You’ve probably seen the same reports I have about the burning of the bible in Afghanistan… and the lack of a response by Christians (at least not a violent one accompanied by mass protests and death threats, etc.).

Certainly, the fact that Christ has a lot to say about loving ones enemies explains fairly adequately the (lack of) a response.  We can say with confidence that any call by a “Christian” for a violent response would be roundly, publicly, and nearly unanimously condemned by other Christians. (Much as the Christian community publicly and vehemently condemned oh what’s his name (the pseudo preacher dude) down in Florida a while ago.

Inversely, much of the Islamic rhetoric we see and hear and read so much about marches to a drumbeat of violence against those who do not hold to these extreme “ideals” (though every Muslim I personally know does not personally hold to these doctrines of violence and is not afraid to speak against it, so it would be very wrong to put all who claim to be Muslim into one basket).

But there is a much deeper reason for the contradictory responses to what appear to be similar actions (Bible burning and Qur’an burning), a reason that cuts to the very fabric of Islam and the heart of Christianity, and why Islam is fundamentally incompatible with the reality of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

I’ve seen this reason hinted at in various places. The best explanation I’ve found is over at the Desiring God blog where John Piper quotes Andrew Walls:

Christian faith must go on being translated, must continuously enter into vernacular culture and interact with it, or it withers and fades.

Islamic absolutes are fixed in a particular language, and in the conditions of a particular period of human history. The divine Word is the Qur’an, fixed in heaven forever in Arabic, the language of original revelation.

For Christians, however, the divine Word is translatable, infinitely translatable. The very words of Christ himself were transmitted in translated form in the earliest documents we have, a fact surely inseparable from the conviction that in Christ, God’s own self was translated into human form.

Much misunderstanding between Christians and Muslims has arisen from the assumption that the Qur’an is for Muslims what the Bible is for Christians.

It would be truer to say that the Qur’an is for Muslims what Christ is for Christians.
(The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History, 29)

Then John Piper goes on to explain in greater detail:

Did you catch that last line?

The parallel between Christianity and Islam is not that Christ parallels Mohammed and the Qur’an parallels the Bible. The parallel is that the Qur’an parallels Christ. The giving of the Qur’an is in Islam what the incarnation of Christ is to Christianity.

If this is so, then Qur’an-burning is parallel to Christ-crucifying.

But ponder the implications of this. On the one hand you might say this goes a long way to explaining Muslim rage. Yes. But more importantly it goes even farther to show the deep differences between the two religions.

In the process of being crucified, Jesus rebuked the use of the sword (Matthew 26:52) healed his enemy’s amputated ear (Luke 22:51), prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers (Luke 23:34), and sent his followers out to love their enemies and do good to those who hate them (Luke 6:27).

So the Qur’an has been burned and the Christ has been crucified…

Even in the crucifixion of Christ, Jesus condemned the use of force by his disciples… making it evidently clear that He is more than capable of protecting himself.

And that is who we worship, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. He who was crucified once and for all. This message liberates us to live like lambs  going to to the slaughter. Loving our enemies, especially when we are wronged in the process.

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”^[j]

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39