Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.~Ps. 139:19-22
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?~Mt. 5:43-46
As you might have heard, Fred Phelps, head of the notorious Westboro cult (to dignify it with the terms "Baptist" or "Church" would smear said terms nearly as much as shying away from them for fear of association with the organization) passed to his "eternal reward" today, a reward which, it must be said, I can only speculate consists of permanent residence in the place with which he was most concerned in life. Just now, my friend Ryan mentioned that it would be the height of hypocrisy to "hate" Fred Phelps for "hating people"; a sentiment with which I can hardly disagree. But to stop there would be an oversimplification, and dare I say, fails to explore the reasons,which I am about to defend as (conditionally) righteous, that Christians are not among those mourning Mr. Phelps (indeed perhaps the only folks who are are certain media personalities, the proverbial false prophets in whose mouths Phelps has long been a lying spirit).
Few passages spring more readily to the lips of Sunday School teachers than the above quotation from Matthew 5. While it is a marvelous example of passages violently excised from meaningful context when monotonously chanted by apostates and cafeteria Catholics, guilt by association is no reason to treat Christ's words here as unimportant or trivial. In proclamation of the standard of righteousness entailed in the Father's law, a standard He came to fulfill on behalf of the totally incapable, Jesus announces that our enemies are our neighbors, that they deserve our prayer and that if we only love those from whom we receive blessing, we are no better than pagans. This line of the Sermon of the Mount, like the rest of it, is a man-slayer. All boasting is stopped in the shadow of the Law's mountain, all proclamation of our righteousness is exposed as menstrual leavings in Christ's demand that we show perfect love for our persecutors. And while each of us fail (in the flesh) to love the way Christ loved his enemies on the cross, it is certainly the heart's desire of every sheep to see hypocrites like Phelps, a man whose flesh would likely burn on contact with the printed words of Matthew 5, called to task for flagrant scorn heaped on the Lord's words here.
Yet, some argue, there can be no joy in the perishing of Phelps so (evidently) far from the true gospel, no sense of vindication in the hearts or minds of Christians, that a pernicious false teacher has passed, for by the measure we measure out we will be judged. Surely, goes this logic, if Phelps is indeed our enemy, Matthew 5 calls for, if not sackcloth and ashes, at least silent sobriety in the face of Phelps' passing? Would it not be Pharisaical to do otherwise? And here is where Ps. 139 rears it's ugly head.
It is hyperdispensational thinking at its worst to sever the writings of David from the teachings of the Son of David. The greatest rabbi who ever lived, the inheritor of the Davidic throne, the Logos incarnate, and the guy who just got done saying he came to fulfill the law in verse 17 knew full well that David actively boasted in song and prose of his "hatred" of the enemies of God. It is easy in the modern age of pagan friends, political correctness and what I will term "voluntary illiteracy" to refuse to square the circle of these two statements, to shrug off the elder as "OT thinking" "law not grace" etc. But to a truth-seeker, that will not do.
Scripture calls to love our neighbors AND to hate evil. Praying for those who persecute us can walk hand in hand with setting our face against false teachers of every stripe. If Paul desired that those troubling the Galatians would castrate themselves, (Gal. 5:12) it is right to feel a measure of vindication at the death of a man who made an art-form of "speaking against God with malicious intent and taking his name in vain". This vindication is not for ourselves, and must not be mingled with self-righteousness. But for the restraining hand of God, we might be as bad as Phelps or worse. But we can know with absolute certainty that the judge of all the earth manifests his justice in the fate of men, and that all the vitriol and blasphemy of men like Fred Phelps cannot prevent their going the way of all flesh.
I believe that the American Church is facing a time of trial for which it is largely unprepared. When persecution increases it will be vital for us to obey the dictates of Matthew 5 and uphold God's standard of righteousness. We must treat all bearers of the Imago Dei as our neighbor, and know that our persecutors have not merited murder, repression, slander or wicked treatment: this is Decalogue 101. But it will similarly be important to know that God is fighting our battles for us, that evil is identifiable, and that the triumph of the divine justice is eternal, inevitable, holy and good. As sheep and goats separate into more distinct camps, we must know that sheep are not the only apropo animal metaphor for the redeemed, and as a certain Picard-Genevan expositor said, "even a dog barks when his master is attacked".
Bark.
~JS
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