Dissidents: Disagreeable Disciples

Dissident: : disagreeing especially with an established religious or political system, organization, or belief

On April 7 , 1933 The German Reichstag passed the Aryan Paragraph. It called for the removal of all Jews, persons of any Jewish descent from civil service. This included churches both Catholic and Protestant. The church action was justified by the fact that churches were funded by the government. All Germans paid taxes in support of pastoral functions-baptisms, weddings, funerals, and other services. Pastoral salaries and pensions were also tied to governmental funding. 

            On July 22, Adolf Hitler conducted a special radio broadcast endorsing his friend Ludwig Muller to be Reich Bishop of the German Evangelical Church. Like Snoop Dogg becoming he Archbishop of Canterbury. [ a blend of different factions] Muller won with 70% of the vote and also approved the Aryan paragraph. 

Three weeks earlier Dietrich Bonhoeffer attended a public rally in the cavernous Auditorium Maximum on the campus of Berlin University. The packed house included professors, church officials, ministers and students. There were many speeches advocating submission to the wishes of the Fuhrer.  

            There was a small group that opposed it, they argued that the church needed to preserve its independence from the state. But no one spoke to the plain fact that the gospel was under assault. Bonhoeffer stood quietly with some friends at the back of the room. He could no longer contain his anger- He interrupted the chair, took a step forward, hundreds of eyes turned his direction. …….” If God leads the church to wage war for her soul, God will honor only those who fight for her integrity.”  Bonhoeffer felt much like the Apostle Paul roaming the streets of Athens, He was provoked, a holy indignation had come upon him. 

            What happened? On July 23 hundreds of students would gather at midnight at the Hegel Memorial to salute the new Reich Chancellor with a thunderous Heil Hitler. Bonhoeffer and the little band of Confessing Church pastors had lost. But more importantly, the gospel itself had lost. This is what he would later write about in 1937 in his now famous book, The Cost of Discipleship, Cheap Grace was the mortal enemy of Christ and his church. That book read and misunderstood by so many, and basically ignored by the majority of American Church leaders, have continued to assault and cheapen the gospel by dividing it between conversion and discipleship. The mistake has been to so lionize Bonhoeffer’s book as the ideal, the preferred, the commendable, but never the normal. Following Christ for the “Christian”  remains optional. The Bonhoeffer Project stands at the back of the room, and we step forward and declare, “ The great sin of the church and the root cause of our weakness, our irrelevance , our accommodation to the culture is our failure to make disciples who believe and are committed to repent of their sins, believe the good news and follow Christ in obedience. 

We are dissents, like our namesake, we step up, we speak up, and we are willing to lose, be cancelled, no one will want to publish us, join us, hear us, believe us, or invite us to their meetings. We don’t care! We are willing to step up, speak up, and say, NO, I will not be silent! [1]

Bonhoeffer was a dissent by persona and personality. Born to privilege on February 1906, Dietrich and his twin Sabine, were the youngest of eight children. Their parents, Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, were products of the German nobility and intelligentsia. Dietrich’s propensity to go his own way was apparent at age 14 when he announced his decision to become a theologian. Not a concert pianist as his parents thought, or even a scientist or attorney like his older brothers. This precocious and temperamental boy cut his own trail through the privileged underbrush of high society. He was connected, intellectual, special, lazy, spoiled, and usually unafraid. At twenty-four he did post-doctoral work at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He already held two PhDs and was better educated and smarter than most of the faculty. He feared no one, he challenged the faculty and was disappointed in their weak arguments and political philosophy. His intellectual power, his privileged life gave him entrée to powerful people, the people in society that made decisions. His aristocratic bearing gave him the confidence to stand up to virtually anyone. 

He was dissent in his dealings with church authorities. When most young leaders are  compliant and agreeable in order to advance their careers, Bonhoeffer didn’t flinch when he found himself disagreeing with older pastors and Bishops. He both admired Karl Barth and eagerly confronted and disagreed with him. In 1933-1935 he pastored two German congregations in London. He was increasingly getting on the nerves of the German Church and his Bishop Theodore Heckel. Heckel resented Bonhoeffer because he would not fill out reports and for not signing or agreeing with the Aryan Paragraph. Heckel traveled to London and met Bonhoeffer at the Savoy Hotel Grill. There Heckel insisted that Bonhoeffer sign a document that affirmed the German Church required allegiance to Hitler. Bonhoeffer walked out of the meeting, daring Heckel to do something about it. Heckel was to become the Bishop of the Reich Church. 

            Bonhoeffer left London in 1935 to become the leader of an illegal seminary in a town near the Baltic Sea named Finkenvalde. This was another act of dissidence. Everything in the seminary community was a grand experiment in the New Monasticism, that he described as nothing like the old. The two year experiment is written about in Bonhoeffer’s best-selling book, Life Together. The Rule of Life was Benedictine in nature, it was idealistic, it was both loved and hated by the twenty-three students. The student’s primary criticism was the rules were Bonhoeffer’s rules and changed based upon his whims and moods. It is also true that Bonhoeffer was a Bon Vivant, driving a new Audi convertible provided by his father, and was free to come and go. He excluded himself from any manual labor around the premises because he had better things to do. You might say that the flaws in Finkenvalde were ordinary ones, because humans and their flaws were present. Bonhoeffer was a dissent at heart; personality, practices, teaching, preaching, writing, and for it he was banned from all the above. He was subversive to the Reich and to the German Church. Subversiveness to the church should frighten us, for it is a very serious matter. 

            What are we actually against regarding the church? The church is much like a restaurant in that taste and preference govern opinion. I would like to put aside such things as taste in creeds, codes, customs, décor, and the personality of its leaders. I am in serious disagreement in the doctrine of salvation preached and practiced by the majority of the evangelical world. I don’t think we have an accurate understanding of faith, grace, and what means to be a Christian. I’ve already said it, but in recent days this mistake has led to disciples who are weaker, intimidated, and easily cowed by the culture.  This accommodation is too often driven by a lack of confidence in our message. When in the back of your mind you question the exclusivity of Christ, the authority of the bible, and the teachings of Jesus about the requirements of discipleship, naturally, you shrink back from those in opposition. Many would agree with my assessment, nod their heads. But then the discussion ends, and the efforts needed to get from where we are to where we need to be are left undone.

That is where The Bonhoeffer Project Comes in. The Gospel you believe in determines the disciple you make. It also governs the disciple you become and the Church you get and it defines normal. The Confessing Church fell apart, it was too costly for the majority. When Bonhoeffer wrote about the church in America, 1939  he called it A Church without a Reformation. It also has become a church without a spine. Just as the Confessing Church failed for want of courageous disciples, and the power and persecution of the state, our cause may fail. [ photo of Durer’s painting of Michael’s win over Satan Revelation 12] 

            The most difficult part of the battle is that it is intramural. This is not so much a contest on a national stage, Duke verses Kansas at Cameron Indoor or Allan Fieldhouse, its shirts and skins in the practice gym. The Reformed don’t much care for us, the forgiveness only don’t like us, the prosperity types feel sorry for us, the progressives think we are living in the past, The Anglo-Catholics and Catholics think we should live even more in the past. Liberals have left theology for politics, they don’t care. 

            If you want to style on the Big Platform and enhance your brand, you are with the wrong people, and you are headed in the wrong direction. The progressives need to progress, they are on a train to nowhere, but it is moving and has already left the station. As Bonhoeffer himself once quipped, “If you are on the wrong train headed in the wrong direction, it doesn’t matter how fast you run up the train aisle in the right direction.” This is the Bonhoeffer moment, the Bonhoeffer way,  We have a choice to make………… 

1.     Are we going forward and storm the Bastille, the edifice that is Cheap Grace? 

“ We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Jesus.” [2]

2.     We could back off, calm down, make peace, reduce the stress, keep your job, quell the pushback. 

3.     Cost: Bonhoeffer ended up in a small prison yard in a now Polish town, Flossenburg @ the end of rope, body burned in a pile of fellow-conspirators. 

4.     Written over the cell door of a fellow prisoner “ It will all be over in 100 years” In 100 years no one will remember us, my grandchildren will, but my great grandchildren, and great, great, great won’t have any knowledge of me. So what really counts? If you turn leaders into disciple makers, [4th soil]  your legacy will be people walking with Christ in all the nations of the world.  

Bishop George Bell in the American edition of Discipleship, aka The Cost of Discipleship, begins his introduction with the words of Bonhoeffer, “ When Christ calls a man, he bids him, come and die.” Bell goes on to say, “these words contain the essence of discipleship.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life is a commentary on what it means to do exactly that!    

[1] Acts 18:9-11

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship, New York: Macmillan. 1949 page 58 

who is trying to close your church?

The creatures from the dark lagoon want to close your church, not their church, just your church. 

            Babylon is fallen-that great city is fallen! She has become a home for demons. She is a hideout for every foul spirit, a hideout for foul vulture and every foul and dreadful animal. For all the nations have fallen because of the wine of her passionate immorality. The kings of the world have committed adultery with her. Revelation 17:2,3 NLT. 

            Californians recently said they like life in Babylon. We are partial to the hanging gardens and all the free stuff. You can steal what you want from a store and if it isn’t valued over 999.00, that is ok, have a nice day.  Over 60% of we residents of this dystopian paradise decided not to replace our fearless leader, Gavin “French Laundry” Newsom. Oh yes, Talk Show Host Larry Elder had “His Governess” worried. Elder was smarter than many gave him credit for, most of his campaign ads were compliments of Relief Factor. I would personally like to thank Relief Factor that my hands do not ache as I type this sentence. They paid Elder to drive a shiny new speed boat through the beautiful waters of LA. One wonders where he found clear blue waters around here. It seems that soaring gas prices, housing costs and taxes along with the  homeless tent cities, the smell of urine, the reduction of police, the decline of law and order, and sharp increase in the murder rate have not been enough to tap down the serenity of the  satisfied. The middle class is disappearing, what it means to be a citizen is eroding, and two million people voted with their feet last year and moved out of the state. The victorious suave Governor declared, “ I’ve been right all along and this proves it.” 

            With such a confident mandate, what might we Cali types want to vote on next? Life in the golden state could be reengineered and we could take the next step in the evolutionary progression. The satisfaction and confidence the Governor now feels encourages taking even more ground from the regressive people and policies that are stunting the growth of our state. 

We are the home of the most censorious and powerful media companies in the world. Facebook, Twitter, Google, and throw in Apple just for fun, they belong to us, and even better, they are progressive. Who needs the police when these powerful companies have become the government’s  own Ministry of Truth?  They do the Government’s dirty unconstitutional work for them. Think how much better life in Babylon could be if they take down the crown jewel of free speech? If they could own, control, and censor the one voice, the institution that stands alone, protected by the First Amendment along with free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom to address grievances with the Government. Yes you guessed it, the church, the last free people on earth. The church’s meetings are protected, and what is said there is protected. Many believe if somehow they could be silenced, life would be so much better. Because they are the real problem, they hold to a world-view that is diametrically opposed to the goals in Babylon. They believe God created the heavens and the earth, he started it all, and he will end it all. His justice is perfect and one day he will decide everything in full. Christians believe that God visited the earth fully in Jesus Christ, that Christ took the punishment for what is wrong with the world and the humans in it. He took it upon himself and now has provided a way out, a new life, and a hope for the future. Much of this can be tolerated by the skeptics because it is all theory, out there, doesn’t touch the ground, and can’t be proven or disproven in the here and now. 

But then there are some stuff they believe that really gets under the utopian skin and slows progress down. 

Such things as life begins at conception and that all innocent life is sacred and needs protection. It is really aggravating that digitally enhanced images of live fetuses can be seen in the first several weeks of pregnancy. Biblicist Christians believe that all sexual practices outside the covenant of marriage is sinful and wrong. Because this includes same sex marriage, and various other gender combos, it is regressive and damaging to the human race. Translated this means people can’t turn it everyway but loose sexually and expect to be taken seriously. 

I belong to that breed of Californians that have lived here a very long time and have no plans to leave, our lives are here. Daniel never left Babylon, many of us will never leave this dystopia We did see during the pandemic a move by governing authorities to control the church. To be fair, this was not noticeable at all prior to the Covid19. I don’t believe the leaders so feckless that they were spending a lot of time plotting to take over the church when the church was doing such a good job of making itself weaker and less relevant. I can’t prove it, but I know it is true that if they could close us, they would. There are so many examples of utopian idealism becoming tyrannical in history that it would be naïve to believe anything else. Most of us in the church would like to be left alone to live and make our own decisions. Knowing that the IRS wants to hire 80,000 new agents to comb through our bank accounts, does not bring comfort to the masses. I’m not sure there is enough loose change in American’s offering plates to buy off the feckless politicians who would like to close the churches. 

Which Churches would they close? 

I don’t think they would close or even want to close all churches. They would want to keep their churches open, you know, the ones who are no threat to their political power.  First of all, who are “they?” The ruling class, the cognitive elite, the political and cultural leaders who live in their illusionary bubbles. The keepers of power who like sharks that once have the taste of blood in their mouths, want more power. They will corrupt themselves and sacrifice their principles of liberty and the first amendment to censor speech and punish every form of communication that threatens their power. Their primary illusion is that human beings would improve if they lived in an advanced society where everyone was equal. Equality of course isn’t free. It costs a society a lot to even everything and everyone out. But they don’t believe it anyway, they have abandoned the equal value of each person because it is a biblical value and the bible has been largely rejected.  That is the product of the bible and western civilization. That is a theological or philosophical doctrine. If you reject the message of the bible, then you lose that premise. Reality is inconvenient because it proves that people are not equal in performance.  In value, yes, if you adhere to the biblical notion that “All people are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable right.” That declaration of independence is about the value of the individual, each person’s worth and dignity. Of course this right does not extend to the millions of unborn children that have been slaughtered on the godless altar of choice. Equality isn’t free because people are not equal in ability, strength, character, opportunity and in many other ways. It costs society to attempt what is now called equity. I always thought equity was what built up in an investment. But I have been schooled by the philosophical left to understand that equity means equal results. It means reengineering society through mandatory governmental action to force equity on a society. Since humans won’t put up with this tripe, they must be punished and forced into conformity. The utopian dream is to punish merit, ingenuity, creativity, imagination, hard work, by taxing and taking wealth from those who have earned it and giving it to those who have not. Therefore, the utopian dream is that everyone can be adequate, mediocre and live a tolerable life in a high rise condo where you don’t control the temperature gage in your own unit. It is Governed by someone who knows what temperature is best for you and it is controlled by a bureaucrat [French for a person seated at a desk] with his name written on his shirt who lives in the basement of your building. This is the dream, have you ever seen a zombie movie?, then you get the picture. 

The kind of church they want open are those who separate truth into two categories. First there is Objective truth based on facts, science, and reason. This is knowledge for the public square and for public life. The church has volunteered to remove itself from this realm via the separation of church and state. This of course is a false separation, but one that keeps the church at bay and removes any claim it might have on spiritually having an impact on public policy and systemic change in society. The second kind of truth is personal and subjective that is based on religion, faith, and mystery. This is permitted in polite society if it stays in its personal conduct lane. A church then should help make better people who in turn, once in a while, might influence a public person to make a better choice. If a church concentrates on saving eternal souls and not challenge the political order, it is safe in the arms of the state. The church in the first to third centuries refused such protection and underwent ten significant persecutions over that period. They believed in one truth that touched and ruled every part of life, both secular and sacred. The church that they want closed is like the earliest version of church which refused to allow itself to be marginalized in its beliefs.  Lesslie Newbigin “  But for the modern church to accept this status is to do exactly what the early church refused to do and what the Bible forbids us to do. It is , in effect, to deny the kingship of Christ over all of life-public and private. It is to deny that Christ is simply, finally, the truth by which all other claims to truth are to be tested. It is to abandon its calling. [1]

The church that they want closed will not behave itself, it will speak out of turn and its disciples will step into the fray and announce that Christ is God in person, he is the truth, and the spiritual truth he brings to the world in his incarnate self is the truth that rules all of humanity. It rules the sacred space and it rules the secular space. Only in Christ do you get an coherent explanation of what life is for, what his creation and his creatures are for-why this all exists, where it is going and how it will end. And finally, who will bring judgement, and what forgiveness, restoration, and final perfection will be like. It is beyond utopian dreams, beyond idealism, it something rather than nothing. It is a kingdom and Jesus is the King. 

            It is this church that will create and cultivate disciples that could hold a disintegrating world together. The church cannot wash its hands of the responsibility to step into public life where it will be fought against, demonized, and threatened. The church steps forward when it must protect their children from the destructive teachings of Critical Theory, of false history that teaches the young to hate their country and people of other races-and of course for people of advantage to loathe themselves and the country that has created their advantage. The cognitive elite power brokers don’t want to be challenged by a biblical morality, they want the church to hand out hot towels and warm blankets, and an extra bag of canned goods.  That is why everyone loves the Salvation Army but hates the Evangelicals. The Evangelicals will provide the food, the housing, the help after hurricanes, they are good for all that, but they will tell you the truth, at least they should. But they don’t stop there, they also will argue with you about a whole range of moral and political issues. There is no way to avoid this that is in any way in the Christian tradition or supported by the bible. So many who want the church to get out of the way is because they have converted to politics as their religion. They don’t mind your religion until it infringes and opposes their religion. Then like the barbarians in medieval times, they will take battleaxes to you. 

Tyrants don’t close churches because the churches comply. They go after those who don’t! Jesus didn’t go looking for a fight, but he always seemed to find one wherever he went. As his disciples, we should expect the same. 

[1] Foolishness to the Greeks, Lesslie Newbigin. Page 101, 1986, Eerdmans  Grand Rapids