2 Reflections on Christian Community from Dietrich Bonheoffer

One of our core values as a church is community, and this August we’re going to stop gathering together on a Sunday to spend more time intentionally building community through various activities and lots of food.  We’ll kick back into our normal Sunday Gathering routine in September. So this month of ‘life together’ felt like a good moment to reflect on the nature of true community and what the church should be.

To do this I am going to reflect on two things that Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in his classic book Life Together.

Reality vs Dream (chapter 1)

Bonhoeffer identifies that one of the main stumbling blocks to forming true community is our dream and our idea (our ideal!) of what community should be like – a group where we all get along and everyone does as I want them to do. Bonhoeffer says that is hopefully unrealistic. True community will involve getting on with people who are different from you, but that you commit to because you share a common reality in Christ. He says that for true community to form there must first come a moment of disillusionment.

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realise it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams… surely we must be overwhelmed by a great general disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

A community that cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community… he who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter… when the morning mists of dream vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Bonhoeffer says that true community is not formed as I try to realize my ideal, my dream, but rather as I appreciate and give thanks for the reality that has already been established in Jesus, where I am united to different brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. He says that once we understand what we have been given and what we have automatically entered when we trusted in Jesus, “we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.” He goes on to say:

The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us [the reality of the Christian Community to which I belong], the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.

Bonheoffer is highlighting the fact that Christian Community is not a club where I choose those I like to be friends with and we form this clique of people who all think, act, look and speak the same. To form such a church community would have at its foundation selfishness and self-preservation. And if that is the foundation then in time it will implode (or in his language, come to a moment of disillusionment). Instead the person who follows Christ, instead of being “picky” about whom they have fellowship with, should look around and give thanks for those in the local church to whom they have been joined with. And instead of finding the basis of their community in similar interests or backgrounds or education (or whatever!), they find the basis of their community in a common Saviour and Lord, Jesus. Once that is your foundation you can learn to accept, accommodate and (in time) rejoice in your differences and as this happens you will be living out the reality which Christ has already created.

Application – be careful not to love the ideal of Christian Community in your mind; instead look around and give thanks for and love the Christian Community that Christ has given you.

The Day With Others vs The Day Alone (chapters 2-3)

Bonhoeffer shows that to be part of a community you will need to learn to be able to spend time alone and be able to spend time with others, but you do it for the right reasons. He says:

Many people seek fellowship because they are afraid to be alone. Because they cannot stand loneliness, they are driven to seek the company of other people. There are Christians, too, who cannot endure being alone, who have had some bad experience with themselves, who hope they will gain some help in association with others. They are generally disappointed. Then they blame the fellowship for that which is really their own fault. The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium. The person who comes into fellowship because he is running away from himself is misusing it for the sake of diversion, no matter how spiritual this diversion may appear. He is not really seeking community at all, but only distraction which will allow him to forgot his loneliness for a brief time…

He goes on to issue a warning:

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community.

Bonhoeffer then highlights the balance that we must keep:

We recognize, then, that only as we are within the fellowship can we be alone, and only he that is alone can live in the fellowship. Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship. It is not as though the one preceded the other; both begin at the same time, namely, with the call of Jesus Christ.

He therefore expands his earlier warning:

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

Why do we need to heed this warning? Bonhoeffer clarifies the dangers:

Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.

Bonhoeffer is again challenging our selfishness, whether that selfishness drives us to being alone or being with others. Some of us want to be alone because we cannot stand to be with others (because they bring out the worst in our characters and force us to accommodate to their wants and needs, preferences and desires!). If you cannot be with others, if you find you’re impatient and unkind and irritable, do not look to solve that by being alone. That will only lead to vanity, self-infatuation and despair. Rather you must come to Christ and ask him to heal you so you can be in the community and love the community.

However some of us want to be with others because we cannot stand to be alone (we feel so insecure and lonely). If you cannot be alone, if you find that you’re uncomfortable with your own company and need to affirmation of others, then do not look to solve that by being with others. That will only lead to you offloading your emotions and words to others; you will not be loving them but using them. Rather you must come to Christ and ask him to heal you so you can be alone, but not lonely.

Later, Bonhoeffer talks about the tests of true community:

Has the fellowship served to make the individual free, strong and mature, or has it made him weak and dependent? Has it taken him by the hand for a while in order that he may learn again to walk by himself, or has it made him uneasy and unsure? This is one of the most searching and critical questions that can be put to any Christian fellowship.

Similarly, he talks about the test of being alone in meditation on the scriptures and in prayer:

This is the place where we find out whether the Christian’s meditation has lead him into the unreal, from which he awakens in terror when he returns to the workaday world, or whether it has led him into a real contact with God, from which he emerges strengthened and purified. Has it transformed him for a moment into a spiritual ecstasy that vanishes when everyday life returns, or has it lodged the Word of God so securely and deeply in his heart that it holds and fortifies him, impelling him to active love, to obedience, to good works?

He concludes by saying:

Blessed is he who is alone in the strength of the fellowship and blessed is he who keeps the fellowship in the strength of aloneness. But the strength of aloneness and the strength of the fellowship is solely the strength of the Word of God, which is addressed to the individual in the fellowship.

His final words are telling. Whether it be enjoying the reality of community rather than desiring a false-dream of community or whether it be learning to be alone for the sake of community or in community for the sake of being alone, it all starts and ends with Christ. The person who is not secure in who Christ has made them will either use the community selfishly or avoid the community for the sake of an easy life. It’s as we hear Christ’s call to us, that we realise he is calling us to become fully ourselves as we love the community.

Application – Do you avoid community because you find it challenges your selfishness? Or do you use the community for your own selfish gains? Come to Christ and let his word heal and strengthen you.

May God form a community at Christ City Church where people can find refuge, find Christ, find themselves fully and find a place to serve and love the community and the world around them.