"Why?" (Some thoughts about Grace and the tragic death of a friend)

Last weekend I found out that a high school friend of mine had died. She was several years younger than me but a friend none the less. I'm not going to post her name or information here, partly out of respect and partly because her death sparked some things in my soul and I am going to speak my mind and I don't want my thoughts directly attached to her passing.
My friend was a beautiful, sweet girl when I saw her last. She came from a very devout home. Her parents and siblings were good people. Very good people.
In no way would you ever look at her life and, knowing her background, think she was someone who was ever going to wind up drinking herself to death one day. But that's what happened.
I don't know how old she is, but she's a few years younger than me. I'm 49. She was probably 44 or 45. That's awfully young to die from something so awful. It's no way to die at all.
It's also no way to live. What follows here is not an indictment on anyone. It's conjecture, but I believe it's based in fact. I believe this because I have watched too many friends from that period in time, ruin their lives in some form or fashion. And the undercurrent to it all was a horrible, grinding adherence to a legalistic belief system and a miserable, unfathomable avoidance of Grace. Real Grace. The Grace of a loving God. Not the "grace" that makes you feel like a beggar every single day of your life. Not the pathetic, legalistic, Pharisaical, cruel, systematic grace that is never really yours. That you have to earn, but never quite can. That you have to work to keep but never really have confidence that you have kept it.
The kind of horrible excuse for "grace" that forces someone to hide their addictions  -whatever they might be- instead of  blurting them out to those who would call themselves your "Sisters and brothers in the Lord" and finding the help you need. The niggling, petty, diminutive grace that barely covers our "old sins" and holds no room for any sins in the future. The grace that teaches us that we can never lose our salvation because it was a gift. But then sends the signal that the God who sent us the gift regrets offering it every single day, because we never work hard enough to have "deserved" it or to be worthy of it. In the culture of graceless grace, my friend could never have opened up and asked for help. Because "saved people don't have addictions." Because, after all, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things pass away and all things become new"  (II Cor 5:17)  Here is the problem with quoting this verse and not understanding it properly...it's dangerous. The circle I ran in, and my friend ran in more so than I did, only adhere to the King James Version of the Bible. Now, I own the KJV and I use it when I am in churches who hold to this particular preference. It's a VERY good translation. It's very accurate. But it is not perfect. The problem with the KJV is that the English is about 600 years old. So verses can be excessively harsh if you don't understand their proper translation from Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. This verse is a prime example.
"If any man be in Christ..."  "In Christ" means that a person has experienced the New Birth. They are Born Again. Pretty easy there. Then it says this person is a "new creature". This is where the legalists start getting in trouble. The "new creature" here means not a renewed version of what this person was before their head-on collision moment with Jesus. They aren't a "new" Craig Daliessio. They are a new creature. "New" here is  kainos. It's a Greek word that depicts not some new and different but new like a baby. You aren't just going into the shop for a tuneup...you are starting over from scratch. You are not starting as a spiritual adult. You are a newborn. A new creation. A kainos. The term "old things become new" is future perfect tense. Those old things are becoming new...a little at a time...day by day. We grow each day and God removes things as we go along and replaces things as we go along. It is a lifelong growing process. The circle I ran in, and that my friend ran in, never saw it like that. They saw the "new creature" as perfect from the beginning. No excuse for falling and failing. If you failed, there had to be an accompanying trip to the altar where you confessed your state of being "out of fellowship" and you made a tearful penance which had to be as emotional as your salvation was originally. There became a habit of constantly spending time at the altar every Sunday, "searching your heart" for "unrecognized sins" and confessing things that probably didn't need confession. It became a system that produced not strong sons and daughters of God, who walked in the unfathomable love of their Father, but a groveling colony of worms who never saw anything in themselves that God could love and so they spent their lives trying to manufacture something. It produced a hollow, feeble, empty, tenuous grace that we feared losing. Healthy Christians fear God the right way. The term for "Fearing God" is what you feel when you see the Ocean. Or when you stand in the distance as a powerful thunderstorm rolls by. Or when you watch a baby being born. Or when you stare into a starry field on a perfectly clear night and are in awe of the power that could create that. That is fearing God. The fear of God we learned was not reverent fear...it was dread. It was what people felt about Tony Soprano. It was frightful. He was a brut and a capricious taskmaster. He could never be counted on to let His face shine on us as He did on David. We were never told that He was wildly, passionately, ridiculously in love with us. We were never told that He didn't hate us. He wasn't angry at our sin. Read that again...He wasn't angry at our sin. He isn't angry at it now. His anger was vented at Calvary. The debt was paid. From that point on, it was a simple matter of justice, not vengeance. Not punishment. He punished Jesus for those sins. He doesn't ask for double payment. If you accept Jesus as Savior, your debt is paid, and a just God is satisfied. On that terrible day when judgement falls, it won't be a God who is laughing and wringing His hands as He watches the lost walking into an eternal Hell. It will be a broken-hearted God, who did all He could by paying the price. He will have tears in his eyes and no joy on his face as sin is expelled forever. But they never told us this. They never painted this picture.
They taught us about a God who was a tyrant and a fearful, vengeful, capricious score-keeper. We never knew exactly what would make him happy so we'd better be trying everything we could think of.
And God forbid you admit to secrets and sins. God forbid you have an addiction that you can't beat. They'll doubt your salvation. They'll question your faith. They'll shame your parents. They'll use you as an example in sermons. They cast you out and make you grovel and beg to come back. But they won't show you Grace. Not the grace of God. Not the love of God.
And so my friend wrestled with the bottle and the demons that made her drink. And she couldn't find grace and she couldn't find help and she couldn't reconcile her humanity and her frailty with the life we were all told we were supposed to be living. And so she died a horrible, miserable, tragic death.
She will end up in whispers and bywords. She'll be mentioned as the nameless example of how "sin when it is finished bringeth forth death". But they won't ever grasp how this happened. How the lies they told about the God who loved her contributed to her demise.
The graceless prophets of legalism will pick a few bones and crow under their breath. "This is what happens". They could have been Jesus to her when she was wrestling with the bottle in the middle of the night. When she probably tried to cry out to the God she was convinced could never love her or forgive her. They could have been there to explain that He will never, ever stop loving her and there was nothing to forgive that hadn't already been forgiven.
They should have told her how being human means wrestling with these things until the day we die. They should have told her that it was nothing, this alcoholism. It was nothing that God didn't already allow for. That it only became sin when she let it come between her and the love He has for her. They could have been open and honest and transparent and broken themselves over their own sins and failures, But they weren't and so she drank until her body gave out.
She is at peace now. Resting in the Grace she never tasted here. Because it was never offered.
Why?

Final Thoughts on Brennan Manning's Passing...Third Person Prayers

           
I miss Brennan Manning. I miss him more now that he is gone, but I was already grieving his passing for over a year, ever since reading his autobiography; “All is Grace”. (Which I highly recommend by the way) I have been thinking about his life since last Friday when he passed away. How broken he was. How he lived a lie in front of people, by hiding his alcoholism, and how that lie is no different than the lies we try to hide from our friends and family too.
Brennan could preach grace so passionately that you’d think he was mad at you for not grasping it. His eyes would be wild and his voice would boom. I listened to his teaching and I’d think to myself that he was so passionate about the message of grace because he was so irate at how churches and preachers have so hijacked it and manipulated it and left us devoid of it’s presence in our hearts. I thought maybe Brennan was an angry crusader who was deeply wounded for the pain he saw in the eyes of those who were there to hear him speak. What I learned by reading his story was that, while this was true, what drove Brennan’s passion and fury when he pronounced the blessings of grace on his hearers was not his righteous indignation at the wounds they carried but the guilty desperation of another failure, another drunken binge the night before, another fractured wail for the forgiveness and cleansing of the Holy Spirit. When Brennan was preaching to those at the retreats he conducted…he was preaching to himself. Brennan was counseling himself in third person. When he would bellow; “Do you believe He loves you in the morning sun and the evening rain? Do you believe that He exists to love you and nothing can ever stop that position of His heart? Do you realize that He loves us just as we are…and not as we should be, because we are NEVER going to be as we should be?” When those words would pour out of him with wild-eyed passion and force, he was really saying them to himself…again. He was really comforting himself once more because he needed to hear it once more. He was thinking, as he spoke to those beat-up and bedraggled in the crowd, about the night before, and the vodka bottle, and the mouthwash, and was it working, and when could he get back to his room and take a drink? And the same voice he preached in would be preaching to him and telling him, “He loves YOU as you are…because YOU will never be as you ought to be either, Brennan.” I wonder how close to tears Brennan was during those years of teaching the grace of God. I wonder if his face turned crimson when the enemy of our souls would whisper in his ear even as he preached of grace… “You failure! You loser! You miserable fraudulent drunk! How can you speak of God when you drank yourself blind only last night? They’re going to know. They’re going to see through you one of these days you know. They’re going to find you passed out and call your bluff and your whole miserable phony life will be exposed and you’ll be finished”
The same thing every one of us faces…only maybe the sin of choice is different. I don’t care much for drinking. I have a different pet sin. Mine is doubt. It’s pride. It’s falseness.
It’s telling others how much God loves them but refusing to believe it for myself. It’s knowing…for the love of God, knowing how He loves us, writing about it eloquently, speaking of it freely, and yet denying it for myself. Denying it so much that I no longer can pray in the first person.
What?
Yes. I want to explain that but first I have to cover one more base.
Last year when I read Brennan’s autobiography and it opened with “This will be my last book” I had to stop. One sentence in and I was already sobbing like a child. I loved this man. I found in Brennan Manning a voice for the longing of my soul. I found someone to remind me that God loved me and to do it forcefully, because it’s the one thing in this world I have the hardest time accepting. There exists a wall in my heart that no amount of beating upon or reasoning with seems to be able to destroy. Not completely. I wrestle with God daily, trying to get a response and in my broken, hardened heart I never seem to find one. I get glimpses but never break through to the relationship I so desperately long for.
When I could finally resume reading the book, I wept my way through it. Wept, sobbed, wailed, and longed. I longed to look at Brennan just once and tell him how he touched me. How he freed me. How without his reminders I’d never have even the hope that someday I’d feel this grace I seek. Brennan gave me hope…even as he had little for himself.
When I came to terms with Brennan’s impending death, I prayed a bold prayer. I knew that one day his passing would leave a huge hole in the world of grace. His voice falling silent would leave a sorrowful echo that needed to be filled. I asked God that if possible, if any mantle falls from Brennan as he leaves this earth…that it might fall on me. I cannot write like Brennan. It would be absurd to try. John Hiatt once said that he was asked to write some songs for Bob Dylan once and he made the mistake of trying to write “Bob Dylan Songs”. He said he only accomplished sounding like bad Bob Dylan. I don’t want to write “bad Brennan Manning“. I can’t be eloquent in the way he was. I won’t be quoting Walker Percy or Dostoevsky. I’m more inclined to reference Gene Hill from Field and Stream or Bruce Springsteen. But I have a similar voice and a similar perspective and something of an ability to communicate. And the need remains. Someone has to speak of grace with a voice still quivering with need. God permitting…it might be me.
I have decided to be more honest than I already have been in my writing. One thing I hear frequently is that my writing connects on a soul-level with people because I describe hurts, or wounds, or joys in great detail. If I am revealing a broken heart, I can bring you to tears. If I am describing a joy, I can get you to laugh out loud in an empty room.
It’s because I’m honest. I intend on continuing that. Which returns me to the topic of third person prayers.
I have been so battered and broken. So wounded and hurt and hopeless that I can no longer even pray for myself in the first person. I lost my career and my house and all the things I’ve outlined here before. I lived through that alone…without very much comfort from those I thought of as friends. The town I live in is a wealthy place and they don’t abide poverty and failure very well. And I have been poor and I have failed. And then it grew into hurt and shame…so much shame. And the shame became hardness, because shame will kill you if given enough time so you harden your heart in an effort just to breath another day. A hard heart in a poor man’s body who is cloaked in failure is not a popular thing to behold in the eyes of people who are generations removed from struggle and pain. It’s just how it is. Kindness was in very short supply. Understanding and comfort were operating in the red. Love and tenderness were scarce.
I was hurting and broken and the very people I wanted and needed to help me, to remind me…daily if need be…that I was not a failure. That I had been a success. That I was staying here for my daughter and it was the right thing to do. That God was up to something and if I just hung in there one more day I’d find out what it was…those people instead just smacked me across my mouth and told me to get over my pain and go get a job and stop complaining about how my life was. And so I hid. I hid the hurt because I loved those folks and I respected them and I thought…”I guess they’re right. It must be me” So I tried to gain their love and their favor and their approval even as I rebuilt my life. I studied in my car and finished my degree. I wrote two books, and three blogs. I started a small carpentry service and finally got myself a place to live. I graduated from college last May. You’d think it would garner a little pat on the back, but nothing. I published another book at Christmas…it was a good book and I was proud of it. Still…nothing. I got accepted in Seminary. Barely a notice.
I couldn’t figure out what it would take to feel like I had earned their love and affection and their caring concern. Re-read that last sentence. Earn it? You don’t earn that, Christ commands it!
Last fall the market began to weaken again. Jobs were more scarce. My landlord sold her house and in February I was homeless again. Since February 3 I have been sleeping in my truck again…after 14 months of having a home. One step up…two steps back. And nobody knew because by then I figured it out…they didn’t care. They weren’t going to.
It got to me. I felt like maybe they were right and I was wrong and I was the screw-up. I fell back into my old patterns of thinking…“Since these good and godly folks feel this way about you maybe this is also how God feels“. These last 2 ½ months have been painful and lonely and have hurt worse than the entire four years I was previously homeless. I feel great waves of doubt and fear, punctuated infrequently by my natural optimism.
I stopped praying altogether. Because I assumed that God felt that same way His emissaries here feel about me. I assumed He was mad at me for some unrevealed sin, some slight I’m not aware of. I figured He wasn’t going to hear my prayers for myself anymore.
I could pour out my heart for my friends and especially for my daughter…but to ask God for anything that might bless me or help me or be loving towards me or ease my troubles…I could not imagine him hearing me and eventually, I could not even attempt to ask. So this morning I had to pray in third person. I prayed for me the way I pray for my daughter… “Dear Lord…please bless Craig. Please touch his life. Please open some doors and provide for his needs and please restore what he’s lost. Please honor his love for his daughter that has kept him here in this place in which he feels so very lost. Please look at his love and dedication to her and bless that. Please give him a home and some rest for his soul. Let your face shine on him.” I prayed for me the way I would pray for me if I was someone else and met me walking down the street. I had no choice. These things had to be said and I couldn’t say them normally. I had to Gerry-rig something to make it work.
What I need right now is what Brennan needed and apparently never had. I need someone…a real friend who will not grow weary of reminding me…who will not cease to pray with me and comfort me and who will resist the urge to tell me to suck it up and go get a job and get on with my life. Someone who will remind me of the good things I’ve done and help me forget the screaming voices of the failures. Someone who will stop me mid-sentence when I begin to doubt and to blame myself. Brennan needed that. Maybe he would have finally beaten that bottle if he’d found that reminder somewhere. I have decided to become that for someone else, in the hopes that some of that will splash on me as I pour it on them. I’m a broken, battered, embarrassed, ashamed, wounded ragamuffin. I used to be a successful man, I owned a home, I had a good life. Now I am a shadow and I need someone to shine on me and to not give up until I shine again myself. While I do this for others through my writings, I hope to find it for me.
I hope you’ll join me.

Faith, Works, and Love...

Often I find myself embroiled in controversy and arguments about legalism, “old time religion” Baptist Theology, fundamentalism and assorted other topics concerning modern Evangelical Christianity.  Some say we need the rules and regulations.  That the command to be separate from the world is also a command to act separately.  That any discussion of obedience to Christ begins with a change in manner of lifestyle.

I suppose there is some merit to that argument.  A heart change will always yield an action change.  Nevertheless, an action change is not always indicative of a heart change.  You can follow rules simply because you were told to, trained to or guilted into following them.  You can perform for the sake of performance and never have a real change of heart.  You might not even know why you are living a certain lifestyle except that someone in authority over you told you this was “right and proper” living.

These folks contend that living for Jesus requires behaving like others who are living for Jesus…as they define living for Him of course.  However, aping someone else’s behavior doesn’t mean you’ve had the same experience that caused that behavior.  “Acting like a Christian” doesn’t mean you’ve actually encountered Christ.  It could mean that someone simply told you that this is what it looks like if you have.  And this person holds enough sway over you to induce you to act this way.  You could even convince yourself that you have had this encounter with Jesus if you follow the code closely enough.  If you were just like all the other Jesus followers in your circle, why would you ever question whether you had a head-on-collision with Jesus?

The other side of this, of course are those who claim that there are no requirements to the Christian life.  That since Grace covers all; we are bound to no performance standards at all.  That to even suppose that we could bring God happiness by behaving in a certain way is heresy.  I understand this.  I held this position for a long time after leaving the legalism of my youth and young adult years.  And to be honest…this position is more Biblically sound that those demanding lifestyle performance as a sign of my love for Jesus and the depth of my relationship with Him.  However, they too, take this too far.

As I approach my fiftieth year and my 24^th year of knowing Jesus and having this relationship with Him, I find myself grasping the truth of both Ephesians and James.  “For by Grace we are saved…not by works.”  Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8.  However, James wrote, “Faith without works is dead…”  James 2:14-26

The Biblical principle is both.  Faith without resulting works is not really faith.  Not in a life changing way.  And believing you have Faith because of your works is just as wrong.  The truth is your life yields works because you have been given faith.  And that faith yields works.  They are inseparable.

So what is the real motivator for a real lifestyle change?  What constitutes “Godly” living?  Is it rules made by one man governing another man?  Doesn’t this eliminate the need for change and reduce it simply to the need for obedience?  Doesn’t this change the impetus for change from internal to external and from loving obedience to Jesus to grinding obedience to the Law?

Of course it does.  The truth is that the only real change…the only change that will take root and never fail is the change wrought by Jesus as a result of an ever-deepening relationship with Jesus.  I can never please Him by any action of my own, save one…that of letting Him love me.  He does this when I let Him come close to me as I am, and let Him stay there.  When I let Him draw closer each day and in the proximity, He changes that which He desires to change.  Not my Pastor.  Not my Theology professor.  Not the TV preacher.  Jesus.  Whose blood was shed to purchase that right.

My focus has shifted from trying to do this or that to get Him to approve of me to trying nothing.  Spending more time quietly in His presence letting Him walk around the hallways of my heart, springing the trap doors and sweeping the cobwebs out from under the furniture.

From this depth of relationship comes an obedience that takes almost no effort.  When you love someone who loves you it’s easy to make them happy…because you already do.

From this depth of relationship come the changes that mold me ever closer to the image of Christ that He has for me.  Close to being called by that special name He knows me by…a name I have yet to hear.  (Rev 2:3)

Is it effortless?  No, of course not.  But it’s a labor of love instead of a grinding effort of my flesh or a shameful frolic through the world with the attitude of someone with a “Get out of Jail Free!” card.  Neither resembles the reality of a lifelong walk with Jesus of Nazareth.  A walk where every step draws closer to His until quite often only one set of footprints is visible.  Instead of the sweet sentiment of the old Christian illustration that says, “That’s where I was carrying you,” the truth is that “That’s where you were so close to me in every step that we took them together”

I hope someday that is true of me.