A friend and I are both deconverted Christian fundamentalists. We both wonder what we might do in the situation I’ll describe below. I’d love for the wonderful commentariat here, or our leader, Bruce Almighty, to give us some very clever — or witty — responses to this.
We live in a town that has the longest High Street in Wales. Like most High Streets, the main shopping streets in UK towns, it’s a sea of closed up shops these days. This one has only 30% of its shops still open. The city fathers have appointed a ‘czar’ to revitalise it. The local newspaper reported this and asked shop-owners how they are faring. They replied — badly. It’s unusual for anything Evangelical to be reported on in the UK. Still, prominence was given to the owner of the ‘Heavens Above’ Cafe on the High Street, whose picture had him smugly sporting a sweater with John14:6 on it. He claimed they were thriving and said, “We hold a monthly healing service and lots are healed.”
I commented that if this is so, why didn’t he and his fellow god-botherers travel two miles to our local large hospital and empty it and send patients to their cafe instead. Just think how wonderful our country would be if it didn’t have to finance the National Health Service (NHS). Patients could go along to ‘Heavens Above’ and, for the price of a sandwich and a coffee, get healed. My comment was up for about two hours, then it was deleted as ‘not adhering to community guidelines. ‘ So, apparently, lying-through-your-teeth for Jesus does adhere to them.
My friend has waited six months already for a major operation under our very overstretched NHS. She would love to go into ‘Heavens Above’ to challenge this arrogant assertion, but she can’t bring herself to give them any custom by even buying one coffee. But we’d both love to just go along and challenge their claim to miracles of healing and for them to explain to us why they aren’t down at that hospital.
Any witty repartee, any snarky put-downs, or irrefutable arguments that we could use would be most welcome. We’re open to suggestions from all you clever people! Help us out here!
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’m often asked if I had a personal relationship with Jesus — the Evangelical gold standard for what it means to be a Christian. Many Evangelicals think that I can’t have had a personal relationship with Jesus; that a true relationship with Jesus stays steady and sure until death. That I am now an atheist means I never had a super-duper personal relationship with the second part of the Godhead. If this claim is true, it means that I spent the first fifty years of my life as a deceived Christian. No matter what I point to in my life that suggests otherwise, Evangelicals say I was deceived. Imagine the sheer level of deception required for me to pull off such a feat. This should be enough for Evangelicals to see that their claim that I was (and still am) deceived is wrong, but their soteriology keeps them from doing so. You see, my story poses a big problem for Evangelicals who believe in once-saved- always-saved or eternal security. By necessity, they must conclude that either I never was a Christian or I am still a believer. Both claims are, on their face, irrational, contradictory, and absurd. As I have told such Evangelicals countless times before, “Just because you can’t square your peculiar theology with my story is your problem, not mine.” I know what I know. I once was saved, and now I am not.
Over the years, I have asked people who claim I never was a Christian for evidence for their claim. The only evidence forthcoming is proof texts from the Bible — as interpreted by my critics. However, doesn’t the Bible say that we judge a person by the fruit he produces; that good works are the measure of a man or a woman? Have you never noticed that judgmental, hateful Christians always want to focus on theology, not how they live out their beliefs? They know their behavior betrays their beliefs, so they focus on theological or philosophical arguments instead. However, the Bible is clear: the measure of a person is how he lives.
According to this standard, I measure up quite well. I spent most of my adult life loving and serving others, including the poor, the imprisoned, and the homeless. I invested myself in the lives of my parishioners, at times at the expense of my partner and children. I preached with or without pay. Why? Because I believed I had a higher calling to preach the gospel to the unsaved and teach the Bible to Christians. What mattered was the work of the ministry. I selflessly devoted myself to this calling for twenty-five years.
If I never was a Christian, how do my critics explain the aforementioned evidence to the contrary? I have repeatedly challenged my critics to find one person who knew me at the time I was a pastor who would say they knew I never was a Christian. I’m confident that no evidence will be forthcoming. I am not perfect, not now, nor when I was an Evangelical pastor. I “sinned” just like every other Christian, yet the bent of my life was towards holiness. At best, I was an imperfect, falible man who sincerely wanted to help others. And that, my friend, is what I still try to be today.
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 have been in a better place mentally and emotionally since I left my religious beliefs behind me. I’ve had more peace as well. I’m not saying that I don’t have problems, down days, or worry. It’s just that I have fewer worries, fewer down days, more effective methods of dealing with life’s problems, and a little more peace overall. Looking back at my life, I realize that I’ve gone through bouts of depression here and there, probably since I was a child. I grew up in an abusive home where I rarely felt safe. I never got any counseling or was put on any medication that might have helped deal with that stress. It just wasn’t something that was widely accepted back in the 70s. So, I developed whatever coping skills I could. I stayed busy with hobbies like reading, art, music, and martial arts. We considered ourselves Christians in my home, but we didn’t attend church regularly, read the Bible, or pray.
One thing that often bothered me growing up was the question: What am I supposed to do with my life? I got through college and worked a couple jobs that I really hated. I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the time, surrounded by Christians, many of whom were Bible college students. They seemed happy and excited about life, so eventually, I started attending a large church there. This church told me that God has a good plan for my life, and all I have to do is ask him what he wants me to do and follow his directions. For a rule follower like me, that sounded great!
I wound up going to Bible school and eventually in part-time ministry as an associate pastor and youth pastor and traveling minister. Things were great for a while. I had arrived at a place where I thought God wanted me to be. Eventually, I became unhappy and depressed. I went through the worst depression of my life during this time. I prayed, spoke in tongues, read the Bible constantly, and was prayed for in every way you can imagine. And nothing helped. I finally found a good psychiatrist who diagnosed me properly and got me on some medicine that helped. During this time, I started noticing things in the Bible that just didn’t line up. I started asking questions. Also, during this time, a friend of mine sent me a short booklet on how the brain works and how to get out of the rut of depressing thoughts all the time. Basically, I had to retrain my brain. Another friend recommended a book called Living Buddha, Living Christ. I was hooked! I started learning more about mindfulness and meditation. I studied secular Buddhism and Taoism. I started seeing more improvement in my life doing a few simple things than I ever did with all the prayer and Bible study. There is no more magic in any of these practices than there is in me eating healthier and exercising to lose weight.
Fast forward to where I had left my Christian beliefs behind. I’m still mostly a closeted agnostic/atheist; not even my wife knows the extent of my deconversion. She is still a very devout Christian. Maybe more so than ever. I have not attended church in years. So far, we’ve made it work. I used to hate the jobs I worked, thinking they were just temporary until I could go full-time in the ministry. Now that I no longer believe that I have some sort of divine calling on my life, I can focus on where I am now and how good I really have it. My job gets pretty stressful sometimes, but I’m good at it and mostly enjoy it. I used to be pretty uptight. Depending on my mental and emotional state, little things could easily stress me out. But now that I use the tools available to me, I’m much more chill. I try to apply Buddhist principles like the understanding that there is suffering in this life, but there are ways to not add to my suffering. I know that the only constant in this world is change. I still don’t like change, but I’m getting better. Less attachment. Seeing situations as not good or bad, just as they are (as much as I can). I still take medication that helps me, but without the guilt of “If I just had more faith” bullshit. These things help me so much, where religion left me high and dry, so to speak. I also have much less fear in my life. Religion is so full of fear! Life is not perfect, but it’s better without religion. My wife asked recently, “How do you stay so calm now?” I mentioned the practices that I wrote about above. She gets confused because these things are “ungodly” — basically meaning that god doesn’t seem to be in these practices. I get that. When I was full on drinking the Kool-Aid, I wouldn’t have understood how those things help someone either. Or, I would think that yes, they might help, but they still need Jesus on top of that.
Nope. Not anymore.
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 am always interested in having people write guest posts for this site. If you are interested in writing a guest post, please use the contact form to email me or text me at 567-210-1145. You can choose any subject. If you are an Evangelical Christian, you can even write a post about how wrong I am about God, Christianity, and the Bible. No subject is off limits.
Have a story to tell about your life as a Christian and subsequent deconversion? Testimonies are always welcome. I have found that readers really appreciate and enjoy reading posts about the journey of others away from Evangelicalism. Perhaps you are someone who has left Evangelicalism, but still believes in the existence of a deity/energy/higher power. Your story is welcome too.
If you worried about grammar, punctuation, or spelling, don’t be. Carolyn, my ever-watchful friend, editor, and blog wife, edits every guest post before it is published. If she can turn my writing into coherent prose, trust me, she can do the same for yours.
Anonymous posts are okay, as are articles previously posted elsewhere. If you have written something for your own blog and would like to post it here, please send it to me.
If you have previously written a guest post, I am more than happy to publish another one from you. Some readers have become regular contributors. It’s important for readers to hear from other writers from time to time. As a pastor, I knew people would tire from hearing me week after week, so I would schedule guest speakers to preach. Guest posts give readers an opportunity to hear new, different voices. Will that voice be yours?
Several readers have emailed me in the past about writing guest posts. I am w-a-i-t-i-n-g. 🙂 Seriously, if you have something you would like to say, I am more than happy to post it here. The ball is in your court.
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.
When asked to describe what atheists believe and how they live, Evangelicals are notorious for giving straw man responses. This meme accurately shows how many Evangelicals view atheists — none of which (generally) is true.
What say ye? Does this meme describe you? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Yesterday, I received an email from an Evangelical woman who lives in South Africa. My response follows. (All grammar, spelling, and punctuation in the original.)
It is with much sadness that I read your blog. I can hear the hurt and disillusionment in every word, the pain of your youth and your mothers’ mental health struggles with little support from those who loved her and the church members.
Why should you feel sad reading my writing? I get that you might disagree with the path I’ve chosen in life, but there’s no reason for sadness on your part. You don’t know me, so I can’t imagine you feeling sorry for me.
I have written almost five thousand posts for this site. How many of them did you actually read? How many posts on the Why? page did you read? If all you read is a few autobiographical posts about my upbringing and my mother, I can see why you might feel “sad.” However, the vast majority of my writing should not cause people to feel sorry for me. I am a happily married man. We are blessed to have six grown children, three daughters-in-law, and sixteen grandchildren. Two of our grandchildren are currently in college at Ohio State University (pre-med) and Miami University (zoology), respectively. We own our home, drive a late model automobile, and have four cats. In every way, I am blessed. Yes, I have a lot of serious health problems. Yes, I am depressed over Trump’s attempt to destroy our republic. But these things aside, I have a good life. No need to feel sorry for me.
I suppose if you only judge people — and you ARE judging me, despite what protests you might raise — based on your theology, there’s reason to feel sorry for me. After all, I’m headed for Hell, right?
This life sure is interesting how we all have such different experiences. To be an evangelical pastor for 25 years and a Christian for so long and to have such a 180-degree turn of belief is truly fascinating.
While a pastor deconverting at my age with the experience I have is rare, people walking away from Christianity is quite common (and increasing by the day).
My story is the reverse. I rejected God for very much the same reasons as you did for over 20 years, I also carry much hurt and trauma from my past and after my wonderfully talented cousin got diagnosed with schizophrenia and went on a rampage and brutally murdered and raped a woman that was it for me and God and I set out and lived my life.
Yet over 20 years later on a normal Thursday morning, while watering my garden, the presence of God descended on my garden in the arse end of Africa with wars raging in Ukraine.
It was the first supernatural encounter of my life. After over 17 years of intense Buddhist meditation, nothing could ever compare to this moment. In my spirit, I could hear the word “Child” being called. The atmosphere grew heavy and thick, and as those words resonated, it felt as if every grain of sand, every leaf, and every cell in my body was filled with the presence of the Lord. I was overwhelmed with a love so profound that I never knew existed, yet it felt like home. I could not stand; I had to drop to my knees and begin to weep. How could I have ignored this reality for so long? This world is not what it appears to be. It’s not just a sequence of events; it’s a carefully woven, deeply spiritual, divinely orchestrated journey.
What you provide here is an anecdotal story. Such stories are fine for testimony night at your church, but you can’t expect it to convince an Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist like me. I am not a Christian because I no longer believe the central claims of Christianity are true. Unless you can empirically show me that I am wrong, I see no reason to return to Christianity.
I did not even own a Bible but at that moment I understood what was meant when God says He is the Alpha and Omega, that there is only one Living God. I was shown Jesus on the cross and the importance of the blood. I could understand the meaning of free will, that God is not a psycopath that controls everything, but in order to fully love he has to allow everything so that each thing can be.
Your email reflects exposure to Christianity before your experience, so you certainly were not a clean slate for God to write his story upon. The Bible is a book of claims, not evidence. Again, what empirical evidence do you have for your aforementioned claims?
If you want to have a discussion/debate about your claims, I am game. Just in the one paragraph above, there are several claims you make that I can easily refute from a Biblical/theological perspective (i.e. that there is only one God, that God is not sovereign, that humans have free will, that God is not omniscient, that God doesn’t have free will).
After this life changing encounter I went out and bought a Bible and not long after, I ran into the same challenges that I had before with Christianity, but I could not deny what happened and the glory of God. I asked God to help understand these issues and over time God revealed this to me.
How do you KNOW God revealed anything to you? People tell me God told them all sorts of things, yet they can provide no evidence to prove their claims.
I could understand why much of these things are sin.
What things, exactly? Personally, I don’t believe in “sin.” Sin is a religious construct used by clerics to invoke fear of God’s judgment. This keeps asses in pews and money in offering plates. People do good and bad things. When we do bad things, we need to own our behavior and, if necessary, make restitution. No need for God, judgment, condemnation, or Hell. Just do better the next time.
I also learned about spiritual warfare and how so many of us do not acknowledge the attacks of the enemy.
What enemy? Satan is a mythical being too. I have no worries about being attacked by the Devil. Attacked by humans? You bet. I have been repeatedly attacked by Evangelical Christians more times than I can count; people who show me no regard or respect.
I also learned about the power of suffering. Not from the human eye or man’s perspective. I learned that suffering in the world is far different than suffering which is God ordained. Suffering of the world is only to harm, where suffering of God is to refine us, to make us stronger, for this life, for its battles that we will inevitably incur as life is hard. There is no way around it.
You seemed to miss what suffering really teaches us; namely that there is no God, and if there is, he cares nothing for us, content to allow horrific suffering that he could stop in a blink of an eye. Let me give you a quote attributed to Epicurius:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
In a world without God, suffering is expected. Shit happens. However, in a world with a personal God who allegedly loves and cares for people, suffering is a blaring advertisement for the fact that said God either doesn’t exist, doesn’t care, or is on a millennia-long vacation.
Richard Dawkins had this to say about the Christian God:
“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.”
As I was deeply hurt by church as well, I couldnt hand my soul in a man’s words again and I asked God to help me. Its not that I dont want to be part of the body of Christ, its that I want to seek God and only God. I want the truth.
While Christians have done hurtful things to me over the years, they played little to no part in my deconversion. If you read the posts on the Why? page, you will find out that I left Christianity primarily for intellectual reasons. Most of the hurt from Christians came after I deconverted. Over the past seventeen years, I have received countless hateful, nasty, vulgar, mean-spirited, judgmental emails, social media messages, and blog comments from Evangelical Christians — some of whom have known me for decades. These emails, messages, and comments are a poignant reminder of the ugly underbelly of Evangelical Christianity.
The only way to get to that Truth is to build a personal relationship with the Trinity. To be led by the Holy Spirit, to learn from the life of Jesus who also suffered as an innocent, like so many today. This did not come easy as I had many questions and had many fights with God but it was never in rebellion to God. That ultimately this journey led me to surrender my life and to grow real faith in uncertainty, to let go of the world and its views and step into a new life with a new heart, new ears, new eyes, restored. To truly sacrifice my ego, my will and my dreams. From the outside it looks like one lets go of your freedom and identity, but in actual fact you gain so much more. Because our minds are limited and God takes us to the unlimited. He gives true peace, He empowers us to bring peace and healing to those we encounter on our journey. What I was, is nothing compared to who I am now and what I am able to do through Christ Jesus.
Again, you make lots of claims. You are free to believe what you want. However, you can’t expect me to return to Christianity based on an anecdotal story. If Christianity works for you, fine. However, I see nothing in your testimony that I haven’t heard countless times. Did you really think that your story would lead me to repent and embrace faith in Christ, given that I am a man who was a Christian for fifty years and a pastor for twenty-five years?
So my message to you is that God still loves you, He wants you back, nothing can seperate you from the love of Christ, do not be fooled by the enemy who operates greatly in churches.
You can’t possibly know if God loves me. You can’t know if God wants me back. Your statements directly contradict the teachings of the Bible. How do you KNOW Satan operates greatly in churches? How do you know it’s not your beliefs that are false? Maybe you are deceived by Satan, and your email to me is her attempt to lead me astray. Besides, even if there is a Devil, who created her? Isn’t God ultimately culpable for the works of Satan? If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why did he create Satan?
I pray that you are touched by the love of Christ once again, that His peace blows through your soul, His mercy restore you and that you must know that none of it was in vain. You matter greatly to God.
Sigh. Stop with the syrupy love bombing and cheap cliches. I don’t matter to God for one simple reason: he doesn’t exist. And even if he does exist, it’s clear that outside of helping Nana find her car keys or helping Sister Bertha get a good parking place at Costco, God doesn’t give a shit about people. I see nothing in my life that says I “matter greatly to God.”
Saved by Reason,
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.
Someone using the moniker Samoan Hotty sent me the following email. All spelling and grammar in the original. My response follows:
Dear Bruce,
Rain falls on all of us,every single one of us. To some it is a welcomed shower and a source of water, to others it is nothing but an annoying nuisance that is cursed at.
Okay, and this has what to do with me, exactly?
Praying for you, your wife, your kids and your sweet precious grandkids.
Sigh. One more Christian who is allegedly praying for me and my family. Instead of doing something meaningful for me — cash, checks, and credit cards are welcome — Samoan Hotty offers up a meaningless prayer to the ceiling God. Scores of Christians have said they would pray for me — without success. Either there is no God, God didn’t hear their prayers, or they lied and didn’t really pray for me. Regardless, their prayers have not led to the saving of my soul or the death of my body — for those praying imprecatory prayers.
I’m only 29 and got 2 kids of my own and knowing their souls rest in Lord Father God’s hands and not in Satan’s gives me so much joy and relief.
How do you KNOW God or Satan exists? How do you KNOW your kids have souls, let alone their souls are resting in the hand of God? God must have pretty big hands if the souls of every believer rests in his hands. Or maybe, just maybe this is a cliche Evangelicals bandy about when wanting to convince themselves and others that God really, really cares for them and has a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious plan for their lives. No evidence is provided for these claims other than faith. That’s fine, but atheists find faith claims unconvincing, so don’t expect us to come running to Jesus.
I pray for their sake your pride does not turn your family away from knowing Lord Father God and getting to spend eternity with him.
What makes you think I have a problem with pride? Do you usually seek out strangers on the Internet and psychoanalyze them? You don’t know anything about me, yet you think it is okay to judge me.
My partner and I have been married for almost forty-seven years. We are blessed to have six adult children, ages 45, 43, 40, 35, 33, and 31. We also have three adult grandchildren, two of whom are in college, one studying pre-med at Ohio State University. and the other studying zoology at Miami University. We have five more grandchildren in middle school/high school, and eight grandchildren in elementary school. What they believe about a god or a religion is up to them, not me or their heathen mother/nana. I don’t talk about God/religion with them unless it naturally comes up in discussion or they ask me a question. Currently, son number two attends the Catholic Church with his family. The rest of the family does not attend church, though they do have varied beliefs about God and the afterlife. The choice of what to believe is theirs. When Polly and I deconverted seventeen years ago, we let our children, then sixteen to twenty-eight, know that they were free to make their own decisions about belief in God. If they choose to be atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, or Christians, that is on them. We will love and support them regardless of what path they take in life. Am I pleased that none of them wants anything to do with Evangelicalism? You bet.
Like the rich man said, had he known what it was gonna be like he would lived life differently.
You know that’s just a made-up story, right? The poor man in this story lived a miserable life, yet, in the end, he was given a bunk in paradise, safe from pain and suffering. Never asked about this story is why God let the poor man suffer his entire life without helping him?
I live my life as I please, with the clear understanding and knowledge that I will one day soon die. I have a lot of health problems that are working hard to kill me. One day, they will succeed. Until then, I plan to live each day to its fullest. What matters most to me is my family. I have no interest in God/church/Bible. My life is fine just the way it is. I know you have difficulty wrapping your mind around someone who does not want or need your God, but that’s your problem, not mine.
♡ I pray it’s not too late for you ♡ God Bless
Too late for what, exactly? Outside of better health, more money, and the Reds winning the World Series, I have everything I want and need in life. Well, a heated indoor swimming pool would be nice too, and a 1970 Nova SS.
Let me ask you, what did you hope to accomplish by contacting me? You knew I was an Evangelical Christian for fifty years. You knew I was a college-trained pastor for twenty-five years. I know the Bible inside and out — probably better than you. Did you really think you were going to say something I haven’t heard countless times before? Trust me, I haven’t heard an original argument for God/Christianity in years.
It is too late for me to return to Christianity. I no longer believe the central claims of Christianity are true. They no longer make any sense to me. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) To become a Christian again means repudiating everything I know to be true, and that ain’t going to happen.
If you have any questions, please let me know, and I will do my best to answer them.
Saved by Reason,
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.
Over the years, I have been threatened with Hell and eternal punishment by countless Evangelicals. Yesterday, a Christian reader named JT left the following comment. All spelling and grammar in the original.My response follows.
I don’t know if you been asked this, but when you die, what are you going to do if you end up in hell?
I have been asked this question numerous times. Threats of judgment and Hell are common from Evangelical readers.
I have no fear about ending up in Hell after I die. None whatsoever. Hell is a religious construct used by clerics to cause fear and elicit obedience. Remove fear of Hell from the equation, and churches would empty overnight. Without threats of Hell, offering plates would be empty and preachers unemployed. Can’t have that, so threats such as yours continue unabated.
I’ve seen no evidence for the existence of Hell. Further, the Hell JT speaks of is not taught in Scripture. A good book on this subject is Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife by Dr. Bart Ehrman. Ehrman’s book shows that what we were taught in Evangelical churches about the afterlife is untrue.
I know you don’t believe in it, it’s your free will to believe in whatever. But my question is, what IF you find out that hell was real?
I don’t believe in the existence of Hell. I have not seen one iota of evidence for its existence. If you want me to believe Hell is real, you are going to have to do more than quote proof texts or make bald assertions. Surely, you don’t believe without sufficient evidence. Just because a preacher reads a few Bible verses out of context about Hell and tells a few sermon illustrations about people who died and went to Hell doesn’t mean it exists. Preachers can and do lie, even if they do so unintentionally. I preached scores of sermons on Hell, yet I never looked at the original Hebrew and Greek behind the English words for Hell in the King James Version of the Bible. I never read any of the history behind the evolution of Hell. I took what the Bible said and what my pastors and professors said about Hell at face value. Surely they wouldn’t lie to me, right? Maybe, but they may have been products of the same indoctrination and conditioning as I was. Generation after generation is taught about the existence of Hell and the eternal damnation and suffering that awaits non-Christians after death. Not one pastor or professor, to quote Paul Harvey, told me the rest of the story. Their goal was the reinforcement of fundamentalist dogma, not knowledge about what the Bible teaches about Hell and the history surrounding the notion of eternal punishment and suffering for everyone who is not a Christian.
And I know what is gonna play in your head, all the people you got to turn from Christianity to Atheism… How do you think you will feel about that knowing you had everything when you were a preacher but only to find out you were wrong and you have led 100s if not 1000s of people away from something that indeed was true?
I am just one man with a story to tell. I am not an evangelist for atheism. I couldn’t care less whether someone deconverts. All I know to do is tell my story and provide an honest, thoughtful critique of Evangelical Christianity. If people deconvert after reading my writing, that’s on them, not me. I don’t pressure people to deconvert. No high-pressure soulwinning tactics. No altar calls.
Have people deconverted as a result of my writing? Sure. I have heard from scores of people who told me my work was instrumental in their loss of faith, including pastors, evangelists, youth workers, missionaries, and college professors. I am humbled that people find my writing helpful. If Christian apologists don’t like my writing, they are free to rebut and challenge me. Produce a podcast, start a blog, preach sermons, etc. I offer a standing invitation to Evangelicals (Muslims, Catholics, Mormons too) to write a guest post rebutting my writing. No editing, no strings attached. I’ve been blogging for seventeen years. I can count on one hand the Christians who have taken me up on this offer. Instead, most of my critics foam at the mouth and rage against me on social media, on their blogs/podcasts, and in their Sunday sermons. I have even offered to debate them publicly. No one has taken me up on the debate offer. Take Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiesen. Thiessen is a college-trained Evangelical preacher. He has written thousands of words attacking me personally or a particular subject I’ve written about on this site. I have challenged him to a public debate several times, without success. What is he so afraid of? I’ve even given him the opportunity to author guest posts for this site, which he did one time before bitching, moaning, and complaining about me changing his writing. I did no such thing, but ever the martyr, he thinks otherwise. Thiessen knows that he is free to respond to anything I have written on this site. Other critics know the same.
Just think about it. I’m not one of those judgemental Christians,
LOL! You threaten me with Hell, and then, with a straight face, you say you are NOT “one of those Christians.” Sure JT, sure.
I believe in God because of my death experience, the things that God has truly shown me… You could never change my mind about what I believe in and I’m sure that I can’t change you back to believing in Jesus.
How do you KNOW your peculiar God did anything for you? Outside of your feelings, what empirical evidence do you have for the existence of your God, and it was he alone who “showed” things to you? I am more than happy to have a discussion with you about the existence of the Christian God.
Unlike you. I am open to being persuaded that God exists. So far, no Christian has successfully persuaded me that their God exists and is personally involved in their lives. but I am not closed-minded. If you think you can prove to me the existence of your God, please do so. There are others on this site who would love to see your evidence for God, too. I’m an agnostic atheist, not an anti-theist. I’m open to persuasion, JT, so bring it on. Keep in mind, I have already heard virtually every defense of the one true faith, so you will need a new argument of some sort to persuade me.
God would have to make that happen..
Then my salvation is up to God, right? If I die and go to Hell, it’s God’s fault, right? God knows where I live. He knows my phone number and email address. He could even write a guest post for me. So far, God is silent. He’s not uttered one word to me outside of apologists who claim to speak for him. If God exists, the salvation of my soul is up to him, not me.
I think one day you may come back as God has not yet taken you out of this world yet… I think he has something up his sleeve that will pull you back to him.
What, exactly, does God have up his sleeve? He is all-powerful, so he could save me at any time. Yet, it’s been seventeen years since I deconverted, and God has not said one word to me or done anything that suggests to me he exists.
You make God sound like a magician — a deity that has a trick up his sleeve that will magically deliver me from atheism. I am confident that I will die sooner and not later, and when I die, it will be because of bad health or my partner crowning me with a Lodge cast iron skillet, and not because God killed me.
And if I was, per chance, drawn back to Christianity, it would not be Evangelicalism. That ship has sailed. I have seen and experienced the ugliness of Evangelicalism, and God himself couldn’t convince me to return to the fold.
Just know, satan hates me right now, because he has you at work, and I’m trying to disrupt that work.
My, oh my, you think highly of yourself; that Satan, the alleged God of this world hates you because you think you have interrupted his work in my life. Satan is no more real than God. You might want to do some reading on how the personage of Satan came into being. He is not who you think he is. You might find The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics by Dr. Elaine Pagels a good read on this subject.
All I can say is that I love you no matter what you believe in and I will be praying for you. Blessings,
I know you mean well, but you don’t know me, so you can’t possibly “love” me. I suspect you are used to the cheap love bandied about by Evangelicals. The same goes for “praying for me.” Are you really going to continually pray for me? I doubt it. Prayers come and go, and I suspect yours will do the same. I don’t say this to criticize you as much as to remind you that I was an Evangelical Christian for fifty years. I know how Evangelicals use the cheap cliche “I’m praying for you.” Besides, you threatened me with Hell, so I hope you will forgive me if I don’t think much of your love and prayers. Send me a couple of hundred-dollar bills along with your love and prayers, and I might think differently. 🙂
Saved by Reason,
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.
Those of us raised in Evangelical churches were told that the God of the Bible gave us lives with meaning and purpose. Without God, our lives have no meaning and purpose. Want an awesome life? Get saved! Or so the story goes, anyway.
However, when asked to provide evidence for this claim, none is forthcoming. Does religion give countless people meaning and purpose? Sure, but Evangelicals argue that only their peculiar deity actually gives life meaning and purpose. This means that billions and billions of people go through life living meaningless, purposeless lives. This claim, of course, is absurd.
Babies come into the world as a blank slate. Outside of what DNA gives them, babies have no religious or political beliefs. Virtually all of us begin life with the political and religious beliefs of others — our parents, grandparents, tribe, and church. It is not shocking in the least to see how parental and tribal influences affect how a child grows up. It is not surprising at all that I grew up as an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christian and a right-wing Republican. It would be many years before I shook the indoctrination and conditioning of my parents, family, and church. And I should add, it was also years before I cast off the borrowed theology of my pastors and professors.
Evangelical children’s ministries push the idea that it is important to reach people with the gospel when they are children. The older people become, the harder it is to evangelize them. That’s why Evangelical churches have children’s programs that aggressively proselytize children as young as five.
Both my partner and I were saved at age five. We later made professions of faith as teenagers — a common experience in IFB and Southern Baptist churches. Both of us became what our parents and churches made us into. It would be years before we saw our way clear to embrace our own beliefs. I suspect this rings true for many Evangelicals-turned-atheists.
The most important thing parents can teach their children is to think for themselves. Parents have the responsibility to nurture, care, and protect their children. Evangelicals tend to teach their children what to think instead of how to think. From the time I was born, my parents and other influences taught me what to believe. No instruction was given in philosophy or world religions, outside of other religions being heretics or cults. For the first twenty-five years of my life, the goal of my influencers was to reinforce Fundamentalist beliefs and practices. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, these well-intentioned people withheld the truth from me. Maybe they were as ignorant as I was, having indoctrinated themselves in the “one truth faith.” No ground was ever given to other beliefs or practices. The IFB, and later Evangelicalism, was the one true faith. One lord, one faith, one baptism — ours.
Once liberated of past indoctrination and conditioning, I was free to reinvestigate my beliefs. I learned that despite five decades of having religion determine the meaning and purpose of my life, there is no inherent meaning or purpose. Life, then, is the slates upon which we write the parameters of our lives. Atheists are told they live meaningless and purposeless lives, but this is patently untrue. Only people who think God is the end-all make such a stupid claim. Just because I believe differently from Evangelicals doesn’t mean I am lacking in any way. My life has all the purpose and meaning it needs. I have a good idea of what I need, want, and value in life.
While our lives have no inherent meaning and purpose, they do have meaning and purpose — that which we give them every day of our lives. We alone decide what matters in our lives. Truly, to each our own.
As an ex-Evangelical, how do you explain purpose and meaning of your life? Please share your thoughts 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.
Geri Ungurean is an Evangelical Christian known for her fanatical support of Donald Trump, the nation of Israel, and Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people. Devout in her faith, I would never question whether she is a Christian. When it comes to professed beliefs, I generally take people at face value. If a person says they are a Christian, I believe them, and I expect the same treatment from Christians. Each of us has the right to control our own storyline. Who better to tell their story than the person who lived it?
Unfortunately, many Evangelicals refuse to let atheists and agnostics control how they self-identify. Supposedly, the Bible gives them the right to tell unbelievers what they “really’ believe or whether atheists are atheists at all.
Find a person who not only claims to be an Atheist, but obsesses on pushing their atheistic views on others so as to recruit them; and I guarantee that if truth be told, and this person opened up about their life, you would find an ANGRY person. You would find a person who blames the God whom they say does not exist, for something that happened in their life.
….
There is a saying that goes like this: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” I believe this is true. A lifelong “atheist” will cry out “God help me” when faced with death.
….
Do you have a person in your life who claims to be an atheist? I have many. But I came to the point when I realized that God must be the One who gets through to the “haters.” The more you push against them, the nastier they become. The more Scripture you give to them, the more they laugh.
….
Love them and pray for them. There is a man on Twitter whose sole purpose for being on there is to tout his “atheism” in hopes of drawing others to his sad conclusions.
I watched this man for many days. I wanted to say something to him, but it was as if God was holding me back. I felt in my spirit to show Christian love to him and most importantly to Pray for him.
We are now friends on Twitter. We can write back and forth in private messages. This was during the medical scare I had recently. By the way – all tests came out benign (Thank You Jesus).
The Twitter atheist and I would talk to one another about things which were going on in our lives. He is very polite and compassionate. He knows that I am an Evangelical Christian who will not budge from my deep faith. I know that he claims to be an ardent atheist. So, with that out of the way, we speak as friends.
He has opened up to me that he went to seminary and that he was saved during college. He knows that my boys (grown) refer to themselves as atheists now. I feel that the Holy Spirit has led me in this friendship. I pray for this man every day – expecting God’s answer.
I am hoping and praying that the Lord will bring him back. I pray for God’s will to be done in “David’s” life.
But I don’t for one minute believe that he is an atheist. I believe that something happened in his life which made him bitter towards God.
Brethren, I believe that many of us have these people in our lives. Sometimes, they are in our immediate families. Sometimes they are friends or co-workers. Show love to these people and do not argue with them. Most importantly, PRAY for them every single day!
The arm of God is not too short to reach anyone, and that includes those who are angry with Him!
Where oh where do I begin?
Ungurean denies the existence of atheists; that when push comes to shove, atheists will cry out to Jesus in their time of need. She has no evidence for this claim other than her own opinion. I’ve been an atheist for seventeen years. I know more than a few atheists who have died, including readers of this blog. Not one of them abandoned atheism. Not one of them embraced Christianity on their deathbed. Is it possible for an atheist to get “saved” at the end of life? Sure, it happens, especially among those deeply conditioned and indoctrinated in Fundamentalist Christianity. Fear of death, Hell, and judgment return, leading the dying person to return to the safety of their religious past. Of course, more than a few Christians have died wondering where the Heaven God is in their time of need.
So, to Ungurean and other atheist deniers, we exist, and we ain’t going away. I am confident that when it comes time for me to die, I will expire knowing that I was right about the existence of God and my eternal future. And if I do, per chance, struggle with these issues on my deathbed, it will be because of how Fundamentalist Christianity fucked up my mind for fifty years.
Ungurean thinks people become atheists because of anger, bitterness, or some sort of negative experience. I can’t speak for all atheists. Every atheist has a unique story to tell. For me personally, I came to a place where the central claims of Christianity no longer made any sense to me; that the claims critical to faith in Jesus are false. Have I, at times, been angry or bitter? Sure, but these feelings came after I deconverted. I was angry and bitter for a time because of how Evangelical Christians treated me post-Jesus. I’ve never been more abused and demeaned than by Evangelicals who savaged and belittled me for walking away from Christianity.
I find it hilarious that Ungurean chastises atheists for promoting atheism, yet she does the same for Christianity virtually every day — as do countless other Christians. Unlike Evangelicals, however, outspoken atheists rarely try to evangelize people. Sure, it happens, but, for the most part, atheists want to be left alone and only share their beliefs when asked or accosted by a zealot.
Ungurean asks her followers to pray for atheists and not try to debate with them. Why is that, I wonder? Is it the fact that most Evangelicals — including Ungurean — are ill-equipped to have a thoughtful, intelligent discussion with an atheist? Is it the fact that outside of giving a salvation testimony, most Evangelicals can’t defend the core doctrines of Christianity, including the existence of God? They wrongly think that quoting Bible verses will defeat any atheist, when, in fact, the Bible is a book of claims, and not evidence.
Let me note, in closing, several of Ungurean’s grown children are atheists. Why has she been unable to convince them to get “saved” or does she think they are still saved, based on childhood religious experiences? Her children, like the rest of us, own their own stories. She has no more right to tell their stories than she does those of atheists and other unbelievers. All that should matter is truth, and to Geri Ungurean, I say, stop psychoanalyzing atheists and engage them in debate; honest, open debate. If you can’t do that, you are just chucking rocks at atheists instead of defending the faith.
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.
