Cruciformity

I’ve been slowly sifting through old posts in my RSS feeder and came across a great post on the reliability of the Gospels over at Ben Myer’s blog by Prof. George Hunsinger. Click here for a great read.

I particularly like his closing paragraphs:

It is finally not we who read the NT, but the NT that reads us. It calls us and our detached role as would-be authoritative, evidence-weighing spectators radically into question. That is why it is so dangerous. Many of those original “unreliable” witnesses to the resurrection of Christ, like Peter and Paul, went to their brutal deaths as martyrs. “When Christ calls a man,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “he bids him come and die.”

No one who is not willing to take this risk should venture to read the NT. But many of those who have turned to it spiritually have found, throughout the centuries, that they end up saying with Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:68). I suggest that you might want to read the opening chapters in The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I have a developing love of poetry. So I’m beginning to explore what’s out there. Please let me know if there’s anything that you’d recommend.

A friend recently shared with me a precious poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I’m a big fan of Bonhoeffer - please read up on him if he’s unfamiliar. I love this because because it so clearly expresses my own thoughts and experiences.

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell me of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my thoat,
Yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine,
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!