It’s easy to loathe Westboro Baptist Church. But because of their spiteful rhetoric, the otherwise politically and socially divided segments of America are united. Thanks, WBC.
When the Phelps clan picketed at several churches throughout Emporia Sunday morning, it almost seemed like no one cared. A few officers from the Emporia Police Department protected WBC’s coned-off area from harassment that never came.
Sure, a few rubbernecking motorists had some choice words in the comfort of their vehicles, but, mostly, the morning went on as usual. The various Emporia church members greeted one another with smiles and open arms as their morning services proceeded unfazed by the silent plot of sign-wielding picketers across the street. They affected nothing. Is that the game plan for WBC?
Honestly, we don’t care, but clearly WBC is losing. Their fire and brimstone, their fundamentalist interpretation of select Bible scripture and their little refuge in Topeka are but a nuisance – offensive and nothing more. We can deal with offensive. Offensive is just a feeling.
But what they cannot control is the position in which their radicalism leaves the rest of us. The nature of extremism is divisiveness. In a country and time so comparatively temperate – “lukewarm,” according to WBC signs – we are united by default. Even our most contentious battles, like abortion or gun ownership, vanish in the presence of groups like WBC. We are allies, if only for a short time.
While in Emporia, WBC moved in caravans. They stood in the cold and looked as if they had just clocked-in to a part time job. It was business as usual. We don’t have to acknowledge every picket as meaningful, but we should definitely begin our discussions of other political schisms with the understanding that we are not so dissimilar.
If most debates would begin with, “At least neither of us is like Westboro,” then perhaps it would be easier to get something done for once. There is a larger picture to be seen here, and WBC neatly frames it for us.
Matt’s words, “There is a larger picture to be seen here, and WBC neatly frames it for us” is spot on … though not how he would like it to be. Faith in God is not a social experiment; it is an enlistment (compelled by the overriding and merciful hand of a sovereign God) into the pitch and eternal battle between good and evil, between the elect and reprobate, between darkness and light.
Only one standard defines these battle lines, and only one power determines both the combatants and the outcome: The Word of God!
Noah preached for 120 years to the nasty, arrogant (and in fact far more intelligent than this sin-sick generation of rebels) inhabitants of the antediluvian world. 120 years! Noah (with a few family members to assist) against the whole world! How’s that for a neatly-framed issue? Same issue … same frame!
Only eight got onto the ark, Matt.
I like our odds.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
John 3:16
Just curious: on the next ark, which Phelps family members maintain the lives of which bodily parasites so that those species aren’t destroyed in the flood? I mean, how do you even decide that? There are a lot of human parasites, so each person would have to carry a lot of them, so maybe, in the end, each person would have an equal amount of suffering. Those are actually very bad odds! Then again, if there were a second ark, wouldn’t that mean that God broke his promise to never flood the earth again? Your post raises a lot of interesting questions, Timothy. Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” (2 Pet. 3:5-7). There will be no second flood or ark … just destruction of whole earth and inhabitants with fire, because (if you read the authoritative work in the Babylonian Talmud) because of worldwide same-sex marriage, to which Christ referred: “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. 27They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:26-27).