My Father Was a Drunk

You would have liked my father.

Everybody liked my father. I’m not sure why they did. He never finished high school and didn’t have any degrees. He was a drunk and would disappear from the company where he worked sometimes for a week at a time. He was a gambler and womanizer. My father was also a bastard (no, not the profane one but the real one) in the days when that simply wasn’t acceptable. He was raised by a single mother. My father had very little with which to commend himself.

Though he was someone with very little formal education, my father rose to an executive position with his company. Even when he would disappear, “the powers that be” would overlook those periods and pretend they hadn’t happened. My father was a gambler but quite good at it. When pool hustlers would come through town, he would be called and a crowd would gather to watch with great enthusiasm as my father “cleaned the clock” of the pool hustler. A friend of mine said that whenever someone asked, “Who’s the best pool player in town?” without hesitation, the answer would always be, “Brownie . . . when he’s sober.” Then there was always the follow-up question, “Well, who’s the second best pool player?” The answer was always, “Brownie . . . when he’s drunk.” The women with whom he had affairs loved him, even knowing that he had betrayed them.

My father loved my brother and me without reservation. If we weren’t there, he thought it was impossible to have a party. He showed off our pictures and bragged on us to anybody who would listen. He only spanked me twice that I can remember and both times he cried while doing it.

When I almost blew up an elderly lady one night—I honestly didn’t see her in that rocking chair when I threw the cherry bomb on her porch—my father wasn’t happy, but he still loved me, going with me to the home to apologize and standing with me when I went to the police. When he died, a very long line of people came to offer their condolences, and the comment made more often than any other to my brother and me was, “Do you boys know how much your daddy loved you?” We did.

There’s one other thing you should know about my father. He hardly ever went to church, talked about God, or had anything to do with Christianity. When my brother or I would “perform” at a church function, he would sit in the back and leave when we finished. But that was pretty much it.

Do you know why he had so little to do with the church? It had nothing to do with “those hypocrites” or a lack of belief. It was because my father didn’t think he was good enough. He missed the main message of the Christian faith and almost missed Jesus. I’m so thankful for the physician who said to my father, “Mr. Brown, you have about three months to live. We’re going to pray and then I’m going to tell you something more important than what I just told you.” That man told my father about Jesus—the Jesus who came for the sick and sinful, not the good. My father heard, was surprised, and then “ran to Jesus.”

I’ll introduce you to my father when we all get Home.

I’ve often wondered why my father was so beloved by so many people. It wasn’t because he was good at his job. (He was, though. When he retired, the company had to hire three people to replace him.) It wasn’t because he was such a skillful pool and card player. (He was, though. After all these years, the old folks in my hometown still tell stories about his skill.) It wasn’t because he had friends in low (and high) places and was loyal to them. (He did and he was, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many drunks and executives cry at a funeral.)

So why did everybody love him? They loved him for the same reason he didn’t go to church. They loved him because he didn’t think he was good enough. When I was growing up, I never heard my father say negative things about the church or church members. In fact, I don’t think I ever heard him say anything critical about anybody. (Well, he was a Democrat and wasn’t altogether pleased with Truman. He would say, “Once I was a Democrat as happy as could be . . . Now I’m a Republican and wish Truman was a tree.” Then he would laugh. He never, by the way, became a Republican.) The reason my father was never critical or condemning of people was because he always thought others were a lot better than he was. And the reason he never went to church wasn’t that the church was at fault; he felt he was. The church was for good people, and my father knew he wasn’t good.

My father treated others as better than he was. Jesus said in Luke 14 that we should do the same thing. He said that, when invited to a wedding banquet, we should take the lowest place. That’s where my father always sat. He believed that was where he belonged. Paul said, “In humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3). My father modeled that and it affected how he treated people.

Do you know why we wear masks and have hidden agendas? It’s because revealing the reality behind the mask might destroy the self-image we’re trying to maintain—that we’re really good people, obedient Christians, and compassionate souls who love kittens and people. Anything other than that is too threatening to consider. If we’ve looked behind the masks and considered the destruction that would be caused by our hidden agendas if people knew the truth, it’s way too threatening. People would know we aren’t really good people, obedient Christians, and compassionate souls who love kittens and people.

So, tragically, the church becomes a place where strangers gather and pretend a love we don’t have and fake a compassion we don’t feel. One simply can’t love someone they don’t know or feel compassion for one whose pain is hidden. In other words, you can’t love and feel compassion for a mask.

Edward Wallis Hoch’s poem was first published in The Marion Record (Kansas) in the early twentieth century, and you’ve probably heard it quoted a thousand times. It is true . . . sort of:

There is so much good in the worst of us,

And so much bad in the best of us,

That it hardly behooves any of us

To talk about the rest of us.

There is a sense in which my father had to be a drunk before he could be a Christian. He had to fail in order to know what it’s like to be really loved. He had to face the humiliation of his mask being ripped off (everybody knew about him) to have a heart that could care for others. In other words, he had to be bad to be good.

You do too.

I’ve often joked about praying for Christians who are self-righteous, critical, and dismissive of others who don’t “live up” to their standards (masks). I’ve joked about praying that they’d somehow get drunk in a public place and make a fool out of themselves, confessing their deepest and darkest secrets to people they’re trying to impress or judge.

But I’m not totally joking. Sometimes I think that the fastest way to see genuine renewal and revival in the church would be for us to throw a church-wide party with the express purpose of everybody getting plastered. The masks would have to come off, and I suspect the Pharisees in the church would be better for it. I know this one would.

I wish more of us were like my drunk father. I wish I were. Not because of the drinking, but because the drinking meant my father couldn’t wear a mask.

My father was a drunk, and because he and everybody else knew he was he didn’t have anything to protect, he didn’t have to pretend to play a role, he didn’t have to hide, and he was the most forgiving and unconditionally accepting man I’ve ever known.

Adapted from Steve’s book, Hidden Agendas: Dropping the Masks that Keep Us Apart.