Well, the ‘evangelical’ church, the Dove World Outreach Center has proved once again that Christians do the dumbest things. What a bunch of idiots. What do they really hope to achieve by this. I suppose they made it onto the headlines of BBC Radio 4 and probably many other news agencies throughout the world. This is a good example of Christians exercising a right to free speech, while at the same time exercising the right to do dumb stuff.
Book burning never really works. The cultural revolution in China burnt books, the Nazis burnt books and now Evangelicals can sit right alongside Hitler and Chairman Mao.
Books were burnt by Christians in previous generations as an act of turning away from a life involved with the occult, and an account of this is recorded in the book of Acts. But the proposed action by Rev Jones is of a different order. Would it be cynical of me to ask if the Rev Jones now has the publicity he desires no matter what it means for the proclamation of the Gospel. He really has not thought this through. The trouble is, he’s now made it very difficult for himself – can he still back off without looking like a fool. I’m sure he can. But will he. If he were to back off now, and see reason, it could be a major card to play because I suspect there will be extremist actions by Islamic Fundamentalists whatever Rev Jones does. But in the media war Jones could at the last moment pull it out of the bag and preach the message of the cross instead. But will he?
Carl Trueman ends his Reformation 21 Blog post thus:
‘This Koran burning is childish; it will at best only draw attention to the book and fuel curiosity; at worst, it could jeopardise young people serving their country. Christians would be better served spending the time praying for the conversion of their Muslim neighbours and reaching out to them with love and with God’s true word, rather than with a box of matches and acts of counterproductive immaturity.’
Amen to that!
Related Articles
- Book burning (geneveith.com)
- Jim Luce: Evil in America? U.S. Fundamentalist Group to Burn Koran on 9/11 (huffingtonpost.com)