Spiritual Books: #7

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to read a set of Christian books: one for each month. This is the first in that series.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

For someone trying to ease their way back into reading Christian tenements, this was not the book to choose first. It happened by accident. I was in the airport and wanted to start on these Christian books on this 8-hour flight, so I dug into my overhead bag and pulled out Bonhoeffer. I was disappointed. I wanted something easy, like Francis Chan. But Bonhoeffer was interesting. He was a German in WWII. He had the opportunity to escape, he was even in Britain, safe, but voluntarily decided to return, because he felt he could in no way help reconstruct the church in Germany unless he suffered with it. Guards shot him two days before the Allies freed the camp.

Bonhoeffer knows what he's talking about. He writes about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, and it is no easy line. He doesn't smudge it to make it easier for us to swallow or digest. Holding nothing back, he describes the magnitude of sacrifice expected from Christians. And its exhausting. I had an extremely difficult time concentrating because I kept thinking, but I'm just not good enough to do all this. Extenuating human inadequacy, the perfection of God, and the high standard expected of Christians, left me despairing. That's exactly what Bonhoeffer intended us to feel. But Bonhoeffer wanted us to despair, to shout in anger and frustration at our inability: he wanted us to leave all that behind and throw ourselves wholly on the mercy of God and through his good grace in us, accomplish anything.

The Cost of Discipleship is hard. I wouldn't read it again in a hurry. I can't say it nourished my soul and made me love God more. But it did have its moments. My favorite part was the ending chapter on being made in the image of God: that the more we strive, the more we worsen things, but God in his mercy "does not neglect his lost creatures," and "if we surrender ourselves utterly unto him, we cannot help bearing his image ourselves."