You told me to love my neighbors, and to model the life of Jesus. To be kind and considerate, and to stand up for the bullied.
You told me to love people, consider others as more important than myself. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.” We sang it together, pressing the volume pedal and leaning our hearts into the chorus.
You told me to love my enemies, to even do good to those who wish for bad things. You told me to never “hate” anyone and to always find ways to encourage people.
You told me it’s better to give than receive, to be last instead of first. You told me that money doesn’t bring happiness and can even lead to evil, but taking care of the needs of others brings great joy and life to the soul.
You told me that Jesus looks at what I do for the least-of-these as the true depth of my faith. You told me to focus on my own sin instead of trying to police it in others. You told me to be accepting and forgiving.
I paid attention.
I took every lesson.
And I did what you told me.
But now, you call me a libtard. A queer-lover. You call me “woke.” A backslider. You call me a heretic. A child of the devil. You call me a false prophet. A reprobate leading people to gates of hell. You call me soft. A snowflake. A socialist.
What the hell did you expect me to do?
You passed out the “WWJD” bracelets.
I took it to heart.
I thought you were serious, but apparently not.
We were once friends. But now, the lines have been drawn. You hate nearly all the people I love. You stand against nearly all the things I stand for. I’m trying to see a way forward, but it’s hard when I survey all the hurt, harm, and darkness that comes in the wake of your beliefs and presence.
What the hell did you expect me to do?
I believed it all the way.
I’m still believing it all the way.
Which leaves me wondering, what happened to you?
Grace is brave. Be brave.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Have you noticed the varied reactions to the “He Gets Us” campaign?
I just wanted to add a few thoughts for consideration as the conversation continues.
As followers of Jesus, I think it is important to find out why so much money is spent on Super Bowl ads, who is spending that money, and their reasons for doing so. Especially when that money could be used to for so many other humanitarian needs and whether we like it or not, their actions shape our collective reputation as Christians.
As followers of Jesus, I also think it is important not to use commercials about Jesus, which at face value do promote a good and needed message in and of themselves, and our possible skepticism about them to cause more public lashing out against each other in an already divided world. Our culture sees enough of that division within the church as it is already. It would be to disregard the message the commercial was trying to convey. A message we Christians in America need to hear more than anyone else.
With that said, after thinking about this for a long while, I just had some personal thoughts to share about why the reactions might be so varied and tenuous among Christians.
My heart is so weary of how we have commercialized Jesus, so often at the expense of embodying the way of Jesus ourselves.
As a millennial, I came of age in the world of religious tracts, street preachers, people holding signs that read “repent or burn” in heavily trafficked areas, paintings of Jesus with presidents, Christian t-shirts, music, and entire industries that attempted to advertise Jesus in every possible way, with a seemingly willful disregard for how it might impact our public witness as Christians.
I also worked food service throughout my entire academic journey. From 2001 to 2013, I worked at Dairy Queen, Smokey Mountain Pizza Co., Olive Garden, and then Starbucks. Looking back, this experience profoundly changed my perspective of “Christian evangelism.” I was studying to be a pastor then and got a front-row seat to how Christians interacted with food service workers.
There wasn’t a week that went by where I wouldn’t get several Christian tracts thrust in my face as I handed food through the drive-through, before the driver abruptly drove away.
There wasn’t a week that I wouldn’t get a religious tract disguised as a $100 bill left on the table with their check, often with no actual tip left. When I turned the tract over, it would say, “Disappointed? Well, you’ll never be disappointed with Jesus.” I was a student in desperate need of money, and this is how they chose to share “the gospel” with me.
There wasn’t a week that I wouldn’t hear my non-Christian coworkers complain about the “after church” crowd because of how poorly they would be treated and how low the tips would be.
There wasn’t a week that I wouldn’t be mistreated myself, yelled at over something silly like ranch dressing or a soda refill by people who had just prayed over their meal before they ate.
As a pastor in training, I couldn’t help but be really challenged by this and ask why this was happening?
Meanwhile, as I continued to study theology and ministry, I saw churches all over the nation try different methods to try to “attract” the younger generation. Being a millennial, at the time, I was considered the “younger generation.”
We saw the influx of new technology, smoke machines, well-polished music, and worship settings that appealed to modern fashion and style. And of course, the coffee bar. As much as I even enjoyed some of these things, I still felt “advertised” to.
Especially now with the advent of social media, we are advertised to more than ever. Is advertising and marketing really the most important and effective strategy for us Christians to undertake right now?
At the core of this are two elements for me.
First, so many in our culture are so tired of having Jesus advertised to them rather than people who claim to follow him imitating Jesus to them. People both inside and outside the church desperately want people who claim to follow Jesus to actually live out his teachings in the world around us.
Quite frankly, whether it is handing out religious tracts on the street as people pass by or making a million-dollar commercial, it is a really clever way of putting the responsibility to represent Jesus on something else, other than yourself. It is so deeply impersonal. You don’t even know the names of the people you are giving those tracts to or the lived experiences of those who are seeing your commercials, yet you are assuming their relationship with God and telling them “You obviously need this, sinner.” Like leaving it on the table for a pastor in training you don’t even know after you yelled at him about your ranch dressing.
It’s passive, drive-by evangelism. It feels deeply insincere and lazy, especially to the people it is being directed towards.
Secondly, this also plays into how we’ve reduced the gospel of Jesus to what people believe in their heads. I will often hear “If just one person had a change of mind because of that tract or commercial, it was worth it!” Why? Because we’ve made our religion all about getting to heaven and getting to heaven is simply about believing the right things, rather than imitating Jesus with our lives and working to embody God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.” Again, this can easily lead to really callous situations where we don’t even care if our waitstaff has bills to pay or a family to care for. If stiffing them causes them to read about Jesus, even for just a moment, “it will be worth it.”
This kind of evangelism just seems so deeply out of touch with the actual world we live in.
When I think of all this, I hear James, the brother of Jesus, screaming in my ears:
“If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” James 2:16-17
Our world is crying out for faith in action, not faith advertised.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
“Being a Christian will cost you everything,” Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preachers often say. Even Jesus himself said:
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. (Matthew 16:24)
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple . . . So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26,27,33)
As I heard my pastors preach on these verses and read them myself, I took the words of Jesus to heart. From the moment I was saved at age fifteen, my heart was set on following Jesus wherever he led me. When Jesus called me to preach, I never doubted his calling. When my IFB parents divorced and left the church, never to return, I stayed. In John 6, we find Jesus teaching a large group of disciples:
Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is a hard saying; who can hear it?When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? . . . From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.
Peter, of course, would later deny Jesus, but as a young Christian, my mind and heart were set on following Jesus and the teachings of the Bible. Where else could I turn? It was Jesus alone who had the “words of eternal life.”
I was a true-blue believer for the next thirty-five years. Oh, I had times when my love for God waned and I even sinned against him, but the bent of my life was toward holiness (without which no man shall see the Lord). One of the most common criticisms hurled my way since my deconversion is that I wasn’t a true Christian; that I was a deceiver, a false prophet; that I was in the ministry for the money; that I had a “secret” life. When asked for evidence to prove their claims, none is forthcoming. Ask anyone who knew me at the time I was a Christian and a pastor, and they will tell anyone that I was a committed follower of Jesus; that I took the Bible seriously and patterned my life after its teachings.
Actually believing and practicing the Bible cost me dearly. I believed that this life was preparation for the life to come. I was willing to pay whatever was required of me, knowing that Jesus would welcome me after death into the joy of the Lord as a good and faithful servant.
Fast forward to 2008 — fifteen years ago. My unshakeable faith came tumbling down. What I once believed turned into fool’s gold. At age fifty, I knew that I had wasted my life chasing after a mirage. Bitterness and regret whisper in my ear, “Boy, were you an idiot.” Some of the readers of this blog know exactly what I am talking about. Having followed similar paths, we all lament the great price we paid for a lie.
While I certainly learned much from my experiences as a Christian, nothing can help me regain that which was lost. There are no do-overs in life, and all I can do is embrace life as it is and move forward. That is easier said and done. When you have sacrificed the prime of your life to delusion, it’s hard not to have a lot of regrets. It’s not that I am sitting here wallowing in what I lost, but I refuse to ignore the huge price I paid to follow Jesus. My physical health, my family, my finances, and my mental health all suffered as I devoted myself to the Bible and its teachings. I not only hurt myself, but I also hurt others — wounds that can never be healed.
Last Sunday, Polly and I went to Sweetwater Pavillion in Fort Wayne to hear Samantha Fish/Jesse Dayton and Eric Johanson — jazz, blues, rock– in concert. (Music I once believed was from the pit of Hell.) We had a wonderful time. A high-energy show with a capacity crowd. We have been going to a lot of concerts over the past eighteen months, as often as our finances will allow. Why? For the first fifty years of our lives, we NEVER attended a non-Christian concert. Further, my health is at a place where I may soon not be able to go to concerts. As it stands now, I must use a wheelchair, but there’s coming a day when that will no longer work for me. I take extra narcotic pain medications, hoping that will cut my pain enough that I can enjoy the music. By the end of last night, I was contorted in my chair just so I could sit without excruciating pain. Afterward, I came home and collapsed.
I find it hard not to think about all the bands and music I missed in my pursuit of holiness. I have similar thoughts about other things I missed out of devotion to Jesus. All I know to do is make the most of what time I have left. I will use my writing to warn people about the high cost of Fundamentalist Christianity. Anyone or anything that demands total obedience and devotion is a cult and you should run. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not just endured.
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.
I wish someone had told me this as a young man. Instead, all I heard was “Let Bruce deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Jesus.” Is it too late to ask for a refund?
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
