Bonhoeffer’s Prison Prayers

   This is a sweet book.  It captures many of my interests at once.  First, I appreciate Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings in general.  These letters and papers are especially edifying because I can see what is “behind” some of his other works, so to speak.  Second, I love reading about the tough issues: What does it mean to be a Christian (or a church) under intense pressure?  You’ll find answers to this question in this book, Letters & Papers from Prison.  Third, having read many volumes of WWII history, these letters/papers fascinate me from a historical perspective. 

Here are a few of Bonhoeffer’s prayers that are quite moving, especially considering he penned them from a Nazi prison.  I recommend reading these out loud.

“In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me.”

“Lord Jesus Christ,
You were poor
And in distress, a captive and forsaken as I am.
You know all man’s troubles;
You abide with me
When all men fail me;
You remember and seek me;
It is your will that I should know you
And turn to you.
Lord, I hear your call and follow;
Help me.”

 “I remember in your presence all my loved ones,
my fellow-prisoners, and all who in this house perform their hard service;
Lord, have mercy.”

Amen.

shane lems

Cheesy Church Choruses

If you’ve been in (or are currently in) an average American evangelical Christian church, no doubt you know what a cheesy Christian song is all about.  From “Shine Jesus Shine” to “I Can Only Imagine,” solid theology is out and emotions and contemporary are “in.”   I like what Stephen Nichols has to say about this.  Commenting on “I Can Only Imagine,” he writes that it

“…Has a rich sound and explicitly religious, even Christian, lyrics, but in the end it presents a rather vacuous theology.  These crossover artists remind me somewhat of the Osmonds.  They are wholesome, safe, and clean-cut, especially compared to their purely secular counterparts, but you can listen for a long time and not hear anything overtly Mormon.  Perhaps the same could be said of Christian crossover artists.  They too are wholesome, safe, and clean-cut, but not much Christianity crosses over with them.”

“In some ways this problem confronts more than the crossover artists.  The whole sweep of CCM may come under its purview.  CCM itself attempts to crossover, combining tastes and styles of the popular culture with the sensibilities and (a modicum of) the lyrics of church music.  How well it straddles that fence becomes a point of debate.  One problem that arises, however, is what CCM communicates in general about evangelicalism’s ambivalence to culture.  While the early days of Jesus music had an edge, arising as it did from the streets, CCM today has dulled the edge, producing music that is safe, not all that complex and artistically ranking a little below the songs on pop albums that don’t make it into radio circulation.”

“CCM has become ghettoized, the Christian suburban youth’s counter to what their unchurched friends listen to.  James Davidson Hunter refers to this dynamic as parallel institutionalism, which means that you can listen to Christian music on Christian radio stations or at Christian concerts or on CDs brought at Christian stores.  You can even download Christian ringtones for your phone bought, hopefully, from a Christian-owned-and-operated kiosk at the mall.”

“Hank Hill, the character from the animated series King of the Hill, sagaciously quipped in relation to Christian rock, ‘You aren’t making Christianity better, you’re just making rock and roll worse.’” (p. 134-5).

Since Christians learn much of their theology from the church/worship songs they sing, no wonder evangelicalism is a mile wide but only an inch deep.  You can’t expect Christians singing quasi-Christian pop music week after week to mature into doctrinally sound believers (cf. Heb 5.13).

shane lems

Kevin DeYoung on the Importance of the Cross of Christ

Kevin DeYoung recounts responding to a letter wherein a critic claimed that scripture nowhere speaks of God pouring out his wrath upon Christ at Calvary.  After a nice summary of the biblical teaching to the contrary, DeYoung  concludes with this passionate and spot on plea:

There is nothing more important in Christian theology than our theology of the cross.  We must speak clearly that the heart of the gospel is the good news of divine self-satisfaction through divine self-substitution.  Never compromise on the cross.  Never dilute the message of the cross.  And never stop glorying in the cross where Christ accepted the penalties that should belong to us so that we can claim the blessings that would otherwise belong only to Him.

The Good News We Almost Forgot, Pg. 43.

____________
Andrew

Kevin DeYoung on Human Misery

Here’s a great one on Lord’s Day 2 from Kevin DeYoung’s new book on the Heidelberg Catechism:

Many people, well-meaning church leaders included, are eager to boil down Christianity to the great commandments, or the Sermon on the Mount, or the Beatitudes, or Micah 6:8, or some other powerful summary of God’s ethical intentions.  But if all I have are God’s ethical intentions for my life, I’m in a worse fix than simply losing my tail like Eeyore.  My own efforts to be a good person are, in comparison to what God requires of me, positively miserable.  I’ll be damned, discouraged, and dismayed if being a follower of Jesus means nothing more but a new set of things I’m supposed to do for him.  Instead, my following Jesus should be, first of all, a declaration of all that He has done for me.

The Good News We Almost Forgot, pg. 27

We’re wired for law; it’s the gospel that is so foreign for us.  God’s commands and instructions are bad news unless we are first told about the one who has kept God’s commands and heeded God’s instructions perfectly in our place!

__________
Andrew

Why Remember? (Meilaender)

 Gilbert Meilaender, the Lutheran theologian and bioethicist, has some very helpful essays on ethics and the Christian life.  I’ve read his book Bioethics before, which I really enjoyed.  I just finished one essay in a collection of his essays called The Freedom of a Christian.  The essay is called “Why Remember?” 

In this essay, Meilaender wrestles with what the memory is good for and if it would be desirable to erase horrible memories.  Apparently there are certain drugs that can prevent the formation of long-term memories.  For example, if you’d undergo a horribly traumatic experience, there might be a drug to wipe that memory out.  Is that desirable?  Meilaender isn’t so sure.  Here are a few quotes I appreciated.

“If we cannot say who we have been, we can never know who we are.  Our humanity lies not in mastery over the construction of our life story but in the virtues by which we accept the limits of the body, live truthfully in the face of the past, and seek to give new meaning to what is painful or misguided in that past” (p. 188).

This quote is a bit longer, but it is worth citing in full.

“One who supposed that he could attain that godlike perspective on the meaning of life might perhaps be in a position to know what experiences were so painful that they were better obliterated from memory.  If, on the contrary, we know ourselves as bodies who live in time, whose lives must have a narrative quality but who cannot know the end or full meaning of our life story, then our task is not to erase memory but to connect and integrate memories – to live the story as best one can who does not yet know how the plot will work out.  Perhaps, in doing so, some of us will believe that there is no past so painful that it cannot be transfigured and redeemed in a truthful story.  Perhaps, in doing so, others among us may suspect that the best we can do is blow on the coal of the heart and see by and by (how the plot takes its course).  But neither approach will find good reason to act as if we already knew the full meaning of life’s story.  In either case we are led to acknowledge our limits, to honor the narrative quality of human life, to accept our need to sustain the life stories of another, and to wonder at the mysterious depths of a ‘memoried’ human life” (p. 190).

This is highly applicable to the Christian life.  Many of us have some memories we’d love to erase.  But perhaps it might not be desirable after all.  In God’s plan and providence, the tough parts of our lives are important shaping events that he might use to grow us in grace.

shane lems