Recently, someone burned Bibles in the city of Mosul in Iraq. Christians have left the region, so their enemies burned their books.

Someone wants to exterminate Christians, and that is bad news.

It is easy to miss that this is also a good news story. Christians are suffering, and that is tragic, but part of this story is good. It’s a picture of disruption.

“Innovative Disruption” refers to a new idea that replaces a “market and value structure.” It erodes critical mass which is the minimum amount required to maintain a venture.

One good example is the smart phone that you probably have in your pocket. I remember when phones were mostly black and had dials. The system worked well, but now we all want the new thing.

Cell phone vendors don’t hate dial phones, they just promote their new thing. Traditional phone companies had us all, their critical mass, and then lost us. Now they are free to sell antique designs to a few, but they need us all in order to succeed.

In the large city of Mosul, ISIS could have raided any library and burned any book collection. They chose Bibles and made a video of the fire, and made a point of distributing the video. They told the world about their disruption; the thing that threatens their sense of world domination, their critical mass.

When Christians worship God, but not in the approved way, extremists become frustrated.

In Bible history, Christians did not win arguments, or wars; they won converts, and organized small churches. They promoted Jesus, the mighty disrupter.

Today all the great powers from those times are gone, but more people identify with Jesus than any other ideology or religion. Jesus is the world’s leading brand, and the mighty Roman Empire shares the fate of buggy whips and dial phones.

We are called to be faithful. If we don’t see the power in this, the other side does.

Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:22 and 23)