“I am tormented even now by the thought that I didn’t do as you asked me as a matter of course. To be frank, I can’t think what made me behave as I did. How could I have been so horribly afraid at the time? It must have seemed totally incomprehensible to you both, and yet you said nothing. But it preys on my mind, because it’s the kind of thing one can never make up for. So all I can do is ask you to forgive my weakness then. I know for certain that I ought to have behaved differently.”
If you’re alive you’ve probably had occasion to write or think such a statement of regret. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this note to his twin sister, Sabine, in 1933 after he declined the invitation to preach her father-in-law’s funeral. Hitler’s agenda against the Jews was just becoming known and Christians in Germany were having to decide where to stand. If the famous “Aryan Paragraph” were adopted by the new government, all pastors with Jewish blood would be forced to step down from the ministry. Dietrich saw clearly where such discrimination would lead and began calling the church to be the church. He wrote, “What is at stake is by no means whether our German members of congregations can still tolerate church fellowship with the Jews. It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say: here is the church, where Jew and German stand together under the Word of God, here is the proof of whether a church is still the church or not.”
Sabine’s husband, Gerhard, was a baptized Christian of Jewish descent. His father was not a Christian and when he died Dietrich was asked to preach the funeral. After trying to think through every angle and after listening to the council of others, Dietrich declined. In the biography “Bonhoeffer”, Eric Metaxas tells the story of the young theologian who learned to delve as deep into the mind of God as he possibly could to discern how to preach and live in an era of immense evil. “If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.” Dietrich’s message was that Jesus Christ was the only right train and Christians had to live boldly no matter what resistance existed. He believed his decision not to stand and speak at a Jewish funeral was a failure to practice what he preached.
But moments of regret sometimes spur us to bolder living. At times we can only apologize, ask forgiveness, and ask God to help us learn from our mistakes. We all need his wisdom and his courage to speak out in our generation. We need eyes to see the devil’s work today that might not be quite as obvious as Satan’s strategies in Nazi Germany. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged three weeks before World War II ended for being a part of a plot to take the life of Adolph Hitler. The doctor at his prison at Flossenburg recalled this scene early on the morning of his execution: “Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his 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 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 seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” No regrets…
Dietrich was 39 years old when he died. At a memorial service held in London on July 27, 1945, Matthew 10 was read which contains these verses: “If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.”
All quotes taken from “Bonhoeffer” by Eric Metaxas, published in 2010 in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson, Inc.