Westboro Baptist and the Content of God's Character

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome.  May the Lord protect and defend you.

During my daily perambulation this morning, I began thinking about God's character in the Bible.  Yaweh kills a lot of people.  Yet I could not recall any passage that says that God hates anyone.

I thought about something I had written earlier, how in a sentence the subject "God" should never be followed by the predicate "hates."  I may be wrong about whether or not the Bible says that God hates, but as a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, a man who preached a God of love, I cannot imagine that in all the God lore there is in the Bible that any statement of God hating a person would be true.

It was a beautiful this morning with a near full moon glowing from a wide nocturnal sky place bordered by tall trees.  Hate is certainly not suggested by the loveliness of the world.

Suddenly, two associations popped into my head.  I thought about Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."  That sermon is in the 11th grade textbook in our public schools.  There are a lot of stories about people falling to the floor when they heard that sermon.

It must have been the times in which it was written and spoken that caused such a reaction.  They must have been days full of fear.  Also, I know Edwards was a Calvinist.  Few theologies are as saturated with fear and loathing as Calvinism.

However, I would have fallen to the floor too, and I nearly did the first time I read it--from laughing. 

Edwards actually says, "God abhors you," in his sermon.  I reckon that means God abhors him too.

I don't know for certain, but abhorrence is a little more intense than just plain hate.  I hate working all the time.  I abhor working for little pay and support.

I hate drinking my coffee black.  I abhor not having coffee to drink.

I hate my personal sins, but I abhor the temptation to give up the struggle.

I hate hating people, even for a moment, but I abhor any thought of retribution or fantasy of anyone else's destruction.

I abhor war.

Poor John Calvin hated Catholics.  That hatred drove his theology.  He had to imagine a way to plunge everyone into his god's hell so only his kind could be spared.  Alas, it is his kind of theological hatred that pulsates among some hearts in our churches today.

The other association that popped into my head was Westboro Baptist Church.  If you go to my web site, you'll see a rainbow.  If you go to their web site, you'll see various ways of saying, "God hates fags."  We know where their hearts are.

My Westboro brothers and sisters have been woefully misled by their minister.  We should not follow ignorant men.  

I cannot tell if Brother Phelps is charismatic and misguiding his flock or is he misguiding sheep who, like him, love to hate.  

Most likely, the latter is the case.  Charisma works only for partisans.  Rarely, are we persuaded by someone's personal brilliance unless we are already in the same place they are.

Of course, Westboro Baptist members would believe that I am misled for preaching that God loves us all.  I'll go ahead in that case and be misled, but as a Christian it is my duty to discern what love commands and what it does not command.  

If my minister is a fool, I shall love him anyway and seek to edify him by word and deed.  

Blessings...