Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Robert Coles. Age: adult. Library section 2D: Lutheranism, Lutheran Writings. Coles, Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard, has written a short biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, followed by short selections of Bonhoeffer’s writings from his classics, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, as well as letters from prison. The last letter, to his mother, is such a sweet and thankful one, and bittersweet, knowing that there was little chance he would survive. Bonhoeffer came from a well-to-do German family, his father being a reknowned neuropsychiatrist.
When Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer created an underground “confessing church” which worked to keep religion alive in a totalitarian regime. He also plotted to kill Hitler. He had several chances to sit out the war in America or England but as the war intensified, he felt the need to return to his nation to stand against Naziism. I wonder how many of us would have chosen to do that. No matter the hurt, pain, or fear, Bonhoeffer believed that Jesus was there to lead believers into life with Him. He felt that Jesus held him and all of us to a certain moral and spiritual mark, and Bonhoeffer was prepared to act on that as few others were. Bonhoeffer knew that to truly follow Christ in that time and place was to sign on to a severe disruption in his life (with the possibility of torture and death). He was spied upon, eventually arrested, and sent to a series of prisons and concentration camps. He was shot just a few weeks before Hitler committed suicide. The Cost of Discipleship speaks to this call to follow Christ no matter what. Life Together was about his underground church. ( )