Lia of Rogue Reverend says
Nate Phelps is the son of the infamous Fred Phelps, the awful (pardon my french) ASSHAT pastor of the website God Hates Fags. I’m not linking to his site. This really struck me:
Yet when my father turned his instructive fist on my mother, I instinctively felt internal conflict. For me, it was intuitively wrong that a 6 foot 2, 250 pound man be allowed to beat up a woman barely half his size. But we dared not intervene or even question his actions, because his behavior was sanctioned by god.
In one instance, as my father was stalking our mother at the top of the stairs, she stumbled and started to fall. Reaching out to catch herself she ripped her arm out of the socket. My father refused to let her get medical treatment to repair the damaged muscles and tendons. In subsequent, years when he was angry with her, he would inevitably grab for that injured arm. On a few occasions he managed to get hold of it and re-injure it.
I’ve always known instinctively that Fred Phelps is a bad person. But to hear his son tell the tale, it is even more horrific. There is something about this mix of power, anger, and religion that kills me the most.
While I can sympathize with his sentiment it’s always seemed like Marx was mistaken to say “Religion is a crutch.” But also while I can sympathize with the sentiment it’s also seemed like the religious wag was mistaken to reply “But humanity has a broken leg.”
Because you can’t lean on faith, no more than you can lean on love or sex or place or privilege or (goodness knows!) gender or any institution. Nor are we born in damage or injury or sin such that we must be mended or healed or blessed before we can lead good lives.
Whatever the words of his text, Reverend Phelps, surely as pious a man as any in intention and, especially, longing, has preached that sermon all his life with his life: you can not lean on faith as if it were a crutch because it will break your leg. And dislocate your partner’s arm! And immiserate the lives of those you scorn, and those you shun, and those you mock, and those you drive from faith by your example!
Submitted by 2970 (not verified) on Thu, 2009-05-28 04:22.
Thank you. Great stuff as always, but I do think some people's damage will hamper them, placing them at a disadvantage when it comes to living a good life. That stuff can skew your responses, and it requires effort to get over it. All the more credit to those who manage to do so.
I'm not sure how much self-awareness we're entitled to expect of one another.
Submitted by 2970 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-07-11 04:00.
The claim of "humanity has a broken leg" is a false one. The legs work fine, but the fearful are told by mollycoddling and manipulative parents that their legs don't work.
The problem isn't lameness, if fear of abandoning the crutch after being told so long that it was needed.