From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:
Questions pushed opened the door, and once it was open, I was free to wander and roam; free to read whatever I wanted; free to have non-Christian friends; free to love the world and the things of the world; free to finally, for myself, choose whether I wanted to be an Evangelical or whether I wanted to be a Christian. And the choice I made, of course, was NO, I don’t want to be an Evangelical; I don’t want to be a Christian. But even here I have to admit that, to some degree, this choice was forced upon me. I could have ignored the voices in my head and remained a Christian, but I chose, instead, to listen to questions and challenges percolating in my mind as I, for the first time, looked at Christianity with a skeptical, critical eye. And once I dared to accept the full weight of the implications of what I learned, my house of faith came tumbling down.
I have spent the last decade building a new house, one that sits on a foundation of reason, freethought, and the humanistic ideal. I didn’t choose to become an Evangelical. But I have now chosen to become a humanist. I feel liberated from the bondage of past beliefs, and while humanism is not the end-all Christianity professes to be, it does provide me a solid moral and ethical foundation by which to live my life. And here’s the good news, I am free to change and adapt as my thinking evolves, and no one is going to threaten me with humanist hell if I do. I can’t begin to express how wonderful it is to to ponder and think about what we call the big issues of life without fearing that I have offended the God or one of his earthly messengers. Simply put, I am free to be me.