How Bible Burning In Portland Can Bring Christians Joy
On August 1, 2020, the news media reported that a Bible burning had taken place in Portland, Oregon.
For some time now, I’ve mulled over these articles unsure of how I should respond or how I should interpret their actions. Naturally, my immediate response is anger and frustration. The Bible is the most important book ever written!
When characters from the show, The Office, play Desert Island, they need to pick five books they could take with them that they would be happy reading for the rest of their lives.
I pick the Bible . . . and then I don’t care about the other four. It’s the only book I need. The only book that would make a desert island bearable for the rest of my life because it would take me closer to my Heavenly Father. His love is written on every page. Even after 80 years of intense focused study, I wouldn’t begin to mine the depths of His love for me!
How could these people burn THAT book. My book!
But wait . . .
It isn’t my book. It’s God’s book.
God has a purpose for this Bible burning. In fact, God allowed these people the freedom to choose to burn the Bible. God gives His creation the opportunity to reject Him. As a testament to His love for us, He has to give us that option. Many do choose to reject Him.
So why would I be angry?
I can’t protect the Bible from those who reject it.
God does not call me to be sole preserver of the Bible.
That’s up to God, and He’s done a pretty good job of it so far.
God has kept the Bible protected for 6,000 years before I was around.
He preserved and maintained His Word long before the printing press.
In fact, God used circumstances to spread the Bible to the world while I still doubted Him.
The Bible is His word, and I know He’s got the Bible burning incident under control.
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What should my reaction look like?
A part of me is sad. Those Bibles could have gone to a country that needed them. People in China, North Korea, and Cuba (to name a few places!) have to smuggle in single pages of the Bible. They cherish those pages! Often, they memorize those pages. These Christians hope they will not be caught with the pages of the Bible because then the pages would be destroyed. Never mind that it could also mean their own death sentence.
Really, I have to be sad for the people who burned the Bibles. These Bibles were assuredly written in English, and wouldn’t have done much good internationally. But on a less technical point, it is these people who need the love and forgiveness of Christ.
They burn the very book that promises them freedom. The book that promises love. They held the only book that reveals to them the power, grace, and love of a heavenly Father and they burned it. The people who need the Bible the most are the very people who have decided to reject it and burn it.
I am saddened for them. And I am bolstered by Christ’s words, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” These people may have not heard the Gospel preached to them.
Sadness Is Not Enough
However, the more I consider the problem; sadness is a weak answer. The rich young man looked into the eyes of Jesus Christ and turned away sad. The Bible tells us that people will suppress the truth. They will reject Him.
The heavens declare the glory of God. People have no excuse to say they did not know of God’s existence. Every part of creation shouts the truth that God exists. People’s hearts have been hardened to not notice the glory of God through their surroundings.
Do we need to get them the gospel? Most emphatically, YES.
But saving men’s souls is also not within my hands. Individuals must make the choice for themselves. My sympathy is wasted on people who don’t want it. They have the same opportunity to accept God’s gift of forgiveness for their sins. But they have chosen to burn the one book that would help them understand their sin nature and how to be reconciled with God.
I’m powerless to protect the Bible.
Even more so, I’m powerless to change the hearts of lost people.
It would be the greatest of pride to take responsibilities the Lord has taken upon Himself and claim that I am somehow responsible.
What Is The Solution?
The solution is found, of all places, in the Bible.
Paul tells us, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
How can we rejoice when our connection with the Lord is burning?
Know Your Own Relationship With The Bible
First, we should understand what our relationship with the Bible is. Please understand that we can’t protect it, write it, or adjust it. Man’s job is to understand the reality of the Bible. We can learn how to show lost people the evidence for the reality that God’s Word is true. Out task can be to speak out that the Bible is reliable, true, historically accurate, and different from any other book on the planet.
The research is out there to support that we can have faith in God’s Word.
(Check out Frank Turek, Norman Geisler, Erwin Lutzer, C.S. Lewis, J.P. Moreland, and Lee Strobel’s resources to help give you a great grasp of the evidence.)
Know That the Bible Is Fully True
When you don’t get what you want for Christmas, do you blame Santa Claus?
When the candy in the basket isn’t right, do you curse the Easter Bunny?
People don’t get mad at what isn’t real. The person who blames an imaginary character sounds like a crazy person.
We misplace anger all the time. Without fail, we tend to blame the wrong person and wrong things constantly. Humanity’s anger is as sinful as we are . . . and yet we don’t blame imaginary people. We don’t blame the characters when we don’t like the end of a story. We don’t rant and rave at a corporate mascot when the company does something we don’t like.
How can we rejoice? Because these people burned the Bible.
They’re mad at something they know is real. The Bible clearly holds a special place. They burned what they knew to be real. Why didn’t they burn the Quran? Where was the Book of Mormon? I didn’t see a Buddhist statue out there, or a Bhagavad Gita. For all their talk about “all religions being the same” those texts are still on the shelves next to Harry Potter and Twilight.
Those people got mad at what is real. Only the Bible held that special place.
Only. The. BIBLE.
Rejoice, friends. Our God reigns.
Know That Sinful Humans Avoid The Truth
Need more proof that we can rejoice in spite of Bibles being burned? Let’s consider humanity’s relationship with truth.
What hurts more: when someone tells you a lie you know to be a lie; or when someone tells you a truth you don’t want to hear?
No one is hurt by a lie they know to be a lie. Go ahead, tell me my car has been stolen while I’m driving it. Tell me my house is on fire while I’m there watching TV. Of course, you could tell me a lie and scare me. But as soon as I’ve discovered the lie, the fear is gone. The truth sets you free.
No one is scared by a lie they know to be a lie.
Next consider the truth, especially the truths you know, but don’t want to admit. Truth like having a light shined on an affair, a drinking problem, or an abusive relationship. When the truth about these struggles are placed before you it can be downright painful.
Truth is what hurts. Truth is what cuts to the bone.
Don’t take my word for it, the Bible teaches the same thing:
In Proverbs 27:6 is says, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.”
Truth is what causes the greatest of wounds. But truth is what we need to hear the most.
Truth is also what the protesters are fighting the hardest to avoid. Look at the falsehoods that our culture believes. (Likely what the Bible-burning protesters believe too as they are clearly living in and participating in this culture too.)
Culture denies truth and instead claims many crazy things that are simply not true.
- Men can become women and vice versa.
- Two men or two women can create a biological family.
- Babies in the womb are not human and therefore do not need protection of their lives.
- Human life is not equally precious and valuable.
Truth is not what the protesters (or anyone in our culture) want to hear, so they seek to eliminate truth. It is truth these Bible burners seek to eliminate.
Which can only mean one thing, the Bible is true.
In their blind hatred, in their cruel acts of destruction, they affirm the very things they seek to eliminate. The Bible teaches truth. I didn’t see Darwin being burned, I didn’t see Dawkins, or Hawking. Why? Because they do not teach truth. They teach the lies these people want to hear.
Don’t believe me? These books by Darwin, Dawkins, and Hawking SHOULD anger Bible burners.
The theories they espouse clearly state things such as:
- Transgenderism would be a weakness in the species.
- Homosexual DNA traits could not be passed on through reproduction.
- Darwin believed white people were naturally superior to black people.
If Darwin wrote the truth, then he should catch these rioters’ ire. Instead, they ignore Darwin and seek out the Bible. The book that teaches:
- ALL sexual immorality is bad (including divorce, premarital sex, cohabitation before marriage, extramarital affairs, homosexual relations, and biological sex changes to name a few)
- ALL people are created equal in the image of God (including all skin colors and all developmental ages and stages)
How can these people ignore the book that teaches what they hate, and burn the book that teaches what they want to hear?
Truth.
The Bible teaches truth. The Bible’s only conclusion is that we all need a Savior. Jesus Christ is that Savior, and we need Him.
How can we find joy while the Bible burns?
Remember, the Bible is confirmed. God doesn’t need us to believe, He doesn’t need us to approve His actions, or explain Himself to us. Yet, in these protester’s actions, they prove what we live our lives for. They confirm that only the Bible contains the truth. Only the Bible is real.
Brothers and sisters, ONLY THE BIBLE.
They’re not out there burning the Quran. They’re not out there burning the Book of Mormon or any other book of lies. They burn the Bible, because only the Bible matters. The rest can sit on the shelf with all the other dime novels.
Friends, our God reigns.
Our. God. Reigns.
Stay faithful to God and His Word,
Nick
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