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The Cost Of Discipleship By Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Analysis

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Legalism and Liberty In this post-modern society, a prevailing school of thought is the idea of subjective truth. Every person has their own understanding of what they believe to be as true, and absolute truth does not exist. Regarding the concept of a “life rightly lived,” each individual may have a different interpretation of right and wrong according to their perspective. In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer portrays a very different version of the “life rightly lived.” He says that only those who follow the teachings of the Bible with the utmost obedience and surrender their lives to Jesus Christ may truly have a right life. Even in the setting of a Christian college, these strict interpretations of the Bible put me in a state of defiance. I …show more content…

He talks about how Jesus commanded his disciples to let their light shine before men while also taking care to “not let (their) left hand know what (their) right hand is doing” (English Standard Version, Matt. 6.3). He claims to resolve this apparent paradox by asserting that we must hide our righteousness not from men, but from ourselves (176). This “voluntary blindness” maintains that “all that the follower of Jesus has to do is to make sure that his obedience, following and love are entirely spontaneous and unpremeditated” (177). I understand how Bonhoeffer arrived at this conclusion. However, I find this idea of “spontaneous and unpremeditated” obedience to be quite absurd. I do not believe that this passage was meant to be taken so literally. The purpose of this teaching was to warn us against doing good solely for the feeling of piety rather than for the purpose of helping others. Furthermore, love and obedience are not spontaneous actions but learned cultivated over time. Unfortunately for Bonhoeffer, I do not believe that this doctrine is quite as clear-cut as he makes it out to

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