Florida "Dove World Outreach"'

The situation in the news with "Dove World Outreach" (ironic name) has become a hot topic of conversation. It has been hyped up by the media that a pastor at that small (24 year old, nondenominational) church is doing a Qur'an burning. Apparently he says the bonfire they are going to build will go on this week as planned desipte attention drawing widespread criticism.

Now to the point here, it seems that one would be hard pressed to find any endorsement of the reaons that Terry Jones their pastor is doing this in the New Testament pages. It would take some non-existent example such as Paul burning a bunch of books on a Roman Caesar's life or Timothy burning copies of the Artmesian worship manual. No such example exists, and reading the reports that I've seen in several places (here and here and here) I don't see any clear biblical church reasoning for Jones' motivation. It seems that Terry Jones is following a political motive. This motive is to point out the potential danger of a pluralistic view towards other religions. In our present context, acceptance of anything anyone does is considered fashionable. (Except ironically not this guy [though I'm not a pluralist]). It is unclear since Jones fails to offer biblical reasoning why his church then would be the location of this burning. This seems dangerous to me. Perhaps if he is inclined to this, he should borrow someone's field, or go to some rented land, and use that instead if his motives are political commentary. He has the right to, even if it is not especially wise.
One of the things that strikes me is how he calls it "International Qur'an Burning Day." That is obviously meant to draw attention to his own personal message. It's clear he is not just trying to get a message to just his own area.
A thought that comes to mind as well is this: if Terry Jones is following the New Testament model, he should be seeking ways to reach out to Muslims with the gospel of reconciliation to the LORD God (Yahweh) through Jesus' atoning sacrifice on the cross. Instead the attention seems to be on his own goals for our time and place. I would not normally reference this writer, but Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, made the comment that this action does not bode well for that kind of bridging relations for the purpose of outreach in the name of Christ. How then is his place an "outreach" center for Christ? It seems Barnes is correct on this one.
In the NT, there is an example of a book burning. However it is not done the way Jones is doing this. In fact, the burning is done with a significant amount of magic/divination books by those who converted out of the magic they had practiced. This was a way of saying we who have converted out put behind us our own --personal-- temptation to sin by using the magic books again. It was NOT a going out and buying magic books, or PR campaign, to drive home personal political views. It was a witnessing tool to say those books are false. If Terry Jones wants to have a Qur'an burning, it should NOT be him doing it. The New Testament church did have a book burning that eliminated personal idols. Therefore, if Jones struggles with some personal idol, perhaps it is addiction to too much television, let him burn up his own television so that he will not fall back into his own sin struggle. But since (to my knowledge) Jones never was a follower of Islam, he should not be burning Qur'ans. It simply doesn't accomplish the goals he is called to in his life and situation.
Nevertheless, I am wondering if any Christians out there have any thoughts on this person. It seems that Terry Jones has the right to do this as a freedom of speech issue, but what about as a Christian? If he is doing this, isn't it better that he do this as a way of expressing his own personal political views rather on some personal property rather than on a church property and as a pastor? What do you think the reprucussions may be with his doing this from a Christian perspective?

Comments

David Keuss said…
Apparently that Florida Pastor changed his view on the burning, and decided against it. The details so far are unclear on why:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/pastor-terry-jones-calls-off-koran-burning-ground-zero-mosque/story?id=11594495
David Keuss said…
Hopefully this Kansas group will not follow through with another one:

http://www.ocala.com/article/20100909/ARTICLES/100909743/1412?Title=Westboro-Baptish-Church-to-burn-Qurans-if-Dove-doesn-t

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