Baptist Pastor Fred Phelps passed
away on March 19, 2014. He was a man of God on a mission of hate.
Beyond that, I know very little about him.
The question
that troubles me is not what he did, but why he did it. What made him
feel so strongly about this one particular issue that he would devote a good
portion of his life in its pursuit and hopeful annihilation?
Fred
believed that God hated gays. God hated gays! Why? Some childhood encounter? A hatred
passed from parents' to son? A literal interpretation of the bible?
A mind off kilter with compassion and reality?
We do not
know and we may never know.
Now that
Fred is gone, his church may or may not continue. For the sake of Fred's
family and followers, I hope it does not. I am not worried about gay
people; they will survive. They know that prejudice and disenfranchisement are
part and parcel of their struggle for equality.
After death, I believe that we are called to account for our lives, not by a tribunal fixed
on punishment and mandatory repentance, but by a group of souls whose single mission it is to help us look at our actions as humans and determine what went wrong and
how to do better the next time around. Harmful acts do not go unnoticed on either side of the "veil".
This
afterlife review, of course, does nothing for the living left behind—those
who followed Fred and those who suffered at his hands. It does, on
the other hand, provide those willing to do so, another way to
examine his actions in the hopes of not repeating them again.
We'll leave
the Bible and other such religious books out of this for now. This is
ground upon which no one consensus can be found. We'll set
aside the fact that Fred did not make friends by his actions and that most who
knew or encountered him, found his words and actions offensive and downright
mean.
But Fred did
do one thing that we cannot deny. He put hate right in your face! He
shouted it at every opportunity! Fred wasn't weak in his beliefs.
He didn't back down in the face of overwhelming opinion against
him. Fred had a goal and he pursued it without flinching!
So, you must
be asking, where am I going with all this?
It's very
simple, really: If we had the same drive that Fred did, but turned that
conscientious resistance against hate and exclusionism.
If we taught our children that it is wrong to hate another person because
they are different from us. That to judge is to assume what we cannot
know unless we have walked in the shoes of the one we judge.
If we taught
our children that one person's actions do not speak for all persons' actions. That the color of one’s skin, the country of
one's origin, and the beliefs of one's heart are what make our world rich,
creative, and hopeful.
Yes, there
are people who do awful things, but the majority of people do not do
awful things. Yes, Fred spread a lot of
negative energy around. If we do not want other Fred's to appear at our
doorstep, then at our doorstep, before we set one foot outside our house, we
must determine that we will be kinder, more thoughtful. That we will get
the facts before voicing concern and dissent.
Fred showed
us one way. Sadly, there are many groups who follow in his stead, individuals
who believe that they have the formula for the perfect world or society.
You want a world without hate?
Start with yourself. Not one of us alive is without fault. It
is the height of hubris to believe otherwise.
