Saturday, April 27, 2013

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer's LETTETS & PAPERS FROM PRISON

"All 1 want to do to-day is to send you a short greeting. I expect you are often thinking about us, and you an always pleased to hear we are still alive, even if we lay aside our theological discussion for the moment. It's true these theo­logical problems are always occupying my mind, but there are times when I am just content to live the lift of faith without, worrying about its problems. In such moods I take a simple pleasure in the text of the day, and yesterday's and to-day's were particularly good (July 20th: Psalm
20.8: Romans 8.31; July 21st: Psalm 23.1: John 10.24). Then I go back to Paul Ger­hardt's wonderful hymns, which never pall.

During the last year or so I have come to appreciate the worldliness of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a homo relgiosus, but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus was a man, on par with John the Baptist anyhow. I don't mean the shallow this-worldliness of the enlightened, of the busy, the comfortable or the lascivious. It's something much more profound than that, something in which the knowledge of death and resurrection Is ever present. I believe Luther live a this-worldly life in this sense. I remember talking to a young French pastor at A. thirteen years ago. We were discussing what our real purpose was in life. He said he would like to be­come a saint. I think it is quite likely he did become one. At the time I was very much impressed, though I disagreed with him, and said I should prefer to have faith, or words to that effect. For a long time I did not realise how far we were apart. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life or something like it. It was in this phase that I wrote the Cost of Discipleship. Today I can see the dangers of this book, though I am prepared to stand by what I wrote.

Later I discovered and am still discovering up to this very moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must attempt to abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a churchman (the priestly type, so called!) a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. This is what I mean by worldliness - taking life in one's stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness. It is in such a life that we throw ourselves into the arms of God and participate in his sufferings in the world and watch with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metonoia and that is what makes a man and a Christian (cf Jeremiah 45) How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God by living in this world?

I think you get my meaning, though I put it so briefly. I am glad I have been able to learn it, and I know I could only have done so along the road I have travelled. So I am grateful and content with the past and the present. Perhaps you are surprised at the personal tone of this letter, but if for once I want to talk like this, to whom else should I say it? May God in his mercy lead us through these times. But above all may he lead us to himself!

I was delighted to hear from you, and glad you aren't finding it too hot. There must still be many letters from me on the way. Did we travel more or less along that way in
1936?

Good-bye. Take care of yourself and don't lose hope that we shall all meet again soon!"

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