A Great Alternative

Thank you James McGrath! Over at his blog, the good doctor has suggested a great protest to the Burn a Koran day - Read a Qu'ran day! I'm in. Of course my Arabic is a bit non-existent so I'll be reading a translation. I urge you to join in as well. The reality is that many North American evangelicals have been brought up in a culture of fear. We are taught, sometimes explicitly, to fear the Catholics, Jews, Blacks, Mormons, Asians, Pentecostals, gays, academics, and the list could go on and on. So in some ways fear comes natural to us. There is a solution though. Perfect love, the Bible claims, casts out all fear. So why do we love fear so much? Fear is control. In fact fear is quite a powerful political tool, having a common enemy allows a government to focus the attention of the masses onto the object of fear instead of their poor performance at home. Pastors use it to keep people in pews. But, let me be bold here, fear is quite anti-Christian. Fear is the product of regulated ignorance. Fear is the tool of manipulation, the classic definition of witchcraft. So let's look fear right in the face and choose instead to read for understanding and love. On 9/11 read the Qu'ran.