I only forgive those who sincerely want it, and even then not every time. He’s shown no evidence of remorse whatsoever.
As long as you recognize that’s not how it’s supposed to work. :P
If it was easy everyone would do it.
That’s how it’s supposed to work for Christians, though in practice I don’t see it often. As I’m not one, there’s no hypocrisy in my statement.
My point was that meeting his bigotry and hatred with kindness would be the ultimate “FU” to a man who lived his life believing he was a christian. It’s like all the Who’s in Whoville gathering outside the Grinch’s hospital window on the eve of his death from Stage 4 Lung Cancer and singing him a song…
…at which point his heart grows 10 times larger, effectively shattering his rib cage and compressing his already damaged lungs and causing an excruciatingly painful death over the space of a few hours.
While it may be an FU in a cosmic sense, I feel the irony would probably be lost on him, personally.
The heart explosion thing sounds more appropriate.
Yeah, the “Let’s all forgive the sinner” approach might make him feel bad. But, the psychotic night-shift orderly… that’s guaranteed.
I just don’t want him to feel any sense of justification whatsoever for his religious beliefs or actions. I’d rather he died without a smirk on his face as he looked out at a sea of haters who are gnashing their teeth and said to himself, “I was right all along”.
But hey, if the Zodiac killer were to reappear, take him out AND announce he was a heterosexual, that would be cool by me too.
p.s. joking aside, this is one of my favorite encounter with Westboro stories.
And now, it’s mine too.
and mine
Holy shit, I forgot Fark exists.
As long as you’re holding yourself up to be a better man, and condemning him for his condemnation of others (which is, I presume, the source of your ire) I have trouble believing the latter part of your statement.
I think it’s intellectually and logically dishonest to condemn someone for being a close-minded bigot and an asshole while practicing bigotry and asshole-ish behavior. Inasmuch as you’re presumably condemning him for being a close-minded bigot and an asshole for practicing bigotry and asshole-ish behavior, it seems particularly hypocritical.
It’s not really about spirituality or Christianity, IMO, but about having no moral high ground from which to pronounce judgement if you can’t practice the morality you take others to task for not practicing.
Ah yes the old “you must tolerate my intolerance” trope. Well played!
This may be the single worst example of false equivalence I have seen this year. And I follow politics :)
I don’t think these kinds of responses are fair. It almost feels like saying you can’t hate a Nazi without being a hypocrite even though they’re so evil deep down. Sometimes we can’t have much tolerance for this kind of behavior. It’s a hard line to draw.
Take for instance the story about the Nazi “costume party re-enactment” at a German restaurant in Minnesota. That story has not gotten the traction it should have with the outrage and disgust it deserves because they’ve been flubbing details. But as we come to find out their last gathering was not a Christmas get-together… it was on Martin Luther King day. Not only that, they sell Nazi memorabilia, printing out shirts etc. You don’t have to have Nazi banners plastered all over and Nazi uniforms to practice. And of course, thy lied about being sponsored y the WWII re-enactment community. Only 2 of the people who attended this deal were actual confirmed wannabe “actors”. http://hypervocal.com/news/2014/nazi-dinner-mlk-day/
If this is just an innocent get together, why are they selling these shirts?
It’s obviously a bird clutching a fancy boomerang. What’s all the fuss?
I can say, with no hypocrisy at all that I hope he’s in constant, drug resistant pain. And I hope that he’s crying out to his god, who does nothing. Yeah that is some nasty shit, right?
Spot on. It’s a truly grand piece of false equivalence. Calling someone a bigot in no way makes you a bigot, and shows a complete lack of understanding of what the term bigot means. There’s nothing “immoral” about pointing out someone’s bigotry.
As for forgiveness, to rephrase what Dave said, a requirement for my forgiveness is that the person I am forgiving know that they’ve done wrong, and feel regret. I don’t see the point in accepting an apology that wasn’t actually offered.
If I see any value in the Bible passage in question, it’s in letting go of anger. I could even reconcile the two in theory, in that you can drop the anger against someone who does you wrong while remembering that they’ve done you wrong, and that they will continue to do you wrong if given a chance.
And yet, and yet, I think anger has value. Anger can be a valuable motivation. Without passion against injustice, very few people would make more than minor efforts to correct injustice. It’s good to care about things, and sometimes the only appropriate reaction to caring about something is anger.
Fred Phelps deserves our anger.
So I’m “intellectually and logically dishonest” and “practicing bigotry” for not forgiving someone who hasn’t asked for forgiveness and shows zero remorse? Okaaaaaaaaaay.
Edit: Gus has already responded better than I have, probably because I’m the target of this truly bizarro post. Thanks, Gus.
Actually, I kind of get where mouselock is coming from but it’s such a tricky set of beliefs to espouse that it’s maybe hard to do it without sticking your foot in your mouth or contradicting yourself. Let me give it a go…
Fred Phelps behavior, bigotry and condemnation are so repugnant that I do not want to be guilty of emulating them in any way. Hia hatred and spiteful small-mindedness is almost ludicrous in its extremes and sets a counter example for how I want to live my life. Stooping to his level by reveling in his death, protesting his funeral, damning him to pain and hellfire, etc, feels like a victory for him – A validation of his mindset. I prefer to shrug my shoulders and pity his sad, miserable life. While it doesn’t always work, there are times that the correct counter to hatred is love. That’s a very Christian philosophy and I feel like it’s appropriate in this situation.
There are other times where I would have a harder time taking the high road. Genocide and other ideological mass killings. (The only death penalty I can remember approving of was Timothy McVeigh’s and I wept when I heard the ruling.) But Phelps was such a small, silly man. I know he caused a lot of people pain and I’m not excusing anything he did but neither do I feel the need to sully myself by coming down to his level.
I don’t wish painful death on Fred Phelps, but I won’t be shedding a tear at his passing. I may even smile a bit. Maybe that does make me a bad person, or guilty of falling into his hate, but I sleep easy knowing that I haven’t ruined someone’s funeral or wedding by carrying signs with hate speech on them.