16 Oct 2011
It’s about the attitude
I’ve been sharing parts of Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together because it has spoken so deeply to me since reading it last week.
In my last post I included a passage where he talks about disillusionment being a good thing because it deals with the illusions we bring into community.
He then goes on to contrast the two approaches that can be taken to Christian community. I find myself really challenged by this passage because I know how much I can be idealistic and how I don’t always make the time to face that part of me.
It seems a large part of Bonhoeffer’s book is about the how we approach community rather than what we do. It’s as much about the attitude as what we are doing.
God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly. They stand adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the community. 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.
When their idealized image is shattered, they see the community breaking into pieces. So they first become accusers of other Christians in the community, then accusers of God, and finally the desperate accusers of themselves.
Because God already had laid the only foundation of our community, Because God has united us in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that life together with other Christians, not as those who make demands, but as those who thankfully receive.
We thank God for what God has done for us.
We thank God for giving us other Christians who live by God’s call, forgiveness, and promise.
We do not complain about what God does not give us; rather we are thankful for what God does give us daily.