To: Fred Phelps
C/o: Westboro Baptist Church
P.O. Box 1886
Topeka, KS 66601

Mr. Phelps,

In the 3rd Chapter of James, we are gifted with the following words:

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, 8but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Though I am not a teacher as you are, these words have always spoken to me. They are a constant reminder of struggle to control my tongue. The tongue speaks from the overflow of the heart, and that dose not speaks well for me sometimes. I am sure you understand what I mean.

Hate is easy, so much more so that the more positive emotions. We cry out for justice, or our perception thereof, and often forget that the objects of our justice have need of salvation – yet no more right to it than we do. It is something which comes to us all too easy, and something we must fight.

1 John 2: 9, 10, 11

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

1 John 3:15

Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

I think the Bible’s, and so God’s stance on hatred is very clear. We are warned against speaking it, teaching it, and wallowing in it, yet that is exactly what your Church is doing.

I write to you as a believer in Christ, one who believes the Bibles abhorrence on homosexuality, spiritual wickedness, and the murder of the unborn. I believe in heaven, and in hell. I believe in Christ’s death on the cross as a payment for our sins. I believe in his resurrection, in his ascendance, and in his imminent return.

But I cannot accept your actions, and find you a poor reflection of our Lord.

It is easy to latch onto the mistaken belief that hate and anger can be as righteous as love and forgiveness, but that is not what we are taught. Your message leaves no room for grace, though you profess its existence. It leaves no margin for forgiveness, though that is a cornerstone of the Christian faith.

By picketing funerals of the honorable soldiers, who answered a call to protect one of the last bastions of Christianity in the free world, you have done more to harm our cause than promote it. By taking a good and right message against homosexuality and wrapping it in evil, you build a resistance that may cost a soul otherwise saved.

You actions are wrong. There may be a kernel of sound doctrine in your message, but it is lost in the delivery. We are called to be servants, not executioners.

I am sure this is not the first, nor the last such letter you have received. I can only hope and pray you feel my intensity and change the course you are on.

You and your congregation will be in my prayers, that you will see the error of your ways before you stand before He who is our Judge.