Bonhoeffer Journal #8

280-6, 323-333, 345-7, 356-361, 378-383

In these selections from Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer further develops his ideas of a ‘world thus come of age’. In his writings to Eberhard, he is primarily asking “What does life look like when ‘God is no longer needed in the lives of everyday people?” Bonhoeffer understands that ‘a world come of age’ means that outside of isolated fields of philosophy, people do not need ‘God’ for any part of their lives. He writes, “God is being pushed more and more out of life, losing more and more ground.(326)” For Bonhoeffer, if ‘God’ is being more and more pushed out, how should Christians exist in this world come of age?

He addresses the ways in which Christians of his day have made mistakes either in their methodology or their theology (i.e. Barth’s positivism of relevation). Bonhoeffer is attempting to reconcile the ways in which liberal theology have gone wrong, as well as, the conservative backlash. Bonhoeffer is ultimately convinced that this ‘problem’ can be reconciled as the world come of age is better understood on the basis of the gospel (329). He sees flaws within many pastors to hunt out secret or inward issues on order to gain a foothold of control over people (i.e. prayer and sex). Bonhoeffer abhors this type of Christianity that weakens itself and the true Biblical message that does not make distinctions between inward and outward parts of person (345). Bonhoeffer refers to this behavior as the “clerical sniffing-out-of-sins”. This type of Christianity that attempts to take a person living in the world come of age without ‘God’, and pull them back into adolescence with ‘God’ is desperate and unchristian for Bonhoeffer. As Bonhoeffer says, “We should not run a man down in his worldliness, but confront him with God at his strongest point…(346)” Bonhoeffer is developing a theology for the secular person in a world that lives without ‘God’. One that does not shy away from the direction that the world is going in, but rather embracing people were they live and thrive with a robust theology of Jesus Christ.

Personal:

Ever since I became a Christian at the age of 13, I have wrestled with many of the questions that Bonhoeffer puts into words in his Letters and Papers. My parents did not attend church, and many of my friends during my adolescence often said that they too did not need ‘God’. While learning and developing a theology from a young age I had justify how and why I would believe in ‘God’ when asked. It was often my experience in church, like Bonhoeffer’s, where people are attacked for the sins, whether private or public. It was the church’s explanation that a person simply needs ‘God’. What else do you need to know, right? Are you going to question or say you don’t need God because that seems dangerous. I was often aggravated and annoyed by these types of fear tactics because I found the Bible to be incredibly personally compelling and not at all attempting to leverage itself in my life as a sort of guilt trip. These sections of Bonhoeffer’s writings illuminated many of my thoughts that I have never been able to put into words. He challenges me to continue to explore a new Christianity that does not meet people in their weakness, but in their strengths. Not to say that Jesus’ burden is not light or that he did not come to set the captive free, but in a world come of age, the “who is Christ for us today?” question may have a slightly different answer. Bonhoeffer is not afraid to wrestle with these difficult questions and reminds me that I should not be either.

Teaching:

Our church teaching in this manner obviously must change. Sermon after sermon often targets people’s weaknesses or hidden sins like Bonhoeffer says. In 21st century America, we have not moved away from this strategy. Probably for the reasons that it is an easy tactic that often times works. It is, in a lesser since, preying on the weak with cult-like tactics. This is not to say nothing good ever comes out of these situations, as God can work in the lives of anyone who calls on Him in truth. However, I have been a part of countless church camps, services, and sermons in which pastors purposefully seek to elicit an emotional reaction from the audience. I believe that in our world come of age, we cannot continue to use these ‘tactics’ or gimmicks to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like Bonhoeffer writes, we must be able to have a productive word that meets our world where it is at and not attempt to drag them backwards. In sermons, we must be able to intelligently communicate who the person of Jesus is within our 21st century world. This is done through careful exegesis, like that of Bonhoeffer’s in Discipleship, and then have the ability to bring those transformative truths into today’s issues that real people find themselves in the midst of. If we only prey on people’s emotions and weaknesses, we will not be taken seriously in today’s world come of age and will be reduced to a narrow-mind subset of people that will continue to have less to say to our evolving world.