The Westboro Baptist Church forgets that God is love
Posted on 29. Jan, 2010 by kchristieh in religion
Here’s a shout-out to the students, parents, staff and supporters of Gunn High School in Palo Alto, CA for protesting the demonstration by the members of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church. These insensitive, hateful people had the nerve to tell the Gunn community that the reason that five of their students had recently committed suicide was that they failed to obey God.
“You’ll be in front of the train next! God laughs at your calamity!” shouted Margie Phelps, wearing an American flag as a skirt.
The daughter of Westboro Church founder Fred Phelps, she said that the Gunn students died because they failed to obey God, and now live in hell.
This story literally made me cry. I can’t fathom the pain that Gunn has gone through, and am completely appalled that anyone would try to drive such a knife through that hurt. The fact that these people call themselves Christian is shameful and embarrassing, and I hope that people realize that the Westboro Baptist Church does NOT represent the viewpoint of mainstream Christianity.
When the church members (oh, it hurts to call them that!) sang ugly lyrics to “America the Beautiful,” students countered with “All You Need is Love.”
They get it. Just like the rest of us, Gunn students need love. The God I embrace is a God of love, not a God of hate.
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (I John 4:8)
After the Gunn protest, the WBC folks (better label!) went to the Stanford campus to protest in front of the Jewish student center, Hillel. They wanted to tell Hillel students that they too were destined for Hell. I’m so proud of the Stanford response: over 1,000 people showed up in solidarity to let the WBC know that their hatred wasn’t welcome on campus. The band and the Tree were even there.
“I just wanted to come out and show them that being a Christian isn’t about hate, it’s about love,” said Monica Alcazar, a Stanford freshman and Gunn graduate.
I wish I could have been there.
Links:
- “Protestors at Gunn, Stanford confront ‘God hates America’ group” (San Jose Mercury News)
- “Op-Ed: Westboro: A Christian Response” (The Stanford Daily)
- “A Few Comments on Westboro Baptist Church’s Visits to Stanford and Gunn High School” (Fiat Lux blog)
I certainly don’t wanna presume to speak for God. I’m not that certain. But when you do, it can get you in a brunch of trouble from one side or the other.
Just ask the Prophets!
In other news, KCher, I wanted to wish you a Happy National Chocolate Cake Day the other day but I forgot – my time was consumed with cake.
Kathy:
In full disclosure: I am a practitioner of my religion (Jewish)and I have a deep respect for believers of ALL religions.
This may sound like blasphemy, but truly, I am not sure that God is love. I think that he is way too busy to worry about us. But what do I know, I am not a religious scholar.
Where was that concept \G-d means love\ created? I have never heard about it prior to coming to America, but that could be me. I think that this concept of religiosity reflects on America than about God.
Read the Old Testament, and you will find endless examples of where the power of G-d was used in ways other than \love\. Worse yet, throughout history, men created so much evil in the name of G-d (though I will be first to admit that the biggest atrocities in human history — Nazism and Communism, were committed by those who opposed religion.)
I think that like any powerful conviction, religion could be used or misused. It could be used to bring people together for love and advancing humanity, or for inflicting immense pain and suffering on others.
What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.
LC, I think there are 2 main camps of believers re God is Love: those who emphasize God is Love and those who say he is anything but!
I think both are unbalanced views. That is one example where the \messengers\ often get in way of the message. But, of course from a Christian perspective we are sinners so what do you expect from his faulty childeren! We certainly haven’t been Gods best sales reps!
Besdides, when we start judging how God behaves, well, based on what?
I’m wundering if we can be God’s “Gift” to each other before we can be the gift to God?
Anyway, IMHO I think it’s more correct to say God is a balance of traits, with Truth, Justice, & Love probably being supreme.
I personally believe that Fred Phelps, his daughter and possibly most of his church members are mentally ill, and severely misled. I actually feel sorry for them, because to live in a state of such hatred, has to be a hell in and of itself. But I grieve when they inflict their hatred on others who are in deep places of pain. Sort of like Pat Robertson’s stupidity in saying the people of Haiti made a pact with the devil, as an explanation for the massive earthquake there.
God is love, righteousness, holiness, gentleness, forbearance, sovereignty, and many other attributes, but God characterizes God’s self as love in both Old and New Testaments. But sometimes love is expressed in terms of justice, etc.
My thoughts and prayers go to the families who have lost their children, and to the school who have lost these young lives way too soon.
But, Jesus also calls me/us to pray for our enemies, and for those who persecute us for righteousness’ sake. So I pray for Fred Phelps and his church who are in deep need of learning and understanding Grace and healing.
I read the Old Testament many times over, and each time has left me with even more unanswerable questions. If anything, it has only made me humbly admit that certain things are beyond the reach of my comprehension, and I learned to live with my faith as long as I don’t try to explain Him. In this I am hardly alone. I was absolutely not surprised to hear about Mother Teresa’s own remarkable struggled with her faith.
As the son of Holocaust survivors, I am baffled by the determinism that is coming from Rev. Moriarty, and especially from the absence of struggle with her notion of “God’s love”. As I explained, I am bemused when I hear others trying to explain God’s actions by using linear thinking.
With all due respect to Rev. Moriaty, I am also puzzled by a few of her other statements. Of course here is not the right place and time for all of it, but for example how can one explain God’s frequent violent handling of humans in terms of love and justice, and at the same breath condemn Pat Robertson statement about the people of Haiti? As for “praying for our enemies, and for those who persecute us for righteousness’ sake”, I guess I am not big enough for that. I cannot pray for those who gassed millions of people in concentration camps, or for those who sent planes to crash into high rises. Sorry. I do not pray for our enemies; I pray for their demise.
Philosopher Saint Augustine said it so well: \God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.\
To LCF resident,
I am sorry if I sounded as if I have no struggle with faith, or the contents of the Bible. I never meant to say any such thing, and don’t think that I did claim that. Throughout my years of studying, and living faith as best as possible, by the Grace of God, I have come to a place of having to learn to accept mystery, and that all of my questions will not be answered.
Regarding the Holocaust: I am so sorry that your parents had to live through such an atrocity, and as Elie Wiesel says, ” all we can do is embrace them and weep.” There is no explanation that would justify the evil.
What I was saying about Pat Robertson is I can never excuse a comment such as his, that the reason for the tragedies of our world as somehow being a curse from God, or as he said, that the people of Haiti made a pact with the Devil.” So as he is saying such cruel things, the people of Haiti are dancing in the streets in praise to God and singing.
And again, while Jesus calls me to pray for my enemies, and I try to do that, I am nowhere near perfection on that particular call. It is difficult and I have failed many times. It doesn’t take the call away though,and I still strive to do it. I will pray for changed hearts of the Phelps clan, Pat Robertson, others like them, and myself when the words of my own mouth are not reflective of the God I am seeking to follow daily.
So I can still speak of God as both love and Justice, as evidenced by the thousands of people who are motivated to go and help rescue the people of Haiti as an act of faith. As well as evidenced by the thousands of people who hid Jews in their homes to prevent them from going to the internment camps, often at great risk to their own lives. God’s justice is accomplished when God’s people move to right the wrongs,and to bring the perpetrators to justice.
I would like to thank Rev. Moriarty for her kind response and her graciousness in handling adversity. My hope is that she did not take anything that I said as a criticism of Christianity, and especially not as disparagement of the amazing American form of Christianity for which I have the utmost respect (I know, I know… Wherever there are humans one can find some flaws. No one is perfect, and this does not diminish the greater good that Christianity has brought to the world).
The Reverend may have not meant it, but she sounded a bit apologetic for the tragedies of Holocaust. I truly hope that this was not what she meant, because Americans have nothing to do with it any more than they have to do with students being shot at in the streets of Tehran, or with the genocide of black Africans in Darfur. The issue of the Holocaust was brought up only to explain my personal perspective; I could definitely say that the Holocaust has been a cause of deep and widespread crisis of faith among many modern Jews.
If anything, the Holocaust should really be cosidered a moral Catastrophe to humanity. In tragic turn of event, Christians have now become the most persecuted religious group in the world. Sadly, the lesson of the Holocaust has not been internalized, except perhaps by Americans, and especially American Christians.
LCF resident, Thank you for your response as well.
I didn’t feel you were criticizing Christianity. You said at the beginning that you have respect for all religions, and I believe you!! And while I do not feel personally apologetic for the Holocaust, I do agree that it is a moral failure, and I do feel that if we do not learn from the past mistakes of the moral failures of humanity, they will be repeated. I would agree with you that we haven’t learned the lessons to the extent that we should.
What you don’t know about me, is I am a hospice chaplain. I see people of all faiths, and so I have come in contact with many holocaust survivors. One woman in particular had a HUGE impact on my own life. She gave me far more than I gave to her. I sat listening to her one day with tears streaming down my face, with the awareness that I was sitting before a very wise woman, who had chosen to transform the horrible experience of her life, where she lost most of her family, into caring for the most vulnerable of our society, the severely developmentally disabled. She did this for 30+ years, and said if God would ever give her a second chance, she would do it again. I can’t help but believe she developed that compassion as a young girl.
But I also speak with many Jewish patients and families who do have a crisis of faith because of the Holocaust.And I can say that I understand why it would cause a crisis of faith. Again, Elie Wiesel relays a story from his boyhood in the camps, where they witnessed a hanging. A man behind him said, \For God’s sake, where is God?\ From within Wiesel, a voice said,\Where he is? This is where – hanging here from the gallows.\
I suppose that could be interpreted two ways, 1) that God had died or 2) That God identified God’s self with the person hanged, and was with him/her. I choose the second. But I understand that for many, it is the first. My hope and prayer for my patients and families would be that they would be able to be reconciled with the God who I believe loves them, and grieves deeply over the loss of those whom he created.
It would also be my hope for the Fred Phelps, Pat Robertsons, and others who choose to operate out of hateful legalism or angry hearts, that they would learn grace, so as not to inflict their own limited perspectives on those who need compassion.