Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Following Christ
From John Piper’s blog today:
Today, sixty-four years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged for his part in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He is known by many for one main sentence. It is worthy of Holy Week.
Here is the context of his most famous quote:
The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call. (The Cost of Discipleship, 99)
Leave and go:
- “a death like that of the first disciples – leave home and work to follow him”
- “a death like Luther’s – leave the monastery and go out into the world”
I don’t believe that I have really left anything and gone anywhere as a follower of Jesus. I don’t feel a personal calling. Perhaps the answer is in his previous blog. Perhaps a “personal call” is not necessary. Perhaps, even, it’s American arrogance.
Former DG staffer, Jonathan Dodson has posted a helpful article that challenges us to re-examine our Western paradigms of gospel conversion. Here’s a key quote:
Gospel change in some cultures is more gradual than instantaneous. The American Evangelical tradition of “deep consciousness of personal sin followed by a sense of joyous liberation” is not common to all cultures. Missionaries labored for years before they saw a single conversion, and even then, the conversions were sometimes very different than what they expected. Cultures that are more communal experience conversion differently that cultures that are highly individualistic. In many African and Asian cultures, conversions come in pairs or families instead of by single individuals. Not all gospel change happens identically, especially across cultures.
