“The church confesses that it has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people, oppression, hatred, and murder, and that it has not found ways to hasten to their aid. It is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.”[1]

     These words were penned by an imprisoned pastor who was suffering under the hands of a tyrannical regime, bent on destroying their own people. He had witnessed the church turning a blind eye, and he had experienced an unwillingness to let their hands be soiled by “someone else’s problem.”  He lamented the failure of religious leaders to abandon self-preservation by reminding them, in word and un deed that “The church is the church only when it exists for others.”[2]

     The pastor was Dietrich Bonheoffer and he wrote the words above during the years leading up to his execution in a Nazi concentration camp. His words fit equally well into our contemporary dilemma as we face yet another tyrannical regime, another massacre of the innocent of epic proportion, and a war-weary public that is either too exhausted, or too apathetic to respond.

     Key to any discussion about Syria for Christians must be an examination of the fundamental relationship between the church and the government. Herein lies one of the greatest contributions Bonhoeffer makes to us who bear the name of Christ. Few people struggled as earnestly to unravel the mysterious relationship between the two in the way that he was forced to. The Third Reich was able to blur the lines between these fundamental institutions in dramatic ways by blending together national redefinitions of patriotism, salvation, and power. Many churches capitulated.

     Admittedly, there are significant ways in which the current events in Syria do not parallel the historic catastrophe of Nazi Germany. Yet, much of what Bonhoeffer preaches to the church in that hour does find application in our current ethical struggle. Most notably in the West is the way in which the church has often struggled with a biblical understanding of their political responsibility, erring frequently towards one extreme or the other. On the one hand finding solace by removing themselves entirely from political affairs, or on the other, meddling to the point of usurping the government and legislating morality.

     To clarify, Bonhoeffer suggests that the government is the institution that bears the sword on behalf of the oppressed, and that the church stands as the institution who holds the government responsible to that task. The linchpin, Bonhoeffer notes, is Jesus Christ.

Jesus showed that government can only serve Him, precisely because it is power which comes down from above, no matter whether it discharges its office well or badly. Both acquitting him of guilt and in delivering Him up to be crucified, government was obliged to show that it stands in the service of Jesus Christ. Thus it was precisely through the cross that Jesus won back his dominion over government (Col. 2:15), and, at the end of all things, “all dominion and government and power” will be both abolished and preserved through him. So long as the earth continues, Jesus will always be at the same time Lord of all government and head of the church.[3] 

     In this way the church can, and should, support the government, when they act on behalf of injustice and loss of innocent life. This is not a call to “blind obedience,” and to suggest such would be to completely misunderstand the cultural context from which Bonhoeffer wrote. Let us remember that he was killed for his role in an assassination attempt on the leader of his own government. Bonhoeffer would be the first to readily concede that there are times when the church is called, precisely because of its regard for the oppressed, particularly the religiously oppressed, to stand against their government.

       I readily admit that the myriad of highly complicated political and theological issues surrounding whether or not to initiate a missile strike on Syria will not be handled in a lone blog entry, and certainly not one written by me. But I do add to my own voice to Dietrich’s when he reminds all who claim the name of Christ to consider this: 

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

  

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[1] Ethics, 114

[2] Letters and Papers from Prison, 382

[3] Ethics, 333

Staff Sgt. Ty Michael Carter is the most recent recipient of the hallowed Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award the military can bestow on a soldier. He earned it amidst a terrible day of battle in the baking heat of Afghanistan when an enemy ambush forced him to head into a hail of shrapnel and drag his fallen soldiers to safety. Earlier in the week Carter sat down with NPR’s Renee Montagne to talk about his experience. In a particularly vulnerable moment Montagne asked Carter the following question:

MONTAGNE: “You have every right to feel pride in your actions of the day that has earned you the Medal of Honor. I'm just wondering - it being such a public award, if there are also a mixture of emotions that you're feeling?”

CARTER: “Oh, big time. Even though this award is an awesome honor and a great privilege, in order to get such a prestigious award, you have to be in a situation where your soldiers - or your family, your brothers - are suffering and dying around you, and then you just did everything you could to either save lives or prevent further loss. And so I would never tell any soldier or service member, hey, go out and get the Medal of Honor because of the amount of pain and loss and tears that - has to be shed in order to receive it.”

As the words spilled out of my car speakers I found myself connecting to Carter’s reflection in deeply personal ways. This is the story of my life. I long for glory without cost, freedom without suffering, and joy without pain. It brought to mind the heroes of the faith whose lives have been held before us as examples of true discipleship. Missionaries like Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Bruce Olson, Gladys Aylward, Amy Carmichael, Hudson Taylor, Brother Andrew or David Livingstone. Saints of the past like Perpetua, Felicity, or Polycarp. Reformers like Wycliffe, Huff, and Tyndale along with more modern heroes like Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Mother Teresa. Their lives beg the same question, “would I be willing to endure what they did to achieve for the Kingdom all the fruit that their lives produced?” Do I really want the honor? 

I want their story, but without many of chapters the Author has used to write it.   

And I am deeply concerned that this is all too often the story of the Church here in the West, holding out the promise of abundant life, the promise of blessing…free of charge. “Cheap grace” as Bonhoeffer would say. In contrast to this Dietrich reminds us that the grace offered to us is quite expensive, having purchased us life in return for the death of an innocent man. It is “costly because it cost God the life of his son…and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.” (The Cost of Discipleship, p. 48)

Carter’s reflection on the high cost of the medal pointed me back to this great truth for us all that if we desire to conform to the image of Christ, if we long for the honor of bearing his name before the watching world, and if we anticipate the privileged of living in his Kingdom, there is going to be a great deal of dying, suffering, sacrifice and (most likely for me) great humiliation and failure, before any sort remotely recognizable image bearing comes into view.

Of course, Ty Carter could have easily avoided the consequences of war. He could have escaped the PTSD that plagues him now and all of the sleepless nights and haunting nightmares associated with it. He could be free today from anxiety attacks and moments of panic, confusion and incoherence. He could have avoided the suffering and the ultimate cost of his honor by never enlisting in the first place. He could have been at home last week watching someone else receive the military's highest honor. He would have been safe...but the men he rescued during that infamous day in Afghanistan would not.  

Perhaps Jesus was on to something of deep significance when he declared "whoever loses his life, will find it." Or as the famous missionary and martyr Jim Elliot once wrote, "he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot loose." Or, as Apostle Paul reminds us most bluntly, "You are not your own, you were bought at a price." The price was not cheap. Your commitment to the purposes for which you were purchased shouldn't be either, regardless of the cost.  

There were plenty of things interesting about President Obama’s trip to Africa last week. A black man standing in the place where people were once kidnapped from their tribal homes because of the color of their skin. A black President of a country that once held quite a bit of stock in the business of the buying and selling of those kidnapped people. Or when Obama spent time on the island where his hero, Mandela spent decades of his life fighting in shackles for the kind of equality in his own country that would eventually lead to his election as a global leader. 

Interwoven into those two stories, the subplot of Obama’s time in Africa was a new perspective on how best to help the continent of Africa in the coming years. In his speech to a crowd in Cape Town Obama shared his hope that the U.S. would seek the kind of "partnership that empowers Africans to access greater opportunity in their own lives." If those words failed to be clear enough, Obama continued, "Ultimately I believe Africans should make up their own minds about what serves African interests."

This language of “empowerment” is a healthy turn for American policy, particularly as it relates to historical U.S.  relationships with the poor in the global south. What Obama’s speech alluded to was putting an end to the kind of “charity” that can oftentimes become crippling for those who receive it.  

It brought to mind for me the work of Robert D. Lupton, founder of FCS Urban Ministries (Focused Community Strategies) in Atlanta, the voice of the Urban Perspectives newsletter, and the author of Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life. For 40 years Lupton has served on the frontlines of urban ministry activism and has seen more than his fair share of “charity-gone-awry.” In his book Toxic Charity he writes, 

“In the United States there is a growing scandal that we refuse to see and actually actively perpetuate. What Americans avoid facing is that while we are very generous in charitable giving, much of that money is either wasted or actually harms the people it is targeted to help.”

Speaking specifically of the Africa which Obama recently visited, he adds statistical data to our President’s anecdotal evidence of the damage of hand-outs. 

“In the last 50 years the continent [of Africa] has received 1 Trillion in benevolent aid. How effective has this aid been? Country by country, Africans are far worse off today than they were a half-century ago. Overall per-capita income is lower today than in the 1970’s. Over half of Africa’s population of 700 million lives on less than $1 a day. Life expectancy has stagnated, and adult literacy has plummeted below pre-1980 levels.”

This is not “God helps those who help themselves” theology. It is not a call for dis-compassionate individualism, or support for survival of the fittest. What lies behind the statements of Obama and Lupton is a fundamental understanding that whenever we do that which someone is able to do for themselves we rob them of their dignity and humanity. Again Lupton observes:

“For all our efforts to eliminate poverty- our entitlements, our programs, our charities- we have succeeding only in creating a permanent underclass, dismantling their family structures, and eroding their ethic of work. And our poor continue to become poorer.”          

Perhaps most sinister of all is that our primary motivation for doing so, even as Christians, is to feel better about ourselves, or to improve our standing with God. Subconsciously, many of us are thankful the poor don’t ever seem to disappear because we need someone to serve in order that we may continue to justify ourselves. Admittedly, this is a hard word to hear, and it causes me to reevaluate exactly why I do what I do, and for whom. Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled with these issues deeply in his WWII Germany. Watching the suffering of billions he concluded in the end that it would not do to simply tend to the effects of injustice when he could spend himself, literally spend his own life, fighting against its causes. It is my prayer that his convictions might become my own, and those of the Church.    

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

According to Jim Roope of CNN, “One of the most intense battlefields in today's gun control debate is happening inside Christianity. Christians of every stripe; conservative, moderate and liberal tend to agree with the Gospel's message of love and peace. However, they don’t agree on what that Gospel message means.” Here are a few important confessions at the outset of this brief discussion. One, I don’t own a gun, but I am not morally opposed to it. I have shot a few times during my life, at inanimate objects like cans, TVs and clay pigeons. Frankly, I like loud noises, fire, and watching stuff blow up. Two, as a general rule, I don’t hunt, although I am not opposed to it either. I tried to shoot a blackbird once during a Thanksgiving I spent with my friend Matt Tucker in Ephrata, WA…but I missed miserably, despite multiple attempts. Three, I believe firmly that views on education, alcohol, the end-times, politics, facial hair and gun control do not determine your commitment to Jesus Christ. With that said I do want to take aim at Jim Roope’s comments above about why there might be so much disagreement among Christians about guns these days. I don’t share Roope’s opinion that it centers on a disagreement with the meaning of the gospel. For starters, I think he is far too naïve to assert that all Christians even agree with his lifeless and powerless definition of gospel as merely “love and peace.” Secondly, if the House of God is really the place where the gun-control debate is playing out most ferociously these days I would suggest it is precisely because it is Christians who recognize that the gospel is not just a message of love and peace but also one of war and punishment, grace and truth, judgment and pardon, liberation and battle. Christians are followers of a God who frees slaves, acquits thieves and forgives whores while simultaneously threatening to cast away others who won’t do likewise. He calls sinners his sons and daughters and refers to religious leaders as white washed tombs and children of Satan. Christians are indeed a people who see peace and love in the gospel, but they are also people who know that the good news came by way of murder. I say this to guard us all from the temptation to oversimplify incredibly complicated and highly emotional issues like gun control. I also say this to suggest something that may sound rather relativistic to some postmodern-sensitive ears and it is this, that maybe we all don’t need to agree. The truth of the matter is that for centuries Christians (and as many non-Christians as well) have spent countless hours attempting to establish ethical systems that could be adopted to abolish any myriad of moral dilemmas humans face every day. The problem has always been, especially for Christians that the Bible would always end up serving as one giant exception clause for nearly every ethical dilemma. Whether the issue was lying, war, murder, deception, genocide, retribution, stealing or breaking the rules of the Sabbath, the Bible offered multiple narratives that suggested, under the right circumstances, many things forbidden become the will of God. These realities lead Dietrich Bonhoeffer to declare that a true Christian ethic was one in which believers attempted to discern nothing but the will of God. The exhausting task of constantly determining “right from wrong,” Bonhoeffer argued, was the work of Pharisees, not spirit-filled followers of Christ. Indeed it was the application of this very ethic that allowed Bonhoeffer to move from the position of a pacifist to a secret agent during WWII. Admittedly, this kind of theology inevitably leads to necessary discussions of determining the will of God, but not today. Instead I bring all this to the forefront to disclose that while we are all tempted to argue the finer points of the Christian life, many of us ignore the most obvious aspects of what it means to be a Christian. We overlook God’s certain will for debates on peripheral issues. Case in point: I don’t know for certain whether you should own a gun, nor can I say whether you should not. I do know, without doubt, that God’s will declares that the world will know we worship the same God by the way we love one another. If we can’t get that right, I doubt whether or not God is impressed with the decisions we might come to about guns. Let’s make sure we are obeying the clear commands first. Or, to apply a more appropriate metaphor, let’s make sure we are aiming at the right target or we will be sure to miss every time, no matter how nice the gun is.

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.” These words were penned by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from the confines of a Nazi concentration camp and they serve as a potent reminder for me this time of year that Advent is, indeed, the season of waiting and of expectation. I have also found that Advent is a time to reflect on the great divide between what I want and what I have. Some may read those words and fume in frustration that I have fallen prey to the same disease our entire country seems to be caught up in this time of year, reflecting on what I want and what I don’t have. Yet, what I am speaking about here is not longing for the newest Apple product, slippers, or another book to set on the coffee table, but those parts of my own life that still appear to be so far from anything that God could have ever intended for me. The bent and crooked parts. The twisted and misshapen parts that have never seemed to resemble anything close to the types of parts that could be of use to anyone. Broken parts, spare parts, and absent parts that make me wonder if, perhaps, I left the factory before I passed through quality control. These long, grey days of winter lend credibility to Bonhoeffer’s analogy of Advent to a prison cell, which appears in these hours to be more honest and accurate than any would suggest at first glance. Indeed, Advent has the ability, if we let it, to reveal the tension of the “now and not yet” reality we find ourselves in, and the reality that we find inside ourselves. It is fitting because freedom feels so elusive for me, as it does for many others. Peering over my shoulder at the last year I always recognize with a startling clarity just how few my steps have been these past twelve months, and how much further I have left to go. Perhaps this is precisely why so many of us will find ourselves making new resolutions within a week of celebrating the birth of Christ, for Christmas marks both a beginning and end for each of us. It is the year-end evaluation that meets each of us like cold morning air that burns nostrils as we inhale. It marks another year of finding myself, like the Pagan astrologers from the east some 2,000 years ago, falling prostrate before the tiny feet of the God-child to worship, knowing full well that the gifts I have brought him are wholly inadequate. But, as Bonhoeffer reminds us, Advent is also a type of prison cell in that it is a living reminder that “freedom has to be opened from the outside.” Not only from the outside, but only by the hand of a Jewish child reaching from the rough-hewn edges of a feeding trough. May this Advent season be marked, for each of us, by the great hope that this same child comes again this year to a broken and troubled world and, with nail pierced hands, stands ready to offer freedom again for the prisoners.

I am not going to talk about politics today. I think the nation could use a little detox. Instead, I do want to talk about the leaves outside my office window. Fall is, without any shred of doubt, my favorite season. And I have had the amazing privilege of living in four entirely different states whose hillsides each come alive with blazon color when the nights of October come quicker and colder. In New Hampshire, Oregon, Western North Carolina, and now, North Georgia, fall comes every year like a best friend visiting from a distant country. We have not talked much throughout the year, but we are so comfortable with each other that the conversation can simply pick up where it left off as if no time or distance has ever passed. Fall causes me to become contemplative. I slow down. While summer fans adventure, activity and long nights that extend well past bedtime, fall ushers in a season of quiet for me. When I get the first glimpse of color something almost spiritual ignites within me and I feel as if most days I long to be walking, intentionally slow, along a path in the woods with no destination in mind, and no clock to obey. But I also love fall because it is a reminder to me that time is not standing still and that change is possible. There have been seasons of my own life that have felt quite endless. Struggles, fights, battles and wars that appear to have no end in sight; wounds that feel as they will never heal; addictions that look like they will never shake free; attitudes that haven’t shifted in months; bitterness that is only getting more bitter; depression that is only getting darker, and a loneliness becoming increasingly lonely. Then I find one morning that as I peer across the steam lifting off my mug of coffee that out the back window I can see the faintest hint of orange, or yellow or crimson red gathering around the edge of a tree on the boundary of the property. That night as I sit on the back porch I recognize that it is darker at this hour than it was the night before. Maybe later in that same week my wife suggests we turn the heat on. My kids spend the weekend sorting through boxes in storage to look for their favorite sweatshirt that has been packed away for the summer. Windows spend more time closed. And soon, very soon, I will see my breath in the air as I drive to work amidst a dazzling display of forests on fire with color that stands even more brilliant against the crystal blue sky hovering overhead. Fall is the glorious and gracious annual reminder for us that you will not always be who you are today, that this too shall pass, and “that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Phil. 1:6). In you…in me…in our country…in our world. Amen.

As the national election day in the United States draws increasingly close, I have been pondering with more frequency some words spoken by pastor-theologian-activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer. National elections almost always make me think about Bonhoeffer, whose WWII Germany has become the historical symbol of everything that can go terribly awry when patriotism gets in bed with religion. With Evangelicals classified as a substantial voting demographic, one must take a bit of pause and consider what role Christians should play in politics. Many people have written about this very topic throughout church history, and almost all of them are far more eloquent and qualified than I am. I am not attempting to write something entirely new here, but I would like to stand as a small voice amidst all the noisy politico clamor of the season and repeat some important thoughts that Bonhoeffer penned from his prison cell while he awaited his execution. He wrote: “Our church has been fighting during these years only for its self-preservation, as if that were an end in itself. It has become incapable of bringing the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and to the world. So the words we used before must lose their power, be silenced, and we can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings. All Christian thinking, talking, and organizing must be born anew, out of that prayer and action.” Regardless of who wins the election, the mission of the Church, the purpose of the redeemed doesn’t change. The goal of the Church was never to fight for religious freedom, create a moral society, define marriage, extend healthcare, or reduce taxes. The Church, Jesus’ bride, was rescued for one purpose – to join the Kingdom of God. To bend a knee to the true King and swear our allegiance to his reign and rule, and to spread the message of his love to the darkest corners of the world. I am not suggesting that it is unimportant to vote, but I do believe that the results of the election can never be an excuse for Christians to live faithfully in this fallen world. Jesus promises that the gates of hell can’t stop the Kingdom, never mind Republicans or Democrats. Our call as Christians isn’t swayed by unemployment rates, mortgage rates, social security, or national security. I agree with Bonhoeffer that perhaps the most important thing for the Church to do these days is pray and work for justice. Kingdoms will rise and fall. Only one will be standing into eternity. I want the Church to spend their time and energy building that one, not our own.