Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove Center in Gainesville, Fla. threatened to burn Qurans on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. He claimed that “Islam is of the devil,” and has written a book with the same title. At the very last minute, Pastor Jones decided not to carry out his threat. Good for him.
Despite this apparent change of heart, I would argue that the threat was misguided to begin with. While I agree with Pastor Jones that Islam is of the devil and the Quran is not what Muslims claim it to be (Galatians 1:8), this does not validate actions like burning Qurans.
What would be accomplished by burning them? I don’t remember the Great Commission being “Go ye into all the world and burn the books of other religions.” (Or perhaps that was the passage 1 Terry Jones 1:7, that new verse recently added to Scripture, not yet verified by textual critical scholars?)
When it comes to mature, evangelical Christianity, God does not want us burning Qurans or the Book of Mormon or the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He wants us to study these books and use them to reach the people bound in these cults and false religions. Let me offer an illustration from personal experience.
When I was a newborn “babe” in Christ years ago, my dad would give me Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower magazines to read. I would start to read the information and would feel literally sick to my stomach. I knew something was wrong, but I was too young and immature to determine what it was. So I ripped the magazine to shreds and threw it in the garbage. Some people could argue, “That’s where it belongs.” Yet, I want to tell you about a more excellent way.
After growing and maturing in my faith, God began to show me that I could read Watchtower material, dissect it, discern the Scriptural and logical errors in it, and then use that information to evangelize to the Jehovah’s Witnesses who are so bound in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, a pseudo-Christian cult.
God has helped me to develop skills in apologetics so that I can use the literature of atheists, agnostics, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others to refute their claims, showing them in painstaking detail how their literature is in error. My heart now “burns” to reach the lost using their own literature and Biblical truth, and this is what should burn instead of books.
Hopefully, Pastor Jones will one day start an apologetics program at his church that teaches his congregation to take those Qurans, read them, analyze them, and use them to reach Muslims for Christ –– assuming Jones knows the true Christ who is both God and sinless man (John 1:1,14; Romans 8:3; Philippians 2:5,6).
So should we burn Qurans? No. Our hearts should burn with God’s Word and Spirit so that we can take erroneous writings and use them for the ultimate good of those who oppose the Gospel.
