Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God is not with the stronger battalions but with the small host of the praying, watchful congregation. God's strength is powerful in the weak.

Now he felt that it would be for him an illegitimate escape from responsibility if he were to avoid the growing contacts with the political and military resistance movement. Not that everyone ought to act as he did, but in his position he saw no possibility of escape any longer into sinlessness and innocence. The sins of the bourgeoisie became clear in the flight from responsibility.

Man at his origin knows only one thing: God. It is only in the unity of his knowledge of God that he knows of other men, of things, and of himself. He knows all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with this origin.

The distinction between objective and personal thinking must truly first be learned. Many people never learn this (look at our colleagues in the ministry! among others).

to finally take up his bourgeois responsibility as a German, he went to the spot where God had placed him through birth and talents. He never considered rejecting his position in life.

What is the power of Christ? It is the hidden, secret power of the cross and of suffering.

You can only learn what obedience is by obeying. It is no use asking questions, for it is only through obedience that you come to learn the truth.

The morning prayer determines the day. Squandered time of which we are ashamed, temptations to which we succumb, weaknesses and lack of courage in work, disorganization and lack of discipline in our thoughts and in our conversation . . . all have their origin most often in the neglect of morning prayer.

I think we honour God more if we gratefully accept the life that he gives us with all its blessings, loving it and drinking it to the full, and also grieving deeply and sincerely when we have impaired or wasted any of the good things of life (some people denounce such an attitude, and think it is bourgeois, weak, and sensitive), than if we are insensitive to life's blessings and may therefore also be insensitive to pain

As Christ is Christ only as the suffering and rejected one, so the disciple is a disciple only as one who suffers and is rejected, as one crucified with Jesus.

But this distinction between person and office is wholly alien to the teaching of Jesus. He says nothing about that. He addresses his disciples as men who have left all to follow him, and the precept of non-violence applies equally to private life and official duty. He is the Lord of all life, and demands undivided allegiance.

Your life as a Christian should make non believers question their disbelief in God

By the way, do you notice that uneducated people find it very difficult to decide things objectively, and that they allow some more or less fortuitous minor circumstance to turn the scales?

Christliche Bruderschaft ist nicht ein Ideal, das wir zu verwirklichen hätten, sondern es ist eine von Gott in Christus geschaffene Wirklichkeit, an der wir teilhaben dürfen:

How does Jesus differ from other great persons and heroes? All heroes come from lowliness and want to be great, while Jesus comes from the heights and wants to be humble. All heroes are human beings and want to be like God,[523] while Christ is God and wants to be a human being. All heroes are born of the earth; Christ is born of God.[524] [—] John 3:6; Acts 4:12

When a man gets angry with his brother and swears at him, when he publicly insults or slanders him, he is guilty of murder and forfeits his relation to God. He erects a barrier not only between himself and his brother, but also between himself and God.

There is no fulfilment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from fulfilment of the law. To forget the first condition was the mistake of the Jews, and to forget the second the temptation of the disciples.

The source of their faith lies in the once-and-for-allness of Christ's death, which they have experienced in their baptism.

When one no longer knows what one owes oneself and others, where the sense for human quality and the strength to respect boundaries cease to exist, chaos is at the door. When for the sake of material comfort one tolerates impudence, one has already surrendered, there the floods of chaos have been permitted to burst the dam at the place where it was to be defended, and one becomes guilty of all that follows.

g. What does it mean to love God?[444] Loving God means giving him everything that belongs to me; it means wishing nothing for myself; it means asking his will before everything you do;[445] it means gladly thinking about him, praying to him, gladly hearing and reading his word.

To live in the light of the resurrection - that is what Easter means

the only visible sign of God in the world is the cross.

The only thing I am really clear about in the whole problem is that a 'culture' that breaks down in the face of danger is no culture.

where the cross stands, the resurrection is near.