You might also be interested in my other blogs — mikenowandthen.wordpress.com and biblenowandthen.wordpress.com
I am Michael Hayes, follower of Jesus Christ, retired pastor and former staff member with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I have been reading Bonhoeffer for many years and have recently established a monthly Bonhoeffer discussion group in Red Wing MN, where my wife Char and I live.
I am a graduate of Sonoma State University in California and have two graduate degrees from Fuller Seminary. Those from whom I have learned the most over the years have been IV staff members Jim Berney, Paul Byer, and Mary Beaton, friend/pastor/professor Ray Anderson of Fuller, writers/speakers Eugene Peterson, John Stott, and Henri Nouwen, theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth.
I have begun this blog in part because of the popularity of the recent Bonhoeffer biography by Eric Metaxas, who is a good story teller but quite inept in theology, dismissing Bonhoeffer’s mature thought without understanding it at all. I believe that Bonhoeffer and Anglo-American evangelicals share the foundations of our faith — especially a trust in Scripture as the Word of God and a deep devotion to Jesus Christ — but Bonhoeffer matured in his thinking beyond the beginning point while to a large degree we evangelicals have wanted to remain close to the starting line.
I have often heard fellow evangelicals speak of Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:3 – “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The marks of a child? Trusting, innocent, quick to forgive, immature, shortsighted, learning fast but not knowing much yet.
Did Jesus really want us to be like a child in all ways? Of course not. We are not to remain immature. The virtue of a child is obedience. The virtue of an adult is responsibility.
I want to learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer what it means to mature in Christ. And I want to be careful not to be selective, choosing only those ideas of his which confirm what I already believe while tossing the others aside as if they were unfortunate mistakes.
May this blog help us to hear Dietrich Bonhoeffer and to walk with him as he walks with Jesus Christ.
paper from prison p. 57 “From the Christian point of view there is no special problem about Christmas in a prison cell.”
How do you go about finding that attitude when you are stuck in jail?
Bob
Life together pp 95,96 talking about the christian community.
“In a Christian community, everything depends on whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain.” My question then, if everyone must be indispensable then what happens when someone leaves the community? My common sense then would be they are missed but another person will eventually fill the void in one manner or another. But if the first person is truly indispensable then they can never be replaced.
Am i way off base?
Good question, Bob. Three thoughts come to mind. First, Dietrich for a long time had been practicing the art of basing his choices — even about attitudes — on his faith in God. Second, he had long concerned himself with understanding the “Christian point of view” with clarity and insight. He never let himself get by with thoughtless cliches but always sought to let his theology be shaped by the biblical revelation of the character of God. And the third thought that comes to mind is an insight learned by Victor Frankl, an Austrian Jew who spent some of the war years in a Nazi concentration camp. There he learned that the one freedom no form of evil can take from us is the freedom to choose our own attitude. Bonhoeffer was a perfect example of that freedom.
OK I’m not planning on ending up in jail and I don’t feel I know someone who I should plot to kill.
The other day I was accessing a web site which I use about twelve times a year. They asked some security questions and after I answered them correctly their computer said I answered they incorrectly. Three wrong answers and they shut the web page down for me. This was frustrating to me so I shared it with a few others and they didn’t think any big deal. They asked what I did wrong to get that response? Not one of them assumed the web site computer was wrong.
The computer called me a liar and my friends all took the computer’s side.
So Frankle says I can choose my attitude and I choose to be ticked that a computer somewhere out in the “cloud” can tell me I don’t know my own grandfather’s name.
Wouldn’t the “character of God” be ticked if the computer called him a liar?
Your friends remind me of Job’s friends. Surely you, Job, must be wrong because the alternative is unthinkable.
I was once on Facebook and tried after a couple of days to get off it, since I couldn’t think of a reason in the world to trust the managers of it. Four very frustrating hours later I succeeded in convincing it that I knew my own password. I was pretty confident, since in those days I only used one simple password for everything. I banged my head against the brick wall 20-30 times before it collapsed. The headache was worth it!
Does God get mad in situations like that? Seems to me the biblical word is even stronger: God is wrathful! The question we need to ask, methinks, is whether our anger is an aimless emotion or is actually productive. Being angry at the clerk at an airline counter when a plane is delayed, for instance, is unkind and counter productive. Being angry when you are unjustly imprisoned by Nazis is a complete waste of emotional energy which affects only the prisoner himself or herself, not any of the people who have enacted the injustice.
Faith gives us a good foundation for our inner freedom. A good friend of mine lived a beautiful life for many, many years without taking any problems personally. He simply believed that all problems in his life were God’s problems, since every single aspect of his whole being belonged to God.
Your final paragraph is conspicuously powerful, and all-too rarely expressed. Thanks.
Methinks you give a very good answer. What a waste of emotional energy to get angry at a nameless unknown computer somewhere out in the “Cloud.”
However there seems to be something in my nature which seems to relish the times I get mad or extremely upset without hurting people. To use your example of beating your head against the wall until the wall collapses or else the pain makes one quit.
Because I had such a terrible temper as a youngster I may now over compensate and try not to get angry on the outside so I vent on stupid things like computers.
Anger is an appropriate response to injustice. Unfortunately, most of us are too sensitive to minor injustices against us but insensitive to major injustices against others.
If everyone carried a Q-Tip in his or her pocket, we’d all be better off. When tempted to become angry or defensive at minor things, we need to be reminded to Quit Taking It Personally.
Bonhoeffer in prison could have been consumed with anger at the evil of Hitler and the Nazis. Instead he ministered to prisoners and guards alike.
Jesus could have been angry at the soldiers driving steel spikes into his hands and feet. Instead he prayed, “Father, forgive them. . .”
Those whose sense of identity is firmly grounded in the love and grace of God find it easier to let little affronts slip by unnoticed.
Life together pp 95,96 talking about the christian community.
“In a Christian community, everything depends on whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain.” My question then, if everyone must be indispensable then what happens when someone leaves the community? My common sense then would be they are missed but another person will eventually fill the void in one manner or another. But if the first person is truly indispensable then they can never be replaced.
Am I way off base?
Regarding Jesus’ call to come to him as little children; contrasting child-likeness and childishness is critical. Simple trust characterizes childlike obedience, and a unique, fresh wonderment colors their attitude toward all things new. When exploring God’s Word, I experience just such wonderment. God’s profoundly simple truths about everything keep me in a constant state of awe.
It seems to me that childishness is a trap from which it is hard to escape but childlkeness is marked — besides the qualities you mention — by a hunger to learn and grow.