I am truly amazed at how much press Dove World Outreach Church in Gainesville, Florida is receiving for it’s planned burning of the Quran, or as they put it “International Burn a Koran Day” planned for this Saturday, September 11th. It truly shows how a message, any message good or bad, can spread in our world today. This is a 50 member “church” in a small town. Fifty members. How many millions of dollars will other churches (with far better messages) spend to get their message out, and much of the time with little effect. Our church, and many others like it, are helping to change lives locally, and all the way over in Africa, but that isn’t news of course.
Sometimes it is the “shock-and-awe” that makes a message go viral, and their message, Terry Jones’ message, has reached every corner of the earth at this point thanks to Hilary Clinton, Gen. David Petraeus, Attorney General Eric Holder, CNN, Fox News (Orlando), and every high profile person who mentions the Quran burning. Even the Vatican (multiple times) and the White House has weighed in, all giving semi-credibility to this tiny little “outreach center” and their “look at us burning” party.
Other churches have tried this, like the one in North Carolina who created a sign that said “The Koran Needs to be Flushed” and was later forced to leave the SBC. If you dig into “Dove World Outreach” you will see they are a “church” who is mainly focused on the “shock-and-awe” of Islam, not on teachings of Christ and Christianity.
What I haven’t read in any of these reports however is that no matter how much stupidity they claim as their own, the lack of any true sensical Christian message they offer, and the Adolph-Hitler-Natzi-like event this seems to be, this country has fought to allow these freedoms, even if we don’t like them. We don’t fight for only those freedoms we like, but for all freedoms within the law. What would dilute their message today is to heavily vet “Dove World”, Terry Jones, and their other fifty members. Their Facebook page alone is enough to discredit them, and their “about” information for their church shows no focus on any doctrinal beliefs of Christ, yet, today, shock-and-awe wins out.
I do not use the term “idiot” lightly. The dictionary definition says this is “someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way”, and this is exactly what this group of 50 are doing, in many different aspects, but, in this country, they have the freedom to act like idiots, and others in turn have the freedom to condemn their actions as idiotic.
3 responses to “Does Freedom Mean Allowing Idiots to Burn the Quran?”
Faith sometimes leads people to do some really questionable things. This is one of the reasons I think it’s important to question more critically the idea of faith as a supposedly beneficial aspect of our culture.
I disagree in respect to saying faith leads people to do questionable things because you are putting a blanket statement around everyone, like this church above or the church that protests the funerals of dead soldiers, and most churches will have nothing to do with either of these groups.
Historically i think culture and society as a whole have been much better when faith is involved. You will of course disagree but faith based organizations have done enormous charity work worldwide, and they should be. They should be doing things that the government tries to do and fails miserably at doing, like feeding the hungry and helping those in need.
[…] Below is an excerpt from my full review which can be found in my writing section or the pdf can be found Book Critique of The Unexpected Journey: Conversations with People Who Turned From Other Beliefs to Jesus by Thomas Rainer. In light of world events it is always important to understand other world religions. The violence over the Quran burning in Afghanistan right now is a great example (see also Does Freedom Mean Allowing Idiots to Burn the Quran?). […]