General Petraeus: “ nothing brave about burning the Quran over here while our soldiers pay the consequences over there.”

 

If foolishness were a sin for which a judgmental and punitive God would punish human beings … then perhaps “hating the sin but loving the sinner” would be today’s challenge regarding Pastor (and I use that term as a loose definition of what he pretends he is) Terry Jones.

Terry Jones has perhaps superseded the notorious “God hates fags – funeral protesting” Fred Phelps as the most despised, discredited and fraudulent Christian in America.

Burning the Quran is No Childish Game – Rick Sanchez (Bio)

Children have to be taught to settle disputes and express their opinions respectfully. Unfortunately, it's a lesson some adults never seem to have learned.

Take, for example, Terry Jones, the pistol-packing Florida pastor who threatened to burn a Quran on 9/11 last year. Well, a little over a week ago, he... you guessed it. He burned a Quran.

If you recall, Jones didn't go through with it last year because there was such an outcry from nearly everyone -- President Obama, Secretary of Defense Gates, politicians from both sides of the aisle, celebrities, religious leaders, regular folk and pretty much anyone with a lick of common sense -- that burning a Quran, and offending one and a half billion people, wasn't a good or sane idea.

But it may have been General David Petraeus whose argument was the most convincing -- at least for me. When I spoke with him last year, he boiled it down to a simple matter of life and death. General Petraeus said that there was nothing brave about burning the Quran over here while our soldiers pay the consequences over there -- in Afghanistan, Iraq and now, Libya.

The question of confrontation for this pretend Christian would of course be a moral-values asking where Jones found his Christ-based justification for such an incredible silliness.

Now is the time for our Christian celebrities to put away their donation-request plates and make national religious heroes of themselves.

Would it not be in our national best interest for our prominent and noisiest Christian advocates to take a public stand and call Jones on his behavior? At some point you cannot walk away from behavior that leads to such horrific consequences.

Sanchez on this very point:

Ignoring Jones and hoping he disappears into obscurity doesn't seem to work. If anything, he seems to have the survivability of a cockroach. Jones has to be confronted head-on, and that is exactly what an interfaith group of 35 pastors and imams from the Detroit-metro area is doing.

On Monday, the group spoke out against Jones' visit and announced they were planning a prayer vigil in response. Reverend Charles Williams II of the King Solomon Baptist Church said, "As a Christian minister, silence for me would be consent."

As much as I dislike giving Jones any more attention and a 16th minute of fame, silence and inaction in the face of bigotry don't work. Worse, they can unfortunately -- and incorrectly -- signal approval or at the very least acceptance. Jones needs to realize that his words and actions make him the very thing he despises: He is no better than the fringe of Muslims who hate.

Hate masquerading as political protest is still hate, which is why Jones must be repudiated so he realizes that his actions are not only offensive, but also dangerous -- especially to our troops.

We teach our children that they can disagree without being disagreeable. That lesson evolves as we grow older. As adults, we learn that we can protest peacefully and that we can oppose something without being offensive.

There is nothing spiritual, holy or religious in looking the other way with this one. It’s time for all of us to cast a vote for real piety.