Shut up and listen

"Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them. … We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them. So often Christians, especially preachers, think that their only service is always to have to “offer” something when they are together with other people. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking. Many people seek a sympathetic ear and do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking even when they should be listening." ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

be different from the world

" In judgment and action those who follow Jesus will be different from the world in renouncing their property, happiness, rights, righteousness, honor, and violence. They will be offensive to the world. That is why the disciples will be persecuted for righteousness’ sake." ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer (on Matt 5:10)

Sure enough, if you live modestly, humbly, in deference to others, with empathy, compassion, altruism and respond to violence with non-violence, you are going to be viewed derisively. Even other Christians will resent your adherence to this path.

Maybe that's part of what it means to be salt and light (Matt 5:13-16) behaving like Jesus presents a contrast with the selfish, materialistic, power-accumulating, aggressive, ambitious values of this world.

Like salt brings out a food's own flavor and light exposes one's "true colors," maybe living out Micah 6:8 creates so much cognitive dissonance for some people that they (subconsciously at least) know that they're choices aren't so godly after all and it irritates them. Nobody wants to be accused of being self-serving or short-sighted. That's why I love that bumper sticker so much that says, "annoy a conservative, live like Jesus."

As 19th century social activist Mother Jones might say, the Gospel is going to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." (Garrison Keillor modified it a little and I put that one on the top of this page.)

No wonder Hitler had Bonhoeffer killed. Not only did Bonhoeffer's liberalism expose Hitler's fascism and authoritarianism for the tyrany it was, his authentic Christianity exposed Hitler's pharisaical hypocrisy for the mere political appliance that it was.

Grace is messy, people!

This love of God for the world does not withdraw from a reality into noble souls detached from the world, but experiences and suffers the reality of the world in the harshest possible fashion. The world takes out its rage on the body of Jesus Christ. But he, tormented, forgives the world its sins. Thus does reconciliation come about.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Meditations on the Cross

Wallis on Bonhoffer

Jim Wallis: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Sixty-two years ago today, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at the Nazi concentration camp in Flossenburg, Germany, for his role in the anti-Hitler resistance. His books – Life Together, Ethics, The Cost of Discipleship, Letters and Papers from Prison, and others – continue to be read and discussed widely. Last year, Harper San Francisco published A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer, short meditations drawn from his writings for each day of the year. Wallis wrote the foreword to the book, and later excerpted it as a column in Sojourners magazine, noting, "The more I read Bonhoeffer, the more amazed I became. He seemed to break all the categories."

He knows our needs

"It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty".

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer