Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
New York, New York: HarperOne (1993). 122 pp.
Also see part 1 and part 2.
Chapter Three: The Day Alone
This was a sobering chapter. “The Christian community is not
a spiritual sanitorium.” Here we are exhorted to beware of community if we
cannot be alone, and to beware of aloneness if we cannot be in community. “We
recognize, then, that only as we are within the fellowship can we be alone, and
only he that is alone can live in the fellowship.” (77) This paradox proposed
by Bonhoeffer deserves additional thought.
The guidelines for our time spent alone as proposed are
helpful. Meditation, prayer, and intercession are worthy pursuits that embrace
both our personal relationship with the redeemer and our corporate
responsibility to our brothers and sisters in the church. I appreciated the
emphasis placed on the value of this exercise, and its use: “…the strength of
aloneness and the strength of the fellowship is solely the strength of the
Word of God, which is addressed to the individual in the fellowship.” (89)
Chapter Four: Ministry
We are a sinful people, and even when pursuing seemingly
altruistic purposes we tend to be driven by our own agendas and desires. The
conversation on page 91 concerning how we naturally tend towards jockeying for
a position of superiority over our brother brought to mind what Bonhoeffer had
to say about our nature on page 31. “The essence of human community of spirit
is darkness … It is the deep night that hovers over the sources of all human
action, even over all noble and devout impulses.”
Another trend in some of our larger churches is to engage in
pew-sitting, not bothering to use our gifts for the good of the body. After
all, we have paid staff to do that type of thing. Bonhoeffer rejects this
spiritual complacency. “In a Christian community everything depends upon
whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain.” (94) We are all
part of one body, and we all need each other to function properly as the body
of Christ. When 90% of the body is sitting idle allowing the other 10% to do
the work, we have severe dysfunction. This reminds me of something I heard a
professor at DTS say: “If 10 people in your large church didn’t show up one
Sunday, would your pastoral team start desperately searching for them? Or would
it go unnoticed? How about if you woke up one morning and 5% of your vital
organs were gone? That’s the analogy.”
No comments:
Post a Comment