Tag: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Let Our Vision Overcome The Narratives

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

 

When “taking the vax” became a means to signal ones virtue as part of the moral high ground, the right side of history, etc. many people were indulging themselves by taking the vaxx. It became not just an act of personal health or even collective health but a signal, a ritual of their faith in something much bigger and much more sinister.

The origin of that faith and purpose of that ritual should not be ignored. Especially given how by nature of the vaxx being a moral position many of those people entered into that contract full knowing that those of us who refused would be indicted by that same moral position.

– Comment by Dangerous Variant,  Dec 13, 2021

 

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

― Voltaire

 

Where there is no vision, the people perish…

– Proverbs 29:18

 

I read an opinion column early in the new year written by a local woman scolding The Unvaccinated in my area. Ironically, she addressed her article to the “my body, my choice” crowd and argued those who don’t get vaccinated should have their health insurance capped. She claimed taxpayers should not be burdened by those too selfish to care about overwhelmed health care systems or for those who are oppressing future generations.

Where does one even start?

Continue reading “Let Our Vision Overcome The Narratives”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.

Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“It seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent.

In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.

Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings…

Only the humble believe in Him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that He does wonders where people despair, that He takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly.

God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; He loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken…

In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.

Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Germany, 1943

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THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Defiant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged – 1945

Via History.com

On this day in 1945, Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged at Flossenburg, only days before the American liberation of the POW camp. The last words of the brilliant and courageous 39-year-old opponent of Nazism were “This is the end–for me, the beginning of life.”

Continue reading “THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Defiant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged – 1945”

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“All my life I have been fighting against the spirit of narrowness and violence, arrogance, intolerance in its absolute, merciless consistency. I have also worked to overcome this spirit with its evil consequences, such as nationalism in excess, racial persecution, and materialism. In regards to this, the National Socialists are correct in killing me.

I have striven to make its consequences milder for its victims and to prepare the way for a change. In that, my conscience drove me – and in the end, that is a man’s duty.”

Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Executed in Plötzensee Prison on 23 January 1945

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Executed in Flossenbürg Camp on 9 April 1945

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed- in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from ‘After Ten Years’ in Letters and Papers from Prison

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer


THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Defiant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged – 1945

Via History.com

On this day in 1945, Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged at Flossenburg, only days before the American liberation of the POW camp. The last words of the brilliant and courageous 39-year-old opponent of Nazism were “This is the end–for me, the beginning of life.”

Continue reading “THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Defiant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged – 1945”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer


QUOTES OF THE DAY

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the greatest of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“We pray for the big things, and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not so small) blessings.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“No one is discontented who employs and enjoys to the utmost what he has. It is high philosophy to say, we can have just what we like, if we like what we have; but this much at least can be done, and this is contentment, to have the most and best in life, by making the most and best of what we have.

Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air. Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive than the plain doing of duty.

To have bread excite thankfulness and a drink of water send the heart to God is better than sighs for the unattainable. To plow a straight furrow on Monday or dust a room well on Tuesday or kiss a bumped forehead on Wednesday is worth more than the most ecstatic thrill under Sunday eloquence.

Spirituality is seeing God in common things, and showing God in common tasks.”

Maltbie Babcock


QUOTE OF THE DAY

“For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep down in their souls, from which they shy away. These are the manger and the cross. Here the rich come to nothing, because God is with the poor and hungry, but the rich and satisfied he sends away empty. Before God in lowliness, the powerful come to naught; they have no privilege, no prospects; they are judged.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, From Prison, Dec 1943


QUOTES OF THE DAY

“We sometimes forget that central banking as we know it today is, in fact, largely an invention of the past hundred years or so, even though a few central banks can trace their ancestry back to the early nineteenth century or before.

It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. If the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with `free banking.’

The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.”

Paul Volcker, foreword to The Central Banks, 1995

 

“Against folly we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it; it is unmoved by reason; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can be just pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer


QUOTE OF THE DAY

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.

Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer