Counter-Protest

Counter-Protest For weeks now, the media has been covering the story about the small church in Gainesville Florida that had been planning a 'Burn the Qur'an Day'. As of right now, I understand that the pastor of that church has called it off. Though from what I have read, he is either greatly misled or just flatout lieing about his reasons to do so. This idea that he had was un-christian from the start. When I think of book burnings, white supremists wearing swastikas come to mind. No good can come from burning any book, much less what is a holy book to millions of people. As Christians, it's not a holy book to us, but how would we feel if a local Muslim Mosque held a 'Burn The Holy Bible Day'? We would be outraged and ready for some sort of action! Muslims around the world were already protesting outside of our embassies, throwing rocks at our soldiers, burning our flag, and chanting 'death to Christians' because of the acts of ignorance of one man, claiming to be a Christian minister. Actions like this just breed more contorversy and trouble for all Christians and widen the gap of understanding among the world's religions. Christ did not return hate with hate and that's what this is; a hatecrime. Anyway, as my own little counter-protest, I stopped by a local bookstore and bought a copy of the Qur'an today. I had been planning on buying one for a long time now to study so that I may better understand the religion of Islam. I had been putting it off, since I'm in the process of a cover to cover read of the Holy Bible at the moment, but all of the controversy lately prompted me to go ahead and do it. I thought it a far better thing to buy a Qur'an that will be kept safe in my collection of books and use it to study and better understand people of another faith, than to let it sit on a shelf with the possibility of some ignorant or misled person buying and destroying it. In closing, through this online Christian ministry I founded I have befriended Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, and Universalists as well as many Christians. We have treated each other with kindness and respect even though we are of different faiths. So tell me now, can I better represent Christ's believers by treating people of other faiths with respect and love or by burning their holy books and driving them to hate Christians? So, I encourage all Christians, to show all of God's children love, not hate. It may be a very overused saying, but ask yourself this, What Would Jesus Do? Your brother in Christ, Rev. Norman L. Morrison a.k.a. Pete Pete 9-9-10