Each football season you can find a couple of fruit-loops holding up a sign at the end zone of the stadium as the extra point kick is tried. I’d make a lot of money playing the odds that those holding the signs are not only very, very odd themselves, but also politically extreme right, and fundamental literalists. Wanna take the bet? And by the way, the sign merely says John 3:16.
Who doesn’t know that Scripture?
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” But though most know WHAT the verse says, who understands HOW it is applied to our theological understanding? Ever thought of that one? 
Why of course it mean that Jesus was so damned mad and angry with how the world was operating that He decided to take it out on His Son, Jesus, and send Him to a most traumatic death on the Cross- for you and me, but not for Muslims, Hindus, and homosexuals.
The above is somewhat tongue-n-cheek! Somewhat!
What if the phrase had nothing to do with your American, fundamentalist, and literalist paradigm? In other words, what if it was not referring to Jesus’ death on the cross as a substitutionary atonement for sin!
Say what?
What if the “giving of His Son” was referring to the incarnation, to whom God became in Jesus and who Jesus became with God? What if God is love and Jesus went to the cross on His own volition to show us that love has no conditions and that loving God and our neighbors (even lesbians) is what the game of lie is all about.
What would that do to your theology, but more importantly your LIFE?
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