Who am I that He would give me a second chance at this? As I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, I feel like I can relate my previous clumsy attempts at “Christian ministry” so closely to his description of the human community. I remember how my best love came out more like manipulation. I talked my head off as though I had something important to say, and even my listening was a weak space to re-gather my thoughts and assert my judgments again. Bonhoeffer’s exposition of the contrasts are striking:
| Human Community (though often religious) | Christian Brotherhood |
| 1. Comes from the natural urges, powers, and capacities of the human spirit | Created only by the Holy Spirit |
| 2. Basis is the dark, turbid urges and desires of the human mind: desire | Basis is the clear, manifest Word of God in Jesus Christ: truth |
| 3. Men bind others to themselves | God’s Word alone is binding |
| 4. Complete fusion of I and Thou | Releases the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love |
| 5. Love for my own sake | Love for Christ’s sake |
| 6. Loves as one to whom I bind myself; desire to be irresistible, to rule | Loves you as a free person |
| 7. Makes love an end in itself, to which it must subject everything | Comes from Jesus Christ, serves Him alone |
| 8. Constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and should become | Recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ |
| 9. Speaks to the brother about Christ | Speaks to Christ about the brother |
| 10. Creates human subjection , dependence, constraint | Creates freedom of the brethren under the Word |
