Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

by Megan Phelps-Roper

Mom continued on, telling the story of Jacob and Esau to illustrate predestination. It wasn’t the long version of their story from the Old Testament, of Jacob’s deceit in securing the blessing of the firstborn and of Esau’s vow of murderous revenge. Instead, our mother focused on the most salient part of their tale, found in the book of Romans: their fates. Jacob and Esau had been grandsons of the patriarch Abraham—twin grandsons, Mom stressed, as biologically similar as it was possible for two humans to be. “And yet! Before those two boys were even born, God loved Jacob and hated Esau. They hadn’t done anything good or bad to deserve it. They were still in their mother’s womb!” In the Bible, she told us, God is likened to a heavenly Potter, with humans as clay in His hands to mold as He pleases. Cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand. God had elected—chosen—the beloved Jacob for honor, to be welcomed into Heaven for an eternity of bliss. His twin brother, Esau, meanwhile, had been created to be condemned to Hellfire—all through no fault or cause of his own. For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works … As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.