On second thought

The North Carolina minister who put up a sign outside his church saying "The Koran needs to be flushed" has apologized and removed the sign.

In a statement, [Rev. Creighton] Lovelace [of Danieltown Baptist Church] says that after prayer and reflection, he now realizes that Muslims revere their holy book more than many Americans revere the Bible. He says the church sign's message has been replaced with a new one that reads "Jesus said, 'I am the way.'"

Lovelace had previously been unrepentant, declaring the sign to be

"a statement supporting the word of God and that it (the Bible) is above all and that any other religious book that does not teach Christ as savior and lord as the 66 books of the Bible teaches it, is wrong."

He added that any such book "is automatically written off" and that if anyone was offended, "we must be doing something right."

I wonder if some of his "prayer and reflection" was prompted by people paying attention to the wider meaning of his words, specifically "Christ as savior" and the reference to "the 66 books of the Bible." There's a subtle point here: While the version of the Bible normally used by Protestant denominations has 66 books, the Roman Catholic Bible contains 73 books - and the Greek Orthodox Bible has 76 plus an additional Psalm!

So those the minister slammed as "trying to defeat people from the way of true righteousness" included not only Muslims (along with followers of Hinduism, Baha'i, and any other non-Western mainstream religion), but also Jews, Roman Catholics, and Greek Orthodox.

Christian love in action. A wonderful thing to see.