Recently while casually strolling on Vine, I stumbled across this video of a group of teenagers dancing along to the song “Watch Me” while holding up different signs that said things such as, “Repent or perish,” “You’re going to Hell,” “God hates fags,” and “fags doom nations.” Needless to say, I was incredibly shocked (and angered) to see such horrible words being used by anyone, especially such a young group. I flipped my attention to the account name above the video and saw that the video was posted by the Westboro Baptist Church.

After tapping on the account name, I began flipping through their videos to reveal tons of horrible and cruel messages, just like the one I saw in the first Vine. There were children dancing while wearing, “God Sent The Shooter” T-shirts (referring to the Chattanooga shooting of the marines), families chanting “God hates fags,” and people turning their flags upside (in order to represent the “impending doom on our nation” after the legalization of gay marriage). I was absolutely awe-struck by the ridiculous amount of false, negative information on this page that was being preached by the older members of the church and forced into the minds of the younger members. After watching all of the videos on the Vine account, I decided to do some research and check out the WBC website.

I typed in Westboro Baptist Church on Google and found a link for the church titled www.godhatesfags.com. There I was greeted by several things, including quick links to their picket schedule and their sermons, some of their sister including GodHatesTheWorld.com, PriestsRapeBoys.com, and GodHatesIslam.com, and a couple of their editor’s picks (such as a sign movie title God Hates Your Prayers and a parody video about the legalization of gay marriage titled “Forty Hour Week of Sinnin.’” Another shocking part of the WBC homepage is the section of the site titled numbers that includes some horribly worded statistics such as the number of soldiers that “God has killed in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the “gallons of oil that God poured in the Gulf,” and, my personal favorite, the “nanoseconds of sleep that WBC members lose over your opinions and feeeeellllliiiiiings” (which, of course, was zero).

Upon finishing my research on the Westboro Baptist Church, my anger started to switch to sadness. I was no longer angry at the members of the church for preaching this false information, but instead pitied them for actually believing it. Not only did I become sad for the church members, but also for the people who see this and truly believe that this is what Christianity is about, which is why I decided to write this article. I made a brief Facebook post about this, but I wanted to reiterate my point for everyone that I am not Facebook friends with Westboro Baptist Church, which is absolutely not Christianity. Christianity is about love and until WBC starts preaching love, they cannot rightfully call themselves a Christian church. If you are gay, God does not hate you. If you are Islamic, God does not hate you. If you sin, God does not hate you.

1 John 4:8 states, “Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love.” That being said, how can the embodiment of love ever hate someone? So, for everyone who looks at the Westboro Baptist Church as a representation of religion, look elsewhere, because that’s not what religion is about.