Several days ago, an atheist told me I must have been pretty “stupid” if it took me fifty years to realize that Christianity was false. He proudly told me that he figured out as a child that God was a myth, and from that point forward he was an atheist. He added that “God” was no different from Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. In other words, he was saying that I must have been pretty dull if it took me five decades of my life to figure out what he figured out as a mere child.
Most atheists who take this approach with me grew up in nominal Christian homes Typically, they have little to no understanding of Evangelical theology and practice. Lacking knowledge and understanding of that which they criticize, these atheists set themselves up as the standard for deconversion. In their minds, anyone with any sense at all should be able to figure out there’s no God by the time he reaches sixth grade.
These hyperbolic atheists seem to not understand how Fundamentalist religious indoctrination and conditioning make it impossible for people to “see” the truth about God, Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity. I grew up in a dysfunctional Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) home. God, church, and the Bible permeated every aspect of my life. One-hundred-eighty times or more a year, I attended services and events that reinforced IFB theological and social beliefs and practices. That’s one service every other day. And then there were private acts of personal piety: daily prayer and Bible reading.
At the age of five, I told my mom that God wanted me to be a preacher when I grew up. Ten years later, I got saved and baptized, and two weeks later I stood before the church and told them God was calling me to preach. Several weeks after that, I preached my first sermon. At the age of nineteen, I enrolled at Midwestern Baptist College to study for the ministry. I married a preacher’s daughter. Together, we spent twenty-five years in the ministry. My life was all about the Evangelical God.
I spent almost fifty years in the Evangelical bubble. In the bubble, everything made sense; everything was internally consistent. Imagine a world where everyone has similar beliefs and moral values. Imagine where everything modeled to you as a child by adults and people in positions of authority reinforces IFB beliefs and practices. Imagine being part of a sect that separated itself from the “world”; from everything contrary to their version of “truth.” Imagine long lists of rules and regulations (church standards) that governed virtually every aspect of your life, from the length of your hair to the clothing you wear. Imagine being taught that God is all-knowing and all-seeing, and he will punish any deviations from church standards. All of these things taken together make one thing very clear: I couldn’t have been anything other than what I was.
My path in life was predetermined by my upbringing and intense religious conditioning and indoctrination. By the time I was old enough to understand life, it was already too late. Both counselors I have had over the years have told me that it is remarkable that I escaped the Evangelical bubble — especially as a preacher. By the time people reach the age of fifty, they rarely are willing to abandon beliefs they have held their entire lives. For me personally, I had invested my entire life in servitude to God and the church. I had sacrificed my financial and physical well-being seeking spiritual fulfillment and eternal life. The sunk costs were so great that it was almost impossible for me to walk away (and for Polly to walk away with me). Yet, I did. Why? Because I valued intellectual honesty. So stupid I was not. When my beliefs were challenged by evidence I couldn’t overcome, I changed my beliefs. And that’s why I am an atheist today.
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 few days ago, I received an email from an eighty-one-year-old woman named Wanda Sims. Sims read all of two posts before sending me a message that God allegedly laid upon their heart. My brief response follows. All spelling and grammar in the original.
There is one Go ,in 3 persons Father, Son Holy Spirit.
Sims provides no evidence for her claim there is one God, uh I mean three Gods, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As most Christians do when they come to this site to deliver to me a message from their peculiar version of God, Sims makes all sorts of claims without providing any evidence for them. She presupposes that her God is the one true GO, and all others deities are false. Thus Sims is an atheist too.
God is love!!
I see no evidence in our world that this claim is true. In fact, what I do see is that God is anything but love. Look at all violence, pain, suffering, and death in the world. Where is God? Even in the Bible we see a God, as Richard Dawkins suggests:
“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.”
I would love Sims to take the events of Genesis 6-9 (Noah’s Flood) and justify her claim that God is love. Her God drowned millions of people, including children, infants, and fetuses. What an awesome God!
I pray you will have your eyes opened ,and the truth will guide you to see truth.
My eyes today are more open than they ever have been. If Sims wants me to see and know “truth,” I suggest that she share it with me. Let’s talk about “truth, Wanda. I’m game, are you?
You gave up on God, he still loves you. If you repent he is faithfull and just to forgive you.
I didn’t give up on God. I weighed the central claims of Christianity in the balance and found them wanting. Surely Sims would want me to follow the evidence and believe as many true things as possible.
How does Sims know God still loves me? According to countless Evangelical zealots, I am an apostate; a reprobate; a tool of Satan; an enemy of God. Based on the teachings of the Bible, God doesn’t love me. I have crossed a line of no return. I have been repeatedly told that I am a modern-day Judas, a son of perdition. Did Jesus savingly love Judas? Of course not.
I put Sims’ claims to the test. I just repented of all my sins, even the “secret” ones, and asked Jesus to save me from my sins. Did God forgive me? Is it really that easy? Nothing more is required of me but to repent and believe? Good to know. I am now s-a-v-e-d! 🙂 Yes, Wanda, this is me mocking you and your silly, bankrupt gospel.
I don’t want to be your BFF, but my heart hearts for you and those you have lead astray.
That’s good, because why would I want to be friends with someone who doesn’t respect me? Sims chose to deliberately ignore my requests on the Contact page. She sent me a preachy email, hoping that I would see the “light.” She paid no attention to my background, thinking that her rambling email would do anything to return me to the faith.
I’m not a Crack pot
I don’t know about that. What should I make of someone who seeks out strangers on the Internet and emails them? What should I make of someone who shows no regard for me; whose only goal is to put in a good word for Jesus? Jesus Fucking Christ, I am a fellow human being. How about treating me like one?
I spent fifty years in Evangelical Christianity. I pastored churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan for twenty-five years. I preached over 4,000 sermons, and spent 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. I am confident I know more about the Bible and Christianity than Sims goes. What possibly could she say to me that I don’t already know?
Of course, Sims read none of my autobiographical writing, so maybe she doesn’t know these things. If so, I would like to share with her what God says in Proverbs 18:13: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude.
just a 81 yr old woman that loves the Lord and have seen his love,beauty,miraculous works and mercy and love.
And I am just a sixty-five-year-old man who loves his wife of forty-five years, six grown adult children, thirteen grandchildren, and cats named Joe Meower and Socks. I have seen their love, beauty, mercy, and works. My family is the only God I need.
I pray you find your way back to this one true and loving God.
Well, as I mentioned above, I repented, so I am good to go. All praise be to Loki, the one true God of rural northwest Ohio.
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.
Today, I received an email from an Evangelical using a fake email address: godlovesyou@gmail.com. Coward. 🙂
What follows is my response to God Loves You. My response is indented. All spelling and grammar in the original.
Bruce, you know that God has been trying to reach you all your life. You can’t escape Him. He’s real whether you believe Him or not. He’s done so much for you.
I know no such thing. If my life tells me anything about God it is this: his phone line is disconnected. God’s is supposedly the creator of all things; the sovereign lord, ruler, and king. Yet, according to God Loves You (GLY), the Christian God has been trying to reach me. God has every tool and method at his disposal, yet the best he is able to do is send people such as GLY to pass me a note. If God wants to reach me, why not contact me directly? Send me an email, a text, or call me on the telephone (260-657-0019). Better yet, if I am so important to God, why not send Jesus to my doorstep and have him take me out to lunch? I guarantee you that if Jesus shows up and takes me out to eat, I am going to listen.
Instead, God keeps sending people such GLY; people who show me no respect; people who preach at me; people who insult me; people who attack me and my family and the readers of this blog; people who lack a basic understanding of what the Bible teaches.
I am here, God. Come and get me.
GLY claims God is real, yet he provided no evidence for his claim. This is a common ploy by Evangelical zealots. They are presuppositionalists. God is self-evident to them, so they think he should be self-evident to everyone. Not me. Convince me that the God of the Protestant Christian Bible exists and he is as the Bible portrays him, I might believe. I say “might” because, let’s face it, the God of the Bible is a violent, genocidal son of a bitch, so I doubt I would want to worship and obey such a malevolent deity.
GLY claims God has done so much for me. Really? What has God done for me? Virtually everything in my life can be traced back to material, biological means. The few unexplainable events in my life are not enough to convince that GLY’s God exists.
I’m sorry for any hurt that humans and the church have caused you. People will hurt you, this earth is ruled by Satan, but this is not our home forever. The teacher is always silent during the test. Whatever happened to you, whatever you’re going through, it’s just a test to see if you’re faithful.
I did not leave Christianity because of the hurt caused by humans and the church. If you really want to know why I deconverted, please read the posts on the WHY? page. Seek and ye shall find, GLY.
I am an atheist, so I don’t believe in the existence of deities, especially the God of the Bible. Since God created Satan, it stands to reason that I don’t believe in her either. Earth is ruled, controlled, and dominated by humans, other animals, and natural sources. I see no evidence for the claim that the earth is ruled by Satan. Again, I am open to being proved wrong. Just have Satan contact me and we can talk.
Evidently, whatever I have experienced in this life is a “test” from God. Of course, the giver of this test is, to quote GLY, “silent.” How, then, can I know it is God testing me? As an atheist, I live by the maxim, “shit happens.” I can explain my present trials, suffering, and adversity without invoking the name of God or Satan. MY health problems are easily explainable, albeit not easily treatable. I have accepted that my suffering, the unrelenting pain and debility, is my lot in life. I do what I can to ameliorate my symptoms, hoping to live as long as possible. What more can I do but get up each morning and try to do my best?
I find that this is a far better way to live than wondering whether God is, at any given moment, testing, trying, or punishing me.
Eventually youre going to die, which place will you choose?
There’s been countless of testimonies of those who died and have seen the afterlife (check YouTube!). Everyone who has died has said the same things and Jesus sent them back to tell their story.
Yes, I am, sooner, than later. I know that I am at the end of my life. When I die, I choose cremation and nothingness. I see no evidence for Heaven, Hell, or an afterlife. Those claiming to have died and gone to Heaven and Hell are delusional liars. The only evidence they provide for their claims are fanciful stories. I find it interesting that none of these stories agree with any of the others. Why is that? Humans have been making up “supernatural” stories for thousands of years. The Bible is one collection of these stories.
If GLY wants me to believe these stories are true, he is going to have to provide empirical evidence for them. I will not take his word for it.
There’s a lot of scientific and historical evidence that Jesus was real and many witnesses to that (Google and learn yourself!).
I wonder if GLY forgets or doesn’t know that I was a college-trained Evangelical pastor; that I pastored churches for twenty-five years; that I know the extant source material for the existence of Jesus inside and out. There is not, as GLY says, “a lot of scientific and historical evidence that Jesus was real and many witnesses to that.” There are the Gospels and a handful of disputed historical mentions of Jesus. That’s it. I know of no scientific evidence that proves ANYTHING about Jesus. All we can know is that a Jewish apocalyptic preacher named Jesus lived and died in Palestine two thousand years ago.
But what do I know? According to GLY, I need to “Google” and learn the “truth.” 🙂
I know you’ve been hurt, but in heaven, there will be no more suffering. I promise. Turn back to God.
GLY knows no such thing. He has read a couple of posts on this site and decided that is enough for him to deconstruct my life. He is lazy and lacks curiosity. Search Google, GLY, search Google. You will find thousands of blog posts I have written and podcast interviews I have given.
Life is suffering. Live long enough and you will suffer, sometimes horribly. I have an advanced degree in suffering. I don’t need the promise of salvation and Heaven to make it through life. I find meaning and purpose in my wife of forty-five years (my best friend and lover), our six children, our thirteen grandchildren, the Cincinnati Reds, Cincinnati Bengals, and this blog. Yes, I am in a lot of pain. Yes, sometimes I want to die. But, I remind myself that I have much to live for. I don’t need the promise of a room in God’s Trump Hotel to give my life meaning and purpose. I feel sorry for people who have no sense of meaning and purpose outside of the hope of eternal life. They have bought into the Apostle Paul’s lie: if we only have hope in this life we are miserable (1 Corinthians 15:9).
GLY implores me to turn back to God. Nope, not going to happen. I have weighed the central claims of Christianity in the balance and found them wanting. What is there about Christianity that I don’t know, GLY? By all means, educate me. 🙂
If you’re still alive, Hes still waiting to give you another chance. I will pray for your hardened heart to be softened, for you to come back and have a relationship with Him again. God is good but the world is not, Satan has deceived you.
What a pathetic God Jesus is, who is forced to wait on fallible, frail sinners. If God wants to save me, he knows where I am.
The only thing that “hardens” my heart toward Christianity is the endless emails and social media messages I receive from the GLYs of the world. Why would I ever want to worship their God? They bully, badger, threaten, and judge me, yet they want me to worship their God. No thanks. GLY and others like them are the worst possible advertisement for Jesus and his wonderful, matchless, awesome, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious grace.
If you want to spark your faith again, watch Isaiah Saldivar and Vlad Savchuk on YouTube. Learn about the deliverance ministry and casting out demons! We need to open our eyes to the supernatural, the spiritual realm. There’s so many testimonies out there now (YouTube – Delafe Testimonies), that show and prove the true existence of God!!
I have seen two demons in my life: my youngest grandsons. 🙂 Boy, are they “devilish.”
It is clear to me that GLY has a low evidentiary standard for believing things. If he sees it on the Internet, it must true. I have a much higher evidentiary standard than GLY and other Christians like him. YouTube ain’t going to cut it. Gawd, do I actually have to say this?
God did not create this world for us to suffer and have pain. The result of our sins and our ancestors sins have caused us much burden.
Sigh, Sigh, Sigh. Ugh. 🙂
If God is the creator of all things and controls EVERYTHING, he is culpable for pain, suffering, and death. Either God is all-powerful, or he is not. Either he is all-knowing, or he is not. Either he is everywhere, or he is not. Orthodox Christianity says God is all-everything. Based on the teachings of historic Christianity, GLY is preaching heresy. OMG, repent, GLY, lest you end up in Hell when you die! 🙂
I believe that you may be curious about the supernatural so I suggest looking into deliverance. As Jesus cast out demons and heal the sick, you too can be healed! Whatever sickness you’re going through, you will be healed in the name of Jesus! Seek deliverance, Seek Him! Dare God to reveal Himself to you! HE WILL!!!
No, I am not curious, in the least, about the supernatural. I am a materialist. I have no room in my worldview for supernatural mumbo-jumbo.
Let me put GLY’s claims to the test! Jesus, I believe you heal people. I double-dog dare you to reveal yourself to me. I triple-dog dare you to heal me of fibromyalgia, gastroparesis, and degenerative spine disease. Jesus, if you heal me of these things, I will abandon atheism and worship you as my Savior and my God. Okay, Jesus, the ball is in your court.
GLY promises that God WILL hear and answer my prayer. If he doesn’t, that mean GLY is a liar and a false prophet worthy of being stoned to death.
Jesus loves you. God loves you. I love you.
Jesus is dead, God doesn’t exist, and GLY doesn’t know me. None of them “love.” me. I am sick and tired of shallow, cheap, sentimental Christian “love.” Gag me with a spoon. I have all the love I need in life — no Jesus, God, or Christians needed.
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.
I was raised in a Fundamentalist Baptist church. I was saved and baptized at about the age of six. Throughout my youth, I remember being wholly devoted to Christianity. I remember family praising me as a young child for the example I set because I wouldn’t eat a bite at meals until I made sure everyone prayed together. I also remember being the “good Christian girl” through high school and college. I prayed, faithfully attended church — even by myself after I started driving — and read the Bible voraciously. I sought to be completely devoted to Jesus. I said all the right things and did all the right things. I sang, led Bible studies, and served God. All my extracurriculars were associated with the church or faith-based things, other than being involved in my community arts organization as a teenager, mostly acting in plays. I was so certain about Christianity until the moments in which I wasn’t. In my late teens, I began to incorporate the following story into my salvation testimony to prove I had truly been born again and to use it to allay any doubts I or anyone else might have about the authenticity of my faith.
Baby Sinner
My mom has always talked about how I was such a headstrong young child, so much so that she didn’t know how to parent me. Mom told me she once went to our pastor crying about me because she didn’t know what to do with me. Recently, she told me a story I had never heard before — that she remembers the first time she really connected with me was in a Pizza Hut when I was about four years old. It made me sad because my daughter is almost four.
My daughter is so much like me. My relatives who knew me as a child say being around my daughter is like being around me again when I was her age. Even though she’s headstrong and hard for me to manage sometimes, I feel we have more moments of connection than I can recount from my own childhood. To hear my mom say she distinctly remembers not having a real moment of connection with me until I was four years old makes me question what was really going on with me back then.
Mom said I was difficult until I “asked Jesus to come into my heart” then it was like a switch was flipped on in me and I became “better.” Now that I’m a parent of a toddler, I realize that my issues as a toddler and young child weren’t the spiritual issues of a hell-bent sinner, but that I was lacking something somewhere, stability or attention or love or something. I was well cared for as a kid and I had a good childhood. I don’t think I was neglected or abused, but whatever was lacking, the problem wasn’t spiritual or that I needed Jesus, but it was behavioral, that I needed something real from my parents, whatever it may have been.
Seeds of Doubt
In my teens, and especially college years, I struggled with doubt. I have a lot of questions. My mind dissects things, deconstructs things to the minutest details, and rebuilds them to understand what’s happening, how things work, and what is the logic behind them. But I’m also naturally loyal. I was loyal to the presuppositions of my faith that were ingrained in me since before I can remember. I questioned, but I never sought answers outside of my faith community, even in college.
One of my biggest regrets is that in college I did not lean into and explore all kinds of thinking. I dabbled in things because I went to a state school. I couldn’t get away from it in mandatory philosophy classes and English classes where I was introduced to secular ideas. I learned what ideas were out there, but I never truly considered them. I observed them from behind the hazmat suit of Fundamentalist Christianity I wore. In fact, I remember driving two hours to my home church to attend a special service where a visiting preacher preached a sermon he called “Babylon University.” He used the story of Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Babylonian captivity to set a principle for those of us going to college to be “in the world, but not of the world.”
Marriage Obsession and Denied Sexuality
As a teenager, I was obsessed with getting married. My church’s worldview, and being a child of divorce, as well as my dad dying from suicide two years after my parent’s divorce when I was 13, caused me to desire stability that was foundational to my obsession with marriage, along with my natural sexual desires that wouldn’t be satisfied until I got married.
Even though I was raised by a single mom who dated and had boyfriends with whom she was having sexual relationships, I was sexually and relationally conservative because I held so closely to the teachings of the church, even more so than to my mother’s parenting. I remained a virgin — mostly — until I got married at 28.
At 18, I began a “courtship” (think Josh Harris “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and Elisabeth Elliot’s romance with Jim Elliot) with a man in my church who was 15 years older than I. He was 33 at the time. This was my first serious relationship. This relationship was supposed to be a “courtship” overseen by our parents, but considering he was 33 and my only parent was a single mom who, along with her boyfriend, (eventually my stepdad), thought the whole thing was super weird, it was mostly overseen by my youth pastor and his wife and my church’s pastor and his wife. By the way, the whole thing top to bottom makes me cringe today and I’m so grateful I did not marry that guy.
I became engaged or “betrothed” (ugh!) but thankfully my mom, and eventually, my church, helped me end the relationship before it got to marriage. After our engagement, my husband-to-be began acting strange — overbearing and potentially abusive. My mom and youth pastor encouraged me to move away to live on campus at the college I was currently attending.
I didn’t want to move away, but I heeded my mom. Living on campus, this was the first time I became depressed. However, I got involved with a church and made good friends and when I left campus for the summer, I realized I was sad to leave and couldn’t wait to go back. I had a great college experience. My friend group grew beyond the church. I became a resident assistant and really enjoyed my friendships with my fellow housing employees. Looking back, I have some regrets about missed opportunities, but nothing that makes me hate my time there. I didn’t date anyone in college, but I wasn’t without my crushes. I literally fell in love with one man, but we never dated, surprisingly. At one point I did feel like God told me I would marry a pastor. Good to know, God.
Not long after college, I moved back to my small town because I missed my church. I eventually connected with a former high school classmate that ended in another broken engagement after three years of an on-and-off-again relationship. After one final rebound boyfriend to whom I nearly lost my virginity, I met my husband.
My husband and I have an amazing relationship and chemistry. If I have any belief left in miracles, then the one miracle I have in my life is Matthew. When I lost belief in God, I felt free to say, “I believe in Matthew and in our love,” but also, I believe in myself and my place in the world.
During that strange time, especially as an unmarried, 20-something, between graduating college and meeting Matthew at age 28, I fell into a deep depression that lasted years; I don’t think it ever fully lifted. This is when I started to lose my faith, though I didn’t talk about it. I had suicidal thoughts. The loneliness facilitated by my church’s beliefs as I waited for marriage was debilitating and I believe denying my sexuality gave me sexual frustration that contributed to my depression. I suspect if I had a different worldview at the time that would have allowed me healthy sexual expression outside of marriage, then I would have carried a lot less shame and guilt about masturbation, which I discovered in college.
Meeting my husband lifted my depression. We had a quick romance. We met and were married between February and November of the same year. I was so happy. Within three years we had two children. My life up until I met Matthew felt so slow and especially those last few years in my 20s felt like a slow grind. Since meeting Matthew, change keeps coming and coming. Big stuff — marriage, babies, becoming a pastor’s wife, losing my faith as a pastor’s wife, moving from a very rural area to a city. When we got engaged, we were looking at a decent combined annual income, but halfway through our engagement, we both lost our jobs. We started marriage and had babies living in extreme poverty and mutual depression over our situation. It was traumatic, but our relationship remained strong.
Loss of Faith
In October 2019, I remember really struggling with doubts about my faith, and that’s the first time the thought entered my head, “I’m not a Christian.” I thought God gave me that thought. The next day, I was emotionally moved by a sermon my husband preached to respond with a recommitment to my faith and I was baptized again.
But doubts resurfaced and I began struggling with deep depression again. Around January 2022, I told my husband that I wanted to take some breaks from attending church, like maybe one Sunday a month, I don’t go, or I visit another church. He was supportive of me doing that. However, I never followed through on it because someone in the church broke her back and I stepped in to fulfill her responsibilities. It put my plan to take a break from church on hold as I needed to be there for these things. I didn’t mind it. It helped me a little because I felt I had more purpose with church than just getting the kids dressed to go and wrestle them into a pew and fight to keep them quiet.
Then in May 2022, my stepdad asked my mom for a divorce after 15 years of tumultuous marriage. It was with this backdrop that I just got tired of pretending that prayer did anything, that faith had any meaning, that Christianity was true, or that maybe God was even real, and if he was real, that he (or she or them) even cared about things the way my church said God did.
At the end of July 2022 and with the help of Bruce’s blog, I told my husband I considered myself a Christian agnostic. Christian in that I am content to practice a social Christianity for the sake of his ministry. I sincerely don’t want my faith status to disrupt his profession and passion and I sincerely love my Christian friends. I don’t want to cause him controversy and pain within the church.
I would be socially Christian in the outward trappings, but I told him that I refused to pray privately. I decided to act as if God didn’t exist, and if he did, then let him reveal himself clearly to me. So far, God hasn’t. I haven’t been struck by lightning. I’m the same person I’ve always been. I cuss more and pray less. My thoughts on abortion and sexuality are changing. But I’m essentially the same person. Better, I think, in how I treat others and how I treat myself.
I’m happier and more at peace with myself and the world as I face depression as essentially an atheist. I would much rather face depression without faith than face it with faith, as if I’m thrown into a fight with a demon with a bag over my head. Moving Forward
I don’t know what the future holds for me as a non-Christian married to a devoted Christian who still feels a special call to be in church ministry. We have toddlers so we have many years ahead of raising children. My husband has resigned from the ministry for the time being for reasons not related to me. He is excited about finding a new church to join in our new city. I told him that I don’t think I’m eligible to become a new member of a church and that I don’t intend to hide the truth about my faith status from people we meet in churches. I don’t mind attending church with him some, because I enjoy having that connection with the whole family, but I’m also looking forward to exploring slow Sundays with no expectations except to truly rest.
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, I received the following email from an Evangelical man named Nathan Tucker. My response is indented and italicized. Tucker read two posts, Another Evangelical Con Job, This Time by 7 Hills Church in Cincinnati, Ohio and Dear Evangelical before contacting me. According to the server logs, he also looked at the front page, which contains ten full-text posts. I do not know what posts he actually read. Tucker read none of my autobiographical material (please see the WHY? page), yet, as you shall see below, he felt qualified to deconstruct my life. Perhaps Tucker missed this verse in his Bible: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude (Proverbs 18:13).
Now to Tucker’s verbose email:
Every single human being has ulterior motives behind all human behaviors. It has been said, and I believe it is true that, the greatest and most basic drive on earth is the human belly. Everything mankind does in the material world, he does so that he can eat and drink, so that he can continue eating and drinking; so he can continue living. Jesus recognizes this in a passage I am sure you are quite familiar with. In Matthew 4:4, Jesus indicates that, “man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (The New King James Version, 1979). Jesus, Who was acutely aware of the need to eat after having not eaten in forty days, implicitly states man must have bread to live. That is, man must live on the material things of this world. Yet man cannot live on those material things alone—there must be more to this life than eating and drinking. God tells us that to truly understand what it means to live, one must be “born again” (John 3:3-8).
Tucker claims that “every single human being has ulterior motives behind all human behaviors,” yet provides no evidence for his claim. It is never wise to claim to know something about every human being. Of course, this is a common Evangelical behavior. Everyone is a sinner. Everyone needs to be saved. Everyone will go to Heaven or Hell after they die. The problem with this sort of linear, black-and-white thinking is that billions of people reject it. I am an atheist. I don’t believe in the existence of deities, including the countless Gods Christians worship. I don’t believe the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible. I reject the central claims of Christianity; that Jesus was divine, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, performed miracles, resurrected from the dead, and ascended into Heaven. Simply put, these things don’t make sense to me. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
Tucker claims, without evidence, that there is more to life than eating and drinking; that what everyone needs is Jesus, the bread of life. What I want to know is this: is Jesus white bread, cracked wheat, rye, or whole grain? If Tucker has evidence for there being anything other than the material world we live in, I would love to see it. So far, all Tucker has done is quote Bible verses and make unsubstantiated claims. If someone claims that there is a spiritual dimension, then they are going to have to cough up evidence to support their claim. Countless Evangelicals have emailed me and left comments on this blog that emphatically said that God/Jesus/Holy Spirit is real. When pressed for evidence for their claims they typically do three things: quote Bible verses, give some sort of subjective, anecdotal testimony of having a saving/personal relationship with Jesus, or flee to safety of the house of faith. Neither of these things can, nor ever will, be sufficient evidence for their claims.
Bruce: I am a wizard! I have the power to do all sorts of supernatural things!
Tucker: No, you are not.
Bruce: Yes, I am!
Tucker: Prove it.
Bruce: I have read all the Harry Potter books. I watched all the movies too. I believe Harry is the one true Grand Wizard. When I embraced Harry as the Grand Wizard, he came into my heart, giving me power to do mighty works in his name. I know, I know, there’s no doubt about it, Harry lives in my heart.
Tucker: I don’t believe you. Until you provide evidence for your claims, I refuse to believe you are a miracle-working wizard.
Until the Tuckers of the world can provide empirical evidence for their claims, I have no reason to believe what they say.
The problem is simply this: many professing American Christians and pastors are not truly born again. Well, how can I say this? Isn’t this a terribly judgmental statement? It is a judgmental statement, but it is a statement based upon the perfect Law of Liberty—Christ says, “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15-16, 20). Many times people hear this statement, and they immediately think of the fruits of the Spirit, and I guess that is acceptable. Yet, there is a more basic understanding regarding what it means to be born again, what it means to be a true Christian. Primarily, a true Christian is one who sincerely loves and fears the Triune God and is one who strives to keep God’s Law in thought, word, and deed (Isaiah 66:2; John 14:21; Matthew 22:36-40). Being a Christian means one loves God and loves his neighbor—love is the fulfillment of the Law of God (Romans 13:10).
I would have, as a pastor, agreed with everything Tucker wrote above. I loved and feared God. I strove to keep the law of God in thought, word, and deed. I kept the two great commandments: love God and love my neighbor. Tucker will search in vain for anyone who knew me who would say that I was not a committed Christian. So, I am not sure what point Tucker is trying to make.
Hypocrisy is real. Every single human being is a hypocrite; we only differ in degrees. I am a hypocrite. I know what is right and many times, I find myself doing what I know to be wrong, sometimes uncontrollably so. Many times, I feel like a failure as a Christian. Yet, I know that I am not alone because Paul had this same experience, and he describes it quite succinctly in Romans 7:13:25. Paul is describing the spiritual warfare that goes on within the heart of one who is born again. This warfare or struggle with sin is what characterizes and marks the life of a true Christian—the true Christian seeks to execute or put to death the rebellion towards God in his own heart and life (Colossians 3:5; Romans 8:13), and he seeks to aid others in that pursuit through loving admonition, encouragement, and sincerity of heart, by the power of the Holy Spirit, with the full knowledge that none of this striving can be accredited to man, but all to the grace of God in the sacrifice of Christ.
Hypocrisy is ugly, especially within the church. I hate it in myself, and I hate it in the church. I simply want to vomit when I hear a Baptist or Pentecostal preacher condemn one to hell for partaking in beer or alcoholic beverages, all the while knowing that same preacher is going to have fifteen plates of food from the buffet after the sermon. Equally, that same pastor will no doubt condemn adultery, but adultery and gluttony have at their core the same sin—lust.
Hypocrisy is real, hypocrisy is ugly, but hypocrisy is present everywhere, not just in the evangelical community. For instance, we want freedom of speech to exist in a culture fixated on cancelling the politically incorrect. We want to conserve energy and planetary resources, but we burn countless units of energy for sporting events, entertainment venues, and sometimes, for no purpose at all other than to make something pretty. We want to put an extreme and almost obsessive focus on health, but not help the truly sick and suffering because of the “evil of opioids” and potential drug addiction.
Okay? So what . . . I am an atheist, so all this verbiage has no relevant meaning to me, outside of the fact that we all can be, at times, hypocrites. I don’t need a relationship with Jesus to know I am a hypocrite, nor do I need the Holy Spirit to convict me of my hypocrisy. I am quite self-aware. Even my counselor agrees with this assessment. (In fact, she thinks I am too self-aware.) Thus, I am cognizant of when I am being hypocritical. The difference between myself and Evangelicals is that I am not morally hypocritical. I don’t get up in a pulpit on Sundays and preach about all sorts of “sins” and then go home and commit the very sins I preached against. I don’t wage war against society’s vices and sexual proclivities all the while practicing these very same sins in the privacy of my home or a motel room.
Additionally, Atheists and Humanists are not spared from hypocrisy. They lament the evils of the world such as hypocrisy, justifiably so, but due to the nature of their worldview, one that hinges on the idea that there are no moral absolutes, they cannot sincerely call hypocrisy evil. Hypocrisy is distasteful to be sure, but hypocrisy, murder, sexual impurity, and deceit cannot be called evil, not if the atheistic humanist is to remain true to his worldview, that is.
I love it when an Evangelical zealot tells me what it is I believe or what other atheists believe. Personally, I think morality is inherently subjective. Christians believe the same thing. If that weren’t so, then the followers of Jesus would all have the same moral beliefs. Since no two Christian believe the same things about morality, it is clear, at least to me, that morality is subjective for Christians too.
I am a humanist. It is humanism, not atheism, that provides a moral framework by which I live my life. Please read the Humanist Manifesto to learn more about how humanists view morality. As far as “evil” is concerned, evil is not a thing or an entity separate from human behavior. Evil does not exist apart from humans. Humans do evil things. I have no problem saying that certain behaviors are evil.
That is where this discussion comes full circle, Bruce. You claim to be an atheist and a humanist, yet you reject the evangelical community because of their failure to adhere to a standard of sincerity that your worldview cannot legitimately define and account for unless moral absolutes exist. If morality is relative and merely rooted in human consensus, societal convention, as the Humanist Manifestos claim, then why shouldn’t the evangelical community be hypocritical if that is what gives them fulfilment, meaning, and happiness? You might say it defies logic to believe one thing and act contrary to that belief, all the while seeking to bring in new acolytes to use and abuse. Again, by what standard is anything “logical” or “illogical” if there is not some absolute standard by which these human abstractions are to be measured?
I do not reject the Evangelical community. I am surrounded by Evangelicals. What I reject are Evangelical beliefs and practices. What I object to is the psychological, and, at times, physical harm caused by Evangelical preachers and churches. (Please see the Black Collar Crime Series — one thousand stories and counting.)
Instead of spending an inordinate amount of time and energy rebutting Tucker’s claims about atheists and morality, I will leave the task to atheist firebrand and expert debater Matt Dillahunty.
The truth of the matter, Bruce, is you, like me, have been injured by either a wolf in sheep’s clothing inside of the evangelical community, or you may have been injured by a sincere Christian caught up in sin, but the actions of others cannot give us an excuse to reject our Creator and Sustainer. You know God exists and you have spent the last two decades pointing at the hypocrisy of others so that you can explain away His existence.
This is the point in his screed where Tucker shifts into Christian Asshole® mode. Without bothering to read any of my autobiographical material, he is going to tell me why I am not a Christian and what it is I really believe.
Tucker tells me that I was either hurt by a preacher or the sinful actions of Christians. Over the past sixteen years, I have written over 6,000 posts. Not one time have I said that I left Christianity because of someone “hurt” me. Not once. Did Evangelical Christian behavior play a part in my deconversion? Sure, a small part, as did numerous other things. However, I have made it clear over, and over, and over again to the Nathan Tuckers who contact me that I left Christianity for intellectual reasons. Not because I am angry, hurt, or jaded, but because the central claims of Christianity are false. It is really that simple. I am more than happy to discuss these reasons with Evangelicals, but they typically choose to attack my character and motivations instead of meaningfully engaging me on the real reasons I no longer believe. The reason for this is simple. If they say that I divorced Jesus for emotional reasons, they can dismiss my story out of hand. “Oh, Bruce just got his feelings hurt and couldn’t cut it” (as Dr. David Tee frequently says). Evangelical zealots know that if they engage me on the intellectual reasons for my deconversion they are likely to end up looking bad. I know the Bible inside and out. I am an expert on Evangelical Christianity. I am quite fluent in what Evangelicals believe and how they think. How could I not be? I was born into, raised, and educated in Evangelicalism. I spent the first thirty years of my marriage swimming in the deep end of the Evangelical pool. Even today, I continue to stay connected to the Evangelical sect. If Tucker wants to engage me on Evangelical beliefs and practices, I am game. I am ALWAYS game. Sadly, no one wants to play. 🙂
All the while, your actions beg the following question: why does it matter whether people believe in God or are used and abused by the evangelical community or not? If this life is all that matters, why not let people enjoy it how they see fit? Because they are being lied to? By what standard is something a lie or the truth? What are you trying to save them from? What is your motivation?
Evidently, Tucker thinks I should be okay with preachers, churches, and parachurch organizations misusing and abusing people; that I should be okay with preachers raping and sexually molesting children; that I should be okay with Evangelical theocrats trying to take over our government; that I should be okay with Evangelicals trying to ban books and history in public schools; that I should be okay with Evangelical racism, bigotry, and homophobia.
It is because we only have one life that these things matter. I have a wife I have been married to for almost forty-five years. I have six adult children. I have thirteen grandchildren. I have at least twenty reasons to work as hard as I can to make this world a better place to live. Jesus, I am starting to think that Tucker hasn’t ever talked to an actual atheist. Most atheists seek meaning and purpose in their lives. We want a better tomorrow, not only for ourselves, but also for everyone.
As you can see, Tucker repeatedly claims that atheists aren’t moral; that they have no moral foundation. He’s convinced that we are immoral, godless heathens. No amount of challenge is going to change his mind. He knows what he knows. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
Tucker is only moral because of Jesus. If that is the only reason he doesn’t rape, murder, steal, or eat too much at Thanksgiving, by all means, Tucker, for the sake of all of us, stay saved. We don’t want you going on a crime rampage, all because you don’t have the Holy Spirit living in your mythical heart.
Now, you may ask, what is my motivation behind writing you? Sincerely, I do not know what my motivation is at this point. I was looking into this band called 7 Hills Worship and your website popped up. I know that I am not trying to save you; God alone can deal with the heart and conscience of human beings, and salvation is up to God, not man (Romans 9:10-24). I am not trying to fight because of some sense of pride. I am not trying get money or fame (I am convinced I will never have either; that is okay). Heck, I am not even trying to befriend you. I think what struck my conscience is your pain. I have experienced similar pain and I wanted to set my faith aside too.
No, Tucker hasn’t. He doesn’t personally know me, nor does he know anything about me. He was too lazy to invest any time in reading my autobiographical writing. Yet, he knows my “pain.” Fuck off with that nonsense. Yes, I have experienced a lot of trauma in my life, more than most people experience. Yes, I battle serious, unrelenting physical pain every day of my life. Tucker could have known these things had he shown a bit of curiosity, but unfortunately, curiosity is not a common Evangelical trait. (Please see Curiosity, A Missing Evangelical Trait.)
Tucker is being less than honest when he says he doesn’t know what his motivations are for writing me. I have heard from thousands of zealots over the years. Typically, they respond to me because they think God want them to do so or they “feel” the need to set me straight or they delusionally think that they will be the one who brings me back to the faith. Tucker read the Dear Evangelical post. In this post was all the information necessary to know who and what I am. I even give Evangelicals a Reason for Contact Check List they can use when emailing me:
Reason for Contacting Bruce Gerencser (Check all that apply)
_____To tell him he is wrong
_____To preach at him
_____To quote Bible verses to him
_____To evangelize him
_____To tell him he doesn’t know anything about the Bible
_____To let him know God still loves him
_____To let him know I am praying for him
_____To tell him he never was a Christian
_____To tell him he is going to Hell
_____To tell him he is still saved and can never be un-saved
_____To tell him he was/is a false prophet
_____To tell him he was/is a wolf in sheep’s clothing
_____To tell him he is angry
_____To tell him he is bitter
_____To tell him his writing shows he has been hurt
_____To tell him he is fat
_____To tell him I hope he burns in Hell
_____To tell him that I am praying God will kill him
_____To tell him that he has a meaningless, empty life
_____To tell him he is going to die soon and then he will find out THE TRUTH!
_____To tell him that I know THE TRUTH about him!
Once you have completed the form, cut and paste it into your email or comment.
Tucker could have saved himself a lot of time by using this checklist. Instead, he sent me a sermon. I will leave it readers to “discern” his motivations.
Yet, the hypocritical behavior of others cannot change the truth that nothing in this world makes sense apart from the Christian worldview, the Christian faith—not the Christians who hold that view, but the objective truth of Christianity itself. Biblical Christianity is true, despite the shortcomings of its practitioners. In fact, Jesus even warned us about these people, which brings even more veracity to His claims. The fact is that Christ is the only perfect man to ever live—He is the only human being that cannot be charged with hypocrisy; that is why He was murdered and that is why our trust must solely rest in Him, not His followers. Take care.
My worldview makes perfect sense, all without God, Jesus, Christianity, and the Protestant Christian Bible. Most people in the world believe the same thing. Yet, Tucker is convinced that his little band of true believers has cornered the market on truth; that their worldview is the only one that makes sense. We see similar thinking among Trumpists, QAnon supporters, anti-vaxxers, and conspiracy theorists. It is not surprising that many of these people are also Evangelicals. The dominant religion of those who tried to overthrow the U.S. Government on January 6, 2021? Evangelical Christianity.
Christianity does not equal objective truth. I am more than happy to school Tucker on the falsity of his claim. While we are at it, we can discuss why the Evangelical deity is immoral and why the Bible shouldn’t be used for anything other than a paperweight.
What is “Bible Christianity”? No two Evangelicals agree on its definition. The Bible isn’t inerrant or infallible, nor is it internally consistent. Contradictions abound. That said, if Evangelicals want to believe that the Bible is true, fine. Just keep your nose out of my business. I don’t care what the Bible says, nor do care what Evangelicals think about how I live my life. You do you and I will do me. And if my wife consents, we can do each other. 🙂
Jesus was a man. He lived and died, end of story. Just because a religious text says Jesus was _________ doesn’t make it so. I have no reason to believe that Jesus was anything other than a Jewish apocalyptic preacher who ran afoul of Jewish leadership and Roman law and got himself killed.
Tucker really needs to rethink why Jesus was executed. That’s some bad theology. Maybe if he decides to engage me we can talk about his claims about Jesus.
Saved by Reason and Polly’s Awesome Cooking,
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.
An Evangelical woman named Candida left the following comment on the post titled Wasted Years, Oh How Foolish . . . (all spelling and grammar in the original):
It’s a pity you went through this Bruce. Quite sad. Abd you’re quite right about lots of people in church whose lives are as ‘wasted’ as that of those outside church. That’s a reality.
I must say though there are also countless people whose lives have been changed, transformed, made meaningful by their encounter with Jesus.
There’s a big difference between encountering Jesus and being in church. You can be in church singing about, hearing about, maybe also preaching about Jesus without really encountering or knowing Him. If you know Jesus, you have a relationship with him, like the one you have with a wife whom you love and cherish. It’s real.
Many confuse activities in church with relationship with Jesus. There’s no love like His. I pray you, and all others who have abandoned the faith experience this relationship and this love first hand.
The Lord bless you. And everyone. And us all too.
Candida read all of one post and concluded that I never had a relationship with Jesus. Boy, I’ve never heard that before! 🙂 How could Candida possibly know the depth and quality of my relationship with Jesus? She doesn’t know me. She was not a member of one of the churches I pastored. How could she possibly know that I had “churchianity,” and not Christianity? I could spend days telling Candida how deeply I loved Jesus; how I devoted my life to serving and following him; that I taught my children to do the same. Would it make a difference in how she views me? Of course not. All she sees is Bruce, the Evangelical pastor turned atheist. Since I am an atheist today, that means I never was a Real Christian®. The fifty years I spent in the Evangelical church and the twenty-five years I spent pastoring churches are dismissed with a wave of the hand. What Candida is saying, then, is that I am a liar; that what I say about myself and give testimony to is a lie. Why do Evangelicals find it so hard to take former Christians at face value? When Candida says, “I am a Christian,” I believe her. It’s her story to tell. I wish Evangelicals would grant me the same respect.
I have experienced the love of Jesus firsthand, as have thousands of readers of this blog. Much like marriages where couples fall out of love and divorce, we fell out of love with Jesus, finding that he was not the person we thought he was. And so we divorced him, seeking love in people and places we had long denied (because Jesus told us to do so): spouses, families, and self. We reconnected with humanity and nature, and in doing so we found love. Why would any of us want to return to a jealous, demanding lover?
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.
Today, I received a comment from a Christian man named Keith that stated, in part:
Thus, since so much crock comes out of the pulpit (and always has), you have to read the Bible for yourself. And, pray for yourself and your family. I do both.
….
My hope is that one day you’ll be able to separate the religious crap you were taught (and taught yourself), from the core truth of Jesus (you might have to vomit some, my guess), and find your way back to Jesus Himself.
What is the core truth of Jesus? Where can we find this truth? The Bible, right? All we have is the Bible, a collection of sixty-six books written thousands of years ago primarily by unknown men. All we know, then, about Jesus comes from a fallible, internally contradictory, religious text written by fallible men. Why should I give this text any weight or authority? What value is the Bible and its teachings to me or my family? If I never read the Bible will my life be less in any way?
In his comment, Keith mentioned his blog, The Myth Machines: Truth Unshackled. I perused his blog, reading a dozen or so posts, hoping to understand him better. The best I can tell is that Keith is a disaffected Evangelical, a Black man who is disgusted by much of what he sees in churches today. I suspect he thinks that as a pastor I was just like the clerics he has problems with. It’s too bad Keith didn’t bother to read my autobiographical writing. (Please see Why?) He would have quickly learned that I am not the straw man he has constructed in his head.
Keith says I need to read the Bible for myself. Uh, that is exactly what I did for most of my adult life. As a pastor, I spent over 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. What does Keith think I missed? He doesn’t say. My core beliefs were Evangelical and orthodox in every way.
There is no Jesus for me to come back to. I deconverted because the central claims of Christianity no longer made sense to me (please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense). First, I believe the Christian deity is a myth. Second, I don’t think Jesus was divine, born of a virgin, did any of the miracles attributed to him, or resurrected from the dead. Jesus lived and died, end of story. Third, I reject the notion that there is life after death. Just like Jesus, we live and die, end of story.
Jesus is a ship that has sailed on a one-way trip, never to return. No amount of Bible reading is going to change my mind. I know what I know. No one can say that I didn’t do due diligence when it came to the claims of Christianity. I have weighed them in the balances and found them wanting.
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.
Like Hotel California, once you are in, you can’t get out.
Once you are saved, you can never be lost.
Once God’s hound dog, the Holy Spirit, tracks you down, you belong to God forever.
Or so says Charles Smith:
If you scour the world-wild-web for any amount of time using atheism as your search term, you will undoubtedly find pages and pages of sites laced with the famous proclamation, “I used to be a Christian.” While this may be intriguing to the seeker, desiring a glimpse at the testimony of a formerly professing believer turned cynic in hopes of discovering reasons to remain religiously repulsed by Christendom, or possibly the opposite – looking to see if their retroversion experience is sensible – one thing is certain…there’s no such thing as a former Christian.
Cultural Christianity is quite the phenomenon of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries…
After “leaving the faith,” these misguided, false-converts then find their voices in the blogosphere, social sites, chat rooms, discussion boards and every other form of digital media outlet known to man – exhaustively expatriating as many “cardboard Christians” as they can sink their flaw-full claws into. Ironically, if they would spend as much time truly investigating and begging with a contrite heart, “God, please show yourself to me!” they would discover that He is absolutely faithful to do so – and the door the Lord has once opened, can be closed by no man.
These poor misinformed “ex-Christians” were never truly reborn of the Holy Spirit of God. They followed the crowd in church, were dunked under water, consumed crackers and gulped grape juice, sang songs, talked the talk, looked the part, memorized verses and so many other religious acts, but never came to a saving faith found in a relationship with the only begotten Son of God. Like so many of their contemporaries who weren’t led to the foot of the blood-stained cross of Calvary, they never saw their sins in the mirror of the ten commandments and consequently, never realized the magnitude of their debt – owed to a God who, because of His perfect love and justice, must punish sin – and they never saw the spotless Lamb for who He was and is, the ransom payment – the sacrificial substitute – who carried their sins before the Father and said “I will take their punishment.” Their prideful hearts of stone never crumbled under the weight of such a love and therefore, they simply socialized and enjoyed the music and learned to get along. But, of course, anyone who goes through a “phase” knows, it wore off and they moved on and Jesus wept…
Let the reader understand, just as you can’t become unborn once you have evacuated the womb, you also cannot become un-born-again. It is impossible to un-ring a bell, un-cook an egg or un-kill the living. If you are a spiritual seeker, please know that there is no such thing as an ex-Christian and if you want the truth, please look in a good Bible teaching church for assistance. If after reading this you still claim to be a “former believer,” you just do not understand…
While Smith’s argument certainly might apply to cultural or nominal Christians, it falls flat on its face when it comes to people like me; those who were sincere, committed, devoted, sold-out, on fire, consecrated, dedicated, sanctified followers of Jesus. While it is quite easy to dismiss those who never really took Christianity seriously, what about those of us who did? Did I really spend most of my adult life deceived, never having come to faith in Jesus Christ? Only in the echo chamber of Smith’s mind is such a claim possible. The only way he can square his theology with the life of someone like me is to say I never was a Christian, and since theology always trumps reason, Bruce Gerencser never was a Christian.
Look, I understand. I really do. Christians such as Smith cannot fathom anyone walking away from their Jesus. Why would anyone want to walk away from J-E-S-U-S, the most awesome God-man in the world, the biggest, baddest God in the entire universe? Why would anyone walk away from a golden ticket to God’s Motel 6? No more pain, no more suffering, no more death . . . who in their right mind would turn down such an offer?
But I did, others have, and more will continue to do so. Evidently, God didn’t want us bad enough to keep us.
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 was having a meal with a friend recently. He is a really nice guy and fun to be around. We’ve known each other for at least 17 years. He grew up as a Southern Baptist, but is now an atheist. I’ve been an agnostic atheist for about 6 years. Prior to my deconversion, I had been a Christian for 36 years, mostly in the evangelical/charismatic world. It turns out that my friend and I went through our deconversion process basically at the same time, but neither of us knew about the other. Both of us are still mostly closeted atheists. My wife doesn’t even know the full extent of my “change in some beliefs.” As with my friend, most of my friends and family are Christians and, like him, I’m not ready to go full-on just yet.
It wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that I noticed some of his posts on social media that made me go, hmmm. There weren’t many and they were subtle, but they made me think that he might be questioning his Christian beliefs as I had. I decided to ask him about it. I knew he was a Christian, but I also knew he was not really hardcore. So even if I was wrong and told him where I was in life, it would probably be fine. Once I brought it up and we both came clean, so to speak, we spent about 4 hours talking about our deconversion experiences. We still talk about them to this day as we proceed down this road.
One thing I noticed about my friend is that he is just as great a human being now as he was as a Christian. In fact, he is probably a better human in many ways. I feel the same about myself. I know I’m a better human being now as an atheist than I was as a Christian. I’ve found this to be a pretty common theme among people who used to believe in a God but are now atheists. I’m less judgmental, I have a lot less fear in my life, I don’t have any hidden agendas to get people to my church or my Jesus, I’m more compassionate and empathetic towards myself and others, and when I give (time, money, etc.) it’s because I want to, not because I feel like I have to. And not because I think I’ll get something in return. Yep, the prosperity gospel (BIG eye roll).
One thing that helped me become a better person is that now I feel free to study other ways of viewing life and the world. I enjoy learning about secular Buddhist and Taoist philosophy. I have picked up many tools from both philosophies that better help me navigate life. My overall mental and emotional state is better now than it ever was when I was a believer.
I can also say that life in general is better. I have more money because I’m not giving 10%-20% of my income to religious organizations. I’m free to focus on my job without thinking I am doing so until I can do full-time ministry. Ugh! It makes me cringe just typing that out! I’m much more chill now and worry less about things that used to worry me. Not praying anymore really helps! People pray because they want things to change or turn out a certain way. It’s an illusion of control. So much wasted energy. And, in my opinion, praying often takes the place of people doing things for themselves and others. Now, if I can change something that I think needs changing in my life, I do it. If I can’t change it, I adapt the best I can — using the tools that I have picked up along the way. Tools that I did not have when I just prayed about most things, hoping God would somehow fix them.
I was listening to a podcast a while back and the hosts were talking about what didn’t happen in their lives after they left religion. Their pets didn’t die, their cars didn’t break down, they didn’t get sick, their marriages didn’t fall apart, they didn’t lose their jobs, and life pretty much went on as normal. Even better than normal. I remember being told in multiple churches that if you decide to leave God, all kinds of bad things will happen to you. I’m not saying life is perfect, but most of those bad things I was told would happen never took place; not any more than they were happening when I was still a Christian. Cars break down, jobs change, pets die, loved ones die, people get bad news from the doctor, and people get divorced. Life happens to everyone, theist and non-theist alike.
Here is an example of what I believe is me being a better human now than I was as a believer. Not to toot my own horn, but simply an example of how I’ve changed since leaving religion. A close relative came to me recently and told me she was gay. I was thrilled for her! I was so happy that she had discovered this about herself. I pretty much knew, based on clues over the last couple of years, and was very humbled and happy that she trusted me with this news. She has been pretty careful about whom she shares this with, and I don’t blame her a bit for that. She did tell another close relative who happens to be a very devout Christian and it did not go well. I’m so glad that I have been away from religion long enough, and have grown as much as I have, that I could celebrate with my loved one instead of judging her for what I once considered to be wrong and “sinful.” I plan on continuing to change and to grow to be the best human I can be during the time I have here on this planet. No God needed.
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.
Polly’s mom recently died. I always had a contentious relationship with my mother-in-law. She never wanted me to marry her daughter, and she went to great lengths to frustrate our dating relationship. It was not until Polly told her mother we were getting married with or without her blessing that she grudgingly gave in and helped Polly plan our wedding. We’ve been married for almost forty-five years. Polly’s mom was certain that marrying someone from a divorced family led to divorce. I assume, by now, we have put that bit of nonsense to rest. Over the years, Polly and I butted heads with her mom over how many children we planned to have, how we raised our children, ministerial moves, choices of secular employment, how we celebrated Christmas, and a host of other things.
In 2004-2005, we lived in Newark, Ohio, blocks away from Polly’s parents. Our plan was to live there and care for them as they got older. Unfortunately, they made it clear that our help wasn’t needed. Message received. We returned to northwest Ohio so we could be close to our children and grandchildren. Five years ago, Polly’s dad (who died in November 2020) had botched hip replacement surgery that left him crippled. We offered to move them up here so we could help care for them. Our offer was rebuffed. Polly’s mom told her that they couldn’t move because their church — the Newark Baptist Temple — was very important to them. This sentiment is strange considering that their church pretty much ignored them since Dad’s hip surgery. Out of sight, out of mind.
As readers are aware, Mom made sure that the Gerencser family had nothing to do with her personal affairs and funeral. Mom’s behavior hurt her devoted daughter beyond measure. Why would she do these things? Our atheism. That’s the reason she gave us the last time we talked to her face to face. (Which was odd since she never, ever, not one time talked to us about our beliefs.) We, of course, respected her wishes. Her life, her choices, end of story.
I realize that if Polly had married a “normal” Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher boy things might have been different. Instead, Polly married a “bad boy”; a man who has always marched to the beat of his own drum; a man who has rarely been afraid to make hard, controversial decisions. In Mom’s eyes, I was an “odd duck”; I was “different.” Why couldn’t I have been like other IFB preachers? You know, like Polly’s Dad, Uncle, and cousins? Why couldn’t I have kept the faith? You see, the underlying issue is my unwillingness to hew to IFB belief. We left the IFB church movement years before we deconverted. Polly’s mom was upset with me numerous times during my years in the ministry; upset over decisions such as: me not wearing the IFB preacher uniform (white shirt, tie, and suit), letting Polly wear pants, allowing my children to listen to Christian rock, not preaching from behind a pulpit, not sending my children to a Christian college, removing the name “Baptist” from our church name, using praise and worship music during church services, and not using the KJV when I preached, to name a few. Nothing was as bad, though, as me leaving the ministry in 2005 and Polly and I walking away from Christianity in 2008. I suspect Mom believed that if I were out of the picture, Polly would come running back to Jesus and the family religion. Little did she know how independent her daughter really iwas and how anti-religion she has become. She may not be as vocal as her husband, but Polly has no use for anything associated with organized religion. She is, in every way, her own woman. The days when Bruce, the IFB Patriarch, ruled the home are long gone. Most of all, Mom blamed me for what our children have become. According to her, I RUINED them! Actually, what I really did was set them free. Each of them is free to be whoever and whatever he or she wants to be. Yes, to a person each has abandoned IFB/Evangelical Christianity, and some don’t believe in gods at all. Yes, they have abandoned the social strictures of their Fundamentalist youth. OMG! They drink beer, cuss, go to movies, watch R-rated programs, and have sex outside of marriage. I can don’t imagine what Mom would have thought had we told her our youngest son is gay. In Mom’s eyes, my children (who are grown-ass adults in their thirties and forties) were “worldly,” and it is all MY fault. I was, after all, in her IFB worldview, the head of the home, even though all my children are out on their own with families, well-paying jobs, and own their homes. Mom might have lamented their worldliness, but I am quite proud of who and what ALL my children have become.
It’s Thanksgiving 2005. We are living in Bryan, Ohio, five miles from where we now live. Polly’s parents came to our home to join us for the day. Mom, as she often did, blew into our home like a tornado, moving furniture and changing meal preparations. It was noticeable to me that Polly was quite stressed by her mom’s behavior. She, however, said nothing. As the day wore on, I became increasingly agitated by Mom’s behavior, so much so that I reminded her that she was a guest in our home and asked her to please STOP micromanaging everything. Well, that went over well. Mom and Dad didn’t stay long that day. A day or so later, Mom called to apologize. During our conversation, she said, “Bruce, we have always accepted you. We knew you were ‘different.'”
Different? Sure, but does that make a bad husband, father, grandfather, or person? Since when is being different a bad thing? My mother had many faults, but she taught me to think for myself and be my own person. I carried her teachings into my life and they continue with me to this day. I refuse to follow the well-trodden path. I refuse to do something just because everyone is doing it. I choose, instead, to walk my own path, even if that means I am walking alone. I realize that Mom went to the grave saddened by what had become of her daughter, her son-in-law, and her grandchildren. Instead of seeing that we were happy and blessed, all Mom could see was our ungodly disobedience and lack of faith. Instead of seeing what awesome children and grandchildren we had, all she saw was their faithlessness and worldliness. Her religion kept her from truly embracing and enjoying our family. In mom’s world, the wash can only be cleaned if the washing machine is set to “normal” and Tide is used for detergent.
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.
