Monday, March 14, 2011

God knows!

Recently I was driving along the highway, minding my own business, when I was passed by a truck with this decal taking up its back window:

Kill ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out!

My heart broke.

I am discouraged to know that someone in my community holds this belief, and holds it strongly enough to pay money to display it on a vehicle.

And I am heartbroken to know that people believe God thinks so little of humans. Are we, in God’s eyes, interchangeable, disposable, worth so little? Are the distinctions between individuals, which seem to be the cause for so much concern among us (gender, race, language, location, sexual orientation, etc) really unnoticed by God, that God would find any gathering of people expendable—just kill them all and let God sort them out?

And I am pissed off that people who don’t bother to know God so freely speak for God. For if this person did know God, s/he would remember something we all need to remember, which, fortunately, shows up in the readings for worship (January 16): The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me. (Isaiah 49:1). God knows each of us, and loves each of us, and values us for who we are, which is, after all, who God created us to be.

When I was a campus pastor, we had a conversation on campus about “visual pollution”, which was bombarding the campus in the form of T-shirts which some people found offensive. We love to express our views in secondary discourse: T-shirts, bumper stickers, special apps for our Facebook pages. Sometimes we wear words we would not dare speak.

I’m not sure who “they” were, whom the driver was so upset about existing; perhaps “they” change from day to day. But I do know that God knows every “they” on the planet—the ones we know and love, and the ones we will never know, never love, and especially the ones who don’t seem to be known or loved by anyone. God has already sorted us out, and knows us each by name.

THAT is something worth declaring!

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