Dietrich Bonhoeffer and His Challenge

American Minute with Bill Federer

Feb. 4 –
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and His Challenge

British Journalist Malcolm Muggeridge explained how Hitler’s universal healthcare plan eventually led to the Holocaust:

“We have been accorded, for those that have eyes to see, an object lesson in what the quest for ‘quality of life’ without reference to ‘sanctity of life’ can involve…The origins of the Holocaust lay, not in Nazi terrorism…but in pre-Nazi Weimar Germany’s acceptance of euthanasia and mercy-killing as humane and estimable.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer rebuked German Christians who stood silent while Hitler intimidated church leaders to accept the socialist, anti-life agenda of the National Socialist Workers Party (NAZI).

The New York Times reported Oct. 10, 1933:

“Nazi Plan to Kill Incurables to End Pain; German Religious Groups Oppose Move…The Ministry of Justice…explaining the Nazi aims regarding the German penal code, today announced its intentions to authorize physicians to end the sufferings of the incurable patient…in the interest of true humanity.

The Catholic newspaper Germania hastened to observe: ‘The Catholic faith binds the conscience of its followers not to accept this method.’…In Lutheran circles, too, life is regarded as something that God alone can take…

Euthanasia…has become a widely discussed word in the Reich…No life still valuable to the State will be wantonly destroyed.”

Bonhoeffer warned Germans not to slip into the cult of Führer (leader) worship, as he could turn out to be a Verführer (mis-leader, seducer).

Jimmy Carter, in his book Sources of Strength, 1997, wrote:

“Rev. Niebuhr urged Dietrich Bonhoeffer to remain in America for his own safety. Bonhoeffer refused. He felt he had to be among the other Christians persecuted in Germany.

So he returned home, and…in resistance to Hitler…preached publicly against Nazism, racism, and anti-Semitism…Bonhoeffer was finally arrested and imprisoned.

Born FEBRUARY 4, 1906, he died April 9, 1945, just a few days before the allied armies liberated Germany. He was executed on orders of Heinrich Himmler. He died a disciple and a martyr.”

Jimmy Carter concluded:

“The same Holy Spirit…that gave Bonhoeffer the strength to stand up against Nazi tyranny is available to us today.”

As a young man, Bonhoeffer was deeply effected by the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, where he taught Sunday School and formed a life-long love for African-American spirituals.

Bonhoeffer challenged believers:

“To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ”

In his most widely read book, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.”

On February 16, 2002, Dr. James Dobson told the National Religious Broadcasters:

“Those of you who feel that the church has no responsibility in the cultural area…

What if it were 1943 and you were in Nazi Germany and you knew what Hitler was doing to the Jews…Would you say, ‘We’re not political-that’s somebody else’s problem’?”

Dobson concluded:

“I thank God Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not give that answer, and he was arrested by the Nazis and hanged in 1945, naked and alone because he said, ‘This is not right.'”