Jesus didn't say "Hate your enemies" or "Blessed are the violence-makers"

"The Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Centre church calling itself a "New Testament, Charismatic, Non-Denominational Church," says it will go ahead with the torching of the Koran on Saturday to mark the ninth anniversary of the 2001 attacks against the United States. Gainesville authorities have said that will contravene fire safety rules."

See here for more on this astonishing and dangerous nonsense from a group who dare to claim their behaviour has any conceivable connection with New Testament Christianity.

Their proposed actions have not the remotest congruence with the Holy Spirit whose charismata does not include hatred and incitement

Nor can their proposed actions carry even the most tenuously, tortuously, tediously argued iota of justification in the teaching and person of Jesus, whose clear command is (if they MUST name Muslim people as enemies), "Love your enemies!" 

Burning the sacred text of another tradition is thinkable for so called Christians only if:

• they have already disposed of the Sermon on the Mount as a defining text of the actions and dispositions that reflect the Living Christ
• and only if they act in direct contravention to all that the cross stands for as the reconciling act of God in Christ
• and only if they reject the truth of the resurrection - which is that life not death, love not hate, light not darkness, hope not despair, peace not violence, are the true values of the Kingdom of God, and the convictional commitments by which Christians live.

The US Government, and whole swathes of Amercican people have rightly and strongly condemned the plan, and called on the church not to proceed. In addition to all the other arguments and reasoned protests, one further point. When Jesus said love your enemies he was referring to those we considered enemies or who hated us. In my view, and my reading of the gospels, the Christian response to people of other faiths can never be hatred, and can never use the vocabulary of enmity, not if we are followers of Jesus. The idea that the One who took the scroll of the law to preach the Nazareth Manifesto, can be co-opted as a burner of the sacred book of another faith tradition is ludicrous, the image it conjures, grotesque, the religious message it sends, dis-graceful.

The name of the Church planning to burn the Koran - mark it well - The Dove World Outreach Centre. The picture below shows what real doves are about.

Comments

[ruthg]

thank you, Jim

[Adam Oellermann]

Amen. Someone claiming the mantle of Christian must necessarily burn their Bible before they can turn their matches on the Koran.