Under the “Quick Links” on the side, I have a link that tells you a little bit about a book (Life Together) written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He’s one of those heroes of the church’s story who should really be better known than he is. 

Here’s just one little gem from that book:

“It is the struggle of natural human beings for self–justification. They find it only by comparing themselves with others, by condemning and judging others. Self–justification and judging belong together in the same way that justification by grace and serving belong together.”

Think hard and deep on that.  Turn it around in your mind until it starts bearing the fruit of repentance and wisdom.

If you haven’t met Bonhoeffer yet, this post is for you.  Let me tell you a little bit about him…

• He was born in 1906.  In Berlin.  Germany.  He died in 1945, executed by the Nazis.

• At the age of 14, he announced matter–of–factly that he was going to become a theologian.  At the age of 21, he had earned his doctorate in theology.

• In 1930, the year before he was ordained, church seminaries were complaining that over half of their candidates for ordination were followers of Adolf Hitler.

• In 1933, when the government instituted a one–day boycott of Jewish–owned businesses, Bonhoeffer’s grandmother broke through a cordon of SS officers to buy strawberries from a Jewish store.

• As a young man he moved into “about the worst area of Berlin” so that he could minister to the young people there.

• He served as a member of the Abwehr, the military–intelligence organization under Hitler.  Actually, he was a double agent.  While ostensibly working for the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer helped to smuggle Jews into Switzerland.

• Bonhoeffer studied for a year in New York City.  He was uniformly disappointed with the preaching he heard there:  “One may hear sermons in New York upon almost any subject; one only is never handled,… namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, of the cross, of sin and forgiveness…”

• While a student in New York, Bonhoeffer regularly attended a church in Harlem, again working with underprivileged youth.  He also taught a women’s Bible Study there.

• Back in Germany, he directed an “illegal” seminary for two and a half years until it was closed by the Gestapo.  This seminary was training pastors for the “Confessing Church,” a group Bonhoeffer and others had formed in opposition to the Nazi–influenced German Reich Church.  It was at this seminary that he developed his classic work, “The Cost of Discipleship.”

• It was after the Gestapo finally shut down the seminary that Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together — over the course of four weeks — to describe to the world what had been learned from that season of “faith in community.”

• Just before World War II, Bonhoeffer was invited to lecture in the United States.  This allowed him to escape increasing persecution and the impending draft.  But Bonhoeffer decided he must share the fate of those suffering in Germany.  In less than a month, he returned home.

• In 1936, because of his anti–Nazi views, Bonhoeffer was no longer permitted to teach at the University of Berlin.  Two years later, he was forbidden to live in Berlin.  In 1940, the German authorities forbade him to speak in public, and he had to report regularly to the police.

• Bonhoeffer was engaged to be married, but he was arrested and eventually killed before he and his fiancee could be married.

• During Allied bombing raids over Berlin, Bonhoeffer’s calm deeply impressed his fellow prisoners at Tegel Prison.  Prisoners and even guards used all kinds of tricks to get near him and find the comfort of exchanging a few words with him.

• The majority of Bonhoeffer’s classic Letters and Papers from Prison was smuggled out by guards who chose to assist Bonhoeffer.

• Bonhoeffer could have escaped from prison but chose not to for the sake of others.  He had prepared to escape with one of the guards when he learned that his brother Klaus had been arrested.  Fearing reprisals against his brother and his family if he escaped, Bonhoeffer stayed in prison.

• Adolf Hitler was directly involved in the decision to execute Bonhoeffer and his co–conspirators.

• Bonhoeffer’s parents did not learn of his death until three and a half months afterward, when they turned into a radio broadcast of a London memorial service for their son.

The above has been taken from a study by Mark and Barbara Galli that was printed in Issue 32 of the magazine Christian History.

Want to learn a few things from a man like Dr. Bonhoeffer?  Pick up Life Together sometime.  Whattabook.