Letter to the Editor

This is a letter to the editor concerning Jarrett Skov’s opinion piece (Page 9) on the Westboro Baptist Church that I just submitted. I wonder if it'll make the print.

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Letters to the editor are obviously not the place to have a theological discussion, but Jarrett Skov’s recent editorial concerning the Westboro Baptist Church suffers from the same flaw that causes the nation to be disgusted at the WBC. It is a flaw that permeates society in areas other than religion, on issues most divisive and in the political arena. That flaw is “cherry picking”, and it certainly doesn’t generate any fruits for your labor.

Cherry picking involves taking only facts, arguments, or any other points that support your argument and discarding the rest. To my understanding, you can’t quite do that with holy texts. It’s all or nothing; it’s inspired by the word of a deity or it’s not. The WBC may ignore Jesus’ forgiveness of the New Testament (cherry picking the bad), but Skov ignores the tyrannical hothead of a god in the Old (cherry picking the good).

He ignores the fact that his god created humans with the sin we should feel guilty for. Even beyond ridiculous edicts about wearing wools and linens (Deuteronomy 22:11) or eating shrimp (Leviticus 11:12), he ignores the drowning, killing, and slaying of millions by his god or his followers. Even Jesus only saves us from the sin created by God in the first place. And while homosexuality and adultery could be interpreted as the same degree of sin, the Bible is clear about the punishment: death. Skov argues that this is “hating the sin”, but it’s still people that are suffering the consequences (i.e. eternal hellfire for finite crimes).

Why not step away from the millennia-old mythology and embrace instead a secular moral system? This allows you to judge the Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, or any holy book of your choice on its own merits. These books are an antiquated reflection of the time they were written (and perhaps edited, retranslated, copied, edited again). A balanced (non-cherry-picked) look at the Bible shows a lot of brutality mixed in with the love and kindness.

To be a Christian, you must accept it all, however. There are wonderful lessons amongst the madness; that’s absolutely true. But let’s drop the stuff about slavery, sexism, and original sin and keep the Golden Rule, brotherhood, and forgiveness. Some of those commandments are good building blocks, too. I firmly believe that mankind today is far better than the Bible collecting dust on their shelves.

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Update: it printed (Page 8).