One of My Heroes – John A. Bernbaum

Do you have any heroes? More than one or two? Who are they? I have a small number of heroes in my life, some that I know or knew personally and others who I have only read about.

I’d like to share with you one of my heroes, a man who exemplifies a peacemaker or reconciler who chose to stand up against evil and resist oppressors even at the cost of his own life. He was a man who was a committed follower of Jesus, who served other people – especially young people, and who wrestled with how he should live out his faith in a country increasingly captivated by Adolf Hitler. I am focusing on this man because he had to make some very difficult decisions, decisions that some of us today might question.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian born in 1906. A number of his books were influential in my own understanding of the Christian faith, particularly The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. This brilliant man, who was the sixth of eight children from a prominent middle-class family in Breslau, was an exceptional pianist as well as an outstanding student and he earned his doctorate in theology at the age of 21 from the University of Berlin.

While I read these books by Bonhoeffer years ago, I’ve been thinking about him lately because I recently finished an outstanding new biography about him by Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Metaxas tells the story of Bonhoeffer’s amazing life and his incredible moral courage in the face of monstrous evil.

As he witnessed acts of violence against Jews, he was troubled by how other Christians were manipulated by Hitler’s cronies into supporting “German Christianity” – a mixture of Nazi beliefs and traditional Christian teachings. Eventually Bonhoeffer decided to join forces with a small group of German leaders who planned to assassinate Hitler, a plot that failed and resulted in his arrest, imprisonment and execution in April 1945, only 23 days before the surrender of the Nazi regime.

Metaxas quotes a speech Bonhoeffer gave in August 1934, as he struggled with how to respond to the evil of the Nazi regime. Here are the words of the 28-year-old pastor:

There is no way to peace along the way of security. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hands of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross (p. 241).

Bonhoeffer had no idea in 1934 how prophetic his words would be in terms of his own life. I see him as a hero because he understood that following Jesus in the modern world can be a dangerous undertaking and that being a peacemaker does not mean tolerating injustice and evil. He lived what he believed, no matter the cost. I will never forget his words “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.”

So What?

I encourage you to take the time some day soon to think about and write down a list of your heroes and then some short observations about why you chose them.

Being a peacemaker is not necessarily a safe way to live. Can you think of some peacemakers in recent history? What happened to them?

Bonhoeffer recognized that the energy and strength he needed to be a peacemaker – to defy Hitler’s call to make war on the innocent – came from the Holy Spirit’s work in his life. Have you ever experienced this in your life?