Cyanide & Happiness hits the mark with their latest comic. Many Evangelicals believe atheists worship or follow Satan/Devil/Lucifer/Beelzebub. Never mind the fact that atheists believe Satan is every bit as fictional as the Christian God. I have given up trying to explain this to Evangelicals. They just know that atheists and Satan are in league together; that atheists are to blame for much of what is wrong in the world; that atheists will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire with Satan. All I can do is *sigh* and ridicule Evangelicals who refuse to speak intelligently about what atheists believe. Can’t fix stupid, I suppose.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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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I received an email several years from an eighty-year-old Evangelical man named Richard. I thought his email would make for a good post. My response is italicized and indented.
I just read your bio and find it a very sad story. (Please see the About page for context.)
Why is the course of my life a “sad story”? It is what it is. I’ve had all sorts of experiences — good, bad, and indifferent — over my sixty-six years of life on earth. On balance, I have lived a good life. I am happily married to Polly, father to six wonderful children, and grandfather to ten granddaughters and three grandsons. My body is wracked with pain, yet I find enough meaning and purpose in life to keep plugging away. devoted most of my life to Jesus/church/ministry/other people. Now that I am no longer a pastor or a Christian, I choose to spend my time with the people I love. Throw writing, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Cincinnati Reds, and other meaningful things into the mix, I have a life that gives me great happiness. Like all of us, I have shitty days, awful days, days where I want to die. Today, is a top five pain day, one where my pain meds aren’t tamping down pain spikes. I have had to supress thoughts of suicide. But, on balance I’m satisfied with how my life has turned out.
Richard is a born-again, baptized-with-the-Holy-Spirit Christian, and I am not. From his perspective, a good life is one lived according to the teachings of Christianity. I’m not a Christian, so that means I am headed for Hell, or so Evangelicals think, anyway. I, however, reject the teaching of the Bible and have no need of a “relationship” with a dead man named Jesus. I choose to live and enjoy life among the living. Life is short, so I have no intention of wasting my time chasing a myth.
Your physical problems including depression, your obesity, and high blood pressure do not reflect someone who is doing well.
My health problems started long before I left Christianity. God never answered one prayer about my health. Either God doesn’t give a shit, or he doesn’t exist. My money is on the latter.
I have battled health problems since the age of fourteen. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia twenty-five years ago. I do what I can to stay healthy. Yes, I am fat (I have lost 100 pounds over the past three years) but there’s little I can do about it. I ma comforable in my Bear/Daddy/ Sexy Santa body. 🙂 In 2019, I was diagnosed with gastroparesis. Imagine being nauseous every moment of every day. Imagine frequent stomach and abdomen pain.Imagine having to daily take medication to keep from vomiting. Walk/stand/live in my body for a bit before you hurl criticism my way. Every day is a painful, debilitating struggle, but I do my best to live each day to its fullest. My diabetes and high blood pressure are managed with medication. Depression? It’s primarily driven by my health problems. Less pain, less depression. I’ve been seeing a secular psychologist for twelve years. She has helped me immensely, reminding me that it is normal for someone with the health problems I have to be depressed.
Am I doing well? It depends on your perspective. From my perspective, I am doing the best I can. I have a lot on my plate health-wise, but I don’t let these things keep me from enjoying life.
What were the causes of your turning away from believing the bible is the word of God and that Jesus is the Son of God who died on a cross to purchase our redemption?
I wish Christians such as Richard would spend time reading my story instead of just reading a few posts and then rendering judgment. My blog is well organized and information about my past is readily available to those who bother to look. The reasons for my deconversion can be found everywhere on this site, including the WHY page. Some dead guy in an ancient religious text said, seek and ye shall find. Good advice. I’m pretty open about my life, past and present. I have a few secrets, but for the most part I am honest and transparent in my writing and interactions with others. So, to Richard I say, the answers you seek are available if you are willing to do a bit of reading. If, after doing your homework you still have questions, I will be glad to answer them.
So you can know who I am: I am 80, married to Karen for 57 years, six children, 17 grandchildren, and 7 great grandchildren. I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ in 1964, was baptized with the Holy Spirit in 1967, and like you, I pastored and planted churches as well as traveled and taught in many countries. By the grace of God, all of our family are followers of Jesus Christ. I have the joy of mentoring a group of 7 men teaching them how to live their lives in the life and power of the Holy Spirit. Since we have similar backgrounds, I would count it a privilege to connect with you.
Richard
I suspect Richard means well. He likely thinks that if he befriends me, he can bring me back into the fold. As I said numerous times before, I am a confirmed atheist. I am not, in any way, a good prospect for recruitment.
Richard wants to “connect” with me, but we really have nothing in common save being old, married a long time, and having a large family. I am at a place in life where I choose to spend my time with family and likeminded friends. That’s enough for me. If I am looking make new friends, I am going to look in liberal/progressive/atheist/humanist circles.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.
Once the church was seduced by Margaret Sanger, the angel of death and founder of Planned Parenthood, to embrace birth control, which separated sex from procreation, it paved the way for the world to embrace abortion on demand and all its adjacent evils (homosexuality, child molestation, the rape culture, and other deviant immoralities).
Sex with no commitment produces a people who treat their spouses or sinful partners (sex outside of marriage) as mere sex objects. Most, in this compromised state, refuse to muster the responsibility necessary to raise children.
Perhaps, it is past time for Christians to put the ax of God’s truth to the root of this bloody idolatrous tree. The church must first repent of the anti-child mentality inspired by the Devil himself, who came to kill, steal, and destroy.
The same reason why the world murders their offspring is the same reason why some Christians do the same or falsely believe that a barren womb is now the blessing and a fruitful womb is now the curse.
The American church, for the most part, rejects the Biblical truth that children are gifts, blessings, and God’s reward to faithful parents (Psalms 127:3-5). No, they believe children are burdens that interrupt our hectic American lifestyles that seeks personal fulfillment without being encumbered by the sacrificial love necessary to advance God’s Kingdom in the earth.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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 difficult to confront the past: victims are made to relive their pain; victimizers are forced to face the truth. That, of course, is the reason why histories, whether writ large or in one’s own life, are too often unresolved: the victim’s suffering may just be too much to bear, and the victimizer’s guilt causes him or her to lie, evade, or flee.
The unfinished business, if you will, doesn’t go away. It is carried across generations, through history, and among families and cultures. As an example, many of the difficulties faced by African-Americans today are direct consequences of their countries’ inability or unwillingness to deal honestly with slavery and its aftermath, as well as other aspects of their nation’s history.
There comes a day, however, when there is no choice but to deal with the crimes committed by individuals and institutions that had, and sometimes still have, power. Those crimes are like bubbles that could have been submerged only for so long: eventually, they must rise from the depths to the light of day.
Just as those bubbles rise, whether they are in oceans or puddles, abuses must find expression by the individuals who experienced them or the societies in which they occur. Such expression might be in works of art, organizing communities, or simply in telling one’s story and someone else listening to it, without an agenda. Otherwise, those bubbles explode, and the people, their communities and cultures do not survive—or, at least, are tainted.
I am one of the people who could have been blown apart, if you will. Less than two years ago, I named the abuse I experience and my abuser—a priest who, half a century earlier, took advantage of my availability and vulnerability. I have, on a number of occasions, come close to destroying myself: whether consciously, through what people readily identify as “suicide attempts,” or unconsciously, through addictive and reckless behavior.
What seems odd to me now is that some might see recounting my abuse and remembering my abuser as the most difficult thing I’ve done, just as some people thought my “coming out” as a transgender woman was a “big step” for me. Yes, it took a lot of emotional and mental work to be able to take the reins away from the abuser and to stop the emotional blackmail he generated. But I realize now that the difficulty, the pain, of “coming out” as an abuse survivor is temporal, if not momentary. At least I know that, whether or not that pain has an end, it is at least something that I can use to forge new paths in my life and, possibly, help someone else do something similar.
As difficult as confronting that part of my past was, and is, having to live through, and with, the abuse and the shame I felt for so many years was far more difficult and caused much greater damage. Whatever is ruptured by breaking my silence—including that shame and the self-loathing that it too often became—didn’t deserve to survive intact.
Some might accuse me of “projecting,” but it’s hard for me not to think that, in some way, so many cases of sex abuse by clerics and others connected with organized religion is a greater, wider example of what I experienced in my own life. The “scandal” or “crisis” in religious institutions isn’t that the stories of abuse and exploitation are coming to light, by the thousands. The “crisis” has been going on for centuries, and the “scandal” is that its perpetrators kept their victims silent for so long.
In short, the “crisis” or “scandal” in the Roman Catholic Church (and other religious organizations and communities) is nothing more than an institution and its leaders being forced to confront its past—and present—because we, the victims, have had to deal with our pain, for ourselves and those who couldn’t. And those of us who are living could not keep silent any longer, or else we would explode like the Langston Hughes’ “dream deferred.”
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In October 2017, Clinton Brackett, Director of Student Ministries at First United Methodist Church in Lindale, Texas, was accused of sexual assault. Prior to his employment at First United Methodist, Brackett spent five years working for First Baptist Church in Ballinger, Texas.
The Tyler Morning Telegraph reported at the time:
The Director of Student Ministries at First United Methodist Church in Lindale has been arrested for sexual assault.
Clinton Brackett, 32, of Lindale was arrested Thursday on a warrant out of Runnels County and taken to the Smith County Jail.
The arrest was the result of information obtained from a Texas Highway Patrol trooper’s traffic stop in Runnels County, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.
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First United Methodist Senior Pastor Rick Ivey released a statement saying Clinton Brackett, an employee at the church was arrested Thursday for charges of sexual assault that happened in Runnels County.
Ivey said the incident did not happen at FUMC Lindale or in the Lindale community.
“Clint Bracket’s employment with our church has been terminated,” Ivey said.
Brackett’s social media page indicates he was previously employed as the First Baptist Church in Ballinger. In a social medial post on Dec. 6, 2015, Brackett wrote that he accepted the position of Student Minister at the First United Methodist Church in Lindale and would be leaving the church in Ballinger after four and half years as a minister and member of the First Baptist Church family.
Brackett was held on a $100,000 bond which he posted on Thursday, according to Smith County Judicial records.
Yesterday, Brackett pleaded guilty to child sexual assault and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
It is absolutely true that our modern world is trying very hard to make God’s design of masculinity obsolete in every way they can. As Bible believing Christians though we need to realize this is part of a much larger insidious plan. The secular humanists have been using scientific and technological advancements as well as cultural changes to try and make God obsolete.
The attack on what we call “traditional masculinity” which really is just God’s design of masculinity is an attack on God himself.
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Men are not “emotionally incompetent” for strongly desiring and needing marriage nor for placing their value in being providers and protectors. Men cannot fulfill the purpose for which God designed them without being husbands, fathers, providers and protectors. So, it makes perfect sense that some men would feel suicidal and without a sense of purpose if they cannot do these things.
Our modern world hates this truth. And that is why we are seeing a cultural war over the gender roles God created in the form of transgenderism and homosexuality being forced into cultural acceptance. Secular humanists are literally trying to annihilate the distinction between men and women as God created it.
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The answer then for us as Christians is to fight back by refusing to conform to this wicked agenda which seeks to make God’s design of masculinity (and femininity for that matter) obsolete.
But how do we fight this cultural war? The simple answer is that we need to reverse the cultural decisions that have brought us to the point we now find ourselves at where we are actually debating if traditional masculinity should be tossed to the dustbin of history.
Work supplies man with a great amount of his purpose. And a service economy does not provide the vast majority of men with an income that can support a family. Only a production economy can supply men with jobs that can support a family. Some say people just need to be educated more for the future. That is false for two reasons.
First it assumes all men have the intelligence and aptitude for high tech jobs and learning. That is untrue. Second as things become more and more automated, we will need even less and less techs because the machines will fix themselves.
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So, Christians need to raise their voices about the threat of continued automation and AI advances. We need to pass laws that outlaw further AI advances and also outlaw robotic automation in all manufacturing. We also need to outlaw driverless cars as this will put truck drivers and man others out of work.
But we must also work to undo feminism. We must take away the rights America has granted to women since the mid-1800s. This means taking away women’s right to own property and limiting the ability of women to work and earn money. It means placing restrictions on how many women may enter higher education. In other words, it means making women completely dependent on men for their economic provision.
And it absolutely means taking away women’s right to vote.
It also means removing no fault divorce laws and restricting the allowance for divorce to only the gravest of circumstances such as physical abuse, adultery or abandonment.
When we once again secure the institution of marriage and protect the ability of all men to be able to work and earn a living and we restrict women from being independent from men then true masculinity can be restored to its rightful honored position it once held.
But then the question comes – how do we do all the things I just mentioned? They seem impossible in our current culture and political climate. The answer is it starts with Christian fathers and mothers sitting their young people down and showing them what God’s Word says about the different reasons he designed men and women. It means teaching our sons to seek out only Christian women who want to be keepers of their homes and depend on their husbands for their provision as the church depends on Christ for its provision.
It means raising our daughters to be women whose goal in life is not education and career, but instead bringing glory to God by bringing glory to their future husbands. It means raising daughters who want to fully dedicate their lives to serving their husbands, their children and their homes.
Here is another way to look at this. Godly young men need to shut out feminist women. Even if a feminist woman wants to stay at home, she will still bring great sorrow to her future husband with her daily contentions. That means staying away from women who want college and university educations and or careers.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In March 2017, Jose Aboytes, assistant pastor of Palabra Miel Hispanic Church in Decatur, Illinois was charged with “seven felony counts for allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulting and abusing a girl younger than 13 during a period of seven months.”
Jose Luis Aboytes, a former pastor of a church on the city’s east side, was charged Thursday in Macon County Circuit Court with seven felony counts for allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulting and abusing a girl younger than 13 during a period of seven months.
Aboytes, 58, who is being held in the Macon County Jail on $250,000 bond, is facing one count of predatory criminal sexual assault, punishable by six to 60 years in prison, two counts of criminal sexual assault and four counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.
The victim told police she attended the Palabra Miel Hispanic Church, 3434 E. Wabash Ave., where Aboytes “began to sexually abuse her in an office in the church” about Sept. 16, 2015, said a request for an arrest warrant by Decatur Police detective Erik Ethell.
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The victim said the abuse “began with Jose touching her leg and progressed to sexual intercourse,” said the court document. The victim said that during choir practice “Jose would call her into his office,” where he would fondle and abuse her. She reported that the abusive conduct occurred during a period of several months. The adolescent girl told police she “took numerous cellphone photographs of her naked body and sent them to Jose’s phone.”
Detectives received more than 10 letters from the girl, in which Aboytes “expressed his love” for the victim, “in addition to knowing her age,” Ethell wrote in the court document. Aboytes “frequently asked (the victim) to destroy the letters after reading them.”
An intellectually disabled teen girl also reported to police that she had been abused by Aboytes, said the warrant request. She said that Aboytes would call her into his office, hug her and fondle her on top of her clothes. She told detectives that “Jose told her not to tell her parents about the conduct.”
Today, Aboytes pleaded guilty to one Class X felony count of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child. The Herald & Review reports:
Aboytes, 60, pleaded guilty Wednesday to one Class X felony count of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, ending his trial on charges he raped and sexually abused a girl younger than 13 from his congregation.
The sentencing hearing is set for July 11 in Macon County Circuit Court. He faces between six and 60 years in prison, of which he would have to serve at least 85 percent.
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The plea deal came on the third day of what was anticipated to be a four-day trial. As part of the deal, four counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and two counts of criminal sexual assault were dismissed, according to court records.
Opening the trial Tuesday, [Assistant State’s Attorney] Kurtz described Aboytes, who served as an assistant pastor at the church, as using the friendly nature of the congregation to prey on the child.
Kurtz described a pattern of sexual assault that started with touching and escalated to groping and, after Aboytes had picked up the child once from her home on the pretense of taking her to the park, ended with rape.
She said Aboytes wrote intimate letters to the child and persuaded her to send him erotic pictures of herself — pictures the girl’s parents eventually discovered that prompted them to call police.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Brandon Hughes, a youth pastor at First Christian Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, stands accused of exposing his genitals to children and having them do the same. KTRE-9 reports:
According to the Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office, 27-year-old Brandon Hughes turned himself at the Nacogdoches County Jail on April 22.
He was indicted following an investigation conducted by the sheriff’s office. The investigation came after a complaint was made about Hughes, alleging he sending sexual images to minors.
The findings from the investigation were turned over to the district attorney’s office and the case was presented to a grand jury.
The grand jury indicted Hughes on five counts of indecency with a child by exposure, which is a third degree felony.
Hughes was employed as an assistant youth pastor at the First Christian Church of Nacogdoches from Sept. 2015 to June 2018. The church reported he was placed on administrative leave in 2018 following the allegations.
They released a statement on April 24 regarding the Hughes:
Brandon Hughes was employed by First Christian Church as the Assistant Youth Pastor from September 2015 to June 2018. In June 2018, when allegations were first made about Brandon, he was immediately placed on administrative leave. Soon thereafter, Brandon resigned his position. We have been fully cooperating with law enforcement officials from the day allegations were first made. We are saddened and shocked by the allegations made against Brandon. We are praying for everyone involved.
There is no scientific or medical evidence that proves “reversing” a medication abortion is possible: There are no clinical trials and no objective or credible data. It is only a theory that has been introduced by anti-abortion activists and politicians to further attack access. When misinformation spreads, it affects the patients who seek care in my exam room.
Medication abortion involves using an FDA-approved regimen of pills to end a pregnancy prior to 10 weeks. Two medications are included: mifepristone and misoprostol. Used first, mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and prevents the pregnancy from growing. If taken alone, mifepristone will end the pregnancy in about half the patients who take it. Misoprostol is used six to 72 hours later to soften and dilate the cervix as well as cause uterine contractions to remove the pregnancy. Together, the medication abortion regimen is 98-99 percent effective.
In theory, it could be possible to stop the effect of mifepristone with high doses of progesterone, but this has never been proven. In medicine, we do not expose people to potential risks for no medical benefit, so we would never recommend this as an option for patients. In the unlikely event someone did not want to take the misoprostol, what healthcare providers would suggest is that there is a significant chance that the pregnancy could continue. If the patient wanted to continue the pregnancy after taking the mifepristone, we could advise to not take the misoprostol, and we would support a patient with that decision as well. Anti-abortion lawmakers have used very unethical and flawed research conducted by one anti-abortion doctor to push laws that require doctors to mislead their patients by telling them of this so-called option.
This series of cases studies from 2012 that was completed at a Catholic university where a few women who had taken mifepristone, changed their mind about the abortion and then continued their pregnancy after receiving progesterone. The report was not supervised by an Institutional Review Board (a committee which protects the rights of human subjects) which would have raised ethical concerns. Second, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology (ACOG) found that there is not enough evidence from this report to say that the pregnancies continued due to the progesterone. The ACOG called abortion reversal “unproven and unethical.”
The same researcher did another study in the same year with more participants and claimed that he confirmed that progesterone can reverse the effects of mifepristone. But again, his research methods were found to be flawed and there is rigorous systematic review to show that pregnancy continuation was not more likely with progesterone administration. The ACOG, the National Abortion Federation, and Planned Parenthood do not recommend administering progesterone if a patient tries to continue their pregnancy after using mifepristone. There just isn’t enough data to support this.
Dr. Mitchell Creinin, an OB/GYN at the University of California, Davis, who has done significant research in family planning, decided to put this issue to rest. He is currently enrolling patients in a study to determine if progesterone can block the effects of mifepristone and increase the chance of pregnancy continuation. He doesn’t believe that that it will and he’s hoping that his findings will be used to prevent lawmakers from mandating physicians from providing patients with misinformation about medication abortion reversal.
Now, pastor, I have to call you out here as you try not to offend your audience. You know full well that most women are weaker emotionally than their Christian husbands, but you just can’t say it out of fear. You make no reference to anything that the Greek text or context may have to defend this assertion that emotional weakness is not part of the context.
Here, let me help you out and give you some empirical evidence, even as you know from your experience that men and women process emotions differently and women struggle more with their emotional nature than men do in general. God forbid that your audience find out what they already know and have known almost all of their lives. It’s not by accident that 70 percent or more of divorces are sought by unhappy women who allow their emotions to rule over their once godly values for family, children, and most of all their Lord Jesus.
