In one of God’s “thin threads” of unexpected connections, I just finished a book about an American hero whom I did not know just a few weeks ago. And yet her life has immediate implications for my current thoughts and actions. The book is The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God, which is the story of Ruth Pakaluk, as told by her own letters and by her husband, Michael. Ruth was born in 1957 in New Jersey. She lived for 41 years and died in 1998 of metastasized breast cancer. Dr. Daniel...
How should we approach the upcoming mid-term elections? With a focus on today’s 24/7 headlines, or with a longer term perspective? Are the elections, as President Trump claims, all about him, or larger issues? As a Christian conservative with strong libertarian leanings, what are my guiding principles for voting? And, by the way, I know that there is only one true Savior, and he is not any politician, party or government. The founding document for our nation, the Declaration of Independence,...
This week in August marks the Fiftieth Anniversary of two events in the tumultuous year of 1968 which had a lasting impact on my life: The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21st, and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 26th. I had just graduated from UNC and turned 21. What follows is a personal post, using mostly my own photos. The Warsaw Pact countries invaded Prague that week because the Czech leadership had dared to give their citizens a few freedoms...
This post is part of my series on Black Swans and the crucial need to keep real Margin built into our lives. Upcoming is the Tenth Anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the largest such filing in U.S. history and the trigger for the devastating Great Recession. In time for it is the publication of Laurence Ball’s new book, The Fed and Lehman Brothers. There have been many books and articles written on the Financial Crisis of 2007-2011, but Ball’s book focuses on the...
This post is for all of us who have struggled with the “faith vs. science” conundrum. I do not profess to be a Steven Pinker, a scientist, theologian, philosopher, or great thinker. I am just a guy. But for over twenty years I’ve read and studied experts on the three big questions that, if answered, largely define our earthly existence: creation, the emergence of life, and macroevolution. What I ask of great thinkers like Steven Pinker is honesty, consistency, and truth. As I stated in last...
Bill Gates calls Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, “My new favorite book of all time.” Pinker’s work is a 453 page, incredibly well researched tour de force on every aspect of life across the globe since The Enlightenment. And almost every page explores the incomparable progress we humans have made during the last 250 years to beat back death, extend life, multiply productivity, equalize rights, increase leisure, and add to...
We are blessed to have five grown children who, with their spouses, shine brightly--first as people, and then in the areas where they have focused their gifts and talents. Our oldest son, Parker, is a doctor in Austin, and he has written a moving opinion piece in The Houston Chronicle about love, understanding and healing. I recommend Parker's piece to you. And I challenge you, as I have challenged myself, to apply these Christ-like principles to the people and the relationships in our lives...
A nation that fractures along identity politics boundaries is almost certainly doomed. When Lenin and Trotsky started their rebellion against the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky in St. Petersburg, Russia in November, 1917, they expected to be arrested and sent into exile, as had always happened before. Instead, a few days later, much to their surprise, they were in control of the capital and, soon, the nation. What happened? The Bolsheviks were prepared to use violence to get...
Veteran readers in this space will know that one of my favorite books is Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. See my post from 2013 entitled What We Don’t See is Killing Us for a reminder. And I will again quote several sentences from Chapter 15 which capture Hazlitt’s special insight, and which all policy makers should memorize: “In studying the effects of any given economic proposal we must trace not merely the immediate results but the results in the long run, not merely the primary...
This month is the 25th Anniversary of two big personal milestones: the completion of the draft of my first novel, On The Edge, sending it to Thomas Nelson for editing, where it was published later in 1993, and writing the first pages of The President, which was published by Multnomah in 1995. So this post is going to be an unusual (for me) look back at those 25 years, with some brief reflections on what I’ve experienced and learned along that journey. A powerful story based on God’s truth can...
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