There Arose a Reasoning Among Them . . .

Bonhoeffer & his students

In every community of faith and learning there come times of conflict.  Conflicts arise because these communities are composed of humans who are finite and fallen.  At every university where I've taught over the past sixteen years there have been conflicts – conflicts between students and faculty members; between faculty and fellow faculty; and between faculty and university administration.

A university is in many respects like all other human communities that experience conflict from within among its members.  Universities founded upon a common faith are no less prone to experience conflicts since, like every church fellowship, such a university is made-up of humans.  So it should come as no surprise that a Christian university, especially one that is in its early years of growth and development, would experience conflict between some of its faculty and its administrative leaders.

Brother Bonhoeffer knew the reality of conflict from within a fellowship.  During his days leading the Confessing Church’s seminary at Finkenwalde, he experienced it.  When he wrote about this experiment in Christian community in his little book Life Together, he began the fourth chapter with this warning:

“'There arose a reasoning among them, which of them would be the greatest’ (Luke 9:46). We know who it is that sows this thought in the Christian community.  But perhaps we do not bear in mind enough that no Christian community ever comes together without this thought immediately emerging as a seed of discord.  Thus at the very beginning of Christian fellowship there is engendered an invisible, often unconscious, life-and-death contest.  ‘There arose a reasoning among them’; this is enough to destroy a fellowship” (90).

Bonhoeffer’s insight exposes the root cause for many, if not most, of these conflicts in our communities.  It is the human desire for greatness or ascendancy over others.  He continues, “It is vitally necessary that every Christian community from the very outset face this dangerous enemy squarely, and eradicate it.  There is not time to lose here, for from the first moment when a man meets another person he is looking for a strategic position he can assume and hold over against that person.”

Bethge & Bonhoeffer - student & teacher

“There are strong persons and weak ones.  If a man is not strong, he immediately claims the right of the weak as his own and uses it against the strong.  There are gifted and ungifted persons, simple people and difficult people, devout and less devout, the sociable and the solitary.  Does not the ungifted person have to take up a position just as well as the gifted person, the difficult one as well as the simple? . . . Where is there a person who does not with instinctive sureness find the spot where he can stand and defend himself, but which he will never give up to another, for which he will fight with all the drive of his instinct of self-assertion?”

“All this can occur in the most polite or even pious environment.  But the important thing is that a Christian community should know that somewhere in it there will certainly be ‘a reasoning among them, which of them would be the greatest.’ It is the struggle of the natural man for self-justification. He finds it only in comparing himself with others, in condemning and judging others.  Self-justification and judging others go together, as justification by grace and serving others go together “ (91).

If this then is indeed the case, how may members of a community who are presently experiencing such conflict eradicate it?  Bonhoeffer offers a potential path in the remainder of his chapter.  There he addresses seven “ministries” that we owe to one another in community.   Each bears upon me and my colleagues here at Handong if we would be peacemakers and ones who are committed to the growth of our community of learning into wholeness and mutual blessing that flows to all.

 

Those within our Handong community who would advance and seek to protect  the students’ “right to learn” owe the ministries Bonhoeffer commends to professors, students and fellow administrators.   Those, on the other hand, who uphold and see to maintain the professors’ “right to teach” likewise owe these ministries to all others within the community of learning.

Rather than dispute over issues of control and authority, the ministries that Bonhoeffer teaches us to engage express avenues of service that lead toward mutual edification and the ultimate achievement of the goal of our community – the forming of whole persons who act responsibly in the service of others according to God’s calling upon their lives.

The first of these ministries, as Bonhoeffer describes them, is “the ministry of holding one’s tongue.”  “Often we combat our evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words” (91).    We are admonished in Scripture to be “slow to speak” (James 1:19), so we would do well to hold our tongue and think thoroughly we express comments, especially when they are criticisms of others.

Bonhoeffer advises that “where this discipline of the tongue is practiced right from the beginning, each individual will make a matchless discovery.  He will be able to cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him, putting him in his particular place where he can gain ascendancy over him and thus doing violence to him as a person.  Now he can allow the brother to exist as a completely free person, as God made him to be” (92-93).

The second ministry is meekness. “He who would learn to serve must first learn to think little of himself” (94).  This is not self-loathing, but rather a proper view of self.  “Only he who lives by the forgiveness of his sin in Jesus Christ will rightly think little of himself” (95).  Such a perspective, Bonhoeffer acknowledges, leads to a challenging conclusion: “To forego self-conceit and to associate with the lowly means . . . to consider oneself the greatest of sinners. . . If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. . .  He who would serve his brother in the fellowship must sink all the way down to these depths of humility” (96).  

Holding one’s tongue and meekness lead naturally to the third ministry we owe one another in community – that of listening. “Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren [i.e. for others] is learning to listen to them” (97). To be an effective listener, though, is a skill we must be devoted to developing. Our tendency is merely to “wait to talk” when in conversation with others. What we need to be doing is authentic listening. Bonhoeffer warns that “he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God” (98). 

By listening we are enabled to understand the needs of others and so reach out to them with the ministry of helpfulness. “This means, initially, simple assistance in trifling, external matters . . . Nobody is too good for the meanest (i.e. lowest) service. One who worries about the loss of time that such petty, outward acts of helpfulness entail is usually taking the importance of his own career too solemnly” (99).  

The next service we owe is the ministry of bearing. “’Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ’ (Gal. 6:2). . . Bearing means forbearing and sustaining. . . The Christian . . . must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated” (100). As we extend this service, Bonhoeffer calls us to bear both the freedom of the other person as well as his sin through regularly practicing forgiveness. 

The thoughtful engagement of these first five ministries – holding one’s tongue, meekness, listening, helpfulness and bearing – provides the only sure foundation for the next – the ministry of proclaiming the Word. This ministry is not the “preaching of the Word” but rather “that unique situation in which one person bears witness in human words to another person, bespeaking the whole consolation of God, the admonition, the kindness, and the severity of God” (103-104). “We speak to one another on the basis of the help we both need. We admonish one another to go the way that Christ bids us to go. We warn one another against the disobedience that is our common destruction” (106).  

Bonhoeffer concludes with the ultimate service we owe -- the ministry of authority. This ministry, however, can only be exercised by those who have first fulfilled the all that come before it because “Jesus made authority in the fellowship dependent upon brotherly service” (108). “Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community . . . The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren” (108-109).  

Indeed, no community of faith, no community of learning, needs brilliant personalities. What we need are faithful followers of Christ who seek daily, by His grace, to serve one another according to the call of God. What is needed to eradicate the attitudes and actions that destroy our community of learning are men and women possessed with the mind of Christ that seeks not their own interests and rights but those of others. Such an approach to sustaining our community of learning and faith will not pit the right to learn against the right to teach. Rather, it will serve others by taking seriously the responsibility to teach and the responsibility to learn as we seek together to obey the call of Christ and serve the needs of others in the here and now.