Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Seven principles for eradicating selfish ambition in the fellowship: 3. the ministry of listening The first service that read more

Seven principles for eradicating selfish ambition in the fellowship: 3. the ministry of listening The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them... Listening can be a greater service than speaking... One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others. Anyone who thinks his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies... We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.

Life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, read more

Life together under the Word will remain sound and healthy only where it does not form itself into a movement, an order, a society... but rather where it understands itself as being a part of the one, holy, catholic, Christian Church, where it shares actively and passively in the sufferings and struggles of the whole Church. Every principle of selection, every separation connected with it that is not necessitated quite objectively by common work, local conditions, or family connections is of the greatest danger to a Christian community. When the way of intellectual or spiritual selection is taken, the human element always insinuates itself and robs the fellowship of its spiritual power and its effectiveness for the Church, and drives it into sectarianism.

Commemoration of Scholastica, Abbess of Plombariola, c.543 Seven principles for eradicating selfish ambition in the fellowship: 5. the ministry of read more

Commemoration of Scholastica, Abbess of Plombariola, c.543 Seven principles for eradicating selfish ambition in the fellowship: 5. the ministry of bearing "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2). Thus the law of Christ is a law of bearing. Bearing means forbearing and sustaining... The Christian must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated. It is, first of all, the freedom of the other person that is a burden to the Christian. The freedom of the other person includes all that we mean by a person's nature, individuality, endowment. It also includes his weaknesses and oddities, which are such a trial to our patience, everything that produces frictions, conflicts, and collisions among us. Then, there is the abuse of that freedom that becomes a burden for the Christian. In sin, fellowship with God and with his brother are broken. To cherish no contempt for the sinner but rather to prize the privilege of bearing him means not to have to give him up as lost, to be able to accept him, to preserve fellowship with him through forgiveness... The service of forgiveness is rendered by one to the others daily. It occurs, without words, in the intercessions for one another. He who is bearing others knows that he himself is being borne.

If temptation were really what natural man and moral man understand by it, namely, testing of their own strength -- read more

If temptation were really what natural man and moral man understand by it, namely, testing of their own strength -- whether their vital or their moral or even their Christian strength -- in resistance, on the enemy, then it is true that Christ's prayer would be incomprehensible. For that life is won only from death and the good only from the evil is a piece of thoroughly worldly knowledge which is not strange to the Christian. But all this has nothing to do with the temptation of which Christ speaks. It simply does not touch the reality which is meant here. The temptation of which the whole Bible speaks does not have to do with the testing of my strength, for it is of the very essence of temptation in the Bible that all my strength -- to my horror, and without my being able to do anything about it -- is turned against me; really all my powers, including my good and pious powers (the strength of my faith), fall into the hands of the enemy power and are now led into the field against me. Before there can be any testing of my powers, I have been robbed of them.

Feast of Simon & Jude, Apostles The heart of man is revealed in temptation. Man knows his sin, which read more

Feast of Simon & Jude, Apostles The heart of man is revealed in temptation. Man knows his sin, which without temptation he could never have known; for in temptation man knows on what he has set his heart. The coming to light of sin is the work of the accuser, who thereby thinks to have won the victory. But it is sin which is become manifest which can be known, and therefore forgiven. Thus the manifestation of sin belongs to the salvation plan of God with man, and Satan must serve this plan.