As a part of my New Years Resolutions to read through 12 Spiritual Books, I've begun to Read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. In my last two years, I attended a conservative Christian, evangalism oriented, highschool. In our Chapels and Spiritual Emphasis Weeks, we were told to go out and preach the gospel to anyone and everyone, without limit, and though never directly stated, everywhere implied, that if they weren't converted, it was our fault, because the gospel never fails. Though I'm not sure I exactly agree with this segment, oh how I wish I had read this then:
"But the Christian is not only forbidden to judge other men: even the word of salvation has its limits. He has neither power nor right to force it on other men in season and out of season. Every attempt to impose the gospel by force, to run after people and proseltytize them, to use our own resources to arrange the salvation of other people, is both futile and dangerous. It is futile, because the swine do not recognize the pearls that are cast before them, and dangerous, because it profanes the word of forgiveness, by causing those we fain would serve to sin against that which is holy. Worse still, we shall only meet with the blind rage of hardened and darkened hearts, and that will be useless and harmful. Our easy trafficking with the word of cheap grace simply bores the world to disgust, so that in the end it turns against those who try to force on it what it does not want. Thus a strict limit is placed upon the activities of the disciples, just as in Matt 10 they are told to shake the dust off their feet where the word of peace is refused a healing. Their restless energy which refuses to recognize any limit to their activity, the zeal which refuses to take note of resistance, springs from a confusion of the gospel with a victorious ideaology. An idealogy requires fanatics, who neither know nor notice opposition, and it is certianly a potent force. But the Word of God in its weakness takes the risk of meeting the scorn of men and being rejected. There are hearts which are hardened and doors which are closed to the Word. The Word recognizes opposition when it meets it, and is prepared to suffer it. It is a hard lesson, but a true one, that the gospel, unlike an ideology, reckons weith impossibilities. The Word is weaker than any ideology, and this means that with only the gospel at their command the witnesses are weaker than the propagandists of an opinion. But although they are weak, they are ready to suffer with the word and so are free from the morbid restlessness which is so charateristic of fanaticism."
What do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment