Burning the Qur’an: If You Do It, Don’t Say the Bible Told You So. If You Don’t Do It, Make Sure You Do What the Bible Tells You to Do.

Pastor Mike offered some sound insights on the controversy over the planned Qur’an burning by a Florida church at the Compass staff meeting today. Like the shrewd steward of Luke 16, the “wise as a serpent” Christian today does well to weigh the impact of his actions on his audience: are unbelievers more likely or less likely to respond winsomely to the gospel as the result of such a radical action?

But some might beg to cite biblical precedent here. After all, the occult books burned by repentant former practitioners of black magic in Ephesus (Acts 19:18-20) were so many that their total value reached 50,000 pieces of silver. A lot of Ephesians, and no doubt some Ephesian occultists, eyed the smoke rising from that fire! So is there a biblical principal in view in the present Qur’an burning dilemma that would require such a dramatic public statement?

Simply stated, no. The burning of the Qur’an and the burning of the occult books in Acts 19 are worlds apart for several reasons. First, it should be pointed out that the new disciples in Ephesus were renouncing their own former religion, not denigrating that of others. While a public book burning by Muslim converts to Christianity would not be a great idea, it would certainly be a different case than that of Terry Jones (the spiritual leader of a group of people in sunny, mild, and conspicuously non-Muslim Florida) getting a hankering to burn the religious text of some other faith. Not that this would be our best advice either, but why doesn’t he burn a few hundred copies of Playboy or Hustler? They probably sell better down there than English copies of the Qur’an do. And I doubt even Jones would argue that laying pure eyes on the pages of the Qur’an would be as defiling as the latest smut turned out by Hefner and friends.

If you were inclined to “go biblical” in your arguments to support Qur’an burning, chances are you’ve already made a turn back. But just in case, going a bit further into the context of Acts 19 we see just how impossible it is to use this text as proof for this latest misguided endeavor.

The converts of Acts 19:18-20 were, as we mentioned, practitioners of the arcana mundi, or “black arts” in Latin, which were specifically proscribed and punishable by Roman law. So too was any mystery religion that was not a religio licita, that is, a religion officially recognized and tolerated by the state. Roman society disdained such superstitio, “superstitious beliefs”, and a number of public book burnings are gleefully recorded in the annals of the Roman historians Suetonius and Livy. Far from enraging the average civic-minded Ephesian, the book burning would most likely have been viewed as a welcome purge from society of superstitious unmentionables.

Not so with the cult of “Artemis of the Ephesians” (Acts 19:28) and her great temple, mentioned just a few verses later in the biblical account. A source of civic pride, the official cult of Artemis was one layer of the societal glue that bound Ephesians together. So careful were Paul and his companions not to cast unnecessary aspersions on the Artemis cult that later the town clerk could remark confidently that they were neither “sacrilegious” nor “blasphemers of our goddess.” (verse 37).

The Ephesian milieu was a complex mix of religion, social mores, and political pride—not unlike that of the Arab world today. The tides of Arab nationalism have waxed and waned over the centuries, but for many Arab Muslims, in particular, Muhammad will always be a rallying point. It was he who united the nomadic Arab desert tribes and began to form them into an impressive and dominating fighting force. The sayings of the Qur’an, which Islamic history attributes entirely to him, have served as a crystallizing and preservative force for the dialect of Arabic which has become standard across the Arab world. While not generally spoken by the masses, it is still largely understood, whether you’re a cosmopolitan socialite in Tangiers, Morocco, or a marsh Arab dwelling in tenement huts in Iraq. Though the analogy is crude, in some ways Muhammad was the founding father of the Arab national movement, just as George Washington was of that in America. Only, Muslims remember Muhammad as both a religious and secular figure, whereas Americans have long forgotten Washington’s deism, but still embrace his secularism and libertarianism.

In the end, the whole conversation seems like just another round in the endless cycle of foolhardy reactionism against Islam by Western evangelicals. We are too busy disobeying the Great Commission to actually do what Jesus tells us to do: Go to unbelievers (even Muslims). Preach a simple gospel with boldness and humility. And pray that people will be saved. Whether the next Florida pastor is too busy organizing sea-side treasure hunts for retirees or decides to go on a “burn crusade” against the world, we’ve missed the point.