“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be out to death; blood shall be upon them.”
This is the common passage thrown about by some within the Christian community to justify their stance against homosexuality and gay marriage in America.
One group within that community, the Westboro Baptist Church, considered more of a cult than actual church, parades the passage around to funerals around the country, blaming the plights of America on the existence homosexuals.
The Westboro Baptist Church is the crazy uncle of the Christian community – the family member you avoid making eye contact with at Thanksgiving for fear of a long lecture about things no one really cares about anymore.
Christians try to distance themselves from that church, saying that they are not true Christians. But the Westboro Baptist Church is in actuality the face of good Christians in America.
There is a misconception amongst Christians that the words of Jesus and the word of the Bible are one in the same. They are not.
Former President Thomas Jefferson found the Bible to be so abhorrent that he created the Jefferson Bible, or what was known at the time as “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” where he extracted what he thought was the doctrine of Jesus.
In his Bible, Jefferson excluded all miracles performed by Jesus, most mentions of anything supernatural, including Jesus’ resurrection and passages that indicated Jesus was a divine being. Why would Jefferson do such a thing if he truly founded a nation on Judeo-Christian beliefs?
Probably because the Bible is full of horrific atrocities usually left out of the typical Sunday church service. While their adherence to the Bible does not make them necessarily good people, the members of the Westboro Baptist Church are good Christians.
They follow the Bible as it reads and while their actions are vile, this should make any feel-good Sunday special Christian question their understanding of the Bible and religion in general.
You don’t get all of the points for only doing part of the work. Yes, it is arguable that the Old Testament is truly wretched out of the two books, but it is still part of the Bible regardless.
This leaves Christians – the non Westboro, modern American Christians – in a unique predicament.
Child murder, rape, torture, genocide, incest, tyranny, mass slaughter, slavery, mutilation, child molestation and infanticide all appear in the Bible and all in the name of God. Ignoring these things is, well, ignorant.
This disillusion ultimately separates the quintessential American Christian from the out-in-left-field Westboro Baptist Church members. But it’s the church that adheres to the Bible, as true Christians should, blindly following the word of God while committing horrific atrocities in his name.
American Christians are the Golden Corrals of the religious community, offering a plethora of differing options available to be picked and chosen over as one sees fit. And like the roadside Corrals of the great American highway system, a buffet diet is never good for one’s morality.
