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Going all the way:
The film was an education and inspiration. I learned Bonhoeffer was a German theologian with an awesome passion for Jesus Christ that deeply affected his life and those around him. A young man with an amazingly mature faith in Christ, Bonhoeffer became one of the first members of the organized church to publicly speak out against the Nazi regime when most church officials in Germany supported the Third Reich openly or through silence. Originally a pacifist, inspired in part by the impact of World War I and the life of Mohandas Gandhi, Bonhoeffer would come to believe Nazi violence could only be stopped by killing Hitler. In time this theologian would become a double agent, aiding the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer. Bonhoeffer's path from pacifist to activist was marked by many steps. A pivotal move forward occurred when Bonhoeffer visited America for post-graduate studies at New York's Union Theological Seminary. There he was introduced by a classmate to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, an African-American church with a powerful history of political and social activism. The church and the dynamism of its pastor, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., etched on Bonhoeffer's mind the example of a church that put its faith in action by fighting social injustice. As Nazi power grew throughout the 1930s, Bonhoeffer's conviction solidified that Christians, and himself in particular, had to take action as Nazi violence against Jews escalated. He wrote and spoke out against what was happening. He carried news of the Nazi's "Final Solution" to Britain's Parliament and to American government officials, but reports fell on deaf ears. Bonhoeffer had the chance to escape Germany in 1939, on the brink of World War II, via a teaching position in America. When he arrived, he found he couldn't stay. God tugged at his heart, calling him back to Germany into the midst of the storm. Following his return to Germany, Bonhoeffer's belief that Hitler had to be eliminated led him to join the group that would attempt to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer helped relay secret information to aid the group's efforts. After other members planted a bomb that exploded underneath a table at which Hitler and his men were meeting - a bomb that caused major damage but failed to kill the Fuhrer - a major search was launched to find those responsible. Documents were found that pointed to Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, a key participant; those documents also pointed to Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer would be arrested and imprisoned in 1943. Two years later he was executed by the Nazis on April 9, 1945, one month before the Allies declared victory in Europe. What Bonhoeffer did was remarkable, yet WHY he did what he did fascinates me. In effect, he was martyred for his faith. Bonhoeffer was murdered because he firmly believed that being true to Jesus Christ, and to how Jesus calls those who follow Him to live, means to take a stand against sin that people perpetuate against each other. Bonhoeffer's devotion to Christ is especially intriguing because there were no obvious external explanations for it. His tight-knit and privileged family was not religious. In fact, they were surprised when he decided to enter the seminary. Regardless, Bonhoeffer was cultivating an intense love for God, and the knowledge that the Lord Jesus Christ is the center of life: ". God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized at the centre of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognized in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigour, and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin. The ground for this lies in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He is the centre of life. " (1) Early on, Bonhoeffer was convinced that faith must be lived, not just on a personal level but as a member of the church - the collective "body" of people who believe in Jesus as Lord. As Nazi influence became more pervasive in Germany, Bonhoeffer was troubled at the divided response of the organized church. While some clergy spoke out against the Nazis, others did not. This split was in opposition to God's call for the church, not just specific congregations, but all Christians, to reflect God by functioning as a unified body. In Scripture, God calls the church to be in agreement and unison, serving as the human representation of the unity of God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit. What Bonhoeffer saw happening around him and throughout his country was in direct conflict with God's plan for the church: "For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free - and have all been made to drink into one Spirit." ". But God composed the body .that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it." (1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 24-26) Bonhoeffer's personal connection to Jesus Christ fueled him and framed his perspective on the world, other people and himself. He understood that the "personal relationship" between an individual and Jesus is the lifeblood of Christian faith. He strived to inspire his theology students to seek the same connection for themselves, when he taught them to read the Bible as though God was speaking to them personally, and that the infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing God knows and loves each of us individually. Bonhoeffer's approach to God was a major contrast to those who treat theology primarily as an intellectual activity. As brilliant as he was and despite his love for scholarly study of God, Bonhoeffer realized intellect never takes you to the heights with Jesus Christ. The only way to truly see Jesus as the God He is, to understand Him as the Messianic fulfillment of numerous prophetic scriptures so intricate and precise that odds number in the TRILLIONS that anyone else could fulfill them (2), is to open up your heart, the deepest part of yourself, to Jesus in faith. The spiritual connection, the link between one's spirit and the Holy Spirit, is what makes the difference between those who read the Bible and see only words on a page, and those who absorb those words and experience Jesus as the awesome and intensely personal God that He is. The apostle Paul asks us: "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God." (1 Corinthians 2:11) A.W. Tozer, another 20th century theologian, minister and author, echoed Scripture with the following words: "But the highest love of God is not intellectual, it is spiritual. God is Spirit and only the spirit of a man can know Him really. In the deep spirit of a man the fire must glow or his love is not the true love of God." (3) Bonhoeffer lived that spiritual connection to Christ. It compelled him to speak and act against seemingly invincible Nazi power when there was nothing material to gain and everything to lose. His personal relationship with Christ empowered him to associate himself with the needs of those who were suffering - which Jesus does to the ultimate degree. In his "Letters and Papers from Prison," Bonhoeffer wrote: "We are not Christ, but 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." (4) During the two years he spent in Nazi jails, Bonhoeffer's writings reveal he experienced a range of emotions, including optimism, disappointment, frustration and resignation. But even in the bleakest hours, he never gave up on the real, unshakable hope that Jesus provides: "I'm still thinking about the assertion. that man cannot live without hope, and that men who have really lost all hope often become wild and wicked. It may be an open question whether in this case hope = illusion. The importance of illusion to one's life should certainly not be underestimated; but for a Christian there must be hope based on a firm foundation. And if even illusion has so much power in people's lives that it can keep life moving, how great a power there is in a hope that is based on certainty, and how invincible a life with such a hope is. 'Christ our hope' - this Pauline formula is the strength of our lives." (5) Bonhoeffer went all the way with Christ because he knew Christ had gone all the way for him. Whether enjoying the company of family, friends or students in freedom, or enclosed by the walls of a prison cell, Bonhoeffer knew Christ was his strength and first love. One of the images from the Bonhoeffer documentary I found most memorable was a modern-day shot of the prison yard in which Bonhoeffer was executed. Filled with grass and filmed on a sunny day, its peaceful appearance belied the fact Bonhoeffer was hanged within its space. Yet when death came, Bonhoeffer went willingly, knowing his life for Christ and hope in Christ would have eternal value. Words the apostle Paul used to describe himself could also apply to Bonhoeffer: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." (2 Timothy 4:7) Faith in Jesus, and living that faith to the fullest extent through God's power, was the essence of Bonhoeffer's life. "I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world - watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia [repentance]; and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian (cf. Jer. 45!). How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God's sufferings through a life of this kind?" (6) Bonhoeffer's story thrives as a witness to the power of "going all the way" to truly know Jesus. It points to understanding the hope of His death and resurrection. It emphasizes how Jesus' victory over death and sin transcends all adversity for everyone who believes in Him as Lord and Savior. When alive, Bonhoeffer was willing to let God live through him unhindered, and that was the key to his success. Bonhoeffer was able to identify with the following statement by the apostle Paul: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Galatians 2:20) For more information about the Bonhoeffer documentary, visit www.bonhoeffer.com. Sources
Footnotes
©Copyright 2003 Ann Pinkney. All rights reserved. |
I started thinking about what it means to "go all the way" after watching