God Hates America, New Orleans…

September 27, 2005 | 7:28 PM

Or that’s what I hear anyway. Really, I had no idea. This is totally news to me. Came straight out of nowhere. All those peace-loving folks who always talk about this loving God who loves everybody, and you know, doesn’t hate. And you know, he’s a God who wouldn’t send someone to Hell at all, because He’s God, and he is love. And it’s like, well, God, all paths really lead to God, right? And so he doesn’t hate anybody, because he loves everybody. You know, it’s all good.

But you know, God hates America. He hates America because we’re not Muslim. (A thousand cheers from the bin Laden group.) He hates America because we’re rich, and we don’t share. (Shh, don’t ask Indonesia who was there helping last January.) He hates America because we didn’t sign the Kyoto Pact. (Really, then, God does hate. And all these hurricanes are actually his wrath on America for not playing along with the rest of the world’s insanity. Oh, we do… but… just not all the time.)

God hates New Orleans too. He doesn’t hate Mississippi or Alabama or Florida or Texas, which also got ripped in the hurricanes (both Katrina and Rita). You know why? Because of all their sins. Oh yeah. I had no idea. Really. Like I said before. This all came out of the blue (the deep blue). He hates New Orleans, it seems, because it’s known for being a party town. But God doesn’t hate Amsterdam or Las Vegas, Tokyo or Rio de Janeiro. Oh I know. It’s absolutely amazing how that works.

Maybe it’s just the Muslim god, Allah, who hates America. Or maybe it’s goddess nature who hates America. No, I’ve got it, it’s the graceless god of ignorant “Christians” who hates America- wait, no, God loves America (God Bless America)- this one hates New Orleans (remember, nothing happened to the Mississippi Gulf Coast at all).

Have you gotten the point yet? (No.) Will you hear me on this? (What?) Listen to me, just this once. (Shh, Wolf Blitzer is on.) Just try. (Make it quick.) I will.

There is this God. He’s it. Only one. His Son came down here to fix things that got all messed up- really messed up. We sinned and jacked things up, and the only way it could be fixed really is for a perfect One to come and be that sacrifice- call it a ransom, call it a substitute, call it what you will, but it had to be done. And it’s like this- God has always wanted to be up close and personal with us, to share His glory with us, to show us how incredible He is (and we were down with that because I mean, look at the stars, who wouldn’t want to know that guy?) So His Son (let’s call him Jesus) came down to show us how it was supposed to be (God gave this law, to show us what it meant to be human, and it was already impossible to do, but we kept changing things and playing with it, distorting it).. anyway, Jesus comes down here and puts everybody in their place, shows us how it is. And it turns out He’s the one everybody was expecting, and He doesn’t break God’s law, but he does break a bunch of social rules (those things we changed and added I was talking about). Long story short, Jesus does a lot of miracles and redefines everything we know about God. And along the way He tells us all to “love God and love other people like you do yourself.” Then we killed him. But the neat thing is that He got up. He did die, but then He raised Himself, because He is God. And the thing is, it’s not that God hates anybody, but He made it pretty clear that you have to believe in Him before He’ll let you hang out with Him, and if you do that you’ll get to know Him and everything will be good, but you can’t just reject Him and think it’ll be good. You couldn’t be my friend if you didn’t want to be my friend. I might still like you, you know, but if you don’t like me, then I guess that’s on you. Anyway, before Jesus left and went back up to be with God, He offered a Guide to this life. We find the Holy Spirit is inside of us who believe and follow Jesus. One of the guys who followed Him, Paul, told us that we don’t have to live by the rules of this world. We don’t have to hate, we can be different. We can love people. He said that Jesus lives inside of those of us who believe and follow Christ, and that we would be changed so that we were more like God than like we are now, in our really messed up state, where we do things we don’t want to do, and don’t do the things we want to do.

I guess what I’m saying is there’s more to this whole life thing than running around telling everybody that God hates people when it suits our agenda, political or religious or social or whatever. I think there’s this whole life of adventure and love and of knowledge of God that we can have, if we’d just sit down and listen to God. And I’m thinking there’s more to this love thing than we’re giving God credit for.