Megan Phelps-Roper on The problem of evil
Phelps-Roper grew up in a theology that embraced evil as God's righteous judgment, and her rejection of that theology was driven by the recognition that this was morally intolerable.
Westboro Baptist Church had a unique and disturbing response to the problem of evil: it embraced it. In Westboro's theology, suffering was not a problem to be explained but a vindication to be celebrated. When tragedy struck — a tsunami, a school shooting, the death of a soldier — the church's response was not grief but exultation: God was punishing a sinful nation, and the suffering was deserved. The problem of evil was not a problem because evil was divine justice.
Megan Phelps-Roper absorbed this theology completely during her years in the church. She picketed funerals with signs celebrating the deaths of soldiers, held signs reading 'God Hates Fags' at every opportunity, and genuinely believed that the suffering of others was evidence of God's righteous wrath. The problem of evil, in this framework, is not that there is too much evil in the world — it is that there is not enough, because sinners deserve worse.
The collapse of this theology was central to Phelps-Roper's deconversion. As she engaged with people outside Westboro — particularly through Twitter — she began to see the suffering she had celebrated as genuine, undeserved, and morally indefensible. The recognition that innocent people suffer, and that a theology which celebrates their suffering is monstrous, was one of the key forces that drove her out of the church and into a more uncertain but more humane engagement with the problem of evil.
“We celebrated other people's suffering. We said it was God's will. I still don't know if I believe in God, but I know that celebrating suffering is wrong.”