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Burning Korans
A strange idea. I knew a man once who burnt all his Heavy Metal CDs – and his guitar – when he turned to Christ, because he saw them as part of a demonic dark period in his life from which he wanted to be free. But they were his CDs.
But where would you go to find out about burning other people’s Korans? The Old Testament gives some suggestions about smashing and burning idol images, but that is for idols that find their way into God’s land. It is not as though there was a general world-wide mandate given to the Israelites to search out and destroy all idols world-wide.
The problem was that they polluted the land God had set aside for his people. Or perhaps more importantly lots of Israelites seemed to like them and tended to adopt them as their gods.
It is true that, at different times, various groups of Christians have taken iconoclasm seriously on the basis of some of these texts, but the practice hasn’t gained a widespread following.
Maybe Paul might help. There was that girl with a divining spirit at Philippi who kept on telling who he was. She was very annoying and eventually Paul got rid of the spirit (though not the girl). It is an interesting contrast to some kinds of Prayer Warfare that would have cleaned out all the spirits before Paul started work in Philippi. Paul didn’t know about that method – or perhaps he had a better way.
Paul had plenty of scope if he wanted to look for religious beliefs and practices that were abhorrent to him. The world he lived in was full of them. He did get into a few arguments and fights but not because he was looking for a fight. He had a much simpler approach.
He told people about Jesus. He thought that his message about the resurrection of the crucified Jewish Messiah was the way to change people’s religious beliefs and behaviours.
It is still the best method even though we may have to explain and defend ourselves as a result. But more about that another day.
Dale Appleby
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