Wednesday, May 10, 2006

What Do You Think?

Obviously we think that this woman is nuts, but as a Christian, what should my response be? Should I just be silent and not judge? Should I speak out? How should Christians respond? [I've removed the embedded video, because it auto-played and has started driving me crazy.] Click here for a link to a website to view it.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

In no way should we, as Christians, remain silent and allow this "family/group" put an ugly face to our name. It's hard enough not doing that on our own... (albeit less crazy-like)

Ryan said...

thats unbeleiveable.

Anonymous said...

wow!! "thank God for dead soldiers, AIDS, 9/11" "God hates america" she is a sick unit!! seriously she had one of those creepy smiles on her face the whole time!! There is no way we should stay quiet. I was glad the one guy spoke up against her and as to what he believed about God, even if it was brief. I feel so sorry for this lady and all the people of thier church. they have a "raging angry God" to look to for thier strength, they are missing the loving, grace-filled, and soverign God. how sad.

David Rudd said...

i posted about this same issues about a month ago. got a lot of interesting comments.

link

Anonymous said...

That is wild. I am really more concerned with responding to the people that women is affecting with her comments rather than holding her accountable to her actions. You can see that she is not going to change her mind!

Watching people associate Christ with that kind of behavior makes me want to apologize to anyone who is offended by their acts. I just hope that they have someone in their lives who can show them the real love of Christ that wants to know them, rather than judge them!

Screwtape said...

I do not agree, obviously with the sentiment and fortunately this is just basically a family who has some radical ideas that are stupid and disrespectful vs. a large church with a large following. I think that it should also be considered that airing this, even though the media is completely negative, is still media and it might have the unintended consequence of adding to this following. One note that doesn't correlate with my dissagreement with their arguments, I do believe that banning them from protesting at services is unfortunately wrong because that is banning them from a basic American right that these soldiers faught to protect. Passing some legislation will not make them go away, especially now that they are on Fox news and instead it slowly erodes the constitution. No matter how much we dissagree with "stupid people," Americans must fight at every chance possible the free and open society dispite what we might think to be our better judgements.

swishthedish said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
swishthedish said...

Screwtape, your thoughts might seem reasonable until it's your brother's funeral that's being picketed. Then those laws might not seem like such a bad idea. That's not protesting, that's just harassment.

As for the Phelps. We have every right and the obligation to stand up and oppose them and their teaching and unfortunately to clean up the mess they leave behind making people disillusioned with Christianity.

erichapman said...

i was going to quote John Fischer, but i'll just link to him...

http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/devarchive.aspx?ARCHIVEID=1765

Anonymous said...

This is ridiculus. I'm still wondering why she refers to God as "The Lord YOUR God." Does she not consider herself a Christian? Is He not her God too? This lady is crazy, she is giving Christians a bad name, and we shouldn't remain silent. It was nice to see Hannity and Colmes tear into her. It makes this discusion on "The Five (plus) irritating things about Christians" very worth while. Not to say that it wasn't already. But come on, this lady really is one of those irritating Christians that is giving the rest of us a bad stereotype!

Anonymous said...

All the points and comments I've seen so far are valid and worthwhile. Screwtape and DGB ressonated with me the most. The more attention we give to this the more it will escalate into something that spins out of control and gives this sick and misguided family the publicity they obviously are seeking. Kudos to DGB. Indeed our God is so awesome that He cares about this women and her family in spite of the missguided "axe" they have to grind. I certainly do feel sorry for the families they are harrassing and disrespecting in their time of great loss and sorrow. Screwtape is right on in saying that the majority of intelligent people will not judge Christ's Church by the action of this radical minority. Intervention by well meaning Christians will only lead to more confrontation which will in turn lead to more publicity and hipe; hence these sick people will get exaxtly what they're seeking.

charlesdean2 said...

Thanks Tom!
I had someone ask me the other day for the best method for confronting said individuals.

In the end my response was something like..."there's not much we can do, because to confront them only throws fuel on the fire." I think that all we can do is make sure that we're speaking and living Jesus' love in our culture so that when they see this kind of craziness, they recognize it for the craziness that it is.

And finally, -- great post Danny Bobbitt! We always need to be careful that we don't get self-righteous about this kind of stuff, because grace covers even this!