Opus 2022-089: Craven Conformity

The older I get the more I realize my education has some serious vacuums.  Some is total lack of information.  Other times it is a slanted and distorted narrative that is off base enough to give a total lie to what I think is truth.  The resistance of Christians in German to the rise of the Third Reich is one of those areas.

I had always heard that the church cooperated with Hitler and was joined at the hip with him and his perversions.  I am currently reading Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas and as he works through the life of the man I find that there was a very active and adamant attempt by the real Christians of Germany to keep the faith.

Bonhoeffer is famous for being executed shortly before the prison was liberated at the end of World War II.  He had been involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler.  He was arrested and condemned.  What gets lost in the shuffle is his life long opposition and defiance to the Nazis.  He worked with the leaders of the ecumenical movement to censure the attempts to turn the German church into an arm of the socialist state.  Obviously he did not succeed but that is not because he did not try or because there were not others involved in the resistance.

I am only half way through the book at this point but I see many parallels with the spiritual condition of the United States.  The majority of American churches and pastors are more concerned about fitting in and being comfortable than presenting the truths of the Bible to a needy culture.  Bonhoeffer ran into this in Europe.  They seem to think Paul said to be conformed to this world in Romans 12:2.

There are so many parallels to what is happening in the United States and what went on in the great upheavals of the French Revolution, Russian Revolution and the rise of the Third Reich.  I wish people would pay attention.  I pray to that effect.

Think.  Speak out.  Dare to be counted if given the opportunity.

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