If you have any other questions, please let me know.
Bruce Gerencser
After reading a handful of posts, Mike was ready to render judgment:
I pray that the God you preached about all those years will pierce your heart and bring you back to Him, as well as all the people you have influence over. After reading some on your website, I am afraid that Satan has tricked you, like so many, that you don’t need God.
Eternity is to long to be wrong. Heaven and Hell are real places, and we ALL will spend eternity in one or the other.
That’s all you can say? Reductionist bullshit told to me by hundreds and hundreds of Christians?
Do better, Mike. Think, listen, read, and learn. You don’t know as much as you think you do. I know how many posts you read (server logs don’t lie). Can you really say you made a good faith effort to read and understand my story? Or did you read just enough to pass judgment?
I may use your email as fodder for a blog post. I’ll send you the link if I do.
God bless.
Bruce Gerencser
Mike did not respond to me.
Mike ignores the fact that I am an atheist, so suggesting that I am being “tricked” by Satan is, to put it mildly, a joke. I don’t believe in the existence of the Christian God, nor do I believe in the existence of Satan. As a man on the short side of life (please see Giving In When It’s The Only Thing You Can Do), I have thought a good bit about death. As an atheist, I am confident that once I draw my last breath, my life is over. While I will live on in the minds of my family and friends, my cremated remains will be sprinkled by my loved ones on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
As is often the case with Christian zealots, Mike passive-aggressively threatens me with Hell. According to Mike’s theological beliefs, Heaven and Hell are real places. People who have beliefs different from him will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire (Hell is a temporary holding cell, which God casts into the Lake of Fire, Revelation 20:14). Outside of the Bible, there’s no evidence for the existence of Heaven or Hell. In fact, there’s ample evidence that such places are fictional, tools used to reward and threaten people by churches and clerics. As an atheist, I do no fear going to Hell. And, I have no desire to go to Heaven. Why would I want to spend eternity with the Mikes and David Tees of the world? No thanks.
Mike believes that Satan has tricked me into believing that I don’t need God. Unlike Mike, I don’t need a psychological crutch to make it through the day. I can’t think of one aspect of my life where I “need” God. The only time I think about God is when I write for this blog. That’s it. I choose, instead, to focus on the present, life as it is.
Mike could have made a good faith effort to get to know me and understand my story. He could have asked me questions after reading my autobiographical posts. Instead, Mike went into preaching mode. Whether he had a pathological need to do so or felt “led” by the Holy Spirit, I do not know. Over the years, countless Evangelicals have taken a similar approach with me. If they were willing (and they are not) to take a bit of advice from a reprobate/apostate/atheist, I would tell them that this approach does not work; that if the goal is to engage in thoughtful discussion with me or learn more about my story, you might try a different approach.
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.
“Dr.” David Tee (David Thiessen) — an Evangelical zealot — is an expert in passive-aggressive writing. Of late, Tee has written five or so posts about me. I am starting to think that Tee has a man-crush on me — even though I am not gay or bisexual. Sorry, David, I know you want me, but it ain’t going to happen. 🙂 My three wives and 666 concubines keep me way too busy — wink, wink, if you know what I mean (just following in the footsteps of Solomon, the “wisest” man in the Bible).
Tee warns Christians — especially “immature” believers — not to read my writing lest I lead them astray. Evidently, I am more powerful than God. Cool, right? Tee views himself as a Bible expert. I suspect what irritates the heaven out of him is that I know as much as he does (if not more) about the Bible and Christianity. He knows that my writing can and does lead people to the light — of skepticism, reason, and intellectual inquiry. So, he rages against me, hoping that the few people who read his blog will be warded off from this site. Much like the gospel he preaches, his efforts are doomed to fail.
Tee has written two posts about me (and others) this week. The first post is titled Applying Scripture. Here’s an excerpt from this post:
We have done many articles recently using two non-Christian websites as a source for our topics. It is not wrong to do so and we may address more of the issues they raise n future articles.
What is important though, is how to respond to these people. One of the keys to approaching those that either do not believe or did believe and turned away from their salvation is that they do not accept God’s definitions, God’s thinking, nor anything to do with God.
That makes it very tough to deal with because they will avoid the truth as much as possible.
….
God’s love tells everyone to forsake evil, wrong behavior, and so on. However, only God defines those categories and places different actions in each category. Star Trek and unbelievers do not have the authority or power to change that categorization.
All they can do is create something that continues to corrupt people and leaves them in their sin. They call it by other terms but it certainly is not love. Then there is Bruce and his views on abortion (We are tired of trying to type his last name).
….
It is impossible for Christians to talk to unbelievers and quitters because they have a low view of human life and think it is okay for women to murder or kill. They change the concept of an unborn child in hopes of relieving any guilt or regrets from disposing of human life for selfish reasons.
A woman has no right to kill anyone including an unborn child. Pro-abortionists do not have the power or authority to change the status of the unborn child. The pregnancy period is God’s choice and life starts at conception no matter what sinful term is used to describe it.
These are the situations where applying scripture correctly will help believers focus their energies on topics and issues that really matter. That application takes correct discernment.
First, you have to discern if it is really God leading you to interact with these people. Then if that is so, you need to discern which scriptures will help you in that interaction. Both steps are governed by your going to your prayer closet and praying.
You will need prayer to protect you from the subtle attacks of unbelievers and those that turn away. Then you need to ask for wisdom and understanding to tackle the interaction. Having the correct knowledge will help as well.
One of the biggest complaints atheists have had over the years is that believers do not know anything or they know very little. Getting the right knowledge is not wrong as your ability to discern will help you use that knowledge with God’s help in a manner that is effective and convincing.
Bruce tends to complain a lot when evangelicals make comments on his website about his desire to return to the faith and so on. Those comments are not very discerning as they ignore what Hebrews says in chapter 6:
4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame
Sometimes it is best to ignore such people and just use what they write on their blogs as teaching tools to show believers what to watch out for. Remember that unbelievers will camouflage their deceptive thoughts with a lot of truth.
For example, in the quote above Bruce mentions that right to life people are only right to be born advocates. That is true in many circumstances. He wasn’t the first to say it, as Robin Williams said it before him and we may have beaten him to that fact as well.
But that fact does not mean we stop being anti-abortion supporters. We just have to broaden our methods and reach more people through a better strategy that only God can give. Also, the Bible does not say to focus on saving the unborn only. They are plenty of other innocent people who need our help.
That is where discernment comes in. Knowing which strategies to use and where to apply them will help make you a better success for God than ignoring God’s instructions in hopes of saving those who cannot be saved anymore.
When you get the correct discerning powers, you will notice that the unbeliever, etc. will think they have been enlightened, that they came to the truth, and that they alone can make determinations for everyone else.
….
No, we are not hypocrites because we are doing what God says to do. We do not listen to unbelievers because the Bible instructs us not to; we do not accept sinful positions because they are wrong and sinful; we do not have ultra-literal interpretations because we are doing what Christ said to do- know the truth.
Meerkat is upset because his ideas are being rejected and he has no say in the Christian way of life. But he rejects God and his ways so why should he expect to be accepted when he attacks the very belief of those he wants to accept his views?
It is neither rational nor logical and discernment lets you know that and that he is doing nothing but trying to ruin Christian lives and get them sent to hell. He may not realize that is what is taking place but Christians with discernment see it very clearly.
Bruce is the same way. He wants his views to be accepted but he will reject anything to do with God, the Bible, and Christianity. The two are hypocrites because they say one thing but in reality, act differently from what they say.
As you can see, Tee thinks of himself as a uber-mature Christian who is called by the Evangelical God to “protect” weak, immature followers of Jesus. Evidently, the Holy Spirit, who allegedly lives inside every Christian, is too busy playing golf to protect them from atheist bloggers. Christians should be glad that Mr. Tee is on the job, protecting them from an evil Meerkat and Santa Claus. (Please see Ben Berwick’s blog, Meerkat Musings.)
I love that Tee has finally admitted why he refuses to take the time to spell my last name correctly. He’s too lazy to do so. Tee can write thousands of words about me, but he can’t spell my last name correctly.
We all know what is going on inside the mind of an atheist. But it is nice to have them make confessions once in a while. B.G. (Bruce Gerencser) has written a little confession that clears up any confusion. His very first line tells us everything we need to know about atheists:
Atheists of every stripe agree that all the gods of human religions are false; that these gods do not have magical, supernatural powers; that they do not answer prayer, heal the sick, or raise the dead. These gods are made and shaped by human hands and do not, as many religionists suggest, live beyond the space-time continuum.
The only thing true about this comment is that it describes exactly what the atheist believes and thinks. The Bible says the fool has said there is no god and this is not something that has suddenly appeared in the 20th or 21st century.
It has been going on since almost time began. B. G. is saying nothing new and after all these millenniums you would think the atheist would come up with something new and better. They don’t because they have nothing to offer anyone.
The first line in that quote doesn’t prove anything except that the atheist is not using fact, physical evidence, reality, or even truth to make their decision. They also use no authority either. They have just decided that is the way it is and then attack anyone brave enough to admit that they cannot do life alone.
Their statement that there is no God is not fact just what they wish it was. They hope for this because they have been deceived and do not want to think about the ramifications of their decision.
They also ignore all the evidence proving that God does exist. They are not enlightened but simply deceived. They do not have the truth ut gave it up for whatever false promise they have been given by evil.
Then they think they are winning because they are being successful in turning people away from God. How sad that is because they are aiding evil in its hatred against God and destroying people’s eternity and lives.
They mock those who hold onto their faiths and that is a sign of weakness, as most people who can’t, mock those who can. They are too weak to take the step of faith and live the life that Christ wants them to live so they do whatever they can to harm those who can.
The atheist may not realize it as they are blind to what is going on in their lives and who is pulling their strings. These people are too afraid to deal with reality so they deny the existence of evil as well.
Those denials leave them in a quandary as they now have no source for good and bad behavior. They have no standards to measure themselves or others to see if they are on the right path. Instead, they failed so they deny everything that would remind them of their failure.
Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of gods. While there may be a God that has not yet revealed itself to us, such a possibility is improbable. Most atheists are comfortable living their lives with no thought of God or religion.
This is another sign of weakness. They do not want to draw a line in the sand so they leave a little opening there just in case. What they are really saying is that the God who has revealed himself to everyone is not real and they are waiting for a god that does what they want.
In other words, they want to be in charge of their god and have it do what they say. We know they are not going to bow down to that god who may reveal himself eventually because they refuse to do it for the one who has revealed himself.
Of course they are comfortable living their lives that way. They get to make their own rules, make judgments, lie, sin, and do whatever they want because they reject the rules of the God who has revealed himself.
The atheist wants to be master of their own lives even though they are ruled by evil and that goal will never happen.
Many Christians believe that Christianity gives them a one-up morally on the rest of the world.
It goes without saying that we are morally superior to the atheist. Not because we have created our own moral system like the atheist has. But because we are courageous enough to admit that we cannot live morally without Jesus.
We recognize our true state and seek to change our lives through belief in Jesus and following his ways. Some are more successful than others. Those that refuse to do this mock those who can and have.
We also recognize that we cannot create our own moral state. That our human capacity is not great enough to accomplish that goal. We also recognize that we do not have the authority to create great moral codes.
Even those Christians who have tried to create a system they believe is right falls short of what God has created already. We know we cannot do better than God and even if we tried, there would still be people who claim it is wrong, inferior, exclusive, racist, sexist, and so on, then reject that human-created option to design their own.
It takes a lot of courage to live the Christian life and one has to be brave to do it. However, atheists have shown that they have neither characteristic as they cowardly leave the faith or reject it and join the unbelieving world.
They must think there is safety in numbers but they are wrong. They are not safe, it is just an illusion and denying reality only proves they are weak and not brave.
A religion need not be true for people to benefit from it.
While this is a true statement, that does not mean that all religions are false or fake. False religions exist for the same reason atheists exist. To deceive people into thinking they have been enlightened and know the truth.
Without one true religion, no false belief would exist nor would atheists. There would be nothing to reject or avoid nor would there be anything that people would need to be deceived about.
The best way to understand religious belief in general and Christianity in particular is to view both from a sociological and economic perspective.
This is not a true statement for it demands that people ignore all the truths about Christianity and look solely at the faith from a deceived standpoint. The best way to understand Christianity is to examine it with all of its characteristics intact using an open mind.
Evangelicalism is numerically in decline.
This is not news to the Christian. Not only did Jesus tell us this would take place but he also said that people love darkness over light. B. G. and other atheists are not proclaiming some phenomenon here or that they have the truth and are winning the battle against evil.
Christianity is not evil. It is the best thing that could happen to this world. we have a better way to live and treat others, we are not deceived and living a lie and we have promises to hold onto to help us meet the challenges that come with life.
The criticism hurled at Christians by B. G. and other atheists are without merit as they look at things through blind and deceived eyes. They deny the existence of the enemy and the work it does to successfully destroy believers like they were destroyed.
They cannot see the reality of life because they live in a state of denial not a state of illumination. That is why Christ came to earth and why his followers continue to cast that light.
We are not losing, it is just that sinful men do not love God enough to change and be brave enough to live the Christian life. We do not take B. G. seriously as he has said that when he was a preacher and following God, he was quite successful.
Yet, he denied and denies the very evidence for God that took place in his own life. If he was as successful and on fire for God as he claims, then he should be ashamed. He let evil destroy him so that success could not continue.
That is not something to be proud of.
I could write a series of posts on Tee’s lies and half-truths about atheism in general, and the infamous B.G. in particular. I won’t do so, however, because I have covered Tee’s objections to atheism and B.G. before. I might change my mind on this if readers are interested in me doing so. What say ye, dear heathens and false god worshipers?
Thanks, Mr. Tee, for the comedy bit. Keep it up. You are an awesome evangelist for the one true religion — atheism.
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.
A perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God created a perfect universe 6,023 years ago, inhabited by two perfect humans, Adam and Eve, and a plethora of perfect animals. We know all this because a perfect inspired, inerrant, and infallible religious text compiled over thousands of years says so. These things are true because the Bible says they are true. How do we know that what the Bible says is true? Because the Bible says so . . .
This perfect God also created angels, some of whom were fallen beings, creatures who hated and despised God, creatures whose sworn mission was to overthrow and destroy God’s creation. Have you ever wondered why God created fallen, sinful angels? Me too. If God is this all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful being, why did he create these angels to start with? This question will lurk behind everything I write in this post. If God is whom the Bible says he is, then WHY?
One of these fallen angels was a sexy, redheaded, left-handed being named Lucifer. Lucifer hated God and was determined to destroy Jehovah’s perfect creation. What better way to do so than to tempt Adam and Eve to break the rule God had given them: thou shalt not eat fruit off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And the Lord God commanded the man [Adam], saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Lucifer, a fallen archangel — a big shot in Heaven — decided to use a walking, talking snake — either by possessing the snake or using it as a ventriloquist dummy — to tempt earth’s first humans.
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
God is omniscient, so he knew that this would happen. God is omnipotent, so he had the power and ability to keep it from happening. And despite controlling everything, God did what, exactly? God had every choice at his disposal, yet he chose to do nothing. For those who dare to argue that Lucifer, Adam, and Eve had free will, and that’s why things happened the way they did, isn’t God ultimately responsible for everything? Isn’t God sovereign? God could have chosen NOT to create fallen angels or give Adam and Eve free will. God could have chosen not to plant the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the Garden of Eden. God had endless possibilities before him, yet he chose what’s recorded in Genesis 1-3 and the rest of God’s Word, the Bible. Think about this fact for a moment. What does it say about God’s reasoning skills?
Adam and Eve’s choice to eat fruit from a forbidden tree caused all the pain, evil, and suffering we see today. War, famine, and disease all trace back to Adam and Eve. Rape, sexual assault, murder, robbery, lying, and cheating, all Adam and Eve’s fault. Our world and our lives could be radically different if God had gotten up off the couch, shut off the TV, and stopped the events that took place in Genesis 1-3. Instead, he did nothing. Well, we can’t say “nothing” in a literal sense. God has spent the past 6,000+ years “bothered” by what we humans do. He even wrote a bestselling book, the Bible, to express how bothered he was by our “sinful” behavior.
Recently, an Evangelical man by the name of Richard left a comment on the post Dear Jesus. I responded to Richard here. Richard responded to my post via email. Here’s the exchange that took place between us:
Richard:
Richard here again, thank you for your response. I dont like labels, I follow Jesus Christ thats all. In response to you comments (humbly)
There are no low hanging fruits [people more easily persuaded by Christianity], you have to toil for each and every one of them.
Just because there is no answer now does not mean, there will never be. Remember understanding without words?, I think its in Isaiah.
God always sends Richards,Pauls and Peters, (murderers, cowards and fools). They understand forgiveness and restoration.
Maybe God did tell me to write you, maybe time has come for you to return and do what you do best. He is not finished with you. There is a time for everything. God bless you and your family even though you dont believe in him…yet. Take care.
Bruce:
If you want to interact with me, please comment on the post. I have no interest in interacting with you privately. You ignored my commenting guidelines. What does that say about you and your faith?
Go away, and find someone else to bother.
Richard:
Dear Bruce,
My apologies for not following your commenting guidelines. It was not intentional. I was using my mobile. Sorry for bothering you and I will not bother you again but I hope this tells you something about my faith, I am able to admit to making mistakes. God bless.
Richard is what I call a God-botherer. My friend Zoe had this to say about Richard:
Sorry to bother you, yet, is he? I don’t think so. The person who is bothered is Richard himself. He’s only following the story about a God who is bothered. And I can’t blame Him. The whole story is quite bothersome.
As always — okay 99.9 percent of the time 🙂 — Zoe is right.
The Bible is the written record of all the human behaviors that bother God. In the Old Testament alone, there are 613 God-given laws pertaining to human behavior. Dozens and dozens of laws are added to this list in the New Testament. God is bothered by how people cook, what they eat, and how they grow their crops. God is bothered by how people build their homes, what type of clothing they wear, and how they keep their hair. God is also bothered by how, when, where, and why people have sex. Taking the Bible as a whole, it’s clear that God spends every moment of every day being bothered by human behavior — behavior he created and could have made differently. If God didn’t want LGBTQ people to have sex, he could have changed their DNA in a way that would have eliminated the want, need, and desire to fuck. The same goes for heterosexuals. If God didn’t want humans to commit adultery or fornication, could he not have created them in such a way that they wouldn’t do so? With God, all things are possible, right? I heard countless preachers say that nothing is too hard for God. Were they lying?
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
Does nothing include the human behaviors that bother God? Without me [Jesus] you can’t do anything, the man, the myth, and the legend says. Did Jesus mean what he said, or must this verse be properly interpreted?
The Apostle Paul said: I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me (Philippians 4:13). Implication? Without Christ, we can’t do anything. Does that include human behaviors that bother God? Just taking the Word of God literally.
Paul also said: God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth . . . For in him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17: 24, 28). According to my Evangelical pastors and professors, it is God who gives us our breath; it is God who gives us the ability to live and move. Without God, we would all instantly die. Everything necessary to live comes from God. Peter said in 2 Peter 1:3 that Jesus [according as his divine power] hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness.ALL things. Doesn’t it stand to reason, then, that every human behavior comes from God; that God is bothered by behaviors he gave us?
If God didn’t want to be bothered by human behavior, he could have created us differently. If anyone is to blame for how things are, God is. Paul, the first Calvinist, says in Romans 9 that God is the potter and we are the clay; that God alone determines who will and won’t be saved. By extension, does this not mean that God is in control of e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g?
Richard, along with his fellow God-botherers, believe the Bible is a supernatural book written by a supernatural God; that its words are straight from God’s mouth to their ears; that every word is to be practiced, enforced, and believed. Thus, whatever bothers God bothers the Richards of the world. One need only pay attention to the current culture wars to see that Evangelicals are bothered by all sorts of human behaviors. And that means if they are bothered, God is bothered. Isn’t it interesting that God is bothered by the same human behaviors as Evangelicals? Canny how the mind of God and the minds of Evangelicals always agree. Why this would almost make you think humans created God and wrote the Bible.
I grew up in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. IFB churches and pastors are bothered by just about every human behavior you can think of. Here’s a list of some of the behaviors I heard condemned by IFB preachers (and later condemned myself):
Watching MTV
Watching HBO
Listening to secular radio
Listening to contemporary Christian music
Listening to rock and roll music
listening to country music
Long hair on men
Short skirts on women
Pants on women
Shorts on women
Wearing wire-rimmed glasses
Men having facial hair
Smoking
Drinking alcohol
Going to the movie theater
Voting Democratic
Attending a liberal Christian college
Female preaching
Effeminate male preachers
Effeminate men
Hen-pecked men
Haughty women
Church members who disagree with the pastor
Premarital sex
Extramarital sex
Getting an abortion
Practicing Christmas/Halloween/Easter
Reading any Bible translation but the KJV
Dancing
Card Playing
Attending non-IFB churches
Shall I go on? The list of human behaviors that bother IFB preachers is as vast as the human mind. Every church and every pastor have their own list of human behaviors that bother them. While many Christians call such extremism legalism, isn’t it a matter of degree? Don’t all Christians have at least a mental list of human behaviors that bother them; that they believe are contrary to the Bible’s teachings? Isn’t that what sin is: human behaviors that bother God? And shouldn’t Christians love what God loves and hate what God hates? No shellfish for you, Richard.
Let me conclude this post with a short Disney video that perfectly illustrates the point I am trying to make in this post.
The Bible says that Christians have the mind of Christ [God]. Winnie the Pooh, then, is the God of the Bible, and representative of millions and millions of Evangelical Christians. Oh, bother . . .
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.
I’m sixty-five years old, and there has never been a moment when you were not in my life.
Mom and Dad talked about you before I was born, deciding to have me baptized by an Episcopal priest. They wanted me to grow up with good morals and love you, so they decided putting water on my forehead and having a priest recite religious words over me was the way to ensure my moral Christian future.
A few weeks after my birth, Mom and Dad gathered with family members to have me baptized. I was later told it was quite an affair, but I don’t remember anything about the day. Years later, I found my baptismal certificate. Signed by the priest, it declared I was a Christian.
Jesus, how could I have been a Christian at age four weeks? How did putting water on my head make me a follower of you? I don’t understand, but according to the certificate, I was now part of my tribe’s religion: Protestant Christianity.
I turned five in 1962. Mom and Dad decided to move 2,300 miles to San Diego, California, believing that success and prosperity awaited them.
After getting settled, Mom and Dad said we need to find a new church to attend. Their shopping took them to a growing Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation, Scott Memorial Baptist Church, pastored by Tim LaHaye. It was here that I learned that my tribe had a new religion: Fundamentalist Baptist Christianity.
I quickly learned that our previous religion worshiped a false God, and my baptism didn’t make me a Christian at all. If I wanted to be a True Christian®, I had to come forward to the front of the church, kneel at the altar, and pray a certain prayer. If I did these things, I would then be a Christian — forever. And so I did. This sure pleased Mom and Dad.
Later, I was baptized again, but the preacher didn’t sprinkle water on my forehead. That would not do, I was told. True Baptism® required me to be submerged in a tank of water. And so, one Sunday, I joined a line of people waiting to be baptized. I was excited, yet scared. Soon, it came time for me to be dunked. The preacher put his left hand behind my head and raised his right hand towards Heaven. He asked, “Bruce, do you confess before God and man that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior?” With a halting child’s voice, I replied, “Yes.” And with that, the preacher, with a hanky in his right hand, put his hand over my nose, dunked me in the water, and quickly lifted me up. I heard both the preacher and the congregation say, “Amen!”
Jesus, the Bible says that the angels in Heaven rejoice when a sinner gets saved. Do you remember the day I got saved? Do you remember hearing the angels in Heaven say, “Praise to the Lamb that was slain! Bruce Gerencser is now a child of God. Glory be, another soul snatched from the hands of Satan?”
After a few years in California, Mom and Dad discovered that there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and our family was just as poor in the Golden State as they were in dreary, flat rural northwest Ohio. And so we moved, a process that happened over and over to me throughout the next decade — eight different schools.
As I became more aware and observant of my environment, I noticed that Mom and Dad had changed. Mom, in particular, was quite animated and agitated over American social unrest and the war in Vietnam. Mom and Dad took us to a new church, First Baptist Church in Bryan, Ohio — an IFB church pastored by Jack Bennett. We attended church twice on Sunday and Wednesday evening.
I attended Bryan schools for two years. Not long after I started fourth grade, Mom and Dad decided it was time to move yet again. This time, we moved to a brand-new tri-level home on Route 30 outside of Lima, Ohio. It was there that I started playing basketball and baseball — sports I would continue to play competitively for the next twenty years. It was also there that I began to see that something was very wrong with Mom. At the time, I didn’t understand what was going on with her. All I knew is that she could be “Mom” one day and a raging lunatic the next.
I was told by my pastors, Jesus, that you know and see everything. Just in case you were busy one day and missed what went on or were on vacation, let me share a few stories about what happened while we lived in Lima.
One night, Mom was upstairs, and I heard her screaming. She was having one of her “fits.” I decided to see if there was anything I could do to help her — that’s what the oldest child does. As I walked towards Mom’s bedroom, I saw her grabbing shoes and other things and violently throwing them down the hallway. This was the first time I remember being afraid . . .
One day, I got off the school bus and quickly ran to our home. I always had to be the first one in the door. As I walked into the kitchen, I noticed that Mom was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. She had slit her wrists. I quickly ran to the next-door neighbor’s house and asked her to help. She summoned an ambulance, and Mom’s life was saved.
Mom would try again, and again to kill herself: slitting her wrists, overdosing on medication, driving in front of a truck. At the age of fifty-four, she succeeded. One Sunday morning, Mom went into the bathroom, pointed a Ruger .357 at her heart, and pulled the trigger. She quickly slumped to the floor and was dead in minutes. Yet, she never stopped believing in you, Jesus. No matter what happened, Mom held on to her tribe’s God.
Halfway through my fifth-grade year, Mom and Dad moved to Farmer, Ohio. I attended Farmer Elementary School for the fifth and sixth grades. One day, I was home from school sick, and Mom’s brother-in-law stopped by. He didn’t know I was in my bedroom. After he left, Mom came to my room crying, saying, “I have been raped. I need you to call the police.” I was twelve. Do you remember this day, Jesus? Where were you? I thought you were all-powerful? Why didn’t you do anything?
From Farmer, we moved to Deshler, Ohio for my seventh-grade year of school. Then Mom and Dad moved us to Findlay, Ohio. By then, my parent’s marriage was in shambles. Dad never seemed to be home, and Mom continued to have wild, manic mood swings. Shortly before the end of ninth grade, Dad matter-of-factly informed me that they were getting a divorce. “We don’t love each other anymore,” Dad said. And with that, he turned and walked away, leaving me to wallow in my pain. That’s how Dad always treated me. I can’t remember a time when he embraced me or said, “I love you.” I would learn years later that “Dad” was not my biological father. I wonder, Jesus, was this why he kept me at arm’s length emotionally?
After moving to Findlay, Mom and Dad joined Trinity Baptist Church — a fast-growing IFB congregation pastored by Gene Millioni. After Mom and Dad divorced, they stopped attending church. Both of them quickly remarried. Dad married a nineteen-year-old girl with a baby, and Mom married her first cousin — a recent prison parolee. So much upheaval and turmoil, Jesus. Where were you when all of this was going on? I know, I know, you were there in spirit.
Mom and Dad may have stopped going to church, but I didn’t. By then, I had a lot of friends and started dating, so there was no way I would miss church. Besides, attending church got me away from home, a place where Dad’s new and improved wife made it clear I wasn’t welcome.
One fall weeknight, I sat in church with my friends listening to Evangelist Al Lacy. I was fifteen. As is the custom in IFB churches, Lacy prayed at the end of his sermon, asking, “with every head bowed, and every eye closed, is there anyone here who is not saved and would like me to pray for them?” I had been feeling under “conviction” during the sermon. I thought, “maybe I’m not saved?” So, I raised my hand. Lacy prayed for those of us who had raised our hands and then had everyone stand. As the congregation sang Just as I am, Lacy said, “if you raised your hand, I want you to step out of your seat and come to the altar. Someone will meet you there and show you how you can know Jesus as your Lord and Savior.” Much to the surprise of my friends, I haltingly stepped out from my seat and walked to the front. I was met by Ray Salisbury — a church deacon. Ray had me kneel as he took me through a set of Bible verses called the Roman’s Road. After quizzing me on what I had read, Ray asked me if I wanted to be saved. I said, “yes,” and then Ray said, “pray this prayer after me: Dear Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner, and I know you died on the cross for my sins. Right now, I ask you to forgive me of my sins and come into my heart and save me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” After I prayed the prayer, Ray said, “AMEN!” “Did you really believe what you prayed?” I replied, “yes.” “Then you are now a child of God, a born-again Christian.”
The next Sunday, I was baptized, and the Sunday after that, I went forward again, letting the church know that you, Jesus, were calling me to preach. I was all in after that. For the next thirty-five years, Jesus, I lived and breathed you. You were my life, the sum of my existence.
At the age of nineteen, I enrolled in classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. It was here I received training to become a proper IFB pastor, and it was here I met the love of my life, a beautiful dark-haired preacher’s daughter named Polly. We married during the summer between our sophomore and junior years. We were so excited about our new life, thrilled to be preparing to work in God’s vineyard. We planned to graduate, go to a small community to start a new IFB church, buy a white two-story house with a white picket fence, and have two children: Jason and Bethany, and live happily ever after. However, Jesus, you had different plans for us. Do you remember what happened to us? Surely you do, right? Friends and teachers told us that you were testing us! Polly was six months pregnant by early spring, and I was laid off from my machine shop job. We were destitute, yet, the college dean told us, “Jesus wants you to trust him and stay in college.” No offer of financial help was forthcoming, and we finally had to move out of our apartment. With my tail between my legs, I packed up our meager belongings and returned to Bryan, Ohio. I had failed your test, Jesus. I still remember what one of my friends told me, “If you leave now, God will NEVER use you!”
What did he know, right? After moving, I quickly secured secular employment and began working at a local IFB church. For the next twenty-five years, I pastored Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Jesus, you were my constant companion, my lover, friend, and confidante. I sure loved you, and I believed you loved me too. We were BFFs, right? Sometimes, I wondered if you really loved me as much as I loved you. Our love affair was virtual in nature. We never met face-to-face, but I believed in my heart of hearts you were the very reason for my existence. When I doubted this, I attributed my doubts to Satan or me not praying hard enough or reading the Bible enough. I never thought for one moment, Jesus, that you might be a figment of my imagination, a lie taught to me by my parents and pastors. I was a true believer. That is, until I wasn’t.
At age fifty, I finally realized, Jesus, that you were a myth, the main character of a 2,000-year-old fictional story. I finally concluded that all those times when I wondered where you were, were in fact, true. I couldn’t find you because you were dead. You had died almost 2,000 years before. The Bible told me about your death, but I really believed that you were resurrected from the dead. I feel so silly now. Dead people don’t come back to life. Your resurrection from the dead was just a campfire story, and I had foolishly believed it. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. Everyone I knew believed the same story. All of us believed that the miracles attributed to you, Jesus, really happened; that you were a virgin-born God-man; that you ascended to Heaven to prepare a mansion for us to live in after we die.
It all seems so silly now, Jesus, but I really did believe in you. Fifty years, Jesus. The prime of my life, I gave to you, only to find out that you were a lie. Yet, here I am today, and you are still “with” me. My parents, pastors, and professors did a good job of indoctrinating me. You are very much “real” to me, even though you lie buried somewhere on a Judean hillside. Try as I might, I can’t get you out of my mind. I have come to accept that you will never leave me.
You should know, Jesus — well, you can’t know, you are dead — that I spend my days helping people get away from you. What did you say, Jesus? I can’t hear you. I can hear the voices of Christians condemning me as a heretic, blasphemer, and hater of God. I can hear them praying for my death or threatening me with eternal damnation in the Lake of Fire. Their voices are loud and clear, but your voice, Jesus? Silence.
Always silent, Jesus. Why is that?
If you ever want to talk to me, you know where I live. Show up at my door, Jesus, and that will be a miracle I can believe in. Better yet, if you can help the Cincinnati Bengals win the Super Bowl, that would be awesome!
If you can’t help my football team win a few games, Jesus, what good are you? It’s not like I am asking you to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or put an end to violence and war. That would require you to give a shit, Jesus, and if there’s one thing I have learned over the past sixty-five years, it is this: you don’t give a shit about what happens on earth. We, humans, are on our own, and that’s fine with me.
A Sinner Saved by Reason,
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.
Over the weekend, an Australian Evangelical man by the name of Richard left the following comment on the post titled Dear Jesus. My response is indented and italicized.
I stumbled on to your website and man, I would have lost my faith ten times over!!.
What did you actually read on this site? Did you break anything when you stumbled? The Dear Jesus post primarily deals with the problem of evil and suffering, told from an intimate, personal perspective. If you want to understand my story in its entirety, please read the posts on the WHY? page.
I appreciate your recognition of the fact that I had a difficult and traumatic upbringing. One of your fellow Christian apologists, Mike Kuvakos, took a different approach, choosing instead to tell me, “get over it.”
That said, the primary reasons for my deconversion are intellectual, not emotional. Despite all the trauma mentioned in the Dear Jesus post, I remained a committed follower of Jesus Christian until age fifty. If past trauma was going to derail my faith, this would have happened years ago. Instead, I pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years, leaving the ministry in 2005, and leaving Christianity in 2008.
If asked to give the primary reasons I left Christianity, I typically say:
1) I no longer believed the Bible was inerrant and infallible
2) I no longer believed the central claims of Christianity were true
3) Christianity no longer made sense to me
Secondarily, I concluded that Christianity had no persuasive arguments for:
1) The problem of evil
2) The problem of suffering
3) The hiddenness of God
I lost my faith for many years (for lesser things) suffered violence and poverty, had nothing, lost everything. I was bitter with God for his failures , the hypocrisy of the pastors, the immorality of church leaders, the molesters and the thieves, but now I believe again. He reached out to me and brought me back.
I get it, God/Jesus/Christianity works for you. You find meaning, purpose, and direction in your faith. I, however, find the opposite. My life is better in every way post-Jesus. I have learned that I don’t need God/Jesus/faith to have meaning and purpose in my life. A good life is possible without Jesus. I humbly suggest you give it a try.
You see, we cannot run away, we will eventually go back, there is nothing else in this world that is better than Him, no matter how we see and rationalize the failures.
Running away implies that I am trying to avoid something — I’m not. You seem to think I am wrongly rationalizing what I consider faults and failures within the structure of Christianity. However, I have honestly and opening weighed Christianity in the balance and found it wanting. Do you think it was easy for me to walk away from Christianity; to walk away from the ministry; to walk away from that which I held precious and dear for fifty years? I can tell you this: divorcing Jesus was painful and traumatic — even to this day. Yet, after carefully studying and investigating the central claims of Christianity, I had no choice but to say that I no longer believed. You see, truth matters to me. I couldn’t go on believing things that I knew were lies.
I know he will call you back, you don’t have to go, He will come. As you, you will believe when He comes, I am sure he will. You are a man of truth and God will honour you.
Richard, how do you know your peculiar version of God will call me back to himself? Has God told you this? Or do you just “hope” God will reclaim me? I hope for all sorts of things: the Reds winning the World Series, the Bengals winning the Super Bowl, me winning $1,000,000 in a vax-a-million lotto, my unrelenting pain to miraculously disappear. I can hope for these things to happen, but facts, reason, logic, and probabilities tell me that there is little chance that any of these “hopes” will occur in 2021-2022. I didn’t say “no chance.” Our family has nine entries left in a vax-a-million lotto. Maybe, just maybe, one of us will hear, “winner, winner, chicken dinner.”
I “could” become a Christian again. Perhaps, my conclusions about God, Christianity, and the Bible will be overthrown by overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, thirteen years in, no Christian has provided such evidence to me, yourself included. Thousands of Christian zealots have tried to win me back to Jesus, without success. Thus, I highly doubt that sufficient evidence is forthcoming, and I am sure I will remain an atheist until I die. And then? I will be a dead atheist. 🙂
Further, I could be a reprobate or an apostate — someone who has crossed the line of no return (Romans 1). Many Christian apologists believe there is no hope for me, that I have a sinful, darkened heart and have done despite unto the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:29). My advice to you is that you focus on low-hanging fruit — people more likely to buy what you are selling. I am not such a person.
It’s possible that you believe that God is letting me wander for a time, and someday he will draw me back to himself. Sure, that’s possible, I suppose. However, I don’t believe God exists. If, by chance, I am wrong, then God, the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit know exactly where I live. This three-headed supernatural Marvel superhero can stop by my house, email me, or send me a text. Why has it not done so? Instead of dealing with me directly, God sends the Richards of the world — thousands of them. Why is that? Why can’t God speak for himself?
Saved by Reason,
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.
No matter how many times I tell people that I am not a Christian, I have no interest in Christianity, and there is a less-than-zero chance that I will return to Christianity, some Evangelicals remain convinced that I am either a backslidden Christian or I harbor deep in my heart of hearts (wherever the hell that is) the desire to return to Christianity. Dealing with such people remains one of my biggest frustrations, mainly because they refuse to hear what I am saying and accept the telling of my story at face value.
Several years ago, one Evangelical man said that he just knew that I was still a Christian because I capitalized the words God and Bible in my writing. Other Evangelicals read my writing and see in it a man who still wants to believe in God and reclaim his faith. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what they think they see. I told one man that he misunderstood how and why I write. My use of Evangelical verbiage and argumentation often leads people to think I am still a Christian, when, in fact, all I am doing is using language that readers, both current and former Evangelicals, are familiar with. I have found that this approach is quite effective in reaching Evangelicals where they are. My use of common Evangelical words reflects not only my long, deep immersion in that culture, but also my desire to engage Evangelicals on their own turf. The fact that I mention particular Evangelical beliefs should not be construed by anyone as me wanting to return to Christianity. I don’t.
Some Evangelicals take a psychotherapy approach, divining from my writing that I have some sort of deeply hidden desire to still be a Christian. I know that many Evangelicals think they have the “supernatural” gift of discernment, but I am here to tell them, as I once heard an old-time preacher say, that their discerner is broke. When I mention that I can understand how someone might come to believe a deistic sort of God created the universe, Evangelicals read into it that I have some sort of longing to believe in God. I don’t. All I am saying is that I understand how someone might come to a different conclusion from mine.
I am not sure what more I can do to help Evangelicals understand that I am the proverbial horse who has left the barn — I ain’t coming back. Perhaps I concern myself too much with obtuse Evangelicals who refuse to accept things as they are. I get it. Bruce Gerencser returning to the fold would be a big story, and the Christians involved in my reclamation would be rewarded and praised for bringing such a hard case back to God. However, this is never going to happen. Even if I were inclined to reconsider some sort of religious belief, it most certainly would not be Evangelical Christianity. That ship sailed and fell off the end of the earth. Once free of the cult, why would I ever want to return?
When Christians share their conversion stories, I accept what they say at face value. I don’t believe, for a moment, that a God “saved” them or that they were “sinners” in need of “saving,” but I do accept that their stories are, to them, real and meaningful. I am not an atheist evangelist out to convert Evangelicals to atheism. In the thirteen years since I deconverted, I have, not one time, attempted to turn a Christian into an atheist. I have, however, engaged and talked with hundreds of Evangelicals who have questions and doubts about Christianity. I try to give them the facts their pastors often hide from them out of fear that, if they told the truth about the Bible, the pews would empty overnight. When asked, I share my story, much like Christians do during testimony time at their church. I am just one man with a story to tell. That my story resonates with thousands of people is not my fault. Perhaps Evangelical church leaders should take a close look at their beliefs and practices and how these things are causing people to abandon their churches, and, in many cases, their faith.
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.
Yesterday, a Christian psychologist named Mike Kuvakos left the following comment on the post Dear Jesus. My response is indented and italicized.
Couple of questions arise. You didn’t mention whether you believe in God, you know, as an entity in himself and if not, why?
I have been writing for this blog iteration since December 2014 — 4,000+ posts (3.5 million words). You read all of two posts before leaving this comment. Had you bothered to click on the WHY? page, you might have learned a bit (okay, a lot) more about me. Instead, you read two posts.
I was in the Christian church for fifty years. I spent twenty-five years pastoring Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. So, yes, I believed in God, specifically the Christian deity.
I’m your age and maturity does make you realize in the gifts of plants, trees, miraculous medicines developed from ecology that some kind of supreme being has a hand in the cycles in life. Or do you think these things just happen. I don’t think I could make a donation from that kind of viewpoint.
My age (an objective statement) and maturity (a subjective statement) have led me to far different conclusions about the universe, our planet, and our biological world from yours. I put my “faith” in science, not a fallible, contradictory ancient religious text. I am no scientist, and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night, but I trust the explanations for our world given by trained experts in the various scientific fields. In other words, I know what I don’t know. Unfortunately, religion often makes people think they are “experts,” when, in fact, they are not.
Science tells how our world began — no God needed. What happened before the Big Bang no one knows. Asserting that a God who exists outside of time and space created everything is not supported by the current understanding of the universe. Maybe there is some sort of divine creator, but we don’t know. You don’t know, and neither do I. So, we base our understanding of the universe on what evidence we do have. If you have evidence for the claim that your peculiar God created everything, please provide it. Quoting the Bible is not evidence.
Of course, things “just happen.” We are surrounded by randomness. Much of our lives are governed by chance and luck. That said, I suspect you mean something different by “just happen.” Please clarify.
You are a Christian, so you believe that “some kind of supreme being” created everything. One might argue that a deistic God of some sort created everything, but I have yet to see persuasive evidence for the claim that this creator God is the God of the Christian Bible.
As far as donating, please, please, please donate. My family is starving, and I desperately need donations from people who show no interest in my writing. (That’s sarcasm, by the way.) Feel free to donate, or not. Whether you donate will not affect the content of my writing.
Also, I’m interested in reading some of your site’s content (I AM a Christian).
Please read Curiosity, A Missing Evangelical Trait. Reading only two posts tells me that you aren’t really that interested. And I AM an atheist. Not sure why you felt the need to capitalize “am.” Emphasis noted.
The biggest disagreement is that you really don’t provide a reason for your new found disbelief. I assume it’s all-the-above. I’m also a psychologist by trade and can tell you – that’s the dumbest reason in not believing in anything. You’ve had a tough time growing up. Join the list, friend.
Actually, I have provided numerous reasons for why I am an atheist. Again, please read the WHY? page. Seek, and ye shall find.
Newfound disbelief? Uh, I deconverted in November 2008 — almost thirteen years ago. Because of your laziness, you failed to learn anything about me. Had you bothered to investigate, you would never have said that the reason for my deconversion was “all of the above.” Do your homework, and then we will talk.
Thank you for your passive-aggressive comment: “you’ve had a tough time growing up. Join the list, friend.” In other words, “get over it.” Evidently, you missed the class lecture on empathy and understanding. You, my friend, are an asshole.
And as far as the Bengals are concerned, I’ve been a sports psychologist for many years and I can tell you with complete assuredness that there are several teams in sports who purposely lose (until the odds for these athletic teams get odds of 500 to 1 against their winning a Super Bowl in Vegas). Their owners acquire collegiate players who are notorious for willingly selling out their performances to wealthy owners like Robert Kraft of the Patriot’s who can buy off these cheating players and can make big extra money in betting in Las Vegas. You think these multi-million dollar salaries come from fans and TV? Look-up in the stands. You see anyone there totaling the 200-500 million dollar contracts? When they get three or four cornerbacks willing to make it look like they’re slipping and sliding while covering the opposition’s receivers the games are pretty well lost, wouldn’t you say? In the meantime – owners put down money bets you yourself couldn’t imagine. Or do you think that a genius like Joe Namath could really give a guarantee his team would win the Super Bowl years ago. There is a lot more involved in this than I told you but I don’t have the time.
For readers who may not understand what this commenter is saying, he is responding to me saying this in the Dear Jesus post:
“Always silent, Jesus. Why is that?
If you ever want to talk to me, you know where I live. Show up at my door, Jesus, and that will be a miracle I can believe in. Better yet, if you can help the Cincinnati Bengals win their last six games, well, I just might rethink your existence. Not going to happen, I know. The Bengals are going to bungle their way to an 0-16 record.
If you can’t help my football team win a few games, Jesus, what good are you? It’s not like I am asking you to feed the hungry, heal the sick, or put an end to violence and war. That would require you to give a shit, Jesus, and if there’s one thing I have learned over the past sixty-two years, it is this: you don’t give a shit about what happens on earth. We humans are on our own, and that’s fine with me.”
Why Kuvakos decided to educate me about American football, I have no idea. Not that I know anything about the subject, right? Sure glad Kuvakos stopped by to “educate” me.
God-Bless
Ah yes, always the “God bless” benediction.
And here’s mine . . .
A Sinner Saved by Reason,
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.
Over the years as we have followed God’s call to work with Christian pastors in our limited fashion, we have come across a lot of different people. Many of those people are like Mr. Bruce Gerencser a deconverted Christian or former pastor who used to believe the Bible (Or however he describes himself).
We are sad that he is sick but that is life and we all suffer at one point in time or another. We have known Mr. Gerencer for many years and never see eye to eye like the owner of Muskrat Musing.
The impression we got from reading his content, is that he thinks his eyes were opened to the truth and that he received the truth, which is why he downgraded the Bible and left his pastorate, career, and calling.
There is a lot of content in his article that should be refuted and we will bypass the Dr. Ehrman quotes for this article. The gist of the content is that Mr. Gerenscer thinks he has the truth, and all the fundamentalists and Christians he hates do not.
That is impossible as Jesus said he was the truth and he did not say the Bible was in error or had any errors in it. He told s if things were not true, he would have told us and we have received no divine scripture that corrects the biblical content.
….
At best, he points to works written by secular authors or scientists and claims that they have the truth over God’s writers. But how can that be when Jesus said the Christian is to be the light unto a dark world.
It is not the secular world or secular science that has the truth. If they did, Jesus would not have been needed nor would we need him to die on the cross. We would go to the person leading those secular people instead.
….
He is very misguided and deceived as it is not the Christian, their faith, the Bible, or Jesus that are harming those people who refuse to repent of their sins. The person harming those people is the one who traps them in those sinful activities and fights to keep them from being converted-the devil.
The Christian is showing the love when they try to rescue those unbelievers from that trap while Mr. Gerenscer and people like him are showing their hatred towards those people by helping evil keep its hold on them.
….
Mr. Gerenscer, and people like him, listened to those who do not believe over God. The people who infect young minds with falsehoods are those who stop believing God and accept the words of unbelievers who were not at the event they are trashing.
….
Mr. Gerenscer moves on to social issues and claims there are proof texts prohibiting certain preferences etc. Those are not proof texts but God’s communication on how he feels about certain things.
Yes, many believers get the verses wrong and apply them in a wrong fashion but that is due more to immaturity and bad instruction. Not to errors in the Bible. If God did not say those words, then we do not have God’s view of those social activities or preferences.
In other words, Mr. Gerenscer and others like him, want to live life their way and be god declaring what is right or wrong, good or evil, moral or immoral. They do not want to humble themselves and accept God as their God and live by his rules.
….
You cannot solve problems if you are going to leave the answers at home or in your car but then Mr. Gerenscer does not want to solve problems, especially God’s way. He wants people to remain in their sins because he has determined that God and his word are wrong (according to his limited thinking).
If people are going to trash me publicly, I wish they would at least spell my last name correctly. How hard can it be, right? GERENCSER.
I “love” Tee’s passive-aggressive comment about me being sick. What Tee is saying is this: everyone is sick now and again. Quit talking about it, wimp. As you shall see in a moment, Tee thinks I am “weak.” Besides, what does the fact that I suffer from gastroparesis, fibromyalgia, and osteoarthritis have anything to do with inerrancy? Of course, Tee said very little about the subject of my post: the inerrancy of the Bible. Instead, he went after me as a person. Tee can’t square my story with his theology or personal experiences, so he attacks my character instead. Sadly, this is common behavior by Christian Fundamentalists. Instead of critiquing my writing, they zero in what they believe are character flaws/failures. Tis the price paid for being a public figure, I suppose. Such behavior only drives people farther away from Christianity. One of the reasons I publish the stuff people say about me is that it shows readers the ugly underbelly of Evangelical Christianity. And, it’s fun.
Tee wasn’t done with me. Today, he wrote post titled, We Call Them Quitters. While Tee used plural pronouns in the article’s title, the body of the text reveals that the title should have been, I Call Bruce Gerencser a Quitter. The post is excerpted below. My response is indented and italicized.
In our last article, we wrote about one man who turned away from Christ and left his faith. He actually represents all the people who have done the exact same thing since Christ was here.
Tee believes in original sin and the substitutionary death of Jesus. Simply put, when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden 6,023 years ago, humanity sinned. We had no choice in the matter. We don’t become sinners — we are sinners. Of course, since Tee believes we are created in the image of God, that means that God either gave us our sin natures, or God himself is a sinner, and we are just like Daddy.
When the virgin-born, sinless son of God, Jesus, was executed on a Roman cross, he died to provide atonement for human sin. We deserved to be executed (why? Jesus is one who did what he did, not me) but Jesus died in our place. His Father hates sin and those who do it. If the All-Father (tell me you get the reference) had his way (you mean God can’t have his way?) all of us would end up in Hell for eternity. Jesus, the mediator between God and man, stood between humanity and his angry Father, dying on the cross on our behalf (unless you are a Calvinist — then Jesus just died for the elect. Non-elect need not apply). Even today, Jesus sits at the right hand of his Father, interceding on our behalf. This makes me think that Jesus’ Father needs to take anger management classes. Blaming billions of humans for what Adam and Eve did doesn’t seem just or fair. Regardless, that’s the plan the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit — the “we are not three gods, just one” deity — cooked up from before the foundation of the world.
Much like Adam and Eve and Jesus, I too represent a group of people: those who turned away from Jesus Christ and Christianity. I, Bruce, Gerencser, am the substitutionary Christian-turned-unbeliever. Not just Christians who are now atheists or agnostics, ALL Christians-turned-unbelievers. Awesome, right?
We are not singling him out as he just parrots the same words all the rest of the former Christians say and nothing is new coming out of his mouth or from his keyboard.
Hell, David, at least be honest. You most certainly are singling me out.
The Bible talks about running the race, fighting the good fight, and keep on doing it till the end. But Mr. Generscer and the people like him, have decided that they know better than God and quit the race, etc.
We do not support their moves, call them intelligent, or think they have something to offer. Instead, we call them quitters. They could not handle the fight, strive to the end, and did not take the right precautions to protect their faith.
Generscer? That’s a new one.
According to Tee, I am a quitter. Instead of running the race set before me, wearing a faith condom, and persevering to the end, I just up and quit. Instead of trying to understand the complexities of my story, Tee reduces my life to that of a quitter.
I attended Midwestern Baptist College, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) institution, in the 1970s. Dr. Tom Malone (who had a doctorate from an accredited university, Wayne State University), president of Midwestern and pastor of a nearby megachurch, Emmanuel Baptist Church, frequently railed against quitters in his sermons. Quitting was viewed as a cardinal sin, a sign of weakness. I heard this theme repeated over and over again at IFB Bible conferences and pastor’s meetings. Good Christians never quit. The fact that my six-month pregnant wife and I, recently unemployed, left Midwestern after three years was proof to Malone, our professors, and classmates that we were weak. I vividly remember a close friend of mine telling me as we were packing up the U-Haul to leave, “If you quit, God will NEVER use you.”
Seven years later, Malone was preaching at a Bible conference at the Newark Baptist Temple in Newark, Ohio. The church was pastored at the time by Polly’s uncle, James Dennis. Her father, Lee, was the church’s assistant pastor. At the time, I was pastoring Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio. In the mid-80s, the church grew quickly, reaching 200 in attendance — quite a feat for a country church. Hundreds of people were saved through my preaching. By all accounts, I was an up-and-coming pastor.
My father-in-law told Malone about my exploits for Jesus. Seeing that I was sitting in the pews, Malone called me out by name and then said, “If Bruce had stayed any longer at Midwestern, we would have ruined him.” Everyone laughed. I thought, “I wonder what those people who called me a quitter think now?”
I have quit all sorts of things over the years. I suspect most of us have done the same. No big deal, right? Tee, however, is using the word “quitter” as a slur. People who “quit” Christianity are weak, unlike Mr. Tee, the True Christian®.
When you look at their websites, there is a common theme to them. We won’t quote from Mr. Gerenscer’s site, we will just link to his commenting rules page as that is where you find this common element found among all those who have left the faith.
Now we are to one of the reasons Tee’s feathers are ruffled, why he has written two posts about me in recent days. Tee doesn’t like the commenting rules for this site. He doesn’t like that I don’t let him and other Evangelical zealots publicly masturbate (it’s a metaphor, David)) in the comment section. Tee wants the right to whip out his Bible Dick whenever he wants on this site. Me telling him to put it away, zip up his pants, and move on down the road is an affront to all that is holy and true.
The commenting policy was crafted due to me spending the past thirteen years dealing with the David Tees of the world. For those who have not read the comment policy, here’s what it says:
— begin comment policy —
All commenters are expected to use a functioning email address. The use of a fake or non-functioning email address will result in your comment being deleted.
Pseudonyms are permitted. Please use one, and only one, pseudonym when commenting on this blog. People using more than one will have their comments deleted.
All first-time comments and comments with more than one HTML link are moderated. Depending on the time of day, It might take hours for me to approve your comment.
Before commenting, please read the ABOUT page to acquaint yourself with my background. You might also want to read the Dear Evangelical page and the WHY page
The following type of comments will not be approved:
Preachy/sermonizing comment
Bible verse-quoting comment
Evangelizing comment
I am praying for you comment
You are going to hell comment
You never were saved comment
You never were a Christian comment
Any comment that is a personal attack on me personally, my family, or the readers of this blog
Any comment that is not on point with what the post is about
Any comment that denigrates abuse victims
I write about issues that might not be child-friendly. Please be aware of this. I also use profanity from time to time, and I allow the use of profanity in the comment section.
The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser is not a democracy where visitors have a right to say whatever they want. This is my personal blog and I reserve the right to approve or disapprove any comment. When a comment or a commenter is abusive towards the community of people who read this blog, I reserve the right to ban the commenter.
If you can be respectful, decent, and thoughtful, your comment will always be approved. Unfortunately, there are many people — Evangelical/Fundamentalist/IFB/Conservative Catholic Christians in particular — who have a hard time playing well with others. Using a passive-aggressive approach in the comment section will not be tolerated and will result in a permanent ban.
This blog is also not a place for hardcore atheists to preach the gospel of atheism. While I am an atheist, some of the people who read this blog are not. Frank, honest, open, and passionate discussion about religion, Christianity, and Evangelicalism is encouraged and welcome. However, I do expect atheists not to attack, badger, or denigrate people who still believe in God. If you are respectful, decent, and thoughtful, you will be fine.
Generally, I will post one comment from a preachy, Bible-quoting, evangelizing Evangelical. If this describes you, please make sure you say all you need to say in your comment. By all means, say whatever it is you think “God” is leading you to say, but understand that no further comments will be approved once you have said your piece.
My writing is direct and pointed, and so is my response to comments. Please do not confuse my directness and pointedness with me attacking you or your religion. This is a grown-up blog, so cries that I offended you or “attacked” your religion will fall on deaf ears.
If you can play by these rules, I hope you will become a part of our community and join the discussion.
If you have further questions about the commenting policy, please use the contact form to email me.
— end of comment policy —
I determined long ago that my target group was Christians (primarily Evangelicals) who had questions or doubts about their faith and people who had already left Christianity. This blog is for them, not Evangelical apologists. That said, EVERY Evangelical commenter is given one opportunity to say whatever it is they believe God is laying upon their heart. If they show that they can play well with others, I will approve further comments. If I have learned anything over the years, I have learned that most Evangelicals are pathologically unable to play well with others. Give them the opportunity to comment, and they will show their true colors. When Evangelical commenters DEMAND further access to the comment section, I typically tell them to fuck off and to start their own blogs. Such people can start a blog in five minutes. Then they are free to critique my writing, deconstruct my life, or attack my character. Go for it!
As you read those rules, you will see that he, and others like him, act worse than they claim God acts. They are little dictators who demand that their readers and commenters follow their rules exactly or they will be excluded from public viewing.
I act worse than God? Really? I don’t believe I have ever committed genocide or slaughtered the whole human race, save eight. I am, in every way, a better person than God. All one needs to do is read the Bible to see that Richards Dawkins was right when he said:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
They hate God for excluding sin from his paradise, yet their own little world comes with worse rules than what God has set up. Violate them in a minute way and you are gone.
Sorry, David, I don’t hate God. You know this. I have told you this before, dude. One has to believe God exists to hate him. I don’t. I don’t hate mythical beings. Doing so is a colossal waste of time. Do you hate Santa Claus?
Again, Tee’s post is about him not being allowed to comment on this site or not being permitted to say whatever he wants. (He is not presently banned.) Imagine me going to an Evangelical church and demanding that they let me speak. I want to share with them the Gospel of Bruce Almighty. Do you know of any church that would let me preach to them the unsearchable riches of Bruce? Of course not. So it is with this blog. I want to be a help to people who have questions and doubts or have left Christianity. I use the comment policy to protect the people that matter to me. Well, that and the fact that I haven’t heard an original thought from Evangelical zealots in years. I’m bored, people.
What this tells you is that those who have left the faith have nothing to offer anyone, especially their former Christian counterparts. If they had such a better way, why is it not present in their rules and their conduct?
Huh?
I can say this much, thousands of people read my writing every day. So much for not having anything to offer anyone. I would be glad to compare traffic numbers with Tee. I suspect we will find out who it is that really has nothing to offer anyone. Size matters, David.
If they found something better than God why is it not permeating their words and actions showing the believer there is something better than God and his ways? When you read their content and comments, all we are seeing in them is more of the sin that Jesus is trying to save everyone from.
There is nothing in these people’s words or actions that show the world that they have found something no one else has. They just glorify sin and revel in it. That is not worth giving up eternal life.
Another common element you will see in their words and actions is hatred. They hate God, Jesus, and those that follow them. They hate other people who cling to their Christian faith, they hate hearing other people’s points of view if it is religious in nature.
Yep, this blog is all about sinning. Wait until you see the photos of me doing my Santa striptease act. I wish I could do more sinning. I am too sick to do so. Of course, I am being sarcastic. Well, not about the sinning part. I suspect that my life would measure up quite well with that of Saint Tee and his merry band of critics. Tee can’t bear that I am happy post-Jesus. Nope, in his mind, I sit around all day raging against God, the Bible, and True Christians®. Sure, dude, sure. I’m going to the zoo tomorrow with my youngest daughter’s family. And Sunday, Polly and I are going out on a date. I don’t have much time to hate on Hey-Zeus.
Sorry, David, you have concocted a picture of my life in your mind that is not true. That Bruce Gerencser does not exist.
Oh, our pingback from the other post was never approved, which backs up our point (we checked several times). Then they hate it when people disagree with them or try to bring them back to the faith, which Peter has said is impossible.
Ah, now we arrive at the real reason Tee is upset at me. I allegedly didn’t approve a pingback. What is a pingback, you ask? WP Beginner describes it this way:
“Pingback allows you to notify other bloggers that you have linked to their article on your website. Although there are some minor technical differences, a trackback is basically the same thing as a pingback.”
I approve ALL ALL ALL legitimate pingbacks. I have received no pingback from either of Tee’s posts. It must be my fault, right? What else could have gone wrong? As long-time bloggers know, the pingback system is not infallible. Just like the Bible. . .
Here’s the irony of Tee’s complaint. I have mentioned several of his posts over the years. I have pingback enabled on this site. That means Tee has received pingbacks from this blog. Where are they, David? Not one pingback from this site is shown on your posts. Why is that? Hypocrite. (Update: Several pingbacks have now miraculously appeared on Tee’s blog.)
What Tee wants is attention, and outside of this post, I will not give it to him. Per the comment policy, I will grant him one comment on this post. Let ‘er rip, big boy.
We are not and do not try to preach to Mr. Gerenscer and others like him as that would be a waste of time. We just point out the errors in their thinking to protect believers.
Those people have nothing to offer you but like the evil they follow, they will try and rob you of eternal life with Jesus. You have to take care to protect your faith as no matter what level in life the unbeliever enjoys, they have nothing over God to offer you.
Their education and experiences are used against them to ruin their faith and they are no trying to do to you what was done to them. At best ignore them and point out their fallacies to others so you can win souls for Christ instead of losing yours to Christ’s enemy.
….
The unbeliever has nothing to offer you even if they are the greatest scientist, teacher, leader, athlete, and so on in the world. Just do not be fooled by their fake claims of being a Christian.
I am just one man with a story to tell. That people find my story helpful or compelling is not my fault. Perhaps, the real question is WHY my story resonates with people. (Look in the mirror, David.) I am content to write and leave it at that. I have received thousands and thousands of emails, comments, and social media messages from professing Christians over the years — some of whom still read this blog. Not one time I have ever tried to deconvert someone. My goal has never been to make atheist converts. Helping people had always been my objective. I leave it to readers to determine whether I have done so.
I suspect Tee’s real issue with me is that he sees my congregation growing. He sees my words influencing and helping others. He reads stories about people who praise me for helping them in the deconversion process. Thus, Tee feels the need to demonize me and attack my character (and the readers of this blog). He simply can’t stand losing.
And dammit, my last name is spelled Gerencser. Get it right! 🙂
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.
You have contacted me several times in recent years via Facebook, hoping to reconnect with the man you once called Pastor. Shockingly, you found out that I am no longer a Christian; that I no longer believe the Bible is the Word of God; that I proudly self-identify as an atheist and a humanist. I can only imagine how difficult and heartbreaking it was for you to read my blog for the first time. You are not the first former church member to feel this way. I am sure you hoped that you would find me faithfully serving Jesus, preaching the gospel, and winning souls to Christ. Instead, you found out that I have repudiated all that I once believed and preached.
We were Facebook friends for a short while, and then you unfriended me. I told you that I understood your decision to unfriend me. I know my story can be troubling and disconcerting to those who were once close to me. You sent me another friend request, yet before I could accept it, you thought better of friending me and deleted the request. Again, I understand. You have a hard time reconciling the Bruce who was your pastor in the 1980s, and the Bruce of today. Because your worldview requires you to frame and measure everything according to your interpretation of the Bible, you find it impossible to square my life today with that of thirty-plus years ago. From a theological perspective, the current Bruce Gerencser is a lost man headed for Hell, yet you remember a Bruce Gerencser who loved God and devoted his life to following after Jesus.
Set the religious stuff aside for a moment. Instead of attempting to see me through religious eyes, how about seeing me through human eyes? The kind, loving, compassionate, temperamental, flawed man who pastored Somerset Baptist Church decades ago still exists. The man you have such fond memories of is still alive and well — though physically in poor health. From a human perspective, I haven’t changed much. The character strengths and flaws I had as your pastor still exist today. Next month, I will turn sixty-four, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is this: humans rarely change. We are, character-wise, who we are. While my beliefs, politics, and worldview have dramatically changed over the years, my nature has not. Sure, age, sickness, and time have affected me, as they do all of us, but, for the most part, I am not much different today from who I was during the exciting days when Somerset Baptist was a thriving, growing church.
If you can ever look beyond your theological beliefs and see Bruce, the man, you will find out that the man you once loved and respected is right in front of you. Sadly, many Evangelicals cannot see people for who they are because their theological beliefs force them to define people according to what the Bible says instead of what they can see with their eyes. Your fellow Christians routinely savage me. I have been repeatedly told that I am evil and a follower of Satan. Evidently, what I believe, and not my behavior, determines what kind of man I am. The moment I said, I no longer believe in the Christian God, I went from a loving husband, father, and grandfather to a man who is worthy of scorn and derision; a man, some say, who is hiding a life of debauchery and licentiousness.
You have two choices set before you, Wendy. Either you can embrace and befriend the Bruce of 2021, or you can hang on to the memory of the 1987 Bruce. I would love to be friends with you in the here and now, but life is too short for me to worry about people who cannot see beyond my beliefs and are thus unable or unwilling to befriend me. Virtually all of my former Evangelical friends, parishioners, and ministerial colleagues, have been unable to remain friends with me post-Jesus. I understand why this is so. Fidelity to Jesus and the Bible was the glue that held our relationships together. Once I deconverted, that which bound us was gone. Rare are friendships that survive for a lifetime. Today, almost thirteen years after I attended church for the last time, I have two Evangelical friends. Everyone else has written me off or turned me into a sermon illustration, a warning of what happens when someone no longer believes the Bible is true.
Since you can’t seem to bring yourself to befriend me as I now am, you are left with your memories of the time we spent together in the rolling hills of Southeast Ohio. And that’s okay. I, too, have many fond memories of the eleven years I pastored Somerset Baptist Church. Nothing in the present can change the experiences of the past. If it helps you think better of me, then, by all means, cling to our shared memories, pushing from your mind thoughts of Atheist Bruce. If you ever want to be friends again, you know where to find me.
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.
Earlier this week, an Evangelical man named Daniel Kluver decided to contact my wife on Facebook. (Please see Evangelical Man Messages My Wife on Facebook.) Kluver also messaged me (please see Another Facebook Message From an Evangelical Zealot) and left comments on my posts on Facebook. Kluver has since blocked me on Facebook — my demonic power must be too strong for him. Before he blocked me, he sent me one more message.
Here’s what Kluver had to say. My response is indented and italicized.
You morphs are just confirmation of the times we are in.
Kluver says I am a “morph.” I had no idea what this term meant. I found out the word has several technical meanings. The word is also listed in the Urban Dictionary, and I suspect this is the definition Kluver wants to use.
A morph is “a person who acts like an idiot, a person who acts like a crackhead.” I don’t use crack, so I assume that Kluver is calling me an idiot.
You have shown that you don’t love or fear god and you are useless now!
I am an atheist, so of course I don’t love nor fear Kluver’s God. Said God is a mythical being, a work of fiction. I can say the same thing about every extant God. I do, however, fear the worshipers of deities. People cause harm, not gods. Beliefs cause harm, not gods.
Kluver says that because I don’t love or fear his God that I am “useless.” I have no idea what he means.
Your opinions are slanderous and you have become just like satan whom you serve. A stumbling block to some. Just a bunch of hot air to others.
To devout Fundamentalist Christians such as Kluver, I am sure my writing seems slanderous. My goal has always been to help those who have questions/doubts about Christianity or have left Christianity. My target audience has NEVER been saved, sanctified, all-hopped-up-on-Jesus Christians. If such people read my writing, it is because they choose to do so. Don’t want to get your panties in a bunch? Don’t want to feel righteous indignation? Don’t want to get angry? Then don’t read my writing.
Kluver seems to forget that he is the one who commented on this blog, and he is the one who contacted my wife and me on Facebook. I left Christianity thirteen years ago. Not one time I have ever contacted a Christian and tried to convert them to atheism. I abhor such behavior. I do, however, respond to Christians who email me, leave comments on this site, or comment on social media. My nuclear policy is this: no first strike.
Lost on Kluver is the fact that if I don’t believe in the existence of God, neither do I believe in the existence of Satan/Lucifer/Devil/Beelzebul/Day-Star/Son of the Morning/The Evil One/Father of Lies/Ruler of this World/God of this Age/Angel of Light/Roaring Lion/Destroyer/Apollyon/Abaddon/Serpent/Deceiver of the World/Accuser of God’s People. No matter what name you give her, I don’t believe she exists.
Kluver believes I am a stumbling block to some Christians. He is, of course, right. I know that many Christians find my story and my critiques of Evangelicalism to be troubling and disconcerting. Former parishioners and colleagues in the ministry have told me that my writing so troubles them that they can’t read it. Why is that? I am just one man with a story to tell. If my writing causes followers of Jesus to doubt their beliefs, why am I to blame? I make no effort to evangelize people. Millions of people have read my writing over the years, many of whom are Christian. I am humbled by the sheer number of people who think my writing is worth reading. I sure as hell wouldn’t read this shit! 🙂 If readers find help and encouragement from my writing, I am grateful. Grateful to whom, you ask? Loki, of course. 🙂
I started blogging in 2007. At the time, I was still a Christian — barely. Since that time, I have heard from scores of people who have been helped by my writing, some of whom deconverted after reading my work. Do I find satisfaction in people deconverting? Sure. I am persuaded that any move away from Christian Fundamentalism is a good one. If my writing helps someone break free from the pernicious clutches of Evangelicalism, I count myself blessed. Blessed by whom, you ask? Loki, of course. 🙂
Kluver believes I am full of hot air. Maybe. However, I suspect that Kluver thinks my educated opinions about Evangelical Christianity are what he is calling “hot air.” The traffic numbers for this site suggest that there are a lot of people who seem to like “hot air.” I encourage Kluver to start his own blog. By all means, rage against the evil atheist Bruce Gerencser. Deconstruct my story and attack my beliefs. Nail me to a cross and metaphorically crucify me. My life and work are an open book. By all means, blast away! (A number of Evangelical zealots have done just that over the years. They miserably failed, abandoning their attempts to deconstruct my life.)
Rough times ahead just right around the corner for those who hate god.
Yet another passive-aggressive threat from Kluver. What, exactly, lies ahead for those who “hate God?” Need I remind Kluver that atheists don’t hate God? Atheists don’t hate mythical beings. Wouldn’t it be silly to do so?
You’re wrong about who dies when you said that we will both die. Believers never die!
*sigh* Both Kluver and I will one day die. I am sixty-three, and he is sixty-four. We are in the final stretch of life. If I live to age seventy, that means ninety percent of my life is over. I hope that I live that long, but I have my doubts. Gastroparesis, fibromyalgia, and osteoarthritis are taking their toll on my body. I know death is stalking me, just as it is Daniel Kluver. Unfortunately, Kluver thinks he’s never going to die; that the moment he draws his last breath in this life, he will awake in Heaven. This, of course, is not taught in the Bible. Orthodox Christian theology teaches people — saved and lost — remain in the grave until they are resurrected from the dead and judged by God. Kluver and I are headed for the same place — the grave.
I am amazed at your ignorance and you probably were thrown out of the congregation that you say you were pastoring. I doubt that much of what you said is true!
I am amazed at my ignorance too. There is so much that I don’t know.
Kluver ends his message by trying to inflict as much emotional pain as possible. It’s evident he wants to hurt me. Thus, he calls me a liar, doubts my story is true, and says I was thrown out of the congregation I pastored.
I do my best to give an open, honest accounting of my life — past and present. I just completed a five-part series titled I am a Publican and a Heathen, detailing my excommunication from Community Baptist Church in Elmendorf, Texas. I also wrote a post about what happened to the churches I pastored. Please read What Happened to the Churches I Pastored?
Why don’t you get a job?
Well, I am disabled and retired. Had Kluver bothered to read more than the five posts he read on this site, he might have known this. He might have learned about my struggles with chronic illness and pain. He might also have learned that I can no longer drive. Believe me, if someone had a job opening for a broken-down, sick old man like me, I would take it.
Not that I don’t work, I do. It takes me hours each day to write for this blog. While I don’t make much money from blogging, I do treat it as a job. I also manage my sister’s business website. Throw in the money I make from stripping on the weekends, and I am rolling in cash from the “work” I do. Of course, Kluver uses “Why don’t you get a job?” as a way to inflict emotional pain. My beliefs no longer matter to him; he’s out for blood.
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.
