This book took a long time for me to finish, and it was not the best written book I have ever read.....but it is the first book I read on my kindle that I actually wanted to underline passages, and share some of the Bonhoeffer wisdom. What a mind he had and what a servant of God he was!
Now, I knew very little about Bonhoeffer, except that he was a hero to my ex husband, who was studying theology when we met. I now know why he was a hero to him....because Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran in Germany, and David's favorite professor, John Warwick Montgomery (who happened to marry us), was a Lutheran, so I'm sure Bonhoeffer was a hero to Dr. Montgomery, and was talked about a lot!
It is quite fascinating the history in this book. Bonhoeffer was a theologian in a family of great scientific and legal minds. His father was quite famous doctor and psychiatrist, and his family was upper class German. His father was a contemporary of Freud, and he had a brother who was a physicist and was a contemporary of Einstein, and was one of the first people to split the atom. His family was not spiritual, but they were religious, and were accepting of his decision to go to seminary. He made a name for himself quite young with his writings. I think he got his PhD when he was 21. He and his family were quite skeptical when Hitler came to power, and he seemed to understand instinctively how dangerous he was, and worked against him from the very beginning.
Bonhoeffer spent some time in NY, and was quite fascinated with the Jim Crow laws. He saw what Hitler was trying to do in Germany with the Jews as being similar to what the US did to the black population with the Jim Crow laws, and he believed it was inherently evil, and did not work well for society. He had an opportunity to leave Germany before the war broke out and stay in the US in safety, and work against Hitler from afar, but his conscious would not allow him to do that, so he returned to Germany to stand next to his fellow citizens, and fight the evil from within.
He was part of the Valkyrie assassination attempt on Hitler (the one where Hitler survived, Tom Cruise made a movie of it) is what led to his execution, just days before Hitler committed suicide himself and the war ended. And even though his courage of standing up to the Nazi's is noteworthy in and of itself, his heart for Christ is what set him sets him apart! He believed that faith required action, and that faith without action was what he called "cheap grace". That even though God did not require anything except faith from us, and that Christ's sacrifice for us, was a great gift, if it did not cause a change in us, and cause us to act on that change, then what was the sacrifice for? He was a fascinating man, who lived in a fascinating time, and much of what he wrote is still taught today. He is not well known, and I think someday, someone will realize what an awesome movie the story of his life would make....and I will be first in line to see it!!
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