“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. -(Matthew 23:23-28 ESV)

Here’s a statement that nearly everybody can agree on. Fred Phelps and the folks behind him at “Westboro Baptist Church” are really despicable. In case you have somehow missed the upsetting amount of coverage this group has been rewarded with, let me summarize who I am talking about. WBC is a very small group which pickets, among other things, the funerals of soldiers and popular people with signs proclaiming that God hates “fags,” Elizabeth Edwards, America, and whatever else will get them media attention. They do all of this under the guise of being an actual church. They are a hate group like any other, but their vitriol carries an extra ingredient which makes them even more difficult to deal with. They attempt to associate themselves with Christianity. They claim to be acting under the guidance of the same Jesus I do and the same Bible I read. They aren’t alone in this frustrating practice. There is Pastor Terry Jones, the guy who wanted to burn Korans, Brian Mitchell, who kidnapped and repeatedly raped a young girl because, “Jesus told him to,” and there are, of course, countless politicians who claim to know Jesus while spreading a message of hate, violence, and selfishness that He never preached. It has been going on for years, too. Slavery was defended by using the Bible. The crusades took place because somebody thought God wanted the Church to focus on killing Muslims more than He wanted it to help the poor and sick. The list goes on. Terrible things have been done in Christ’s name. Freddie Phelps is just the latest in a long line of those who abuse the gospel.

Having said all of that, it still does not make it any easier to stomach what WBC does and says. Reading about their antics this past weekend made my blood boil, and I found myself hating them. At first, I adopted the policy of Emperor Palpatine and allowed that hatred to thrive, because I felt it was just. My hatred turned into a desire to see Freddie murdered and for nobody to show up at his funeral. This was the moment that the obvious hit me like a baseball bat to the gut. (The Holy Spirit swings like Ted Williams after a training session with Tom Emanski.) Hating somebody because they hate other people is not very well-thought-out.

Convicted, I asked God to help me know what else to do. I knew that I am supposed to pray for them, but I had no idea what to pray. I knew that I am supposed to love my enemies, but how do I show them love without associating myself with their evil? Most of all I knew my hatred towards their hypocrisy only shined a floodlight on my own. God has been dealing with these questions in my life, and I am compelled to share what He has been teaching and re-teaching me.

How should we pray for Fred Phelps and his followers? Before even getting to Freddie, I believe that more often than not, we must repent for the same sin he is guilty of. It is ridiculous to point out the protest sign in one person’s hand when you are holding a bucket full of whitewash with hands encased in foam fingers of hypocrisy (Did the metaphors land?).

Are we, as a church or as individual servants of Christ, focusing on declaring the evils of one specific sin while wallowing in another one that can more easily be kept to ourselves? It is tempting to list specifics here, but I think that if we ask God to make these known to us, He will reveal them much more skillfully than I ever could.

After dealing with our own sin, I think that the prayer follows naturally. It is one of sympathy or even empathy for Freddie. He is as helpless to his sins as we are. Just like him, we are despicable people except for where Jesus has taken over in our lives. We have no fingers to point unless God points them for us. Our prayer for Him and our other enemies should be the same as it is for ourselves – that the Lord of all would show Him mercy and bring Him into the fold of eternal love. Redemption is the transformation of one thing into another, far greater thing. God’s redemption is powerful enough to change the message of even WBC. I believe that the key to loving people who offend the most basic of Christian senses lies in repentance of our own offenses to God.  God does not hate “fags” and he does not hate Fred Phelps. He loves them and desires their repentance. He died for them. When we move aside our own ideas through confession, then we can share God’s love in perfect communion and we can become strong enough to love even the most hateful of people.

As for the concern about our love of them being confused with loving their message, I will simply say that I believe God is powerful enough to overcome that. The gospel is not so fragile as to be destroyed or even tarnished by the efforts of man.

So pray for Fred Phelps’ hypocrisy. Pray for the hypocrisy of others, but never forget to pray for your own. Hypocrisy is a sneaky sin which can take many forms. It can follow the traditional definition; doing one thing while saying another. It can also be found wherever the big picture is ignored in favor of beating importunately on one point. Hypocrisy is an enemy of love. And like a burned out tail light, it is easy to notice everybody’s but our own. It takes a friend to point it out to us; hopefully before a cop does.

We need other Christians to be faithful to speak prophet-strength truth into our lives. We need somebody to tap us on the shoulder whenever we unknowingly drift into another lane while yelling at the car in front of us for neglecting to signal. We need to pray for that type of fearless accountability within the Church. We need to always be penitent in our relationship with God. We must ask Him to help us not become the thing we hate, to clear out the bones and uncleanness, and to fill us with His love to the point that it overflows and melts away even our pathetic whitewashing.

“…for the way I believe that I am living right by trading sins for others that are easier to hide, I am wrong and of these things I repent.” – Derek Webb