It has recently been asked of me what do I think about the whole Qur'an burning event and even though I'm pretty late to the party, I think I want to write down my take of it now that the media circus has died down.
To summarize the situation, Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida wanted to burn copies of the Qur'an on "International Burn a Qur'an Day." The reason? Among others, they stated "...to warn about the teaching and ideology of Islam, which we do hate as it is hateful." The full list can be found here. Now Pastor Jones did suspend burning the book after people like President Obama, Gen. Petreaus and many others called for him to stop, but he left the possibility for it to return on the table.
Now the question should be: What can we learn from everything that has happened? To which I would answer, several things.
1. We need to remember who we struggle against. I opened this post with Eph. 6:12 where, after detailing how a Christian should arm themselves for spiritual warfare, Paul details what our objective is and who we will be fighting against. We should not use physical acts when dealing with our 'enemy'. Far from it! Elsewhere in Scripture we see what we should do in these situations. Paul in Romans 12:17-21 and Jesus in Matthew 5:43-48 are just a couple examples on how we should be loving our enemies instead of physically confronting them.
2. The Dangers of Bad Hermeneutics. Within the previously posted article, the church used Acts 19:17-20 as a Scriptural reason that burning the Qur'an. However, there's a few key differences in what the believers in Ephesus were doing and what Terry Jones wanted to do. The believers were burning the scrolls of sorcery out of their own free will, similar to someone in modern times torching bad CDs, magazines, DVDs, etc. It was a statement that they had renounced their old practices and that the money lost in those scrolls was nothing compared to what they have gained through Christ. Terry Jones is not a repentant Muslim, so this Scripture doesn't apply to him. So the Qu'ran burning would simply be a provocatory gesture.
3. Where is the Gospel? In the Dove World Outreach's site, they stated that "We do not hate any people, however. We love, as God loves, all the people in the world and we want them to come to a knowledge of the truth." That's great, however if this was a true Bible-believing church then the greatest thing that we could give the Muslim people would be the gospel. We should take this cue from Spurgeon:
"If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for."
That would be real love in action.
Final Thoughts: I would not go out on my own accord and burn a Qu'ran as I do not believe there is any Scriptural backing from it. I believe that the whole escapade was one man's attempt to draw attention to himself without regard to the damage it would cause the true church. The best thing that we can do would be pray for Terry Jones and his heart, as well as pray that the hearts of the people we are trying to reach will not be hardened by this story.
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