The churches in the German Reformation have taught many marvelous things about Christian freedom and the triumph of grace, he insisted, but these churches have not built loving hearts. Look around you, Bonhoeffer implored the faithful, look at the German church and nation. He referred to the Protestant youth groups and to Reich Bishop Muller's "decree concerning the restoration of order." The declaration, which came to be called the "muzzling decree," prohibited pastors from mentioning in sermons or discussing with parishioners any matter related to the church crisis. Violation of the decree would result in suspension, salary cuts, and, pending disciplinary hearings, dismissal from the ranks of the ordained clergy. Niemoller, he reminded them had been sent into forced retirement and the worst was still to come. The Reich educational ministry had dismissed Barth from his post in Bonn. The theological faculties were now peddling a corrupt Aryan faith. "Is this not obvious? They had not made people who love!"
"It does nobody any good professing to believe in Christ without first being reconciled with his brother or sister - including the nonbeliever, his brethren of another race, the marginalized, or outcast," he explained.
"Even faith and hope as they enter into eternity are molded into the shape of love. In the end everything must become love," said Bonhoeffer. "Perfection's name is love."
"The earth that nourishes me has a right to my work and my strength," Bonhoeffer wrote. "It is not fitting that I should despise the earth on which I have my life; I owe it faithfulness and gratitude. I must not dream away my earthly life with thoughts of heaven and thereby evade my lot - to be perforce a sojourner and a stranger - and with it God's call into this world of strangers. There is a very godless homesickness for the other world, and it will certainly create no homecoming. I am to be a sojourner, with everything that entails. I must not close my heart indifferent to the earth's problems, sorrows, and joys; rather I am to wait patiently for the redemption of the divine promise - truly wait, and not rob myself of it in advance by wishing and dreaming." 263
Then there is the seemingly prosaic matter of stupidity, which in Bonhoeffer's estimation is as dangerous an enemy of the good as evil itself. One may wage protest against evil; evil can be exposed and, if need be, overcome by force. But stupidity mounts a broad and insidious defense in this way" "Facts that contradict one's prejudgment simply need not be believed... - and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental." 341-342
With marriage comes "difficulties, impediments, obstacles, doubts, and hesitations." The holy estate of matrimony might be honorable, worthy of praise as "a decisive triumph," but the true fellowship of souls such as he and his friend enjoyed was a state of "unimaginable freedom and power," an ineffable lightness as against the leadenness of wedlock. 364
Bonhoeffer discovered the value of hilaritas - good humor - as the quality of mind, body, and spirit most important to animating the greatest human achievements. "High-spirited self-confidence," speaking the Yes and Amen in gleeful defiance of the Nothing, a cheerful audacity - "spread hilaritas!" Bonhoeffer directed Bethge, in a kind of eureka. 365
Only when one knows that the name of God may not be uttered may one sometimes speak the name of Jesus Christ.
Only when one loves life and the earth so much that with it everything seems to be lost and at its end may one believe in the resurrection of the dead and a new world.
Only when one accepts the law of God as binding for oneself may one perhaps sometimes speak of grace.
And only when the wrath and vengeance of God against His enemies are allowed to stand can something of forgiveness and the love of enemies touch our hearts... 368
His faith had grown more at home in the Old Testament as he reached the extraordinary conclusion that "whoever wishes to be and perceive things too quickly and too directly in the New Testament ways is to my mind no Christian." And with a new sense of worldly habitation were unleashed certain desires and energies, long restrained. 369
I'm sitting alone upstairs. Everything is quiet in this building; a few birds are singing outside, and I can even hear the cuckoo in the distance. I find these long, warm summer evenings, which I'm living through here for the second time, rather trying. I long to be outside, and if I were not "reasonable," I might do something foolish. I wonder whether we have become too reasonable. When you've deliberately suppressed every desire for so long, it may have one of two bad results: either it burns you up inside, or it all gets so bottled up that one day there is a terrific explosion ... Perhaps you will say that one oughtn't to suppress one's desires, and I expect you would be right.
But look, this evening for example I couldn't dare to give really full rein to my imagination and picture myself and Maria at your house, sitting in the garden by the water and talking together into the night etc, etc. That is simply self-torture, and gives one physical pain. So I take refuge in thinking, in writing letters, in delighting in your good fortune, and curb my desires as a measure of self-protection. However paradoxical it may sound, it would be more selfless if I didn't need to be so afraid of my desires, and could give them free rein - but that is very difficult." 369-370
"I know that it is only on the path that I have finally taken that I was able to learn this. So I'm thinking gratefully and with peace of mind about past as well as present things." "Discipleship" was but a stage in the journey, one that he had now moved beyond. After the war, it would comfort his family to read the prison letters and to know that the strenuous austerity of his writings of the 1930s had given way to a faith more open, munificent, and sensuous. 375
Bonhoeffer realized at last that what he'd shared with Bethge existed on a higher plane: their partnership had been "a mutual giving and receiving of gifts, [in which] there is neither violence nor indifference." What remained unspoken signified a gesture pointing toward as yet undiscovered treasures, toward riches still hidden in the other, which will be disclosed in the fullness of time. But the preciousness of those treasures would be in their contemplation rather than their possession. Theirs was a duet of "natural harmony," he liked to say, like all that is holy. And so everything that remained unfinished - "the loss of so many things" - rushed toward a "great liberation"; and this, like all the loves that he had given up, though first among them, had returned to him once more, transfigured in a final beatific surrender. 384
