Sublime

Bonhoeffer is telling us what we all know in our hearts, if we’ll admit it to ourselves: these old myths were the stories we were told in our childhood. Now that we have come of age, we should put them aside and take responsibility for ourselves like adults,

I would rather a man be a committed humanist than an uncommitted Christian.

Precisely at this point Christian community is most often threatened from the very outset by the greatest danger, the danger of internal poisoning, the danger of confusing Christian community with some wishful image of pious community, the danger of blending the devout heart’s natural desire for community with the spiritual reality of Christian

Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.

Because they daily hunger and thirst for righteousness, they long for the redeeming Word again and again. It can only come from the outside. In themselves they are destitute and dead.

Christian poverty alleviation ministries must be “rooted in and lead back to” the local church.

The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian living in the diaspora recognizes in the nearness of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. In their loneliness, both the visitor and the one visited recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body.