Dietrich Bonhoeffer must certainly be considered one of my personal saints. He his included in my small community consisting of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I love Bonhoeffer because his prose is so beautiful it borders on poetry. Also, he is a realist. His theology is about practice, about how Christianity functions in the daily life of people. His theology isn't something which exists in some ethereal realm, but how faith expresses itself in the day today. Finally, he's not some theologian writing from an attic he locked himself in devoid of real human contact. Bonhoeffer is writing from an underground church in Nazi Germany where he is participating in a resistance movement. Bonhoeffer spits it how he lives it and he spits it hot.
Well, currently I've read 70 pages of the book but I am still stuck on the first page of the work. Bonhoeffer writes:
"It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and movers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God" (17)
"For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God." God hung from a cross, a slave's death, being mocked and hated. The epitome of human war machine, built on domination and corrosive strength, murdered the embodiment of divine reality. With our war factories we produced the daggers to kill Love. Our made-up religions of wealth and power persecuted the author of Life. And yet, God came to bring peace to them. Hitler, Stalin, Koresh....you...me...He brought peace to all of us. How absolutely mind boggling is that when you think about it?
Love for the entirety of humanity. The good and the bad. The beautiful and the ugly. And if this is something which I truly believe, if I really affirm that Christ brought peace to all, then why do I not act this way? Why do I not seek to imitate that kind of life? Why do I not actively seek to bring peace to my enemies? "For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God." I am only beginning to wrestle with the cosmic significance of that truth. But if you aren't moved by those words, by that idea...if you aren't challenged....no matter how much more I write, you just won't get it.
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