“Don’t go.  I swore I would never go back there,” came the voice of my friend Jay Smith on a trans-Atlantic Skype call.  “I’ve been in over sixty countries.  I’ve been all over Africa.  I lived there, and I’ve never felt unsafe the way I did in that country.  There is something especially terrifying about that place.”

“Good to know,” I replied.  “Alan said that he goes there all the time.  He said he even takes his children.”

Alan was a British politician who had recently attended one of my lectures in London.  To hear him tell it, Nigeria was like Club Med.

Larry Alex Taunton is an author, cultural commentator, and freelance columnist contributing to USA TODAYFox NewsFirst ThingsThe AtlanticCNN, and The American Spectator.  In addition to being a frequent radio and television guest, he is also the author of The Grace  Effect and The Gospel Coalition Arts and Culture Book of the Year, The Faith of Christopher Hitchens. You can subscribe to his blog at larryalextaunton.com.