爱豆传媒

I’ve been reading “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy: A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich” by Eric Metaxas and have begun to draw conclusions as to the type of Christian that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was. Conclusions that are absolutely relevant in this current day and age. Here are some of my findings.

It’s 1933 Germany, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer is watching his country become engulfed by the flames of chaos that is National Socialism, better known as . Although World War II had not yet started, the country had already begun its campaign of persecution against those of Jewish descent and other minorities that are deemed inferior to the Aryan race. Pastor Bonhoeffer, a German Christian from an almost-artistocratic family, is caught in the midst of the political turmoil that is spewing over into the German Evangelical Church. 

He sees the , or “German Christian” movement, gaining traction and throwing its hat into the ring of anti-Semitism and Aryan superiority. Worst of all, he sees many of his fellow pastors and friends roll over and show their bellies to the Reich regime. The German Christian movement aligned with the racist ideology of the government and sought to purge Christianity of anything remotely related to Judaism. This included ridding the Bible of the Old Testament because it was written by Jewish men, and attempting to shift the New Testament Jesus into an individual who wasn’t Jewish and didn’t display any kind of emotion (emotions were considered to be a weakness, and there was no place for weakness in the 1,000-year Reich). 

In response to these policies and procedures being put in place, Bonhoeffer and Pastor Martin Niemöller founded the Confessing Church and drafted the Barmen Declaration, which, among other things, stated that the Church would not kneel before any human (much less a dictator) but only before God. In the chapter “The Church and the Jewish Question," Bonhoeffer declared that it was the duty of the church to stand up for the Jews.

‘What is at stake,’ he said, ‘is by no means the question whether our German members of congregations can still tolerate church fellowship with the Jews. It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God; here is the proof whether a church is still the church or not . . . There is no other rule or test for who is a member of the people of God or the church of Christ than this: where there is a little band of those who accept this word of the Lord, teach it purely and confess against those who persecute it, and for that reason suffers what is their due’ (Metaxas 155). 

Bonhoeffer is very clearly stating that it is the job, or “task” of Christians to stand up for those who don’t have a voice. Who are being trampled underfoot by those in authority and power. Our duty as Christians and followers of Jesus Christ is to love others, period. End of sentence. It is not to turn away members of the LGBTQ+ community at the church doors, or only let them in on the condition that they “reform.” It is not only to love the immigrant who has proper documentation. It is not to condemn a woman for getting an abortion. It isn’t to turn our faces away from the many minorities in this country that are crying out for change and justice. It isn’t to send only thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims of school shootings because “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). 

I want to end with one more Bonhoeffer quote from a few years prior to 1933. He was in Barcelona preaching as an assistant pastor and wrote the following in a letter home:

'Every day I am getting to know people, at any rate their circumstances, and sometimes one is able to see through their stories into themselves—and at the same time one thing continues to impress me: here I meet people as they are, far from the masquerade of “the Christian world”; people with passions, criminal types, small people with small aims, small wages and small sins—all in all they are people who feel homeless in both senses, and who begin to thaw when one speaks to them with kindness—real people; I can only say that I have gained the impression that it is just these people who are much more under grace than under wrath, and that it is the Christian world which is more under wrath than grace' (Metaxas 79).

I, for one, refuse to stay silent while there are people hurting. I will not be the individual who rolls over in submission and compromise, for there are some issues that you cannot compromise on. What will you do? Will you be a voice for the voiceless? Or will you continue to stay silent and keep your head buried in the sand? The choice is yours.