Twenty years ago, I was asked to write a devotional based on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship, which was one of the first books I read when I came to Christ in high school in 1969. I started that devotional and never finished it, but I had a great time doing the research. I read everything I could on Bonhoeffer, including a huge biography written by a friend of his back in the 50s or 60s, I believe.
The year I started my blog, I did a series of three articles on Bonhoeffer. As I said then, I disagree with Bonhoeffer in various areas. Theologically, as was true of nearly everyone in his place and time, he was certainly more liberal than I am. While I would not present Bonhoeffer as a model theologian in every area, I think 95% of The Cost of Discipleship is right on target. His personal love for Christ was evident in his books and in his life, and he paid the ultimate price he wrote of: “When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
A friend recently shared that he had the opportunity to visit Bonhoeffer’s house, and meet the retired pastor who now lives there, though their dialogue was limited since he spoke only a bit of English. That reminded me of crossing the Iron Curtain into Hungary in the 80s for an illegal gathering of Hungarian pastors, where the translator failed to show up, presumably due to him realizing he was being followed by police. The missionary and his family who Nanci and I were staying with in Vienna didn’t know Hungarian, and none of the pastors knew English.
Our entire means of communication was to turn to passages of Scripture in their Bibles. It was easy to find the divide between the Old Testament and New Testament, so for example, we would count four books into the New Testament to the book of John, and then the chapters and verse numbers were the same. That made it relatively easy to find John 3:16 or anything else in their Bibles, and they could do the same in our English Bibles.
They would smile and nod, read the verses we were pointing to, and say amen and get very excited as they turned to another passage to share with us. One verse led to another. We went back-and-forth like this for a long time, and it was so meaningful. We didn’t know each other's languages, but we knew the same God and we loved the same Book and used that book to speak for us. It was absolutely unforgettable, and brings tears to my eyes even now. That truly was the single most inspired dialogue I have ever had—literally every word was God-breathed!
We were there in 1988, and just over a year later, the Berlin Wall came down and soon there was no more Iron Curtain. Then in 1990, we distributed Bibles for two weeks in what was then still the Soviet Union, and a year later came the end of the USSR. It was remarkable to see the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people in Ukraine and Russia in those days.
My friend’s mention of Bonhoeffer brought that all back to me. I can’t wait to meet Dietrich in a far better world!
