I was debating back and forth today, if I am going to mention this in today's post or if I just need to ignore it. Maybe this is the originator's only wish to be in the news and have people talking about him and I really didn't want to promote those efforts. On the other hand, it's just too disturbing and if someone is wrong (in my opinion anyways) I feel that I have to speak up, however small my audience might be. Especially after reading this quote:
"Where they burn books, they will also burn people."
Out of Almansor: A Tragedy (1823) by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Okay, I guess by now you must be completely confused by me rambling away. Let me explain. This morning I saw in the news that the pastor of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton N.C. is planning on burning books on Halloween e.g. bibles in other version's than the King James Version because they are "satanic" and a "perversion" of God's word... click here for the full article.
This is wrong on so many levels, that I don't even know, where to start. First of all, I think there is a lot of truth in the line out of Heinrich Heine's work and throughout history, book burnings have always been used to judge other people's beliefs and opinions and a lot of the time, it didn't stop with burning books. It's a very strong statement of disapproval. What makes it even worse, when Christians start to burn bibles is, that they fight against their own team. Even if this process of burning books is not illegal (at least, I don't think it is), the act in itself has a bad aftertaste and the signal that is sends doesn't promote the Christian beliefs. It starts with them burning bibles, but what is next? Will they start to attack Christians in their community that "dare" to use other versions than KJV? Will they start to attack people of other beliefs in their community? This is an open invitation to any aggressive nut job out there!
When you start things like this, where will it end??
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