Luke 16:19-31 - First thoughts

Well this week, we've got a pearly gates story.
 Luke 16:19-31
And like a modern pearly gates story, it has elements of tradition about it, that don't necessarily fit in with what heaven is actually like.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't actually believe that St Peter stands at the pearly gates all day, interviewing people who want to get into heaven.
But there he is, in every joke you've ever heard on the subject, bumbling along, doing something daft to make us laugh. If he really was that stupid, surely God would have sent somebody else out to do the job by now.

So my first thoughts about this story are that it must be like that. It must have some traditional elements that everybody recognises, but which aren't necessarily true.
Such as Father Abraham.
Such as the fiery flames of hell.
I don't know exactly which ones are true and which belong to this glorious tradition, but it make me cautious about assuming that the afterlife is going to look like Jesus' description of it here.

That's how I get round the problem of not taking his words literally.
Now if you're a fundamentalist I expect  I've upset you for ever.
If you're a secular sceptic you probably wonder why I'm even mentioning it.

But for me,  it's part of taking the Bible seriously.
I need to work out what sort of text I've got, as a first step in interpreting it.

So I reckon we've got a traditional story, told not as a joke (though people might have found it funny back then) but told to make a point.

Have we got the same Bible?

In the news yesterday, a US pastor defiantly plans to burn as many copies of the Koran as he can on September 11th.
Terry Jones, from the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, is reported as saying "It is possibly time for us in a new way to actually stand up, confront terrorism."
Makes me wonder if he and I have got the same Bible. Today I was reading Luke chapter 6.  It has stuff in it about loving your enemies, doing good to those who hate you, and not reverting to  a kind of tribalism: only scratching the back of those who you can reasonably expect to scratch yours in return.
So if (and it's a big if, so big I can't personally swallow it whole) Muslims are my enemies, Jesus tells me to love them, do them a favour, help them out. If they steal my coat, I should offer them my shirt. In short, I should do to others as I would  have them do to me.
I'm puzzled. How does Terry read his Bible and come to this conclusion?
Has he really got the same one as me?