God loves them

Wednesday May 6^th, 1 John 4: ⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Oh that we really believed this and acted upon it.  I get a kick out of the literalists who want to quote chapter and verse to support hatred in God’s name.  It requires amazing mental gymnastics and total misuse of scripture, but if the fear and hatred is deep enough, they can find a way.  I get a kick out of it, but it is more like a kick in the head.  It is amazing to watch, but oh so sad in reality, and humanity has been doing it since Cain and Able.   I also get a kick out of Coffin’s comment in “letters to a young doubter” where he recalls asking the head of a “Jesus” group on campus how their prayer list differed from their shit list.  All too often that too is the case.  As humans we love to judge others as less than ourselves out of fear and then attribute some Biblical quote to justify our hatred.  We are not called to judge others as less than, we are called to love others as created in the image of God.  Judging is easy, judging is fun, judging is empowering, but alas, in the end judging is God’s, and God already answered that question by sending Jesus to forgive the sins of all.  Name someone who doesn’t love.  Those terrorists…. They most likely have families they love, so do most of the others we might be brave enough to mention.  I have met a few who don’t love, they do exist.  Bottom line, God loves them and they just haven’t figured it out yet.  In the end, all will succumb to the love of God and end up in the sweet bye and bye.   It is God’s providence to accomplish such.  In the meantime, and I do mean “mean” time, we all have to face the fact that the biggest obstacle to God’s love is one part of God’s creation not being able to grasps that God loves the other part of creation that God created and called good.