Political murder and martyrdom
I mentioned yesterday that I'm reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who stood up to Hitler and was executed for it. It seems to me we should learn from people like this, those driven by their faith to do what they can in their particular context to defend human life and dignity against brutality. Well, earlier this week marked the 13th anniversary of the death of another faith leader, this one in Guatemala, who was killed for his tireless work on behalf of the brutalized poor in the context of a civil war that claimed something like 200,000 lives.
Once the war had finally ended in 1996, Bishop Juan José Gerardi issued a report documenting who was responsible for the lion's share of atrocities during the conflict. Two days later he was killed. From The Latin Americanist:
Two former military officers and a priest were convicted in 2001 of masterminding Gerardi's murder though the Guatemalan archdiocese issued a call this week for authorities to actively investigate his death. "The Catholic Church awaits for justice to be served against all those involved in the vile assassination," said the director of the archdiocese's human rights division.
The Latin Americanist also shared the following video, featuring a short interview with the author of a book about the murder of the bishop, in which he describes how he first learned about the atrocities in Guatemala and how the weight of this knowledge has impacted his life and work.
Bonhoeffer on the Christian response to evil
For the past couple of weeks I've been reading Eric Metaxas' massive and excellent biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy about the German pastor and theologian who was ultimately executed for his collaboration in a plot to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer has fascinated me for a while. I count three of his works (The Cost of Discipleship, Life Together and Ethics) among my very favorite books and I've long pondered the complexity of a spiritual journey that leads someone from planning to visit Gandhi in India to learn about nonviolence to return instead to Germany to participate in an assassination plot.
All sorts of people want to claim Bonhoeffer as their own (and probably, neither Metaxas nor myself are exceptions) but what I love about Bonhoeffer is that even with all his complexity and seeming contradictions, he doesn't shy away from hard questions and answers about what it means to be faithful to Christ amidst the harsh realities of our world.
I'll leave you to chew on this paragraph from Ethics that I came across last summer, written during Hitler's rule but as timely a warning as ever for us today:
When evil becomes powerful in the world, it infects the Christian, too, with the poison of radicalism. It is Christ's gift to the Christian that he should be reconciled with the world as it is, but now this reconciliation is accounted a betrayal and denial of Christ. It is replaced by bitterness, suspicion and contempt for men and the world. In the place of the love that believes all, bears all and hopes all, in the place of the love which loves the world in its very wickedness with the love of God, there is now the pharisaical denial of love to evil, and the restriction of love to the closed circle of the devout. Instead of the open Church of Jesus Christ, which serves the world till the end, there is now some allegedly primitive Christian ideal of a Church, which in its turn confuses the reality of the living Jesus Christ with the realization of a Christian idea. Thus a world which has become evil succeeds in making the Christians become evil too.
Formational and relational transformation
One of the dangers you encounter when reading a book about the Christian life is that you underline all the most challenging parts of it and think of all the ‘lukewarm’ Christians out there it applies to. I first remember falling into this trap while reading The Cost of Discipleship by Bonhoeffer and being amazed at how applicable it was to the lives of so many people I could think of. This was pretty ridiculous, of course, seeing as I was no better than any of them, and that before I can ever call anyone else to discipleship I need to have first committed to going there myself.
I kept that in mind as I read The Fruitful Life: The Overflow of God’s Love Through You by Jerry Bridges. He writes books that urge deeper understandings and practices of discipleship. I read his classic The Pursuit of Holiness on a trip to Africa several years ago and found it to be a tremendous challenge to the sort of haphazard attitude toward discipleship that I can easily fall into.
This book is about the fruit of the Spirit. In recent years I have come to see just how relational the evidences of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives really are, and I have been trying to read the Bible and other books through that lens. Too often, when it comes to application time at the end of the sermon we are asked to examine what’s going on inside our heart and mind, and whether we have been spending our quiet time with God, and based on these questions to gauge our spiritual health. There’s nothing wrong with this sort of introspection. But if the Spirit of God is alive in us, the fruit isn't just going to show up in these very personal, private ways. It’s going to turn our relationships upside down. Changed hearts will mean changed lives, and our lives necessarily involve other people.
To be honest, I expected to have to read this into Bridges’ reflections, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he is eager to make this point as well. He writes that the fruit of the Spirit is both formational and relational, and that “several of these character traits have a definite outward focus to other people� (p. 8). In fact, in Bridges’ work with the college ministry of The Navigators, he says that they are intentional about making sure that when they help to lead students in discipleship it always involves serving others. Discipleship does not happen in a vacuum.
Chapter by chapter, character trait by character trait, Bridges leads us through reflections that both challenge and encourage us as we seek to be good soil in which the fruit of the Spirit can grow in our lives. The Spirit’s work takes root in the deepest places of our being, transforming us at the core, but it doesn’t stop there. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control will eventually begin to emerge in the lives and communities of transformed people, and the world will never be the same.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."
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