Originally posted in 2003, this has more relevance than ever with the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church over the past few years.
One of the problems with my new “job” is that I travel 4 days a week and spend 4 hours each of those days at regional offices, doing the rest of the work from home. I think I enjoyed my life better when I lived in a bit of a cocoon and was insulated from some of the terrible things that go on.
I’m sure just about everyone has heard of the “hazing” incident at a football camp perpetrated by high school youths on another player this past August. There is no defense for what those kids did - none at all. Today, however, I listened to the radio on the way to office #1 and heard some things that disgusted me even more.
A radical religious group from Kansas decided to protest outside the high school. Why they felt the need to do this is quite beyond me, and I’d be quite happy if they stayed under whatever rock they lived under in Kansas. I’d be quite happy to never hear from the likes of them again. The local rock radio station covered the “protest” in great detail, even with a reporter on the scene.
He said that what disgusted him about the whole thing most of all was seeing a 4 year old holding up a sign that said “God hates fags”. Of course, there was also the “Thank God for 9/11" sign to go with it. It’s pretty obvious that these are sick, sick people who are trying to provoke people to further their own sick agenda. It’s a credit to the Long Island community, the Nassau Police force, and the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth Group that counter-protested that nothing happened. I’m quite proud of this community for that.
The group that protested is from the Westboro Baptist Church. If the name sounds familiar, they are the same sick, twisted people who protested outside of Matthew Shepherd’s funeral. It’s people like these who give the rest of Christianity a bad name.
I study my bible and participate in bible studies through my church on a regular basis. Right now we are studying a book titled What’s So Amazing About Grace?by Philip Yancey. He manages to hit on everything that’s right about Christianity in that book, and something that is sorely missing from the message coming from the Westboro Baptist Church, that God loves us all. He loves all of the people in the world. We are all sinners, and no one is perfect, yet he loves us. That is why he sent his son to be one of us; so that God could have a better understanding of humanity. Jesus crying “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do...” was his way of transferring his own forgiving power over his enemies to his father.
It is up to us and humanity’s free will to choose whether or not we accept God’s love. How we accept that love can mean very different things for each person. But none of us are perfect.
Even more to the point, when Jesus came to Earth some 2,000 years ago, he did not cozy up with the so-called religious leaders of that time - the pharisees and sadducees. Instead, he sat at the table with people who were considered the dregs of humanity by these same religious leaders; women of questionable reputation, tax collectors, lepers, and others considered “unworthy” by those who made the moral and religious pronouncements of that time. Perhaps if the people of the Westboro Baptist Church would read the bible for themselves instead of relying on the hate-filled filtering by leaders such as Fred Phelps, they would learn a bit about the true nature of God. Those gay people Phelps espouses that God hates have more of a chance of ending up at God’s table that he does, or I do for that matter.
In no way does “God hate fags”. God doesn’t even hate the terrorists who flew those planes into the buildings on 9/11. And God doesn’t even hate the sad, sick people of the Westboro Baptist Church. Even if I believed in my heart that being gay is a sin, it is not my place to decide. Just as Jesus turned the job of forgiving over to his father, so must this decision be made. Too many religious leaders hold homosexuality as the ultimate sin, for some reason. My belief is that for them it is a “safe” sin to exploit. While they could rail against adultery, there might be adulterers in their congregation (or even a sin they might commit). While they could preach endless tirades about the rampant theft in our society, whether it’s our belief that it’s somehow okay to steal services from the cable company by using cheater boxes, or packing our suitcases with extra towels from hotels on our vacation, there might be those in their congregation who fit this bill and would never return to church after having heard this particular message. Holding one’s sexual preference as a sin above all others is “safe” for them.
That’s not to say that I am above reproach. Just as everyone else, all I have to go on is what I read in the bible. This is a book of words written down by human beings. What books actually made it into the bible was a decision made by human beings. I recognize that somewhere in all that, our human frailties and imperfections could have caused some important facts to be left out. If I ever thought that my views of who and what God is were wrong, let’s just say that I’d rather spend eternity in “hell” with my gay friends than in heaven with the likes of the leaders of the Westboro Baptist Church.
This church has been labeled by both the Southern Poverty Law Center (www.splcenter.org) and The Ross Institute (www.rickross.com) as a “dangerous hate group” and a cult-like religious organization despite having the word “Baptist” in their church’s title. Indeed, read a few articles about the church and its followers, and it reads more like the Jim Jones cult in Guyana than a congregation filled with Christian love.
Initially, my blood boiled when I heard the report today. After a while, however, I knew who really needed my prayers. It’s not the people here on Long Island. Thanks to the actions of this so-called “church”, the community here on Long Island is possibly a little less divided than it was yesterday. You see, everyone agrees that the actions of those Mempham students is reprehensible. I haven’t spoken to anyone who saw it as an act of homosexual rape. If anything, this “church’s” action have led people to be even more against people like them and their idiotic proselytizing. The people who need my prayers are the people under the influence of the leaders of this church. I’ll pray that they see the light and are able to divorce themselves from exploitative leaders who use their own trusting nature to further their own agendas, and find the true nature of God: grace and love brought upon humanity through his son, Jesus Christ.
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