Unfollow: A Journey From Hatred To Hope Quotes
"If a mother thinks something is important enough to take a public position about, shouldn’t she teach her children that value?" - Shirley Phelps-Roper
"He began by detailing his findings in a letter to the mayor, opening with a colorful description of the problem."
"The dynamics of my parents’ marriage never fit with the paradigm commonly associated with conservative Christianity."
"The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked."
"Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him."
"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
"For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little."
"The Lord has blessed you with so many wonderful talents, and you use them to serve Him."
"The Great and Dreadful God hath been pleading with poor England in these last Years." - James Janeway
"If they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us."
"Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God."
"No prophet is accepted in his own country."
"But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul."
"They chose new gods; then was war in the gates. For there fell down many slain, because the war was of God."
"If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord, he shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies."
"His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate."
"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
"Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God… And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God."
"They have deeply corrupted themselves… therefore [God] will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins. Though they bring up their children, yet will [he] bereave them, that there shall not be a man left."
"Let his days be few; and let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children."
"A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?"
"Obedience and submission are such sweet comfort to our soul, and such a strong antidote against the enemy we face daily called our flesh."
"The key to memorization is attention; and the key to attention is interest."
"By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone."
"Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins."
"The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity."
"God was going to use this lawsuit as a preaching tool, and He was going to lead us to victory."
"Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."
"The university system allowed me to focus on classes and subjects I found most interesting."
"Could we be held liable for 'intruding upon the seclusion' of the Marine’s family—even though we had been standing on public land?"
"The speech was indeed planned to coincide with Matthew Snyder’s funeral, but did not itself disrupt that funeral, and Westboro’s choice to conduct its picketing at that time and place did not alter the nature of its speech."
"Stop worshipping your feelings, and start obeying God!"
"The tongue is a fire. These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also."
"You won’t repent of your rebellion that brought His wrath on you in this incurable scourge, so expect more & worse!"
"If one person can label another’s opinions on public issues 'offensive' and then sue the speaker for millions of dollars in damages, what protection does the First Amendment offer?"
"Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?"
"I think unthankfulness may be the most disgusting sin of all."
"Her dad and I had only ONE hope for her: That she would have a tender heart from God, toward Him and His word, and that she would serve His people!"
"We weren’t just holding signs on street corners. We were preaching the standards of God, ‘maintaining and defending pure Gospel truth,’ as Gramps always said from the pulpit."
"I’m here because I want to be here," I told the Star reporter. "Because I believe these things. Because I love these words."
"We must look on the great blessings you have been given, my sister. You must rejoice in those gifts and not continue to sorrow."
"If thy brother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or thy wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods… Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death."
"Our church wouldn’t be executing anyone, but the standard was clear: if your closest friend or family member came to you suggesting defiance of Westboro’s God, that person deserved to die—and you were responsible for turning them in. Neither shalt thou conceal him."
"I was a cherished daughter—I wielded no power, but my skills were many and useful and valued. I was dependable, and trustworthy, and called upon frequently."
"If someone told us we had to obey Artemis or we’d be tormented by Hades when we die, we’d laugh at them. I think we worry now because we’ve believed it was real forever."
"Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is."
"For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother."
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."
"Wonderful how one loses track of the days up here in the mountains."
"I have been waiting for you grandchildren for years. Decades. Megan. I never thought it would be you."
"I wish I could have been better. I love you more than words could ever say."
"If your heart gets broken and you are ashamed, reach out. Otherwise this is done."
"You can’t leave me! You’ll be reading to the sound of my typewriter! It will be so poetic. In Deadwood."
"I like to think about my thoughts before I have them."
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
"For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak."
"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
"Can two walk together, except they be agreed? What communion hath light with darkness?"
"For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all… there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going."
"The chaos surrounding us dissolved as I watched him in the garish lights of the casino floor."
"It wasn’t the embrace I’d dreamed about... but it was a damn good start."
"The rest of the year felt like sprinting in slow motion, urgent and constant movement that made the hours pass like deep breaths."
"Every tenuous connection we’d made to the world... suddenly became a lifeline, pulling us along from place to place."
"Certainty sees compromise as weak, hypocritical, evil, suppressing empathy and allowing us to justify inflicting horrible pain on others."
"Doubt wasn’t the sin, I came to believe. It was the arrogance of certainty that poisoned Westboro at its foundations."
"Weeping, I had asked him how he could possibly say such a thing. We were betrayers. 'In a way,' he said, 'leaving Westboro Baptist Church was the most Westboro Baptist Church thing you could have done.'"
"I didn’t want to become the embodiment of the example from the book of James: For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was."
"Though their ideologies manifested in vastly different ways, it was fundamentalist religious groups... that first permitted me to recognize the patterns of my upbringing."
"I knew I never wanted to say goodbye, but we did, and I cried after he left."
"That question became my obsession, too, and the further I ventured from the constraints of Westboro’s belief system, the more I found myself looking back across what seemed to be an ever-widening gulf."
"The people charged with my grandfather’s care had cast him out of their family—out of his own church—after all these years."
"He had spent decades inculcating us with an ideology that valued fear and control over mercy and grace."
"The fact is that people come to embrace these ideas in a multitude of ways: some argue themselves into destructive beliefs; others come to them as I did, taught by parents and loved ones."
"My own change of heart and mind had already made me optimistic about the same potential in others—and now with evidence that even someone like Gramps could experience this kind of change, the idea of completely writing anyone off seemed senseless."
"A sweet way of saying Good night. I love you."
"Gramps is gone now, buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave under the Kansas sun. Yet his church remains."
"I want to tell them that the world isn’t evil. That it’s full and complicated and beautiful and good, filled with unknown truths and unbroken hopes, and that it’s waiting just for them. That I’m waiting just for them."