In Defense of God

The other night I was meeting with some guys from Grace. Our conversation turned to the Westboro Baptist Church, the church recently ordered to pay $11 million dollars for picketing the funeral of a fallen US soldier. The church has been routinely disrupting such funerals, claiming that our soldiers are dying because the US is tolerant of homosexuality. In other words, they claim God is punishing us for such tolerance by killing our soldiers. At each funeral they picketed they carried vicious signs, saying that God hates the US and that God hates homosexuals.

We talked about how frustrated we as followers of Jesus are that churches like Westboro Baptist and their hate-filled “Gospel” are often the face of Christianity presented in the media.

It reminded us of the attacks the world has experienced at the hands of Islamic extremists. Many have wondered where the outrage is from Muslim moderates; why they don’t publicly denounce this abuse of Islam. Come to find out, many moderate Muslims have tried to voice their total rejection of Islamic extremists, but the press isn’t all that interested in carrying their story. The press tends to focus on extremism, be it Islamic extremism, Christian extremism, political extremism, and the like, because apparently, that’s what captures the attention of most of us who check in with the news. Extremism sells, so to speak.

So let me use this blog, on behalf of my particular community of faith, to say that Westboro Baptist Church does not reflect the face of Christianity as we understand and practice it. God does not hate the US. God does not hate homosexuals. God does not hate anyone. The face of Christianity is the face of God, in the person of Jesus, laying it on the line for us, out of a passionate love for each of us, on a cross.

Homosexuality is, to understate the obvious, a divisive issue in our country. Churches struggle with loving the person on the one hand yet wrestling with whether or not homosexual behavior is appropriate. Politicians wrestle with the issue from a civil rights perspective—can gays and lesbians marry or not?

In the midst of the struggle, what I can say with certainty is that Westboro’s vision of a hate-filled God is not anywhere in line with the God of the cross. The God of the cross always meets life, good and bad, hope-filled and sin-full, with transformative grace.

Perhaps another way of saying it is that God meets extreme hatred with extreme grace. In my mind, that’s news that will sell.