Books on Culture: Gray Matters, week five

Brett McCracken’s book—Gray Matters: Navigating the Space between Legalism and Liberty—is written to an evangelical audience. Granted, some may have left the building, some might be sitting the proverbial fence, and some are still very much firmly planted therein. But that’s the book’s primary audience.

McCracken devotes three chapters, not including interludes, to a topic still rather divisive among evangelicals: alcohol. After two chapters (9 and 10) of giving a brief but solid historical context to a drama that includes characters such as St. Paul, the Sumerians, the monastics, Martin Luther, Billy Sunday, and John MacArthur, the author settles on these words:

“To drink or not to drink?” is not a question for which there is a universal answer. It’s a question we must each examine and wrestle with individually and in our community contexts.

Those are good words. Hard, but good.

From that platform McCracken dives into Chapter 11 by providing a list of permissive caveats (drinking can be done to the glory of God, it is something that must be done with great care)—principles aimed at the faithful who feel "it’s okay" (don’t drink alone, consider the community you’re in, drink in moderation, don’t use alcohol but enjoy it, and love it more for the taste than the buzz). He holds these to be tutors in learning what it means to “drink Christianly.” I must admit that’s a horrid little phrase; I far prefer thinking of drink as “oxygen to the spirit.”

“Birds are holes in heaven through which a man may pass.” I had this little epiphany that wine could do the same thing if properly used…Wine can offer oxygen to the spirit.~ Jim Harrison

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When it comes to the evangelical world and the issue of alcohol, the late Brennan Manning immediately comes to my mind. I found it interesting he didn’t come to McCracken’s. If there’s anyone who found fair acceptance among evangelicals while wrestling with the bottle, it was the ragamuffin. Of his quotable quotes, this one always tops the list.

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes…I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.~ The Ragamuffin Gospel

I was granted the privilege of stepping into Manning’s life and to help him co-write his memoir—All Is Grace. Mine was a front row seat to the eating and drinking and making merry that were a substantive part of his rollicking story. I also had a gutter view of the waves of carnage that resulted from his alcoholism, both to himself and those who loved him. Some would say that the grace Manning preached would not have been as potent had alcohol not been the chink in his armor. But that’s naïve. Brennan Manning’s demon was self-hatred and (think back now to McCracken’s caveats) he used alcohol beyond moderation regardless of whether any brother or sister in his community might possibly stumble, often in solitary settings to buzz his pain. But that sentence, too, is naïve. What many do not know is that Brennan Manning helped more than one alcoholic kick the habit, some in almost miraculous fashion. That he never could help himself in that way is one of the mysteries of his story.

Baudelaire wrote in his famed “Enivrez-Vous,” “Be always drunk on wine or poetry or virtue.” Chances are good he likely didn’t mean commode-hugging drunk. Moderation or “middle ground” seems to be the grail and McCracken arrives there in his concluding interlude addressed to his own generation—“Let’s Stop the Pendulum.” It is a needed, if not dangerous plea. For in that middleness of striving sin often abounds; sometimes we overdo it. But where sin abounds grace abides, and that’s what ultimately matters.

I’ll drink to that.

On Monday mornings in December, we've been working our way through Brett McCracken’s book, Gray Matters. Thanks for joining us. Next week, we begin a new book for a new year: The Geography of Memory: A Pilgrimage through Alzheimer's by Jeanne Murray Walker. I hope you'll join us.

Image by Tim Miller. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr. Post by John Blase, the author of Know When To Hold 'Em: The High Stakes Game of Fatherhood (Abingdon 2013). He is also a poet who practices the craft at thebeautifuldue. He lives with his wife and three children in colorful Colorado.