The Correct Question

A bombshell from McClendon's Ethics:

So the correct Bonhoeffer question to put to one who believes as I do that violence is not an option for the disciples of Jesus Christ is not the often-heard "Then what would you do about Hitler?" Quite possibly there was nothing that Dietrich Bonhoeffer alone could have done about Hitler, except possibly to help a few Jews escape Germany and help a few friends of a better German future make contact with their Christian friends in other countries. The correct -- because realistic and responsible -- question has been better put by Mark Thiessen Nation: "What would you do with a church which chooses to go along with a government that systematically eliminates Jews, gypsies and homosexuals, and mounts a war that would lead to the deaths of more than thirty-five million people?" That question makes it clear that (from the standpoint of Christian solidarity) it was not Brother Dietrich but we who failed.

This reinforces a growing conviction that it is not the church's vocation first to be against the world. Rather, the church is first to be against the church.