Back in late-summer, I gathered up my birth certificate, my social security information and all the other necessary documentation, and I headed off to the Division of Motor Vehicles building. It was 10:00 sharp, and there were several hundred people standing in various lines or sitting in rows of seats — vaguely like cattle being processed. When I finally got to my first stop, the man behind the counter wore a smile on his face that telegraphed: “Don’t read too much into this smile; I’m not really happy to see you.” He inspected my forms, typed me into the system and handed me a ticket that said “S-1214.” I asked him, “How long will this take?” “Couple hours,” he muttered. I took a seat in a row of metal chairs. “What’s your ticket number?” I asked the young woman sitting on my left.“S-1058,” she said. She was 156 spots ahead of me. Over time, I noticed this obnoxious loudspeaker blaring the progress we were all making. A computer voice would say, every few seconds: “Now handling … [Read more...]

This past weekend, as I write these words at the beginning of June, a large collection of influential evangelical pastors and leaders sponsored a full-page ad in various national newspapers. Led by Franklin Graham of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the signatories called for a “Special Day of Prayer for the President,” in which their followers might pray “that God would protect, strengthen, embolden and direct” President Trump. They stated: “Our nation is at a crossroads, at a dangerous precipice. The only one who can fix our nation’s problems is God Himself, and we pray that God will bless our President and our nation for His glory.” I have two problems with this “Special Day of Prayer.” First, on the day after a presumed outpouring of prayer for our president, during his plane’s descent into London for a state visit with Her Majesty the Queen, President Trump began his visit to the U.K. by tweeting that London’s mayor Sadiq Khan “is a stone cold loser who should focus … [Read more...]

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall …” So begins Robert Frost’s famous poem “Mending Wall” from 1914 — musing on presumably his neighbor’s aphorism, inherited from his father, that “good fences make good neighbors.” There is, to be sure, something wonderful about walls. My wife Kay and I enjoy a wall of brick and wood that surrounds the backyard of the manse in which we live. Above it peek the second stories of houses surrounding us, and within it we have delicious privacy. There are terraces and large oak trees (one of them sporting a swing). Elsewhere in the heavily Spanish-influenced architecture of this region, there are mossy walls that embrace urban patios, often richly decorated with sculptures and mobiles and covered in bright foliage. You can walk past blocks and blocks of such adobe walls and peek through iron gates that give a glimpse of joyful outdoor meals or happy hours. These are not menacing walls; they radiate domesticity and hospitality. Some walls, … [Read more...]

Just a week ago, as I write these words, I joined a great many other Americans to watch two testimonies on television — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. As a nation, we gathered at our screens, as if we were sitting around one common national campfire; but, beyond that, no commonality could be assumed. I believed one of those giving testimony, and disbelieved the other — 100 percent. In the days following, the rhetoric from Washington and beyond has scorched one or the other of those who testified. Such scorching has come from Washington cloakrooms, from water coolers and gyms and diners and church pews and, just yesterday, from the president himself speaking to a Mississippi crowd. One of my colleagues here at Austin Seminary reflected to me in an email that he was particularly impacted by Christine Blasey Ford’s answer to the question regarding what the most painful and traumatic memory was with respect to the sexual assault she described decades ago. “She did not … [Read more...]