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Tag: Independent Fundamentalist Baptist

Sin and the Myth of the Slippery Slope

Bruce Gerencser 19 Comments
slippery slope

According to the Bible, sin is transgression of the law of God. (1 John 3:4) Evangelicals, as a general principle, believe this to be true. However, when it comes to what, exactly, is the law of God — well, let the battle begin. Every sect and every pastor has their own idea about what constitutes God’s law. None of them actually follows and practices ALL the laws found in the Bible. Every follower of Jesus picks and chooses, cafeteria-style, which laws to obey and which to ignore.

Several years ago, a local group posted on Facebook that they were having a Black Lives Matter/Pride rally. An Evangelical woman responded by posting comments about the evil of homosexuality, complete with Bible verses. I responded, so, you believe LGBTQ people, adulterers, fornicators, non-virgins, and Mormons should be executed? After all, that’s what God commands in the Bible. Of course, she ignored my challenge to her hypocritical use of the Bible to condemn behaviors she doesn’t like, choosing, instead, to attack me personally.

This woman is not unique in any way. I don’t know of one Evangelical who believes and practices every law in the Bible. Granted, Evangelicals have all sorts of lame explanations for their duplicity, but the fact remains that Evangelicals practice pick-and-choose Christianity. (Please see Should Christians Keep the Old Testament Law?)

For the sake of this post, I am going to assume that every Evangelical extracts from the Bible certain laws, commands, and precepts to govern their lives; that transgressing these edicts are sins.

I grew up in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement, attended an IFB college, and pastored Evangelical churches for 25 years. Over the 50 years I spent in the Christian church, I heard lots of preaching against sin — generally and specifically. I preached hundreds of sermons myself against this or that sin. Convincing people that they are sinners is the precursor to salvation. Without sin, there’s no need for salvation. Remove sin, fear, and guilt from the equation, and Evangelical churches will empty out overnight.

Once saved, Evangelicals continue to battle against what they call “indwelling sin.” Surprisingly, having God as your Father, Jesus as your BFF, the Holy Ghost living inside of you, and having at your fingertips the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God is not enough to keep Evangelicals from sinning daily in thought, word, and deed. It seems that Evangelicals sin just like their counterparts in the evil, Satan-controlled world. That’s why Evangelical preachers spend an inordinate amount of time preaching against sin to mostly Christian crowds.

Supposedly, Evangelicals are to grow and mature in their faith. One would think that sin would become less of a problem as Evangelicals became more intimate with Jesus. However, as any honest Evangelical pastor will tell you, worldliness, carnality, and sinfulness are common among God’s chosen ones. Jesus is no cure for the human condition.

Evangelical preachers often warn congregants of the danger of the slippery slope. These so-called men of God believe that a behavior deemed sinful, if unconfessed and not forsaken, leads to more serious sinful behaviors. Let me give readers several examples.

Evangelicals believe that it is sinful to use street drugs. Marijuana is considered a gateway drug that opens people up to using harder, more addictive drugs. I came of age in the 1970s. I heard numerous sermons about the evils of drug use — especially marijuana. Numerous church teens were dope smokers. So were my classmates at Findlay High School. It was not uncommon to see people smoking marijuana in the restrooms. Anti-drug preachers posited that marijuana use led to more serious drug use. Start smoking marijuana, and down the slippery slope you will go, ending up a heroin addict. Don’t want to be a heroin addict? the thinking went. Don’t smoke marijuana. Of course, few of my fellow youth group members or school classmates became mainline heroin users. I am sure more than a few of them tried LSD or other psychedelics, but hardcore heroin users? It didn’t happen.

The IFB preachers of my youth loved to preach against sexual sin. I, of course, continued in their footsteps, spending significant time over the years condemning illicit, sinful sexual behavior. I embarrassingly told church teens in one sermon (1980s) that I never knew of a girl who got pregnant who didn’t hold hands with a boy first. The slippery slope . . .

slippery slope fallacy

When it came to sexual sin, the slippery slope argument went something like this. Couples who hold hands will tire of it and want more intimacy. Thus hand-holding leads to kissing, and kissing leads to petting, which leads to fornication. Want to avoid committing fornication? Never hold hands. (Never asked was WHY should we want to avoid sexual intercourse?) This thinking led the churches I grew up in and the college I attended to develop bizarre anti-human rules. I would later pass on those same rules to churches I pastored. (Please see Thou Shalt Not Touch: The Six-Inch Rule.)

A similar argument is used for pornography. People who view porn grow tired of it, seeking out more explicit content, ultimately leading to sexual assault and rape. That’s right. It is just a hop, skip, and jump from YouPorn to becoming a serial rapist.

The slippery slope is a tool used by Evangelical preachers to scare people into conformity. Remember, the goal is always obedience and conformity. Whatever a preacher thinks the law of God is, his goal is lock-step compliance from congregants with his interpretations of the Bible.

Of course, this approach does not work. Outwardly, it does, but when Evangelicals are on their own, safe in the privacy of their homes and automobiles, no regard is paid to the slippery slope. Sure, sinning Evangelicals have to deal with fear and guilt, but these things are not enough to keep them from behaving in normal, healthy human ways. Any preacher is deluded who thinks that by railing against marijuana and hand-holding he is going to keep church teens and young adults from partying and fornication. Human want, need, and desire win every time.

But, Bruce, for some people, the slippery slope is a real problem. Yep, any of us can and do give in to excess. Most people can drink alcohol without becoming alcoholics. That some people become alcoholics is regrettable, but should we ban the sale and use of alcohol? The same can be said for illicit drugs. Anything can be abused and misused. For example, Polly makes me an angel food cake every year for my birthday. I LOVE angel food cake. I mean I really, really, really love it. I can, I kid you not, eat a whole cake by myself. And it is for that reason that Polly only makes me an angel food cake once a year.

We all have habits and desires that seem excessive to others not so inclined. When sin and the slippery slope are removed from the discussion, it becomes easier for us to understand why we do the things we do. Our three oldest sons grew up poor. Rarely, did they get new clothes or shoes. To this day, they talk of the ugly colored Converse tennis shoes I bought them on close-out at Big Lots. Virtually every bit of their clothing either came from their grandparents at Christmas, Goodwill, or hand-me-downs. The boys owned plenty of jeans adorned with iron-on patches. Such was life in the Appalachian hills of southeast Ohio. Fast forward to when the boys were older and had good jobs. Their closets were filled with expensive clothing and shoes. Why, they even had more than one pair of shoes! It’s not hard to draw a line from their upbringing to their extravagance as young adults. One of my sons refuses to let his children wear cast-off shoes to school. His ex-wife is fine with the children wearing $5 shoes from Goodwill. Not my son. It ain’t going to happen! Why? I suspect he remembers his days attending a private Christian school; how his shoes were old, cheap, and shabby compared to those worn by his classmates.

We have a new 2020 Ford Edge, by far the most expensive car we have ever owned. As I reflect on our evolving car-buying habits over the past decade or so, it is evident that decades of driving rust-buckets deeply affected our view of automobiles. We want, dare I say “need” newer cars. I can give all sorts of reasons for buying newer cars, but the real reason is that we enjoy owning a new car. I suspect all of us have similar “needs” in our lives.

My point is this, once we are free of guilt- and fear-inducing sin, we are free to live life on our own terms. Each to his or her own, right? While I think the slippery slope argument has merit in some circumstances, for the most part it is little more than an attempt to control human behavior. Smart are those who recognize where in their life the slippery slope lurks. I am a retired professional photographer. Due to my inability to properly hold my cameras due to loss of strength, I was forced to liquidate my equipment. Photographers must be aware of the slippery slope — also known as gear acquisition syndrome (GAS). Photography is not a cheap hobby. I invested thousands of dollars in camera bodies, lenses, flashes, studio equipment, and miscellaneous equipment. It was really easy for me to want (need) new equipment. Every couple of years, Sony came out with new camera bodies, always with higher resolution sensors and new bells and whistles. GAS really kicked in for me when they did. But I eventually learned to not give in to my wants, knowing that doing so would send me careening down the slippery slope that leads to a pile of debt. I knew that it was the photographer, and not the equipment (generally), that made the picture. Sometimes, I failed to reign in my desires. I suspect most of you know what I am talking about. We all have things we are passionate about, things we are willing to spend money on. Don’t get me started on my hats. God, I’m addicted.

For those of you who are ex-Evangelicals, did your pastors use the slippery slope analogy to demand obedience and conformity? Do you still have a problem with guilt and fear over human behaviors you know aren’t sinful, yet you can’t shake the voice of your pulpit-thumping preacher in your head? If you no longer buy into the Christian concept of “sin,” how do you order your life and make decisions these days? Please share your stories in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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You Can Do It: How to Start an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church

Bruce Gerencser 20 Comments
start ifb church

Warning! Lots of snark and sarcasm ahead!

John “Jesus Lover” Baptiste recently graduated from an unaccredited Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) college. After three or four years of superficially studying the Bible, John received his degree in Jesus-Loving, Devil-Chasing, Sin-Hating Pastoral Ministry. Now what?

Graduates are encouraged to go into all the world — well mainly the United States, preferably where White people live — and win souls for Jesus. The best way to do this is to start a new church.

Here is what John “Jesus Lover” Baptiste needs to do to start a brand spanking new Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church.

First, find a town where there are churches on every corner and convince yourself that ALL of those churches are liberal, apostate, using the wrong Bible translation, or using worldly music.

Second, conflate your own desire and ambition with the Holy Spirit leading you and God calling you to start a new church.

Third, rent a meeting place or building. Make sure you get the building as cheaply as possible. If the building owner is a Christian, lay a spiritual guilt trip on him to get him to lower the rent and then invite him and his family to the first service.

Fourth, put a puff piece in the newspaper telling locals why you are starting a new church in their community. DON’T tell them that you think ALL the other churches in town are liberal, apostate, using the wrong Bible translation, or using worldly music. You want to be able to poach members from other churches later, so no one must know what you really think of every other church in town.

Fifth, every day pray that God will bless your endeavor. Convince yourself that God put you in the community to win everyone to Jesus, and that without you they will all go to Hell.

Sixth, tell your wife and children that you love them, but they are going to have to understand that Jesus comes first, and you will have to neglect them for a GREAT church to be built. Also, tell them that they will have to mow the churchyard, clean the church, play the piano, work in the nursery, teach Sunday School, and do anything else you ask them to do. Try to explain to them that, yes, God called YOU, but he expects you to bring luggage.

Seventh, much like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, knock on every door in town and witness to everyone who dares to answer. Lie to them by saying, I am not here to take you from your church home. All that is important is that you know Jesus as your Savior. Don’t let them know that if they get saved you will expect them to come to the church that cared enough to lead them to Jesus. And get baptized. And attend services every time the church doors are open. And tithe. And obey every edict uttered by you from the pulpit.

Eighth, run some ads in the local newspaper and put up flyers on every public bulletin board. Church-hopping members (please see The Fine Art of Church Hopping) from nearby IFB churches will notice the ads and see this as “God leading them” to leave their churches. This is the quickest way to start a new church. And just remember, when they leave your new church a few years later for a newer church, you were willing to sacrifice your integrity for numerical gain. You are now ready for your first service. Remember one thing: most new church plants fail, especially IFB churches. Perhaps, it would be better if you join up with one of the other churches in town and help them. Silly me, you will never do that. You are a God-called, Holy-Spirit-powered, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist pastor, and such a calling deserves its own church, and a BIG sign that says, in BIG type, JOHN BAPTISTE, PASTOR.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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What Motivated Me to Work so Hard for Jesus

Bruce Gerencser 9 Comments
working for jesus

Repost from 2015. Edited, updated, and corrected

It all started with my belief that the Bible was the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. I considered the Bible the road map for navigating through a Satan-dominated, sin-plagued world; a blueprint for everything from marriage to child-rearing to what clothing to wear. The Bible, along with the Holy Spirit who lived inside of me, was my God’s way of speaking to me and telling me what to do

According to how Evangelicals interpret the Protestant Bible, every person, from conception, is a vile, broken sinner under the just condemnation of God, deserving eternal punishment in Hell/Lake of Fire. Fortunately, God graciously provides a way for us to have our sins forgiven and avoid eternal punishment. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to be the final atonement for our sins. Jesus Christ was executed on a Roman cross, and three days later rose again from the dead, conquering death and the grave. Our salvation and eternal destiny rest squarely on the merit and work of Jesus. He, and he alone, is the way, truth, and life. Through the preaching of the Word (the Bible) and the work of the Holy Spirit, God calls out to sinners, saying, repent and believe the gospel. Those who hear his voice are gloriously saved and adopted into the family of God.

The Bible taught me that as a God-called, God-ordained minister of the gospel, I had the solemn obligation to preach the good news to everyone. Work for the night is coming. Leave everything for the sake of the gospel. Only one life twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last. These clichés were not mere words to me. They were clarion calls to forsake all, including my family and economic security, and follow Jesus.

Every church I attended, every youth group I was a part of, and every summer youth camp I went to, reinforced the belief that God wanted (demanded) one hundred percent of me. All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give, says the old gospel song, I Surrender All. I went to an Evangelical Bible college to train for the ministry. Every class curriculum, every professor, every chapel speaker shouted out to students:

Souls for Jesus is our battle cry.
Souls for Jesus is our battle cry.
We never will give in while souls are lost in sin
Souls for Jesus is our battle cry.

My partner, Polly, went to college to get a Mrs. degree. She believed God wanted her to marry a preacher. Polly knew that she would have to make sacrifices for the sake of her husband’s call. She was taught that Jesus, the ministry, and the church came first. She was also taught that her husband was specially chosen by God to proclaim the good news of the gospel. She was encouraged to read biographies of great men and women of faith to learn how to deal with being married to a man of God. Polly and I entered marriage and the ministry knowing God had called us to a life of self-denial and devotion to the work of the ministry. Hand in hand, without complaint, we embraced the work we believed God had set before us.

I consider 1983-1994 to be the high point of my ministerial career. I pastored a growing, busy Evangelical church. Sinners were weekly being saved, baptized, and joining the church. Backsliders were being reclaimed. God was smiling on our work. Not only was this my observation, but it was the observation of my colleagues in the ministry. God was doing something special at Somerset Baptist Church.

During this time, I did a lot of preaching.  A typical week for me looked something like this:

  • Jail ministry on Tuesday
  • Nursing home ministry on Wednesday
  • Midweek service on Thursday
  • Street preaching 2-3 days a week
  • Teaching the adult Sunday school class
  • Preaching twice on Sunday

We also had a tuition-free Christian academy, open only to the children of church members. In addition to my busy church preaching schedule, I held revival services and preached at bible conferences and pastor’s fellowships. I was motivated by what I believed the Bible taught me about the work of the ministry. I looked at the life of the disciples and thought that they were a pattern to follow. Run the race, the Apostle Paul told me. I was totally committed to what I believed was God’s calling on my life.

Some Christians object and say “you are the one who worked yourself to death. Don’t blame the Church or God. OUR pastor doesn’t work this way. He takes time for his family. Blah. Blah Blah.” Even now, as an atheist, I find such objections lame. If the Bible is true, if what it says about God, sin, salvation, death, Hell, and Heaven is true, how dare any preacher, or any Christian for that matter, treat the gospel of Jesus Christ so carelessly?  How dare any preacher not burn himself out for the sake of those in need of salvation. No time for busywork. No time for golfing with your fellow preachers.

More than a few pastors are lazy hirelings who do just enough to keep from getting fired. They pastor a church for two or three years, wear out their welcome, and then move on down the road to another church. I have no respect for pastors who defend their laziness by stressing the importance of balance in their lives. Where do they find such a notion in the Bible they say they believe? Jesus doesn’t call them to balance. He calls them to forsake all and follow him.

One of the reasons I see Christianity as a bankrupt religion is the lackadaisical approach Christians and their spiritual leaders have toward matters that supposedly have eternal consequences. Most of what goes on in the average church is meaningless bullshit. Call a business meeting to decide on the color of the paint for the nursery walls and everyone shows up. Implore people to come out for church visitation and only the same three or four people show up, week after week.

Why should I take the Bible, God, Jesus, salvation, Heaven, or Hell seriously when most Christians and pastors live lives that suggest they don’t? It took me leaving the ministry in 2005 and Christianity in 2008 for me to realize that most of what I was chasing after was nothing more than a fool’s errand. Many of the ex-ministers who read this blog know what I am talking about. So much of life wasted, and for what? Too bad I had to be fifty years old before I realized what life is all about. Too bad I sacrificed my health on the altar of the eternal before I realized that there is no eternity, just the here and now.

From a psychological perspective, I understand that my type-A, workaholic personality made it easy for me to be the preacher I came to be. Whether it was pastoring churches or managing restaurants, I worked day and night, rarely taking time off for family or leisure. I still have the same tendencies, the difference now being that the list of things that matter to me is very small. Polly matters. Family matters. My neighbors matter. But matters of eternity, Heaven, and Hell? Nary a thought these days. If the Christian God exists, then I am screwed, and more than a few of the readers of this blog are too. However, I don’t think the Christian version of God exists, so I am investing all my time, money, and talent — how many times did you hear that phrase in a sermon? — on the only life I have — this one. I will leave it up to the gods and my family to do what they will with me after I am dead. Of course, depending on what happens to me after death, I could come back from the dead and write a book titled, “Heaven is for Real and Boy, Are the Atheists in Trouble.”

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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Worldly Knowledge vs. Biblical Knowledge

Bruce Gerencser 11 Comments
benjamin rush quote on knowledge

“I believe the Bible is the Word of God,” millions of Evangelicals say. “I believe the Bible is inerrant and infallible. I believe every word in the Bible is true. Whatever the Bible says, no matter how silly or irrational, I believe it is true. When worldly human knowledge contradicts the Bible, I am going to believe the Bible every time. When science contradicts the Bible, I am going to believe the Bible. When history, archeology, cosmology, biology, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, astronomy, and genetics contradict the Bible, I am doing to believe the Bible.”

According to one Evangelical who has no formal science training:

The unbelieving world is famous for demanding physical evidence for biblical content. They refuse to believe because of the ‘God did it’ factor or for other reasons. This is done regardless of the fact that there are scores of physical evidence from various scientific and other sources proving the validity of the biblical content.

….

We demand that the unbeliever produce verifiable and real physical evidence for each stage of their Big Bang Theory. If they can’t provide any or just offer excuses, then they need to be silent on the universe’s origins.

They cannot prove their theory so it is not true and not a viable option to the creation account. The existence of stars, planets, comets, etc., does not provide any evidence for the alleged processes unbelievers claim took place.

The existence of the universe and its contents does not exclude the biblical account of creation nor any other alternative to it.

….

The unbeliever needs to provide verifiable, real physical evidence proving the source of gravity as well as the development of this field.

With the Bible, we have the answers to these questions– God and his power. Yes, God did it and science cannot produce any physical evidence for any of the alternative theories it proposes.

….

All science can do is offer an alternative explanation for what they observe in the present. When science and scientists omit God, then they have no possible avenue to produce one shred of evidence to support their theories.

The so-called evidence they claim that proves their theories correct is not real evidence. Scientists have no hope of proving those alleged items are real evidence because they do not know if they played a role in the origin of the universe or life or not.

They are merely guessing and have no clue how the universe came to be. So-called background radiation is not evidence for anything except for the presence of background radiation.

Looking at something in the present means one has to guess at how it came to be if they have no written information proving it is evidence for origins. The only document that has written evidence for our origins is the Bible.

When scientists toss that then they are left with nothing. Nothing they claim in their theories leads them closer to the truth. The reason this is so is because they cannot produce one shred of physical evidence for every step of the Big Bang or life’s formation, etc.

Yes, they can say they have evidence, but upon closer scrutiny, their claims remain unproven and simple guesswork.

….

How do they know it was an ‘explosion’ and not God’s power that did it? They need to provide real verifiable physical evidence to prove it was an ‘explosion’ and not a supernatural act.

….

Where is the real verifiable physical evidence for this event? Saying it took place or saying ‘I believe…’ or ‘we believe…’ is not physical evidence. That is just propaganda.

There is just so much in the Big Bang Theory that lacks any supporting physical evidence. Under the unbelievers’ rules, it did not happen unless they can produce the real, verifiable physical evidence to prove that it did.

Everything that science says about origins must be taken by faith, something the unbeliever finds anathema to do when it comes to God and the Bible. Yet, we have more real verifiable physical evidence for God and the Bible than all the scientists in the world have for their origin theories.

….

No matter what scientists do, they cannot compete with or disprove the Bible or God.

This particular unaccredited Bible college-trained preacher’s beliefs are typical among Evangelical pastors, though better educated men and women know that the claims they make for the Bible are not true; that although the Bible might be faithful and reliable and sufficient, it is not inerrant, nor is it infallible. Inerrancy and infallibility cannot be rationally sustained, as any of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books make clear. Countless books have been written by scholars to disabuse Evangelicals of the notion that the Bible is some sort of supernatural book written by a supernatural God, without error. Some Evangelicals, knowing their position on the Bible is absurd, appeal to inerrant originals. No, the English Bible is not inerrant, but the manuscripts from which the Bible was translated were, pious preachers say. Of course, said inerrant originals do not exist, so we have to take their word for it. Other Evangelical preachers go to the other extreme, saying that a particular translation of the English Bible — the King James Version (KJV) — is inerrant and infallible. Some even believe that the italicized helper words added by translators to aid with reading, and for which there is no correlation in the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, are inspired by God and without error. The aforementioned preacher believes the KJV, NKJV, NASB, and NIV are all inerrant and infallible, even though they differ in thousands of places.

Bruce, surely it shouldn’t be hard to convince Evangelicals that the Bible is not inerrant or infallible. Just show them evidence that contradicts their beliefs or get them to read a couple of books. Isn’t this enough to persuade them that their beliefs are false? I wish it were that simple, but since these sincere followers of Jesus weren’t argued into their beliefs, they won’t be argued out of them. Years of deep indoctrination and conditioning have made them impervious to evidence and facts (and the same can be said for all of us when it comes to beliefs we hold dear). That’s why I don’t argue with Evangelicals about Bible inerrancy and infallibility. I write articles challenging these beliefs, hoping that something I say might cause a chink in their Bible armor or I recommend books I hope will disabuse them of their irrational beliefs. I know, however, that until Evangelicals, at the very least, ponder that they could be wrong, they are unreachable. Certainty breeds arrogance, and arrogance precludes someone from gaining a better understanding of his or her beliefs. Humility leads us to consider that we could be wrong or that our beliefs are lacking or that our teachers, well-intentioned or not, might have been lacking in their own knowledge about the Bible. As long as “the Bible says” (or better put, “as I interpret the Bible”) is the final answer to every question, Evangelicals will continue to ignorantly believe sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible are without error and infallible in ALL that it teaches and says.

Suppose the Bible said 1+1=5. Mathematics tells us this is false; that 1+1=2. If the Bible is inerrant and infallible, the Evangelical is forced to say, with shouts of praise to the one true God, 1+1=5. Absurd? Sure, but no more so than believing that the universe is 6, 027 years old; that the earth was created in six twenty-four days; that snakes walked on two legs and spoke a language understood by humans, and that a donkey talked in the same voice with a man; that the entire earth was covered in flood water 4,000 or so years ago; that millions of Israelites spend forty years walking the 432 miles between Egypt and Canaan — a trip that should have taken roughly three weeks; that demonic angels of large size had sex with human women, leading to the birth of part angel, part human children; that the earth stopped its rotation for twenty-four hours … shall I go on?

If you believe that the Bible is inerrant and infallible, you must believe that all the above things are true. No evidence will be forthcoming outside of proof texts from the Bible. So if the Bible said 1+1=5, Evangelicals have no choice but to accept that what “God” said is true; that no matter what mathematicians say, they are wrong, and the Word of God is right.

Bruce, this is insane. Yep, but I believed this way for most of my life, as did many of the readers of this blog. The only hope I see for 1+1=5 believers is this: when they balance their checkbook and add up 1+1, do they write down a 5? Nope. They know empirically that 1+1=2. Believing otherwise would cause all sorts of problems in their lives. Suppose an Evangelical homeschooling family has a daughter who wants to be an engineer and a son who wants to be a physician. Their math instruction teaches them, as billions and billions of people know to be true, that 1+1=2. Should their parents teach them, instead, that 1+1=5; that what the Bible says is right and their math book is wrong? Of course not. The parents KNOW that 1+1=2 and that teaching their children otherwise would be disastrous for them when they go to college to train to be an engineer and a doctor. They would flunk out of college in their first semester, mocked and ridiculed for stupidly believing 1+1=5.

Thus, the homeschooling Evangelical parents live with cognitive dissonance — the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. There’s no way to square 1+1=5 with 1+1=2, so the parents are forced to have one set of beliefs at church and another at home. They are forced to affirm beliefs that they KNOW in the depths of their minds cannot be reconciled. And it is this cognitive dissonance that provides a path by which Evangelicals can be reached. Doubts, questions, and irreconcilable beliefs can and do lead to reconstruction — the rethinking and reevaluation of beliefs and practices. While this process does not necessarily or even usually lead to atheism or agnosticism, it can and does lead people to expressions of faith that put knowledge, facts, and evidence above the words of 2,000-4,000-year-old pre-science authors who had little to no understanding of how the world really works. They were products of their time, so I don’t fault them for what they wrote, but here we are in 2024 and we have millions and millions of Americans who still think the year is 4,000 BCE.

1+1=2, and no matter how many words will be expended saying that what I wrote in this post is wrong, the fact remains that the Bible is not inerrant or infallible. Whatever one might, by faith, believe the Bible is, all the extant evidence tells us that it is a manmade book, littered with errors, contradictions, and mistakes. Evangelicals are free to ‘splain away these inconvenient truths any way they can, but the fact remains that all a critic needs to show is one error, contradiction, or mistake in the Bible to bring inerrancy crashing to the ground.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Teaching IFB Church Members About Every Cult But Theirs

Bruce Gerencser 17 Comments
the-kingdom-of-the-cults

I grew up in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches in the 1960s and 1970s. I later attended an IFB college — Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. Next to evangelizing the lost, preaching against “sin,” and trumpeting the soon return of Jesus, IFB preachers love to talk about cults.

The IFB church movement generally believes themselves to be God’s true church. Some preachers — called Landmark Baptists or Baptists Briders — believed they could, much like Roman Catholics, trace their church’s lineage back to Jesus and the New Testament. While most IFB preachers will grudgingly admit that some other Christian sects include True Christians®, many non-IFB groups are labeled cults. Seventh Day Adventists? Roman Catholics? Mormons? Church of Christ? Charismatics? Pentecostals? Jehovah’s Witnesses? Calvinists? Cults, the lot of them.

As an IFB pastor, I thought it important to teach church members about the teachings of cults. Sunday School was a perfect place to introduce teaching about cults. Congregants loved learning about cults. After all, learning about the heretical beliefs of cults only reinforced the notion that their pastor and church had the “right” beliefs. What was never considered was the fact that Christianity itself is a cult, as is the IFB church movement.

My teaching presupposed that my interpretation and understanding of the Bible were equivalent to the faith once delivered to the saints. Thus, it was easy to “prove” that certain sects were cults. Just compare their beliefs to mine. See! There’s all the evidence you need to prove that baby-baptizing, Virgin-Mary-worshiping Catholicism is a cult. That’s why I could go to a town of 1,600 people that had two Catholic churches, a Methodist Church, a Lutheran Church, and a Church of Christ, and start a new church — a true New Testament Baptist congregation. I was convinced that I knew the truth, and I was duty-bound to deliver the residents of Somerset and Perry County of the hold cults had on their souls. Especially those fish-eaters.

People raised in IFB churches have likely read or heard of Walter Martin’s seminal work, The Kingdom of the Cults. This book takes a prominent place on the bookshelves of many IFB preachers. It was a necessary tool in the raging war against cults. Ironically, Martin did not believe the Seventh Day Adventist Church was a cult.

Two stories come to mind from my days as a cult-busting preacher. One year, I had been teaching on Mormonism. During the class, a visitor stood up and challenged what I was teaching. Unbeknownst to me, this man had gotten wind of my teaching and decided to visit our church so he could put in a good word for Mormonism. Needless to say, his attempt to set me straight didn’t go well. My retort was simple, THE BIBLE SAYS! That was always my answer when my preaching or teaching was challenged.

Later in my ministry, as pastor of Our Father’s House in West Unity, Ohio, a Seventh-Day Adventist man and wife attended our church. They were friends with a couple who periodically attended Our Father’s House. By this time, I was much more open-minded towards other sects. In fact, the front doors of our church building said, “The Church Where the Only Label that Matters is Christian.” I was friends with the local Church of Christ preacher, and a member of the local ministerial group — a cardinal sin back in my IFB days.

I believed, at the time, that this Seventh-Day Adventist couple genuinely wanted “Christian fellowship.” One Sunday evening, I learned differently. I don’t remember what I had preached on that night, but afterward, as was my custom at that time, I asked if there were any questions? The Seventh-Day Adventist man stood up and started condemning my preaching. I was shocked by his behavior. I told him that he was wrong to assume that we believed what we did out of ignorance. We went back and forth for a few moments, and then I put an end to our “discussion.” This couple never came back. I suspect that they were there to infiltrate and evangelize instead of to bond over food, fun, and fellowship. 

Both of these confrontations troubled me, not because I thought my beliefs were wrong, but because I never dreamed of visiting a different church so I could evangelize or set them straight. Back in the 1980s, I preached a series of messages about the Church of Christ, showing that they were a cult that preached a false gospel. On Mondays, I would make cassette copies of the sermons and mail them to Church of Christ preachers in a four-county area. This, of course, provoked all sorts of outrage. I received several cassette sermons in the mail from Church of Christ preachers. Their sermons were their attempt to expose the Baptists as a cult! How dare they! I was a member of True Church®. In the 1800s, the Baptists expelled Campbellites — Alexander Campbell and his father Thomas Campbell were the founders of the Church of Christ (along with Barton Stone) — from their midst for heresy. Cults, the lot of them.

What I never considered is that I too was a cultist; that Christianity, in general, was a cult. According to the TheSage Dictionary, a cult is a system of religious beliefs and rituals; cultists are followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices. Pretty well describes Christianity in general, and the IFB church movement in particular, does it not? I could see the “cult” in every sect but my own.

Want to enrage Evangelical/IFB preachers? Call them cultists. Out will come their Bibles, proof-texts, and evidence that “proves” that their brand of Christianity is that which was founded by Jesus, John the Baptist, and the Apostle Paul. Blinded by arrogance and hubris, they cannot see that their sects and churches are cults too.

To these True Christians® I say: by all means, continue to fight among yourselves. Keep waging internecine warfare against each other. Keep slinging words such as cult or heretic. You are doing good work, exposing the bankruptcy of your beliefs.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Lingo — A Guide to IFB-Speak

Bruce Gerencser 2 Comments
ifb

Repost from 2015. Edited, updated, and corrected.

If you are unfamiliar with the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church movement, please see The Anatomy of the IFB Church Movement for more information.

Below is a list of words and phrases used in IFB churches. IFB churches and pastors have a lingo that may sound strange to the uninitiated, so I hope this list will help.

Guide to Words and Phrases used in IFB Churches

Inerrancy of the Bible

The Bible, often the King James Bible, is inspired, infallible, and without error, perfect in all it says and teaches. Some IFB churches believe that even the italicized words added by the translators are inspired.

Inspiration of the Bible

The Bible, in its original writings, was breathed out by God. God directed (moved) the writers of the Bible in such a way that their words were the exact words God wanted to be written down. Some within the IFB Church movement believe that the King James Bible is just as God-inspired as the original writings. Others believe God has preserved his Word throughout history, and the King James Bible is the only Bible for English-speaking people.

The Second Coming of Jesus Christ

Someday, perhaps today, Jesus Christ will come in the clouds and rapture all the Christians off the face of the earth. Then, all the unbelievers will face seven years of tribulation as described in the book of Revelation. Jesus will then return to earth, bind Satan, and establish his millennial kingdom. During the millennium, the raptured Christians will remain in heaven while Jesus rules the earth with a rod of iron. At the end of the millennium, Satan will be loosed for a season and God will defeat him. Then God will judge everyone, destroy the heavens and earth, and make all things new. (This is an abbreviated form of what IFB churches believe about the Second Coming.)

Pastoral Authority

The pastor, called by God, is in charge of the church. He is called by God to speak the words of God to church members. Most IFB churches are pastored by one man. Often, the pastor has the final say on everything. Typically, the longer a preacher pastors a church, the more control he has.

Pastoral Succession

Many IFB churches have pastors who have been in that position for years and even decades. As these preachers age and their children grow up, it is not uncommon for the pastor’s children to be hired as church staff. In some cases, the pastor’s son or son-in-law becomes the pastor-in-waiting. The church becomes a possession, a franchise that is passed down from generation to generation.

Soulwinning

Proverbs 11:30 says The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise. Most IFB churches actively evangelize their community. They believe they are commanded by God to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, even if people don’t want to hear it. Much like Jehovah’s Witnesses, IFB church members often evangelize door-to-door and hand out tracts. They believe God holds them personally accountable for the souls of those they could have witnessed to and didn’t. Ezekiel 33:7-9 says:

So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

Altar Call

The altar, located at the front of the church, is the place where the unsaved and saved alike come to do business with God. Often the church has trained altar workers who help those who come forward during the altar call (public invitation). In IFB churches, the altar is similar to the Catholic confessional.

Backsliding

Since IFB churches believe Once Saved, Always Saved, they must account for when members become worldly or stop doing what is expected of them. Such members are called backsliders. IFB pastors spend significant amounts of time trying to get backsliders to live as good Christians should. A good Christian attends church every time the doors are open, reads and studies the Bible daily, prays without ceasing, tithes and gives offerings, evangelizes the lost, and follows the church social code/standards. Congregants who don’t are considered, backslidden, worldly, or carnal.

Standards

Standards are rules that every IFB church member is expected to obey. Standards are often developed, based not on direct commands from the Bible, but upon inferences drawn from particular Bible verses. Every IFB church has its own standards. IFB churches fuss and fight over standards, and often a church will refuse to fellowship with other IFB churches that don’t have the same basic standards as they do. (Please see The Official Independent Baptist Rule Book.)

Separation

Separation is the abstaining from people, actions, and things that are considered worldly. What is worldly is defined by what the pastor says the Bible says is worldly. What is worldly varies from church to church. Worldly can be generously defined as anything the pastor thinks is a sin or could cause someone to “stumble” or have a bad testimony.

Head of the Home

The husband is the boss and the decider of everything pertaining to the family. IFB churches are hierarchal and complementarian when it comes to marriage and family.

Right Hand of Fellowship

When new members are welcomed and admitted into the church membership, they are given the right hand of fellowship. Many congregations have new members stand at the front of the church so every church member can come by and shake their hand or hug them. This is a great opportunity for pervert Deacon Bob to cop a feel.

The Call

The “call” is when God speaks to a man’s heart, telling him to be a pastor, evangelist, or missionary. The man called by God makes his calling publicly known before the church, often at the close of the Sunday morning church service.

Preacher Boy

A preacher boy is a young boy, most often a teenager, called by God to be a preacher. Preacher boys often have favored status in IFB churches. Many IFB pastors pride themselves in how many boys have been called to preach under their ministry. This is very similar to a man passing his seed on.

Faith Promise

Faith Promise is a method used by some IFB pastors to extract money from church members. Most often, faith promise is associated with mission giving. Church members are asked to make a promise of X amount of dollars for missions, and by faith they are to expect God to give them the money for the offering. And when God fails to come through? Congregants are expected to give anyway, even if it caused financial harm.

Prayer Meeting

Prayer meeting is a time when prayer requests are gathered and members or the pastor prays over them. It is also known as the midweek gossip hour. It is a golden opportunity for gossips to share dirt about sinful family members or backslidden Christians — all in the name of “praying” for them.

Stewardship

Stewardship is a method used by some IFB pastors to extract money from church members. Some pastors preach a series of messages on being good stewards (caretakers) of the money God has given each church member. The objective is to get people to give more money to the church.

Revival

A revival is a time when a special speaker, often called an evangelist, comes to the church and preaches each night for a consecutive number of days — usually three to seven days. Many IFB church members make spiritual decisions during the nightly revival altar calls.

Carnal/Worldly Church Members

Christians who don’t live according to the teachings of the Bible — as interpreted by the pastor. Such people are “saved” — barely.

The Lord Has Laid Upon My Heart

A personal opinion or interpretation of the Bible that a Christian thinks is straight from God himself.

This is not an all-encompassing list. If there are other words and phrases you think would be a good addition to this list, please leave them in the comments (and make sure you define them).

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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Evangelical Pastor Tries to Justify Being Offensive to Others

Bruce Gerencser 17 Comments
faith baptist church members
Faith Baptist Church, Primrose Georgia, members street preaching, calling on sodomites to repent

An Evangelical pastor I know posted the following statements on Facebook today:

I’d rather offend you into heaven…than sympathize you into hell…

The problem in Christianity is that we are hiding behind the need to be nice, while shying away from truth and true devotion… #thetruthhurtsjohn8:32

Where, oh, where, do I begin?

This pastor assumes that he has and knows the “truth.” He proof-texted John 8:32: And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. In John 18 we find Jesus standing before Pilate:

Pilate: Art thou the King of the Jews?

Jesus: Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me?

Pilate: Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?

Jesus: My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

Pilate: Art thou a king then?

Jesus: Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

Pilate: What is truth?

Pilate asks a good question, “What is truth?” Spoken like a good postmodernist, Pilate challenged Jesus’ claim that he was a witness to “truth.” Jesus does not answer Pilate, leaving the “truth” question unanswered. That, of course, hasn’t stopped Evangelical preachers and churches from answering the question themselves. If there is one thing we know about Evangelicals it is this: they are certain that they have the truth market cornered; that their beliefs and practices perfectly align with Jesus’ words when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Evangelicals fail to understand that Jesus was talking about himself being the way, truth, and the life; not their beliefs, not their practices. The only “Bible” Jesus knew anything about was the Old Testament. You will search in vain to find Jesus or Christianity in the Old Testament. Jesus’ Bible was antithetical to the Evangelical gospel of salvation by grace through faith.

How could this pastor possibly know that he has the pure, unadulterated “truth?” Well, his whole understanding of truth is based on his childhood religious upbringing, tribal influences, sectarian education, and personal interpretation of the Bible. The only “truth” he has are his personal opinions and beliefs about God, Jesus, and the Bible. By faith — the ground of all religious beliefs — he believes his “truth” is the “faith once delivered to the saints.”

As an Evangelical, he believes the Protestant Christian Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Every word in the Bible is straight from the mouth of God, without error and fallibility. Believing God — in the person of the Holy Spirit — lives inside of him as his teacher and guide, is it a surprise that he thinks his “truth” is THE TRUTH? I have always found it amazing that what Evangelical preachers believe perfectly aligns with God’s “truth.” Amazing, right?

All this pastor has is his personal opinions and interpretations about an ancient religious text. He can provide little to no historical evidence for his “truth” claims outside of the Bible. That’s enough for him, and I am fine what that. Believe what you will, but when you claim you have “truth,” you are going to do a lot more than quote Bible verses or appeal to personal experiences to win me over to your side.

Evangelicals, along with Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and door-to-door siding salesmen, are known for their in-your-face evangelism tactics. They believe they have a duty and right to confront anyone, anywhere, at any time — including when you are lying on your deathbed or just experienced a traumatic event — and preach the gospel at them. Evangelicals believe death is certain, Hell is real, and Jesus is coming soon. Because they sincerely, honestly believe these things, Evangelicals think that this gives them the right to invade the personal space of others. Several weeks ago, my oldest son had an Evangelical zealot try to preach at him while he was pumping gas! I have been repeatedly God-bothered by zealots over the years, thinking I have tattooed on my forehead, “Please Tell Me About Jesus.” I don’t, and I, along with every other unbeliever I know, want to be left alone. If we want to know about God, Jesus, the Bible, Christianity, or your supercalifragilisticexpialidocious church, we will ask. If not, leave us alone.

Of course, this preacher will ignore what I have written here, believing that I am deceived, apostate, or a tool of Satan; that he has a higher calling from God, and that calling compels him to irritate, harass, and bother unbelievers. While he would likely say that he doesn’t want to offend anyone or hurt their feelings, he would also say, “Sometimes the truth hurts.” In other words, what you feel or think doesn’t matter. And therein is the fundamental problem with Evangelicalism: all that matters is your non-existent soul and eternal destiny. Who cares if an Evangelical zealot is a Bible bully or an asshole as long as you get saved and gain entrance into Heaven?

You see, Evangelicals are taught over and over and over again that this present life is transitory; that it is preparation for the life to come. The only thing that matters is “What have you done with Christ?” (Answer: I took a spade, dug a hole in our backyard, and buried Jesus, right next to our cat who died a few years ago.) 🙂 While Evangelical lifestyles betray how Heavenly-minded they really are, when it comes to evangelizing the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world, all that matters is saving souls.

Several weeks ago, I had a five-hour gastric motility test performed at the local hospital. I had to eat food laced with nuclear medicine that was tracked every hour with a scan as it traversed my stomach and bowels. As I sat there, I couldn’t help but notice all the suffering around me. A woman dying from cancer, weighing less than seventy-five pounds; a woman having a similar test, except she had bowel cancer; a man having radiation treatments. Into our suffering came a seventy-something-year-old Evangelical man Heaven-bent on evangelizing the dying. (I watched Polly silently mouth a prayer, asking Loki to keep this man from saying anything to me. 🙂 Loki answered her prayer. I have no tolerance for such people. I am not afraid to publicly shame them and put them in their place.) This man had an interesting schtick. He sat down next to the bald elderly woman with bowel cancer — a woman he did not know — and said, “Do you like comics?” The woman, who was very, very, very sick, said, “Huh?” He responded, “Do you like comics?” She replied, “No, not really.” Thinking to himself, “I don’t give a shit about what you think,” the man replied “Anyway — a word that says I am not listening to you; I don’t care how you feel — get your phone out and go to https://chick.com. Again, the woman said, “Huh?” He replied, “Chick. They have lots of interesting comics. You should really check them out!” With head turned away from God-botherer, the woman replied, “I will, but not now.” Fortunately, the radiologist came and rescued the woman from her abuser.

Let me conclude by sharing a few things with the aforementioned pastor and any “soulwinners” who might read this post.

First, if I want to know about your God, religion, church, or the Bible, I will ask you. If not, leave me alone. Most people know that religion and politics rarely make for good conversation among strangers.

Second, if you value your peculiar “truth” above being nice and polite, I have no interest in talking with you. Want to talk about Jesus? Go to church. I have dinner once a month with a group of like-minded men. We talk about all sorts of things, including religion and politics. We have a common foundation for having these discussions. I would never go to a nearby table of Trump supporters and say to them, “Did you know Donald Trump is an asshole?” Not the time or the place. True statement, but as a kind, thoughtful human being, I don’t go out of my way to offend my neighbors. Sadly, Evangelical zealots think they have a God-given right and duty to offend unbelievers.

Third, I am not asking you to stop believing what you believe. I am, however, asking you to be aware of your surroundings; to be aware of how your preaching will affect and negatively influence others. How many strangers have you personally won to saving faith in Christ by invading their personal space and cornering them so you can preach at them? One, two, a few, none? Have you ever wondered why that is? That maybe, just maybe, you are the problem, and not their hard hearts, blind eyes, or deaf ears, or any of the other lame excuses you use to justify your soulwinning failures.

Fourth, Jesus doesn’t need you to save me or any other sinner. If he wants to save us, he knows exactly where we live. Instead of preaching at people, how about putting into practice the teachings of Jesus found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and Matthew 25? Show us your faith instead of preaching at us. Maybe, just maybe, if you live as if this life and your fellow humans really matter and you want to do all you can to help others — especially the least of these — maybe unbelievers might be inclined to look at Christianity more favorably. As it stands now, Evangelicalism is one of the most hated sects in America. When the world sees Evangelicals filled with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, maybe they will have a different opinion of Christianity. As it stands now, all I see is an Evangelical preacher who doesn’t think love, forbearance, kindness, goodness, or gentleness are important if they get in the way of preaching the gospel.

After writing this post, I came upon an article by a Roman Catholic extolling being an asshole for Jesus:

We, as a culture, hate insults. We love to accuse people of “verbal abuse” or “hate speech.” Everyone should know better than to insult others. It would be best to completely eradicate insults from all social interactions whatsoever. Why shouldn’t we? Insults are belittling, rude, and may even hurt the feelings of others. All things considered, insults are just plain mean. The very idea of disparaging words serves to send shivers down the spines of even the most resilient souls of our generation.

There are several problems, however, with believing that all insults are bad and should be eradicated.

….

Too many of the souls of this world are running toward the gaping mouth of Hell, and as Christians we are sternly exhorted not to just casually let them go. If we let this God-hating culture tell us when we may speak and when we must be silent, we are rejecting Christ as surely as if we rejected Him in the poor. Our brothers are trying to throw themselves off bridges and in front of buses. If it takes rebukes—or even insults—to stop them, then let us not be afraid of the charity that requires.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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Breaking News: Baptist Men in Texas Riot in the Streets Over Censorship

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments
pornhub

Did you see the news today? Southern Baptist and Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) men in Texas are rioting in the streets over censorship. That’s right, these followers of Jesus are upset over being censored. Recently, Texas passed a law requiring users to document their age with a government ID before accessing porn sites.

USA Today reports:

The HB 1181 law primarily passed by Republicans in the Texas Legislature requires companies that offer “sexual material harmful to minors” to ensure its site’s users are 18 or older with an online system that can verify their government-issued identification or another system that utilizes public and private data.

If porn providers fail to verify a user’s age, and a minor ends up accessing their sites, they could be fined up to $10,000 a day and $250,000. Unable to comply with the law, Pornhub — the world’s largest provider of pornography — decided the best course of action was to block all access to their sites originating from Texas. And this has the Baptists upset. How dare Pornhub block their access to porn! What shall these godly men do between Sunday and Wednesday church services — you know the appointed times when men confess their porn habits and seek forgiveness from God? So, these sexually frustrated men have taken to the streets, demanding full, complete access to their favorite fetishes.

Not really, but let me be clear, Texas Baptists have a big porn problem, so I do not doubt that many preachers and congregants alike are upset that they can’t readily access their secret sin. (Never mind the fact that God allegedly sees everything. Evidently, worshiping a voyeuristic God is not enough to keep believers from surfing Pornhub.)

I hope researchers will take a look at VPN use after the Texas law was passed. I suspect that there was a huge uptick in VPN use among Baptist men — an easy way to avoid Texas’ age verification requirement.

According to 2014 survey commissioned by a nonprofit organization called Proven Men Ministries and conducted by Barna Group among a nationally representative sample of 388 self-identified Christian adult men found:

The statistics for Christian men between 18 and 30 years old are particularly striking:

77 percent look at pornography at least monthly.

36 percent view pornography on a daily basis

32 percent admit being addicted to pornography (and another 12 percent think they may be).

The statistics for middle-aged Christian men (ages 31 to 49) are no less disturbing:

77 percent looked at pornography while at work in the past three months.

64 percent view pornography at least monthly.

18 percent admit being addicted to pornography (and another 8 percent think they may be).

Even married Christian men are falling prey to pornography and extramarital sexual affairs at alarming rates:

55 percent look at pornography at least monthly.

35 percent had an extramarital affair.

jesus better than porn

The Gospel Coalition, the Defenders of True Christianity®, objected to this study’s results, saying:

The first is the Proven Men Porn Survey, a survey conducted in 2014 by Barna Group for Proven Men Ministries, a non-profit Christian organization aimed at helping men with an addiction to pornography.

The survey found that approximately two-thirds (64 percent) of Christian men admit they view pornography at least monthly. Based on that claim, you might be alarmed by the thought that two-thirds of the men who you think are faithfully following Christ are looking at porn at least a dozen times a year. But that’s not really what the survey found.

As with all surveys that rely on self-identification, clearly defining the terms—such as Christians—are essential. Fortunately, Barna does a better job than most other pollsters in this regard.

Barna classifies someone as a Christian if they individual self-identifies as Christian or identify with a Christian denomination (other than Mormons or Jehovah’s Witness). Within that category, Barna identifies individuals as “born again” if they made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today and believe that when they die, they will go to heaven because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Barna classifies individuals who do not meet the criteria of Born Again as “nominal Christians.”

Within the subset of the “born again,” Barna identifies “legacy evangelicals” and “non-evangelical, born again.” Non-evangelical born-again Christians outnumber evangelicals by almost a four-to-one ratio, according to Barna. They are less conservative and less traditional than evangelicals, and seven-times as many claim to be advocates for LGBT rights (27 percent). Little more than half of this group (55 percent) firmly believe that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches, and fewer than one-third of this group (31 percent) contend they have a responsibility to share their religious beliefs with those who think differently.

Returning to the survey we find that 64 percent men view porn at least once a month (54 percent for born-again Christian men)

About one-third of all self-identified Christian men do not view porn every month. Of those who do, 10 percent are nominal Christians. Of those who are born again, only about 11 percent would be what we’d consider “evangelicals.” (The survey doesn’t appear to have asked about church attendance or denominational affiliation.)

Were these pervert men “real” Christians? The Gospel Coalition asks. This, of course, is their standard answer anytime a study or article makes Evangelicalism look bad. They aren’t real Christians! Nice try. I suspect that there are Gospel Coalition fellows who frequent Pornhub. Jesus is no antidote for porn use.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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Bruce, Your Health Problems Are God’s Judgment on Your Life

Bruce Gerencser 23 Comments
peanut gallery

Last week, I shared with readers my interaction with a former church member named Terry. Terry was a teenager and young adult in two churches I pastored in the 1980s and 1990s. You can read my responses to Terry here and here.

Terry decided to stop messaging me, leaving me with one final comment. After striking a conciliatory tone, Terry took issue with my use of swear words — three out of 3,000 words — saying, “Not sure why you have [to] drop foul language in you[r] blogs sounds ignorant and childish.” Sigh, right? (Please read Why I Use the Word “Sigh.”) It is almost always Fundamentalist Christians who get upset over my use of non-approved words. I addressed this subject in a post titled Evangelical Swear Words. I don’t use many swear words in my writing. If my sparse use of them offends you, then, by all means, stop frequenting this site. I wouldn’t want to cause any further anal clenching for you. 🙂

Terry also had one more judgment to hurl my way:

Have you considered your health might be a judgment from God.

Terry knows I have serious health problems. I explained all of these issues in my second response to him. Yet, he decided to say that the “real” reason for my suffering is that God is judging me. Terry is not the first Evangelical to make such a claim. How could Terry possibly know that my health problems are his peculiar God’s judgment on my life for walking away from Christianity? Only God could know this for sure, right? Yet, Terry and other Evangelicals, seem to think they can divine God’s will, purpose, and plan for what I have experienced in life.

While my gastroparesis and exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI) diagnoses were determined in the past three years, everything else I am dealing with: fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, high blood pressure, diabetes, neuropathy, and degenerative spine disease, all first showed their faces while I was still an Evangelical pastor. My debilitating pain predates my atheism. I was an on-fire, sold-out follower of Jesus when I saw a doctor who diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. I was twenty-one years old the first time I had a problem with my spine. Polly, my partner of forty-six years, has many “fond” memories of the years I spent battling pneumonia and never-ending problems with bronchitis. She fondly remembers me spending a night in the ICU for a suspected heart attack, only to, thankfully, hear I had pleurisy. She remembers me almost dying from mononucleosis in the early 1990s; hearing the internist at the hospital tell her that if my immune system didn’t pick up there was nothing he could do for me. She almost was a widow at a young age.

Evangelicals who say my health problems are God’s judgment seem to be clueless as to how their words are “heard”; either that, or they don’t care. Do they really believe that telling me that their peculiar God is inflicting me with pain and suffering for no other reason than I lack sufficient evidence to believe in or worship him will lead me back to Jesus?

In 2023, I wrote a post titled, Bruce, You Are Sick and in Pain Because God is Trying to Get Your Attention. I said, in part:

I have a three-year-old redheaded grandson named Silas. He’s a handful. Silas has no fear of anything. He must be watched at all times. Our living room is small, 16’x20′. We have three lamps in the room, along with an overhead light. I HATE the overhead light. My grandkids know not to turn the light on when I am in the room. Not Silas. He will run over to the wall switch, give me a look — you know, THAT look — turn on the light, and run off. No matter what I say or do, Silas keeps flipping the switch. Mischief is his middle name, some sort of karmic payback for my own childhood mischief. If my mom were alive, she would be smiling.

Imagine if I determined to teach Silas a lesson about the overhead light. I decided that the next time Silas turned the light on I would break his arm. Boy, that would get his attention, right? This is EXACTLY what Evangelicals are saying when they say that God has afflicted me to get my attention or to teach me a lesson. What, exactly, did I ever do to God to deserve such punishment? Or is God okay with Bruce, the Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist, and it is Evangelicals who want to see me suffer? Sadly, many Evangelicals are sadists. Unbelievers have what they can’t have, so they rail against them, uttering threats of suffering, death, and Hell.

If I broke Silas’ arm because he kept turning on the light, I would deserve to be arrested and locked up for my crime. So it is for the Evangelical deity who inflicts suffering on finite beings. If such a deity exists, he is unworthy of our worship.

As far as my pain and suffering coming from God is concerned, I wrote:

Let me circle back around to this idea that God gave me fibromyalgia, gastroparesis, and degenerative spine disease because he is trying to get my attention; that every night I writhe in pain in bed, unable to sleep, my suffering is a message of love from the Christian deity.

What’s with God “trying” to do anything? Is he weak and powerless, unable to do what he wants? If God is not willing that any should perish, how is possible that Bruce Gerencser, a frail, broken-down biped, can thwart God’s will? Surely God can easily and effortlessly reach me at any time. “Nothing is too hard for God” and “with God all things are possible,” the Bible says. Yet, it seems that saving me is too hard for God and that it is impossible for the Big Kahuna to reach me.

If my suffering is God trying to get my attention, does this mean that if I repent and put my faith and trust in Jesus, my chronic pain and illnesses will immediately and magically disappear? Crickets are all I hear from Evangelicals. They know there is no connection between my health problems and God. None. Shit happens, and this is my shit to deal with.

As I told one Evangelical zealot several weeks ago after she said she was praying God would totally heal me, if God heals me I will immediately repent and become a Christian. I will shutter this blog and immediately return to church. I might even become a pastor again. What a miraculous story I would have to tell. The Defiant Atheist Bruce Gerencser Brought to Repentance and Faith By God Delivering Him From Pain and Suffering!! What a story, right?

And a “story” it shall remain. As much as I would like to go to bed tonight without pain and debility, I know that God is not going to heal me. This is my lot in life, and no amount of praying will change this fact. God isn’t judging me. I am paying the price of admission to the human race. I accept that this is just how things are.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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Christians Say the Darnedest Things: IFB Pastor John MacFarlane Reminds Congregants That They Are Worthless Without Jesus

Bruce Gerencser 3 Comments
first baptist church bryan ohio

Recently, John MacFarlane, pastor of First Baptist Church in Bryan, Ohio, reminded congregants that they are worthless without Jesus as their Lord and Savior:

Today is considered a day of empowerment. Self-affirming statements beginning with “I am” are to spoken to yourself. [I AM Bruce Almighty! Man, that’s empowering.] 🙂

….

Interestingly, I preached a sermon a month ago that addressed this issue.  The purpose of self-affirmation is to remind those who may be considered weak, insignificant, or less than others in society that they are not and to provide a dose of encouragement.  There’s one huge, significant problem, though, with worldly self-affirmation. [In other words, we should treat people like shit because God treats them like shit.]

Humanity is glorified.  Man affirms the goodness OF man and IN man while ignoring the truth found in Romans 3:10-12.  “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:  (11)  There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.  (12)  They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

By making these humanistic affirmations, it comes dangerously close to elevating man to the place of God. [OMG! Humanism!!!!!!]

When I make a self-affirming statement and say, “I am,” it is falling into the psychological trap of affirming man whereas theology and the Christian life is about affirming God.  Either MAN gets the credit or GOD gets the credit, but you cannot simultaneously credit both. (Please see Giving Credit to Whom Credit is Due.)

Remember, dear Christian, that we are NOTHING apart from God and the salvation provided by His Son, Jesus Christ.  It is the Lord who makes “all things work together for good.”  Self-affirmation is a sinful, prideful maneuver to stroke our egos.

Affirm GOD. Credit GOD. Glorify GOD. Praise GOD. Amen! [except when something “bad” happens. then it is your fault; the flesh’s fault; Satan’s fault]

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 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.

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You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.