The Cost of Grace

Last night I completed my grading and entered all grades online, so my students now know finally how they did. I have kept the online grade book up to date, so nothing should be a surprise for anyone, because the last grades to be added were for the final assignment.

I celebrated by playing online mahjong. It is the kind of game that relaxes me because I don't have to think too much - just the thing to relax after strenuous cognitive activity. It is a pattern matching game, where you click on two tiles with the same pattern to make them disappear until, hopefully, there are no tiles left and you win.

When I went to bed, curiously enough, I started thinking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a German theologian who was adamantly opposed to Hitler. Bonhoeffer preached against Hitler and his policies and once, when speaking on the radio, he was cut off midsentence. This relatively young man, who was 28 or so when the radio incident happened, fervently believed that the Jews were God's chosen people and that the Nazis were sinning against God with their policies and actions.

Many historians say that Bonhoeffer got involved with the Abwehr (a German intelligence gathering operation that coordinated anti-Nazi resistance efforts) and were actually involved with some of the plots to assassinate Hitler. Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law Dohnanyi were actively involved in helping Jews escape to Switzerland, and was arrested by the Gestapo on April 6, 1943. On April 8, 1945, he was condemned to death, without witnesses, without defense, and no records of the proceedings have ever been found. The next morning he was executed by hanging.

The camp doctor who witnessed the execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer ... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

I found this last quote on WIkipedia. I do not know all this information about Bonhoeffer as part of my working knowledge, so I did a little research :) What I do remember, is Bonhoeffer's theology. I was about 24 or so when I discovered Bonhoeffer and I vividly remembered how his beliefs spoke to me. It in fact changed my life, because for the first time, I was confronted with the idea that Jesus suffered in his obedience to God. Christ is the center in which God and the world is reconciled through the suffering of Christ. For Bonhoeffer, the duty and joy of a christian is to be an imitator of Christ and to be the center in which the world and God is reconciled. As christian, we have to be involved with people.

Faith, in Bonhoeffer's view, is actuated by two elements: implementing justice, and accepting divine suffering.

Probably his best known book is The Cost of Discipleship, first published in 1937, and published in 1948 in English. The central idea is that of "cheap grace," which he defines as:

"cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace with discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ."

Cheap grace is to believe and preach the following: "Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness." There is of course no mention of giving up the sin, of changing, of becoming more like Christ - cheap.

1. Costly grace, on the other hand, "confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus said: 'My yoke is easy and my burden is light.'"

I realized last night, as I was pondering Bonhoeffer and how he lived his beliefs, to the point of being willing to give his life to fight injustice and to imitate Christ through

suffering in obedience to God, that Bonhoeffer's mindset has been very influential in how I approach my illness. I'm not exactly fighting injusti

ce just sitting here, but I think I did some of that when I was healthy. And I have always tried to be the place where God and people c

an become reconciled. Now, I am suffering.

I try to keep up my spirits and have a brave front. And I deliberately count my blessings, but the

re are days when I feel the suffering, when life is difficult, and when my physical frailty irks me beyond what I think I can stand. I also experience Jesus' light and easy yoke: just when I think I can't sta

nd it anymore, something happens or something says something, or I receive a facebook message, or I receive a photograph like the one below.

This photo was taken recently by Andre Lottering who runs the French speaking operations of AFMIN . He was in Lumbumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, involved with church leadership training. It shows the attendees of the training school praying for me. Andre said they spent at least an hour, standing and sitting before God, interceding for me and our family.

It makes it worthwhile, knowing God's people are concerned for one another, and are willing to spend time praying for each other - reconciling people with God.

I am confronted everyday with the choice between accepting God's grace together with the suffering He is allowing in my life, or rejecting the knowledge that God knows best and is control of the whole thing. I would rather experience His grace at whatever cost He imposes, than live on my own terms, choosing my own way, and taking whatever comes my selfish way.

At least this way I know there is grace.