Embracing Disillusionment.
If you don’t know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer was, you should. Born in the beginning of the 20th century and raised amidst the murky chaos of its two World Wars, Bonhoeffer was a fierce and reckless lover of God. He was an ordained pastor and a prolific writer, an anti-Nazi justice-seeker who lived out his faith and died for it, too. He was killed at the age of 39 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp.
In 1939, just six years before his death, hepublished a book called Life Together, whichcontains some of the most profound, convicting commentary on community I’veever read. A few weeks back, while reading a chapter of the book for one of myclasses, I was reminded of just how arresting and counterintuitive his wordsare. Here’s an excerpt in which He talks about the blessing of disillusionmentwithin community:
"By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of emotions but a God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both....He [or she] who loves his [or her] dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his [or her] personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial."
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Bonhoeffer’s re-envisioning of conflict in community has challenged every part of my identity—as a college student, as a woman, as a creative, and as a Christian. I can’t escape its relevance. How often I’ve dreamed of more whole and more holy relationships than the ones I have now and have tried to hold my friends to those impossible standards. How often I’ve asked God to heal up old injured relationships and embalm the sweetness of new ones, always forgetting that He is bent on teaching our hearts before ameliorating our situations. There is power in renaming brokenness, in mining for God’s goodness in hard and hurtful things.
In my community, I have seen God proveHimself through and in spite of imperfect fellowship. It is at once beautifuland humbling to remember that God is infinitely better at fixing things than weare. That truth doesn’t seem to sink very deep when living life together iseasy and fruitful; we are always so eager to credit ourselves for success inrelationships (and life in general). But when community feels unfulfilling, Godcan begin unveiling our eyes to see that fulfillment comes from Him, nothumans. At our worst, we understand that He is our ultimate and unending Best.
Needless to say, Bonhoeffer is notrecommending we initiate the “unhappy and ugly aspects” in our friendships;there is enough of it already existing, unintentionally created by ourfractured, sin-riddled attempts to love. Rather, instead of wishing and prayingfor a nonnegotiable reality to go away, Bonhoeffer wants us to recast ourmesses (i.e. to let God recast them): we should get to thanking God forshattered pretenses and undone delusions, because the destruction of thesethings leaves us open and available for God to reveal His fullness. God isenough, and very rarely do we realize that without coming to terms with ournot-enough-ness.
What if we started embracing thebrokenness in our friendships? What if we started thanking God for all thetension, passivity, and bitterness that keeps us running back into His presencefor more peace and more wisdom and more grace? Our God loves when we depend onHim! It’s an act of worship to seek out His provision and goodness. Let’s notforget: “Thesacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, OGod, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). He doesn’t want us perfect andput-together. He wants us to come as we are, and to offer our unspokenfrustrations, broken hearts, and imperfect relationships as sacrifices to Him whois our healer, fixer, and reconciler.
Bonhoeffer’s words seem to echo Hosea’s: “Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us” (Hosea 6:1). God is yearning to lean in close and teach us about His all-sufficiency. Come, let us learn those lessons together, even as we fail and fall short for one another. Come, let us return to the Lord.
words by Delaney Young and photo by Cate Willis