According to The (Syracuse) Post-Standard, young “staunch Republican” Jon Alvarez, just weeks from reporting for boot camp after enlisting in the Army Reserve, has gotten himself into trouble with his contest to create a paper mache pig from copies of the Qur’an.

(If he is so staunch, and thinks this war is so necessary and swell, why stop at the Reserves? Ahh, never mind…)

I don’t much care what he does with copies of the Qur’an he owns. So what? I found the kicker here, however:

Alvarez said the contest will illustrate the hypocrisy of Muslim extremists who burn the American flag, “because of the supposed desecration of the Quran,” Alvarez said.

“They haven’t apologized for burning our flag, yet they expect people to apologize for supposedly desecrating the Quran,” he said.

Alvarez thinks he’s just desecrating one “symbol” in retaliation for another. But this is way more interesting than that, because the Qur’an is no mere symbol. The Qur’an, to a Muslim, is God’s very uncreated word present in the world. It is God’s speech, an attribute of God, present with God from the beginning. For Christians, the equivalent is not the Bible, but Christ.

And yet the comparison he makes is NOT to another religious symbol, but to the American flag. So, is our young but cowardly sojerboy saying to us that God is present in the world in the form and substance of the American flag or in the United States of America and it’s government? He’s probably not smart enough to make that comparison. But that is what he is alluding to.

And it’s probably what he believes, too.

The Best of Charles H. Featherstone