Requiem for a Ragamuffin

Last week Brennan Manning died. He was many things during his long life. He was once a Catholic priest. Many times he was either an alcoholic or a recovering alcoholic. He was also an author who wrote one of my favorite books,  The Ragamuffin Gospel . I first read The Ragamuffin Gospel when I was a young adult who had never grasped the meaning of grace.
I grew up in a church that spoke much of grace. We were taught to believe in Christ and that by grace through faith in Christ we are saved. We were encouraged to come to the altar (a bench toward the front of a church sanctuary) at the end of our worship services to get saved, rededicate our lives to Christ, or just pray with someone because we needed help. Growing up we learned a lot of stories from the Bible. We were encouraged to invite others to our church services, especially special events like youth camp. We also aimed to live differently than others by our media choices, clothes, and behavior. We put our Bible in our backpacks and would read them. We would pray before meals and sometimes before school started. We made church meetings a priority and, for the most part, avoided typical things that teens get caught up in, if Hollywood teen movies are even remotely true.
Of course, we were not perfect, and we knew that too. We knew it all too well. As many Christians had before us, we struggled finding assurance that God indeed saved us because our performance for him was spotty. Sometimes we would not feel the Spirit’s presence in our lives. Other times we felt so ensnared by our sins that we presumed God could not be part of our lives until we shaped up. By the time we became young adults we had either prayed many times for God to save us, in case previous requests fell on deaf ears, or we rededicated our lives many times down at the altar, in case our private requests needed a public boost. We knew salvation was a wonderful gift, so something must have been wrong with us since we did not seem to appreciate it like we should have. “Maybe I never had it to begin with,” we would tell ourselves late at night, before whispering that familiar prayer once more.
I did not realize it then, but the heart of my problem was that I did not understand grace. By its very definition grace is unfair. When Jesus told a story about God’s grace, he went into details about a business-owner who treated workers unfairly one day. This owner paid everyone the same amount, regardless of how long or how little each one worked. The workers who got there first grumbled about how unfair the owner was, and they were right. That was Jesus’ entire point. Grace is unfair, but in a good way. The workers who came to work an hour and got paid for a day were thankful for their unfair treatment, which is another part of grace’s meaning. The English word grace is a loanword from old French, which comes from the Latin word for gratitude and thankfulness. Grace leads to thankfulness, and the better the grace the more overflowing the thankfulness.
Manning’s book The Ragamuffin Gospel is a one-sided study on the meaning of grace. Manning says over and over again that there is nothing we can do for God to love us any more than he already does in Christ. Manning says repeatedly that salvation in Christ is being captured—literally, seized—by God’s furious love. Manning chose several stories to illustrate the meaning of grace, but I will only share one here: “Let us suppose you advanced me $1 million for my personal needs. A year later, you request that I begin making monthly interest-free payments of $10,000 on the debt. On the first day of each month I sit down to write the check just as the morning mail arrives. You have sent me a $10,000 check to cover my payment. You continue this practice until the full amount of my debt is relieved. I am bewildered and protest, ‘But this is totally lopsided.’    God is enamored with his people and so intent upon a response that He even provides the grace to respond. [. . .]. The love of God is simply unimaginable. [. . .]. Love has its own exigencies. It weighs and counts nothing but expects everything. Perhaps that explains our reluctance to risk. We know only too well that the gospel of grace is an irresistible call to love the same way. No wonder so many of us elect to surrender our souls to rules than to living in union with Love.”
Rules are fair; grace is not. I grew up hearing about grace, but the behavior my church encouraged spoke far louder than those words—the focus seemed to be that we perform according to the rules. Rules are fair. Rules make sense. Rules are not lopsided. When I was discouraged and drifting in my faith, God used Manning to remind me that the gospel is not about rules. It is about God’s gracious love to undeserving sinners. Now that I am a pastor and speaking much in front of people I need Manning’s reminder more than ever. Perhaps you need it too.