It may depend on their exposure to him. Some folks may have only seen him when he said things they disagreed with. I had seen him tweak both sides. When I disagreed with him, I could at least understand where he was coming from, although some of those times I thought he was way off base.
People have different philosophies about death. When someone they disagree with dies, they are happy and want to dance on their graves. I’ve never bought into that.
IMO, God grieves at the death of every person. He sees what could have been, and laments the poor choices that person that He loved made, and what their lives turned out like due to them. I don’t ever see Him gleeful that a person has died.
Who among us has not had a family member or a friend do things we did not support, but still loved them none the less?
I do think God could be happy that their evil actions and the resultant reactions were coming to an end.
“It may depend on their exposure to him. Some folks may have only seen him when he said things they disagreed with. I had seen him tweak both sides. When I disagreed with him, I could at least understand where he was coming from, although some of those times I thought he was way off base.”
I totally agree with this part of your post. He was certainly one quirky dude. But, he was always someone to listen to.
I have to somewhat disagree about your God part of the post, though.
God loves everyone, no matter what they do, and He gives us free will to conduct ourselves as we see fit.
If He grieves, it’s because of the choices we’ve made.
Upon one’s death, even until the hour of our death, we have the choice to accept Jesus as the Son of God, and our Lord and Savior.
If God grieves, it’s because those who do evil in this world didn’t accept Him.
But, you might be right that God is happy that those who do evil aren’t allowed to continue.