Bonhoeffer: Single-Minded Obedience, Putting God First

As I’m reading Bonhoeffer, I recognize a conflict within me as I struggle with his discussion of the unarguable, literal demands for obedience to which Christ calls in scripture.  I’ve discussed before how I believe that Christ is not calling us to abandon our obligations and vows, to abandon marriage and children.  I also kind of have a hard time taking Bonhoeffer—unmarried and childless—seriously when he makes these demands (until I remember his commitment unto death to preach the gospel during the Nazi reign of terror….).  I get to Chapter 3 “Single-Minded Obedience” and find difficult quotes like this:

“…we in our sophistry differ altogether from the hearers of Jesus’ word of whom the Bible speaks.  If Jesus said to someone:  “Leave all else behind and follow me; resign your profession, quit your family, and the home of your fathers,” then He knew that to this call there was only one answer—the single-minded obedience, and that it is only to this obedience that the promise of fellowship with Jesus is given.  But we should probably argue thus:  “Of course we are meant to take the call of Jesus with ‘absolute seriousness,’ but after all the true way of obedience would be to continue all the more in our present occupations, to stay with our families, and serve him there in a spirit of true inward detachment.”….All the line we are trying to evade the obligation of single-minded, literal obedience.”

Bonhoeffer goes into a fun example-parable, with the tiniest bit of cynicism blended with poignant truth-telling.  He says “If a father sends his child to bed, the boy knows at once what he has to do. But suppose he has picked up a smattering of pseudo-theology.  In that case he would argue more or less like this:  “Father tells me to go to bed, but he really means that I am tired, and he does not want me to be tired.  I can overcome my tiredness just as well if I go out and play.  Therefore though father tells me to go to bed, he really means “Go out and play.”  If child tried such arguments on his father or a citizen on his government, they would both meet with a kind of language they could not fail to understand—in short they would be punished.” 

And I stand convicted in my own mind.

I replay scripts like this in my mind regularly. It is the voice of satan, discussed last chapter and last post, saying “did God really say?”, causing me to question, question, question and therefore escape the need for actual obedience.  I know I’m not the only one, we all play these games and see them played out around us in Christendom even more than the worldly-world itself.  “I know the bible says don’t get divorced, but what God really wants is for marriages and families to be stable and loving; so if divorce gets us to a more stable, loving place, that’s what needs to happen.”  “I know the bible says “don’t murder”, but when a woman has been raped, then aborting the resultant child is the only way to give that woman peace and healing.”  “I know the bible says to take care of the poor and fatherless, but giving money to that homeless person will just encourage him to keep on begging.”

Lord have mercy on our doubting, duplicitous minds.  We balk at obedience at every turn.

But there is a part of my own mind, a part that I only take out and examine in the full light of day on Tuesday afternoon’s in my psychiatrist’s office, or on Saturday’s at the coffee shop where I write posts for a blog that so far no one reads.  That part WANTS to leave my husband, my children and my job.  That part WANTS to “leave all for the sake of the call” and go live a simple life of near-poverty with no responsibilities and no obligations to others.  I could. I could file for divorce, retire from the military, live on half of my retirement pay (50/50 split, you know), apologize to the near-adult kids, get a cat and make plans to buy only thrift-store clothing, and to volunteer at libraries and soup kitchens….and call that “following the call of Christ to obedience, to forsake all.”   There is a siren-song appeal to these imagined alternate realities, this path not-yet taken that carries a thin, deceitful, spider-web shroud of “obedience.” 

But the Word of God speaks against this “call” when it says “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?  I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17: 9, 10) and where it says “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.  These are what make a man ‘unclean’….” (Matthew 15: 19, 20a).

I can’t trust my own heart.  In fact, a reasonable approach might be to say “Here is the call of Christ.  What does my heart want to do, what is my response that comes first (because my sinful, selfish human heart will always ‘instinctively’ put me, me, me first)?  Then I should probably do the opposite of that.”

The heart is deceitful above all things…who can understand it?  More than that, who dares to trust it?  The part of me that hears the “call of Christ” to abandon marriage and family obligations and rejoices in that call—that part is deceitful, my heart is a source of evil thoughts and cannot be trusted.  This is why, while not the source of our salvation, the clear demands of Gods law for holiness shine a light on our innate darkness, showing us how far we are naturally from His righteous requirements.  

In discussion with my psychiatrist who is also an interesting philosopher and conversationalist, I learned about St Augustine’s “love, rightly ordered.”  We discussed it briefly, but the appropriateness of the concept occurred to me again in reading this chapter in Bonoeffer, so I googled it (Dr Google being the last refuge of the coffee-shop scholar) and found a brief summary of this concept as excerpted from “City of God” (which I need to add to my “want to read” list….).  

“And thus beauty, which is indeed God’s handiwork, but only a temporal, carnal, and lower kind of good, is not fitly loved in preference to God, the eternal, spiritual, and unchangeable Good. When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man; and so with every created thing. For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately,”

And

“It is this which some one has briefly said in these verses in praise of the Creator:

These are Thine, they are good,
because Thou art good who didst create them.
There is in them nothing of ours,
unless the sin we commit when we forget the order of things,
and instead of Thee love that which Thou hast made.”

“It is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately.”  That is, in or out of order.  Out of the correct, Godly, righteous order.  Which from the beginning has meant putting God first.  And which from the beginning, humanity has failed miserably to do.  We have repeatedly been told the expectation, but our hearts are deceitful above all things:  “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of slavery, you shall have no other gods before me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything…You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God….Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy….” (Exodus 20: 1-8, selected).  And again “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done…” (Matthew 6: 9, 10).

The right order means that God is God, and we recognize that we are not.  More than that, we must continually reflect on the holiness of God and the sinfulness of our own hearts, meditating on what the command of Christ for obedience looks like in light of that holiness and in contrast to our sinful inclinations.  

Bonhoeffer doubles back on himself a bit, addressing literal obedience and obedience in faith as not exclusive nor as to be taken separately, but saying “We have to hold the two together in mind all the time.”  Bonhoeffer discusses how the ultimate goal of the command of Christ is the “aim of making the man have faith in Him, that is to say, He calls him into fellowship with himself.  In the last resort what matters is not what the man does, but only his faith in Jesus as the Son of God and Mediator.  At all events poverty or riches, marriage or celibacy, a profession or lack of it, have in the last resort nothing to do with it—everything depends on faith alone.  So far then we are quite right; it is possible to have wealth and the possession of this worlds’ goods and to believe in Christ—so that a man may have this world’s goods as one who has them not. But this is the ultimate possibility of the Christian life….It is by no means the first and simplest possibility.”  

Bonhoeffer talks about this “impossible possibility” which is to interpret the call of Jesus in a “paradoxical way”—of both a call to obedience and a call to faith.  “It is just this paradoxical element which exposes His call to the constant danger of being transformed into its very opposite, and used as an excuse for shirking the necessity of concrete obedience.”  He describes a person who feels that it would be very simple to literally obey the commands of Christ; Bonhoeffer accuses such a one as likely holding on to his or her own personal motivations, such that their obedience to Christ does not actually represent submission and obedience to the call of Christ but rather attainment of their own personal objectives and ideals.  

He gives what feels like a very modern example, that of someone who abandons personal wealth apparently in obedience to the call of Christ to take on poverty, but in actuality it is a response to a personal ideal.  We find this exact concept alive and well today, where people espouse simplification and reject consumerism—this is done not out of obedience to Christ’s call to give all to the poor, but to live out an ideal (such as preserving the environment) or to attain a personal benefit (a peace that comes with less clutter, or financial freedom).  Are these terrible goals or terrible outcomes—by no means!  But if they are actually the objective, the motivation for the change, then that is not real obedience—that is a calculated cost-benefit analysis wherein the call of Christ to abandon wealth is made appealing by the fringe benefits of peace of mind and lessened impact on the earth.  Jesus says in Matthew 6:33 that if we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, everything else will be added.  Again, this is the primacy of God and faithful obedience to Christ’s command—every blessing follows after.   

This scenario also depicts a risk which Bonhoeffer describes at the end of this short but intense chapter, that of making “grace” into a form of law or legalism.  He says that, if we use “grace” as an abstract principle by which interpret all of scripture, we end up in a weird place where grace is a type of legalism—the grace-filled, grace-purposed call of Christ becomes a legalistic demand.  He encourages us to instead see “…the whole word of the Scripture summons us to follow Jesus.” The very last sentence of the chapter is “Salvation through following Jesus is not something we men can achieve for ourselves—but with God all things are possible.”  Bonhoeffer is quoting Matthew 19: 26, the ‘camel through the eye of a needle’ reference, and reminding us that even our ability to following the literal call of our Savior is by grace, by His power and will and Spirit.  

1)      Consider the story of the child, twisting the command of his father to go to bed.  This is reflective of a sinful, worldly perspective and also the questioning voice of satan.  How has your mind twisted the commands of God to serve your own needs, to justify your own decisions? 

2)      Examine your heart.  Where have you failed to literally, truly, concretely obey the call of Christ or obeyed only because obedience met a selfish objective?  Confess your sinful inclinations before God, knowing that He has forgiven you for Jesus’ sake.  Ask specifically for wisdom to see though the duplicity and deceit of your own heart, and for the inspired ability to truly obey in faith. 

3)      Consider the quotes from St Augustine, particularly in light of the Ten Commandments and the specific demand to have no other gods—nothing of greater reliance or importance—that God our Father.  Is there anything in your life that you are putting above God?  Something that you rely on more than God, treasure more than Him, fear losing more than you fear being alienated from Christ?  Pray that God would “Create in [you] a pure heart…and a steadfast spirit…” (Psalm 52: 10), one which truly places Him first in your life and heart. Praise Him for the promise that through Him, even the camel can go through the eye of the needle—and even those of us who doubt, waver and obey only half-heartedly, can be blessed with saving faith.