I can come to only two conclusions today: one is that Terry Jones is a murderer; and two is that if there is a God out there, this cannot be what he wants.
That’s the only conclusion you can come to after his supervision of a Qur’an burning on March 21th led directly to today’s murder of UN staff members in Afghanistan.
It’s important to know that both sides here are guilty. Jones is a murderer because he knew his actions would provoke this type of response. He knew that there was at least one Islamic moron who would take the bait and prove his nonsensical theory about the Qur’an. And the Afghan protesters who reports say have killed eight foreigners, two by beheading, are no better. They two are murderers.
Somewhere God or Allah or Yahweh – he or she is weeping.
The sad thing is that I know someone’s going to take offense to that statement. I’ve experienced it firsthand back in university, when the paper for which I was editor-in-chief, ran a cartoon that showed a Christian depiction of God (watching Highway to Heaven, of course) on the phone. The text? Something to the effect of “Allah, it’s God. Have you started your world yet? Me neither.” The punch line was, to paraphrase, that it was a little known fact that God slacked off for six days and crammed on the seventh.
The sucker punch came shortly after. You see, apparently some of the Islamic students at our school were adamant that depicting two versions of God was an insult to them. There were other issues involved, but needless to say, it got ugly.
And what was sacrificed was common sense and common courtesy.
I’ll admit I’m not religious, but I’m very respectful of religion. I think that comes from the fact that it’s not that I don’t believe in something – I just don’t believe in any of the organized religions that are out there now. I also believe that my right to not believe is just as valid as your right to believe, should you choose to do so.
I also believe that no God (not even the bad-ass vindictive one from the Old Testament) would want people killing in its name.
Most religions and belief systems promote tolerance, understanding, and love. Somehow that gets twisted around. From Christians who pick and choose which parts of the Bible remain valid based upon their own narrow-mindedness (Gay? Punishable by death – God says so! Oh, eating shellfish and mixing linen and wool? Pork? Uh, well, yeah, those don’t count. That’d be crazy) to those who bastardize the Qur’an in order to justify killing innocents, there are plenty of people who give God a bad name.
Terry Jones is just the latest. Like the people from the Westboro Baptist Church, I can only hope their time of judgment will come.
I’ve been asked if I fear going to Hell if I was wrong about God and my answer is always, “No.” Simply put, if whichever God is at my final destination is going to take vile representations of humanity and purveyors of hate such as Jones and the aforementioned Muslim extremists over me – a man who is trying to do right by his family and generally live a good life, one that’s courteous to and respectful of others, well then that’s a God that I don’t want to hang with.
The good thing about not being attached to a religion is that I don’t have to pay lip service to forgiveness. I hope the Gods are watching what happens down here and I hope they are fully aware of what extremists on all sides are doing to his or her name.
And I hope that justice fits the crimes these people have perpetrated on humanity.
The M-Dash by Jason Menard 
Strong and true post. Despite my misgivings as a (admittedly fledgling) Christian i agree with this. I mean, there’s no need to agree. It’s pretty obvious those are monstrous acts.
(Well, deep breaths, because i’m going to probably raise people’s ire…)
As a Christian, i know many of those people. I’ve seen people speak those exact words for those examples exactly but in truth we’re supposed to be tolerant of that all. All in all though the Bible should be taken as a whole. Old and New Testament together. Despite popular thought there are no contradictions within the whole thing. I have yet to verify that statement but the sources were reliable.
Sorry, i just felt defensive in that aspect. It’s a pity you got attacked in such a matter. I think human’s refuse to have cool calm debates whenever anything challenging their doctrines happens. I believe in searching out truth for oneself and drawing conclusions from that. I’m an apologetic.
I hope to drop by this blog again, i’ll be sure to see very interesting posts
No need to apolgize. The sad thing is that there are way more good people like you involved with organised religion, but it’s the ones who abuse it that get the attention. Admittedly my Old Testament comment was made with tongue firmly in cheek! What I can reconcile is how people can take words designed to preach love and tolerance and turn them into justification for hate. Thank you for your comment and I hope you enjoy other items that you read. People don’t need to agree about everything, but we must be able to respect differing opinions and beliefs.
Very true
What is there to respect about religion? I think we are socially frightened into saying “we respect the beliefs of others” really? What if my magical belief was that god the leprachan rules the earth, and from there makes a book of rules about life conduct, and I believe in it because I was born into that system. A belief in a spiritual existance is seperate from blindly following ancient ignorant text that has no shown validity. To respect someones belief in “there’s more to life” is different from respecting their belief in vigin births and magic and litteral belief in fairytales. To respect something means to find it praise worthy. I can respect people, but their beliefs in magical bullsh!# NO. I can respect a person with any mental disorder, but I’m not going to treat their dillusional belief as anything but the ignorance or chemical imballance that it is. I look forward to the day when those with a public profile such as yourself ,don’t have to pretend it’s rational thinking either, and to those Musliums offended by your outlook on god in a personal opinion article- tell them they I think that can take that complaint the mosque WHERE IT BELONGS!
Can’t say I agree with much of what you’re saying here. Most religious texts are meant to be taken as analogies and metaphor, much in the same way that fairy tales are meant to issue cautions in a way that’s more subtle. I’m not pretending at all — I actually completely respect people’s right to believe whatever they want. No matter what you believe in, the common denominator is that people are searching to find meaning in their lives. Some people choose to do it on their own; others want a road map. At least most religious people are in it with good intentions and do want to help. It’s the self-help gurus that advocate The Secret-esque pseudo science and people like Kevin Trudeau that worry me more. At least religion, at its essence, is about good. These so-called gurus are simply offering a form of religion substituting wealth and their knowledge for God, then preying upon those who are searching for similar needs as those who choose religion, but want the short cuts.
I used to be much more opposed to religion, but I’ve come around and tempered that arrogance. Just because I don’t believe, doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t accept others. In the end, I don’t think it’s ignorance, an imbalance, or a failing in anyone. Instead, it’s simply a desire to find one’s place in this world — it’s just we all take different paths to get there.