Life Together: What we can learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer about Christian Fellowship

Christian fellowship has come to mean different things to different people.  To some, its a Sunday afternoon pot-luck, with rows of casserole dishes and pies made by silver haired ladies and busy Moms.  To others, its a Bible study at someone's home.  To others it may be getting together with a good Christian friend.  We, as American Christians, have done what most Americans do to everything.  We have taken something from the Bible and made it fit into our lives and culture. 


There is nothing wrong with making things fit within your cultural norms.  But with Christian fellowship, according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book "Life Together:  A discussion of Christian Fellowship", there is everything wrong with this.  For those you do not know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor during Hitler's Germany.  He was executed at Flossenburg concentration camp, April 9, 1945.  The following is from the foreword of Bonhoeffer's book:


"For innumerable Christians in Germany, on the Continent, England and in America, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's death has been a contemporary confirmation of Tertullian's dictum,  The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church; for his life and death and his writings, which throb with the simple, downright faith of one who has met Jesus Christ and accepted the ultimate consequences of that encounter in the World (which he defined as the sphere of the concrete responsibility given to us by and in Jesus Christ)--these are still a living witness in the ecumenical church in which he served."


There is much that can be read on Bonhoeffer's life online or in many biographies.  I highly recommend you pick one up and read.  Not only does he speak truth on Christianity, but also his words resonate in today's world events like few others do.


Back to Christian fellowship.  Bonehoeffer says in his book that there is a difference between true Christian fellowship, that is where we are brought to community by Christ and Human Fellowship, which is where we are brought together by ourselves.  Something really struck me about the following passage:


"One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood.  He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere;  he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood.  Just at this point Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at its root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood.  In Christian brotherhood everything depends upon its being clear right from the beginning, first, that Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality.  Second, that Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a human reality."


Now granted, this is only on page 26 of a 115 page book, but what he is saying struck me as the antithesis of everything most modern American churches stand for.  According to Bonhoeffer, we have taken the truth of true fellowship, with Christ as our only mediator, and turned it into a dream world of human community.  He does state later on that there is a place for both and we can't make everything spiritual, but if what he is saying is true, we have lost the point of being with other Christians.  That would explain why to many people they see no difference in the churches they visit than they do with people in the world.  Christians sagely say that it is because Christians aren't perfect and we are just sinners saved by grace.  We are human, so we will act like humans.  There is truth to this, of course.  But what really is happening is that we have taken something that is spiritual and tried to bring it down to our level, instead of trying to elevate ourselves. 


Not only do we begin to be annoyed by those around us and question their faith, we begin to elevate ourselves to the place of their judge.  Bonhoeffer states:


"Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ's; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ's eyes.  This is the meaning of the proposition that we can meet others only through the mediation of Christ.  Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become.  It takes the life of the other person into its own hands.  Spiritual love recognizes that true image of the other person which has received from Jesus Christ; the image of Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men."


Now, to clarify, there are all stages of Christian, and non-Christian, attending our churches today.  They may not be the level that Bonhoeffer states above.  However, that isn't who I am referring to.  It is the mature Christians, regardless of chronological age, the leaders, the teachers, the Pastors, that have fed into this idea Church may be one great big pot-luck.  Our programs, our youth groups, everything fosters the idea of community.  That's fine, as long as its a Christ centered community, not a group of Christian humans getting together and calling it a Christian community.


I am not a deep theological thinker like Bonehoeffer, but I can see this in congregations.  A few weeks ago, I posted on divorce in the church, how sometimes it was better just to part ways.  Bonhoeffer also states that this is true.  To paraphrase, he states that if as a community you have deluded yourselves to believe that church is a social hour, that all your human support and love comes from your fellow church members, or your Pastor, you should probably just walk away.  Our support, our love, and our help comes from Christ and Christ alone.  It is by his grace and that grace alone that we are allowed to have the community of other Christians. 


"Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ.  No Christian community is more or less than this.  Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this.  We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ."


So when you are having strife in your church or with a Christian brother, remember this.  If your community has tried to become anything more or less than this, perhaps the potlucks are all you have left.  Christ left the building a long time ago.

When to say Yes, when to say no, and when to just shut up

I have been reading "The Best Yes" by Lysa TerKeurst.   She is an author after my own heart.  She likes to communicate in a conversational style, as I do  But what really struck me was the almost revolutionary idea of The Best Yes.   I won't steal her thunder, but the basic premise is that it is ok to say no and that most women in our world, Christian and otherwise, think you are being unkind by doing so.  This book is published by Moody Publishers, so it is a Christian slant, but even if you aren't Christian you could get a great deal out of this book.


Here are some take-aways from the book that I found interesting.  She talks a great deal about how non-working mothers find it necessary to make their working counterparts feel less than what they are.  Lysa will be the first to say that most of her reactions to these less than tactful women was her own hang-ups making her feel bad.  But I was ready to drive to wherever these women were, after reading some of it, and give them a piece of my mind.  If you read my blog, you know I have never had children. I saw myself in some of Lysa's struggles.  I couldn't understand the parts about the judgmental mothers looking down on her working self or asking her children "Does it make you sad when Mommy goes to work?"  That one made my head want to explode, by the way.  But what I can compare to what she was going through is the idea of the Mother and Non-mother in Christian circles.  I know I have written about this here before, but I think it bears mentioning again. 


Judgmental people make, again, my head want to explode.  In Evangelical circles two things are looked down on, sometimes openly, sometimes covertly.  One is a working mother and the other is someone who isn't a mother at all.  One of the reasons I am not a mother is because I knew I would never have a child raised in daycare or by a babysitter.  So I waited and waited and found myself too old and too sick to have any children.  Lysa says in her book that our choices lead us where we will go.  I have made a slew of bad choices and I can't blame the judgey lady at the church pot-luck for all of them.  But it did make my life different.  The Bible states that a woman is to be a wife and a mother (in that order).  Christian friends assume you didn't become a mother because you couldn't, physically.  But that isn't the case with me.  I truly never wanted children, and when my heart started to change, it was too late.  My husband and I do not have the means or the patience for adoption, so here we are. 


But I digress.  Lysa made some excellent points about saying no that were very freeing to me.  I suggest you read her book.  You can read it via Kindle, or purchase it. 


So back to the take-aways, in my own words.


1.  It is ok to say no to even good things, if they aren't the best things.
2.  Just because you don't have a house full of children you still have priorities and needs for your  family that need to be met.  So don't allow people to guilt you into saying yes just because you have no children and you must have "oodles" of time.  (That wasn't specifically in her book)
3.  People who guilt you into saying yes will eventually find a way to be unhappy with you anyway, so don't worry about making them unhappy by saying no.
4.  People can take advantage of people pleasers.  Lysa is one and her chapter on this made me roll at times.  Her and I are so similar.  We need to grill out sometime. 
5,  God know what is best for you, and when asked will help find what that is.
6.  Saying yes depends a great deal on what season of life you are in.


There are so many more, but I won't steal you the joy of reading this book. 


Let me end this blog by saying that I admire stay-at-home mothers, working mothers, women with no biological children and those with lots of people who have they have made their children. 


So what I learned from Lysa's book was when to say Yes, when to say no, and sometimes when to just shut up.  I don't want to be one of those people pushing a pleasers buttons either.  Now go over to Amazon.com and get this book. It will be well worth it.