Ideological Fortress & Bonehoffer to CSC

Ideological Fortress (A Modest Explanation*)

I have an idea for you all. The best way to keep your world intact is to mark off your own territory and never let yourself see outside of it. Why don’t you come up with a belief system that puts you at the center of salvation! Yes, that will be perfect. Now, the only reason you will ever talk to others is in hopes of converting them! The whole time they are trying to tell you about their life, you will not really be able to listen, right! You will just be looking for just the right door to jump in with your pitch!

Actually, the best chance you will get is when people are scared or down on their luck. So you will always be waiting for that low moment or talking to someone who is struggling.** This will only further your ideas that it is people outside your four walls of ideology who need your salvation. You will never really hear from the strong ones right! And if you do, you will just think they are lying because they don’t have your salvation.

Ok, if you are already doing this, you should be all set. Just make sure you don’t have a breakdown and really don’t make sure you don’t have any doubts and really really make sure you don’t break any of the arbitrary cardinal rules of your belief world … Because if you do, you will either have to kill something in yourself to stay on the inside or they will boot you to the curb.

Good luck!

*This is a reference to Johnathan Swift-A Modest Proposal. I do not think all religious people, church people, or churches act like this, but this or elements of this does go on and, in my view, is not called out enough.

**”Or should we jump on a few unfortunates in their hour of weakness and commit, so to speak, religious rape?” Letters and Papers from Prison. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. April 30, 1944 P. 363.

A Word to the Compromised Selfish Church (CSC) from Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer wrote a sermon for the baptism of his namesake nephew from prison where he addresses the trouble of the compromised German church this little one would grow up in (infant baptism). Here is one of the things he says at the end:

You are being baptized today as a Christian. All those great and ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be pronounced over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to baptize will be carried out, without your understanding any of it.

But we too are being thrown back all the way to the beginnings of our understanding. What reconciliation and redemption, rebirth and Holy Spirit, love for one’s enemies, cross and resurrection, what it means to live in Christ and follow Christ, all that is so difficult and remote that we hardly dare speak of it anymore … This is our fault. Our church has been fighting during these years only for its self-preservation, as if it were an end in itself. It has become incapable of bringing the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and to the world. So the words we used before must lose their power, be silenced, and we can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings. All Christian thinking, talking, and organizing must be born anew, out of that prayer and action.

Letters and Papers from Prison. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. May 1944 P. 389.