Curse the darkness or light a candle?

A church in Florida is burning some copies of the Koran in memory of 9/11 this Saturday and the whole world knows it.

It’s not a large church by any stretch of the imagination. About fifty members who regularly engage in incendiary protest have finally discovered an action that will draw global press. If they were an advertising agency, I suppose they’d win a big prize.

Outrage is widespread. US officials, Christian religious leaders, and certainly Muslims have condemned these plans.

I agree that though in the United States we have a legal right to do so, it’s a stupid idea to burn books. But I also wonder why there isn’t similar outrage over burned Bibles.

Yes, I said burned Bibles. Do a quick Internet search and you will find news stories and Youtube videos of people and groups burning Bibles. Pagans have done it. Frat boys have done it. Last year a church threatened to burn all the translations they thought were evil (in other words, about every translation but the KJV), but they didn’t quite follow through.

And, oh yeah, our government has burned Bibles, too. It seems that some local language New Testaments were given to soldiers in Afghanistan, and after the Pentagon discovered this, they had the Bibles burned with the day’s trash. (see this link for the news story).

In light of all that going relatively unnoticed, why does a tiny lunatic fringe group doing something really stupid but totally legal get so much attention? It reminds me of the long-ago controversy surrounding the film, “The Last Temptation of Christ”. I was in High School, and I remember Christian groups getting really upset about the movie and protesting it. It turns out that was the best thing that could have happened for the filmmakers. I guess the movie wasn’t all that good to begin with and it wouldn’t have done nearly as well in Theaters without the public outcry.

I’m not saying that we should just uncritically put up with any twisted thing that perverse people do, but sometimes the press is better for them than for us. One of my favorite U2 songs (OK, they are ALL my favorite) says, “I’m gonna kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight”, turning on its head an even more famous quote by a whole lot of people who lifted a Chinese proverb: “It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness”.

In the spirit of that, I want to point you to a project a friend of mine has created to light a candle in the middle of all of this crazy darkness. Recently there have been devastating floods in Pakistan (officially known as “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan”). This highly Muslim country has encountered destruction that is unthinkable in our country. Though it is estimated that “only” 2,000 people have died so far, over a million homes have been lost and about 21 million people have been injured or are homeless. In other words, it is said that this has impacted more people than the 2004 Tsunami and the Haiti earthquake combined.

So my friend Lucinda is suggesting that we donate the amount of our favorite Starbucks drink to Pakistan Flood Relief on 9/11. I think it’s a fantastic idea. And I think while we are giving the money we should also pray for open roads for the Gospel of love.

I guess that’s better than cursing—or kicking—the darkness!

For more information and to support this initiative, go to this Facebook page.