“The most important election in …”

“This is the greatest financial disaster since …”

“We predict the largest voter turnout since … “

“There is more at stake in this election than … “

“Clearly this is the nastiest election in the history of  …”

“The country hasn’t been this divided since … “

The candidates, their campaigns, main stream media, new media, neighbors, friends, pastors, dentists, and bloggers have characterized the presidential election of 2008 in terms that should be reserved for the most prominent moments in history—you know, like the Big Bang, the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs, or universal heat death.  Based on the rhetoric students will never again need to study history because it has reached its zenith in the epic battle between two omnipotent forces.

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Comedy tastes change over time.  I’m sure a water-squirting daisy on a jacket lapel was a riot in its day.  Knock-knock jokes kept me and my friends pretty entertained in second grade.  And I’m sure Henny Youngman would not get the same laughs today if he were still alive doing stand up.

The new film Religulous starring comedian Bill Maher (HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher) and directed by Larry Charles (Borat, Curb Your Enthusiasm) seemed to fall pretty flat in the laughs department—like it was appealing to an audience that may have been amused by it twenty years ago.  I was struck by how little laughter there was among those in the opening-weekend crowd.  (In terms of magnitude, I use the word “crowd” here in the sense of the “crowd” that might attend a Joe Biden campaign rally.)  Religulous was showing in the smallest theater in the multiplex (not much bigger than the “truck-driver’s chapel” that appeared in the film) and even then it was only about a third full.

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I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here is Part 3 of 3 parts.

If you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com

Can you tell us what it was like to write Five Sacred Crossings?

The thing I enjoyed the most was discovering myself where the story was going next. I did not have a detailed master plan before writing, so every day was a little surprise with regard to the unfolding of the narrative. I am still surprised by my own ending. Re-reading it was an experience that I certainly have never had when writing academic books and essays. I picked it up, started to read somewhere in the middle and couldn't put it down. I wrote the darn thing yet got caught up in the story myself! It was far more exciting and emotional than I remember when first writing it out.

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I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here is Part 2 of 3 parts.

If you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com

Who is your intended readership? And can you tell us about some of the reaction to the book?

I had certain folks in mind when I was putting the story together. Think about the millions of people who watch Oprah every day. They are open to spiritual and religious ideas, but want to connect with them first on an emotional level. They are open to thinking about the big issues if they are presented in a relevant and engaging way.

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I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. I’m going to divide the questions and answers into three parts. Here is Part 1.

By the way, if you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com


How would you characterize Five Sacred Crossings?

That's pretty straight forward. Five Sacred Crossings is a novel, pure and simple. The best way to capture the genre is to compare it to Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a fast-paced, page-turning mystery novel that packed into its center some teaching about the origins of Christianity. Unfortunately, Dan Brown bought an ugly package of historical gossip and unfounded nonsense as the "suppressed truth" he was hoping to reveal to the world. But what better way to communicate such things than for a couple of years to have every other person on a given airliner reading about it! Dan Brown had the wrong message, but the right vehicle to disseminate it.

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It seems that it is not as easy as it once was to speak about all religions as if they are the exact same thing just dressed in different clothing for different people groups at different times in history. With the continuing high profile of Islamic terror activities, stark contrasts are being presented between Islam and the other world religions. Islam is not the same as Buddhism, and Buddhism is not the same as Christianity, and so on. It is very unlikely that all of them are leading to heaven, God, or nirvana. This is much easier to grasp than it used to be.
I remember learning a very old and famous fable in grade school as the teacher tried to demonstrate that all the religions are really, underneath the surface, one and the same. You’ve probably heard it at one point or another and it goes like this.

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During their Christmas break from school I took my teenage kids to see “The Golden Compass”—a movie based on the popular children’s books by Philip Pullman. In his famous trilogy, Pullman attempts to communicate a decidedly atheistic worldview through a compelling fantasy narrative. The film was fast paced, well acted, and visually splendid so it kept my attention for the entire two hours.

Of course, even though the anti-religious aspects were diluted in the movie, I was busy drinking in all the symbols and the obvious atheistic world view that was being set forth. Over burgers and fries after the movie I asked my kids what they thought the underlying message of the movie was. All three agreed: religious people steal children and then harm them all in the name of what is good; religious people believe unscientific myths and then manipulate everyone and everything in order to protect their myths. I think they nailed it.

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A group of esteemed public intellectuals in America from Gore Vidal to Howard Zinn have risen boldly to challenge the official explanations of the alleged terror attacks on September 11, 2001. The latest prominent critic of the official account that Muslim terrorists brought down the World Trade Center towers with fuel-laden passenger airliners is Professor David Ray Griffin, a senior theologian from southern California’s Claremont School of Theology who is traveling around the country attempting to stir up the far left of the Democratic base during the election season about this very important issue.

In his recent book and his public lectures on college campuses, theologian Griffin sounds as if he went back for dual degrees in engineering and investigative reporting as he uncovers the “real” evidence in the case.

Seriously, American Idol from the beginning has been unwittingly dishing out some rather profound personal and philosophical insight.

For the last few weeks we’ve watched people wandering in from the community and auditioning raw before Randy, Paula, and Simon with hopes of being selected to move on to the next stage in Hollywood, the auditioning hopefuls fall into four basic groups. The first are those who actually have enough talent on display or discernible cachet to be chosen to move up. Second are those who are pretty good, but not good enough to move up (we don’t see many of those on the broadcast—not enough drama). Third are those who know they are bad singers and are there for their fifteen minutes of fame or the thrill. Most of the lessons about American culture, though, come from the fourth category which is composed of those who really do think they are good, but are, in reality, atrocious by any objective measure.

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