Back in the 19th century, in London’s Central Criminal Court (also known as the Old Bailey), a witness might be asked the question, “What kind of night was it?” And it was considered neither odd nor impertinent for the response to come back, “It was a dark night.” [e.g., Henry Buckler, Criminal Central Court. Minutes of Evidence, Taken in Shorthand, Vol. 8, (London, UK: George Herbert, Cheapside, 1838), 202.] This kind of exchange probably also occurred many times in other courts, in other countries, and in other languages. The way our sprawling urban nights today are so brightly lit as to render most of the stars and the entire Milky Way galaxy invisible, it’s easy to forget that once upon a time, when weather was not a factor, there were only two kinds of nights: bright, clear nights that were lit up by the moon, and dark nights that were not.

It’s also easy to forget that, considering the span of recorded history, those days were really not that long ago. Thomas Edison invented the first commercially practical incandescent light in 1879, but it would be decades before all the major cities of North America and Europe would have electrical outlets to plug them into. The generation that grew up prior to urban electrification may be all but gone, but the one that grew up prior to the U.S. Rural Electrification Act of 1936 only started hitting retirement age in the last decade or so. Many of those people remember very dark nights, indeed.

But there is a darkness that no one alive today remembers. There was a time in European history when the light of ancient learning and culture from the glory days of Greece and Rome seemed all but extinguished. It seemed to be, as William Manchester (1922-2004) put it in the title of his bestselling book, A World Lit Only By Fire. Continue reading …

I like things to be simple. I like them to be clear. What can I say? I’m a simple guy.

I prefer bullet points to paragraphs, illustrations to explanations, and maps to directions. I prefer monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon words (like “ask,” “come,” and “dog”) to polysyllabic Latin-based words (like “inquire,” “arrive,” and “canine”). Among my favorite expressions are “bottom line,” “cut to the chase,” “it all boils down to,” “the whole thing in a nutshell is,” and “KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).”

I get irritated when people make things more complicated than they need to be. I become especially annoyed when Christians hide the light of the Gospel under the bushel of sophisticated theological jargon. When I was a new believer such people made me feel what I think Woody Allen might have been trying to express when he said, “If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.” They use big words to feed their own egos at the expense of the spiritual growth of others. Continue reading …

Last week I noted the extent of the role of religion involved with Barack Obama’s presidency. Imagine my surprise when I read about Newsweek Magazine’s Evan Thomas on Obama: ‘He’s sort of God’:

I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

Newsweek spends a fair amount of paper and ink debunking religion each year, particularly around Easter. But, they seem to have had a religious conversion to what we might call Obamaism. Thomas’ conversion to Obamaism actually makes sense in an irrational way. Confused? Well, in the world of Obama this new deity told the Notre Dame crowd when he spoke there that being prolife is an extremist position. As talk show host Rush Limbaugh pointed out, Obama is declaring that morality is immoral. Obamaism is irrational and as is true with all good false teachers, redefines the world and any morality they hold to in a new or opposite to what has traditionally been held to be true. For example, Obama says US cannot impose its values: BBC interview. He says this even as he Continue reading …

The last presidential election was interesting, of great concern and steeped in religion. God, it seemed, was in use by all candidates. On the Republican side, the candidates came down to a choice of three. Mitt Romney (Mormon), Mike Huckabee (Evangelical) and John McCain (Raised Episcopalian; now attends a Southern Baptist church). On the Democrat side it came down to Hillary Clinton (United Methodist) and Barack Obama (Trinity United Church of Christ, Afro-centric rooted in Black Liberation Theology which at its core is Marxism wrapped in Christian sounding terminology).

Evangelicals seemed to be split into four segments which I think made all the difference in the outcome of the election. One segment, the Emerging Church represented in Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Donald Miller and others in the merging Evangelical Left. They supported Barack Obama because Continue reading …