Burn it all.
The Qur'an for the Islams
The Kitab-I-Iqan of the Baha'i
The Gospel of Buddha
The Amitabha
The Voyage of Bran for the Irish
The King James Bible
The Holy Bible
The Vulgate
The Moon Lore
Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos
The Book of Shadows
the Oera Linda Book
The General Ahiman Rezon for the Masons
The Pistis Sophia for the Gnostics
The Vedas for the Hindus
Mahabharata
Satapatha Brahman
Upanishads
Yoga
The I Ching
Jaina Sutras for Jainism
Tanakh for the Jews
The Talmud
The Book of Mormon
The Kojiki
The Tao-te Ching
Isis Unveiled
Don't forget the works of the great philosophers and poets too; Aristotle, Socrates, Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Thomas Merton, Meister Eckhart, Mother Teresa, St. Francis of Asissi, Pope John Paul II, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Li Po, Rumi, Hafiz, Kabir, Sultan Valad, and thousands more.
Burn it all. And when the smoke clears, there will be nothing. We will simply stand together, human to human, forced to look deeply into each other's eyes. What will we see? Our own reflection? How would we start over and what would change?
Perhaps humanity would be better served to make good reading of this list instead of firewood. Perhaps if the books were opened and studied, we would realize that we are all saying the same things. Burning is fast and fun. Reading requires an open mind, an open heart and the ability to admit you don't know everything.
I say read it all Pastor Terry Jones!
I agree whole-heartedly !
ReplyDeleteI agree to a point. While I don't agree, nor would I support, this activity, I think it is a direct reaction from the Christian community and feeling pushed back. It may be hard to believe but at times it feels as if the attitude is, "You Christians need to accept us, tolerate us, embrace us, but your faith is not to be accepted/tolerated/embraced." It wasn't that long ago that someone actually said to me, "You seem to open-minded & intelligent to be a Christian." So, Pam, I think that everyone taking a step back to see the humanity, compassion, beauty in one another would be an amazingly healing exercise. But I also think that those crying out for tolerance need to ask themselves the question, "As I cry for others to be tolerant of me, am I tolerant of others?"
ReplyDelete