Sometimes I just hate God.

Does that sound perverse?

It shouldn’t really, because hating God is the great American pastime. Actually, hating God is a sport played all over the world in every culture, every religion, every neighborhood bar and grill. God-hating is popular in the church, too – almost on a par with pot-luck suppers.

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” said Jesus from the cross according to those close enough to overhear his dying words.

Forgive “them”…?

The ones who trumped up the charges, lied on the stand, and voted the verdict to put him to death?

The Roman soldiers who mocked and tortured him Abu Ghraib-style before putting the cross on his shoulder and pushing him onto the road up the hill to Golgotha?

The followers who swore to stand with him but ran away when push came to shove?

Who was the “them” Jesus asked his Father to forgive?

Maybe everyone? Me? You? The whole world?

The notion that Jesus died for the sins of the world lies at the heart of the Christian Faith. People of faith recite that liturgy over and over again, week after week after week, century after unending century.

Trouble is, we don’t want it to be true.

Not for “them.”

Forgive Pilate, Herod, the soldiers, the betrayers, the deniers, the mockers, the hungover men stumbling out of the brothels that early Friday morning, the hookers, the lookers, the bookers taking poor peoples’ cash to buy a ray of false hope in the 7th race that afternoon?

“Forgive them?”

Forgive the bastard who cheated you out of your retirement, or out of your marriage, or out of your job? Forgive the President who sends drones that kill the innocent children of guilty terrorists, as well as the terrorist who sends jetliners into tall buildings to kill innocent civilians? Forgive the felon whose sins are too numerous to list right alongside your Aunt Mabel who never said a bad word about anybody?

“Forgive them?”

And you know what God the Father did with that prayer, right??

Dammit.

I hate it when God forgives “them!”

Sometimes I feel like I want to do an intervention with God, to help God get over this compulsion to forgive “them.” The world would be so much better if God would forgive only people like me and blow up all the others. Unfortunately, from the looks of it God isn’t interested in my point of view. God forgives “them” as well as “me.”

I suppose this is because what’s written in 1 John 4:8 is true.

God is love.

God IS love.

God can’t help it. In fact, it really isn’t true when we say “God LOVES you, or me, or someone else.” That implies that God chooses to love – that God can decide to love someone or not love someone.

No, God does not CHOOSE to love.

God IS love.

That’s what the Book says.

And so here I am just a couple of weeks into this Next Chapter of my life and I realize that if God and I are going to get along I’m going to have to simply accept the fact that God IS love whether I like it or not.

I’ve got to stop hating God for being God.

And strangely enough, when I accept that one central truth – that God IS love – I can never again say those words we Christians are so good at saying:

“God loves you, but…”

Trouble is, now what do we do with the creeps among us?

I’ll take a shot at that next time.