Y’all Come Join Us for Our Book Burning

So, Eyewitness news channel 9 in North Carolina reports that there is a church in Canton planning to burn books this coming Halloween. Pastor Marc Grizzard intends to burn, among other books, several versions of the Bible that are not the King James Version. He believes these other versions are Satanic. And, he plans to burn books by “heretics” like Billy Graham, Rob Bell and Rick Warren of The Purpose Driven Life.

This story has me stirred up in countless ways.

I was born in the sixties so I KNOW that book burning is bad. Really, really bad. Nazi’s burned books and Nazi’s were bad. They burn books in Castro’s Cuba and Castro is bad. In general, burning things in public has never been a particularly progressive idea. Flag burning. Cross burning. Draft card burning. Bra burning. No terribly brilliant insights were ever gained by groups of people gathering around a fire and tossing things in to express their distaste and anger.

But we do it. We write songs about it. Burn, baby, burn. We gather offensive combustibles, douse them with lighter fluid and toss the lit match of our hatred on the mound feeling warmed and enlightened as the darkness closes in until the flames die and all we have are cold ashes and tiny scraps of words that refused to yield to the heat.

Useless. Hate-fueled. Bad, bad idea.

But,

OK, and this is why I’m stirred up,

But, part of me looks at this and thinks – well, they sure aren’t lukewarm about what they believe. I mean, they are heated up, they are passionate, they are on fire.

Again, I am opposed to book burning and think these brothers and sisters are misguided at best but every day I sit by and watch people opposed to God make what I believe is true look like a lie and dress up the things God says are detestable to look as beautiful and appealing as a harem of Victoria Secret models. Then, I watch people I love line up to march blindly into the black tie affair Satan is holding at Studio 54 only to wake up trapped in a death chamber they can’t escape and it does make me want to set something on fire to convince them, to startle them, to wake them up to the danger of cherishing the sins that keep us from realizing who we are in Christ.

I want to act. I want to speak out. Life is not about being comfortable and escaping as much pain as possible. It’s not about accumulating possessions, power, privilege and passionate experiences. It’s not about being on top. There is meaning in life but it is found by learning who we are in Jesus, in knowing His amazing love for us and in responding to that love by giving ourselves over to furthering His kingdom until He comes again and that requires more than we pretend it requires when we know what He’s all about but we continue to only show up for Him on Sunday mornings.

The book burning church is wrong. But they have set a fire in me, a reminder that I want to have the courage of my convictions, the guts to stand up, the confidence that comes from knowing the TRUTH and living it out.

Maybe I do need to set some things on fire:

The fear of what others think.

The spiritual sloth that makes me gloss over the hard questions, avoid the research, settle for glib, clichéd answers.

The self- centeredness that paralyzes me from doing everything I can to get the message to others, knowing that I am safe, I am saved.

The prayerlessness that keeps me in the dark and ineffective.

The cowardice that keeps me cowering.

The lack of love that keeps me seeking my own comfort rather than extending myself to those in need.

These are what I need to burn. These will be the fuel for my fire. I will not set ablaze the works of others, the ideas of others, the differences I have with others. That is for God to sort out. I will burn in my fire those things in me that make me less than He intends me to be and it will be a mighty blaze, a fire that will attract those who shuffle like zombied drones to the mesmerizing pipe played by the deceiver who seeks only their destruction and they will see its light and they will have chance, move by God, to make a different choice.

Our God is a consuming fire. I will let Him consume what is worthless in me. This is a fire worth attending. This is the fire that refines gold.

I have never seen a book burning fuel anything but hatred. But let us not wrap ourselves in the smug comfort that we are not the ones “crazy enough” to burn things. Maybe we need a little crazy. Maybe we need a little passion, some conviction, some heat. There’s nothing worse than lukewarm and baby, we’ve refined lukewarm to an art. In America, lukewarm is almost a religion.

So, don’t set books on fire but do turn up the heat.