Bonhoeffer on the Worldliness of Christianity

I came across this in Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison several months ago.  Along the lines of what I attempted to say yesterday, only much better.

During the last year or so I have come to appreciate the “worldliness” of Christianity as never before…. I don’t mean the shallow this-worldliness of the enlightened, of the busy, the comfortable or the lascivious. It’s something much more profound than that, something in which the knowledge of death and resurrection is ever present. I remember talking to a young French pastor at A. thirteen years ago. We were discussing what our real purpose was in life. He said he would like to become a saint. I think it is quite likely that he did become one. At the time I was very much impressed, though I disagreed with him, and said that I should prefer to have faith, or words to that effect. For a long time I did not realize how far we were apart. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it….

Later I discovered and am still discovering up to this very moment that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe. One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a converted sinner, a churchman (the priestly type, so-called!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. This is what I mean by worldliness—taking life in one’s stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness. It is in such a life that we throw ourselves utterly in the arms of God and participate in his sufferings in this world and watch with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia, and that is what makes a man and a Christian.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a letter to his best friend Eberhard Bethge, July 21, 1944