It’s about Christ, not burning Qur’ans

I’m sure you know that down in Gainesville, Florida, a church-like institution led by an individual impersonating a pastor is planning a bonfire of Qur’ans on 9/11. You probably know that his plan is opposed by public figures not just on the Left, but on the Right; I think Glenn Beck and Gov. Sarah Palin offered perhaps the best statements on the matter. Gov. Palin, I think, did a particularly good job of appealing to the better nature and judgment of Terry Jones, the guy who hatched this plan:

If your ultimate point is to prove that the Christian teachings of mercy, justice, freedom, and equality provide the foundation on which our country stands, then your tactic to prove this point is totally counter-productive.

However, I think she might have given him too much credit on this one, because as you may not have known, Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center are brothers-in-pickets with Westboro Baptist Church, the “God Hates Fags” people; when a group of folks from Fred Phelps’ nasty little “church” did a protest tour of Gainesville, Jones and his people used their worship time to join in.

I don’t know what this guy really thinks he’s going to accomplish, but one thing he’s certainly accomplishing is giving the media-industrial complex a chance to blacken the image of Christians—hence the repeated descriptions of Jones as “an evangelical pastor.” If this guy’s an evangelical, I don’t know the meaning of the word. Heck, if this guy’s an evangelical, I’m an egg-salad sandwich. As Beregond points out, this is really a pretty dubious operation:

50 members on 20 acres that are worth more than a million and a half dollars, a charismatic church not affiliated with any denomination, and a pastor who takes no prisoners. If someone were writing about such a church in a vacuum the 20 acres, church building, ministry for women, and outbuildings would be called a “compound.” But if you have a political agenda and are willing to smear conservative Christians to further that agenda then such hints of a cult can be ignored.

Jones invokes the name of God, and talks a lot about the devil, and shows a strong focus on America; but Christ seems to be absent from his vision. How can he have the gall to call what he’s doing “Christian” when he’s not in the least about Christ? Ray Ortlund’s post nails it:

What is Christian? What makes anything Christian? Not that it has to do with theology, not that it has to do with ministry, not that it has to do with church business, and so forth. What makes anything Christian is that it reflects Christ. It is “according to Christ.”

We reach the sacred watchword here, and pause to listen to it. “Not according to Christ,” not on His line, not measured by Him, not referred to Him, not so that He is Origin and Way and End and All. The “philosophy”in question would assuredly include Him somehow in its terms. But it would not be “according to Him.” It would take its first principles and draw its inferences, a priori and from other regions, and then bring Him in as something to be harmonized and assimilated, as far as might be. But this would mean a Christ according to the system of thought, not a system of thought according to the blessed Christ. . . . It must have Him for Alpha and for Omega, and for all the alphabet between. It must be dominated all over by Him.

H. C. G. Moule, Colossians and Philemon Studies (Grand Rapids, n.d.), pages 142-143.

The further we go with this comprehensively sweeping adjustment, this all-encompassing humility before Christ, the more Christian we will be, the more it will feel like revival.

And the further we go with anything else—however noble or important we may think our goal to be—the more we may talk about revival, but the further we’ll be from ever seeing it.