Thinking On Bonhoeffer

Once a decade, I return to reading of Bonhoeffer's, The Cost of Discipleship.  If you are one of my early readers from Blog 1 in 2005, you might remember me talking about this back then.  But, that site was hacked and destroyed by one of the apostate Churches I tend to take on.  I returned the compliment and never had a problem again with them ... :)

I am both an admirer of and appalled by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

A German pastor from before World War II, he rose to head the National Church of German (aka Lutheran to the rest of the world).  Now Hitler had no real use for the National Church, other than to try and not directly raise their wrath against him.  And Bonhoeffer never had any appreciation for Hitler, coming to believe by 1942 that Hitler was at least the Anti-Christ, and then Satan incarnate.  So you can see how these two might not agree on much.

I admire Bonhoeffer since he served as the head of the Church.  He had a solid Christian background.  He had everything he needed to bring the average German through the tempest of World War II.  And, then politics, family politics, intervened.

And now I am appalled.  He backed the attempted murder of Hitler.  The attempt failed and he with most of the males in his family, extended family and friends were now arrested.  A list was found which named names and dates.  He was guilty but Hitler kept him alive, no one needs a martyr during a war.

Literally, in the last week of the war, Bonhoeffer's death sentence was carried out ... no one wants a hero to survive the war, if the leader is now dead.

So, his best book, because it makes me think, is, The Cost of Discipleship ... because he understood the destruction of Christianity which was coming.  He could see it, he could describe it, and he did have an unpopular answer.  However, I knew that he was wrong.  His answer led to piety ... not Christianity.

In his letters from prison, Bonhoeffer had by now seen how those following him had exchanged their Christian faith for piety (approved works).  Well, at least he could admit his error!

The value to be found in The Cost of Discipleship is that Christianity does bear a cost, and well, if you are unwilling to not pull away from the world - you will be lost - much as the state of the Western Church today.  Of course, we now live in the Post-Christian Age - Bonhoeffer's fear realized ...

In 1937, Bonhoeffer wrote (selections from just his introduction):

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die."

"We propose to tell how Jesus calls us to be his disciples.  But is not this to lay another and still heavier burden on men's shoulders?  Is this all we can do when the souls and bodies of men are groaning beneath the weight of so many man-made dogmas?  If we recall men to the following of Jesus, shall we not be driving a still sharper goad into their already troubled and wounded consciences?  Are we to follow the practice which has been all common in the history of the Church, and impose on men demands too grievous to bear, demands which have little to do with the centralities of the Christian faith, demands which may be a pious luxury for the few, but which the toiling masses, with their anxiety for their daily bread, their jobs and their families, can only reject as utter blasphemy and a tempting of the God?  Is it the Church's concern to erect a spiritual tyranny over men, by dictating to them what must be believed and performed in order to be saved, and by presuming to enforce that belief and behavior with the sanctions of temporal and eternal punishment?  Shall the word of the Church bring new tyranny and oppression over the souls of men?  It may well be that this is what many people want.  But could the Church consent to meet such a demand?

Yeah, Bonhoeffer makes me think, he called it straight during a time of religious corruption - not so unlike our own pagan culture ...