Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The universality of the church was illustrated in a marvelously effective manner. White, black, yellow members of religious orders orders—everyone was in clerical robes united under the church. It truly seems ideal.

In family devotions it is best that the various members thereof undertake the consecutive reading in turn. When this is done it will soon become apparent that it is not easy to read the Bible aloud for others. The more artless, the more objective, the more humble one's attitude toward the material is, the better will the reading accord with the subject.

The hungry person needs bread, the homeless person needs shelter, the one deprived of rights needs justice, the lonely person needs community, the undisciplined one needs order, and the slave needs freedom. Treating human beings as things, commodities, and machines is a special hindrance to receiving Christ.

One is less lonely when one is alone.

They are to go forth in the battle-dress of poverty, taking as little with them as a traveler who knows he will get board and lodging with friends at the end of the day. This shall be an expression of their faith, not in men, but in their heavenly father who sent them and will care for them. It is this that will make their gospel credible, for they proclaim the coming Kingdom of God.

How shall we ever help a Christian brother and set him straight in his difficulty and doubt, if not with God's own Word? All our own words quickly fail.

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH The unity of the church will consistnot in organizations,not in dogmas,not in liturgies,not in pious hearts,but in the word of God,in the voice of Jesus Christ.

If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.

Culturally it means a return from the newspaper and the radio to the book, from feverish activity to unhurried leisure, from dispersion to concentration, from sensationalism to reflection, from virtuosity to art, from snobbery to modesty, from extravagance to moderation.

That the lie portrays the truth as lie is the ultimate possible rebellion. It is the abyss of the lie that it lives because it sets itself up as truth and condemns the truth as lie.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Just as Christ maintained his communion with the Father by his endurance, so his followers are to maintain their communion with Christ by their endurance.