A quote
from the New York Times says it about as directly as it can be said: “You can’t
believe the Bible without believing that God hates people. It’s pure nonsense to say that God
loves the sinner but hates the sin. He hates the sin, and he hates the sinner.
He sends them to hell. Do you think he loves the people in hell?” The speaker is the Reverend Fred Phelps,
the leader of the cult-like family congregation, the Westboro Baptist
Church. It is an organization that
the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as: “arguably the most obnoxious and
rabid hate group in America.”
Fred
Phelps died this last week after a long illness. The street protests of the Westboro congregation continue on. I am sure that a lot of people have
tried to understand the influence this one man and his tiny church have had on
public discourse in our nation.
There are those who are probably glad he is gone, and there are those
who undoubtedly mourn his passing.
But how you and I go about making sense of his twisted version of the
gospel, as well as the relentless protests he and his congregation led, will
continue on for a while longer.
I went
to the Westboro Baptist Church web page to see if maybe the hype about Phelps’
hatred was overblown. Alas, on the
left side of the homepage is a running tally that includes the following:
6801 - soldiers that God has killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
124 - people whom God has
cast into hell since you loaded this page.
218,400,000+ - gallons of oil that God
poured in the Gulf.
8 - people that God saved
in the flood.
16,000,000,000 - people that God killed
in the flood.
0 - nanoseconds of sleep that WBC members lose over your opinions
and
feeeeellllliiiiiings
No, unfortunately the hype was not overblown. Here is a community of folks who claim
to follow Jesus venting rage and hate under the guise of prophetic proclamation. I couldn’t help but shudder to think of
the impact the witness of these persons has had on those who are unconnected to
God.
The second tally of people—those whom God
has cast into hell since you loaded this page--continues to tic higher and
higher as you view the rest of the web site’s content. It must be reassuring in a perverse way
to have such absolute confidence about the eternal destiny of those unknown to
you. The lack of sleep lost over
the contradictory beliefs of other followers of Jesus Christ belies a God-like
certainty in their judgment. If it
is true, I can’t help but be impressed and horrified at the same time.
Looking for some help in thinking this
all through, I was struck by an article I read by Matthew Paul Turner on The
Daily Beast. He observed, “One thing we can say about Fred Phelps is
that we knew his God. We knew that Fred’s God hated us, or most of us. We knew
that Fred’s God couldn’t wait to destroy the world with hellfire and brimstone.
We knew that Fred’s God was seemingly void of a conscience…Fred’s hateful God
left nothing to the imagination, and was easy to reject. But for countless
American Christians, finding a God who doesn’t hate them for what they are is a
long and painful journey.”
Two things we might take away from Rev.
Phelps’ passing. One, whatever you
might say about the God of Fred Phelps, you knew what that God was like. It was a God of vengeance and judgment,
yes. But Phelps was transparent to
his belief in that God. How
transparent are we to the God of acceptance, forgiveness, and love? I hope it would be as obvious to the
people around us where we stand as well.
Second, Turner’s last sentence really hit
home for me: ‘Will countless American Christians be able to connect to a God
who doesn’t hate them for who they are?’
Again, that is also up to us.
Have we found in the God of Jesus Christ unconditional acceptance and
jaw-dropping grace? And if getting
to that place was a long and painful journey for us, what then can we do to
make that journey shorter and less painful for the people around us?
