I agree with what you are saying, but I don’t believe it negates what I say. I’ll go a bit further and say that hate is not the opposite of love, IMHO apathy is the opposite, which is abandonment by God in this case. In human terms it’s hard to see that hate is not the opposite of love, when emotions get involved, we seem to get locked into hate and love is not on our mind, nor can we see love. But God is not limited by human emotion.
For Job, which is also the story for one person suffering for the sins of others (Job 1:5, 42:8), Job did pass the test, he did not curse God. But Job did get rebuked by God for speaking words without knowledge among other things. Job was also warned by Elihu “would all your mighty efforts sustain you that you would not be in distress” (paraphrase from Job 36:19) - note: God never required repentance for Elihu’s words, unlike the other friends that went to ‘comfort’ Job.
In this context, Job went to far and became self righteous, and God used Satan to purify Job of this, by this contest, a contest that He knew Job would pass, but would also bring this other point up to Job. (all this while foreshadowing Jesus suffering and dieing for our sins).
But either way, God handed Job over to the enemy (Satan) to be horribly tormented, we usually don’t think of that as a act of love.
And hating these people just feels so RIGHT. It feels good, it feels clean, it feels powerful to hate these people. After all, they’re bigoted hate-mongers, of course it’s good to hate them!
People like you are the reason the kids in the Phelps church stay instead of leave.
You can’t honestly see that your pure and righteous hate for these bigoted assholes comes from exactly the same human impulse that created their pure and righteous hate for us? What’s the difference between your hate and their hate? Why is your hate good, yet their hate evil? Why is your refusal to understand them for even one second different than their refusal to understand you for even one second?
You’ve got the wrong idea about the WBC. It’s not like, say, PETA, where a bunch of idiots get together to make idiotic and/or hateful protests and then go home. If the WBC were a bunch of hate-filled bigots who got together on weekends for hate-filled bigoted stunts then your lack of compassion would be understandable.
But it’s not like that. The WBC doesn’t recruit from the outside. And you somehow can’t understand that the purpose of the protests isn’t to annoy you, the purpose of the protests is to demonstrate to the kids in the church that the entire world hates them. It’s to prove to them that people outside the church won’t feel compassion for them for even one second.
But the “I” in that sentence is Paul, not God, and the interpretation of “handing over to Satan” subject to scholarly dispute (see also 1 Cor 5:5), with meanings ranging from temporary ejection from the church to actual killing. I refuse to blame God for things Paul said.
Bold mine: I would state that this is neither temporary ejection or killing, but once someone has shipwrecked their faith (in a position where they are of no good for the church - See 1 Tim 1 :19, thye verse before handing them over to Satan), God places them in a situation where they can’t harm anyone, sometimes by inflicting them, something like Job (who was handed over to Satan).
Yes, it was Paul, but acting in the Spirit of God, as all scripture is God breathed. And how can a man, acting on his own hand anyone over to Satan? But also
This is the truth. In another thread recently I mentioned the documentary by BBC’s Louis Theroux The Most Hated Family in America in which he reveals that the entire congregation of the church is 71 people, nearly all being Fred’s relatives.
It is on youtube in chunks. It is interesting viewing.
“Handing someone over to Satan” is, from context, intended to be a remedial rather than a punitive action. Hymenaeus and Alexander had strayed from the faith according to 1 Tim 1:19, but what God or Paul actually did to them is unknown. Expulsion from the Church seems likely; Hymenaeus and Paul differed on whether the resurrection of the born again would be a physical one or, as Hymenaeus thought, that the “resurrection” was a purely spiritual one that occurred at the moment of being born again (as taught in the Gnostic doctrine of the Nicolaitanes), and heresy could not be tolerated.
I suspect we will have to agree to differ on that one. Paul is far too much the politician trying to deal with cultural clashes between the way of the church and the various peoples the Apostles are attempting to convert, and between different factions of the faithful (as in the case of Hymenaeus) for me to take his words at face value. There’s a lot of context required for a full understanding of what the epistles mean.
And if all Scripture is God breathed, why are there so many different versions of it?
That would depend entirely on what handing someone over to Satan means.
I just want to go a bit further on this or at least clarify the point I wish to make, as there is no need for human effort scholarly debate on something that God’s Word does defines already:
and
Job was unquestionable handed over to Satan, I see no scriptural reason to assume that what Paul did was anything different as God is consistent in His use of terms.
Sorry about that. If I had read your post I would certainly have comprehended it. It was very clear. I just jumped from page 1 to give people a heads-up as it is British TV and although I’ve seen it in Australia I kind of assumed it got little airplay in the US.
I very repectfully disagree with you here. They can break away. Fred has thirteen kids, and four or them did leave. One of his youngest, Dortha, has said publically that she planned her escape, made sure she had a place to stay and so on. Dortha changed her surname to get away from the family stigma, and last I heard has her own legal practise.
One of the boys who got away stated he left at midnight on his eighteenth birthday, but the family found him and dragged him back temporarily, till he left again.
It’s possible sometimes, but not often. Physical and emotional trauma can destroy a person and leave him or her simply unable to get away. Also, if it turned out there was sexual abuse within the family, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
That would be Nate Phelps who left the clan in '76. As I recall, they didn’t physically drag him back. They made an offer of reconciliation, asking him to be the best man of . . . I think it was Mark Phelps, but I can’t recall for sure. When he got there, however, they tried to get him to sign a piece of paper stating that he was in the wrong about everything and that he’d have to place himself under his father’s thumb.
Simply the most fucked-up family situation I can imagine.
On edit: I read Addicted To Hate, and it looks like I’m confusing either stories or people. They got Nate back by promises that his father was reformed, but they just treated him like shit and finally tossed him out.
Can they physically break away? Yes (as you have shown), But does that mean they have truly broken away? Are they still living in this pattern, searching out someone to oppress them as it is the only life they know? Or have they started oppressing others, forming splinter groups of the WBC? Sometimes these structures of oppression are not that obvious to see, especially from the outside.
And on the other side, if they have fully broken away and left that behind, have they independently broken away, or did someone work behind the scenes guiding them and showing them true love?
The only thing I can think of is that the Phelpses (?) use verbally explicit signs and some picture stick figures having non-touching anal sex (one bent over, the other behind). The Phelpses also say “fag” a lot.
Thank you HR Dept. Your concern for how I spend my time at work is duly noted.
NSFW may also make it NSF living room, NSF coffee shop, NSF bus ride, NSF bar, or heck, NSF Rack-A-Bones. I just couldn’t picture what would make a documentary on a religious cult NSFW.
