20 years ago — March 27, 1995
“Even before his prison experience he was beginning to see his responsibilities ‘from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.’ … His insights deepened in the crucible of his own confinement. … He recorded in a poem the plight of prisoners who were frightened and who tossed restlessly in their sleep. … He experienced his own helplessness … . His own death at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp sharpens this view from below. So God gives ‘new eyes’ for the purpose of a … compassionate discipleship.” He experienced ‘cheap grace’ as he witnessed many Germans abandoning the foundations of the Reformation to take up Hitler’s Nazi party and idolatry. He also experienced ‘costly grace’ as he identified with the Confessing Church and its Barmen Declaration. The question is: How should we observe the 50th anniversary of the execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, April 9, 1945?
From the article, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945 Costly Grace and the Quick Fix” by James H. Smylie.
