Should be read by all, but especially Christians. There are many warnings about the state of the church that ring true today.
Posted on 04/09/2013 7:55:59 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
For the past several years toward the end of the Lenten season, I have been reminded of the sad yet heroic life and times of the brave German theologian and scholar, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Although rarely discussed in popular culture, it was on April 8, 1945, that Bonhoeffer, the young, patriot pastor, led his last worship service one week after Easter at a church associated with the Flossenburg concentration camp in the isolated Bavaria town near the Czechoslovakian border.
So who exactly was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and what did he do nearly 70 years ago that he continues to be remembered as an exemplary proponent of the Christian faith?
(Excerpt) Read more at courierpress.com ...
I learned about Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Glenn Beck and Eric Mataxas.
He taught that we should not try to make the Bible “relevant” because its relevance is inherent.
This is also a good time to remember the Scholls and the White Rose. Like Boenhoeffer they give today’s germany the knowldge that its soul did not die in the Gotterdammerung
This quote sums up Pastor Bonhoeffer:
In his book “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy,” Eric Metaxas quotes the camp doctor, H. Fischer-Hullstrung, who had met Bonhoeffer only the day before.
“I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer … kneeling on the floor praying most fervently to his God. I was deeply moved by the way this most lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. In the almost fifty years I have worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”
Two weeks later, Allied troops entered Flossenburg.
...., in 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist regime came to power amid a conservative majority cabinet...
This is how ignorant modern society is of the 1930's. Nazi's were not conservative, they were committed European Socialist, but wanted to keep and maintain national boarders. Mussolini, the father of national socialism, was a communist until he was kicked out of the party for not opposing WWI- he believed in nationalism.
However, the author's own sentence is a contradiction... how can a Socialist party come to power with a conservative majority?
There should is no implication in my post about the merits of any assassinations whatsoever, but I do think that Christians today should look to Bonheoffer as one example of a man who did not sit back and hide behind the guise of, “Well, God appoints all governments so we should abide by it and not do anything.”
No. Bonheoffer did not abide by the evil government he saw and he took direct actions against it to subvert it and to destroy it. There were many Christians who fought in the Revolutionary war who did not abide by the specious doctrine that because God allows the set up of government that we should simply submit to it like sheep.
Moses was another example of a person who did not sheepishly submit to his government.
“I learned about Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Glenn Beck and Eric Mataxas.”
Our Sunday school teacher taught him years ago. A brave, conservative man of God.
I think the word games about National Socialism being a left of center party because it had the word Socialism in the title is not a winning argument for our side.
Now certainly it is not easy to map the German political spectrum of 1933 onto a the US body politic, indeed to do so in any sense is ludicrous, but Hitler’s hatred of the Communists and Socialists in Germany was absolute, and he specifically chose the title National Socialists in order to be misleading about his political agenda with the lower classes in Germany who were favorably disposed to the Socialist ideas. If the Socialists and Communiste were “Left”, then the Nazis were decidedly Right, and bonded themselves tightly with corporate and military interests, as was classic to the political Right in that time and place.
Regarding the drastic action they engaged in; they did not come to their decision easily. If I remember correctly, it was a painful struggle.
Classifying Bonhoeffer in today's terms as a 'liberal' or a 'conservative' (politically) does not fit the man or honor the humanity of the man. He saw the humanity in all equally be they Jewish, or Black.
His time spent in NY, where he regularly attended church in Harlem, the fact he sought out Black Gospel records and took them with him back to Germany, shows that the man is not easily categorized. He honored the Bible, he honored God and in his short life, he honored humanity.
You do remember correctly. His family including his brother-in-law, Donyani (sp?), were well connected at the highest levels of Pre-Hitler German bureaucracy, and maintained those connections through the war. Because of this they were privy to a lot of very inside information.
Yes. Great book.....insights into “religionless Christianity” even when he came to America and saw the “pastors” JD Rockefeller, jr.’s money bought and plastered all over Time magazines (to control the “direction” of “Christianity-—(to the far left—”social justice”.) ( in 1931).
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Courage to state the truth is the answer. Get your kids out of the indoctrination centers and throw out the TV and bring back 1st source books.
Bring back Classical education and the Bible so children can understand human nature and be “Wise” and understand where ideas originate——they will be able to Reason.
They were National Socialists, the same way that the Communists were International Socialists. There was very little difference between the two. Hitler even used the Bolshevik symbol - the Swastika.
The only theoretical difference was that Hitler wanted to control the means of production: whereas the Communists wanted to own the means of production.
Both Fascism and Communism were totalitarian oligarchies - indistinguishable to the people trapped under their jackboots.
They were natural allies ( for instance: cooperating on the division of Poland) - right up to the moment Hitler was stymied in the West and needed to get his hands on some more 'means of production' - and launched Operation Barbarossa.
Fighting the Left doesn't make you Right-wing. In many cases it just means you're fighting over the spoils or getting rid of a rival.
Was Stalin right-wing because he had Trotsky killed?
Was Hitler right-wing because he had Röhm killed?
Were the Bolsheviks right-wing because they wiped out the Mensheviks?
Hope this is helpful.
Just finished the book by Eric Metaxas. I was telling my father it was great and that I would lend it to him when I was finished.
Correct. And he was in prison when the war was clearly lost, but Hitler put out a kill order on him and many others simply out of spite.
It's absolutely not just word games.
You're right that it's not easy to map German politics of the time onto ours, but why is it done then? It's because the left is trying its best to draw parallels between the European Right and classical American liberalism on the basis of some flimsy pretext of being "pro-business".
Which is as mendacious as it is asinine.
BOTH European left and right are virulently statist philosophies. Even the European "center" can be described as just moderate statism. What we call American "conservatism" or "classical liberalism" doesn't even fit into the European left-right framework....it is completely off that scale.
If we were smart we wouldn't adopt the enemy's idiotic language and call ourselves a "rightist" movement at all. And I think we absolutely need to point out that whether it's the left boot on your neck or the right one doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the end.
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