A story of racism, poverty, and God’s unfathomable grace

The first way that many children encounter the Bible is through stories – concrete events that happen to a person of interest and that reveal something about all humans and about the God who created them. Even as we get older, the narrative parts of Scripture continue to resound in our lives. They may also appear in cryptic ways when we describe an experience of suffering with “I feel like Job” or warn someone not to be a Pharisee.

When Esau McCaulley spoke at a conference that I attended in 2023, he said his first choice of book title was “The Vine and the Fig Tree,” a rich reference to security that God’s people experienced under Solomon’s rule and then longed for in subsequent generations of upheaval. Yet the actual title How Far to the Promised Land also hearkens back to the basic story of God’s people, from slavery in Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land fully manifested in the salvation from sin brought about by Jesus.

Dr. McCaulley intentionally weaves biblical imagery and the storyline of Scripture into this memoir. It is part of his way of understanding his world, as readers of his more essay-like, theological work Reading While Black (2020) would recognize. The last line of the introduction shares his definition of the kind of miracle by which his family’s story moved forward: “… like the ancient Israelites finding their way in the desert, we have received just enough manna in the wilderness to make it to another day.”

The pivotal event that led McCaulley to write this memoir was the death of his estranged father and the need to make sense of his father’s difficult life before writing his eulogy. The author faces the brutal facts of his father’s troubled life and the ways that his presence and absence complicated life for his mother, his siblings and himself. At the same time, he digs deeper into his father’s family line and the parts of his story that contain glimmers of hope and humanity.

As he shares this narrative, he notes that it does not fit the typical story genre of a hero who conquers obstacles and by perseverance achieves what he wants. It is a nuanced story about a family and a community rather than an exemplary individual. Referring to conditions in the southern state of Alabama, he alludes to “a world made to swallow up poor Black families.”

McCaulley demonstrates on multiple occasions that God’s unfathomable grace made the difference between projected and actual futures. The author rigorously followed a rehab routine to become a college linebacker, and he poured himself into his studies to ultimately become a preacher, a professor and a public intellectual. However, he does not see this outcome as proof that he escaped poverty or racism. Rather, he sheds light on the ways that traumas of the past and present can linger and mark people. The honesty of this first-person account is moving, dignified and thought-provoking.