Bonhoeffer's Call To Familial Christian Community

Having just recently finished Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, I could not help but think about the journey I have taken as I have worked my way through his small yet profound contribution to the subject of Christian community. I must confess that prior to beginning his work, I was somewhat skeptical at first. Though I do not doubt Bonhoeffer’s faith in Christ, I did question how much I could be helped to better understand a fundamental element of the Christian faith like community from someone not traditionally considered a conservative evangelical. As I read through Life Together, however, I quickly came to see the ignorance of such an error. Bonhoeffer helped me on many levels to see more clearly how essential and non-optional it is for all believers to function as builders of community within the body of Christ. Though there are many facets of this community building discussed by Bonhoeffer, one in particular has been most helpful to me.

On nearly every page of Bonhoeffer’s timeless work there is either a stated or implied assertion that upon conversion believers are given an invitation to live life within a family. This family can never be dissolved and the Head never deserts His children. This claim hit home with me for the simple reason that it seems to run so contrary to the trajectory of contemporary Christianity. I am convinced that this is not because Christians would take issue with Bonhoeffer, since his claim is biblically right on target. Instead, I believe the very concept of family has become severely eroded. So much so that most people, Christians included, no longer find it important, much less essential. To make matters worse, few attempts are being made within contemporary Christianity to teach and model the transcultural and transgenerational reality that believers are to live before the world as a family. There are “battles” being fought over alcohol consumption, the degree to which Christians should be culturally relevant, and a host of other issues; yet, rarely, is there a call to draw nearer to one’s brothers and sisters while at the same time drawing closer to the Father through His Son. If that were not enough, we live in a day and age when people are more and more self-absorbed and busy, and churches are more and more focused on numerical growth and fluff. This has led to a severe decline in the number of churches that are truly seeking to foster familial relationships. Whether it be within the home or within the church, true relational living as a family is sadly becoming nearly non-existent.

For all these aforementioned reasons and more, Bonhoeffer’s simple yet insightful Life Together ought to serve as a wake-up call to embrace anew the old truth that believers are brothers and sisters with the same heavenly Father. Just as a family eats together, prays together, reads the bible together, serves one another, cares for one another, confesses sin to one another, calls one another to account, and grows together, so must believers follow suit. When believers are confronted with this precious truth and begin to grasp what such a truth really means for the collective body of Christ, as well as the Christian as an individual, I am convinced that a great harvest of good fruit will result. Other than the word of God, I have yet to read a book more helpful as a call to and a guide for building genuine Christian community than Life Together. For this reason, I am very grateful that God, in His sweet providence, used Bonhoeffer to pen this excellent treatise. There is no doubt in my mind that his words will long be helpful to believers for many generations to come. May you, too, profit from this excellent work.