randalevan's blog

Bonhoeffer on Community, part II.

Here are some other quotes from Bonhoeffer's Life Together, chapter 1:

"One is a brother to another only through Jesus Christ. I am a brother to another person through what Jesus Christ did for me and to me; the other person has become a brother to me through what Jesus Christ did for him.  This fact that we are brethren only through Jesus Christ is of immeasurable significance. Not only the other person who is earnest and devout, who comes to me seeking brotherhood, must I deal with in fellowship. My brother is rather that other person who has been redeemed by Christ, delivered from sin, and called to faith and eternal life. Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely at the beginning, as though in the course of time something else were to be added to our community; it remains so for all the future and to all eternity." (p.25.)

Bonhoeffer on Community

In my last post I mentioned Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, Life Together, and encouraged those who wanted to go deeper to check out this classic on the Christian Life.  Well, I imagine most of us simply don't have the time to do that...so I want to give you some quotes that continue to impact me from the first chapter of Bonhoeffer's classic.  Here goes...

"I must contrive to make money so that I may live to work."

I read something this morning at Dana Street Roasting Company in Mountain View that I really liked.  It is from the book 

Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation, by William Placher. The chapter that I enjoyed was by a British writer by the name of Dorothy Sayers.  (*For more on her life, go to: http://www.sayers.org.uk/dorothy.html.)
The chapter title is, "Vocation in Work", and it was written in 1942...in the middle of WWII.  I would like to share with you what Sayers wrote about a certain group of workers who "have never...altogether abandoned the divine conception of what work ought to be."  Although she is writing about artists, I, too, identify with this group of workers.  As a pastor, I have always felt like "I must contrive to make money so that I may live to work."

talking about heaven and hell

I just finished N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope. 

It's a good book and I recommend it.  I think you'll be surprised by some of the things that he says and encouraged to look at your life differently.  I liked what he had to say about heaven and hell.  Here' s a quote:

empowering the weak to become even weaker

Let's assume I want to lose 20 pounds.  (*Funny, I DO want to lose almost that much!) Let's further assume that I share this desire with my closest friends...people who really care about me and my health.  One day, these friends all get together and decide they want to help me out.  What do they do?  They put their money together and they buy me a Laz-y-Boy recliner, an 80-inch flat screen TV, and a "never-runs-out-of-money-always gets-replenished-automatically" gift card to Coldstone Creamery.  So, are these guys acting like my friends?

Are you an idealist?

Dave Schmelzer is a friend of mine and pastor of the Cambridge, MA Vineyard.  Jacquie told me he had some interesting things posted on his blog, so I decided to check it out this morning.  Here is something Dave wrote on idealism, quoting a man I deeply admire: Dietrich Bonhoeffer:  "One section I found myself going into in a bit more depth than I expected was what I anticipated being a brief word to the wise on idealism.  I'd remembered a striking quote from Bonhoeffer on the subject that has only seemed more profound as the years pass.  As I revisited the quote, I was floored by how much I understood and resonated with a good deal of his comments, comments that hit me hard when I first read them even as I couldn't believe he was serious.  Idealism a bad thing?

One might regard our endeavor here as idealistic.  And one might, understandably, regard it as a pointed critique of churches.  So I'll be really interested in your response to Bonhoeffer's thoughts. If you end up sold that idealism is a problem, how do you recommend keeping big dreams alive without that devolving into toxic idealism?  I'll start with my preface on the matter, and then it's all Bonhoeffer.

It’s tempting to see idealism as right at the heart of starting any community of faith, much less one in these culture centers we’re describing.  And there’s something to that, but it hits its limits very quickly.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, wrote the shocking line, “God hates visionary dreaming.”  I read that just as I was helping start an ambitious ministry to kids in the city with the highest murder rate in the country.  Our team was living in community.  We were all about visionary dreaming.  Otherwise why would we be there?

And yet Bonhoeffer’s line stuck with me, a line written as he was running his own ambitious community—an underground seminary trying to train pastors who wouldn’t bow to Hitler.  His point was that idealism wars with reality, which is warring with God.  Yes, we start with dreams and pursue them, but then we live in the actual as we see what God is actually up to."

If you want to read the whole post, please go to:

http://notreligious.typepad.com/notreligious/2009/07/are-you-an-idealist-.html

Courage and the effect of anxiety on leaders

I have been thinking a lot about courage.  I guess that is inevitable, given the many challenges we all face each day.  A friend of mine recommended a leadership book to me and I have enjoyed reading it so far.  The book is entitled A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, by Edwin H. Friedman.

One of the things Friedman writes about in Chapter 2 is "reactivity", or the effect of anxiety on groups of people: "For example, members of chronically anxious families will be quick to interrupt one another, if not jump in and complete one another's sentences, and they are constantly taking and making things "personal."  Communication is marked more by diagnostic or labeling "you" positions rather than by self-defining "I" statements.  Rather than saying, "This is what I believe," "Here is how I perceive it," "This is what I will do," family members stay focused on one another: "You're insensitive, unfeeling, irrational, missing the point, or just don't get it."  The family is thus easily "heated up" as feelings are confused with opinions.  Those inclined to become hysterical and those inclined to be passive-aggressive will both find their tendencies promoted..."

What should we give our attention to?

Pascal said something very interesting about the way many of us often live - or how we never really live.  “We never keep to the present.  We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past  as if to stay its too rapid flight.  We are so unwise that we wander about in times  that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does..."  This makes me think about what Jesus said about living in the present:  "Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes." (Matthew 6:34, MSG)

Could the Son of God be born in me this Advent?

I started my devotional reading for Advent last night.  Here's the poem I read:

Lo, in the silent night
A child to God is born
And all is brought again
That ere was lost or lorn.

Could but thy soul, O man,
Become a silent night!
God would be born in thee
And set all things aright
15th Century

You might want to check out the book this comes from:  Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas.

Why we are so very busy

"The question is: Why doesn't anybody have any time today? Where did all the time go?...

Your great-grandmother scrubbed clothes on a scrubbing board and cooked on a coal stove. You push buttons on washing machines and microwave ovens full of prepared food. Yet your great-grandmother had more time to talk to her daughter than you do. Why?...