July 20, 2020

We assume and judge to self-justify. Turning from the corner of assumption and judgement to the place of freedom and rest requires we not only understand we are justified by grace, but that we believe it. When we do, turning not only positions us in this Place of Freedom and Rest, it positions others for it, too. And we are positioned to enjoy one another, rather than be afflicted by one another.

Turning is a discipline of the tongue. It is a discipline for me to not initiate talking much about what’s happening to me when I’m engaged with others in community. In doing so, I will discover that others have things happening to them, as well. I will gain empathy and both I and others will be drawn together, rather than pushed apart.

The Modern Spirituality Series: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p 27

“A Christian community should know that somewhere in it there will certainly be ‘a reasoning among them, which if them should be the greatest.’ It is the struggle of the natural man for self-justification. He finds it only in comparing himself with others, in condemning and judging others. Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together.

It must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him.

Where the discipline of the tongue is practiced right from the beginning, each individual will make a matchless discovery. He will be able to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him, putting him in his particular place where he can gain ascendancy over him and thus doing violence to him as a person.

Now he can allow the brother to exist as a completely free person, as God made him to be. Now the other person, in the freedom with which he was created, becomes the occasion of joy, whereas before he was only a nuisance and an affliction.”