Rant of logic: There is no such thing as a "Christian"

[Aractus]

OK, time to pick apart your post.

There are some Christians out there in Kansas...I was thinking about this yesterday. I ranted about it to my word processor..

So this is why there are random line-breaks throughout your post??

Will someone please explain to me why the Westboro Baptist Church is not representative of Christianity?

OK let's start here. We need to consider two things - 1. what is Christianity, and 2. What is representative of Christianity.

WBC is not the first non-christian organization to use the Christian Bible; and they won't be the last, so the point you make later on about a biblical basis is essentially moot.

Also, you addressed their fixation on homosexuality, but not on funerals. You probably aren't aware of what verse of the Bible WBC is "following" by picketing funerals:

• Luke 9:57-62:
  
  As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

There are many clear examples in the Bible of text that is not supposed to be taken literally - some are meant to be figurative (ie figure of speech) some may be somewhat literal - and others may be literal in the right context. Now if you took the text literally then Jesus is saying to the disciple to leave his father to rot where he is! Intuition alone is enough to tell you that you're probably missing something there. Yet it seems this is exactly what WBC believe that Jesus is saying!

If you take it in context, the disciple that says "Lord let me first go and bury my father" could mean anything from "my father hasn't got long to live" to "I must mourn ritualistically for my father". The former conveys the meaning that he must first care for his father until his death, that latter would be attributed to the usual Jewish burial practises of the time - yes a full year of mourning! Either case, Christ calls him in the now, not in the 1-5-10 year future. Depending on where Christ is in his ministry at this point (and you can't count on it being chronological in the Gospels) he may well have less than 12 months of his ministry left.

In our culture we just have the one funeral, and then go about our business. You would find precious few scholars who would argue for a ruthlessly literalistic reading of that verse.

Even if you take the ruthlessly literalistic reading here, Christ is still talking directly to somewhat who would follow him, whom he had just called. He isn't preaching to the masses that are not following him, if that makes sense.

What is Christianity? A Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus as their saviour and repented of their sins before God.

Christianity is the new covenant with God through Jesus, that surpasses all older covenants between God and man. For instance, between God and Abraham, God and Jacob, God and Moses, etc.

Jesus repeatedly found corruption in the religious leaders of contemporary Judaism in the first century. Corruption isn't a new concept. There were entire separatist sects, like the Samaritans, who the Palestinian Jews resented very greatly and certainly did not regard as representative of Judaism, and furthermore there were great tensions between them as well.

To be representative of Christianity one must hold firstly the teachings of Christ and the derivative Christian values.

• But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

WBC totally fail at witnessing the "lesser-great commandment" as quoted by Jesus above. We are not called to judge the world, we are not allowed to judge the world - God alone has that responsibility - we are only allowed to judge ourselves (in the Xian Church). Romans 2-3 is a good explanation of this. But there is an ever better example, and one that WBC uses to justify their position on ex-communication:

• 1 Corinthians 5:
  
  It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
  
  For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgement on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
  
  Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
  
  I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

Truthfully though, WBC is not alone in failing to interoperate this passage correctly. If they were completely literalist about it, then it would only mean to ex-communicate members in your Church involved in incest!! And surprisingly enough, some people actually believe this is what Paul means in this epistle.

What is made abundantly clear and beyond any kind of argument is that we are to judge ourselves, and let God be the judge of the world. WBC totally disregard this - while they do judge themselves, they also judge the world though they are instructed in the Bible not to. Worse still they preach it with hate and not with love.

All of this is why WBC is not representative of Christianity.