God's Job

I've been judged by many people in many hypocritical ways, but I suspect nothing compares to being judged like God is judged - by an inaccurate description we've created of Him, by the cramped box we've tried to fit Him in, rather than by His true nature, character, and by the very words He's spoken.

Among the most irksome reasons one can hear for a disbelief in God is, "Bad things happen." Which of course holds no philosophical water, as God's job has never been to keep us happy, or to keep the world healthy and clean. It's not even a Scriptural truth. In fact, before sin entered the world, and we people began turning the planet into, literally, a world of hurt, it was still not God's job to make everything comfortable - it was man to whom He gave the directive to tend the Garden and keep out lying intruders. And we all know how man did with that task.

Nor is God's job to, in a matter of will over will, change the already-made-up mind of the public shooter or the power hungry dictator. It is however among His sovereign duties to judge them for their actions and choices with divine and holy judgment. I realized long ago that if God did not allow bad things into the world - or, rather, allow people to choose to do bad things to each other - He wouldn't be able to give you and I the beautiful and glorious task of doing good things. And if He, in some trump of will, made us all do good all the time, would our good really be good? Wouldn't it be as fleeting as a blink or a breath?

It is not God's job to make people treat each other fairly, or to make sure every exchange and transaction between people is fair - don't tell God, who sent His sinless Son to die for my sins, about what's "fair."

One of God's chores is, I suppose, to keep things running; the weather, biology, time, all of those vast things we humans can't control, try as we might.
But even more vast than those things too lofty for me to comprehend is something even more puzzling to me and my bitterness - love. And God did His job, kept every promise in every prophecy He ever gave the prophets to utter, when He came to this earth in the flesh. He did His job to the fullest when He gave a Savior to be the perfect Atonement, the punishment for the sins of all who would be willing to accept that this Messiah took on Himself the very literal wrath of God, so that we who bemoan the injustices in this world without doing a thing to cure them, would be free from that wrath and given to a life under His grace - even the shooter and the dictator could have the gift of grace and cleansing of evil.

That's God's job. To love us, though we have turned His creation into a smoking, fuming globe of waste. But this job was certainly not something owed to us, definitely not something we deserved. It is a job He gave Himself, because no one else could. And He exemplified His job when He, in human flesh, let His hands be stretched out and nailed to an ugly stake of capital punishment. A part of love is keeping promises - He's promised to return someday, and that you and I who believe will spend eternity with Him, where this love is never approached by the darkness of doubt, of prejudice, of bitterness. 

A Message of Love to Fast Food Workers

I recently saw a post borne of the minimum wage debate that deeply offended me. I'm not sure I'm qualified, either intellectually or as it pertains to common sense, to take a stance on the issue of raising the minimum wage, as my math skills are abysmal. But I know about common decency (even if I often fail to practice it), and that's why the post I saw infuriated me.

The post read, "If you've chosen flipping burgers as a career, you have failed."

Snobbish, elitist statements like this have offended me since I was a child. The reason the bitterness stems from my childhood is because my mother, Ann Gowdey, fed and provided for four obnoxious, homely sons - and me - with a career in fast food that lasted from 1969 to 2005, give or take a hiatus or two.

Glory days.

Though I don't know that my mom stepped into a Dairy Queen in high school and said, "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life," I do know that she often looked back at her life and said she wouldn't have wanted any other job, despite the physical toll it took on her over thirty-plus years (in those days, burgers were not yet synthesized holograms as they are now). She eventually became the longtime manager of both Dairy Queens in Seminole, Texas. When she went into a temporary retirement when my father died in 1996, the local DQs so declined in quality that one was shut down.
I'm immensely proud of my mother and her "mcjob" she loved so much, the same mcjob that paid for by mcbrother's contact mclenses, our mcschool supplies, the mcjob that paid for my mcpsychiatric care as a teenager, and the mcjob that taught me a person doesn't have to wear a suit or have college training to make a difference. (I probably shouldn't use the "mcjob" term, since she worked at Dairy Queen and not McDonald's, and that could be a huge conflict of interests.)

I'm a preacher, so I know nothing about work. I don't even work the two hours a week since I'm not allowed to preach out of an actual church building. But I do have enough good instilled in me by Christ that tells me if you go to your place of work every day and do your job with commitment, without indifference or bitterness, and with care for your customers, you have done something nothing short of amazing.
The Holy Spirit tells us through the apostle Paul: "And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:23-24).

And, even if you despise your job, and drag your hungover carcass in there every day anyway, to feed your kids or just to get your transmission fixed, you've still done something awesome.

Fast food employees of America and elsewhere, don't let anyone belittle you or look down on you. You don't deserve such snobbish treatment - you're in food service, not congress. You are not an embarrassment, should not be embarrassed, you are not the shame of the work force, and should never be ashamed of your hard work.

Let's be honest. If every fast food worker in America accepted and believed the shame and scorn that's thrown their way, and walked out of their job today, this country would spiral into chaos and anarchy. Endless lines of cars would line up at McDonald's, Burger Kings, Taco Bells all across the land, full of angry Hyundai-jockeys who demand you fix them up a quick lunch, so they can get back to the job that requires two college degrees so they can sit in their cubicle and deride you on the internet some more for working in fast food. Soccer moms who smile with self-assured glee that they don't have to work in grease would be dismayed that no one is at Wendy's to take their order for their children's dinner. Entire high school football teams across the country, students given scholarships to college because they can execute an Earl Campbell-like tackle, would sit in their buses outside Sonic, perplexed at how they'll celebrate their 21-10 victory over the Permian Panthers without a chili cheese coney...until someone has the bright idea to celebrate with booze, and now look - we've got underage drinking.

You fast food employees are the glue that holds America together. Never be ashamed of your work.

"...the worker is worthy of his wages." -our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Luke 10:7

There's Nothing Wrong With Your Mind, Kid

Of my thirteen stays in various psychiatric hospitals between 2001 and 2008, six of them took place during my adolescent years. I was usually given the doctors that the other teens didn't see, due to the fact that my mental problems were more complex, at least for a teenager. Many of the other kids were either experiencing a more intense form of the already-daunting emotional storm that comes with being that age, or they were R.P. McMurphy types - accepting a stay in a mental hospital to avoid jail.

But, in this mix of genuinely troubled children, and juveniles savvy enough to exploit the system, there was always a third kind: kids locked in the mental hospital for the sole reason that their situation at home was no longer safe. They had been neglected, mistreated, or abused. Many of them were placed in the hospital to await placement in a foster home; others were there while their parents showed up daily for "family therapy" sessions; but more disturbing, others were there to begin a "residential treatment" program.

Even then, with my own troubles to deal with, I wondered, "What are they doing here?"

It's not as if I had some bitter notion that they were taking away from the hospitals' resources. It's not that I didn't understand that they needed somewhere to stay that wasn't ruled by an abusive relative. But there were deeper things that puzzled me, and still do, about these kids.

For one thing, why were they being given psychiatric medication? Don't misunderstand me - I understood it if the child had been driven into depression, anxiety, or some other post-traumatic or pre-existing symptom. But that was very seldom the case, at least in the experiences I'm describing. There were many others who were not mentally ill, but rightfully uncertain and afraid about the future. I felt back then, and I feel even more strongly now, "you've been abused! You've been wronged! You're not the sick one!"
What troubled me even more was that, as confused and as fearful as many of these children were, the sheer act of being given a pill for their minds was basically drilling into their souls a notion that there was something wrong with them mentally because they had been abused. Without a word, but with a pill, they were told: you have been mistreated; therefore you're sick.
I was never abused or mistreated by my parents, but if someone told me there was something wrong with my mind because I'd been abused, when it wasn't me who was the crazy one, I would develop the notion that the abuse I suffered had somehow been my fault.

And indeed, many of my fellow patients with whom I kept contact into adulthood (as well as others I met during my later stays in adult wards) harbor some guilt or self-loathing behavior due not only to what they experienced at home, but because someone told them there was a flaw in their minds when they were taken from that danger.

Growing up with so many stays in mental hospitals where these things were commonplace, I made many friends who wouldn't have been in those wards had it not been for a deliverance from an abusive home. But what were they delivered to? A hospital where someone tells them "you were neglected and abused by someone you trusted, someone who should have cared for you, so you're mentally unstable and need pills"? It made no sense to me.

And what's more, I watched many of them grow up from being abused children, to children convinced they were mentally ill because of that abuse, to adults who, because of what they were told, can't handle life and make a mess of it because they've been deceived into thinking "it's supposed to be this way - my mind is messed up, and I'm messed up." I've had many friends who don't have the strength to handle being an adult because no one told them they were strong as a child. No one told them, "hey kid, you've got more guts than me - I could never go through that and not lose my mind. But you held it together. You're a brave, strong person, and you've got a bright future ahead of you, if you believe it."

If anyone out there is reading this, and you've found yourself in a mental hospital as a result of having a bad home life, when you get out, keep in mind that you're not the crazy one. You're not the sick dirtbag who beat you, who preferred some poison or powder over your needs, who didn't care about the precious life they'd been entrusted to keep safe. If you developed some post-traumatic mental illness, address it by all means. There's nothing wrong with being ill. But don't let anyone tell you that you were the one who needed pills based on the fact that some maniac hurt you. Don't let someone tell you that you weren't strong.

Don't let some pill forced down your throat when you're a kid shape the kind of person you become when you're an adult. Let your bravery and strength shape you instead.

"What do you think you are, crazy? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average ***hole out walkin' around on the street!"
-Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Why Christians Don't Have To Care What Joel Osteen Says

One of the great things about true Christian faith is that the doctrine we follow is governed by Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, and not...well, "some dude." The Bible, and everything in it, was written by divine inspiration. As for what is not in the Bible, God is not only the divine Author of the Scripture, but its divine Editor as well. And God being eternally good, and never contradictory or changing (James 1:17), those who believe in the sovereignty of Jesus and not the authority of people have no fear of following an immoral facet of this faith.

But, there are sects of those who claim Christ in a twisted way, but are led by mere men - dudes prone to bias, agendas, and corruption. For example, the presidents, "prophets," and leaders of the Mormon church held for about one hundred fifty years the gross doctrine that black people were all cursed, descendants of Cain. In Mormon Doctrine, Bruce R. McConkie wrote, "Those who were less valiant in pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed on them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God, and his murder of Abel being a black skin."
Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, wrote, "Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization." 
One of Smith's predecessors, Brigham Young, echoed these racist sentiments: "Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which was the flat nose and black skin...the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree...If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be."
However in 1978, as the tide was thankfully strongly turning concerning America's racism, then-president of the Latter-Day Saints, Spencer W. Kimball, announced that God had apparently changed His mind concerning black people, and that they were no longer cursed.

The point of this is not to bring up the history of racist doctrine in the Mormon church, but rather to make the point that this faith's doctrines were concocted and changed throughout the years by mere men. And these mere men, whatever they stated, true or false, was "gospel" for the Mormons.

Faith in Christ's authority and sovereignty - and His alone - does not carry this conundrum.

For example, when Fred Phelps, former leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, would say hideous things like "God hates f*gs," this did not reflect the belief of all, or even most, Christians, and certainly did not reflect or affect God's words in Scripture. Fred Phelps was just some dude, whose ravings reflected only himself and the wanderers who followed his warped view. Jesus remained Lord, while Phelps remained only a bitter, raving man who led others astray.
Likewise, if another controversial figure in Christianity, such as a Joel Osteen or others of his ilk (certainly not to compare Joel Osteen to Fred Phelps), whose teachings on the so-called "prosperity gospel" have been rejected by many Christians who find no basis for it in - again - God's word, say something questionable, it does not reflect the truth of God, nor are Osteen's sayings precedents for all believers to follow.

A few years ago when Haiti was plagued with natural disasters, Pat Robertson, of 700 Club fame, attributed the tragedies to some "pact with Satan" that Haiti had made long ago. There have also been many who blame tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and the like, on moral decline in America and the rest of the world. But we know this notion to be refuted by the Bible, as God said after the Great Flood, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21).
Again, Christians were not obliged to heed Robertson's ill-informed statement because God's truth trumps the words of men, even if those men profess to be God's spokespeople.

One of the only "televangelists" (though he's served in many more capacities for the church of God than just televangelism) I enjoy listening to is Dr. Charles Stanley...out of the, like, four televangelists I've ever listened to. Lately however, I discovered that he and I have differing views on the timeline of the Great Tribulation and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (keep in mind however that I still require much more study and prayer on this matter, as we all do - I could be butt-over-tea-kettle wrong in my view; Spirit and prayer will tell). So, because I find Dr. Stanley to be a well-spoken, gentle, and passionate man of God, does that mean I should abandon my views, or even ignore what the Holy Spirit lays on my heart concerning those issues? Absolutely not.
I don't have the nerve to say "Charles Stanley is wrong, and I'm right," as I'm not even a cup-bearer in God's Kingdom, but merely a jester (but given entrance to the Kingdom by the grace of God nonetheless).
But, I do know that if the Holy Spirit convicts me in my future studies and prayer on the End Times, and affirms that what I've learned from Scripture concerning those things is true, even if they don't line up with Dr. Stanley's views, then I must abide by the Spirit, and not Dr. Stanley.

Therefore, seek not the wisdom of Charles Stanley, Billy Graham, Ravi Zacharias, or Beth Moore. If these servants of God said something wonderful, and in accord with His gorgeous Gospel, then praise the Holy Spirit who gave it to them. We must seek answers in prayer and the holy Scripture; if God's servants preach a sermon, write a discourse, or make a remark that jibes with the Word, praise the Lord and not the servant. We should encourage the man or woman of God in their proclaiming of the Gospel, but we must always acknowledge first and foremost Christ - for, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-3, 14).

Those rooted in Jesus Christ may be condemned and criticized by an unfeeling, unbelieving world, but they have a much easier yoke to carry than those who follow the ever-changing, ever-dreadful words of men.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." -Hebrews 13:8

Bury My Heart at Joe Byrd Cemetery...Oh, and Bury the Rest of Me There Too

Last year, I found myself with no choice but to adopt an opposition to the death penalty. My newfound position stemmed from my vehemently pro-life/anti-abortion views. One of the standard arguments for the pro-choice side of the abortion debate would be the perceived hypocrisy of so many who are "pro-life," but support the death penalty and oppose food stamp programs. And while I've never opposed food stamps, I was often on the fence about capital punishment. The Law of Moses gave clear instructions for the death penalty, but the New Testament's position on the subject has been a source of debate, even among we who believe (though the apostle Paul writes, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." -Romans 8:2, emphasis added; and, if we're going to base a support of capital punishment on the Old Covenant in the Bible, we'd also have to execute those who commit adultery).

But I soon realized I had no choice. Being pro-life must not end at the womb or at birth. It must carry into the child's well-being, education, and even into old age. Therefore, I decided I wouldn't give the other side of the abortion debate the ammunition - no longer could they pin me down in some generic mold of hypocrisy that they've concocted.

I oppose the death penalty.

I'm not sure how the two thoughts became connected - the thought of where I'd like to be buried when I die, and my opposition to capital punishment - but they did connect somehow, and left me with the wish to be buried in a prison cemetery, any one that will have me.
In January, I made a call to the Texas Prison Museum, to gather information on the Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville, Texas, a cemetery for prisoners in my state who die with no one to claim their remains. When I asked the admittedly odd question about a non-inmate being buried there, the answer was that, if for no other reason, I might be prohibited only because they're quickly running out of room.
Many prison inmates, whether sentenced to life or not, die while incarcerated each day, and many have no relatives to claim their bodies (and many have relatives who simply refuse to claim their bodies based on the deeds they've done). I'd assume that Texas would have to open a new state prison cemetery at some point. But when I pass away, I hope that any prison cemetery that will have me will allow my remains to be buried there.

My reasons are simple. When the Lord Jesus returns to gather all who are saved, both dead and alive, He will no doubt gather even those who died on the gallows, in the electric chair, the gas chamber, or the lethal injection stretcher, who confessed their sins and repented before their executions. And if I'm so pro-life, so opposed to the killing of a human being in the womb or outside of it, I can only empathize with those who were executed for their crimes by the state, though they were cleansed of them by a much Higher Authority. I've never done anything deserving of death according to the state, but had I lived during the time of the Old Testament, I could have been stoned to death for taking the Lord's name in vain, for adultery, or any number of sins for which I've been forgiven, under the New Covenant of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Therefore, it would be an honor to be raised at Jesus' Second Coming with men who, like me, are forgiven scoundrels, criminals purged with hyssop. It's my desire to meet the Lord in the air, but it's my dream to meet Him with men who had no one in their lifetime to claim their mortal bodies. In death, they were in the company of only strangers, guards and shackles. In life, they'll be in the company of their fellow saints.    

I suppose I could find just as many forgiven wretches and deviants in any cemetery, and many graves with the careless word "Unknown" etched where a name should be. But most of those people weren't killed by their state, their deaths condoned by many governors and politicians who rally against death by lethal injection in the womb, but support death by lethal injection outside it.

I don't want a special tombstone to designate that I wasn't a prisoner. I'd just need a simple marker with a number for the sake of records, the same as those who died as inmates. Jesus Christ will know where to find me when He returns.
I suppose there was no way to write this blog without looking both morbid and fanatical. I can admit to the fanatical part - I know that if I'm a fanatical supporter of life, I won't kill anyone to make my point. But I don't find eternal life and the promise of God to be morbid. He is a God of life, not of death. My job in this world is to proclaim the good news of eternal life offered to us by the Lord Jesus, paid for by His own blood; and I hope to someday be risen next to men who died alone and forsaken, but forgiven and blessed with eternal life by Him whose authority exceeds any court or lynch mob.

"There ain't no grave gonna hold my body down
When I hear the trumpet sound
I'm gonna get up outta the ground
There ain't no grave gonna hold my body down."
-traditional American folk song

That's Not Science - And That's Not Jesus

A few months ago, a friend asked me about my widely criticized, Biblically-influenced, belief that our planet is only several thousand years old, rather than the hundreds of millions of years believed by most scientists (though to be honest, even if one goes by the Bible, he still has no positive idea how old this world is). I didn't want to debate my beliefs, and basically stated that I trust God more than I trust man, and that I believe in the divinity of His word, this Book we came to call the Bible. I don't dispute that my spiritual beliefs are dogmatic - if I believe something to be an absolute truth, such as "2 plus 3 makes 5," I also can't help but be "dogmatic" if I refuse to believe the possible answer could be pi. When pressed further about my beliefs, I pointed out how many times scientists have been wrong over the centuries; for example, many of Aristotle's theories are now known to be butt-over-tea-kettle wrong, and yet he's still lauded as one of the grandfathers of science.

My friend's response was simply, "That wasn't science."

For a while, I thought that to be a silly and dodgy answer. But the more I thought about it, I realized my friend was right. No, Aristotle's misses weren't science. I believe God gave us science to study and better care for our environment, our bodies, and so forth - and being so, I believe true science, much like true religion, holds one true answer to our questions, even if man provides a myriad of blunders to try and explain them.
Man's wrongs don't render science null and void. Even now-defunct scientific theories that were widely held until just the 19th century - the Miasmatic theory of disease, Luminiferous aether, the immovability of Earth's continents, the "static universe" (if I've misspelled Miasmatic or Luminiferous, I apologize) - have been debunked and abandoned in droves, yet that doesn't make science a waste of time. And it didn't negate the many times scientists have been right to be somehow wrong.

Likewise, man's wrongs don't render my God or my faith in Jesus as the Messiah to be useless. The Westboro Baptist Churches, the false doctrines of Mormonism and the Jehovah's Witnesses, and etc., are all against God's words, twisted doctrines that claim Him but are in direct opposition to His truth. Man's lies and evil actions don't render God's truth ineffective. Fred Phelps was to Christianity what Immanuel Velikovsky was to independent theory. The abominable "Phinehas Priesthood" is to Christianity what Cyrus Teed was to...to um, not-getting-electrocuted-and-developing-wildly-inaccurate-theories-about-the-planet.

If a person does something in the name of Christ that is actually against Christ - picketing funerals, condemning someone to hell while frothing at the mouth, banishing someone from attending their church because they've been divorced, etc. - this is not the command or love of Christ. Much like my friend's assertion that it was not "science" to believe the universe to be spherical and finite. Just because I misidentified that obsolete belief with science doesn't make it science.

A disproven theory is not science, much like hypocrisy is not Jesus.

I've always found the Bible to be in harmony with nature and science. Certainly the Bible acknowledges God's creation and sovereignty over these things (Psalm 147:8, Isaiah 5:6, Job chapters 38 and 39), which many dispute. I understand that. But, the Bible doesn't claim that angels dump buckets of water from the sky to make rain - it acknowledges rain as moisture and precipitation descending from clouds (Psalm 147:8, Proverbs 25:14, Ecclesiastes 11:3, etc.). The Bible doesn't claim mischievous sprites make flowers and grass in underground factories - it acknowledges that plants need seeds, rain, soil, and such to grow (Deuteronomy 32:2, Leviticus 26:4, Jesus' parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13, etc.).
The Bible never described Earth as a flat center of the universe, but a planet suspended in space, when as yet no images from satellites and space stations existed (Job 26:7 - Job is, by the way, widely accepted, even among non-believing scholars, to be among, if not the, oldest recorded book of the Bible).
The Bible never claimed a fixed amount of stars or celestial bodies, as other early astronomers did - God alluded to an uncountable amount of stars when He told Abraham in Genesis 15:5, "'Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.' And He said to him, 'So shall your descendants be.'"

Likewise, when contrasted with myths, the Bible always makes a distinction between the natural and the Supernatural. Unlike in the myth of Icarus, where it was supposed that men are just somehow able to fly when they strap wax wings to themselves. I once read a Native American legend during which a warrior went to sleep and told his thigh (or in other versions, his excrement) to keep watch and speak to warn him if enemies approached - because apparently that's just how it works.
Not in the Bible. When miraculous and awesome events are described, they're always separated from natural occurrence and attributed to the supernatural work of an omnipotent and all-powerful God. This ranges from Creation to the plagues of Egypt to Jonah surviving in the belly of a large fish, and most importantly, to the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. It's a Pasteur-like dismissal of spontaneous generation - the Bible teaches that the awesome doesn't "just happen."

Scientists and science may not always, nor have they always been, in harmony. And, those who claim the name of Christ are not in harmony with the truth of the Lord when they blaspheme His name with evil ideas and doctrines.
But truth can never be separated from itself. 

Wolves in Wolves' Clothing: Last Thoughts on Fred Phelps

In 2011, I watched as many condemned other Americans for celebrating the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed.
Now in 2014, I watch as many of those same people celebrate that Fred Phelps, founder of the notoriously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, died last night.

At first I was irritated by those who scolded the people who rejoiced at bin Laden's death, but they were right. I was glad that a terrorist and enemy to the sanctity of human life had been eliminated, but why should I rejoice that someone is now in hell - the only place where God's love is perpetually absent, and no chance to repent is ever found again? That's what makes it hell, after all.

I'd hesitate to make the blatant assumption that Mr. Phelps did not repent on his deathbed; I hope he did, but I can't prove it. If he didn't, I'm sorry to say I believe he'll be sent to everlasting condemnation on the Day of Judgment. I don't think anyone who unrepentantly does things that mislead people about the doctrine of Christ, about God Himself, enters the kingdom of heaven. And Mr. Phelps, and the hypocrites like him, have driven so many away from the Savior by their hatred.

Fred Phelps' death should rightly only bring Christ's disciples sorrow and a churning in our stomachs. Hopefully, we recognize that churning as the Spirit groaning inside us, convicting us to "do good and put to silence the ignorance of foolish men," as the apostle Peter wrote, so that the illusion of the Great Deceiver, the devil himself, might be shattered, even if that illusion is worked through wolves in sheep's clothing - or in the case of Westboro Baptist Church, wolves in wolves' clothing.
"Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’" -our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Matthew 7:21-23

Adam Raised a Cain (A Discourse on Sin & the Garden of Eden)

"In the Bible, Cain slew Abel 
 and east of Eden he was cast
 You're born into this life paying for the sins
 of somebody else's past."
 -Bruce Springsteen, "Adam Raised a Cain"

A female friend was trying to text me the other day, when she complained about her phone. "It's taking forever to send messages."
"Taking forever, eh?" I remarked, "your phone must be a woman."
AMIRITE fellas?!
We men and women have fun berating each other. It reminds me of the playful boys-vs-girls debate among believers, and even non-believers, about whose fault it truly was that mankind fell into sin in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve, the first two human beings on Earth, disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit. And while the man in me wants to put the blame at 60/40, judging by Scripture I can only surmise that the Fall in the Garden was equally the fault of man and woman.

We read in Genesis 2:15 "Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it." Concerning Eve's creation, she was described in relation to Adam as "a helper comparable to him." Further, Genesis 2:24 tells us, concerning the spousal relationship, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."
In the third chapter of Genesis, we're sent headlong into the Fall of Man. "The serpent," it says, "was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made." 
Note here the distinction - maybe I'm just reading too much into semantics, but the serpent (who we of course know was Satan) is identified with "the field," not with the Garden. If one accepts any significance about the use of the word "field" rather than "garden" in describing the serpent, we can logically assume he had no business in the Garden of Eden. He was an intruder. And, as we read previously, God had given Adam the specific duty of tending and keeping the Garden. So, Adam had overlooked one responsibility already in preventing the serpent from entering his home - just as we today must keep evil influences and destructive behaviors from our own doors.

What happens next is infamous - it should be, because it led to the world sucking. The serpent persuaded Eve, through lies and twisting of speech, that there would be no disastrous consequence to eating of the fruit of "the tree of life." So she did, her and "her husband with her" (emphasis added, Genesis 3:6).
Long story short, mortality and sin entered the world, Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and every ugly, hurtful deed that's ever been done can be traced back to this fateful day.

But concerning whose "fault" it was that this happened, we see plainly that Adam and Eve were "one flesh," that Adam had a responsibility and duty in overseeing the Garden of Eden, that he faltered in negligence when he allowed the serpent near his wife, and that Eve too stumbled when she heeded the word of the enemy. The man and woman were one flesh.
In the New Testament, Paul at two points seems to distribute responsibility evenly. In his masterpiece of Romans, Paul writes in the fifth chapter, "through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned". (It would be an injustice to grace if I didn't include Paul's complete thought here - he writes that though sin entered the world through one man, "the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.") Later, in his first epistle to his protege and faithful companion Timothy, while referring to the authority of men in the church, Paul scolds Eve particularly for her part in the Fall, writing, "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression." (1 Timothy 2:14)

I used to read a lot about serial killers. One thing that linked almost all of them was an abusive and painful childhood. So many of these murderers' parents or guardians beat or neglected them, allowed them to be exposed to hideous things, or forced them to commit atrocious acts at tender ages. These killers' parents made them pay for their twisted actions, leading them to paths of darkness and destruction.
In God's grace, He often won't punish us for our sins - but we sure make each other pay for them.

It goes right back to the beginning of man on Earth - if Cain's parents had not sinned, he would not have been envious of his brother Abel, would never have killed his own flesh and blood. (Not to suggest our sins as individuals, much like Cain's sins, are merely results of environment or ancestry - rather, they are the result of our surrender to temptation, as it was from the beginning in the Garden).

But it should also be noted that the first Biblical prophecy of the Messiah, Jesus, is spoken directly by God, during His casting of Adam and Eve from the Garden - He says to Satan the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." (Genesis 3:15) In the bruising of His heel, God was speaking of the unthinkable pain His Son would endure on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice to atone for the sins of man; this would bring doom to Satan, a destiny for a lake of fire, therefore the bruising of his head. But compared to the abundant life, on Earth and after, which Jesus' death and resurrection gives to so many, the pain He would endure on account of sin would seem like a wound of the heel.

Some might ask "Why didn't God just atone for the sins of all mankind right then and there?"
Thousands of years passed between the casting of man from the Garden of Eden and the death of Jesus on the cross. In those thousands of years, not only were we given prophecy after prophecy of the coming Savior who would atone for us, but we see the Hebrews who lived under the rigorous Law of Moses - which was fulfilled by the final, ultimate sacrificial Lamb in Jesus Christ. So, we have thousands of years of prophets foretelling the suffering and victory of the Messiah, and years of "the law of sin and death" as Paul described it. These things were an ominous prelude to what was to come, a prologue if you will, so that we would have more reason to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
Despite this, there are still many who don't believe - how much less would believe if Jesus had been sacrificed on the same day as the Fall of Man? We would have had no prophets, no anchor of history, to affirm to Jesus' Authority.

Speaking of prophecy and the rotten things we do to one another, individually or collectively, sometimes I let the assurances of Biblical prophecy turn into apathy. For example, I know there will never be world peace, at least until Christ's millennial reign, so I don't fret about it; I know we'll never eliminate poverty and starvation from the world because the Bible tells us that people will become more and more evil, always swindling, stealing, and wronging each other. I believe in global warming and climate change, but I believe it to be a prelude to the Great Tribulation which Jesus described. And all of this was entered into the world through the devil's deception in the Garden.
But I shouldn't think that the fact that the world will always be a rotten place excuses me from my responsibility as an individual - Christ has given us a responsibility to live peaceably as individuals even if many others don't, to give and bless those in need, even if there are many who don't, not to litter and to care for the environment, even if so many don't even acknowledge that the environment is changing, and not for the better.
Will it bring peace to the Middle East or Washington DC? No. Will it eliminate tyranny and poverty? No. But each good deed done in Christ's name, no matter how small in the world's eyes, sends a ripple of hope in a sea of very ugly, bloody water.

“Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
-our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Matthew 13:24-30