Never did Jesus throw any doubt on a man’s health, vigor or fortune, regarded in themselves, or look upon them as evil fruits.

―Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lenten Reflection: 20170406 – The Cross in the Modern World (Part II)
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

This irresponsibility and absence of bonds has its counterpart among the clergy in what I should call the ‘priestly’ snuffing around in the sins of men in order to catch them out… (See Part I)

From the theological point of view the error is twofold. First, it is thought that a man can be addressed as a sinner only after his weaknesses and meannesses have been spied out. Second, it is thought that man’s essential nature consists of his inmost and most intimate background, and that is defined as his ‘interior life’; and it is in these secret human places that God is now to have his domain!

On the first point it must be said that man is certainly a sinner, but not mean or common, not by a long chalk. To put the matter in the most banal way, are Goethe or Napoleon sinners because they were not always faithful husbands? It is not the sins of weakness, but the sins of strength (genius, hubris.), which matter here. It is not in the least necessary to spy out things. The Bible never does so.

On the second point it must be said that the Bible does not recognize our distinction of outer and inner. And why should it? It is always concerned with the whole man. It is quite un-biblical to suppose that a ‘good intention’ is enough. What matters is the whole good. The discovery of inwardness, so-called, derives from the Renaissance, from Petrarch perhaps.

The ‘heart’ in the biblical sense is not the inward life, but the whole man in relation to God. The view that man lives just as much from outwards to inwards as from inwards to outwards is poles apart from the view that his essential nature is to be understood from his intimate background.

This is why I am so anxious that God should not be relegated to some last secret place, but that we should frankly recognize that the world and men have come of age, that we should not speak ill of man in his worldliness, but confront him with God at his strongest point, that we should give up all our clerical subterfuges, and our regarding of psychotherapy and existentialism as precursors of God.

*Abridged from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. 

Prayer: The Refrain

The Lord knows our human thoughts; how like a puff of wind they are. Happy are they whom you instruct, O Lord!* whom you teach out of your law. —Psalm 94.11–12

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 10 (Listen – 3:25)
Psalm 11-12 (Listen – 1:59)

This Weekend’s Readings
Leviticus 11-12 (Listen – 7:20) Psalm 13-14 (Listen – 1:43)
Leviticus 13 (Listen – 9:34) Psalm 15-16 (Listen – 2:03)

God is being increasingly edged out of the world, now that it has come of age.

―Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lenten Reflection: The Cross in the Modern World (Part I)
By Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Knowledge and life are thought to be perfectly possible without God. Ever since Kant, he has been relegated to the realm beyond experience.

Theology has endeavored to produce an apologetic to meet this development, engaging in futile rear-guard actions against Darwinism, etc. At other times theology has accommodated itself to this development by restricting God to the so-called last questions as a kind of Deus ex machina.

When God was driven out of the world, and from the public side of human life, an attempt was made to retain him at least in the sphere of the ‘personal’, the ‘inner life’, the private life.

And since every man still has a private sphere, it was thought that he was most vulnerable at this point.

The secrets known by a man’s valet, that is, to put it crudely, the area of his intimate life from prayer to his sexual life have become the hunting ground of modern psychotherapists. In this way they resemble, though quite involuntarily, the dirtiest gutter journalists. Think of the newspapers which specialize in bringing to light the most intimate details about prominent people. They practice social, financial, and political blackmail on their victims: the psychotherapists practice religious blackmail. Forgive me, but I cannot say less about them.

This irresponsibility and absence of bonds has its counterpart among the clergy in what I should call the ‘priestly’ snuffing around in the sins of men in order to catch them out. It is as though a beautiful house could only be known after a cobweb had been found in the furthermost corner of the cellar, or as though a good play could only be appreciated after one had seen how the actors behave off-stage.

From the theological point of view the error is twofold. First, it is thought that a man can be addressed as a sinner only after his weaknesses and meannesses have been spied out. Second, it is thought that man’s essential nature consists of his inmost and most intimate background, and that is defined as his ‘interior life’; and it is in these secret human places that God is now to have his domain!

You see, this is the attitude I am contending against. When Jesus blessed sinners, they were real sinners, but Jesus did not make every man a sinner first. He called them out of their sin, not into their sin.

*Abridged from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison.

Prayer: The Request for Presence

So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. —Psalm 90.12

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Leviticus 9 (Listen – 3:18)
Psalm 10 (Listen – 2:13)

The cross is not just an example to be followed; it is an achievement to be worked out.

―N.T. Wright

Lenten Reflection: Evil and the Cross

The Park Forum

“Theologies of the cross, of atonement, have not in my view grappled sufficiently with the larger problem of evil,” laments N.T. Wright in God, 9/11, the Tsunami, and the New Problem of Evil. Any Christian who can discuss the individual nature of salvation while struggling to articulate the impact of Christ’s death and resurrection on the greater evils of the world can relate.

Dr. Wright believes modern reading of the Scriptures have skewed toward individualism, causing us to read over the full work of Christ. He continues:

Once we learn to read the Gospels in a holistic fashion, we hear them telling us that the death of Jesus is the result both of the major political evil of the world, the power-games which the world was playing as it still does, and of the dark, accusing forces which stand behind those human and societal structures, forces which accuse creation itself of being evil, and so try to destroy it while its creator is longing to redeem it.

What the Gospels offer is not a philosophical explanation of evil, what it is or why it’s there, but the story of an event in which the living God deals with it. The call of the Gospel is for the church to implement the victory of God in the world.

Once we begin working out the fullness of Christ’s passion, Wright believes, “The cross becomes the sign by which, and by which alone, we go to address the wickedness of the world.” In other words, evil writ large—terrorism, natural disasters, immorality in our field of work, and injustices in government, economics, and every other social system—is redeemed through our daily embrace of the suffering servant.

As Christians we can reject the sacred calling to join Christ in this work by trying to solve the problem of evil apart from God. Wright explains:

The church is never more at risk than when it sees itself merely as the solution-bearer, and forgets that every day it must say “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and allow that confession to work its way into genuine humility even as it stands boldly before the world and its crazy empires.

The Gospels thus tell the story, unique in the world’s great literature, religious theories, and philosophies: the story of the creator God taking responsibility for what’s happened to creation, bearing the weight of its problems on his own shoulders.

Prayer: The Refrain

I will walk in the presence of the LORD* in the land of the living. —Psalm 116.8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Leviticus 7 (Listen – 5:13)
Psalm 7-8 (Listen – 2:58)