you will realize that you are fully responsible for your eternal sentence. You will finally come to see that it was never about love; it was always about lust.
Unbelief is rooted in spiritual lust. This intense longing to be the captain of your soul resists submitting yourself to the rightful owner of your soul, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christian faith, on the other hand, is rooted in God’s love in sending his only Son to be our Savior from sin. (John 3:16) True and lasting freedom can only be found in a loving and faithful relationship with Jesus Christ.
I hope you will decide today to end your affair with unbelief.
….
So be honest. What has unbelief ever done for you? And it only gets worse the longer you stay in that tawdry relationship. Sure it may be humiliating for you to say goodbye to your mistress, but in the words of Oliver Markus: “A horrible end is better than endless horror.”
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Would you please discuss, or please point me to where you discuss, how you dealt/deal with your emotions and conflicts as you were deconverting? My life has been much tamer than yours, yet it’s revolved in a HUGE part around church and faith and belief, and so on.
I’ve been questioning for awhile, but 2019 was an especially bad year, including three huge shakeups in my life, greatly impacting my Christian relationships. It’s all a really long story, one I’m not comfortable sharing with strangers.
I feel sometimes like I’m walking a tightrope, trying to balance or wondering if I should do something now to prepare for the future. For example, I am expected to take over my Mom’s special needs adults class when she passes – not for years yet, hopefully. I love the members, we’re all family – but it will be my chance to cut ties with the church and run.
So much of life now is like this. I don’t have clarity or guidance; and everyone I know wants me to remain as I am. I’ve been a Christian for 45 years +, and taught in one capacity or another for most of that, up until 2019, one of the blindsiding betrayals I went through. I have felt pulls elsewhere as I was growing up, but squashed them, and sometimes I wonder …
I just don’t know how to handle things sometimes. I’ve been in limbo for quite awhile, spiritually and otherwise, and it doesn’t feel good or right to feel this way this much anymore.
Specifically, Theresa asked:
How [did] you dealt/deal with your emotions and conflicts as you were deconverting?
Theresa has been involved with Christianity for over forty-five years. She’s has a lifetime of church experiences and friendships. Based on her comment, Theresa is not a passive or cultural Christian. She’s actively involved in her church; a teacher for decades. It’s evident, at least to me, that she deeply cares about her church family, including her mother who attends the same church. Yet, she has serious doubts and questions about Christianity and is considering an exit from her church. Internally debating these issues has caused psychological angst, leading to emotional unrest.
For those of us who were lifelong followers of Jesus before we deconverted, Theresa’s story has a familiar feel. I was part of the Evangelical church for fifty years, and a pastor for twenty-five years. Much like Theresa, I was deeply immersed in the machinations of the church. I deeply loved God, the ministry, and the people I pastored. I fully expected to spend my entire life preaching the gospel, saving souls, and ministering to both the saved and the lost. My exit story was one where I would be preaching, and as I was emphasizing the certainty of death, drop dead in the pulpit. Talk about a powerful sermon illustration. 🙂 Alas, my faith died before I did. On the last Sunday in November 2008, I walked out of the doors of the Ney United Methodist Church, never to return. Several months later, I sent out my infamous letter, Dear Family, Friends, and Former Parishioners, declaring that I was no longer a Christian.
For the longest time, wanting to fend off people saying I left Christianity due to some sort of “hurt,” I focused on the intellectual reasons I deconverted. I left Christianity because I no longer believed its central claims about Jesus and the Bible. While I could have continued to play the game, I have never been willing to “fake it until you make it.” When I concluded that Christianity was built upon a foundation of untruths, I felt duty bound to share my story. This, of course, led to the birth of this blog.
Over the years, I have tried to share not only the intellectual reasons I deconverted, but also the psychological struggles I’ve experienced, even to this day. Think about being married for fifty years, having children and grandchildren, and building a life together with your significant other. Yet, you began to have doubts about your relationship and the prospect of your future together. You sat down and made a list of things you liked and disliked about your spouse and reasons why you should stay or go. You weighed all the intellectual reasons for staying or leaving, concluding that it was time for you to end your marriage. You spent countless hours wrestling with your emotions, weeping over what divorce would cause not only to yourself but also to your spouse. Despite your psychological travails, you knew intellectually that divorce was the right thing to do. And so you walked away. While you are now “free,” you still struggle with thoughts about the past. “Did I make the right decision?” “OMG, what have I done?” “Now what?”
So it is for people who were married to Jesus, the church, and the ministry for years. We rightly concluded that Christianity could not withstand rational, intellectual challenge, so we decided to divorce. What we are left with, then, is the psychological baggage that comes with making such a momentous decision. And don’t let anyone tell you differently. Walking away from Christianity is hard (and painful), at least it was for me. Deconverting was, by far, the hardest decision I have ever made in my sixty-five years of life. My whole life changed overnight, including my relationships with my wife and our six children. In short order, I lost everything that was foundational to my life, including lifelong friends. I was forced, at the age of fifty, to begin anew.
Through this process, I have faced a plethora of psychological struggles. So much so that I have been seeing a secular counselor for over a decade. Counseling has been an essential part of the healing process for me. Evangelicalism caused me harm, both physically and emotionally. Worse yet, I struggle with the fact that not only was I a victim, but I was also a victimizer. I materially caused harm to my wife, children, and the people who lovingly called me “preacher.”
Theresa’s journey is her own. I have always been careful to not set myself up as an example of the path to follow. Each of us must weigh our beliefs carefully and decide accordingly. Not every road leads to atheism. Some people find resting places where they are able to hang on to some sort of religious faith. Others cannot. I encourage people to meet truth in the middle of the road. Don’t back up or try to go around truth. Do your homework. Read lots of books. Make sure you intellectually know WHY you no longer believe.
Once the intellectual reasons for deconverting are resolved, there’s still psychological baggage to deal with. It’s much harder to reason away feelings. The question that must be asked and answered is this: why do I have these feelings? Typically, fear is the primary reason for emotional turmoil. “What if I am wrong?” Fear of offending God or going to Hell lurks in the shadows. Pressure from pastors, family members, and fellow church members — who cannot or will not understand and appreciate your journey — only add to your emotional unrest. How, then, should we handle the emotional aspects of deconversion?
First, seek out people who have walked a similar path. This blog primarily exists to help those who have doubts or questions about Christianity or who have walked away from the faith. I have found that telling my story is one of the best ways I can help others.
Second, find a vehicle by which you can express your struggles. Start journaling, or better yet, start blogging. I have found writing to be cathartic, a way for me to work through my questions, doubts, and feelings. I have long encouraged people to write guest posts for this site. Telling your story, even anonymously, can be liberating.
Third, find someone you can confide in. This is not easy, especially when everyone around you still believes. That’s why my inbox is always open. I am not a counselor, but I am a good listener. And there are other people on this site who are more than willing to help people along the way. The goal is not to convert people to atheism as much as it is to lend a helping hand to people as they walk their journey through life.
Fourth, I strongly encourage people to seek out help from a competent counselor. Not a religious counselor; not a pastor; a secular counselor trained in cognitive behavioral therapy. Talking to a disinterested third party can be quite helpful as you try to unpack your religious past. Religion can and does cause trauma and harm. People often grossly underestimate the harm caused by their past religious experiences and beliefs. I know I did. It was only recently, ten years in, that my counselor was able to get me to see how much trauma I’ve had in my life and how that trauma deeply marred and scarred my life and the relationships I have with my family. For the longest time, I believed that trauma was what happened to other people, not me. It wasn’t until I made a list of the traumatic experiences in my life that I finally understood some of my psychological struggles.
What advice would you give to Theresa? Please share your thoughtful advice in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Gary Keen, Bruce Gerencser, Mike Fox, Greg Wilson, Midwestern Baptist College, 1978
Last Monday, I tested positive for COVID, as did my wife and our oldest daughter. Thanks to vaccines — we are triple-vaxxed, having received our last vaccination in May — and, in my case, Paxlovid, an anti-viral drug, we avoided hospitalization and possible death (a likely outcome for me without the vaccines). While Bethany is back to her ornery self and Polly is mostly recovered, save for a nagging cough and sinus drainage, my recovery, as expected, has been much slower. I still have a good bit of congestion and I am quite weak. Much better? Absolutely! All praise be to science! But, I suspect it will take some time before I return to my normal sickly self where pain is my biggest problem.
I have spent a lot of time in bed over the past nine days trying to combat weakness and fatigue. Of course, spending time in bed doesn’t necessarily lead to sleep. Pain often precludes me from sleeping, and when it does, I try to “rest,” watching YouTube videos, catching up on recorded TV programs, and surfing the Internet. Sometimes, resting eventually brings sleep, other times it doesn’t. I learned long ago to not fight my body when it comes to sleep.
Last night, I stumbled upon the Facebook profile of a man I knew back when both of us studied for the ministry at Midwestern Baptist College in the 1970s. This man, a megachurch pastor’s son, was an usher for my wedding. After perusing his Facebook wall, I took a look at his friend list. (Yes, his list was public, a really bad idea.) I noticed that he was friends with lots of people who were also students at Midwestern back in the day. With lots of time on my hands — after all, how much time can you spend reading the Bible and praying 🙂 — I started stalking my former college friends, looking at what they had posted on their Facebook walls. Click, scroll, click, scroll, click, scroll . . . and as I did so, I found myself becoming increasingly depressed. After looking at three dozen or so profiles, I concluded that I had made a mistake; that knowledge wasn’t power.
Every person — and I mean EVERY — was still either an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christian, or, at the very least, a right-wing Evangelical. The hatred and vitriol toward the “world,” atheists, liberals, progressives, Democrats, socialists, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama was on full display. To the person, they were Trump-loving, gun-loving, forced birthers, anti-LGBTQ Republicans. And proudly so. I looked in vain for anyone who was a Democrat, a member of a mainline Christian denomination, or who had lost their faith altogether. Taken together, what I found was a monoculture, a cult-like enclave where fealty to rigid, narrow, unbending beliefs was required for admission. What troubled me the most was the devotion to Trump. Even after two impeachments and the January 6th hearing, they still supported the disgraced immoral ex-president.
This shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. If I could break free from IFB thinking, why can’t others? What is it that insulates Fundamentalists from reality? Is there nothing that can change their minds? I recognize that I am, for whatever reason, an exception to the rule, as is my wife. Sure, scores of IFB congregants exit stage left, moving on to friendlier confines, but it seems that few pastors, evangelists, missionaries, and professors are willing to do so, especially once they have been in the ministry for decades. Why is that?
While I found myself depressed over what I saw, I also felt gratitude. I escaped. I found a way to break free. Am I special? Nope, I am lucky. While I continue to struggle with guilt and regret over the harm I caused my family, my counselor reminded me that life could be a lot worse for me and my family had I remained Pastor Bruce Gerencser, the family patriarch. Imagine how life might be for Polly and our children had I remained in the ministry; had I maintained my rigid Fundamentalist beliefs and practices? I can’t think of any way in which that would have been a good thing. So, while it depresses me that my former college friends have matured very little from the days we roamed the hallways of the Midwestern dormitory, I am grateful that I escaped.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Does the Christian God use pain to draw people to himself? Assuming for a moment that such a God exists, does he use human suffering to make followers for himself?
There is no evidence in the Bible to suggest he does. To be sure, the Bible has a fair amount to say about pain. It claims that suffering is a means by which God either chastens Christians (Hebrews 12.7) or strengthens them (Romans 5.3-5), but this is exclusively for people who already believe. The Bible does not say non-believers are afflicted as a means of drawing them closer to God; the idea is unbiblical.
Let’s assume then that while this notion finds no support in the bible, Christians have learnt over the centuries, perhaps though extra-biblical revelation, that God does use pain in this way. What does this tell us about God? That he’s a being whose principal way of making human beings pay attention to him is by causing (or allowing) them to suffer frequently unbearable pain and anguish.
What sort of God is this? Not one who loves the world and cares for humans far more than he does mere sparrows (Matthew 6.26). He’s more an unpleasant, sadistic bully: the jock who backs you up against the wall, grips your balls and squeezes hard.
Maybe that’s how it is. The God who created the universe is just such a being; a moral monster, as Richard Dawkins described him. It’s easy to see how he might be: human beings suffer, yet there’s (supposedly) a God who loves them; therefore, pain and suffering must at the very least be sanctioned by God, or, more likely, delivered by him. This, after all, is the story of the Old Testament. The God so arrived at, though, is a thoroughly human creation, a means of minimising cognitive dissonance by reconciling human suffering and a God who supposedly cares.
One more assumption is needed. Let’s assume this time that despite the odds, this character really exists. Does his strategy work? Does inflicting pain and anguish on people make them, as Lewis suggests, cry out to the One doing (or allowing) the inflicting and compel them to love him? It seems unlikely; I can’t find any evidence online of anyone claiming that pain or anguish brought them to God. From a personal perspective, I can honestly say that in times of distress or suffering I have never, post-deconversion, called out to God or any supernatural entity for help. I’ve never interpreted my suffering as his calling me closer and have never, since escaping Christianity, succumbed to his malicious charms. (What I did do occasionally, following my deconversion, was to convince myself that my suffering was a punishment from God – for leaving him behind, being gay or something I’d done. These feelings disappeared when I embraced fully the fact that the Christian God isn’t real.)
Where does this leave the Christian with, as Lewis puts it, ‘the problem of pain’? How do they reconcile a loving God who allows or even causes human beings to suffer? They can’t. Instead, they spout empty platitudes that they think let their indifferent, imaginary God off the hook. Just look at the meaningless theo-babble religious leaders came up with in 2004 after a tsunami hit Indonesia, killing 227,898 people.
Leave God out of the equation, however, and there are far better explanations for why humans suffer. ‘Shit happens’ is far more convincing than anything the religious have to offer. Physical pain is the body’s reaction to damage. It is an imperfect system that frequently overreacts or fires up even after damage is repaired (I know this, having fibromyalgia). That’s what it is to have, to be, a physical body. Anguish comes from random acts of nature, the violence and cruelty we inflict on each other and the death of loved ones, much of which is beyond human control. ‘Thoughts and prayers’ are useless in ameliorating this kind of suffering. Measures to restrict people’s access to weapons undoubtedly helps, as it has in countries with politicians with sufficient strength and intelligence to enact gun-control legislation. Without it, as in Uvalde recently, more children will die, more parents will experience terrible anguish and another massacre is inevitable. God won’t stop it.
Suffering is not symbolic of something else; it is not ‘God’s megaphone’ or an opportunity for others to point those afflicted to Christ’s light (or any other bullshit that involves the supernatural.) Pain simply is. It is our lot as physical bodies to endure or alleviate it as best we can.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Recently, Bev Babcock Gunter, an ex-friend of my wife, Polly, left a comment on my YouTube channel. Bev and Polly became friends back in the 1960s when they attended Kawkalin River Baptist Church in Bay City, Michigan, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church pastored by Bev’s father, Bob Babcock. (The church later changed its name to Emmanuel Baptist Church. It is now defunct.) Over the years, Bev, a graduate of Tennessee Temple, and Polly stayed in contact, trading letters, emails, and phone calls. Bev was one of Polly’s bride’s maids. Their relationship waned over the years. After we deconverted, Polly received a Facebook message from Bev that basically said, “tell me it isn’t true!” Polly did not respond, as is her custom. We hadn’t heard anything from Bev for several years until her comment on my YouTube channel over the weekend.
What follows is Bev’s comment and my brief response:
I suspect Bev thinks I have led Polly astray. Given no credit for thinking for herself, Polly often finds that others suspect that it is big, bad Bruce who led her to walk away from Jesus. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Sounds of Fundamentalism is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip of Rep. Glenn Grothman claiming President Biden and his fellow atheists are trying to take over the United States.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
If you consider yourself an atheist today, or if you considered yourself an atheist in the past, I’d love to ask you some honest questions.
But I do not ask these questions to win a debate. Or to be antagonistic. Or to buttress my own beliefs by exposing alleged weaknesses in your position. To the contrary, I ask these questions so I can better understand your mindset as an atheist.
What follows are my answers to Brown’s seven questions. I will send my responses to Brown after this post goes live.
Before I answer Brown’s questions, I want to share with him my background.
I was part of the Evangelical church for almost fifty years. My parents started attending Tim LaHaye’s church, Scott Memorial Baptist Church in El Cajon, California, in the 1960s. Both made public professions of faith and were devout Christians until they divorced in 1972. Our family attended church every time the doors were open. At the age of fifteen, I went forward during a revival meeting and one of the church’s deacons led me to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Two weeks later, I stood before the church and confessed that I believed God was calling me to preach. Several weeks later, I preached my first sermon.
At the age of nineteen, I enrolled in classes at Midwestern Baptist College, a small Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) college in Pontiac, Michigan. While at Midwestern, I met a beautiful dark-haired girl named Polly. She was the daughter of an IFB pastor and the granddaughter of a United Baptist preacher. Two your later we married, and on July 15, we will celebrate forty-four years of marriage. We are blessed to have six grown children, thirteen grandchildren, and an old cat named Joe Meower.
After leaving Midwestern in 1979, I started working for a GARBC (General Association of Regular Baptist Churches) church. Over the course of the next twenty-five years, I also pastored two IFB churches, a Sovereign Grace Baptist church, a Christian Union church, a non-denominational church, and a Southern Baptist church, all in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan.
In 2005, I left the ministry, and in 2008 I left Christianity altogether. In early 2009, I publicly professed that I was an atheist. My wife would also later confess that she no longer believed in the Christian God.
Now that I have given a brief summary of my past, let me take a stab at Brown’s questions.
Question One: Would you say that you are (or, were) an atheist based primarily on intellectual study or based on experience? Or did you never believe in God at all?
While my personal experiences as an Evangelical Christian and a pastor certainly played a part in my deconversion, I primarily deconverted for intellectual reasons. My journey away from Christianity began when I concluded that the Bible was not inerrant or infallible. From there, I took a careful look at my beliefs, particularly the central claims of Christianity. I concluded that these beliefs could not be intellectually and rationally sustained. Once I came to this conclusion, I recognized I could no longer call myself a Christian.
Question Two: Would you say that even as an atheist you still have a sense of purpose and destiny in your life, a feeling that you were put here for a reason and that you have a mission to accomplish?
We give ourselves meaning and purpose. There’s no external force — God, the Universe, the Holy Spirit — that gives us meaning and purpose. While I recognized external human forces affect my life and the decisions I make, I am the captain of my ship. I see no evidence of an otherworldly being or force affecting my life.
Do I have a reason for living? Sure. This is the only life I will ever have, so I am in no hurry (most days) to die. I want a better tomorrow for my children and grandchildren, so I work to that end to affect social and political change.
Do I have a mission? Sure. I think Evangelicalism, especially in its Fundamentalist forms, is harmful, causing untold heartache and damage. As a writer, my goal is to tell my story and expose the abusive, harmful underbelly of Evangelical Christianity.
Third Question: Would you say that you are 100% sure there is no such being as God—meaning, an eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing being? Or would you say that, for all practical purposes, you have concluded that this God does not exist, although it is impossible to prove such a negative with absolute certainty?
I am an agnostic atheist. I am agnostic on the God question. I cannot know for certain if a god of some sort exists. The evidence suggests such a being does not exist, but it is within the realm of possibilities that a deity may one day reveal itself to us.
When it comes to specific religions, say the Abrahamic faiths, I am confident these religions are myths.
Because I see no evidence for the existence of a deity, I live my day-to-day life as an atheist.
Fourth Question: Do you believe that science can provide answers for many of the remaining mysteries of the universe, including how the universe began (including where matter came from and where the Big Bang derived its energy), the origin of life, and DNA coding?
I don’t know. Science continues to give us answers to previously unanswerable questions. Whether science ever explains to us what happened before the Big Bang is unknown. Science does adequately explain our world from the Big Bang forward, and that’s enough for me. Unlike many Christians and atheists, I have little interest in philosophical debates about the existence of God and the beginning of the universe. I’m dying — literally — so I choose to live in the present. I am far more interested in balancing our checkbook than I am the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
Fifth Question: Have you had any experiences in life that caused you to question your atheism? Has something happened to you that seemed genuinely supernatural or otherworldly? Or have you been confronted with some information that shook your atheistic foundations, such as a scientific argument for intelligent design? If so, how have you dealt with such doubts to your atheism?
No. One step in my deconversion was giving an honest accounting of the “miracles” and “answered prayers” in my life. My wife did the same. We concluded that we could rationally explain all but a handful of experiences. This was not enough evidence for us to conclude that the Christian God of the Bible did it. Unexplainable? Sure, but I reject the God of the gaps argument Evangelicals often use to explain the unexplainable. I am content with saying, “I don’t know.”
Sixth Question: Are you completely materialistic in your mindset, meaning human beings are entirely physical, human consciousness is an illusion, and there is no spiritual realm of any kind? Or are you superstitious, reading horoscopes or engaging in new age practices or the like?
Yes, I am a materialist.
I see no evidence of a spiritual realm or souls. I believe that new age practices, horoscopes, Tarot card readings, and homeopathy, to name a few, are in the same category as prayers and miracles: unsupported by evidence.
Seventh Question: If you were convinced that God truly existed—meaning the God of the Bible, who is perfect in every way, full of justice and mercy, our Creator and our Redeemer—would that be good news or bad news? And would you be willing to follow Him and honor Him if He were truly God?
I am already convinced that the God of the Bible does not exist, and I can’t imagine any evidence will be forthcoming to change my mind. Thousands of Evangelical zealots and apologists have tried to evangelize me, without success. It has been years since I heard a new argument for the truthfulness of Christianity. As Solomon said, there’s nothing new under the sun. Every few days, I will get an email, message, or social media comment from an Evangelical who is certain they have the remedy for my atheism Alas, they fail every time.
Even if I could be convinced that the God of the Bible is real, I still wouldn’t worship him. Richard Dawkins was right when he said:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Such a deity is unworthy of my worship. The only god I worship is my wife. 🙂
If you would like to answer these questions, please send your responses to info@askdrbrown.org.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
