Death is how nature cures the hate-filled. Nothing of value was lost, beyond the missed opportunity for human flesh to be worth more than the sum of his parts.
With each successive generation that particular brand of bile is slowly seeping deep into the cracks of the earth, and passing into oblivion. When we gain the wisdom to reject that kind of thinking, and we pass it on to the next generation, we improve all of mankind, forever. Wisdom gained is seldom lost.
Every personal victory over ignorance is worth a thousand losses, for that victory echoes throughout history, through each successive generation. Every loss is but the status quo, and every failure ending in death is merely another chance for someone else to achieve something better.
I celebrate every person who learned of his philosophy and rejected it out of hand, and there are far, far more of those on this earth than the opposition.
I take no pleasure in this man’s failures, or his death, but all I see in his absence are better and more hopeful opportunities for all of us. I simply cannot mourn any of this.
Warm regards to his family members who care for him despite his views, and especially to those who cared for him as a person but rejected his terrible ideas.
Well, if God exists, then Fred will soon get a chance to be judged as he has judged others. Not even remotely a position I would wish to be in, given the awfulness that he has ascribed to God.
And really, even if God existed and he was forgiven and taken into heaven? Still a bit of hell to spend that eternity knowing the pain and suffering he had inflicted upon the world. And I mean, really KNOW it. To know the harm he did, to know how wrong he was. For all eternity.
No one should be surprised- Fred’s daughters have been running the show for a long time, and he’d been pushed into the background ages ago. His daughters had been treating him like a nuisance and an old crank for years.
And yes, Nathan has spoken out publicly against his family many time before. Here’s a speech he gave at a “Rally for Reason,” with many of his angry relatives present and shouting at him. I myself am a faithful Catholic, but it’s hard not to feel for Nathan or to admire him.
In a very small (it’s nothing but family, and has no other members) church, it’s completely unsurprising that a nasty, unpleasant old crank could be deposed by younger, more energetic family members.
And to anyone who was paying attention, it’s been obvious for years that Fred Phelps wasn’t the boss of his family any more.
The only thing that’s surprising is that his daughters formally “excommunicated him,” when they could/should just have locked the old coot away from the world and pretended he was too sick to attend the latest protest.
Since we are both going to die my only consolation is that Fred Phelps will be dying before me. I’d protest at his funeral…but then I’m not a classless asshole.
No, that truly is not what God is like. God loves everyone. He may be disappointed or very angry with the choices they make, but, like a parent, he never stops hoping they will reform and turn back to him.
I live in Topeka. I’ve seen Fred in years past, and stood on picket lines against him, close enough to touch. He was a dreadful, evil man as he was.
But after a lot of thinking and prayer I have come to realize that if I believe that Saul of Tarsus(the Fred of his day) could become Paul, professing God and dying for him, then that could happen for Fred too. It’s never too late to come back to God.