The Question WBC is Never Asked

The Westboro Baptist Church has an interesting view of the Bible.  As I've written before, the WBC has a pretty interesting interpretation of the scriptures.  After reading the scriptures thoroughly, Fred Phelps (in his own sociopathic way) has arrived on an interpretation that actually seems to hold up under scrutiny for those in his church:

God Hates The World. 

If you really read the Bible, it's not hard to imagine why they think this.  I mean, it pretty much is painted all over the Old Testament about how wrathful God is, how he "hates" various people, etc.  I've heard Fred's daughter say that God is the most intolerant person ever.  Not that I would endorse their teachings, but if you want to understand WBC's position, they make a pretty good case for it on their website.

One presumes that in the WBC, they are thoroughly indoctrinated into this belief system.  They sing songs about it to with their children.  They live life every day with the notion that God literally is trying to punish everyone on the planet but them...because He literally hates them. 

Faced with this premise; however, they make what I consider an astounding leap of morality: that because God created the Earth and all its people, that whatever he does with it is totally morally justified.  Their logic basically is; because God is too big for us to stand against, we must accept his morality and do his bidding or face his wrath.  Put simply: might makes right.

Since Thrasymachus and Socrates, we've had some insight into this idea of justice and morality and throughout time we've seen just how immoral the strong can be to the weak.   I don't believe that we should base our morality, our ideas of good and evil, on whether or not some bully will harm us if we say the wrong thing.  Morality is derived from reason, not from some threat of physical (or spiritual) harm.  The logical flaws should be self-evident here.  If I told someone to believe that the sky was purple or I would harm them, and they believed in my abilities to harm them earnestly enough, I could probably convince them eventually to actually believe that the sky was purple, but the problem is that the sky would still be blue!  Their acquiescence to my demands notwithstanding, physics just won't budge on this one.  You can't bully morality any more than you can physics. 

How then, does WBC never get asked this simple question: If you really believe that your god will punish you for believing in treating people with kindness, with decency, with tolerance and love, why do you follow him? 

Maybe it's because the answer is self-evident: it's because they are cowards. It's because they are afraid to stand up for what's truly moral from fear that they will be punished by the lunatic invisible fiend that Fred Phelps has shackled them with. 

Cowards, every one.