Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Cheap Grace

Let the Christian rest content with his worldliness and with this renunciation of any higher standard than the world. He is living for the sake of the world rather than for the sake of grace. Let him be comforted and rest assured in his possession of this grace - for grace alone does everything. Instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the consolations of his grace!

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sins departs.

Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must the asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.

Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Bonhoeffer

"I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I tried to read his "Cost of Discipleship." I wasn't grown up enough to wrap myself around this text. Last night we watched the 2003 documentary about him. It's time to give him another try, especially now that I am working myself around the ability of my country to allow genocide to happen--Rwanda and Darfur.

Thank God for Molly

"It's a joke that the Right wing claims it is against 'judicial
activists.' What they want are judicial activists who agree with
them."

- Molly Ivins, syndicated columnist

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/21873

A brilliant and lucid look at the whole "activist" judges scam.

Right to Lifers

"The right-to-lifers believe that the right to life begins with conception and ends at birth."
- Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA)

Christians

"What these self-avowed Christians do not acknowledge -- and what the American public seems little aware of -- is that the war they are waging is actually against other people calling themselves Christians. To simplify: Right-wing and fundamentalist Christians are really at war with left-wing and mainstream Christians. It is a battle over both the meaning and practice of Christianity as well as over the definition and destiny of the republic. Secular humanism is a bogeyman, a smoke screen obscuring the right-wing Christians' struggle for supremacy...

"The present war within the Christian fold is perhaps more threatening to the republic than any of the previous intramural disputes. Right-wing religious zealots, working in partnership with the secularists who have advised President Bush, are a threat to the most fundamental of American principles. The founders of our nation welcomed and planned for spirited debate over public policies, including the role of the judiciary. But as sons of the Enlightenment, they looked to found a republic in which the outcome of those debates would turn on reason and evidence, not on disputed religious dogma. They planned wisely for principles that are now under wide assault.

"All Americans, of whatever religious or non-religious persuasion, need to be on the alert to preserve those principles. The burden falls especially heavily on the mainstream Christians who are slowly awakening to the gravity of the challenge facing them. Too long tolerant of their brethren, too much given to forgiveness rather than to confrontation, they need to mount a spirited, nationwide response to what constitutes a dangerous distortion of Christian truths and a frightening threat to the republic they love."


from ". . . Smearing Christian Judges" by Paul Gaston
The Washington Post
Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/
A10687-2005Apr22.html

Madison's the Man

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
- James Madison

Kierkegaard: 'A bunch of scheming swindlers'

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to
understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers.
We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very
well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act
accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget
everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God,
you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein
lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian
scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend
itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be
good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it
is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even
dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

- Soren Kierkegaard