The long run. The lifelong commitment. The big picture. The foundational truths. These are the elements that feed the reactors that are burning deep within the hearts and minds of those who make a difference, whether or not they are flamboyant as they do it. Such people are deliberately self-aware but not self-conscious, because their focus is on what desperately needs to be done in response to what others are doing.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy is the title by Eric Metaxas that documents the short life and astounding work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who lived all four of those identities to the full.
It is a mistake to think of Hitler having a meteorically sudden rise to power, and it is a great misreading of events to think that those who actively resisted him did so out of the anxiety of a moment, implementing plans only drawn up under the pressure of we must do something right now. Bonhoeffer and and others who actively resisted both inside and outside of government and military service, were far more thoughtful than such a perception would suggest.
What follows is a two page excerpt from Metaxas’ 2010 biography and may provide some food for thought as we find our places in our own national mess, perhaps feeling as he did, that we have so little ground under our feet because of the entrenched betrayals and deceptions that are dissolving the world as we knew it.
“After Ten Years”
Bonhoeffer had written an essay a few months before his arrest, titled “After Ten Years: A Reckoning Made at New Year 1943.” At Christmas 1942 [he was arrested in April of 1943], he gave copies to Bethge, Dohnanyi, and Hans Oster, and he hid a fourth copy in the ceiling of his attic room. The essay is an assessment of what they had been through and learned in the extraordinary experiences of the ten years since Hitler’s ascension, and it helps us see more of the thinking that led him and all of them to the extraordinary measures they had been taking and would continue to take against the Nazi regime. And it confirms Bonhoeffer’s crucial role in the conspiracy, that of its theologian and moral compass. He helped them see precisely why they had to do what they were doing; why it was not expedient, but right; why it was God’s will.
He opened by framing things.
One may ask whether there have ever before in human history been people with so little ground under their feet — people to whom every available alternative seemed equally intolerable, repugnant, and futile, who looked beyond all these existing alternatives for the source of their strength so entirely in the past or in the future, and who yet, without being dreamers, were able to await the success of their cause so quietly and confidently….
The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.
Then he dismissed the standard responses to what they were up against and showed why each would fail. “Who stands fast?” he asked. “Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God–the responsible man who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.”
This was how Bonhoeffer saw what he was doing. He had theologically redefined the Christian life as something active, not reactive. It had nothing to do with avoiding sin or 
with merely talking or teaching or believing theological notions or principles or rules or tenets. It had everything to do with living one’s whole life in obedience to God’s call through action. It did not merely require a mind, but a body too. It was God’s call to be fully human, to live as human beings obedience to the one who had made us, which was the fulfillment of our destiny. It was not a cramped, compromised, circumspect life, but a life lived in a kind of wild, joyful, full-throated freedom — that was what it was to obey God….
Bonhoeffer talked about how the German penchant for self-sacrifice and submission to authority had been used for evil ends by the Nazis; only a deep understanding of and commitment to the God of the Bible could stand up to such wickedness. “It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith,” he wrote, “and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture.” Here was the rub: one must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God’s purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes One’s obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible:
If we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behaviour. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.
Bonhoeffer spoke of death too:
In recent years we have become increasingly familiar with the thought of death. We surprise ourselves by the calmness with which we hear of the death of one of our contemporaries. We cannot hate it as we used to for we have discovered some good in it, and have almost comes to terms with it. Fundamentally we feel that we really belong to death already, and that every new day is a miracle. It would probably not be true to say that we welcome death (although we all know that weariness which we ought to avoid like the plague); we are too inquisitive for that — or, to put it more seriously, we should like to see something more of the meaning of our life’s broken fragments…We still love life, but I do not think that death can take us by surprise now. After what we have been through during the war, we hardly dare admit that we should like death to come to us, not accidentally and suddenly through some trivial cause, but in the fullness of life and with everything at stake. It is we ourselves, and not outward circumstances, who make death what it can be, a death freely and voluntarily accepted.
–Bonhoeffer/Metaxas
For months now, I have been reading and meditating on the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer with renewed interest since I was introduced to Metaxas’ biography by a dear Canadian friend. My personal copy of the book was a gift from her, received one year ago this week. She set an example that I have followed: I always have in my possession at least one additional copy ready to hand off, pass on and gift someone else with — to encourage thoughtful reading and learning for the times we are in.
The historical contexts and timely spiritual challenges offered in the book surely seem to have been provided by the same merciful Heavenly Father who was Himself Bonhoeffer’s purpose, and who has made the most amazing use of both Bonhoeffer’s life and death.
Bonhoeffer, Thomas Nelson, 2010
