Every week, without fail, I will get at least one email from an Evangelical who mistakes me for a Christian. I don’t know how this happens. My bio is on the top of every page and at the bottom of every post. It says:
Bruce Gerencser, 65, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 44 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
I know that some Evangelicals are lazy readers, lacking basic curiosity. (Please see Curiosity, A Missing Evangelical Trait.) When I read a new site, I always check out the bio page. I want to know more about the author, especially his or her background.
Several days ago, I received the following email from a Southern Baptist man:
I attend an SBC church and have been surprised lately to see a man who is admittedly a new Christian and former rock musician, come into the church, become a deacon in a short period of time, and then started wearing pony tails, hair clips, man buns, while he sings whatever emotionally filled song he can find. He was allowed to baptize recently and was obviously nervous doing so with him not even mentioning the name of Jesus Christ while he was doing so. I am very concerned and the pastor does not even care in spite of mentioning scripture regarding him being a novice and not qualifying to be a deacon as well as the I Corinthians scripture about long hair and men. The pastor states he believes in the inerrancy of scripture, but is fine with this going on stating that he thinks this guy may change with time. It is so discouraging to see such compromise. The church’s school dress code is in conflict with the man who is a leader in the church which hosts the school where my child attends. I don’t understand the complacency on this when we have a society bent on blurring the lines between men and women.
Think about all the things that are going on in the world today, yet this man is concerned with:
A ponytail-wearing, bun-wearing former rock musician who is now a Christian and sings emotionally filled songs in church; who said the wrong words when baptizing someone
A pastor who isn’t concerned about this affront to God and the Bible
The aforementioned man violates the church’s dress code (I had a hard time deciphering what he wrote on this issue)
The letter writer’s child attends the church’s Christian school, and allowing this man to wear his hair in an “obviously” female style is a sin and sets a bad example for church members and school students
The real issue is that the letter writer thinks it is a sin for a man to have long hair. I wonder if he thinks the same about women wearing short hair? The Bible condemns both. (Please see Is it a Sin for Men to Have Long Hair?) Of all the things to be worried about today: inflation, rising interest rates, the mid-term election, the threat of civil war or nuclear war, or a host of other serious problems facing not only the United States but the world, this man is worried about a longhaired man he doesn’t like singing songs in church.
Welcome to the world of Baptist Fundamentalism.
I sent the letter writer a one-sentence response: you do know I’m an atheist, right? I received no response from him.
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.
Yesterday, I received the following email from a man named Fain Grogg. My editor, Carolyn, sent Grogg a curt reply earlier today — thank you — but I thought I would respond to several allegations and assertions Grogg makes in his email. All spelling and grammar are found in the original.
Bruce, Yes I have read article of Kenny Bishop, I had heard around 1999 that he made an unwanted advance only a female (from the Bishops music business office). I knew that at that time- he continued preaching.
Grogg came to this site looking for information (dirt) about Kenny Bishop — a former Fundamentalist Southern Gospel singer who is now a gay man and the pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation. If you are not familiar with Kenny’s story, please read Southern Gospel Singer Kenny Bishop is Now a Gay United Church of Christ Pastor. I have been acquainted with Kenny for thirty years. My wife, Polly, and I have heard The Bishops in concert several times, and we owned most of their CDs back in our Christian days. Even today, I will listen to The Bishops from time to time.
I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that Kenny is gay and is now the pastor of a mainline congregation in Louisville, Kentucky. I can only imagine the personal pain Kenny has experienced going from a hardcore Fundamentalist to a progressive, inclusive Christian.
I am aware of the rumor mentioned by Grogg. I don’t know exactly what happened. I do know that Kenny abruptly left his family’s singing group, later divorcing his wife of fifteen years, Debra Hardy. In 2018, Kenny married Mason Miller.
My question is at one time you must have given your heart and life to God & felt the calling to preach for 25 years.
Yes, at the age of fifteen, I was saved/born again at a revival meeting at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. Two weeks later, I stood before the church and told them that I believed God was calling me to preach. Not long after, I preached my first sermon. At the age of nineteen, I enrolled for classes at Midwestern Baptist College, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution in Pontiac, Michigan. While there, I met and later married a beautiful dark-haired preacher’s daughter. In 1979, Polly and I left Midwestern, moving to Bryan, Ohio. Two months later, I started working for Montpelier Baptist Church. All told, I spent twenty-five years in the ministry, pastoring churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Over the course of my thirty-three-year preaching career, I preached 4,000 sermons. While I certainly wasn’t perfect and did things I certainly regret, the bend of my life was toward godliness and holiness. I was, in every way, a Christian.
What happened to cause you to walk away from God’s calling on your life or did you just decide that being a minister was an easy paycheck. Then to say 2 years later you left Christianity completely. There must have been something drastic happen.
Had Grogg bothered to read the posts on the WHY? page, he would have found ALL the answers to his questions.
Grogg, as many who have come before him, can’t make the square peg of my life story fit into the round hole of his rigid Evangelical Christianity. Instead of considering that HE might the one who has a problem, Grogg goes looking for ulterior motives for my deconversion.
First, without ANY knowledge about the arc of my life, Grogg suggests that I stayed in the ministry because it was an easy paycheck. Is he suggesting that I never was a Christian or that the ministry is a place to make easy money? He doesn’t say, so I find it difficult to understand exactly what he is saying here.
Carolyn schooled Grogg on “all” the money I didn’t make as a pastor, often living in poverty or working long hours at secular jobs so the churches I pastored could have a full-time pastor. Not one of the seven churches I pastored over the years paid me a living wage. None of these churches provided me with health insurance, retirement, or other fringe benefits. I pastored churches because I loved God, desired to win souls for Christ, and wanted to help people grow and mature in their faith. I worked secular jobs while pastoring. I ALWAYS made more money outside of the church.
Grogg suggests that something “drastic” had to happen for me to walk away from Christianity. I am sure he thinks there is some sort of nefarious reason/secret for my deconversion, but as I spell out on the WHY? page, I deconverted because the central claims of Christianity no longer made sense to me. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) Using reason, skepticism, and common sense, I concluded that the beliefs at the core of Christianity: the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and his miracles were not true. Not believing these things, I could no longer call myself a Christian. Was my deconversion “drastic”? Yes, but it was the right conclusion after I had carefully re-examined the teachings of the Bible.
You mentioned for people not to send you words from Bible. The Great Commission that you once believed is why we reach out and pray for you
If you are an Evangelical Christian, please read Dear Evangelical before sending me an email. If you have a pathological need to evangelize, spread the love of Jesus, or put a good word in for the man, the myth, the legend named Jesus, please don’t. The same goes for telling me your church/pastor/Jesus is awesome. I am also not interested in reading sermonettes, testimonials, Bible verses, or your deconstruction/psychological evaluation of my life. By all means, if you feel the need to set me straight, start your own blog.
Grogg thinks ignoring my request is justified because the Bible says that Christians are to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every person. Never mind the fact that I am quite familiar with the Christian gospel. What could any of these zealots possibly say to me that I don’t already know? No, the real issue here is not my salvation; it is Evangelicals reinforcing their own beliefs; quelling questions and doubts they might have about their own salvation and beliefs. I get it. My story troubles them. Instead of wrestling with their own doubts and questions, they try to discredit and marginalize me instead.
Imagined if I worshipped DooDoo, as found in an ancient religious text from the first century. Imagine if I came to your house and pissed and shit on your front porch. Would that upset you? I suspect it would. When confronted by you, I replied “Thus saith DooDoo in First Bowel Movement 28:19,20: When thou comest upon a Christian home, thou shalt piss and shit on their front porch, reminding them that I am DooDoo, the one true God, he who moves and lives in all human beings. Would anyone be okay with me doing this? Yet, that is exactly what Grogg and his fellow Evangelicals think they have a right to do. Grogg believes he has no obligation to respect my wishes. And he’s right. He can do what he wants. However, he shouldn’t feign outrage and surprise when I call him out on his boorish behavior.
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.
A year ago, an Evangelical man using a fake name, Victor [Viktor] Justice, left two comments on this site. One, a vile comment about the death of my dear friend Steve Gupton (please see The Suddenness of Death) was immediately deleted. I did, however, approve the following comment. All spelling and grammar errors, of which there are many, belong to Justice.
Congratulations Little Bruce:
Boy, you’ve really become the embodiment of a woke old fool. I honestly feel shame and pain for what you have done to your children. It’s quite obvious that Polly was never saved, like yourself. This is evidenced by how quickly she turned into a typical, slobbish, western, bimbo. You could’ve joined the Harry Krishnas, and old, dumb, Polly woulda been right behind ya…what a dull, addled brained, dunce you married.
Your children hate your guts. You sound like half a fag, bellyaching night and day about how the whole world has been so cruel to Little Bruce.
The Judgement is closing in on you, son. Your body is falling apart fast and your debt is completely unplayable outside of the Cross of The Lord Jesus Christ Almighty!
Most sincerely,
A worm who Christ died for.
I immediately put Justice on the banned list, making him ineligible to comment. No one attacks my wife, children, grandchildren, or friends and gets by with it. As is my custom, I clear the banned list once a year. And sure as the sun comes up in the morning, Justice left another comment:
Bruce,
I’m not someone who just happened upon your blog. I’ve been reading it for a few years and I typically read for hours at a time.
We have a lot in common. OCPD/OCD, major back issues (crushed disk, advanced DDD, spinal stenosis), neck and head pain, with a extremely painful nerve disorders, etc, etc.
Where we differ from one another is my saving faith in the LORD Jesus Christ Almighty. What I see from you is someone that is the quintessential example of the former fake believer who’s consumed by bitterness, jealousy, and selfishness.
You were never saved. Jesus Christ Almighty is truly your only hope and your running out of time!
Most sincerely,
I banned Justice once again. He then left the following comment (which I deleted):
Little Bruce,
Well, there’s no fool — like an old fool. One thing that I can tell you is that you would never speak to me with anything but respect and reverence in person. You should only call me “Mr. Justice” from now on!
Anyway, getting back to what I was saying, before you “blocked and banned” me for what must be the fifth or sixth time. I HAVE read about 50% of what you have written on this blog over the years. I have several computers, computer locations, email addresses, and the aforementioned VPN. Nice try though…
I appreciated you republishing one of my prior letters to you. For the record, I meant every. Single. WORD. contained in it. Also, when you publish a blog on the World Wide Web, anyone has the ABSOLUTE right to join in on reading the content, making comments, and so forth. As long as they are aren’t doing anything illegal, making threats of violence, or using profanity (yes, you read that right), they have the right to full enjoyment of “your” website.
I rarely bring a man’s wife and family into these types of discussions, but I made an exception with Polly, because of how easily she dumped her “faith”, the faith of her fathers…what a jezebel spirit that lurks within her unregenerate soul.
You are truly one of the lowest, most selfish, Christ hating bigoted pieces of human garbage on the face of the earth! You preached over 4,000 sermons that you didn’t believe, while being paid, and thence went about ripping the heart out of those who you were sworn to minister to and love. You are slightly less abominable than Judas the Son of Perdition. AND NOW…you see yourself as the VICTIM!…Burn in Hell, Jack!
I’m angry about what you have said and done to my LORD and Savior — Jesus Christ Almighty! But, He is so loving that you could still possibly be forgiven and Saved! Hopefully, for your sake, Almighty GOD hasn’t completely turned you over to a reprobate mind. GOD’s grace, love, majesty, and mercy is truly a miracle! Praise His scared, holy, wonderful, and great Name! Glory to His righteous Name!
Most sincerely,
After Justice left this comment, I blocked him at the server level. Of course, this only works if he uses one of the IP addresses I have blocked. As expected, using a VPN, Justice evaded this block and sent me the following email:
I just read your last couple of posts (even though I’m supposed to be banned & blocked). You are really losing your stuff, son. I’ll admit that I find your writing style to be pretty good, albeit the content of what you write is particularly vile. That’s what I’m getting at, you are now producing retrograde, rehashed junk. You honestly have no more story to tell.
Obviously you can’t just stop writing this blog, because it’s your source of hustling money outta those who are suckers for your sob stories. Just know that Victor Justice knows exactly how you’re conning, what I call, the deviant vulnerable.
I watched your clown show, supposedly speaking to the “humanist society.” Being such a “professional photographer” didn’t it dawn on you that it looked like you were talking to yourself in your dingy basement while Polly recorded. You look like a quintessential weakling with your filthy beard, jeans, and one of your grandmother’s old hats from her family’s civil war chest in the attic.
Yeah, being an atheist surely is a bundle of joy. Your nothing but a goofball clown with 10 or so sycophants lapping up your vomit. Good luck to your psychotherapist, who probably laughs you to scorn, the minute you waddle out the door. Good grief!
As you can see, Justice’s goal is to inflict psychological harm. Much like Dr. David Tee, Revival Fires, and other Evangelical zealots, Justice hopes his words will cause harm. He’s not interested in truth or evangelizing me. He’s a playground bully who spends his days verbally molesting and assaulting me, safely ensconced in his mommy’s basement without fear of responsibility and accountability.
It would be easy to dismiss Justice as someone who is mentally ill — and maybe he is. However, I am not willing to give him a pass. It is important for readers to see the connection between Justice’s Fundamentalist beliefs and practices and his behavior. (Justice’s use of certain words suggests he is a Calvinist.) Does anyone believe that Justice’s words are remotely Christian? I know I don’t. Had Justice been a member of one of the churches I pastored, and I learned he was viciously harassing people online, we would have excommunicated him. Such behavior is morally wrong regardless of religious affiliation. Yet, I suspect Justice is a member in good standing at an Evangelical church where he lives. His comments and emails reveal that Justice is a Bible believer. For all I know, he could be a preacher. Over the years, I have had Evangelical preachers take a similar approach. Hiding behind pseudonyms, these so-called men of God hurled all sorts of vile invectives my way. In two instances, I was eventually able to figure out who they were. I turned their comments into a post, and put their real name on the post. Now, that’s justice. 🙂 It is unlikely that I will be able to ferret out Victor Justice. All I can do is ban and block him. When he uses a VPN, I will block the VPN’s IP address bloc. Unfortunately, I run the risk of catching legitimate readers with this block. If that happens to you, please let me know.
A handful of readers (I see you Troy) think I should just delete comments from the Justices, Tees, and Revival Fires of the world. The reason I don’t is this: I want readers to see the ugly underbelly of Evangelical Christianity; that there are beliefs and practices that can and do turn people into vile, nasty, hateful human beings. Justice, Tee, and Revival Fires are not just a few bad apples in a barrel of pristine Red Delicious apples. My email, comments, and social media messages from Evangelicals suggest that a sizeable minority of God’s elect have no problem with viciously attacking anyone they disagree with — contrary to the teachings of Christ. These same people are MAGA and Qanon supporters. I fear these people, given the right circumstances, could be provoked to cause physical harm (as we saw in the 1/6/21 Insurrection).
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.
In 2018, I wrote a post titled Emotionally Manipulating IFB Church Members through Music and Preaching Styles. In this article, I detailed the manipulative methods used by Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) evangelist C.T. Townsend. Since then, Townsend’s fans have stopped by to let me know what they think of my critique and of me personally. If you have read my previous responses to Townsend’s acolytes, you know how hostile they can be — in Christian love, of course. 🙂
Today, I received yet another letter from a Townsend devotee, this time, from a woman named Rhonda. Rhonda read all of one post before commenting. What follows is my response to Rhonda. All spelling and grammar are in the original.
I truly feel sorry for you Bruce.
Why? Now, if Rhonda said she felt sorry for me because I am dying or that she was sorry that I had gastroparesis, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and degenerative spine disease, or that I live every moment of every day in pain, I would understand and appreciate her words. However, I suspect Rhonda is saying “I feel sorry for you” because she thinks poorly of me or she thinks that I don’t have a good life post-Jesus.
I know that no matter what I tell Rhonda, her opinion of me is not going to change, but I am going to tell her anyway. My life is better in every way post-Jesus. My wife, Polly, and I have been married for forty-four years. We are blessed to have six wonderful children, four of whom have college educations, and all but our daughter with Down syndrome are gainfully employed. We have thirteen grandchildren, ten girls and three boys, ages two to twenty-two. Most of them are A students. So, while I have a tough row to hoe, health-wise, the rest of my life is good in every way.
I’m so happy and here’s the reason why, Jesus took my burdens all away . . . scratch that. I’m so happy because I am alive. So many things in my life have tried to harm and kill me, yet here I am on my sixty-fifth trip around the sun still alive and kicking. My dad died at age forty-nine and my mom killed herself at age fifty-four. My grandparents, and all my aunts and uncles, save three are long since dead too. Yet, here I am, still among the living. Awesome, right? No God needed.
It is hard for me to believe if you were ever a Christian that you could turn Atheist.
Let me share a bit of the Word of God with Rhonda: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude. (Proverbs 18:13)
I am an atheist today because the central claims of Christianity no longer make sense to me. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) Rhonda wants to take my present life and read it back into my fifty years as a Christian. By doing this, Rhonda is able to dismiss my story out of hand. She doesn’t have to wrestle with the fact that I once was a saved, Spirit-filled preacher of the gospel; a man who devoted most of his life to evangelizing the lost and building up the church. My bona fides are every bit as solid as Townsend’s.
I think it is a terrible thing that you would criticize people trying to do God’s work.
Why? Does Rhonda think that Evangelical churches, preachers, and parachurch organizations are above criticism and critique? If so, she is a member of a dangerous cult.
I also believe that CT Townsend is a great preacher. Big deal if he has a certain methods and mannerisms to lead people to the Lord. Big deal if he uses the same technique in every sermon. It seems to me it is working because people are getting saved! I believe a preacher needs to get to peoples hearts in order to get the message across.
My claim is that Townsend, along with countless other Evangelical and IFB preachers, uses emotionally manipulative methods to evangelize people. They do the same when guilting “backslidden” church members into coming to the altar and getting right with God.
I hate to appeal to authority, but the fact of the matter is that I AM an expert on the IFB church movement. Why? First, I was raised in an IFB home. I was saved, baptized, and called to preach in an IFB church. I attended an IFB college. I married an IFB pastor’s daughter. I pastored IFB churches. I am intimately aware of the methods and techniques IFB preachers use to manipulate people. I used these things myself for many years. I know the IFB church movement inside and out.
I DO NOT call this emotional manipulation or bullying. If anything I am thinking that you are trying to be a bully. Leave the preachers alone and quit trying to criticize them.
I am a bully? All because I pointedly and directly critique IFB preachers? Really? Sigh. (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh.”) These preachers are public figures. As long as preachers drag their beliefs into the public square, they are fair game, especially when they are materially harming people.
Find something better to do with your time.
LOL. Watch porn? 🙂
You said “As part of my responsibilities as a critic of Evangelical Christianity, I read Christian blogs and news sites and listen to sermon and music videos. Hey, someone has to do it! Better me than you, right?”
I have been blogging for fifteen years. My goal has always been the same: to tell my story, to help people who have doubts and questions about Christianity, and help people who have left Christianity. Thus, I continue to read Evangelical websites and blogs and listen to Evangelical sermons and podcasts because it is important for me to know what is going on in that corner of the Christian world. I want to be well informed. Too bad Rhonda didn’t take that approach with my writing (or atheism).
Why do you choose to be a critic of Evangelical Christianity? You said someone has to do it……NO….no one has to do it, they just choose to.
I have to do it because I see it as my calling. The Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement has cult-like tendencies. I have experienced firsthand, as have my wife and children, the psychological (and at times physical) harm caused by IFB beliefs and practices. The IFB church movement is not a benign sect.
Rhonda must have missed the Black Collar Crime series; a series where I document the criminal acts of Evangelical and IFB clerics. The series has reached almost 1,000 entries. Since these crimes are not being talked about, for the most part, within Evangelicalism, I feel it is my duty to write about them here.
I assume Rhonda believes in freedom of speech. Or is freedom of speech a one-way street; a street where preachers have the freedom to say whatever they want, but atheists are expected to shut the hell up and mind their own business?
Let me make a promise to the butt-hurt Rhondas of the world. I intend to keep writing and speaking as long as I am physically able and people still want to read my writing. By all means, pray to God to shut me up or kill me. Thousands of Christians have already done so. Yet, here I am, which leads me to think that God either approves of my work or he is not listening to Evangelical prayers or he doesn’t exist. My money is on the latter.
I believe it is all part of Satan’s work.
God doesn’t exist, and neither does Satan. Rhonda is free to believe what she wants, but she can provide no evidence for me being a tool of Satan. I, alone, am to blame for what is written here.
If you don’t like it just move on and don’t say nothing.
LOL! Why didn’t Rhonda just read my post, move on, and say nothing?
Why are you trying to get people to think CT Townsend and other preachers are bad?
I think IFB churches and preachers cause harm to other people. I don’t think they are “bad” in the sense of being “evil.” Townsend is a product of Fundamentalist indoctrination and social conditioning, as are his wife and their children. I understand why Townsend is the way he is because I walked a similar path. Unlike Townsend, I know and understand that I harmed my family and the people I pastored. IFB preaching is not benign, and neither are behaviors based on a literal interpretation of the King James Bible. I have seen firsthand the harm these things cause, and over the years I have received countless emails that reinforce my educated opinion of the IFB church movement.
I would not want to be someone that talks about Christians in this way and then when they stand before God (and everyone will), they will realize how wrong they were but it will be to late because if a person denies God….He will deny them in the end.
Ah, here comes the threat. There’s always a threat of judgment and Hell. I am an atheist, so such threats have no effect on me — zero, nada, zip. No God. No Devil. No Heaven. No Hell. No afterlife. The only God I fear is my wife. 🙂
Besides, I am still a Christian! 🙂 Surely, Rhonda believes in once-saved-always-saved. I was saved as a fifteen-year-old at Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. Is Rhonda saying that salvation is NOT by grace through faith, that it is by right beliefs instead? Egads! Is she preaching works salvation? 🙂
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 weekend, Adam Stockford, the mayor of Hillsdale Michigan, posted to his personal Facebook account and his official campaign account the post I had written about him last month. Titled MAGA Mayor Adam Stockford Says Hillsdale, Michigan is a “Traditional Values” Community, I wrote about Stockford’s use of the phrase “traditional values.” As expected, Stockford re-posting my article led to his acolytes coming after me personally. I detailed their “love” yesterday in a post titled Did You Know I am a Traitor, Communist, Marxist, a Danger to America, and an Awful Writer Too? One Hillsdale man named Ronald Cook has made it his personal mission to attack me, both publicly and privately. Cook spent twenty years in the military, achieving the rank of sergeant. After retiring, he spent the next twenty years working as a corrections officer. As you will see in a moment, Cook is a bully, making me wonder how much his forty years in authoritarian jobs helped to shape him into the hateful man he is today.
What follows is a Facebook Messenger “discussion I had with Cook over the past three days. As you will see, Cook’s hostility toward me escalated quickly, so much so that I reported him to Facebook. Some of you have been after me to take threats of violence more seriously, so I heeded your advice and acted accordingly. I have not yet heard back from Facebook.
This first comment is what Cook said on Stockford’s personal Facebook page.
Cook says that I should do the world a favor by standing in front of a speeding train and killing myself. He also says that I am a child molester. I don’t understand people like Cook. I didn’t insult him or say anything inflammatory, yet Cook went after me like a terrorist in Afghanistan or an inmate who dared to talk back to him. Cook is certainly not the first, nor will he be the last to threaten me with violence. What concerns me is that Cook only lives 30-45 minutes from my home. He definitely has anger issues and violent tendencies, so I don’t want to provoke him further.
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.
Thank you for your speedy reply. Not expected but grateful. A wise man once said; “…electricity is real, but you can’t see it.” This is what you are saying I guess. Albert Einstein stated “I believe in Spinoza’s God “. He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naive. He clarified however that, “I am not an atheist”, preferring to call himself an agnostic, or a “religious nonbeliever.”
I replied:
No, what I am saying is this: there is no evidence for the existence of a God, especially the Christian deity. Is it possible that someday a deity of some sort might make itself known to us? Sure. Unlikely, but possible. So that’s why I am an agnostic atheist. Practically speaking, I live my day-to-day life as an atheist. The only time I think about God at all is when writing for this site or doing an interview for other sites or news organizations. Life is too short to spend much time thinking about mythical beings.
Langley then sent me a lengthy response, to which I shall reply below. :
Well then we are both at a conundrum about our communication. You say one thing I say another. That’s fine left as it is you would agree.
All I did is explain my beliefs. What should I have said, instead? In the world I live in, disagreements are common, frequent, and encouraged. Is that not the case for Pastor Langley?
After lengthy reading most of your site, (10 minutes you calculated me).
Based on the server logs, Langley read less than 30 of the 4,588 published posts on this site. This means Langley read .00654307 percent of my posts — definitely not “most of your site.” Nor do the logs suggest he spent a lot of time reading my writing. Granted, he could have multiple IP addresses, but even then, it would take weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to read “most” of my posts. I will leave it to Langley to explain his words. Perhaps he is “evangelistically speaking” — a method used by preachers to exaggerate church attendance, offerings, salvation decisions numbers.
You are a very prolific writer as seen on your web site. Maybe this web crawler will show a different time that I spent reading.
Yes, I am a prolific writer, much like I was a prolific preacher back in my preaching days (4,000 sermons). This blog is my job. I spend a significant amount of time each week reading Evangelical blogs, websites, and social media accounts. Since this site focuses on three things: my journey from Evangelicalism-to-atheism, critiquing Evangelicalism, and exposing criminal behavior by Evangelical preachers through the Black Collar Crime series, it is important for me to do my homework before writing a post.
I have been blogging for fifteen years. All told, I have written millions of words. I am a writer. This is what I do. The issues I write about matter to me, as they do the thousands of people who read my work. I make no apology for being “prolific.” Because I AM prolific, I am going to call out Evangelicals who say they have read most or all of my writing.
You certainly tore into my small paragraph, taking several paragraphs to break down every statement.
Okay? I am going to do the same with Langley’s latest email to me. What? Doesn’t he want me to respond? Maybe not. Rarely does a week go by when I don’t publicly respond to Evangelicals who email me or message me on social media. Again, doing so is my job. As far as “tearing” into Langley, he really should read more of my writing. I definitely didn’t give him the full “Bruce Gerencser Treatment®.” 🙂
From your side of the fence you did a great job too. You are not the only person that I have come in contact with as I am 68 years old. I have been preaching/pastoring for 35 years.
I assume there are a few words missing in the “you are not the only person that I have come in contact with” sentence. I assume he means “atheist” or “Evangelical-turned-atheist.”
I cannot say that I will continue in our correspondence. Couple reasons. If I were to be out Soul Winning and ran into to you there would be no argument, attack, preaching, etc. as you have stated many have come after you on the web site. Thus you set some rules and guidelines.
By the way our childhood’s are not so far apart. We all have a past. We don’t choose our parents they say. The other reason is that you would do the same thing as we are doing through this communication, and I would respect you and move on. There would be no attack, no preaching, no disrespect at all. So do not look for much more than you have been given. You obviously do not want to take up all your precious time with this type exchange.
I am more than happy to continue interacting with Langley, as I am every person who contacts me. As far as this site having contact and commenting guidelines, I have these things in place because of the nasty, hateful emails, comments, and messages I receive from Evangelicals — especially Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB). Preachers, by the way, are the worst. They alone would be reason enough for me to reject Christianity,
It is just so odd to me when people say that they can know there is no God! Really.
Here’s the thing, I never said this. I made it clear to Langley that I am an agnostic atheist (as most atheists are).
Now, if the question is whether I believe the Bible God exists, I can confidently say “no.” I cannot, however, say with certainty that no deity of any sort exists. Doubtful? Yes. Probable? No. And that’s why I live my day-to-day life as an atheist (as does my wife). God is not part of my life in any way outside of my writing and speaking engagements.
That’s like taking a gamble on your life and everyone you win over to this thinking. I am sure you hae heard it all before; “What if you are wrong?” and the other one goes like; “To live the Christian life is not a bad way to live.”
Sigh. (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh”.)Here comes Pascal’s Wager, a terrible apologetic if there ever was one. Besides, Langley, doesn’t practice what he preaches. If he did, he would also be a Muslim, Jew, Mormon, and Hindu. Langley never asks himself, “what if I am wrong”? If he did, he would cover all his bases. Instead, he presupposes Christianity to be true.
As far as the “Christian life” not being a bad way to live, I couldn’t disagree more. As an atheist and a humanist, I am free to love, respect, and befriend everyone — I mean REALLY love and respect them — including LGBTQ people. Evangelicals are known for what? “Othering” people; neatly putting people into two categories: saved-lost, saint-sinner, Heaven-Hell, in-out. I prefer a world where freedom and choice are paramount; where the humanistic ideal reigns supreme.
As an unwashed, uncircumcised Philistine, my life is better in every way post-Jesus. Why in the world would I ever want to return to the garlic and leeks of Egypt? Since there is no Hell (or Heaven) I can’t think of one good reason to get up on Sunday and go to church. Besides, I already go to church, three services of the week: Church of the NFL.
So far I have seen the Bible proven wrong. In fact there seems to be many Historians that has proven much of it. Along with many great Scientists, whether they were believers or not there is proof from both sides in that field.
I will make Langley the same offer I have made to other people who tell me “the Bible has never been proven wrong.” The inerrancy and infallibility of the Protestant Christian Bible cannot be rationally, historically, or scientifically sustained. Langley has spent most of his sixty-eight years of life in the Evangelical bubble. His understanding of the Bible has been shaped and molded within the safe confines of the bubble. (Please see The Danger of Being in a Box and Why it Makes Sense When You Are In It and What I Found When I Left the Box.)
If Langley happens to read this post, I would like to offer him a free copy of one of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books on the history and nature of the Bible. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina. I will gladly buy the book for Langley and have it shipped to his home in Oklahoma. I have made this offer numerous times over the years. Not one Evangelical preacher has accepted my offer. Some Evangelicals have read Ehrman’s books after I recommended them. Some of them later deconverted. (Jim Elliff says, Avoid Bart Ehrman, He Could Cause You To Lose Your Faith!)
So with that said I will wait for your response and not sure if it will warrant mine. You have said in this second answer already something that makes me believe that you do not know for sure about something.
Quote: “Is it possible that some day a deity of some sort might make itself known to us? Sure. Unlikely, but possible.”
I lack certainty on most things in life. I have confidence based on knowledge, probabilities, and lived experiences, but “certainty”? That is the realm of Evangelicals who are certain about all sorts of things, even though knowledge, probabilities, and lived experiences suggest they shouldn’t be.
As far as God and the central claims of Christianity are concerned, I am confident that my beliefs are correct. Langley hasn’t said anything that would cause me to change my mind or doubt my present beliefs. I have interacted with thousands of Evangelicals over the years. It’s been years since I have heard a novel argument, proving that Solomon was right when he said “there’s nothing new under the sun.”
You will have to read your email to me to understand. Of course you were correcting me so it may appear that you do not want to learn from anyone but Teach what you either believe, feel, or just aren’t sure of so you reject it.
I am always open to learning new things. However, Christianity is founded on the Bible. I spent thousands and thousands of hours reading and studying the Bible. It’s not a magical book, as Evangelicals claim, providing new information every time you read it. I have done my homework. Do I know “everything”? Of course not. But, I am confident that I understand the Bible, complete with its errors and contradictions. Langley is free to enlighten me, but I suspect, as readers shall see below, that he has no new light to offer.
Moral lives do not make an Eternity difference they just make a Moral life. When life ends then the question and subject you and have had will be up to you, but BEFORE DEATH you cannot do anything AFTER DEATH, which you are stating yourself. I say there are two, Hell or Heaven. To go to Hell do nothing. To go to Heaven one must Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ by Confessing our Sin asking God to Forgive us and believing that Jesus alone saved us by His death on the cross, his shed blood.
Ah, here comes the sermon, the soulwinning appeal. Does Langley think I have never heard these things before? Or did he feel led by the Holy Spirit to say them? Or, perhaps his words are for the lurkers and doubters who read my writing?
Besides, Langley is a Baptist. Once saved, always saved, right? If that’s the case, I am still a born-again Christian, and when I die, I will go to Heaven. Or, will Langley say I never was a “real Christian”? I will have to wait to see how he responds.
I certainly understand all of what you said about Christian, Church People Hurt the worst in those 35 years. Been there too sir.
Langley actually knows very little about my life. His comment reveals that he has read very little of my autobiographical material. Had he done his homework, he would have learned that “hurt” played almost no part in my deconversion. I have chosen not a be Christian because I weighed the central claims of Christianity in the balance and found them wanting. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
I just have to say “forgive me” Jesus suffered more than anyone at the hands of the human race and he was a human at the time, proven by Historians you well know, He was real just you and I have two points of view on these things it seems.
Yes, Jesus was real, but he was also, according to the Bible, God. We have no idea what he actually felt or experienced. After all, God was able to impregnate a Jewish teenager, so it is possible that Jesus’s death was for show. Regardless, Jesus suffered for all of six or so hours. He most certainly did not “suffer more than anyone.” I have battled chronic illness and unrelenting pain for years. I know suffering. I would gladly trade Jesus’s suffering for mine if it meant I would not suffer afterward. I know scores of people who would do the same.
All Langley and I can say is that Jesus was a Jewish man who lived, died, and is buried in an unknown grave somewhere in Palestine. Just because the Bible says something doesn’t mean it is true. The extant evidence suggests that Jesus was some sort of itinerate preacher who attracted, at most, a couple of hundred followers before he died. There’s no evidence, outside of the Bible, for the resurrection of Jesus or the miracles attributed to him. You would think Jesus would have made the front page of the Jerusalem Press a time or two, but he didn’t. Surely first-century historians would have been raving about his mighty works, yet they said almost nothing. Maybe, just maybe, the claims Christians make for Jesus are false.
Thank you again for the communication.
David Langley
Sinner saved by Grace of God
Unworthy but Grace was given
And as you have stated, trying to live a moral life, love family, love wife of 49 years
Praying that your health improves.
I will skip responding to Langley’s benediction. I do want to address his last sentence: “praying that your health improves.” Had Langley read my autobiographical material, he would have known that my health will not be improving; that I am slowly dying; that I have three kinds of days: less bad, bad, and really, really, really bad. I am sure Langley meant well, but offering up empty platitudes to people with incurable diseases is not helpful. Even more so when they are unbelievers.
If you are an Evangelical Christian, please read Dear Evangelical before sending me an email. If you have a pathological need to evangelize, spread the love of Jesus, or put a good word in for the man, the myth, the legend named Jesus, please don’t. The same goes for telling me your church/pastor/Jesus is awesome. I am also not interested in reading sermonettes, testimonials, Bible verses, or your deconstruction/psychological evaluation of my life. By all means, if you feel the need to set me straight, start your own blog.
Two words: please don’t.
A Sinner 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.
It is not uncommon for first-time readers to start reading something I have written or start listening to one of the interviews I have given over the years and conclude that I am either a Christian or a man of “wisdom.” Alas, by the time they get to the end of the article/video/podcast, they find out that I am an atheist. Out goes the “value” and “wisdom” of my words. What possibly could an Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist say about God/Jesus/the Bible/Christianity that is wise or valuable, right? Instead of focusing on the message, people such as Langley focus on the messenger. Instead of wrestling with the question: is what Bruce says true? all they see is my atheism (or liberalism, socialism, humanism, pacifism). Because I am not part of their in-group, my words have little to no value.
that God is Real and You may give a second thought to what you seem to be “preaching” (yourself).
I am an atheist, so I reject Langley’s claim that “God is real” out of hand. If Langley would like to discuss his claim with me, I’m game. I should warn him that I have talked with hundreds of Evangelicals about their God claims. I have yet to hear an argument that was persuasive; that would cause me to return to Christianity. Maybe Langley’s arguments would be different, but I doubt it.
Langley thinks I should give a second thought to what I am preaching. What am I preaching, you ask? Self. I am ready, now, to sigh. (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh”.) Here’s the title of this blog: The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser: One Man’s Journey From Eternity to Here. The central focus of my writing is my journey from Evangelicalism to atheism. This blog is, by design, a first-person account of my life. How could it be otherwise?
Evidently, I am not supposed to talk about myself; my life; my personal experiences. Yet, I suspect that Langley uses first-person stories in his sermons. Has he ever shared his testimony with someone? Does his church have a testimony time for church members to share what God has done for them?
I simply do not understand why Langley objects to me telling my story. If I wrote an autobiography, would he be okay with that? This blog is no different.
Humanism does look like we only care about humans. So whatever we say or do cannot be wrong.
Langley reveals that he doesn’t know much about humanism. While humanism is certainly human-centric, humanists care about all sorts of things. I wonder if Langley has ever had an actual in-depth conversation with a humanist? I suspect not. (Please see Are You a Humanist?)
Langley clumsily says that humanists don’t have a moral/ethical foundation for their lives; that without God, we live immoral lives where we do no wrong. This, of course, is patently untrue. I would be more than happy to have a moral dick measuring contest with Langley, if he is interested. I think he will find I live a moral and ethical life — all without God and the Bible.
Sir I do not want to offend you I am just wanting you to know this may not be the right path.
Langley never mentions why he thinks I am on the wrong path. Is it because I am an atheist or a humanist? Is it because I have no need for God/Christianity/the Bible? Perhaps Langley can clarify why he thinks I am on the wrong path. I think I know, but I don’t want to put words in his mouth.
I too have had many around me fail, go off the other way, then I realized we are HUMAN and FRAIL.
I assume “go off the other way” means leaving Christianity. Langley attributes deconversion to human frailty. While I cannot speak for other former Christians, I can say, for myself, that human frailty had nothing to do with my deconversion. In fact, my leaving Christianity required great strength. It would have been far easier for me to remain a Christian. It is not hard to be a Christian, part of a majority culture that believes in Jesus. Langley might want to walk in an atheist’s shoes before making such generalizations.
Further, I don’t consider my deconversion a “failure.” I assume Langley values intellectualism and rational thought. Maybe not. I am an atheist today because Christianity no longer made any sense to me. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.) I weighed the central claims of Christianity in the balance and found them wanting. Langley did read three of my autobiographical posts, spending all of ten minutes doing so. Perhaps he will return to the WHY? page and actually do his homework, gaining a better understanding of my life and my deconversion from Christianity.
Do I hold HUMANS accountable, no but I do hold myself accountable.
Okay? As regular readers know, I am a big proponent of personal responsibility and accountability. Does Langley think I am blaming others for my loss of faith? I don’t know. Quite frankly, I found his email to be cryptic, and hard to understand. To the degree that certain people played a part in my deconversion, I hold them accountable. That’s how life works. That said, no one made me deconvert. I suffered a lot of trauma in my life, mostly at the hands of Bible-believing, filled-with-the-Holy-Ghost Christians. While I most certainly hold them accountable for what they did, they are not the reason I walked away from Christianity.
Please notice that I have not mentioned anything here that should offend,
Well, that’s up to me to decide, not Langley.
but with this message I am hoping that it will stir something up all those years you either preached without authority or you have left the authority that called you. thank you for allowing text messages here. have a great day.
Speaking of offense, Langley hopes that his email causes some sort of “stirring” in my life. I find his use of the word “authority” to be odd, but I suspect he means that I preached without being authorized by Christ (unsaved) or I left the authority (Christ) that called me. This, of course, is the conundrum for people such as Langley. Was Bruce Gerencser an unsaved preacher or is he a saved, but backslidden preacher? (I assume Langley believes in once-saved-always-saved, eternal security; that once a person is saved, he cannot fall from grace. Thus, I am either unsaved or backslidden.)
Langley said nothing in his email that would cause me to rethink my decision to divorce Jesus. I am not sure what he hoped to accomplish, but I thank him for emailing me.
A Sinner 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.
What follows is my response to a comment left by Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, on the post titled Life with My Fundamentalist Baptist Grandparents, John and Ann Tieken. If you have not read this post, I encourage you to do so. That will give you the context necessary to understand Thiessen’s comment. My response is indented and italicized.
What a waste.
Right off the bat, Thiessen gets personal. He’s not talking about the post. He’s talking about me personally. I am a waste (useless). Thiessen has spent the past two years repeatedly making this claim with a variety of word choices. Regardless of the words he uses, Thiessen wants me to know that he views me as a useless, worthless human being. His goal in doing so is to cause psychological harm. Not to reach me, evangelize me, help me, but to ruin and destroy me. That he has been unable to so only fuels his continued assaults.
You do nothing but spread hatred towards people no one but you and your family have met. This is a travesty for several reasons.
The title of this blog is The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser: One Man’s Journey From Eternity to Here. This blog has always been autobiographical in nature; a place where I give a first-person account of my life. I am a writer and a storyteller, it’s what I do. People are free to love or hate my work. Thiessen, by his own volition, continues to read this site, even after promising never to do so again.
I have every right to tell my story, as I see it. Where my story intersects with other people, I am going to mention them by name, especially when they played an instrumental part in my life. I own every word I write. My grandparents, John and Ann Tieken materially affected my life, my mother’s life, my siblings’ lives, and Polly’s life. Fortunately, my children do not know or remember their great-grandparents. John and Ann caused horrific harm, and the only way I know to hold them accountable is to write about them. Scores of Evangelicals who attended church with John and Ann think they were wonderful people. And they were — to them. However, both of them had a dark, evil side, one that I know firsthand. All I know to do is tell my story. I will leave it to others to decide whether my words ring true. I know my words are truthful, but I can’t force people to see their truthiness. I suspect there are people who went to church with John and Ann who simply will not believe that I am telling the truth. There’s nothing I can do about that.
#1. it is only one side of the story
Yes, mine. This is an autobiographical blog. I write in the first person.
#2. the people you talk about can’t defend themselves
Correct, most of them are dead. Is Thiessen saying we can’t write about anyone who is dead? Would that include Jesus?
#3. the people you talk about do not know you are talking about them
Of course not, they are dead. My aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins know I am “talking” about them, and as of today, not one of them has objected to this post. I have heard that my Evangelical uncle wants to talk to me about the importance of “forgiveness,” but I suspect that discussion will never happen. I haven’t spoken to him in almost 20 years. Among Christian family members, my atheism is a family scandal no one wants to talk about. We can add atheism to rape, child molestation, violence, and psychological manipulation to the list of things we don’t talk about. How ”bout them Cowboys?
#4. it is full of look at me, I am a victim attitude.
Unlike Thiessen who uses plurals when speaking of himself, I write in the first person singular — you know, the way we were taught to write in school.
As far as me having a “victim attitude,” I am a victim. It took over a decade of counseling for me to finally admit that I was a victim; that I have had a lot of trauma in my life. I always thought that victim and trauma were words to describe others, not me. Finally admitting that these words apply to me has made a big difference in my life; allowing me to deal with some awful things that have happened in my life (some of which I have not shared with readers, or my wife for that matter).
It is just narcissism at its best. ‘Oh I am a victim, woe is me’ and all you are trying to do is glean sympathy from people. No one cares about ‘your story’ as it is textbook neurosis and only you are perfect in it.
Thiessen’s hostility is at a fever pitch now. His goal is to belittle and wound. He has failed on both counts.
Is writing about my life cathartic? Absolutely. Do I write to gain sympathy from others? No. Do I appreciate it when people express love and kindness toward me? Yes. I also find it gratifying that some people find my writing helpful, including people who have suffered trauma in their lives. When I write about chronic illness and chronic pain, people who are suffering find my words constructive. The same can be said for ex-Evangelicals and ex-Independent Fundamentalist Baptists. They value my insight, my insider knowledge, and my willingness to honestly talk about my life as a pastor. How are any of these wrong?
You are not helping anyone because you keep them in the same attitude you have hatred towards others and you never solve any problems. You just help people sin more.
Let me see if I can sum up what Thiessen is saying:
I am not helping anyone.
I never solve any problems.
I encourage people to hate people who harmed them.
I just help people sin.
Thiessen, of course, provides no evidence for his claims. I suspect he will search in vain for someone who would say I encouraged them to hate people who harmed them or I helped them “sin.”
As far as “solving problems,” It is not my job to solve anyone’s problems but my own. I am more than happy to help in any way I can, but each of us must solve our own problems or seek out professionals who can help us.
Thiessen loves to assert that I don’t “help” anyone. I will leave it to others to say whether I helped them. I do know that thousands of people read this blog, and I do know that people say I helped them, as evidenced by the countless emails and social media messages I have received over the years.
Thiessen operates a blog that virtually no one reads. Thiessen populates his site with my content and Ben Berwick’s content. He writes very little original content. Perhaps Thiessen would like to share how many people he has actually helped in the past year? How many emails has he received from readers asking for his help? Thiessen says God reads his blog, but the Big Kahuna has never left a comment or sent him an email. No, what’s going on here is envy and jealousy. Thiessen can’t for the life of him figure out why people love my writing, but don’t love his. He can’t figure out why people comment on my posts, but not his. Why does Bruce, the Atheist get all the attention and Derrick, the Fundamentalist gets none? Let me tell Thiessen why that is. Derrick, read your comments. Read your previous posts about me. Read the vicious, nasty emails you sent me. In your own words, you will see the reasons why people don’t like you. God doesn’t even like you, and he likes all sorts of assholes. Want to change that? Stop being a judgmental prick; an asshole; a hateful, mean-spirited person. In other words, Derrick, repent!
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.
Earlier today, an Evangelical Christian named Richard left the following comment on the post titled Is it Possible to Reform the IFB Church Movement? Richard’s words are emboldened. All spelling and grammar are in the original.
Bruce, as a God fearing bible believing Christian in Michigan in the same areas you left… I want to thank you for your honesty and for being instructional to me.
Richard wants me and the readers of this blog to know that he is a God-fearing, Bible-believing Christian who lives near Pontiac, Michigan. Based on the buzz words he used, I think it is safe for me to conclude that he is a Fundamentalist.
You are an unabashed Apostate that has embraced his decision. I had left the Church and on was on the path of becoming an apostate myself when God intervened. One thing that always bothered me since then is WHY I was on the path of becoming an Apostate, and also how someone as yourself could become an apostate. You were an Enigma that contradicted my IFB upbringings of “Once Saved always saved”. It was the Bible and God’s word that showed me my error (or incomplete understanding)… 1John 2:19. and also Tares and Wheat describes your condition.
Richard recognizes that I am an unabashed apostate. Of course, I wear many other labels: agnostic atheist, humanist, socialist, pacifist, liberal, progressive, and circumcised Gentile. Richard, however, wants to focus on my apostasy; my denial of central claims of Christianity.
At one time, Richard considered people such as myself to be enigmas, people who didn’t fit in his narrow, defined theological box. However, God has since shown him the light, and now he’s arrived on this blog to set me straight.
Richard believes that I John 2:19 describes my life:
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
The Message puts it this way:
They left us, but they were never really with us. If they had been, they would have stuck it out with us, loyal to the end. In leaving, they showed their true colors, showed they never did belong.
Wow, no Christian has never, never told me this before! OMG, I never was a Christian. Sigh. (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh.”) I have no idea how much of my writing Richard has read, but whatever he has read, he has concluded from it that I was never a Christian. Nothing in my story suggests that Richard is right, but why let facts get in the way of a strawman?
Your are (now) no more a mystery to me than is Judas who worked Directly with Jesus. If Judas could be an apostate, certainly someone as yourself who was fed a tainted perspective of Christianity from a dysfunctional family and controlling hypocritical “religious” leaders is possible! But both cases are the same… “They were never with us”.
Notice how Richard frames my life: I was fed a “tainted perspective of Christianity from a dysfunctional family and controlling, hypocritical religious leaders.” Richard provides no evidence for his claims. Using a nit comb, he found a few lice in my story and concluded that I am no different from Judas who betrayed Jesus. Instead of taking the time to comprehensively read my writing and interact with me personally, Richard has judged my life and found it wanting. Nothing I can say at this point will change his mind, so I won’t try, except to say, Richard, go fuck yourself.
You don’t offend me, you only prove God’s word to me to be true. You offer comfort to fellow apostates, but you also offer validation of God’s word to true believers, even if that is not your intent.
I am glad I can be of help. You also provide validation to me and the readers of this blog; that you are a judgmental asshole.
You might not know this, Richard, but many of my readers are Christians. Not your brand of Christian, but Christians nonetheless. I suppose you will consign them to the Lake of Fire too.
Bruce, consider this… If I am wrong and self deluded and you are right, I suffer no damage after I die. If I am self deceived, I still count the Peace I attribute to Jesus and Gods Grace as doing far more good in my life than what I was without it and pass onto oblivion in ignorant bliss. But If the Bible is right, if God is real, it is not the same for you. You will hear those terrible words.. “depart from me, I never knew. you” as you pass on into eternity in outer darkness where the only question left is, will you be a wailer or a gnasher…
Richard attempts to use Pascal’s Wager and miserably fails. Evidently, he wants me to pretend to be a Christian; to fake it until I make it. Richard provides no evidence for his claims, yet he just expects me to believe. Fine, I believe. Praise Jesus, I’m headed for Heaven when I die. Boy, that was easy.
Richard presupposes that his peculiar brand of Christianity is true; that it will be his God that will be on the throne of Heaven when he arrives someday. What if he is wrong? What if he gets to Heaven and finds Allah on the throne or Buddha? Better yet, what if he arrives in Heaven and finds out that atheism was the one true religion; believing in Jesus sends a person straight to Hell (also called Mar-a-Lago)?
As is common with Fundamentalists, Richard lacks curiosity. (Please see Curiosity, A Missing Evangelical Trait.) He fails to consider his own atheism or the fact that his being wrong could have real-world consequences. Richard thinks that living according to his interpretations of the Bible is preferable, even if God doesn’t exist. This is patently untrue. The Bible is inherently anti-human. Richard Dawkins was right when he described the Old Testament God this way:
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.
This is the God Richard wants me to worship.
The New Testament God is no better. One need only ponder God offering his son as a blood sacrifice for the behavior of others and the violence he will rain down upon the earth as recorded in the book of Revelation to see that this God is unworthy of worship too.
Richard, if you are reading this, you worship an evil God. Even if he was real, and he’s not, I wouldn’t worship him.
That brings me no Joy I don’t want that for you. I believe you were made in God’s image and loved by God so much that he Died for you before you denied him. I don’t want you to end up separated from God for eternity, but it’s not up to me. You can equally find both high profile apologetics that have made arguments defending the bible and also die hard Apostates breaking apart the bible to fit their narrative… But God is the ultimate author of our (your) faith.
And I know every argument. There’s nothing new under the sun, and that includes apologetical arguments. If Richard has read my writing, he knows that I reject the central claims of Christianity. I have weighed them in the balance and found them wanting. If zealots such as Richard want to win me back to Jesus, they are going to have to come up with better evidence and arguments. Until then, I cannot and will not believe. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
Richard says that God is the author of faith; that if I ever receive saving faith, it will come from God. Fine. Why, then, did Richard bother to comment on this site? Why did he bother to judge my life? Surely, God knows where I live. He knows my email address and cellphone number. God can give me faith any time he wants. It’s up to him, so I’m waiting. I won’t, however, hold my breath.
Bruce, I love you and I don’t want you to die in your sin.
No, you don’t love me. You don’t even know me. Stop with the syrupy, cheap Evangelical “love.” My love is reserved for my wife, my children, their spouses, my grandchildren, my friends, and the Cincinnati Reds and Cincinnati Bengals. I love good food, traveling, and writing. I even love many of the people who frequent this blog, including my editor. But you, Richard? I don’t know you. I know nothing about you. You may be a lovable person, but based on your comment above, you are not someone I am interested in loving. Instead, I pity you. You live in a closed-off world, a world walled off from all the wonderful atheists, humanists, pagans, Buddhists, Muslims, Unitarians, liberal Christians, and LGBTQ people, to name a few, in the world. All you see is up or down, in or out, saved or lost, Heaven or Hell. My world is much broader than that; a wild, woolly, wonderful — and yes, dangerous — world.
Let me give you a piece of advice, Richard; advice I have given to thousands and thousands of people over the years:
You have one life. There is no heaven or hell. There is no afterlife. You have one life, it’s yours, and what you do with it is what matters most. Love and forgive those who matter to you and ignore those who add nothing to your life. Life is too short to spend time trying to make nice with those who will never make nice with you. Determine who are the people in your life that matter and give your time and devotion to them. Live each and every day to its fullest. You never know when death might come calling. Don’t waste time trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Find one or two things you like to do and do them well. Too many people spend way too much time doing things they will never be good at.
Here’s the conclusion of the matter. It’s your life and you best get to living it. Someday, sooner than you think, it will be over. Don’t let your dying days be ones of regret over what might have been.
Be well, Richard.
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.
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Sigh, Angelfire. So 1990s. The link Roden sent me was to a page detailing his testimony. I perused Roden’s testimony, concluding that he has bought into the Calvinistic gospel of sovereign grace. His main page revealed a plethora of articles on Calvinism.
I replied to Roden, asking him “What’s your point in sending me a link to your alleged conversion story?”
Roden fired back:
My heart goes out to you, dear friend, for I was once also hardened against the truth as you are at this time. Yet God was pleased to be merciful to me, and I pray that while reading my testimony of the grace of God and the Scriptures quoted and referenced therein, God might be pleased to also grant you repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21).
Friend, you may laugh, and say there is no such place as Hell, but I would caution you to weigh seriously the dying words of Thomas Paine, the renowned American author and infidel whose book, Age of Reason, exerted considerable influence in his day against belief in God and in the Bible. When he came to his last hour before death in 1809, Thomas Paine cried out,
“I would give worlds, if I had them, that Age of Reason had not been published. O Lord, help me! Christ, help me! O God, what have I done to suffer so much! But there is no God! But if there should be, what will become of me hereafter! . . . If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one!”
Then, my friend, consider the last words of Voltaire, the noted 18th Century French infidel and talented writer who wrote much in his day against the Bible. He said of Christ, “Curse the wretch!” He once boasted, “In 20 years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took 12 apostles to rear!” However, the physician who attended him in his final moments before death said he cried out desperately:
“I am abandoned by God and man! I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months life. Then I shall go to Hell; and you will go with me. O Christ! O Jesus Christ!”
Contrast the tragic death scene described above with the last words of Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899), the American evangelist who spoke these words with joy as he was about to enter eternity:
“I see earth receding; heaven is opening. God is calling me.”
David Brainerd, whose remarkable evangelistic work among the American Indians still inspire the people of God who read about him, was heard to whisper at the moment of death,
“He will come, and will not tarry. I shall soon be in glory, soon be with God and His angels!”
Saul of Tarsus was one of the worst enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet God was merciful to this one who–like you–hated Him. Saul–after his conversion–became known as the Apostle Paul, who wrote 13 epistles of the New Testament. The story of his miraculous conversion may be read in Acts 9.
First, Roden ignored my requests on the Contact page, showing disregard and disrespect towards me. If someone asks you not to contact them and you do it anyway, you are being disrespectful. Roden likely thinks “God” told him to contact me. I guess rudeness is okay if you are hearing voices in your head.
Second, Roden ignores the fact that I was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years, a Calvinist for many of those years. Does he actually think that quoting Bible verses at me will actually make any difference? Does he really think me reading his testimony will cause me to fall on my knees and confess that Jesus is my Lord and Savior? Not a chance. I wonder if he bothered to read any of the posts on the WHY? page. I suspect not.
Third, Roden deliberately used alleged quotes by Thomas Paine and Voltaire that have no basis in fact. (Please see The Vindication of Thomas Paine by Robert Ingersoll and The Fantasy of the Deathbed Conversion by Lawrence Krauss.) All one has to do is consult God (Google) to learn that these quotes are apocryphal, lies, or in dispute. Like many Evangelicals, Roden mines the Internet for quotes that prove his point: that atheists die screaming for God and Christians die peaceably praising the dead Jesus. Having watched a number of faithful followers of Jesus die, I can tell you that very few of them had Jesus’ name on their lips when they drew their last breaths. Some of them were fearful, despite all the Bible promises they heard over the years. And some died without saying a word, as their brains and hearts shut down. There’s literally nothing that can be learned from the words uttered by people on their deathbeds. To Roden I say, stick around, I hope to have quite a sermon for people on the day I slip out to the crematorium. Maybe Polly will record it so everyone will know what the infidel and apostate Bruce Gerencser had to say when dying.
Before I could respond to Roden’s email, he fired off another missive from God:
While there were apostates from the Christian faith in the apostolic era–and in our day such as yourself–there are also notable converts to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ from atheism. One such is Lee Strobel. Are you familiar with his story, and his book, “The Case for Christ“?
P.S.–Another book you might consider investigating is “Evidence for the Historical Jesus: Is the Jesus of History the Christ of Faith,” by Gary Habermas.
Sigh. Apologists always bring up Strobel. His books are apologetical pablum. His atheist claim has been widely disputed. And even if he was, so what? What does his conversion prove? Very few atheists convert to Evangelicalism. Even fewer atheists, who were once Evangelical Christians, return to Christianity. It happens, but not very often. And even if it does, so what? If Roden wants to look at statistics, he might want to look at the increasing number of people who are leaving “Biblical” Christianity. the fastest growing “religion” in America is the NONES — people who have no interest in organized religion. Roden might want to consider why this is happening. One can only hope that Roden looks in the mirror.
As far as Habermas is concerned, color me unimpressed. I wonder if Roden agrees with Habemas’ reductionist view of the gospel? I don’t need to read another book. I’ve likely read more theological tomes than Roden. I know all I need to know. I remain unconvinced that the central claims of Christianity are true. I am more than happy to look at new evidence for Christianity, but I don’t expect any to be coming. Christianity is a dead, text-based religion. Anyone who can read can find out all they need to know about Christianity.
Roden is a Calvinist. Why all the verbiage and book recommendations? Isn’t it up to God to save me if I am one of the elect? Why the need for middlemen like Roden? God knows my email address, cellphone number, and where I live. He can reach me at any time. No need to send Christian assholes to slip me a message from Jesus. I’m waiting God . . .
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.
