Last year I found out about Westboro Baptist Church, I basically googled the living daylights out of this church, watched a ton of youtube videos, until my eyes had cried enough about it and I was physically sick because of how deceived these people are. It broke my heart.
They think that they have grasped God's love, they think that they are living out his love, but I will stand by the fact that I think God's love is evident to everyone, it should flow through the pores of our body, it should be blatantly obvious that somethings different about you. Everything about what they stand for screams hate. Jesus' life never screamed of hatred, no matter how radical He was it screamed love all the way through.
They touched on the phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin." I can't even express how much I hate that saying. It is people like these that give that phrase weight. They are so busy hating the sin, that they eventually end up hating the person behind it as well. I can't see how declaring that people are going to hell (which is never a human's job anyways) is loving someone well. It just isn't.
Jesus never said that line either.
"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is not in the Bible, so I would hate to live as though it is. Our job is not to condemn or convict people of their sins, our job is to love people. Like Russell Brand said, we can't focus on the little tiny text and lines that us humans can misread or skew in the Bible, we have to focus on the bigger picture.
Which is love.
"There are people, professing Christian people, who are determined to bring you under their religious thumb. They are bent on making you a slave of their conscience. They have built a tidy religious box, without biblical justification, and strive to stuff you inside and make you conform to its dimensions. They are legalists, and their tools are guilt, fear, intimidation, and self-righteousness. They proclaim God’s unconditional love for you, but insist on certain conditions before including you among the accepted, among the approved elite, among God’s favored few… They threaten to rob you of joy and to squeeze the intimacy out of your relationship with Jesus. They may even lead you to doubt your salvation. They heap condemnation and contempt on your head so that your life is controlled and energized by fear rather than freedom and joy and delight in God." - Sam Storms
PS if you need a picture of love, a picture of humility and truth and the church, please read this. And even if you don't need a picture of any of that, read this anyways. And then read every other article on faith he wrote, brillant.
