Dietrich Bonhoeffer

About a month ago, I was talking with my friend Kari (who so kindly reads my piddly little blog and I wish she'd get home already from her 3 weeks of visiting family in Texas because I MISS her, but I digress) and we were talking about how it's so good, yet convicting, to read the stories of Christians who have given their lives for the Kingdom of God and the cause of Christ.

She said she had just finished reading this new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxes and loaned it to me to read.  It is a big old fat book... the biography is about 500 pages long... and it instantly made me nervous because I don't do well with reading books on my own, sad to say!  The only knowledge I had of Bonhoeffer was that he was a Christian German during WW2 who lost his life in a concentration camp.  What I didn't know was that Bonhoeffer was an integral part of many plots to assassinate and/or bring Hitler and his regime down, which was why he was eventually imprisoned and killed.  This book brought together two things I'm quite fond of:  history (my degree field), and Jesus!!

Bonhoeffer is one of the champions of the faith that I very much look forward to meeting in heaven one day.  He was pastoring in Germany and other parts of Europe as a very young man, and I think he had a doctorate before he was even 25.  One of the things I learned about him that really challenged me was that in his daily studies, he would meditate and ruminate for a half hour on ONE VERSE of the Bible!!  One verse!!  No wonder the sheer wealth of wisdom that this man possessed at such a young age is astounding.  The depth of his insights and revelations about Jesus and the Bible were revolutionary for the church culture he was a part of.  I especially loved this paragraph toward the end of the book:

[Bonhoeffer] had theologically redefined the Christian life as something active, not reactive.  It had nothing to do with avoiding sin ore with merely taking or teaching or believing theological notions or principals or rules or tenets.  It had everything to do with living one's whole life in obedience to God's call through action. It did not merely require a mind, but a body too.  It was God's call to be full human, to live as human beings obedient to the one who had made us, which was the fulfillment of our destiny.  It was not a cramped, compromised, circumspect life, but a life lived in a kind of wild, joyful, full-throated freedom - that was what it was to obey God. 

Ohhh, I could write on and on about this book, but instead I just want to tell you to 1.  get this book and 2,  read it.  It was long, but it was not your typical dry biography; it read much more like an action/adventure novel and I stayed up way too late too many nights reading it.    

Bonhoeffer wrote a lot in his short life - he wrote essays, books, and many letters to friends and family while he was free and the 2+ years he was imprisoned, and the one I am most excited to tackle next is his book called The Cost of Discipleship.  I got it from our library, and I can't wait to dig into it.  I'm sure it will totally kick my butt (the title pretty much says so), but I'm ready for it.  Let me know if you read it!!