Thanks to my annual Christmas habit of asking for more books than I can read in a span of a year, I have never needed to worry about how I should acquire another book worth my time. A few weeks ago, during my visit to the school I will be spending the next four years of my life at, Hillsdale College, the students’ whose dorm I slept in had a book with a spine I recognized, for I had a copy of the same one sitting on my bookshelf at home. I took this as a sign that this book should be the next one I read, so on the second Sunday of Easter a few weeks later, I laid outside, cracked open the cover, and began reading Eric Metaxas’ Foreword to The Cost of Discipleship by German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Two weeks later, due to an absolutely exhausting schedule, I have only reached the third chapter of the book, yet Bonhoeffer’s biography and first chapter have already impressed on my soul a realization about modern Christianity that is worth sharing.
For those unfamiliar with the author, Bonhoeffer, born in Germany in 1906, is famous among Christians of all denominations for his revolutionary approach to living a Christian life. Specifically, his focus on the whole meaning of Jesus’ call to discipleship. At the time, the Lutheran Church, in which he was a pastor, had become adamant about the idea of a complete separation between one’s religious and public life. The Church called laity to spend their lives “preaching, teaching, and writing” about the truth and beauty of the faith. It was simply a fruitless venture, they believed, to enter the world of sin with the hope of pleasing God and gaining converts.
Bonhoeffer, however, “was in deadly earnest when he called for Christian action and self-sacrifice.”
He not only lived by this conviction, publicly repudiating the Nazis to the point of his arrest, but died because of it, meeting “ his death at the hands of the S.S. Black Guards” for conspiring to assassinate Hitler on April 9th, 1945. Bonhoeffer recognized the value of the private “preaching, teaching, and writing” about the faith was simply “not enough” to fulfill the call to discipleship that Jesus makes to his people.
One of the most common Bible verses that speakers repeat in nearly every topic of Christian theology is Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."
From my experience, most use this verse as a call to instigate positive, Christ-inspired change in our world, not realizing the malice that this way of agreeably living out one’s faith that it can bring along. Every time this verse, which Jesus offered his disciples in his Sermon on the Mount, is presented, the idea of living a vibrant life of faith is treated as a private matter. As long as one preaches to those who are willing to listen, teaches to those who are willing to learn, and writes to those who are willing to read, our world will become a more fruitful place. This lesson, I agree, is crucial to understanding the entirety of Jesus’ Sermon. As Bonhoeffer admits, the self-preserving part of the Christian faith is indispensable to the health and longevity of Christianity as a whole. However, from the little I have already learned about Dietrich Bonhoeffer has led me to realize that today, Christians leave out one of, if not the most critical implications of Jesus’ call to discipleship: with the taste of salt comes fulfillment, but also, at times, great shock.
Part of the beauty of Christianity is what Aquinas describes as the hypostatic union, or the fact that Jesus is both completely God and completely man. Incarnate, he entered our world, and lived a finite, documented time in history. This allows us to apply his words literally as well as spiritually. In Jesus’ time, the “flavor” and preservation salt added to food, and the flavor Christians attempt to fill their lives mostly with was only one of its main jobs. Salt, more importantly, was a popular remedy used to clean open wounds.
In the book the Cost of Discipleship, commonly referred to as his magnum opus, Bonhoeffer concerns himself with the problem of “cheap grace” that he observed plagued the church and stopping the Christian cause against Nazi Germany. As he quickly defines in the second sentence of the first chapter, “cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares… Grace without price, grace without cost!”
This characterization of those who believe in cheap grace rings familiar to the lessons that are often (imperfectly) based off of Christ’s admonition to be the salt of the earth.
Those who are victims of cheap grace fall to the assumption that because, through the Church, God provides grace plenary, there is no need to atone for the sins of the world or for oneself. Put in the context of his time, even if they opposed the actions of Nazi Germany in their souls, Christians ought not to concern themselves with active opposition. Simply put, they considered such work to be unnecessarily messy. Getting involved in the world equates to becoming of it.
“Instead of following Christ,” Bonhoeffer sarcastically declares, “let the Christian enjoy the consolations of his grace!”
In these lessons, the ideal Christian is the Christian who commits steadfastly to attending Church weekly and reading the scriptures daily, and also overwhelmingly submissive to the world they must enter rarely and begrudgingly when, for example, they must go grocery shopping. The Christians that surrounded Bonhoeffer denounced any discussion of current events in the name of “rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.”
If we are to continue with the analogy that Christians ought to be the “salt of the Earth,” we must necessarily recognize every property of salt in the context of the time our Lord spoke to his disciples in: salt was not used merely for adding instant pleasure to life, but agonizingly poured onto wounds for the long-term purpose of cleansing and healing. Christ himself lived and died because he was too “salty” for the world that bore him.
This modern interpretation of Christ’s admonition gave birth to the idea that any pain or discomfort in any context is unjustified. I, personally, know multiple faithful Christians that deeply enjoy conversing about the Christian experience in good and faithful company. In their words, they are passionate about the eternal life that God provides to all who place their trust in Him. They speak endlessly about their hopes for a Christian world and desires for everyone to experience the love of Jesus as they have for themselves, preaching as if their words are backed by ceaseless work against the forces of evil. Yet at the same time, they collapse under any implication of action and self-sacrifice to advance the desires they so passionately preach, teach, and write about. Though they speak strongly, they fear opposition. They silence themselves when in hostile territory, the place that Jesus calls us to speak out the loudest.
This is the trap of cheap grace that Bonhoeffer so adamantly vowed his opposition to. The manner in which he lived his life and faced his death at 39, he is a prime example of having lived in the world, for the sake of its eventual salvation, but not having lived of it.
The entire thesis of Christianity ought to show those who are too fearful to act or self-sacrifice that the only way to live out the most fulfilling Christian life is to do exactly that.
Our savior entered the world, performing miracles and living among those who eventually crucified him because he knew that soft persuasion and gentle suggestion will not change the inherent flaws of human nature. Only a great and brutal conquest of sin and its ugly stewards.
Victims of cheap grace will justify their inaction by observing that Jesus did not create pointless conflict and discomfort. This, to Bonhoeffer’s great dismay, has only become more commonplace among Christians since his death. The Church (an umbrella term for any denomination that is widely considered Christian) has become unwilling to stand up for the unchanging Christian values that both he and Jesus died to advance. Reaching a climax in the 2020s, Christian institutions have bent down to groups advocating for the “acceptance” of modern sexual morals, taking Jesus’ commandment to love as a call to affirm the practices that were historically (and accurately) treated as sinful. Christians have favored cultural alignment and social acceptance over speaking out against workplace persecution and silence, placing pensions, paychecks and positivity over unconditional devotion to our Lord.
This is why the cases of those who have stood for the teachings of Christ, such as Joe Kennedy, Mark Houck, Jonathan Isaac, Gina Carano, and many others, have exploded onto the national scene. Publicly standing for one’s faith has always been honorable, but due to the modern plague of cheap grace, it has gained the extra label of being necessary. These cases are all symbols of what Bonhoeffer calls costly grace, which “condemns sin, and… justifies the sinner.” Costly grace protects Christians from becoming of the world, and trains their minds and souls on the outcome of the Great Commission, and keeps their agreeable flesh from worrying about the discomfort that the action and self sacrifice will inevitably bring. However large the consequence of an unpopular venture is in this life, the reward in heaven is only greater. These disruptions in our society that cause the conversations of faith in public life and enrage Christ’s most passionate opposition are not unjustified based on the fact that they are, themselves, disruptions. Our Lord did not call us to be agreeable servants, but to be good and faithful servants. Our conquest of evil will cease to take flight if we insist on “reaching” the masses with happy slogans and catchy platitudes, but with passionate, albeit costly, declarations of what is sin and what is desired by God.
Jesus did not speak to the Jews and the Gentiles for the sole purpose of angering them and creating chaos, yet he spoke regardless, with full knowledge that He would cause a disruption so big that it led to His crucifixion.
Costly grace, which comes at an expense to our flesh but fulfills our purpose as disciples of the Lord teaches us that what is pretty is not always Beautiful, and what is ugly is, at times, Good. Our flesh ought not to be the unitary decider as to what we should pursue and what we should avoid. Although our eyes might grimace at the sight of a bloodied man on a cross, our souls are fulfilled by that man’s death and resurrection. Although our flesh might recoil at the idea of an uncomfortable confrontation with an unholy force, our souls are strengthened as our cause is advanced.
We are the salt of the earth. What good are we except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot if we do not recognize our full purpose? Our saltiness is not only to provide our good company with a pleasurable meal but to cause the pain of realization of the earth’s brokenness that our salvation justifies!
Bonhoeffer shocked the world with his tireless action and self-sacrifice to glorify God.
Jesus shocked the world with his glory, pouring himself out upon the wounds of the world with every word he spoke and every miracle that he worked.
We are called not to be agreeable but to be loving, and understand the logical limits of either term. May we all strive to live like Bonhoeffer and live like Jesus.
This life, though quite costly, is nevertheless a life that glorifies God in the highest.
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