Is Koran Burning Pastor The New Fred Phelps?
September 8th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
USA Today has a piece about the controversial plans by a Florida church to burn copies of the Koran. There were a couple of quotes in the article that just left me scratching my head. An associate pastor at this church doesn’t believe or apparently care that this stunt will endanger U.S. troops overseas.
"We don’t believe it," said Wayne Sapp, 41, who has been a member of the church for 17 years. "The troops knew the dangers before they went over there. They knew the radical element of Islam is there. This is nothing new."
Sapp said the church, headed by Terry Jones, is "still in prayer over the whole thing."
"We are convinced this is the direction God wants us to go," Sapp said. "That’s the only reason we’re doing it in the first place."
Now I am still trying to figure out just how God told them that burning Koran’s was the Christian thing to do.
More and more it seems like Terry Jones and his little church are bound and determined to replace Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church folks as the most un-Christian church in America. You may remember Fred from his “God Hates Fags” protests at the funerals of American service members killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as other equally repulsive funeral protests.
If you were a non-Christian looking at these folks would you see Jesus in this stunt? Would this attract you to the Gospel and cause you to want to become a Christian? I can see non-Christians thinking that if heaven is full of these people, they’d rather go anywhere else but there.
"But in America, there is the freedom to be ignorant."
September 7th, 2010 § 2 Comments
The uproar over a Florida church that is sponsoring a Koran burning to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks is coming to a head. CNN’s Belief Blog had a great quote in this story about the uproar.
In the story they quoted Plemon el-Amin the leader of a Georgia mosque as saying:
"But in America, there is the freedom to be ignorant," el-Amin said. "The only problem is in the world, many people don’t understand that particular freedom. So what he is doing is like shouting fire in a theater, in a world theater, and people are upset."
With rights, such as the right to free speech come the responsibility to use it wisely. Given the tensions that are likely to be inflamed and the increased danger that US military members will then face, I would like to hope that they will cancel this stunt.
Unfortunately, I have learned never to underestimate people’s ignorance.
