Beware of visions and visionaries
in the church.
 |
| Dietrich Bonhoeffer |
God hates visionary dreaming; it
makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal
of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He
enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own laws, and
judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living
reproach to all others in the circle of the brethren. He acts as if he is the
creator of the Christian community, as if his dream
binds men together.
When things do not go his way, he
calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the
community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then
an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
Because God has already laid the
only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one
body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common
life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful
recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by his call, by his
forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us;
we rather thank God for what he does give us daily.
And is not what has been given us
enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the
blessing of his grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less
than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day?
Even when sin and misunderstanding
burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom
I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion
for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in
Christ Jesus? Thus, the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes
incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us
can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed
which really binds us together--the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When
the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian
fellowship...
Bonhoeffer, Life Together.
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