Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the well known Lutheran pastor who was imprisoned by in Nazi Germany. While in prison he composed a number of letter and papers. Below is an excerpt from July 16, 1944. In this portion, Bonhoeffer is dealing with the tendency of modern philosophy, whether Spinoza, Fitchte, Hegel and Descartes (the later who is a deist, the former pantheists), to place the reality of existence in the individual, and relegate God a force of the natural world. To find a personal God, Bonhoeffer points his reader to an odd place, to Matt 8:3 ("unless you become like a child and repent, you will not see the kingdom of heaven"). It is in living life, engaging others, and encountering suffering and abandonment that we find God. God can be found in the weak and powerless, in the foolish and oppressed. To live in the world as a christian is then defined as follows:
"He must therefore really live in the godless world, without attempting to gloss over or explain its ungodliness in some religious way or other. He must live the 'secular' life, and thereby share in God's sufferings. He may live a 'secular' life (as one who has been freed from false religious obligations and inhibitions). To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be a man-not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. That is metanoia: not in the first place thinking about one's own needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allowing one-self to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ, into the messianic event, thus fulfilling Isa 53.
This being caught up into the messianic sufferings of God in Jesus Christ takes a variety of forms in the New Testament. It appears in the call to discipleship, in Jesus' table-fellowship with sinners, in 'conversions' in the narrower sense of the word (e.g. Zacchaeus), in the act of the woman who was the sinner (Luke 7) an act that she performed without any confession of sin, in the healing of the sick (Matt 8:17) in Jesus' acceptance of children. The shepherd, like the wise men from the East, stand at the crib, not as 'converted sinners' but simply because they are drawn to the crib by the star just as they are. The centurion of Capernaum (who makes no confession of sin) is held up as a model of faith (cf. Jarius). Jesus 'loved' the rich man. The eunuch (Acts 8) and Cornelius (Acts 10) are not standing at the edge of an abyss. Nathaniel is 'an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile' (John 1:4). Finally, Joseph of Arimathea and the women at the tomb. The only think that is common to all these is there sharing in the suffering of God in Christ. That is their 'faith'. There is nothing of religious method here. The 'religious' act is always something partial; 'faith' is something whole, involving the whole of one's life. Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life."
(p361-362 Letters and Papers from Prison, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Collier Books, New York Macmillan publishing)
It is important for Christians around the world to remember these words from Bonhoeffer, and redirect our own gaze into the heart of the gospel; of Jesus Christ crucified- and remember that it was only through the suffering of the crucifixion that Christ was exalted and enthroned. We likewise as follower of Jesus are in the same way called to be in the 'fellowship' of his suffering' as we engage life around us, being the bread broken for the hungry of the world.
Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Rom 8:17
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