Religious Murder

Although I truly didn't have time to write tonight (had to bring work home with me...woohoo), I read an article on my phone right before I was set to unpack my work laptop and could not pass up writing about this, even though it's not going to be my best writing ever.

Apparently, the Bible has made the American Library's annual list of Top 10 "challenged" books. It's part of some bigger, overall report on Libraries. In the article, it states that even though there are challenges made about the Quran being in public libraries, there are far more challenges made about the Bible sitting on the shelves.

There's something wrong with this country and this world. While I'm not always in agreement with everything the Bible says (that's for another blog some other day--I'll digress a second--if Jesus spoke directly to those who wrote the Bible, isn't it a bit odd that He didn't speak to any women? I'm just sayin'...), I wholeheartedly believe in our first amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Of course, many have interpreted those words over the years and will continue to, but with the exception of one thing in the Constitution, I fully support its content, and that includes the right to exercise my religion of choice.

Back to the Bible being on the top 10 list...I've been thinking about how I keep reading about all of these Christians who are being murdered. Yes, murdered. Not persecuted. That sounds "prettier" than murdered. Maybe it's just because I love language, but persecution just has a prettier sound to it than murder. So, yes, the word "murder" fits quite nicely. 

What is happening in the world that Christians everywhere are being murdered for their religion? And why isn't it being reported on more? After a quick search on the Internet just now, I found two articles of not very many from what I consider less subjective sources. "The Guardian" has an article from last year about the pope warning that this has become a form of genocide. "The World Tribune" published a story toward the end of 2015 about the millions of Christians being murdered worldwide.

Here's the thing: no one wants to call Muslims terrorist or the religion anything beyond peaceful, but quite frankly, other than a couple of homegrown nutballs (Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh) here in our country, we don't have terrorists. That we, the general public, know of. Yet.

What terrorists do you know of that haven't been from Middle Eastern descent? Why are most, if not all, terrorist groups acting in the name of the Islamic religion? Where does it stop? Why won't Muslims, of any part of the world, denounce the acts of these terrorists? It sickens me, scares me, and unfortunately, shapes my thoughts about others. It also helps me understand why people sacrifice their lives for their beliefs. But those who sacrifice themselves for their religious beliefs (martyrs, for example) are different from those who kill others because of their religious "beliefs". 

That's a huge difference, especially for such a "peaceful" religion.

I think the public libraries could use a LOT more Bibles.