The Daughters’ Propositions Revisited

i
“The church is up to its steeple in politics.” Either way. We take a stand by speaking out, or we fail to take a stand by remaining silent. Or we may fast and pray. See also vi – ix below.

ii
“What would Jesus do?” We may disdain such simplemindedness, but . . . . There is a “but”; and it is legitimate. If Jesus is our Lord—that is, the one by which we would be ruled—then asking after his expectations is a reasonable thing to do. Asking must recognize, however, that his expectations of his followers may not be the same as his expectations of himself. He does not, for example, ask us to take up his cross; he asks us to take up our own.

iii
What about Jesus? What were his stands on the issues of the day? It’s a rhetorical question, of course. The answer is clear.

iv
We don’t know. We may pretend to know. But if we do, we are doing just that—we are pretending.

v
So how can we—any of us!—have any true confidence with regard to his stands on the issues of our day. We can’t, but that does not mean that we don’t ask, as Bonhoeffer did: What stand do I take, as a follower of Jesus?

vi
. . . we do have to live in our day. We can escape geography—to an extent—move from Biloxi to Buenos Aires, Bergen, Beirut, or Bombay—but we cannot escape chronology. Whatever the mystics may say, even when we fast and pray, we do not escape chronology. We may, however, take a stand over and against the age.

vii
And we live, wherever we live (within reason), after the Industrial Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Technological Revolution. We live after the Great War, and the Second World War, and the Vietnam War. We live with automobiles and airplanes. We live with nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. We live with cell phones (which Jesus clearly abhors).

vii-a
(What, though, if we don’t live within reason?) What if we live a life of fasting and prayer? In particular, what if we fast not from food or drink but from chronology? I am not sure how we go about doing that. I am not, for example, advocating a movement “back to the land” with the nineteenth century overtones that has. Oh, life was simpler then. I doubt it. But we could live not only more simply now; we could live against the age. We don’t have to be reasonable. Indeed, we shouldn’t hope to be, or plan to be, reasonable. Instead we may be patient, for example, as Bonhoeffer advises in The Cost of the Discipleship. (See below.)

ix
We also live—as we always have—with wealth and poverty, both gentle wealth and genteel poverty and obscene wealth and grinding poverty. We live as always with power and weakness, both power used for good and power used for ill, power used to help the weak and power used to destroy them. So how we act foolishly . . . again, I am not sure. And I’m not sure that Bonhoeffer’s work or life offers us considerable help, though that does not mean I don’t think it worth studying. . . closely! as we live in and among, entangled with the powers and principalities . . . What are the choices? We can live in “patient endurance”; or we can participate in plots that will inevitably fail. (What, precisely, is the practical difference?) We live in and among, entangled with the powers and principalities, because the principalities and powers live in us.

x
Even if we seek to live in Christ.

xi
Because we fail. We do sin as much in the best of our acts as in the worst of them.

xii
But our failure is not the last word.

xii
“Behold, the days are coming,” saith the LORD . . . (Jeremiah 23:5-6). Perhaps I should have quoted these verses in full, or at least provided a link. Here’s the rest of it (from the old KJV behind the bar, the one I got for Christmas in 1959 “from Mom & Dad”): “Behold, the days come . . . that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and A king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

Dee knows much more about Bonhoeffer than I do, but I’m not convinced that his (Bonhoeffer’s) heart is changed by “incarnational wisdom.” I’m inclined to believe that it is changed by a changing vision of the future, and particularly what may or may not be possible in it. The Bonhoeffer that calls for patient endurance and believes that patient endurance will draw evil’s sting is moved by a vision like that of Jeremiah—though not a national one (“ the Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political and national ties. . .”). Still, that Bonhoeffer has a hope both visionary and real that people will someday dwell in safety under a righteous and just “judge.” But the Hitler regime continues. Where is the end of it? Bonhoeffer and others can see none unless . . . . Let’s put it bluntly: If divine love is to be victorious over the powers of evil (and the possibilities the prophet mentions are to come to pass), it’s going to need some help.

Fortunately, the failure of the help is not the last word either. We know that already.

And not yet.

—Rick