Gutter Journalism & God at the limits

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Here are the quotes related to the writing scrap from yesterday's post. You will see that he is taking these in a different direction, but they are certainly rich quotes, worth seeing in their full. He is responding to the predicament of the church on the run from culture changes, specifically science and politics whereas I am critiquing my own past pastoral life and whether pastors have the room or the maturity to work beyond the surface crisis or mere church attendance.

"The displacement of God from the world, and from the public part of human life, led to the attempt to keep his place secure at least in the sphere of the 'personal', the 'inner', and the 'private'. And as every man still has a private sphere somewhere, that is where he is thought to be most vulnerable. The secrets known to a man's valet--that is, to put it crudely, the range of his intimate life, from prayer to his sexual life--have become the hunting-ground of modern pastoral workers. In that way they resemble (though with quite different intentions) the dirtiest gutter journalists ... In the one case it's social, financial, or political blackmail and in the other, religious blackmail. Forgive me, but I can't put it more mildly.

.... What I am driving at is that God should not be smuggled in somewhere, in the very last, secret place that is left." (From letter to Bethge dated July 8 1944)


"I often ask myself why a 'Christian instinct' frequently draws me more to the religioinless people than to the religious, by which I don't in the least mean with any evangelizing intention, but, I might almost say, 'in brotherhood'. While I'm often reluctant to mention God by name to religious people--because that name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I feel myself to be slightly dishonest (it's particularly bad when others start to talk in religious jargon; I then dry up almost completely and feel awkward and uncomfortable) -- to people with no religion I can on occasion mention him by name quite calmly and as a matter of course. Religious people speak of God at a point where human knowledge is at an end (or sometimes when they’re too lazy to think further), or when human strength fails. Actually, it’s a deus ex machina that they’re always bringing on the scene, either to appear to solve insoluble problems or to provide strength when human powers fail, thus always exploiting human weakness or human limitations. Inevitably that lasts only until human beings become powerful enough to push the boundaries a bit further and God is no longer needed as deus ex machina. To me, talking about human boundaries has become a dubious proposition anyhow. (Is even death still really a boundary, since people today hardly fear it anymore, or sin, since people hardly comprehend it?) It always seems to me that we leave room for God only out of anxiety. I’d like to speak of God not at the boundaries but in the center, not in weakness but in strength, thus not in death and guilt but in human life and human goodness. ... This bars the way to all escapism in the guise of piety. " (From letter to Bethge dated April 30, 1944)

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