Bonhoeffer on Obedience
Rationalization is a convenient way to slip the tightening noose of obedience. It is human nature to present one’s case for tithing only 3% of your income. Who hasn’t bargained with God about partial or delayed obedience? This is why Bonhoeffer wrote, “Only the obedient believe and only those who believe are obedient.”[1] In 1939, Bonhoeffer found himself, once again, on a ship to New York City. His first trip, nine years earlier, was his nine months at Union Theological Seminary. Since his return to Germany, the situation had really heated up. Bonhoeffer had pastored in London, become the leader of an illegal seminary, started as a lecturer at The University of Berlin, and participated in the creation of the Confessing Church.
He had openly opposed the policies of Adolf Hitler and delivered a national radio broadcast that proclaimed Christ alone as his Führer. He had been banned from teaching, writing, preaching, and publishing and refused to go into the Army if drafted. In other words, Bonhoeffer was persona non grata. He was shut down and in danger. His closest friends counseled him to go to NYC and stay there until things cooled down and he could return to help rebuild what would be left of Germany. Best case scenario, Hitler would be overthrown, war avoided, and life would return to normal. Both his brother, Klaus, and brother-in-law, Hans, told him that war was indeed imminent.
None other than Reinhold Niebuhr arranged a speaking tour and other gainful work and employment for Bonhoeffer. Therefore, on a warm morning in June 1939, Bonhoeffer left Germany on his second trip to NYC.
He found NYC greatly changed. The new Empire State Building had transformed the skyline, even though it was largely empty. The World’s Fair had opened in Queens, Lou Gehrig was playing his last season for the Yankees, the movie The Wizard of Oz had premiered on August 17th, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath had won the Pulitzer Prize, and Mein Kampf (translated my struggle) by Adolf Hitler appeared for the first time in English. However, it won no awards.
Bonhoeffer arrived at Union Theological Seminary during summer vacation and on the first day of a heat wave. He unpacked his bags in the “prophet’s chamber,” a room for visiting scholars. Because of the heat he couldn’t close the windows - the temperatures were in the high nineties. On one side he had the inner courtyard and on the other Broadway. The street noise persisted until late at night. For a German, this was pretty much intolerable. No one was around, so he passed the time by smoking cigarettes, reading, and taking walks. He visited the Metropolitan Museum, he read articles in The Nation and Christian Century. He bought and read Niebuhr’s newest book, Interpretation of Christian Ethics, which he found filled with wrong and superficial statements. He did, however, like Niebuhr’s younger brother’s summation of American Christianity in his essay titled Protestantism Without Reformation.
After socializing for a few days with the Manhattan elite, Bonhoeffer began to think he had made a mistake in coming to America. “All I need is Germany, the brethren,” he lamented. “I do not understand why I am here.” Bonhoeffer had already reached the conclusion that a year in America would be far too long. He spent hours in the scriptures. He wrote thoughtful prayers. He took long walks. He kept asking the same question over and over, the only relevant question, “What is the will of God for me here and now?” Part of Bonhoeffer’s analysis of American Christianity, New York Style, was a combination of homesickness and depression.
“The American churches had surely produced thrifty churchmen, earnest theologians, and revivalist preachers, but they had failed as yet to reckon seriously with the ‘scandal of the Cross’.”[2]
Bonhoeffer asserted that American Christians had not learned to trust God fully or know what it means to stand under the judgment of the Word. American Christians, he believed, had preferred to forgo suffering and live out their faith in freedom without a struggle. Between fight and flight, flight has been the American experience, at least in matters spiritual. Of course, WWII did prove otherwise.
Finally, Bonhoeffer wrote, “I no longer know where I am… I cannot make out why I am here… I cannot believe it is God’s will that I should stay on here, in the event of war, without any particular assignment.”[3] In the end he wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr that he would be leaving NYC for Germany. He had arrived in New York on June 12, 1939 and he was to depart on July 27, 1939. After six weeks of feverish prayer and self-examination, he had come to know his own heart. He wrote, “Manhattan at night, the moon stands above the skyscrapers. It is very hot. The journey is over. I am glad that I was there, and glad that I am on my way home again.”
Bonhoeffer made the decision that would cost him his life. He would plot to overthrow his government, he would spy, he would pray, he would write, he would follow Jesus and take up his cross.[4] It all reminds me of these words by C.S. Lewis:
“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, in the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature…” [5]
[1] The Cost of Discipleship
[2] Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Charles Marsh
[3] Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Charles Marsh
[4] Much of the information regarding Bonhoeffer’s time in NYC was gleaned from a Strange Glory, Charles Marsh, pages 275-286
[5] Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, page 92
