The Cost of Discipleship

I just finished the Eric Metaxas biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm feeling introspective, which is a good thing after finishing a book.

I love biographies. But it was more than a biography, in some ways. It testified to Bonhoeffer's love for Christ and how it drove him to do the things he did in the face of true evil. For such a young man, what wisdom is to be gained from him:

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.”

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”
― The Cost of Discipleship

“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”
―Letters and Papers from Prison

What can I say about this? I think of the cost he paid, but also of how he lived his life. I do not mean to compare his life to Christ's. He is a fallen man. The fascinating thing is that God placed Bonhoeffer in the exact time and the exact place he needed to be, in Germany, as a deeply devout Christian, and one who would resist the Nazi evil in both word and deed. In many ways I feel like how he approached life is exactly the answer to what Francis Schaeffer asked, "How Shall We Then Live?" How should we approach life, as Christians? It is one thing to love Christ in word, but how do we love Christ in deed?

I am not dealing with Hitler in my day-to-day. So how do I apply this to myself? I'm a mom, a manager at an insurance software vendor, I'm a daughter, a sister, a friend, a girlfriend. I'm not a missionary, a tract giver, a church planter.

And here's what I realize.

Christ is here through it all. I learn of my own sin, my own weaknesses, my own inabilities in these roles. I learn that I want to be defensive, that I get frustrated, that I seek material comfort, that I desire my own gain, that my sin penetrates everything I do. And I know I have much to learn, that Christ has so much more work to do in my heart, and I am not really close to learning just a bit of what Dietrich learned in his life. That Christian fellowship draws us closer to Him and that we need it. That building up others for the sake of Christ is its own reward. That the shackles of this life are really okay, and they are meant to drive us to seek him, and we actually need them. This world cannot be lived in a glass tower, but we must be a part of it and we cannot separate ourselves from it because we must irrevocably learn from it, and we really do not have to separate ourselves because nothing, no nothing, separates us from the love of Christ Jesus.