Briefly

Do you want to know why Donald Trump doesn’t want to release his tax returns? I’m not a psychic, but I’m pretty sure I know. Trump has made his career peddling the illusion that he was a brilliant and fabulously successful businessman. The truth is far different. He’s a charlatan who routinely swindled smaller vendors and he lost lots of money making bad deals. He’s a liar and a cheat. His entire persona has always been built on the ability to bamboozle gullible people who accepted his bombastic lies. The New York Times has now obtained 10 years of his income tax information — from 1985 to 1994 — and it paints a pictures of a money-losing operation which is completely at odds with his lies about success. Trump has spent his entire adult life pretending to be something he’s not. Tax records would prove he’s been scamming the public — and his ego can’t take that.

I had another reminder this afternoon how fleeting life can be. When I got to my office Tuesday afternoon after lunch, police had blocked the street off for about a block. It turns out that two teen-agers — a male and a female — drove past our office at about 12:30 and then failed to make the turn at the top of Shades Mountain about a block from us where the road dead-ends into Shades Crest Road. Their SUV went over the top of the mountain and ended up about 150 yards below. Both were dead before rescue workers got to them (and the vehicle was recovered later in the afternoon). It’s just another routine accident, but since it happened right at my office, there’s something powerful to me about knowing these two teens were alive and probably happy just six hours ago. We’re in denial when we put off the lives we need to be living.

I was sad to see the news that Rachel Held Evans has died at just 37 years old. She had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic last month which led to her death early Saturday morning. Evans was born into an Evangelical Christian home in Birmingham and eventually became a popular writer as a progressive left Christian instead. I learned something interesting from her work, but it wasn’t what she intended. I looked at her books and found nothing interesting or persuasive in them, so I was curious why she had such a following. Then I had an epiphany which I should have had years ago. People follow writers not because their brilliant writing changes the readers’ minds. (Not generally.) Readers follow writers with whom they identify. Evans’ personal experience of moving from conservative Christianity to being a progressive politically and liberal theologically resonated with people who had gone through similar transitions. If you follow a writer, it’s not because he’s changed your mind, but because you identify with him or somehow feel an emotional connection that others might not understand. That’s what I learned from Evans. She connected deeply with others who had gone through the same change she experienced.