Notes from The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

• The Message of the Wesleys contains this striking sentence: “It cannot be that people should grow in grace unless they give themselves to reading.”

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 12). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• It remains a startling story to those who never understand that the men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their imperfect existence. Perhaps it was after meditating on this passage that Morton Kelsey wrote, “The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.”

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 23). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. 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.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 25). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• As Thomas Merton put it, “A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.”

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 25). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 25). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• There is a myth flourishing in the church today that has caused incalculable harm: once converted, fully converted. In other words, once I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, an irreversible, sinless future beckons. Discipleship will be an untarnished success story; life will be an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness. Tell that to poor Peter who, after three times professing his love for Jesus on the beach and after receiving the fullness of the Spirit at Pentecost, was still jealous of Paul’s apostolic success.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 30). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• According to an ancient Christian legend, a saint once knelt down and prayed, “Dear God, I have only one desire in life. Give me the grace of never offending You again.”

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 31). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• When we attempt to comprehend the almost countless stars and other heavenly bodies in our galaxy alone, we resonate to Isaiah’s paean of praise to the all-powerful Creator: “Lift your eyes and look: he who created these things leads out their army in order, summoning each of them by name. So mighty is his power, so great his strength, that not one fails to answer” (40:26).

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 35). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God’s power. We stutter and stammer about God’s holiness. We tremble before God’s majesty…and yet we grow squeamish and skittish before God’s love.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (pp. 35-36). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Grace stands in opposition to works, which lack the power to save; if works had the power, the reality of grace would be annulled (see Romans 11:5ff; Ephesians 2:5, 7ff; 2 Timothy 1:9).

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 38). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority ofknowing Jesus Christ personally and directly.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 44). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• The hymn of jubilation in Luke carries the same theme: “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the wise and clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do.” (Luke 10:21)

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 56). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Our puny works do not entitle us to barter with God. Everything depends upon His good pleasure.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 57). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• But Zacchaeus, not too hung up on respectability, was overwhelmed with joy.

It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation, and guilt. By showing them that they mattered to him as people he gave them a sense of dignity and released them from their old captivity. The physical contact which he must have had with them at table (see John 13:25) and which he obviously never dreamed of disallowing (see Luke 7:38–39) must have made them feel clean and acceptable. Moreover, because Jesus was looked upon as a man of God and a prophet, they would have interpreted his gesture of friendship as God’s approval on them. They were now acceptable to God. Their sinfulness, ignorance, and uncleanness had been overlooked and were no longer being held against them.6

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 60). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Mark records that a group of parents, who obviously sensed something of God’s love in Jesus, wanted Him to bless their little ones. The irritated disciples, fatigued by the long day’s journey on foot from Capernaum to the district of Judea and the far side of the Jordan, attempted to shoo away the children. Jesus became visibly upset and silenced the Twelve with a withering glance. Mark notes carefully that Jesus picked them up one by one, cradled them, and gave each of them His blessing.

My friend Robert Frost comments: I am so glad Jesus didn’t suggest they group all the children together for a sort of general blessing because he was tired. Instead he took time to hold each child close to his heart and to earnestly pray for them all…then they joyfully scampered off to bed. One is tenderly reminded of a beautiful messianic passage from the prophets. “He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and will gently lead those that have their young” (Isaiah 40:11). I think there is a lesson here for anyone who would seek to set any kind of false condition concerning just who should be the recipients of God’s grace. He blessed them all.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 64). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• “Unless you become as little children…” Heaven will be filled with five-year-olds.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 65). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Perhaps the real dichotomy in the Christian community today is not between conservatives and liberals or creationists and evolutionists but between the awake and the asleep.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 71). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• A poet has written, “The desire to feel loved is the last illusion: let it go and you will be free.”

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 116). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• “Cultic worship is not only hypocritical but absolutely meaningless if it is not accompanied by love for other people; for in such a way it cannot possibly be a way of giving thanks to God.”

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (pp. 123-124). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Counterfeit grace is as commonplace as fake furs, phony antiques, paste jewelry, and sawdust hot dogs. The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 126). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Gerald May, a Christian psychiatrist in Washington DC, writes:

Honesty before God requires the most fundamental risk of faith we can take: the risk that God is good, that God does love us unconditionally. It is in taking this risk that we rediscover our dignity. To bring the truth of ourselves, just as we are, to God, just as God is, is the most dignified thing we can do in this life.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (pp. 143-144). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Obviously, we are not treating a trivial evangelical matter here. Compassionate love is the axis of the Christian moral revolution and the only sign ever given by Jesus by which a disciple would be recognized: “I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you. It is by your love for one another, that everyone will recognize you as my disciples” (John 13:34–35). The new commandment structures the new Covenant in the blood of Jesus. So central is the precept of fraternal love that Paul does not hesitate to call it the fulfillment of the entire law and the prophets (see Romans 13:8–10).

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 158). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• Perhaps we are all in the position of the man in Morton Kelsey’s story who came to the edge of an abyss. As he stood there, wondering what to do next, he was amazed to discover a tightrope stretched across the abyss. And slowly, surely, across the rope came an acrobat pushing before him a wheelbarrow with another performer in it. When they finally reached the safety of solid ground, the acrobat smiled at the man’s amazement. “Don’t you think I can do it again?” he asked.

And the man replied, “Why yes, I certainly believe you can.”

The acrobat put his question again, and when the answer was the same, he pointed to the wheelbarrow and said, “Good! Then get in and I will take you across.”

What did the traveler do? This is just the question we have to ask ourselves about Jesus Christ. Do we state our belief in Him in no uncertain terms, even in finely articulated creeds, and then refuse to get into the wheelbarrow? What we do about the lordship of Jesus is a better indication of our faith than what we think.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (pp. 176-177). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

• The story goes that Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the world’s greatest theologian, toward the end of his life suddenly stopped writing. When his secretary complained that his work was unfinished, Thomas replied, “Brother Reginald, when I was at prayer a few months ago, I experienced something of the reality of Jesus Christ. That day, I lost all appetite for writing. In fact, all I have ever written about Christ seems now to me to be like straw.”

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 207). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.