Well it's about time I posted again. Sorry to anyone who has been checking this site to see any updates...
In his Ethics, Bonhoeffer spoke of a “sincerely intended love for humanity that amounts to the same thing as contempt for humanity”.[1] This particular notion is founded on evaluating human beings “according to their dormant values”,[2] aspects not visible on the surface always or even at all, but always felt to be potential somehow. The great problem of this way of thinking is that extraordinary evil can be excused on its account, as it had been of course in Bonhoeffer’s own time. “One loves”, he wrote,
a self-made picture of human beings that has little similarity to reality, and one ends up despising the real human being whom God has love and whose being God has taken on.[3]
In other words, we count the potential human and not the actual one; we may even appease what is monstrous in the actual one because we are imagining the potential one. The problem with an "ethic of authenticity" is that it invites an evaluation of some potential self and not the self as it really is. Bonhoeffer’s reply gives a reason as to why finally the ethics of authenticity is not as companionable to Christian theology as might have first appeared:
Only because God became human is it possible to know and not despise real human beings. Real human beings may live before God, and we may let these real people live beside us and before God without either despising or idolizing them…The reason for God’s love for human beings does not reside in them, but only in God. Our living as real human beings, and loving the real people next to us is, again, grounded only in God’s becoming human, in the unfathomable love of God for us human beings.[4]
[1] Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p. 87
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
3 comments:
After reading that and understanding the human condition, no wonder so many men struggle with pornography.
G'day Michael.
Doctrine of difficult love, loving those for themselves and not who we want them to be. Easy to say, hard to put into practice.
There is a danger of loving people for whom you want them to become. I read a book called "Mr Pentecost" which is a story about David Duipless. In it he tells the story how he was in hospital with two broken legs from a car accident and God was dealing with him in regards to certain issues.
The one point I clearly remember from it was that he was saying in regards to forgiveness in loving and praying for people. He said that many people don't see answers to their prayers for people to change because they have locked them into that state through not truly loving them, and forgiving them as they are.
I think it is dangerous to love people for the potential we see in them, as we are not truly loving the real individual, instead Jesus loved us so much that he died for us while we were dead in sin, and certainly God called me to himself, consistantly loving me while I was dead in sin, calling me to walk with him.
Hope my ramble makes sense
craig b
Heya Michael, not much to add to the discussion, except to say that Bonhoeffer rocks!
Was hoping you would sign my Frappr - will only take a few seconds -
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