God Hates Fruit Loops.

"God Hates _____________."

You've probably seen that blank filled before by an infamous group known as the Westboro Baptist Church, headed by Fred Phelps and the Phelps family. Just to clarify for the sake of the Baptist Church, (and because I was raised in a Baptist family) they are not associated with the church. In fact, they're not associated with any church in America. They claim that every other congregation in America--no scratch that--in the world is hell-bound and God-hating sinners minus their roughly one hundred church members.

I'll be the first to admit, according to Scripture, many people in church congregations (while professing Christianity, aren't really practicing what they're preaching) are hell-bound. After all, Jesus said (see Matthew 7:13) few will go through the narrow gate and broad is the way to destruction. And they're telling truth when they say we're all sinners. But I don't take issue with those two claims. Those aren't radical claims for so-called Christians to make. It's the "God Hates" part that really bothers me the most.

Do they understand the power in those words?

The Creator of man and all things--past, present and future--hates. Not only does He hate but He hates any group of people that the Westboro Baptist Church decides that He must hate.

And that message has gotten these people some serious face time. They're all over social media, network news, newspapers, radio shows and outside the funerals of dead soldiers (proclaiming "Thank God" that they're dead) and anyone relatively famous or well-known who might get them airtime on television or radio.

That's why they recently exchanged an hour of airtime on 'The Mike Gallagher Show' for a promise they wouldn't picket the poor death of an 9 year old girl named Christina Taylor-Green in Arizona who was shot to death--for "our sins," they claimed. I listened to that show that day and I listened to them laugh and joke and tell that God hates, while a little girls family was somewhere in Arizona heart broken. How dare they do this to a family. Claim their daughter, their cousin, their child.....they supposedly died because of us and for our sins. That some how God hated her and hates us and this is some sort of warning shot.

If we want to get biblical, yes--God's wrath is in the Bible. I've read, you've read it, we've all read it.

But it's not the answer to every situation. I remember when 9/11 happened and Jerry Falwell said:

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

Does God hate?

Does He hate us so much he's punishing us with things like 9/11?

Did God kill that 9 year old girl, like Westboro claims, for our sins?

No, no and no.

God hates conduct, He hates what we do. He hates our sin.

But He loves us.

God doesn't hate you, the gays, the self-righteous like the now deceased Jerry Falwell, He doesn't hate dogs over cats, cats over dogs, and He certainly doesn't hate my bowl of Fruit Loops.

And because of that, yes....God even loves Westboro Baptist Church.

Even if they hate all of mankind so much that they'd be willing to do as Robert F. Kennedy once said, "build their own lives from the shattered dreams of other human beings."