Westboro Documentary- Romanticizing Death

I was watching a documentary on the Westboro Church on Youtube (view here) and after finishing the 7 parts, I came to some interesting conclusions on them for myself.

Before I saw this, I was always a bit leery of them and felt they were of no good, when in actuality they seem to do SOME good. Here is my reasoning:

1) I would rather see this type of hatred than the type that hides itself and in a moment of passion turns to kill me.

2) Through the whole movie I had great sympathy for the kids. What a life to lead where you go to school and are in essence, taught, to hate those kids that sit beside in the lunchroom. No friends but your own family. No social skills but what you already know from your internal familial structure. No happiness except what your family approves of. No unconditional love, only rules.

Thank God for his unconditional love and his grace and mercy that looks beyond the broken rules to our soul and heart.

3) A lot of what the Westboro church does is to gain attention it seems. What will happen when Fred Phelps dies? I would assume that Shirley would take over, (a woman as the head?) and things would go as normal. But just as any attention getting person knows, eventually people grow tired and stop noticing you so you have to keep upping the ‘tactics’ to get the attention. At what point would they stop?

4) It would seem that the younger generation isn’t all about this ‘everyone is a fag’ idea. Even some kids don’t want to follow in their elders footsteps and become lawyers, except one. Have they grown tired of the constant haranguing? A person can only endure being beaten down by the rules for so long, eventually they seek out love in whatever form they can. My heart goes out to the unconditional love they are missing.

5) I found the snippet on the girl driving the car to the local protest with the doc guy to be of interest. At one point I wondered if she ever turns on the radio station and listens to the ’siren call’ of an ‘evil’ radio station. I know when I was growing up my parents banned me from listening to rock music, so that just meant I had to go and check out what all the fuss was about. Kids are kids and I wouldn’t be suprised if they checked things out on their own.

6) The reason for the title is that they love it when people die or are ‘judged’ by God. They romaticize the end of the world, death of humianity. Is their life so hard that death is more appealing to them? Is death so welcoming to them that they find joy in it? How sad to live a life that welcomes the end of it.

Overall, I will say this about the church clan- they aren’t afraid about shining their light to all the world. And I would have to say that they are times I hide my light away so as not to make someone mad. To them I give them a thumbs up for their courage! We all should show our light to the world so that it will know who our GOD is, not one of hate or disrespect but one of love, grace and peace.