Thoughts on Eberhard Bethge's "Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography"

I've recently finished reading the nearly thousand page biography written by Bonhoeffer's close friend, Eberhard Bethge. It was fascinating reading, even though the writing style is a bit challenging, no doubt because it was translated from German, and also because its meticulous detail, particularly regarding Bonhoeffer's participation in ecumenical gatherings, is often ponderous.

I admittedly tackled the book now because I thought it would provide guidance in the midst of a challenging time in our own country's collective life. Many people are deeply concerned about perceived challenges in the new administration to religious and ethnic minorities, the rule of law, free press, and the relationship between faith and culture. Bonhoeffer has been depicted as a hero, a pastor and theologian who navigated fidelity to the Gospel in challenging times. My hope was that this life and teachings could inform the way forward. Bonhoeffer's story has been helpful for these issues and for many more.

I was struck by how much Bonhoeffer's concern was consistently for the witness of the church as the church rather than using the church for advocacy in the midst of political controversy. Bonhoeffer was consistently opposed to Hitler. But his central concern was not to oppose Hitler, at least initially. His central concern was that the state would not so influence the Church that the Church was not longer be the Church.

The perfect example of this concern was the issue of the Aryan Clause. The Aryan Clause required that German government officials prove their Western European ethnic heritage. German pastors were employed indirectly by the nation because Germany had (and still has) a state church. Confessing Church Christians affirmed that ordination must be sealed off from the power of the state because only the Christian community could determine fitness for ministry. The Church must welcome all people, so it cannot use an ethnic test for ordination. Otherwise, the Church, even if it does religious things, is nothing more than an organ of the state and is no true community of the living Christ.

I find this helpful. Though the Church has a responsibility to advocate for all people, I don't think that the Church faces an existential crisis in the way that the German church did in Bonhoeffer's time. Bonhoeffer never said that a disciple couldn't be a Hitler supporter. He certainly never said that Christians couldn't support the German nation in the war effort--many Confessing pastors and many of his own students served in the war and even volunteered for service. There is a place for people of every political persuasion in Christ's community, even people who are profoundly wrong in all kinds of ways. The line we must draw is in making the church an arm of any political movement, even a good one. The Church must not be coopted into making Christ the servant of an earthly purpose, even a good one, and certainly not a bad one. This is an important line to draw as Christian people are so polarized in our churches. It's the line that the Barmen Declaration draws. I am hopeful that one unexpected benefit for the Church in the midst of our current cynicism about politics is that people who have strong political opinions will recognize that their views are not necessarily God's views and  that God will not be brought into our political disputes. It seems to me that most Christians are less likely to claim that their politician or movement is God's person or movement than they were in the Messiah-talk I heard with President Bush or, contrarily, about President Obama. I hope I'm not wrong about this. But it looks to me that though the times are difficult they may actually be good for breaking our habit of equating leaders or political parties with identification with Christianity.

Something completely different--Bonhoeffer's little seminary at Finklewalde was, as Bonhoeffer enthusiasts have so often celebrated, a beautiful experiment in Christian community. It was also an experiment in a different way of doing ministerial preparation. Bonhoeffer was a product of academia, but he came to believe that academic training needed to be done in intentional and small community. And that community needed to be a community of spiritual formation and active collective discipleship. After Finkenwalde was over, he expected that if he survived and the church survived, he would take part in new experiments in re-imagining and re-creating ministerial preparation. We live in a time that we are seeing the limitations of the seminary model and its tendency to shape clergy as people who are disconnected from the community of faith and unsettled in their spiritual lives. Bonhoeffer should inspire us to look to other models that are community based, collegially based, practice based, and founded upon prayer and worship rather than purely intellectual pursuits.

Something else--Bonhoeffer walked every step of a terribly difficult road seeking step-by-step to know the most faithful way forward. He embraced the lack of clarity of all his choices even as he continued to act. So often, we seek clarity--what side should we be on? What crusade should we take up? What is the right group to join? Who should we resist? How long should I go until I split from people who interpret things differently than me? Bonhoeffer himself was marked by a rare combination of humility and courage. He was burdened by the decision to participate in a plot against Hitler, burdened by what the Confessing Church must do or not do to maintain its integrity, burdened by choices of vocation. He was constantly squeezed by circumstance. And yet, he found his justification not in being right but in Christ's justification. He could move forward boldly and even lovingly.  He was a rare person who could love his enemies even as he resisted them. Even the guards who mistreated him in prison, and even, in a certain sense loving an enemy like Hitler. If we are honest, even the most headstrong crusaders among us harbor deep doubts. Maybe those who crusade the most virulently do so to mask our deepest doubts. We must always recognize that we may turn out to be wrong. And so, we must have humility and love in our all actions. But even in humility and love, we must act. In the case of Hitler, Bonhoeffer struggled with the determination that when a madman drives a car down the road and runs over pedestrians, at some point a bystander is called not only to help the victims but stop the car. There are no easy answers here. Bonhoeffer did not pretend otherwise. But he still stepped out.

And something else--Bonhoeffer himself would have been horrified by the way he has been deified since his death. Death was certainly very good for his "brand." If he had survived, his final views of "religionless Christianity" may have been actually harmful to Christian theology. I'm not smart enough to know that for sure, but I think it's a mistake that so many modern people have swept his later views under the rug. Certainly, his death made his life and views interesting to a world who would have never known him if he had grown into an old theology professor or pastor. Who knows if he could have found employment if he had survived and had been condemned as a hypocrite whose participation in an assassination plot was inconsistent with his pacifism? He certainly expected so. but terrible times allowed him to say some of the most beautiful and powerful things we know any Christian ever said. And they allowed him to back them up with faithful actions.  We all try to avoid suffering. Bonhoeffer himself did all he could to avoid suffering as he faced it gracefully and bravely.
The next book I read is going to be a novel.  No more than 250 pages.

Reflections on Life Together: The Presence of Christ is Physical, not a Disembodied Spiritual Reality

This the second reflection I'm writing on the wonderful insights I've been able to discover with others through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together.  In the first, I shared the important insight that to be with other Christians is an incomparable gift of God, a privilege never to be taken for granted, and a holy anticipation of the final day in which we will gather with all of God's saints in the eternal kingdom.

The Bible teaches us that the Church is the Body of Christ.  We very easily take this to be wholly metaphor and have become so used to using this terminology that we fail to take into account how literal and powerful a reality this is.  I remember my seminary professor Dr. Bill Mallard asking the question in a Church history class, "After the ascension, where did the body of Christ go?"  Everyone was a bit puzzled.  He swung his arms toward all of us and said, "Look around.  It's right here."

Jesus came not as a disembodied spiritual presence.  He was not a metaphor.  He truly came in the flesh.  And so, Jesus is experienced in the flesh in the physical presence of his people.  When we look into the eyes of a Christian brother or sister, we are looking into Christ's eyes.  When we embrace a fellow Christian, we are embracing Christ's physical body in a physical way.

Bonhoeffer says that we should never be ashamed to long for the physical presence of other believers.  It's one thing to stay in touch with people we love in the Christian community through electronic means--Facebook, phone calls, emails, text messages are good and important and we need to connect with each other and offer Christ's love through these means.  But they do not take the place of offering each other the physical presence of Jesus Christ through gathering with one another in the flesh.

We live in an electronic age.  Bonhoeffer could never have anticipated a day in which Christians would stay at home and watch church on television, or listen to sermons through podcasts, or sing along with videos on Youtube, and feel as if they had been nourished in the faith.  Jesus is present in the physical presence of other believers in a way we simply cannot find any other way.

For this reason, Bonhoeffer tells us that we should meet one another as we would meet Jesus--with "reverence, humility, and joy"  This is a fantastic spiritual discipline.  It's one that can help us to get over feeling burdened by each other, or becoming dismissive of each other, or subtly communicating arrogance or even contempt of each other.  If we see Jesus in each other in a very physical way, we will honor each other and find time for each other.  We will learn to listen and attend to each other.  This is not an imaginative exercise.  Seeing Jesus in each other is learning to recognize reality.

The other day I was thinking about my bills and got sick of my own thoughts.  I was in my car, and a prayed as a pulled out of a parking lot into traffic, "God, help me not to waste my life thinking about money.  Help me to see Jesus." Just then, a car pulled up beside me driven by a member of my church.  I honked the horn and rolled down my window and said hello.  I knew that God was speaking to me--showing me that the way I see Jesus is to see him in others.

The old fashioned practices of community life are always relevant no matter how technologically savvy we become.  "The Christian in exile"--the homebound, imprisoned, missionary, hospitalized, or wandering Christian--are strengthened by physical presence or whatever we can offer to approximate it as best as we can.  He describes brief visits, prayer with each other, hand written letters, worship together, fellowship at home in a Christian family (Bonhoeffer himself did not have this gift as his family were not practicing believers), and shared life of seminarians as examples of how we offer that presence.  I've experiences all these forms of physical, bodily, shared fellowship and they have been the way Christ has presented himself to me in a manner impossible otherwise.

Once, I was very sick and hospitalized.  My pastor friend, David Warren, drove all the way from Panama City to see me in the hospital.  He could only stay fifteen minutes before he had to return to officiate a wedding.  Recently, I was able to spend a day with him as he is fighting a terrible disease.  I will always treasure that day.  David told his wife Dian in my presence that my visit was "a gift, a wonderful gift."

The gift of our shared presence, our physical, bodily being together, is the gift of the very physical presence of Jesus himself to each other, whether we recognize it or not.  May God grant us grace to recognize this gift and to offer it to each other.