Bonhoeffer: Discipleship

Bonhoeffer makes the comparison between cheap grace and costly grace. It is more serious than that.

the Black Church, Brașov, Romania.

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of my favorite writers—and people. His book The Cost of Discipleship is a signpost directing us away from the self-defined Christian belief to the Scripture-define Christian faith. He compares cheap grace to costly grace. He says that cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves and costly grace costs a man his whole life. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship. Costly grace gives a man the only true life.

True. Absolutely. My adjustments are not because he was wrong, but that he didn't go far enough. Possibly the church of the 1940s was not as wayward as the church of today. There were certainly no televangelists who wept that they couldn't afford another private plane, nor megachurches with music leaders who did pelvic thrusts and cafeterias at the entrance so people wouldn't have to sacrifice without their morning coffee and muffin by taking time off to go to church.

In the Church of Bonhoeffer's day, the opposite of cheap grace might have been costly grace, but today the opposite of cheap grace is denied grace. Cheap grace is the grace we define for ourselves—and also (and more destructively) for others. If cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves, the underlying ugliness of that is that it is not the grace the God that God bestows. Cheap grace is a human grace. It is define by humans for the purpose of hiding divine grace. Divine grace is fearful; human grace is self-satisfying. Divine grace is unattainable; human grace is attainable to whatever degree we say it is. And therein lies the ugliness.

If Christian grace is defined by people to suit their own purposes (to avoid the terrible grace of God), then the boundary of that self-defined grace includes only the few and excludes all others, based upon that self-defined border. The cheap grace exclusionary zone excludes not just those who know the true grace, but also those who know nothing of either. The self-defined cheap grace protects itself with religious fervor. It must be right, so any belief to the contrary must be wrong. It will not tolerate preaching and teaching of costly grace, and so it reacts with anger. Anger is the reaction that must be made when there is no substance and so the only protection is emotional outburst. But the self-define cheap grace also feeds itself on the plight of the faithless. Cheap grace says the unbeliever is an unbeliever for a reason. It says there is no faith except the faith they define, no love or goodness or courage except the kind they define. It says cowardice within cheap grace is better than courage outside cheap grace. It says there is no true love or devotion or sacrifice except within cheap grace, and then empties love and devotion and sacrifice within cheap grace of any depth and warmth.

Unbelievers care nothing for cheap grace because it is nonsense to them, and the cheap grace adherents take this as proof that their cheap grace is truth: pearls before swine. But that is just another quality of cheap grace: to be recognized by even unbelievers as worthless. Unbelievers do not like evangelism that knocks on their door or preaching that tells them they are bad people. Unbelievers are not impressed by crystal cathedrals or mega churches. They recognize them for what they are: religious pretense. They sometimes tolerate it and usually avoid it. It is a religion they care nothing for. It is a religion that reciprocates: it cares nothing for them.

Costly grace is not a pretense. It is recognized by the world as something different. It is not avoided; it is inspected. It is not regarded as religious pretense: it is seen as something worth looking at.

The man Bonhoeffer is looked at by Christian and non-Christian alike as a true believer. The televangelist is looked at as a fraud except only by his following. There is nothing there to see. The exposing of cheap grace to the world by television and the internet serves only to polarize. Adherents become more strident; everyone else becomes more distant.

A serious problem is declaring that being a Christian is the same thing as being a disciple. It is another instance of cheap grace: people promoting themselves to whatever position they desire. Ask a Christian if he is an elder or a deacon or a pastor, and he will respond correctly: yes or no, whatever he is. But ask if he is a teacher and you get into murky waters. Ask if he is a disciple and you will get a resounding yes. Deny he is a disciple and you will get a dark response.

One reason is that there is no formal office or definition of the disciple. An elder or deacon is appointed or elected; a pastor or priest is ordained. A person claiming to be one of these when he is not is disregarded. But if a person says he is a missionary in his neighborhood or workplace, or if a person says he is a teacher because he conducts Bible studies with his family or in his home, we allow the self-designation.

Discipleship falls at the opposite pole. Saying a person is not a disciple is tantamount to saying he is not a believer. There is no good reason for this; it is just how we regard things in our modern church. The boundary of discipleship in Scripture is fuzzy. A disciple could be anyone a gospel writer or epistle writer declared as such. Nevertheless, there is no example in Scripture of a disciple who stayed home. We take terms like "follower" and "disciple" in the spiritual sense, because we are lazy and easily convinced of our goodness and devotion.