Well, I know one thing. I won’t be forgetting this book or this man for a very long time. I also think that everybody needs to read it and here’s why.
It seems to me that we are living in a very strange time. There are wars happening all around us and to us–the economic world we knew just a few years ago is gone. There are vast oil spills in our oceans and meteors that seem to be passing awfully close to earth. We have world class athletes who have all taken steroids and lied about it under oath and politicians who don’t seem to know what in the world they believe and will change their minds or their party if it will be beneficial. Everyone strives for political correctness so no one wants to take a stand on whether or not a mosque should be built down the street from Ground Zero. I’m not sure which side is right but I get dizzy watching everyone hop back and forth, terrified to land. No one wants to be definitive for fear of offending someone else.
Where are all the great leaders? Those rare men and women who stand out in times of great world crisis? Beats me. I don’t think I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of anyone even remotely ‘great’ in quite a while. I don’t mean to be a cynic, it’s just the truth.
Well, Bonhoeffer was great.
I’m not going to tell you everything that happens in this book but suffice it to say, in the end, he dies. Well, so what? A lot of people died in WWII; many were hung in concentration camps. What’s the big hoopla over one more? Well, Bonhoeffer was both ordinary and extraordinary. He was an academic, a renowned theologian, a pastor who loved people more than he cared about how ‘good’ they were or whether they agreed with him or not. He understood that love was the most important thing of all….love for God, one’s family and one’s country. Bonhoeffer loved Germany and he was not alone. I came to realize that there were so many godly Germans that the horror of all that happened is more horrible than I could have ever realized because those German people weren’t that much different from you and me. I tend to see them all with horns and certainly the unadulterated evil that took place is more than I can begin to digest.
If history is to teach us lessons not to be repeated, then please, oh please, let us learn. Let good men and women bravely stand up for what they believe. Let feelings about mosques and those who think differently from us be viewed from a sense of love and compassion and not doggedly on what we think is right or wrong. A people divided will ultimately fall.
There is bravery and self sacrifice on every page of this book. There is faith and forgiveness and redemption shown in the words and the lives of ordinary people. There is raw evil and indescribable beauty. There is greatness shown forth in all its glory and there is proof that one man can make a difference.
I wonder what I would do if all that happened to Bonhoeffer happened to me. I pray that it would matter to me, that I would stand out and not blend in, that there would be something in me that made people feel closer and not farther apart and that I would welcome difficult things realizing that I was so inconsequential but at the same time, absolutely vital.
I hope you read this book and come away affected. We don’t allow ourselves to be nearly affected enough. -Norma
A late Saturday afternoon at my desk, I looked out my window, and there stood Willie. He was just back from New York, as excited as a kid could be about seeing the screening for My Dog Skip. He glowed with charm and excitement about what was to come. That was my last conversation with Willie. He died the following Monday.
