Anyone who has ever attended Simpson University holds a dear place in their heart for one particular theologian...Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This is in large part to the ever inspiring Dr.Craig Slane (author of "Bonhoeffer as Martyr:Social Responsibility and Modern Christian Commitment"). I think it's impossible to hear one of his lectures without some reference to Bonhoeffer. And who better to hear about Bonhoeffer from, then a professor who wrote a book about him and even lectures in German about this exemplary individual?
Sometimes when I'm in the mood for inspiration or simply for sharing inspiration...I look to Bonhoeffer for the cure. For those of you who do not know much about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who was involved in movements against Nazism and his participation in plans to assassinate Adolf Hitler lead to his arrest and execution by hanging in April 1945, just 23 days before the Nazis surrender.
I urge you to do some research on this particular individual. You will not be dissapointed. I leave you with some of my favorite quotes. Enjoy!
"The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech."
"If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure."
"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
"When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh."(The Cost of Discipleship)
"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."
"If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction."
"In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…"
"God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love."
"Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor."
Sunday, June 19, 2011
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