Missing Something?

It never ceases to amaze me how people can read the Scriptures and find so much to hate.
I'll give you the fact that there's a lot of sex and violence in there.
I see that the depravity of humans in the grip of lust for power, lust for money,
 or just good old fashioned lust can really mess of things.
And I can see why that mess really causes God's nostrils to flare
(a great Hebrew metaphor for being super-ticked off).
But I don't get why people think that God is going to act like a toddler who doesn't get his way and just start breaking stuff.
After all he promised one time (and once is all God usually needs to promise something) that he wouldn't do that again.
The first time just made him feel icky, and God doesn't like to feel icky.
So, for a Holy, Righteous and Loving Creator to somehow give us freedom to mess up,
must have been a pretty hard choice.
Because when things you love get hurt, you get hurt.
Giving people the choice to mess up must have been an incredibly nervous moment for God.
Like that time I gave my son a pocketknife, except a lot more so.
When I read the Bible I think of that.
And I think of all the ways I've messed up and gone against God's will.
And all the times he hasn't smote me into ashes, or gouged out my eyes, or tied me to a rock so vultures could eat my liver over and over again every day for eternity (sorry wrong gods).
And I have a hard time feeling really mad at other broken people who are messing up pretty much the same way I mess up, maybe just with slightly different shades of stupidity.
If I want to be mad, which honestly sometimes I do, I can find all sorts of really good things to hate with a righteous hatred: injustice, poverty, exploitation, greed, arrogance, even hatred itself.
Negative feedback loops can be fun for a minute, as long as you keep an eye on the way out.
And the way out is love.
Love keeps you from turning that righteous indignation on some poor sinner that is every bit as much a child of God as you are.
Another person, in whom God has invested a lifetime of forbearance, forgiveness and grace.
Grace is usually what we miss.
God has been patient for billions of years, working to make you who you are.
Maybe you're not perfect, yet.
But you're here and that's pretty amazing.
Do you think that God is, all of the sudden, just going to give up on you?
That just doesn't make any sense.