Do We Need God to Stand Fast?

Add me to the list of those who recommend Eric Metaxas' excellent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm embarrassed to say that I've personally read very little of Bonhoeffer's works. I have Life Together in German and have been stubbornly trying to read it in its original text. It's possible for me, but it requires an amount of mental energy to keep up, and it sits on our shelf, a reminder of how far my German needs to go. I've recently read some of Wilhelm Busch's (Germany's answer to Billy Graham) straightforward Gospel sermons with more success.

Whether we have read him or not, we Christians are familiar with Bonhoeffer, even if his books are a thick jungle of theology, scholarship and challenge. He stood out among the Christians who stood up to the Nazis. He was theologically sound, truly spiritual and unusually courageous. He helped start the Confessing Church (in response to the nazification of the German church), trained pastors, rescued Jews and conspired to kill Hitler. For his efforts (particularly that last part), he was martyred, executed two weeks before the liberation of his concentration camp. We remember him, because unlike many (and unlike many of us would have, we fear), he did the right thing. He recognized an evil for what it was, recognized it has no place in Christianity, and stood fast to the end.

Who stands fast? Who will do good in the face of such evil? Bonhoeffer himself asked this question (we'll get to that later), and, in his reflection after reading Metaxas' biography (published in The New Republic), Alan Wolfe asks the same question. Take some time to read Wolfe's essay; his reflections are good and provide some additional background. As a Christian, I always wonder how such a work as Metaxas' Bonhoeffer, where a devout Christian honors the life of a considerably great devout Christian, will be accepted. There's a certain comfort to know that Wolfe thinks it a "fine biography," and even more so, it challenges the liberalism in which, to use Wolfe's words, he puts his own faith. It challenged him enough so that he writes a defense in that same TNR article:

"Throughout his book, but especially toward the end, Metaxas turns this erudite and at times abstruse theologian into a living and tragic human being. I would be less than honest if I did not admit that bringing this man—and his intransigence on all the important questions of our time—so vividly to life raises awkward questions for the liberalism in which I put my own faith. How, precisely, would a Rawlsian have acted in those dark times? Must we not move beyond this-worldly conceptions of politics as a struggle for power to other-worldly concerns with repentance and days of judgment, if we are to grasp how the Nazis were able to combine their own rational plans to kill millions with satanically inspired ideas about a Thousand Year Reich, and also how some people were able to resist those plans? Is it possible to face death with courage without knowing that a better life awaits? Can one be loyal to one’s collaborators in the resistance without being loyal to some higher power? Can faith help overcome torture? Lurking behind all such questions is the major one: if the problem of evil is not one that humans can solve, have we no choice but to rely on God for help? Does Bonhoeffer’s greatness prove his rightness?

Yet when I put this book down, I realized that its author, no doubt inadvertently, had helped me to answer these questions. Bonhoeffer may have been convinced that God was telling him what to do, but I am not convinced. Ironically, Metaxas’s passion, the intensity of his engagement with his subject, wound up persuading me of the importance of the very autonomy that Bonhoeffer believed that we do not possess. Even if God told Bonhoeffer what to do, it was Bonhoeffer who chose God in the first place. It was not a humble servant of the Lord who involved himself in the resistance, but a singular human being who, for whatever reason, was able to know what to do when faced with the problem of evil.

It is important to note in this context that there is no simple relationship between faith and courage. The German Christians who collaborated with Hitler may have abused religion, but they considered themselves religious. At the same time, many—if not most—of the resisters to Hitler were not Christian believers and did not take orders from God. They included Prussian generals, and left-wingers (including even a few communists), and the student movement known as the White Rose. Their bravery had nothing to do with religion. One should come away from the Bonhoeffer story impressed by religion, but not in awe of it. The human picture is more complicated."

The human picture is indeed complicated. I wonder, though, if it works both ways. He addresses part of this in his essay, but Bonhoeffer was not proud of whatever human freedom he possessed. In his essay, "Who Stands Fast?", Bonhoeffer writes:

"As to the man who asserts his complete freedom to stand foursquare to the world, who values the necessary deed more highly than an unspoilt conscience or reputation, who is ready to sacrifice a barren principle for a fruitful compromise, or the barren wisdom of a middle course for a fruitful radicalism — let him beware lest his freedom should bring him down. He will assent to what is bad so as to ward off something worse, and in doing so he will no longer be able to realize that the worse, which he wants to avoid, might be the better. Here we have the raw material of tragedy."

Freedom can easily be asserted bad and good, evil and virtue. For Bonhoeffer, the one who stands fast is one who is ready to sacrifice that freedom to his faith in God. Bonhoeffer would say, in disagreement with Wolfe, that this is why he stood. Wolfe, in contrast, does not give us another reason. He only provides examples of religious Christians who compromised, and some non-religious folks who did not (though, among his list, I should point out that at least one of the members of the White Rose movement was a Christian).

I do agree that the relationship between professed faith and courage is complicated. I suspect that Bonhoeffer wrote so strongly, in part, because he was unimpressed by the many Christians who compromised, or perhaps tried to avoid the issue all together. But claiming to follow God does not make us God-followers. I can write, in a comfortable house far away from any sort of political persecution, that however blinded by fear, patriotism or what have you, the religious appeasers of Bonhoeffer's day serve as shameful examples of what not to do in the in the face of evil. Whenever we Christians do wrong, or fail to do right, we are not taking orders from God, whether we believe we are or not. For Bonhoeffer, faith led to actions - actions that, whatever or in spite of our own personal inclinations, took God at his very Word - His Word that took on human form and dwelt among us. His Word who said things like, "love each other," "love your enemies," "I am the way, the truth and the life," and "follow me." This Word took sides with the poor, beleaguered and persecuted, and when Bonhoeffer stood against the Nazis, he did the same. Tell me, whose word does an atheist fail should he not be moral? His own? If so, then on what grounds should that concern him? And why should he not deconstruct those grounds to suit his own purposes?

How then, should we understand the noble non-believers? I'm curious how Bonhoeffer would answer that question (perhaps he has in one of the books that I have not read), but Metaxas provides a clue in the German pastor's reaction to another 20th century giant who did not share his faith. A reoccurring theme in the biography is Bonhoeffer's desire to visit Mahatma Gandhi to learn more about non-violent resistance. He was never able to make the trip, but they did exchange letters. It seems that Bonhoeffer thought God was using the actions of a non-Christian to shame Christians into right behavior. Gandhi did not believe in God in the same way Bonhoeffer did, but who is to say that the same God wasn't somehow involved in those actions? What if he is more intimately involved then any of us could have guessed.

Wolfe writes that there were plenty of heroes resisting the Third Reich who were not taking orders from God. But how could he know? More to the point, maybe the leftists, any non-religious Prussian generals and any other didn't know they were following God's Word, but if they stood for up for the oppressed against unadulterated evil, then frankly, they were. What if they were made in God's image, and there was something written in their hearts that compelled them to right action? What if they were blind agents of God, putting to shame many who claimed to see?

Wolfe did not leave Metaxas' biography "in awe" of religion. That's perfectly fine. Who says we should be in awe of religion? The Bible, with all of its religious instruction, never instructs us to glorify religion. Rather, we should be in awe of God himself. His Word, his fulfillment, was in the person of Jesus Christ. I am impressed with those like Bonhoeffer or anyone else, who follow his example, and I wish to learn from them. My religion does not guarantee that I would stand fast in such a time, nor does Wolfe's lack thereof guarantee that he would not. The answer to Wolfe's and Bonhoeffer's question lies not in some sort of triumph for our own will, but in God and his will. May he give us the grace to stand fast when the time of trial comes.