Costly Grace
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who was banned from preaching by the Gestapo. But in 1937 he had written in his classic work The Cost of Discipleship:
Suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship… Luther reckoned suffering among the marks of the true church, and one of the memoranda drawn up in preparation for the Augsburg Confession similarly defines the church as the community of those “who are persecuted and martyred for the Gospel’s sake.”… Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer. In fact, it is a joy and a token of His grace.
It is perhaps not a surprise to discover that in 1945, after imprisonment in a series of concentration camps, he was hanged by the Nazis. Ten years later, the camp doctor wrote “In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”
Continue reading ‘Destined for persecution (part 2)’
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Published on 24 November , 2007
in Articles.
I need to lay my cards on the table right at the outset. As far as I know I have never been persecuted for being a Christian. Certainly there have been occasions where ‘friends’ have made fun of me. Undoubtedly there have been times when my Christian faith has caused me to be excluded from some activity or opportunity. But persecuted? Not yet.
And that, frankly, is quite remarkable. The Christian heritage that we have enjoyed in Britain for centuries has kept the vast majority of us shielded from the truth which most of the rest of the world knows all too well. The persecution of Christians is a normal state of affairs.
I say all this because there is an increasingly realisation that the privileges that we have enjoyed for so long are beginning to come to an end. Even in this country there have been recent occasions where Christians have lost their jobs simply for living out their Christian convictions. There have even been those arrested and prosecuted for doing what you and I believe the Bible commands us to do.
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Don’t worry, there are no spoilers for Deathly Hallows in this post!
I confess. I’m a big fan of J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books – and have been since I discovered Chamber of Secrets nearly ten years ago. I understand why some Christians baulk at the concept of good witches and wizards, but frankly I just cannot see the difference between Rowling’s writings, and those of Tolkein, and countless tales of Merlin and King Arthur which I grew up on.
The Bible is clear, witchcraft is wrong. But if I lay aside every book that contains things that are wrong, I will only ever read the Bible. The doctrine of common grace – not to mention that of common sense – surely demands otherwise. We should be far more worried about books who’s subliminal messages are opposed to Christian virtues than we should about Harry Potter. A great deal of children’s literature promotes lifestyles that are directly opposed to Christian values and morality. It relatively simple to sit down with your young son or daughter and say “Real witches and wizards are not like Harry Potter. Look with me at what the Bible says”. It is much harder to say, “The underlying meta-narrative of the book you are reading runs contrary to a Christian worldview”. In other words, we ought to be much more wary of the devil’s subtle attacks, and his great desire for us to accept as normal that which God says is unnatural. Harry Potter is an easy target, but surely it should not be our primary target.
Continue reading ‘Life, Death, and Harry Potter’
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