Today's thought: Don't you think God appreciates loving atheists more than hateful Christians?

A self-described “Christian conservative tea-party Republican” elected official in Virginia compared atheists to Islamic State militants as he urged residents to pray during their Thanksgiving gatherings. Wayne Hazzard, chairman of the Hanover County Board of Supervisors, skipped the customary invocation ahead of Tuesday’s meeting and asked fellow board members to indulge him, reported the Richmond Times-Dispatch.…. “As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I think it appropriate that we continue to remember the reason that this great nation was formed and by whose grace it continues to survive,” Hazzard said, reading from a statement. “Christians who formed our nation celebrated days of thanksgiving to God. The Jamestown and Plymouth colonists recognized that they were sustained only by God’s providence and celebrated Thanksgiving feasts.”…. “These days of an enemy from outside of this country, as well as people from within, who would attempt to remove all recognition of God from public life, we offer this proclamation as a reminder that the United States has always acknowledged our nation … is dependent on God’s grace and providence,” he said.

There was a time when someone who fancied themselves a “Christian” and yet felt justified in denigrating those who believed differently or not at all would have generated an angry response from me. Now I find myself most feeling sorry for someone so thoroughly addled by hatred and self-righteousness that he’s clearly lost sight of what his so-called “faith” is even about. It only reinforces that I’ve made the right decision to not believe in an angry, mean-spiritied vindictive God.

Truth be told, Wayne Hazzard is about as much a faithful servant of Jesus Christ as I am the King of Denmark. If he could be bothered to read his Bible (and perhaps refrain from cherry-picking justifications for his judgmental self-righteousness), he might discover to his chagrin that the Lord and Savior whose teachings he claims to revere preached things like love, tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion. He most certainly didn’t preach that demonizing and insulting those with the temerity to believe differently is a wonderful and perfectly appropriate kind and loving act.

From where I sit, if Hazzard’s hateful, judgmental Christianity was the only available version, I’d be feeling fortunate that I had the good sense to opt out. I realize that Hazzard’s self-righteous is his problem and his alone, and the time may well come when he’ll have to account for why he used his bastardized Christianity to become such a miserable, hateful excuse for a human being.

In response, I’d only offer Pope Francis’ admonition that God “must never be used to justify hatred and violence.” Wayne Hazzard is a Christian in the same way Johnny Manziel is the poster boy for maturity and professionalism.

If you believe that your Christian faith allows you to denigrate and discriminate against those who live, love, think, and/or believe differently, you clearly have no concept of what a benevolent God stands for…and you leave much to be desired as a human being.

Things could be worse, though. I could be the once sentenced to wake up next to Hazzard (who must be ALL sorts of fun) every morning.