Lew Smedes, the recently retired Fuller Theological Seminary professor, has an eye for what most people pass over. Half a dozen years ago, when LEADERSHIP editors sat with him for lunch in Pasadena, California, he asked probing questions about "ghost-written" material--articles or books written with or by someone whose name does not appear on the cover. "Doesn't this convey the false impression that the famous person whose name appears on the cover is really a better writer than he or she is?" We had to admit that this common practice, winked at by many publishers and church leaders, did.

This honest gaze has won Smedes readers for his many books (all of which he wrote without a ghost writer). When LEADERSHIP published this excerpt from How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong?, in 1983, readers rated it highly. In it, Smedes observes something most of us encounter but would just as soon pass over.

I was just about to bend my six-foot-four frame into our eggshell blue 1952 Plymouth, ...