Open Letter to Pastor Terry Jones from a Fellow Pastor

I will not put the link to the video on this blog.  To do so seems to me to spread something that I absolutely reject in every possible way.  Suffice it to say that Dr. Terry Jones has posted a YouTube video wherein he claims that President Obama is both a bad president and in effect, a murderer, justifying his approach to hang President Obama in effigy.

Pastor Jones (it is to his identity as a minister and not his educational attainment that I address myself) is my brother in Christ.  Thus do I write him this open letter begging that he reconsider and stop this behavior.

Dear Pastor Jones:

It has to be said:  I am a Christian.

I make my living as a pastor in a small country church in Virginia, so you might even say that I am a professional Christian.

Thus you are my colleague as well as my brother.

It is as one family member to another that I feel compelled to say:

Brother Jones, cut it out.  Stop this.

You can disagree -- vehemently disagree if you feel so led -- with the President, with anyone, for that matter.  And maybe the privileges of the Constitution allow for hung effigies as a form of protest, maybe not.

But the Law of Love, the Person I know as Jesus the Christ, the guidance of his holy Word and God's Holy Spirit, the life-model provided by Jesus during his walk with us on this earth, none of these things, justify the usage of racially-charged symbolism such as the lynching of a black man to make a political point, no matter how heart-felt.

More simply put, cheek turning and Golden Rule engagement were not suggestions from our Lord.  They were and are mandates.  And try as I might, I can find none of that spirit in this.

Please, please, stop this.

The coals of shame Paul refers to are the acts of love in the face of its rejection, not vengeance, anger and malice.  (Romans 12:20).

This is beneath your calling and it is hurting us all.

Yours in Christ, Pastor Beth Pyles