Our Hatred of God

“Don’t talk to me about your crazy, made-up religion.”

These are words recently spoken to someone I know by his devout Jewish friend. My friend had only asked his Jewish friend if he celebrated Christmas, as some Jews do. It was around Christmastime and my friend wanted to know if he should wish his Jewish friend a merry Christmas. I suppose the Jewish friend thought my friend was attempting to convert him to Christianity by bringing up Christmas. I don’t know. What I do know is their friendship ended in the moments the ugly words were spoken. 

“Don’t talk to me about your crazy, made-up religion.”

We are surprised when poison like this comes out of peoples’ mouths, especially people who are our friends. The hate-filled words come out of nowhere and sort of blindside us, like a sucker-punch, knocking the breath and words right out of us, with no warning. Everything is fine and normal and then, BOOM we’re knocked down, stunned. We can almost hear the hissing sound of wrath as the words find their mark and strike. Crazy. Made-up. Religion.

The truth is, we should not be surprised. It has been this way from the beginning.

As several of Jesus of Nazareth’s followers wrote down accounts of what happened after Jesus was crucified (their records of the events that followed his gruesome execution are grouped together toward the end of the Bible, in the New Testament), each account of the events attests to the fact that Jesus was indeed the Son of God, the Jewish “Messiah,” as prophesied thousands of years before and recorded in the ancient scriptures. In fact, Jesus had repeatedly claimed to be the Son of God during his brief 3-year teaching stint before his murder, and by all accounts he did resurrect from the dead on the third day after it.

According to these accounts, after resurrecting, the God-man Jesus hung around for 40 days, making surprise appearances as his friends quietly gathered in rooms, entering as a ghost would at times, without using doors. They didn’t always recognize him. The writers tell us he spent time with his friends during this time, eating and drinking with them, showing them his terrible scars, walking with a couple of them on a foot-journey, and basically astonishing everyone. Then, he ascended to heaven, making everyone very sad, and promised to send the Holy Spirit soon to take his place among them, so that his friends would not have to be without him in the trying times to come.

As you can imagine, accounts of these fantastic events were either believed, or not believed. Two groups formed immediately, and the powers-that-be took action to eliminate the nutso believers—who were growing in number every day—swiftly and thoroughly from the face of the earth: The Jewish high priests wanted the Jesus-followers rendered silent because they believed they were blaspheming God and leading good Jewish folks astray from their ancient faith. In fact, a particularly zealous Jew named Saul saw it as his duty to God to personally hunt down and murder any person associated with this crazy Jesus sect, or at the very least chain them up and throw them in prison. And he did.

(Don’t tell us about your crazy, made-up religion. It’s offensive to us. Be chained up or dead instead.)

The Roman government also wanted the “little Christs” wiped out and silenced because they were disrupting the peace and generally causing problems, making the Romans’ job of ruling the usually-peaceful people of Israel in this part of the world more difficult than it should have been.  

(Shut up about your crazy, made-up religion. Or else.)  

The church was hated, regarded as a trouble-making group, imprisoned, stoned to death, executed in ugly ways, silenced, unfriended, rejected, and forced to hide.

It happened then, and it happens now, friends.

It is a fact of our faith.

But in remembering the cross and Christ’s suffering there, we see that that was a place where our wrath met His mercy. Truthfully, deep in the heart of man, we hate God. In our hatred of Him, we the created in fact slaughtered the Creator. In this act it was revealed that we do indeed hate God, and that God loves us in spite of our sinfulness. In spite of our deep hatred of Him.

None of us are innocent of our hatred of the God Who is Wholly Good. Every moment we insist on doing things our own way instead of His way, we despise Him. When we snap at our children out of anger. When we grumble about our spouse. When we fail to count it for joy when trials come. When we feel entitled instead of grateful. And all of our wrath came out there, expressed openly and recorded in history, in Christ’s suffering. Every stripe of the whip. Every piercing thorn. Every spit in His face. Hate.

Don’t tell me You want to save me. I’m just fine without your saving.

No, we should not be surprised when out of the abundance of man’s heart his mouth speaks.