Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Everything would be spoiled if we were to reserve Christ for the church while granting the world only some law, Christian though it may be.

I am sure of God's hand and guidance... You must never doubt that I am thankful and glad to go the way which I am being led. My past life is abundantly full of God's mercy and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.

All that the follower of Jesus has to do is to make sure that his obedience, following and love are entirely spontaneous and unpremeditated.

It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated.

There is also a false serenity that is not at all Christian. We need feel no shame as Christians about a measure of impatience, longing, protest against what is unnatural, and a strong measure of desire for freedom and earthly happiness and the capacity to effect change.

Singing together [das gemeinsame Lied] joins the praying of the Psalms and the reading of the Scriptures. In this, the voice of the church is heard in praise, thanksgiving, and intercession.

Since the appearance of Christ, ethics can be concerned with only one thing: to partake in the reality of the fulfilled will of God.

Prayer means nothing else but the readiness to appropriate the Word, and what is more, to let it speak to me in my personal situation, in my particular tasks, decisions, sins, and temptations.

To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is: "He leads the way, keep close to him.

Who comes to the light? "Those who do what is true" (John 3:21)! What does this mean? Truth is supposed to happen; it is not only to be thought or willed, but to be done. Truth arises through action that is the opposite of pretense and darkness, which give rise to evil.

The form of the crucified disarms all thinking aimed at success, for it is a denial of judgment. Neither the triumph of the successful, nor bitter hatred of the successful by those who fail, can finally cope with the world. Jesus is certainly no advocate for the successful in history, but neither does he lead the revolt of the failures against the successful.

When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we too were made ready to forgive each other. What God did to us, we then owed to others. The more we received, the more we were able to give; and the more meager our love for one another, the less we were living by God's mercy and love.