“Those who dream of this
idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by
themselves…They act as if they have to create the Christian community, as if
their visionary ideal binds the people together. Whatever does not go their way they call a failure.” [Italics mine]. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, Fortress Press, 2015
(Reader’s Edition), pages 10 - 11.
This is hard to read, harder
to live. As I wrote in the previous post, this is not a “one and done”
proposition; this is a working out of our salvation together, trusting that it
is God who works in us to will and do His good pleasure. When I see this in
others it is only because I see it in myself; I look back on my life and with
pain see it in my attitudes and actions. And yet, and yet, it is an exercise in
discernment and in mutual submission; and it is a challenge to negotiate the
inherent tension in Bonhoeffer’s observation. While I find this section of Life Together beautifully challenging
and deeply convicting, Bonhoeffer does not appear to address the ongoing
challenge that most of have in this area – how do we live with the tension of
the ideal versus the reality? How do we distinguish between the two? How do we
maintain unity in koinonia as a diverse body?
I would love to know whether
Bonhoeffer was self-critical in this area, for there are times in his writings when
he distinguishes between his own thinking and that of other professing
Christians. Such writing is natural and warranted in our quest to “rightly
divide the word of truth”; perhaps our challenge is to rightly divide the word of truth without dividing the body of
Christ. When we speak or write to distinguish practices and doctrines
within the body of Christ do we write or speak with a sensitivity toward
preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bond peace?
Unfortunately, we often divide
the body of Christ when attempting to rightly divide the word of truth; we are
like children playing with adult swords – we hurt people and we are often too
dumb to know the pain we’ve caused – we ignore the pain because we think we’re
right. After all, the other person wouldn’t be in pain if he’d just realize he
is wrong and I’m right.
Bonhoeffer’s warning about
forcing ideals on our life together
as opposed to living in the reality of Jesus Christ in His people is strident
and relentless, he writes (page 10), “God hates this wishful dreaming…” Unless
we’ve experienced the shattering of a congregation we may wonder why Bonhoeffer
devotes such time and energy to the subject, but if we have walked among the
ruins of a people then perhaps we can appreciate why he identifies this
ever-present danger in the body of Christ. Beyond the local church, we need
only to look at the attitudes of denominations and traditions toward each other
to know that the tyranny of idealization is global as well as local.
Paul asks the Corinthians, “Has
Christ been divided?” “So then let no one boast in men. For all things belong
to you…and you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.” The Corinthians
were acting like they didn’t have what they had. They had everything in Jesus,
the reality was Jesus; but they were acting like they didn’t have everything in
Jesus and they therefore gravitated around the “ideals” represented in Paul or
Apollos or Cephas and in doing so they were carving up the body of Christ. To
the adherents of Paul the rest were failures, to the adherents of Apollos the
rest were failures, to the adherents of Cephas the rest were failures. Aren’t
we glad this attitude was confined to the First Century?
How I wish that Bonhoeffer’s Life Together was required reading in
seminary. This dynamic of substituting our ideals for the reality of who Christ
is in us and who we are in Christ (which is reality) is always a danger in
koinonia – and to know the danger, to talk about it, to work through it, to
acknowledge its threat, to know that we all carry the virus – can help protect
our life together in Jesus Christ and
strengthen our witness to the world.
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