Burn the Quran, the Bible and the Flag!

Rev. Terry Jones down there in Florida and that other minister in Springfield, Tenn who want to burn the Quran in retaliation for those who want to build a mosque near ground-zero are as stupid as the people who get upset at them wanting to do it.  The only comment from any minister, priest, pastor, preacher or rabbi that I have heard that even approaches a level of intelligence is the comment made by Bishop David Rickens of the Catholic Diocese in Green Bay.  He said, "The burning of the texts of another religion, especially their Scriptures, totally misses the mark," and he was right, it does miss the mark, even if he said it was for the wrong reason.  Here is the mark!

The Quran, the Bible, and the Flag are symbols people, not artifacts!  They are not sacred objects of worship!  They are manufactured by people, in a factory, somewhere!  Bishop Rickens called it right when he referred to the "texts" of another religion.  The Quran is the text of the Islamic faith, just as the Bible is the "text" of the Christian faith or the Torah is the "text" of Judaic faith.  The Flag is a symbol of America and American ideals.  Now, we are trying to raise the Twin Towers to the level of the Quran or the Bible. 

Now I understand how some might see the Twin Towers as a memorial, a place of grief and rememberance, even a cemetary, but those who died on that tragic day weren't all Christians.  There were by some counts, approximately 60 individuals who were also of the Islamic faith.  I am also sure that there were also some who followed Judaism, Buddism, Hinduism, and some other "-isms" who also lost their lives as well.  Those who crashed those planes into the towers and the Pentagon and the ones who were overcome in Pennsylvania before they could kill more people, weren't trying to save Christians, Jews, Muslims, or any other religious faith, they were trying to kill everyone.  It was an act of "terrorism" which has no religious faith.  If we choose to condemn all who practice Islam for the acts of a group who happened to also follow Islam, then let's condemn all Christians for the acts of those one guys, you know, the ones with the white robes and pointy hats who declared themselves the Saviours of the white race and killed thousands of innocent blacks or the other Christians who oppressed and enslaved blacks, or the Christians who supported that guy with the funny moustache over there in Germany and killed 6,000,000 Jews.

Here is the mark people, WE are the Quran, the Bible, the Torah and the Flag.  WE, the people of the United States are supposed to be the embodiment of those principals and ideals.  If the principals, ideals and beliefs contained in those "Holy Books" abide within each of us, then burning the book has no meaning!  The building of a mosque near ground-zero does not make that site any less a memorial, a gravestone, or a place of sorrow.

The Quran, Bible, Torah and the Flag are ways of life, not words in a book.  When we get upset at the burning of the symbol it is because the contents, the meaning, the principals of those symbols are not within us, those things are not a way of life for us!  We have deified a book, a text and not the principals contained within.  Wake up people and quit being so self-righteous!  Hit the mark!