Christians should recognize the true image of the other person from the perspective of Christ himself, resisting all attempts to coerce and dominate others rather than loving them for who they are: as those for whom Christ became incarnate among his people and with whom Christ became bonded in their brotherly love.

Spiritual love, however, begins right at this point. This is why emotional love turns into personal hatred when it encounters genuine spiritual love that does not desire but serves. Emotional love makes itself an end in itself. It turns itself into an achievement, an idol it worships, to which it must subject everything. It cares for, cultivates,

We do not complain about what God does not give us; rather we are thankful for what God does give us daily. And is not what has been given us enough: other believers who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of God’s grace?

Emotional love can never comprehend spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above. It is something completely strange, new, and incomprehensible to all earthly love. Because Christ stands between me and an other, I must not long for unmediated community with that person. As only Christ was able to speak to me in such a way that I was helped, so

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community [Lebensgemeinschaft] may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.

In both works Bonhoeffer contended that communities of faith in Christ must assume concrete form in the world in order to radiate the presence of God credibly and effectively, and to live in service to those in need.

The bright day of Christian community dawns wherever the early morning mists of dreamy visions are lifting.

Bonhoeffer insisted that Christian communities could not allow God’s will to be merely an abstract idea or smothered in institutional, dogmatic, or biblical reductionism. His spiritual classics Discipleship and Life Together were thus given a realistic embodiment in their most tangible form, the Christian community.

That also applies in a special way to the complaints often heard from pastors and zealous parishioners about their congregations. Pastors should not complain about their congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God.