Dear Mr. Bonhoeffer, 

 

It is now March in the year 2019. The heavy snow and rain of winter are turning to the bright hopes of a festive spring. In America, one of the exciting spring events which happen every March is a basketball tournament for colleges and universities throughout the nation. I think as a sports-loving person, you would enjoy this American-invented sport. Did you watch any college basketball games on your two highly eventful visits to America in the 1930s? 

 

Let me tell you an amusing story about something that happened in March 2013. A student group called the Emerging Scholars Network of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship had a novel idea to select what they called the Best Christian Books of All Time. They patterned their quest after the men’s college basketball tournament organized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA. This annual tournament has acquired a popular nickname – March Madness. 

 

Briefly, the tournament involves the 64 top college basketball teams, divided into four regional brackets – East, West, North, and South. Each team plays an opponent, and the winner proceeds to the next round or bracket, while the loser is eliminated from the tournament. So the teams go down from the initial 64 to 32 to 16, with the eventual survivors of that round earning the affectionate name of The Sweet Sixteen. The subsequent rounds are played, and the teams go down to 8 and then 4 teams, which have received the highly-treasured title of The Final Four. From there it goes down to two team vying in the national championship game to determine the number one team in the whole nation. 

 

Let me get back to the Best Christian Books of All Time. The Emerging Scholars Network also created 4 category brackets for their tournament: (1) Theology & Apologetics, (2) Christian Life & Discipleship, (3) Fiction & Poetry, and (4) Memoirs, Devotionals, & Spirituality. You will be pleased to know that two of your books were selected in the top 64 books: The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, both in the Christian Life & Discipleship bracket. The Cost of Discipleship was the English title of your book in German named Discipleship. After two rounds of battling, which in this tournament meant voting by the Network and interested participants, both your books made it to The Sweet Sixteen!  

 

Just imagine – of all the good books written by Christians down through the centuries, you had two books in the Top 16.  

 

There were two other highly esteemed authors who also had two books in The Sweet Sixteen: Augustine of Hippo (Confessions, City of God) and C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, Chronicles of Narnia). Some of the other noteworthy books in The Sweet Sixteen included GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God, and Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. 

 

By the way, did you ever meet C.S. Lewis in London when you served as a pastor there in 1934-35? By that time, he had recently become a Christian after being an avid atheist. 

 

Getting back to the book tournament, in the Sweet Sixteen bracket, your two books unfortunately had to face each other, and the winner was The Cost of Discipleship, which eventually made it to The Final Four. The other three that made it that far were Mere Christianity, Confessions, and JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The Cost of Discipleship lost to Lewis’ Mere Christianity, which lost to the eventual winner, Augustine’s Confessions.  

 

I tell you this amusing anecdote merely as my introduction, though surely too long-winded, to how I first came to know you. In my university days, I knew you only as the author and writer of those two exact books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. In the introductions to the editions I had, I read that you died as a martyr in World War II, but did not know the reasons why. 

 

But your name was certainly much respected and admired in my college and graduate circles. My pastor at that time would often quote you in his sermons, along with his other favorite Christian author, C.S. Lewis. At Sunday morning services, I came to expect an occasional quote from you – including from one of your other classics, Letters and Papers from Prison, which was edited after your death by your dear friend Eberhard Bethge. 

 

It was not until a few decades later that I learned not only about your death, but about how you had lived life in all its fullness. This revelation came when I read your excellent biography in 2012 written by author Eric Metaxas. That book changed everything.  

 

I learned that your death did not fall under the traditional definition of a martyr, but instead, you died for living out your Christian faith in the face of evil. For joining the German resistance to Hitler. For God called you to act and to sacrifice all in sole allegiance to God on behalf of God’s people, the Jews. And in this, your deep struggle as a church leader was being faithful to that call even though many others were not ready to follow you. In fact, you knew that your resolve may not be fully understood by your current generation – and probably even future generations. You knew that not many people could go where you were going, or could see what you were seeing. 

 

Your biography showed me how history — and I mean the deep joys and struggles of personal history – gives us all a perspective of our common humanity, and with that, of the essence of life.  

 

Around the time I read your biography, I was personally going through a difficult time in my life – a 7-month long period of unemployment. I called it my season in the desert. I took inspiration from reading about your two years in a Nazi prison. And was comforted by the same Biblical verses which comforted you — Psalm 31:14-15a “But I trust in you, Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands…” 

 

Then in the summer of 2018, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Berlin. Of course, I traveled to the town of Wittenberg to pay my respects to Martin Luther. But I was thrilled to visit your house, or more accurately, your parents’ house, which still stands today. I had arranged for a private tour. We sat in the spacious living room. We climbed the staircase to your study on the second floor. I gazed at your bookshelf, which contained parts of your private library. I looked out your window to the street, where I imagined the Gestapo coming to arrest you that pivotal day of April 5, 1943 – and you never had the opportunity to return to your home. 

 

Most personally moving of all, I sat at your desk. There, I could just imagine you penning your many letters and writings. Right there at that very desk, you wrote After Ten Years – the Christmas 1942 letter to your closest friends in the resistance about the struggles of the past decade and the task ahead.  

 

I realized that you were not primarily a theologian, but a pastor and leader. You were gifted at working with youths, be that in Barcelona or London or Harlem or Berlin. You led the underground seminary in the very midst of the Third Reich’s rise to power. You challenged German Christians to think about where their true allegiance lay, and what that meant in the reality of Nazi domination and dictatorship. 

 

The life you lived was characterized by and exemplified in your two life questions: What is the church? Who is Jesus Christ for us today? Inspired by you, I have developed my own life questions, which are three in number. Perhaps I will share them with you in another letter. 

 

As I close this first letter to you, I want to share two things. First, in my aforementioned visit to Berlin, I formed a few impressions and insights of the German nation in your day for which I hope to write about in my next letter. Second, as I walked down Marienburger Allee after leaving your house that hot summer day, one thought kept running through my mind: if and when I meet you in heaven, what would we talk about? 

 

While on earth, your great intellect, refined manners, and sharp wit often intimidated people who related to you. Did you realize that? I’m pretty sure I would likewise feel intimidated to meet you and feel obligated to engage you in some spiritual topic at too high levels for me. Thus, I do hope that these letters will allow us, especially me, to feel comfortable and warm up to each other. So that when we do meet in heaven, and I will certainly seek you out, we can greet one another perhaps as old friends, even though we would not have met each other until then. 

 

Very sincerely yours, 

Ted at Common Reason