[318.1] A WORD DEVOID OF FLESH

...is what hits me with deadening force whenever I am within radar of a satellite TV and chance upon the 'God' channels. Celebrity perfume to erase the smell of the soul; or what one might call, to adapt the title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's best-known book, "the cost of non-discipleship."

Jim Wallis summed it up well, and personally, when he described the impact of his first encounter with Bonhoeffer through his written legacy: "I realized that what I had mostly experienced was an American Christianity without Christ, a religion highly conformed to its culture and mostly uncritical of its nation."

(From the foreword to A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily Meditations from His Letters, Writings, and Sermons, published by HarperSanFrancisco in January 2006.)

Comment on this post: FaithInSociety