My brother, a pastor in Colorado, wrote me recently to report the best bumper sticker he's seen lately: "Honk if you love peace and quiet."

"Seems to describe my life," David wrote. "I've been swamped lately—nearly all good things, but so many of them I can't seem to keep pace."

I had to chuckle at the paradoxical image of people honking for peace and quiet.

A few months ago I had a similarly paradoxical experience when I went to the West Coast to visit a church that I'd heard was a great example of diversity. That Saturday night I had dinner with a friend who knew that church well. And I mentioned I was eager to worship the next day at this church and to see how they had developed such a diverse congregation.

"Oh, it's diverse all right," he said. "They have Korean twenty-somethings that graduated from UCLA; they have Hispanic twenty-somethings that graduated from UCLA; they have black twenty-somethings that ...