... and thinking about Discipleship thanks to Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I am currently reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's, The Cost of Discipleship. I am reading it again after about 20 years when I had to read it for college. It’s different this time. It’s amazing how time, maturity, and circumstances can lead one to reading a book differently. I think scripture can be like that. Maybe that’s why the Hebrew writer said it was living and active. I thought I would post some Bonhoeffer quotes this week to spur a discussion. He's worth quoting when you read about his life. These quotes, especially this first one, are not for the faint-hearted Christian. They grab you, shake you, and disturb you! Here’s my favorite one for starters:

“The cross is laid on every Christian. It begins with the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death -- we give over our lives to death. Since this happens at the beginning of the Christian life, the cross can never be merely a tragic ending to an otherwise happy religious life. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther's, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time -- death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at His call. That is why the rich young man was so loath to follow Jesus, for the cost of his following was the death of his will. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and His call are necessarily our death and our life.”

I wonder what our lives would be like if we lived every day to die. If every decision was made like a disciple that realized he was dead to Christ and alive at the same time. Hmmm…