Cult’s targeting of family funeral points to folly of speaking for God

By David McElroy · July 14, 2011

I don’t know of a better example of pure evil in the world today than the members of an insane religious cult in Kansas who claim to speak for God. For those of us who are Christians, though, it’s a warning that it’s easy to believe that our thoughts and judgments all come from God.

Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, is widely known for picketing military funerals and protesting pretty much everything you can think of. Its members claim that “God hates fags.” (That’s even the name of the group’s website.) Every time something bad happens in this country, the group claims it’s evidence of God’s judgement of America. They picket funerals to bring attention to their claim that the deaths and disasters represent God’s hatred of a sinful America.

Today, this group announced that members would be picketing the funerals of the Teutenberg family (above), the members of which were killed in a plane crash last Saturday in rural Alabama. For the hate-filled details, see this press release (PDF) from the group. You really need to read it for yourself to get the full effect of how insane and how hateful these people are.

Why are they picketing the funerals of this family? It’s hard to say. The news release claims that the family was “…killed in a plane crash by an angry God for the sins of a wicked nation….” In other words, there’s nothing in particular about this family the group objects to. It was merely an excuse to draw attention to themselves and their claims.

As far as I’m concerned, the Westboro Baptist Church isn’t Baptist and it isn’t a church. It’s a nutty and hateful cult whose insane leader, Fred Phelps, has taken the hate in himself and indoctrinated mentally weak people into following him. (I’ve read before that most of the group’s membership is related to Phillips, but I can’t find the specifics right now.) The group isn’t affiliated with any recognized denominational group and certainly isn’t connected to any of the Baptist conventions.

It’s easy to look at these over-the-top hateful people and smugly feel good in knowing that we would never be like them. In many ways, that’s true. I’ll never picket a funeral. I’ll never say that God hates people. I’ll never act in the insane and hate-filled ways that the members of this group do.

But I judge people. I apply my standards of what people should be to others and think that God would judge them more severely than He would me. I sometimes have a mental “sin list” outlining which sins are the really bad ones (the ones other people do) and which sins are those that should be ignored (the “little ones” that I commit, of course). On a small scale, am I less guilty than the members of this cult of trying to speak for God?

As a Christian, I believe that God does condemn sin. I believe that human beings are hopelessly lost without salvation. But it’s not up to me to condemn and judge. It’s up to me to love people and pray that God will show them the error of their ways — just as I daily pray the same for myself. Sadly, for me, that includes not hating and judging the insane people of this cult. The same God who saved me — very flawed and continually broken again — can save people who are as filled with hate as they are.

I can’t find the quote right now, but I once heard talk radio host Ian Punnett say that for many people, God’s voice was just themselves with a deeper voice — and I’ve seen that over and over again in various people, including Fred Phillips, but also in people who are respectable Christians (and pastors) in my own life. We can and will disagree about how God feels about a wide variety of things, including things that are seemingly covered in scripture. And if you’re from another religion or if you’re an atheist, your entire framework for evaluating God or morality or the meaning of life is going to be entirely different from mine.

For now, though, I’m mostly concerned about the witness of myself and my fellow Christians. I believe we know the Truth. We know God — because He has revealed Himself to us in our hearts through scripture and through spirit. But we make a mockery of all of that when we go beyond what He actually says. We put ourselves in grave danger of His judgement when we dare to speak for Him in areas outside of the narrow places where there is complete clarity for us.

I’m confident that God has saved me. I’m confident that God can reveal Himself to anyone He wants to. I’m confident that God can change anyone. But I’m not arrogant enough to speak for Him. It’s a daily struggle to make sure that I don’t judge for Him, even in my own mind and heart.

I’m disgusted that the members of this Kansas cult will be at the Florida funeral of this family, but we as Christians need to look at our own judgmental spirits before we’re really worthy of condemning them without also condemning ourselves.

Share on Social Networks

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

Related Posts