The Importance of Loving Others without the Hope of Changing Them

I’m working through Eric Metaxas’ biography and I’m struck by the contract between the attitudes of Luther and Bonhoeffer regarding people with whom they had intellectual and theological disagreements.

During Luther’s later days, he developed an unconscionable anti-semetic streak. His earlier writings were hopeful that part of the fruit of the religious shifts that were taking place would be the mass conversions of the Jewish people. This did not come to pass and an older and, well, hateful Luther entertained persecuting the Jews and confiscating their property (Metaxas notes that Luther’s venom extended to other groups as well, most notably against the Catholics).  The Nazis found these writings of Luther and used them in their campaign to persuade the Germans that Judaism as the antithesis of Christianity. Luther’s larger than life personality was impressed upon the German nation: his Bible changed the nation, his theology changed their religion, and his hate helped give permission for unspeakable sins. It seems that love that only extends warmth with the goal of changing the Other is a subtle form of hate.

Within weeks of Hitler’s election to Chancellor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered a sermon outlining the how the church and state should relate. Bonhoeffer offered three suggestion for how the church should aid the state. First, the church should play a prophetic role to help the state be the institution that God intended. Secondly, Bonhoeffer argued that the church should “aid the victims of state action.” He declared “the church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. ” Bonhoeffer even want as far to say that the church might need to “put a spoke in the week of government” to end the injustices.

Bonhoeffer’s participation in the attempt to assasinate Hitler demonstrates the depth of his convictions. He loved the Jewish people without a thought to whether they would convert to Christianity. He saw them as people made in God’s image and therefore worthy of unconditional love and sacrifice, even if it cost him his life. Bonhoeffer didn’t commodify love and use it as a tool to leverage people to get in line with his thinking, no matter how true and right it was.

I can’t help but think that Bonhoeffer’s live is a better template for figuring out how the American churches should relate to the state than what we are doing right now.

Here’s some questions for discussion:

What groups of people does the church withhold love from because we haven’t figured out to change them?

Who are the victims of state action that the church should be defending, regardless of their beliefs?

Who are the people who are different from you that you are choosing not to love?

Who would become harder for you to love if you knew that you would never persuade that person to change their behavior or thinking?