I am currently reading through Bonhoeffer the Assassin? by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony Siegrist, and Daniel Umbel. They take on what they call the “myth” that Bonhoeffer was an active participant in the plots to assassinate Hitler.

There is a particular quote from Bonhoeffer that leaves me challenged. Bonhoeffer was writing to three close friends reflecting on the 10 years since Hitler had risen in influence. His words give me pause as I reflect on the last 10 years of my own life.

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds. We have become cunning and learned the arts of obfuscation and equivocal speech. Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings, and often we have failed to speak to them a true and open word. Unbearable conflicts have worn us down or even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? We will not need geniuses, cynics, people who have contempt for others, or cunning tacticians, but simple, uncomplicated, and honest human beings. Will our inner strength to resist what has been forced on us have remained strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves blunt enough, to find our way back to simplicity and honesty? (p. 96)

The past ten years in my own life have left me with similar questions, though mainly about myself.

Am I still of any use? I have left one church home I’ve known my entire life for another place I love as home. It all has become a bit ill-fitting in particular ways. In some ways I have shifted “politically,” though not in as many ways as some would think. Not enough for the taste of others.

Am I willing to live a simple, uncomplicated, and honest life? Is my heart being examined for impurities so I can live more simply? Am I positioning myself to live in a way that my very being just “gets in the way” of what is evil?

There are things to challenge culturally and spiritually in the days ahead, just as there have been in the years gone by. Am I up to a life of simplicity and honesty and being able to rest in that as I then face what is wrong and find a voice to say or do something?

What is needed ahead is discernment and wisdom. Courage, yes. But wisdom and discernment to know when and how to act or speak. And an honest life that simply knows it may be heard, it may not be heard, but that is not the point.

This is the challenge Bonhoeffer gives me.