One more remarkable passage from Brennan Manning’s All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir, ht DJ:
“I celebrated my seventy-seventh birthday in April. If you asked me whether what I have done in my life defines my life, I would answer, ‘No.’ That’s not to diminish my sins or humble-bumble my successes. It is simply to affirm a grace often realized only in the winter of life. The winter is stark but also comforting. I am, and have always been, more than the sum of my deeds. Thank God.
If asked whether I have fulfilled my calling as an evangelist, I would answer, ‘No.’ That answer is not guilt-ridden or shamefaced. It is to witness to a larger truth, again more clearly seen in my later days. My calling is, and always has been, to a life filled with family and friends and alcohol* and Jesus and [ex-wife] Roslyn and notoriously good sinners.
If asked whether I am going gently into old age, I would answer, ‘No.’ That’s just plain honest. It is true that when you are old, you are often led where you would rather not go. In a wisdom that some days I admit feels foolish, God has ordained the later days of our lives to look shockingly similar to that of our earliest: as dependent children.
If asked whether I am finally letting God love me, just as I am, I would answer, ‘No, but I’m trying’.”
*Manning has always been very candid about his struggles with alcoholism.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqe8pv4ZLjI&w=600]
I saw him speak in Abbotsford B.C. about 3 years ago. He was very old and frail looking then; I was a little surprised by it. He was extremely candid about the failure of his marriage, and I think with the crowd there it kind of turned icy, like “should he really be up there teaching us? We need SUCCESSFUL famous teachers, not openly failing teachers.”
I really loved it, as I was experiencing some difficulties at the time. I’m glad he is writing about this into his last days, because I am sure we all need grace of different measures right up to the end, and it is nice to hear from someone in that place saying – “Yes! His grace is still sufficient! I’m still a mess but I’m still assured He loves me!” That is an amazingly different message than the progressive sanctification / murky assurance that we are usually fed. This reminds me that at the edge of death, our assurance is reassuring!
Manning is a complicated guy who left us with a lot of question marks. We know that the last decade of his life was characterized by the ravages on his brain from alcohol that he never gave up and in fact, he admitted to going on speaking tours because it allowed him to drink freely and away from his wife. One wonders if the thief who was in Paradise With Jesus that day, would have been with Jesus had he continued to pursue his life of sin, and my understanding of scripture says that the children of God will be in Paradise perhaps early because of their continuing to sin but they are still sons and daughters and unlike facebook, they can’t be unfriended or should it be un-childrened.
Still, his behavior on road trips makes one think of Ravi Zacharias and the Legacy that he left us which was bitter and hardly consistent with someone bearing the fruits of the spirit. Only God knows, but the idea that one can continue to sin and embrace the concept that God doesn’t require a holy life is antithetical to Bible truth, and we hear Jesus’s voice echoing, “go and sin no more,” a message our generation doesn’t seem to embrace.