Second-rate murder mysteries are common fare on television. Typically, a police investigation takes place after the crime. A usual scenario has detectives going to the home of the victim to ask questions and gather information. Sitting in the living room with the victim's family members, the police begin trying to gather a list of suspects. Inevitably, they ask, "Did he have any enemies?"

How about you? Do you have any enemies? I suspect most of us will quickly insist that we don't have an enemy in the world. Maybe we don't. But I'll bet if we think about it for a few minutes, we might be able to come up with a list. A co-worker who doesn't hesitate to step over the bodies of colleagues in order to get a promotion. An uncaring neighbor whose cat continually walks on your freshly-washed car. One of your children's teachers who seems to have it out for your son or daughter, ridiculing him or her in class and giving grades you think are lower than deserved. Perhaps a brother or sister who has taken advantage of you or lied about you and turned others against you.

An enemy isn't necessarily someone who wants to kill you or someone you want to kill. But it usually is someone who has hurt you or those you love, and you feel that person should be punished. And so those who have snubbed us, we snub in return. To those who have gossiped against us, we tend to repay the favor. The worse the offense, the more alienated we are from them and the more we want to strike back. So if someone kills our son or daughter... Well, you probably have some idea how you'd feel and what you'd feel like doing. I do.

Have you ever thought of God as being one of your enemies? Perhaps on some bad days you have. One of our church members told me the joke about the fellow who had one thing after another go wrong in his life. He cried out to heaven, "God, why me?" Rumbling from the sky above, a voice answered, "Some people just tick me off." That's not exactly what I'm talking about. I don't happen to believe that God takes capricious pot shots at us from the realms of glory.

But, in fact, the Bible does refer to us as enemies of God. We are enemies because in a variety of ways we have attacked the goodness that God wants for all creation. We have tried to make ourselves masters of the universe rather than living as creatures of a Creator. I'm not just talking about the Hitlers and Stalins of the world. Every time we've chosen a lie over the truth or selfishness over generosity or harshness over tenderness, or apathy over compassion, we have struck a blow against the good with which God intends to fill everything that exists. That makes us enemies of God.

Most of us don't take the bad things we've done very seriously. We know we're not perfect, but we're not that bad. The fact is that we are incapable of evaluating our own evil with any accuracy. We see greed, insensitivity and pride in other people and nations. We are aware of oppression taking place in some lands. We know there are companies that put profits above concern for the environment or the welfare of employees. Sometimes we see the harm such evil produces. But we tend to minimize our own evil. We forget that a devastating epidemic is not started by a big hulking monster whose ugliness all can see from the beginning. The naked eye can't see the microbe that leads to the death of thousands. So it is with our evil. The "little" lie, the catty comment, the compassion fatigue that stops us from helping the disadvantaged as we could, all work against God's will and world in ways unseen to our eyes. But God's eye sees the destruction. Only on exceptional occasions do we catch a glimpse.