Today while scrolling through my Facebook news feed, I came across a video that one of my friends had posted. It was the first of eight videos. A documentary on The Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kansas. The church is made up of a little under 100 people and is 80% just one big biological family. I had never heard of this family/church and so I spend about an hour of my morning watching all eight videos. I was intrigued by them all.

It is a church that routinely goes and holds up signs on intersection corners that say God hates America. To name just a few signs : “thank God for 9/11″ “America is doomed” “you’re going to Hell” “God hates homosexuals” “thank God for dead soldiers” “God hates you” As you can imagine, people are not very accepting of this. The church members often get flipped off, sworn and yelled at. The church does not back down, they yell right back. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping thing that the church talks about, is that they rejoice in the death of soldiers fighting in Iraq.

This was disgusting to me. It made me mad. How could people be happy in the death of men and woman fighting for our freedom? The church claimed that these soldiers were out fighting (which is bad in and of itself) for a corrupt country. That God was taking out His wrath on the soldiers. That if a soldier was to die, it was God’s anger for that person. That the soldier deserved to die. I’m not making this up. They, to the core, believe this.

The people of the church often stand out side a soldiers memorial service with their signs yelling and chanting. I can’t imagine the anger I would feel if I was attending a service for someone who had lost their life fighting for us, and a bunch of people were outside saying how that person deserved to die. That they were in fact thanking God for killing the solider.

Westburrow Church justifies their acts by saying that they are warning America. They are trying to help people repent. They think it is their obligation to the world to alarm them of their corrupt life-styles. They feel as though they are being the light to a dark and blind country.

What the family was saying was profound and I pondered their words and ideas for some time. While I do believe there is truth in some of what they were saying, they were going about preaching the truth in the wrong way. Yes, living a corrupt lifestyle is not what God wants. He wants us to love him and live our lives for him. But, he doesn’t want us going out and telling people flat our they are going to Hell. Who are we to judge? Who are we to condemn other people? We don’t know their past, their thoughts, their future or what God has in store for them. Standing a street corners and memorial services telling people they are going to hell is hardly a way to win people for Christ.

The church claims that they are living the lifestyle that people wanting to go to Heaven need to live. I don’t believe this. I think striving to serve God, reading your bible, praying, letting others see the light that God puts inside of you shine. That’s what being a Christian is about. We are to show others love. We are not to condemn and ridicule them. We are to open our arms, comfort and point them in the right direction. If we see others in sin, we are to offer a hand. We are not to go telling them that they are going to Hell. We are not God. We do not know where people are going.

For those of you who are interested in watching the very videos I watched, I will post the first one here and you can go and find the other seven through that one. I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on the videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOrz5k0jWdU

Jesus loves you all.