Disillusioned: 31 July 2002
tonight i'm thinking about dietrich "not so stupidhead" bonhoeffer and about the brethren of the common life and about various community life style experiments in christian living, about monks and nunneries and henri nouwen and 'life together'. i wonder how bonhoeffer's school worked. i wonder if his structure would work now. i fear that i will find out that the post-modern world will be unreceptive to it. G. says that as wonderful as francis schaeffer is (or was), he's becoming irrelevant as the times change. G.B. wonders what francis would say about today's issues. we don't know. we don't know what the great thinkers, the great orators of our faith, would say about people flying passenger planes into office buildings, what they would say about aids epidemics or global warming or gay marriages or astronomical divorce rates. i fear that i'm in love with the past, that i've forgotten that bonhoeffer wrote a glorified description of some things, not S.'s "coffee-table version" of events. the edited version of faith is much simpler. even if i were to become an r.a. eventually at [bible college #2], i would not be able to implement dietrich's system and become a great leader. i would have to seek out my own system. i would have to start reading the bible for myself, start praying for myself, and let god tell me how to do it rather than copying bonhoeffer. it seems like too much work. if i'm a bible college student and i don't want to read the bible, am i wasting my time? is this common? why are the most disillusioned people that I know - the most sarcastic and burnt out and frustrated and fed up people - why are they the people that the holy spirit supposedly dwells in? shouldn't there be love and joy and peace? oh father, if this is the fruit i'm bearing, i'm afraid to discover what kind of a tree i may be.
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