Equality?

"So, do you think it's really true?" I asked, as Corb and I passed the church on our nightly Kyra run.

"What's that?"

"That God loves each of us, as if there were only one of us?"

Corb yanked at Krya's collar to get her to stop sniffing at a telephone pole. "I guess."

"I mean, don't you think there are some of us that he looks at and says, 'Ugh, that went really bad.'"

"Ted, you know that God likes each of us equally."

Corb handed the leash over to me and swatted at a pesky mosquito. "But does he really? Do you really think he looks at Albert Einstein and Adolph Hitler and doesn't say to himself, 'Hmmm. I like that guy with the clown hair a lot better...'"

"Of course not. Would you say that to your kids? No matter what they've done, you would still love them equally, right?"

I paused, giving Kyra a chance to sniff out a dead bird. "Hmmm. That depends."

"WHAT?"

"It does! How about if one of my kids killed the other two kids? How about if they went on a murder spree and wiped out a whole bunch of nuns? I think I might like that one a little less than the others, Corb."

"That's horrible!"

"Is it? I mean, is it really? If someone you love does something really awful and horrible, you still have to love them equally? That seems kind of silly to me. I mean, I'm not talking something petty or stupid. I'm talking HORRIBLE."

"How about if they said they were innocent?"

I thought about that for a minute. "Well, that would really depend on what the evidence was. Like, if there was a videotape of them wiping out that bunch of nuns, then I might find it difficult to believe them. Or if the other kids, as they were dying on the floor, told me that their brother or sister had killed them with their dying breath, then it wouldn't matter if they said they were innocent or not. I wouldn't believe them. And, I'd love them a little less."

"I'm hungry. Let's turn around."

Anyway, it was a beautiful summer night.