Christ demands all including our lives. Do not replace Christ with humanism or materialism or place them in dualism with God, which is not God’s freedom.
Think deeply. Teach and argue, you cannot be friends if you do not argue. Be scientific when discipling yourself in Christ.
God loves humans. God loves animals. If animals help us love God and others more then God’s love will allow both to live on in heaven.
Act and being, in the moment, now. These are the ideals that Bonhoeffer believed with the full moral weight of his life.
Conversely, in Bonhoeffer’s time Nazism was a perversion that sparked in Germany in part because the Nazi’s exploited an explosion of materialism and troubles that Martin Luther personally experienced in the final years of his life.
Luther had severe gastrointestinal problems that plagued his writings in the end. His doctors put him on kosher foods as well as creative concoctions, like manure and garlic, which he lashed out at. Luther, a great German theological scholar and the force behind the printing press revolution used his gifts with words to complain loudly and poison his moral faith with physiological pain.
The Nazi propagandist, H. Goebbels, used Luther’s conflicted words to whip up rage in Germans and drive antisemitism. At the same time he worshipped his man Hitler. Goebbels so loved Hitler that he even named his six children, so their first names all started with H. Goebbels loved Hitler and his children so much in fact that along with Hitler he had them all commit suicide at the end of the war.
Another sentiment that Goebbels and Hitler exploited to turn the German people into their killing movement was hatred over the paralyzing indemnity of the Versailles Treaty. The German people were entitled to be pissed with that treaty, perhaps it was the only opinion Hitler and Bonhoeffer shared.
Why all this history as I sadly pack my bags to leave Germany and return to my broken country. I’ll tell it to you plainly. Time has reshuffled the deck. America is Nazi Germany today, and I see it all the more clearly here.
Again I testify that held animosity in my heart for Germany once because their ancestors were behind the atrocities of the good war my paternal grandfather died in, along with Japan and Ukraine. These nations that never wronged me in my lifetime were triggers of discrimination.
Today I also testify my prejudice against them is gone. Largely because of environmentalism and my commitment to becoming a better scientist I have actually come to greatly admire Germany and Japan. I have come to commiserate with the Ukrainian people’s courage and cause.
In this new head space to read about Bonhoeffer now, to see his struggle and hear his words. My heart has no bounds. The same for the young scientists I met at this conference.
Again I cry out to the world, for the good within us all, we must always defeat propagandists. We must scrutinize our own hearts and minds constantly as well, and we must always stand up honorably for the light in others because we never know which breath will be our last.
Moreover, the same goes for governments. When our leaders tell us we must hate the immigrants because they steal our freedoms we must not listen.
When our government tells us who we can worship and love we must resist. If you find your faith being more in a party or a man, then let go of that devotion, and return to God.
Love your creator, trust your empathy, be for others.
Those who love their own lives more than their principles stand to lose both.
It only takes a small group of committed people to sustain or destroy our chance to make this old world, a new world.