No Greater Love...

“Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." - John 15:13


...Or for complete strangers
     ...Or for, at times, an ungrateful nation

“The Soldier, above all other people, prays for peace,

for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”

- General Douglas MacArthur

A few weeks ago I saw a headline at my preferred online local news resource, AZCentral.com, which caught my eye:

“Outrage over Ruling against Slain Marine’s Father”

As I read the article I became even more upset…apparently a court in Baltimore, Maryland ruled that Albert Snyder, who lost his 20 year old son Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder in Iraq, was to pay some of the court costs of a church that he sued for protesting while he laid his son to rest.


Mr. Snyder was:

ordered510.80 to Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, an anti-gay group that travels the country picketing military funerals.

–quoted from newspaper article, emphasis on ‘ordered’ mine.

Apparently the church group feels that military deaths are God’s punishment for America’s social tolerance of homosexuality.

WAIT!

...last I looked my Bible,
         aka the Word of God,
                 aka Basic Instructions for Leaving Earth,
                           aka The Book for Me…

States that, “We”, meaning Christians (aka perhaps those of Westboro Baptist Church) are not to judge others (Matthew 7:1-3), in fact the protesters are behaving as the Pharisees did in Jesus’ time. In fact Jesus (aka Christ) said that HE came FOR THE SINNERS!!! (Mark 2:17)


So…is now the time I share that I am NOT a theologian.

1. I do not ‘bible thump’,
2. I will and do call myself a “Christian”,
3. but I am by no means perfect or even come close to claiming to be such.
4. I say often that I "know it, in my knower!"
5. In fact there are times when I d r e a d being called a “Christian” because some of the things people do in the name of Christianity, like protesting at a soldier’s funeral, are the very things that turn people away from Christianity.

But even if I was a great (or even mediocre) Biblical Theologian…that still would be

NO reason, NO justification

 for me to protest during a FUNERAL! 

Although one might argue that even this blog post is a form of protest.

Regardless as to how one feels about

God…

or death…

or judgment…

or even our ‘right’ as Americans to ‘free speech’

I would hope that our right to use

our brains

our compassion,

our hearts,

our minds,

our common sense

would

STOP us from being so cruel as to PROTEST,

essentially ridicule…belittle…mock,

the death of ANYONE,

especially a young man…

                        a young SOLDIER!






Ok, I do have to ask …
Where is the rational that ‘emotional abuse’ is worth a cost of

$11 million…

that is the amount that Mr. Snyder sued the church for

…but to what end?

Is $11 million…or

                                      $5 million

                                        (the award was reduced on an appeal) or

               any dollar amount

worth the life of a child?

I wonder if God is thinking...

 “Gee, I wonder what I can sue ‘Christians’ for,

for using (essentially) MY name

as they do these horrible things against each other?!”

I, for one, am thankful that HIS court of appeals, understands that I am not perfect (grace) and that HE loves me in spite of myself (MORE GRACE, also called MERCY)…because just being

 ‘human’

 is  (essentially) it’s own form of protest against

ALL

that

is

GOD!

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:8