Westboro Baptist Church and its leader, Pastor Fred Phelps, plans to picket Heath Ledger's funeral, giving Baptists once again a bad name.
Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church are at it again. In a flyer announcing a picket of Heath Ledger's upcoming funeral, Westboro Baptist Church triumphantly declares that the Brokeback Mountain star is now "in Hell...and nothing else about Heath Ledger is relevant or consquential."
My readers know that I'm no moral relativist. I believe in God, Jesus, the Bible, and the reality of Rights and Wrongs. And while I believe that homosexuality (a lifestyle that was celebrated and defended in Ledger's Brokeback Mountain) is unnatural and destructive, I nevertheless refuse to buy into the virtriol and hate spewed forth by many fundamentalist Christians on this issue (and others, for that matter).
The Apostle Paul told the church at Ephesus that believers should not be "tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine." Accordingly, I do not approve of the shifting winds of public and cultural opinion, which have so often shaped and influenced church doctrine. The church is to stand for the truths of God...period.
However, Paul makes clear that we are to speak the "truth in love," and NOT in hate. Later in Ephesians, he writes: "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers."
I see no grace and no love from Fred Phelps and the folks at Westboro Baptist.
The proper response for the Christian community at a time like this is to mourn the passing of Heath Ledger, to reach out to his family, to offer whatever help and support it can during this time of sadness and need.
