Religionless

I finished my reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's, Letters From Prison.  I marked a few pages to go back to and think about after I was done.  Terms we have today in Theology really were not in wide usage in the 1940's - much less to a German in a prison awaiting death.

Religionless is one of those terms.  Bonhoeffer had seen during the war, the falling away of a people rich in Christian tradition and he had no way to describe the status of this new people other than religionless.  From April 30, 1944:

" ... What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today.  The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience - and that means the time of religion in general.  We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more.  Even those who honestly describe themselves as "religious" do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by "religious".
.....
Are there religionless Christians?  If religion is on a garment of Christianity - and even this garment has looked very different at different times - then what is a religionless Christianity? ... "

Of course, the issue Bonhoeffer had stumbled across was that society and culture was turning away from God and becoming atheistic.  A thought which would have confounded him mightily.  His beloved German had indeed turned from God.  Well rot starts at the top and the National Church (Lutheran), as well as, the Catholic priesthood had openly accepted National Socialism and the powers that be were more than happy to have lots of photographs taken showing the church leaders all in stiff arm salutes to Hitler.

How would you have reacted?  Your pastor, priest, bishop - what have you, is openly accepting evil in the open.  Your faith is weak because the National Church has no requirement that you have any faith in God what so ever.  Yeah, you are going to abandon that faith and stay home from now on - you become religionless aka an atheist.

Bonhoeffer's predecessor at the head of the Church, Karl Barth, had noticed this falling away as well, but had no solution.  The people had fallen into secularism, they needed to be called back into the congregations ... but ... outside of saying they needed to be restored, there was no wisdom passed on.

Today, we see this problem clearly.  We understand that it is the Holy Spirit's responsibility to call people as well as call them back in the event they fall.  But just as in Bonhoeffer's day, we see that "faithful" using God as nothing more than the impersonal "deus ex machina" - the problem solver to save our bacon when we go astray, foul up, we have no other options to fix the problem ...

Of course, God is the best problem solver, He is even better at helping  you avoid those problems in the first place as well - but that requires a personal relationship with Him, not a superficial one!  And well, mankind anymore seems to think a superficial relationship is just fine.  God exists to serve man and his desires.

So, it seems that the ultimate end to the problem Barth and Bonhoeffer saw 70 years ago is not a drawing back of the believer but rather paganism.  We now create gods to be what we want, that serve us, deride those whom are not willing to do so and go our merry way - ignore those whom care about us and desire to turn us back to the one true God.

Yeah, my reading of Bonhoeffer this time really cleared up the very same questions for me as well - only this time I could see the parallel as well as the ultimate goal Evil has brought mankind to.  And I will address this next month ... lots more thinking to do!