An excerpt from A Testament to Freedom, author - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Whether or not the Spirit of Christ has anything final, definitive, and decisive to say to us, that is what we want to speak about...
Of course, we build Jesus a church or, rather, of the churchiness of a group, not a matter of life. Religion plays for the psyche of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the role of the so-called Sunday room into which one gladly withdraws for a couple of hours but only to get back to one's place of work immediately afterwards.
However, one thing is clear: we understand Christ only if we commit ourselves to him in a stark "Either-Or."
He did not go to the cross to ornament and embellish our life.
If we wish to have him, then he demands the right to say something decisive about our entire life. We do not understand him if we arrange for him only a small compartment in our spiritual life. Rather, we understand our spiritual life only if we then orientate it to him alone or give him a flat "No." However, there are persons who would not even bother to take Christ seriously in the demand he makes on us by his question: will you follow me wholeheartedly or not at all? Such persons had better not mix their own cause with the Christian one. That separation would only help the Christian cause since they not longer have anything in common with Christ.
The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after one's bread; on the contrary, it is bread or it is nothing.
Of course, we build Jesus a church or, rather, of the churchiness of a group, not a matter of life. Religion plays for the psyche of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the role of the so-called Sunday room into which one gladly withdraws for a couple of hours but only to get back to one's place of work immediately afterwards.
However, one thing is clear: we understand Christ only if we commit ourselves to him in a stark "Either-Or."
He did not go to the cross to ornament and embellish our life.
If we wish to have him, then he demands the right to say something decisive about our entire life. We do not understand him if we arrange for him only a small compartment in our spiritual life. Rather, we understand our spiritual life only if we then orientate it to him alone or give him a flat "No." However, there are persons who would not even bother to take Christ seriously in the demand he makes on us by his question: will you follow me wholeheartedly or not at all? Such persons had better not mix their own cause with the Christian one. That separation would only help the Christian cause since they not longer have anything in common with Christ.
The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after one's bread; on the contrary, it is bread or it is nothing.
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