Last week, the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church passed away. He was the leader of hundreds of protests staged at sensitive moments, most prominently the funerals of military service members that were killed in action. His vehement anti-homosexuality position and the inflammatory language that was used to denounce homosexuals and other groups that he deemed to be be hated by God drew the ire of everyone, including the Ku Klux Klan.
But it is time to forgive him.
His teachings were the logical extreme of the Reformed and/or Calvinist traditions. He believed that sin was evidence of unbelief, and he saw the death of men and women in uniform as an act of God's vengeance on the United States for tolerating the various groups he despised. He denounced the belief in justification by grace, through faith as heresy, and believed that those who clung to that belief were guilty of apostasy.
But it is time to forgive him.
He did not believe in a God who calls sinners to his embrace and offers them forgiveness for sin that they are born with and cannot help but commit. He could not conceive that God is able to both love the world despite its sin and condemn the world for its sin. He did not understand that God is both merciful and just.
But it is time to forgive him.
And in doing so, we will exemplify how Christianity is supposed to be and how Christians are supposed to live. A vast majority of people will look at him and say that he was an evil person. But the Christian should look at Mr. Phelps and see the same thing that he sees when he looks in a mirror: a sinner in need of God's grace and forgiveness. I condemn his actions as hateful and sinful. But I forgive Fred Phelps for all the hurt that he caused and the unbiblical teachings he held to.
When I asked one of my roommates if he had heard about his death, he said, "Yeah. It's sad because he probably didn't know Jesus." It was so evident during his life that he did not know the forgiveness that can only come from Christ, and that he mistook forgiveness of sins for the acceptance, if not the endorsement, of sin.
His death is perhaps one of the greatest ironies. In death, he will meet the God that he believed in: a god of justice. But he will most likely be surprised when it is him who is cast into hell for unbelief, because he did not believe the Gospel message that God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. So let us pray the prayer our Lord taught us: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
It is time to forgive him.
