Kim Gentes

Elias Chacour is a Melkite Palestinian priest living in Galilee. He is a central figure in reconciliations efforts to draw an end to the persecution and expulsion of Arabs from the Jewish country of Israel.  The territory occupied by Israel following the establishment of the state (after World War II), created a polarized ethnic feud, perpetrated by Zionist Jews (claims Chacour) that have resulted in the persecution of Palestinians.  In his book “We Belong to the Land”, Chacour outlines his struggles as a priest and local leader in a the community of Ibillin. In that small community, Chacour fights to build unity amongst different people groups, religions and ages. His efforts include building a unified inter-faith group, constructing and managing a secondary school and high school, and eventually a college. The struggles Chacour outlines, explore the racist and discriminatory efforts of Jewish establishment officials to minimize the rights and opportunities of Palestenians in an effort to force them to leave the country (allowing the Jews to have a completely Zionized state).

Unlike his other book, Blood Brothers, Chacour focuses this book on details of injustice, his programs and building efforts, his organization and leadership across Galilee, Israel and around the world. Much of the book includes his philosophical and rhetorical foundation for his opposition to Jewish radicalism within the occupied territories where Palestinians once thrived. Chacour is a brilliantly practical man, with wit wisdom and far reaching appeal. He intuits things that others only come to understand through years of deep thinking and research. For example, he speaks eloquently about the value of human beings:

"The true icon is your neighbor", I explained to my companions on Mount Tabor, "the human being who has been created with the image and with the likeness of God..."[1]

We Belong to the Land especially follows the details of corruption not only with the the Zionist corners of the Israeli government, but scandalous and complicit efforts of Chacour’s own overseer, the local Bishop of his church’s diocese in which he is serving. In fact, corruption of values across the church and even “western” society is brought largely into focus by Chacour’s damning indictments of the “Christian” supported US government’s efforts to support and sustain Israel’s policies.

Much of what Chacour elucidates he does so as we follow the story of his building of his local school in the community of Ibillin.  The seemingly simple matter of securing a building permit becomes the plot device which allows us to explore the broader injustices to both Ibillin and the Palestinian people.  But Chacour is careful not to become the very thing he despises, which is common a trend. Instead of hating the Jewish people who have repressed the Palestinians in the country, he constantly calls for a fellowship of love in which both people’s can live in harmony within the land. His most articulate arguments become prayers of commonality that we can all join in. He says,

Human worth, human qualities, are much more important than Jewish, Palestinian, or American nationalism, peoplehood, or land. Sometimes it seems to me that Zionism pushes the Jews to Zionize themselves rather than humanize themselves.[2]

His thesis in the book centers around his belief that the thousands of years of living in the land have united the Palestinians with the essence of what it is to be an agrarian people.

Mobile Western people have difficulty comprehending the significance of the land for Palestinians. We belong to the land. We identify with the land, which has been treasured, cultivated, and nurtured by countless generations of ancestors.[3]

The examples and clarity of Chacour’s convictions become crystal clear. He is intent on peaceful freedom for Palestinians within the national borders of Israel. But for all his brilliant practicality, Chacour takes his altruism and misapplies it at least once, when he says,

God does not kill, my friends. God does not kill the Ba’al priests on Mount Carmel, or the inhabitants of the ancient city of Jericho. God does not kill in Nazi concentration camps, or in Palestinian refuge camps, or on any field of battle.[4]

It is obvious to many that Elias Chacour reflects the best of a heart of justice found in our world today. Yet, we cannot, even in our desire for justice, pretend to know more than God. God, in fact, is more just than us, and more loving than us. But He did kill, not just people in the Old Testament (uncountable peoples of all the inhabited the land of Canaan that were wiped out as Israel settled and conquered the region, including both of the instances of Ba’al preists and Jericho inhabitants that Chacour blatantly denies God is responsible for, though the text clearly indicates He is), but people in the New (Ananias and Sapphira, plus the multitudes of opposition to Jesus righteous judgments in John’s Revelation). While we have a hard time reconciling those actions to our comprehension of a loving God, we cannot dismiss God’s actions of these final earthly judgements of death as though they didn’t happen or he didn’t mean it. He did, and He is still God.  Misstating these facts to shape God into your vision of justice does not do God, himself, any justice.

The other (more dangerous) issue to me on the above quote is that Chacour combines things that God clearly does instigate (Jericho and Mt. Carmel) with things that man (or perhaps Satan himself) have deeply inspired and carried out (Nazi Germany, Palestinian refuge camps). One cannot attribute all evil actions to God, unless one decides to make man faultless of his own predilections, choices and sinfilled actions. Of course, there is the grand question "why do bad things happen to good people" and why is there suffering and hurt. The short answer is - sin. But there are rife volumes and lives spent on the topic, so I won't pretend to sort that all out here. But munging God's clear actions and man's sinful ones in a single list of activity (as though they belong together) is a terribly grievous error, for which I cannot let go without mention.

My confidence in his writing flags when I see that he never actually deals head on with the specific claims of moderate Zionist Jews who believe they are following an edict from God to reclaim the land granted to Abraham (and therefor, Israel) by Yahweh. I am convinced that he is a man of integrity, and certainly not afraid of confrontation and working against the norm, so it surprises me that he never broaches the subject from the Jewish point of view, even if to discredit the weak points of their argument.  Second, he takes the broad tact that all Christians (and especially all American Christians) are somehow in rabid support of Jewish Zionism. Again, he washes his hands of details and accuses the US of global blood guilt without taking on specifics and details from which a more reasonable (balanced) response could be given to his condemnations. It feels a little like he deals so beautifully with the story of the Palestinians that he doesn’t want to address the 800lb gorilla issue in the room- the contrary story which lives along side him every day- the Jewish Israeli claim to the land of Canaan, promised to them through the Old Testament scriptures.

I feel quite guilty having brought up what I think are short comings of his fine book, since one feels ultimately humbled and speechless in light of such a great witness of Christ’s love and reconciliation. I am very glad to be wrong on all my points, and would feel better about it. For me, the things I have said negatively don’t deter from his great accomplishments or his stature as a preeminent leader of peace in our generation. It is hard not to love the heart, desires and unbelievable work ethic of Elias Chacour. The accomplishments he has made in the midst of being a nearly singular voice within a tragic situation is remarkable.  He has much to teach the world about the true nature of reconciliation and its practical outworking.  I would love to meet him.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/w5PTZ2

Review by Kim Gentes

[1]Chacour, Elias & Jensen, Mary “We Belong to the Land”.  (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press 2001), Pg. 46

[2]Ibid., Pg. 69

[3]Ibid., Pg. 80

[4]Ibid., Pg. 163

"Blood Brothers" is the first book from Palestinian Israeli Elias Chacour.  Elias is a Christian priest and community leader in Galilee, Israel.  He lives and serves his community of Palestinian Christians in a village of Muslim, Druze and Christian villagers.  This book is the personal story of his youth, the expulsion of him and his family from his home village of  Biram, his training as a Melkite priest, and his eventual work in the ministry of bringing hope to a broken and terrified group of alienated Arabs in Jewish Israel.  Unlike his other book We Belong to the Land, Chacour focuses more poignantly in Blood Brothers on his personal and family life. Most profoundly, he explores the character of his father who serves as an arch-type for both God and the image of what good men can be. Elias Chacour treasures and follows this image into a lifetime of seeking reconciliation, hope and love for the Palestinian people of the village of Ibillin.

One such powerful example is his father’s statement about Jews and Palestinians, which he declared before the full extent of persecution would begin for the Palestinians:

“But How do we know the soldiers won’t harm us?” Rudah pressed him.

Father smiled, and all the tension seemed to relax. “Because,” he said, “the Jews and Palestinians are brothers-blood brothers. We share the same father, Abraham, and the same God. We must never forget that. Now we get rid of the gun.”[1]

This image turns out to be misinformed, though hopeful premonition to the tragedy that would ensure. After taking over the land of Palestine, the Jews of Israel began to programmatically terrorise the people of the rural villages such as Biram. Demolishing their homes and farms and confiscating the land became the program of the Zionist Jews. Even thought Chacour’s father has his land taken from him and his home destroyed, his connection to the land and its plants shows a level of care foreign to us.

I could scarcely believe it! His life's work had just been torn from his hands. His land and trees-the only earthly possessions he had to pass on to his children-were sold to a stranger. And still Father would not curse or allow himself to be angry. I puzzled at his words to us. Inner peace. Maybe Father could find this strength in such circumstances. I doubted that I could....

Father's other response to the sale of his land was more of a wonder to me. In a few weeks we heard that the new owner of our property wanted to hire several men to come each day and dress the fig trees, tending them right through till harvest. Immediately, Father went to apply for the job, taking my three oldest brothers with him. They were hired and granted special work passes, the only way they could enter our own property.[2]

Elias portrays his father with such magnanimous character that he seems barely real to our western sensibilities and callousness. The story of Blood Brothers is much deeper than just Elias Chacour’s life, it is a story of the non-violent Palestinians who are persecuted as evil by Israeli government programs meant to lodge them from hope and from land within the Galilee communities. Chacour is not just a concerned priest, he is a thoughtful change agent and leader. Speaking about the inversion of the Jews from persecuted to the persecutors he says :

Now I determined to find out how a peaceful movement that had begun with a seemingly good purpose-to end the persecution of the Jewish people-had become such a destructive, oppressive force. Along with that determination, I was driven by a respect for history that Father had planted in me. Did the seeds of our future hope lie buried in our past, as he had so often said?[3]

Elias is brilliant to turn to the teaching of his father to recall the thought that history can teach us and, perhaps if heard, can lead us back together. Blood Brothers tries to convince the reader that Zionist Israel is the major obstacle to reconciliation with the Palestinians, though he is against violence of all sort, including from the Palestinian people. He outright rejects the military efforts of the PLO and looks instead for a reconciled Israel in which Jews and Arabs can live together.

Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/wMi0KA 

Review by Kim Gentes

[1]Chacour & Hazard “Blood Brothers”.  (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books 1984), Kindle Location 325

[2] Ibid., Location 613

[3] Ibid., Location 1158

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together is a modern classic manual to understanding and practicing Christian community.  The book, though short, provides thoughtful and crisp perspectives on what people foundationally believe about community, some of the misguided premise which people start with and what a core of Christian community should be based on.  From there, he guides people through a myriad of important issues dealing with community.  Each sub-topic is addressed in terms of its value to the individual and its value to the community.  Always, we see Bonhoeffer subverting the desires of the individual by exposing them to the underlying truth of the selfishness of their practices. 

Bonhoeffer begins his treatise by exploring the need and nature of fellowship.

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.[1]

This definition is quickly assigned a real world understanding in the representative place that a believer has as the reflective image (Imago Dei) of God:

The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian living in the diaspora recognizes in the nearness of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God.[2]

This kind of understanding of community as a mutual mirroring of God’s presence to all around us throughout the fellowship is not simply an inward blessing club, rather, it is a entrance into the reality of Bonhoeffer’s understanding of what Jesus has given us in the kingdom of God.

Bonhoeffer assigns his weightiest words on the deconstruction of the mythic utopia that some think Christian community to be, when he says:

Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly. They stand adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the community. They act as if they have to create the Christian community, as if their visionary ideal binds the people together. Whatever does not go their way, they call a failure. When their idealized image is shattered, they see the community breaking into pieces. So they first become accusers of other Christians in the community, then accusers of God, and finally the desperate accusers of themselves. Because God already has laid the only foundation of our community, because God has united us in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that life together with other Christians, not as those who make demands, but as those who thankfully receive.[3]

Once this misunderstanding of Christian community is thoroughly shattered under his lithe polemic of artificial Christian community, the remainder of Life Together builds a construct that expresses, for Bonhoeffer, the reality of true fellowship.   Such architectural work is clearly informed by the very real situation and community in which Bonhoeffer found himself during World War II, within the confines of Nazi Germany.  In such a stark environment, this great Christian leader is trying to practically give people tools for caring, in faith, for Jesus (as represented in each other) and for experiencing the co-unity of God with his community.  This kind of effort manifests itself very practically in Life Together.

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door. We must, therefore, be very careful on this point.[4]

But Bonhoeffer is careful not to assign every care for the community on the conscience of the individual. In fact, he finds wayward desires in the system itself (often controlled by leader with poor agendas) and sets them to rights by verbalizing the offense in the book. For example, here he charges those in leadership of communities to seriously evaluate the fruit of the local communities they pastor.

Has the community served to make individuals free, strong, and mature, or has it made them insecure and dependent? Has it taken them by the hand for a while so that they would learn again to walk by themselves, or has it made them anxious and unsure? This is one of the toughest and most serious questions that can be put to any form of everyday Christian life in community.[5]

There are literally dozens of quotable sentences and phrases in Life Together, not because it is snippets of wisdom compiled, but because of the authors compact writing style that brings the up quickly and answers the dilemma within the same sentence often. One particular point rises powerfully to the surface in Bonhoeffer’s acknowledgement and treatment for loneliness among Christians. He clearly believes that loneliness is a powerful foothold for the work of the enemy.

The more lonely people become, the more destructive the power of sin over them.[6]

For Bonhoeffer, the antidote is clearly confession, a unifying force requiring the presence of one another. Unlike modern western culture whose individualism has told them to confess to God in private, Bonhoeffer sees that as a misplaced and powerless position. Instead, he says:

A confession of sin in the presence of all the members of the congregation is not required to restore one to community with the entire congregation. In the one other Christian to whom I confess my sins and by whom my sins are declared forgiven, I meet the whole congregation. Community with the whole congregation is given to me in the community which I experience with this one other believer. For here it is not a matter of acting according to one’s own orders and authority, but according to the command of Jesus Christ, which is intended for the whole congregation, on whose behalf the individual is called merely to carry it out. So long as Christians are in such a community of confession of sins to one another, they are no longer alone anywhere.[7]

And profoundly,

Confession is conversion.[8]

You cannot spend time in the book Life Together without being changed by its powerful message, which has obviously been informed by the realities of living under the persecution of the thoroughly anti-Christian Third Reich.

Amazon Product Link: http://amzn.to/uWCUj3

Review by Kim Gentes

[1]Bonhoeffer, Dietrich; Albrecht Schonherr; Geffrey B. Kelly; Daniel W. Bloesch. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works v.5: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible”. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996),Kindle Edition, Location 561

[2]Ibid., Location 570

[3]Ibid., Location 671

[4]Ibid., Location 805

[5]Ibid., Location 1453

[6]Ibid., Location 1745

[7]Ibid., Location 1758

[8]Ibid., Location 1779

Were I to meet John Calvin today, I think he might be a surprisingly moderate but deeply spiritual Christian professor of warm wisdom and serious desire to see personal holiness take hold in the life of followers of Christ.  This might seem obvious, but note what I did not say. I doubt that I would find a man who is so vehemently driven by the later (derived1) sectarian doctrine of TULIP that he would not sit in community with me as we discussed our varying understandings of theology.  Where do I find such a wise and thoughtful Calvin? Where do I meet the great teacher who inscribed the systematic theology of the reformation that Martin Luther so profoundly burst forward with on the public of medieval Europe?

I meet this John Calvin in the heart of his writings of the Institute, at the sixth chapter, in book III, which was entitled by Calvin (after a number of revisions) as  “On The Christian Life”.  This section of his monumental treatise “Institutes of The Christian Religion” was also extracted and printed as a separate small volume called “The Golden Booklet”. In the pages of the “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life“ (our later English title) we find the John Calvin who speaks with both fiery passion and tempered wisdom.

Calvin begins sharply enough, setting the terse tone of his writing and focused style which gets to the point almost surgically.

The goal of the new life is that God’s children exhibit melody and harmony in their conduct. What melody? The song of God’s justice. What harmony? The harmony between God’s righteousness and our obedience.2

No one can accuse Calvin of presenting an unrequited gospel. To the contrary, the Golden Book proceeds from point to point, blithely trampling on self-importance, false motives and hardness of heart to get the reader to see the reality of the gospel’s unmistakable call to the cross. He returns here repeatedly, helping us place our pride on the altar by examination of the cross :

Therefore, that we may not become haughty when we acquire wealth; that we may not become proud when we receive honors ; that we may not become insolent when we are blessed with prosperity and health, the Lord himself, as he deems fit, uses the cross to oppose, restrain, and subdue the arrogance of our flesh...This is the reason why we see different persons disciplined with different crosses. The heavenly Physician takes care of the well-being of all his patients; he gives some a milder medicine and purifies others by more shocking treatments, but he omits no one; for the whole world, without exception, is ill (Deut. 32:15).3

But John Calvin is more than just a naval gazing mystic. His profound grasp of the breadth of the Scriptural landscape helps him juxtapose his Imago Dei/creational theology (found in statements such as “The law of God contains in itself the dynamic of the new life by which his image is fully restored in us;”4 and “But Scripture here helps us out with an excellent argument when it teaches us that we must not think of man’s real value, but only of his creation in the image of God to which we owe all possible honor and love”5) with a theology of suffering, God’s will and predestination (“For adversity will always wound us with its stings. When we are afflicted with disease we shall, therefore, groan and complain and pray for recovery. When we are oppressed with poverty we shall feel lonely and sorry. When we are defamed, despised, and offended, likewise we shall feel restless. When we have to attend the funeral of our friends we shall shed tears. But we must always come back to this consolation: The Lord planned our sorrow, so let us submit to his will. Even in the throes of grief, groans, and tears, we must encourage ourselves with this reflection, so that our hearts may cheerfully bear up while the storms pass over our heads (John 21:18)”6).

Calvin’s writing here reminds us instantly of Thomas a Kempis’ “The Imitation of Christ”.  Calvin’s Golden Book unearths the heart motivations, factors, deceptions and is always looking to bring the reader forward into a picture of our bleakness such that we will abandon hope of having anything useful within ourselves, save that which surrenders to Christ’s suffering discipline in our lives. Calvin whittles at our motivations of conscience and hearkens the glories of persecution.  At one point, one might think he goes too far, even calling on God’s persecution so that the righteous may be more clearly vindicated:

Let the impious flourish in their riches and honors, and enjoy their so-called peace of mind. Let them boast of their splendor and luxury, and abound in every joy. Let them harass the children of light with their wickedness, let them insult them with their pride, let them rob them by their greed, let them provoke them with their utter lawlessness...For, according to Paul, it is a righteous thing with God to award punishment to them that trouble the saints, and to give rest to those who are troubled, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven. This is our only consolation.7

While I admire Calvin’s pursuit of holiness, this declaration reads like a prayer asking for evil to come upon Christians so that they might be “accounted as sheep for the slaughter,” as he says earlier in the text. It seems doubly bad that he then says that our comfort should come on this point- the hope that others will get punished for having caused us trouble.  Calvin misreads Paul, or at the least, adds his own vestige of a 16th century bloodless martyr teaching into Paul’s original text.

But Calvin is far too great a theologian and writer to leave us with a blighted aftertaste. His transcendent understandings of God’s grace and especially his mandates to a vocational calling on human beings (again rooted in his belief in the Imago Dei) lift up the highest of Calvin’s brilliance:

Finally we should note that the Lord commands every one of us in all the actions of our life to be faithful in our calling. For he knows that the human mind burns with restlessness, that it is swept easily hither and thither, and that its ambition to embrace many things at once is insatiable. Therefore, to prevent that general confusion being produced by our folly and boldness, he has appointed to everyone his particular duties in the different spheres of life. And, that no one might rashly go beyond his limits, he has called such spheres of life vocations, or callings. Every individual’s sphere of life, therefore, is a post assigned him by the Lord that he may not wander about in uncertainty all the days of his life....And everyone in his respective sphere of life will show more patience, and will overcome the difficulties, cares, miseries, and anxieties in his path, when he will be convinced that every individual has his task laid upon his shoulders by God. If we follow our divine calling, we shall receive this unique consolation that there is no work so mean and so sordid that does not look truly respectable and highly important in the sight of God (Coram Deo!) (Gen. 1:28; Col. 1:1 ff)!8

Not only is this profound wisdom but it rings of Calvin’s glorious assignment of God’s goodness into our humanity. This is very interesting, since later proponents of strong “Calvinist” doctrine would nearly eviscerate this high valuing of humanity using the hyper TULIP conflagration of the doctrine of total depravity.

Reading the Golden Book is an eye-opening and encouraging look into a more personal, pastoral Calvin, whose wisdom never leaves him, and his sense of care for the soul is always on fire.

Product Link on Amazon: Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life

Review by
Kim Gentes

[1]Calvin didn’t create the 5 point doctrine of Calvinism himself. It was assembled later (50 years beyond his death) by adherents of Calvin’s teachings at the Synod of Dort in 1619 as a mechanism to combat the divergent understandings of Jacob Arminias (from whose namesake and teachings was derived the doctrines of Arminianism)

[2]John Calvin,  “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, translated Henry J. Van Andel (Grand Rapids, MI:Baker Books, 1952), Pg 15

[3]Ibid., Pg 55

[4]Ibid., Pg 15

[5]Ibid., Pg 37

[6]Ibid., Pg 64

[7]Ibid., Pg 79

[8]Ibid., Pg 92-93

Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel  is a collection of Martin Luther’s pastoral letters sent to a variety of people, reflecting on as wide a variety of topics as life has to offer. What one notes most poignantly about the letters is their constant pastoral voice, intense compassion for grief-stricken people, and his wisdom and wit in any situation.

The book is arranged in categorized chapters based on the  main theme of the letter. A reader from the present day will be immediately affronted by the dim nature of the topics, which range from comfort, consolation, counsel and instruction for the sick, dying, bereaved, anxious, despondent, doubting, needy, troubled and more. This is not light reading. The weight of the pastoral office of the 16th century European church is pressed into the pages of these letters. This provides us not only with wise counsel for our current churches, but a harrowing picture of the people and time in which Martin Luther’s reforms were birthed.

I must admit, I approached this book initially ready for a barrage of theological treatise, each one restated in particular application for a life situation. I expected the theologian that demarcated the single biggest change in the history of the Christian church to be heady, angry and oozing with profundity. To my surprise, I came away realizing that Martin Luther was a man who cared first for the flock to which had entrusted him to care.  He wasn’t applying theology to an ugly, rude world, in which his meanderings meant nothing to the real people.  He was caring deeply, loving deeply, and hurting deeply with the literal scores of people around him which were broken, dying or in unfathomable pangs of grief.

Yes, he writes letters to princes and elites, administrators and bureaucrats. He tackles government, policies and the profound failures of a power rotted church structure. But at his core, he is a pastor, and these letters don’t let you stop seeing that, over and over again.  All around Luther, family, students, friends, children are all dying or becoming sick of a myriad of diseases from deadly tuberculosis to the dreaded black plague. There is not just sickness and death, there is a permeating sense of fear and a gnawing hopelessness that he seems to be trying to combat with each letter.

 
On of Luther’s prime methods of facing such daunting pain and weakened humanity is to speak boldly of the pain, sickness and death.

When, therefor, I learned most illustrious prince, that Your Lordship has been afflicted with a grave illness...I cannot pretend that I do not hear the voice of Christ crying out to me from Your Lordship’s body and flesh saying, “Behold,  I am sick.” This is so because such evils as illness and the like are not borne by us who are Christians but by Christ himself...1

Luther didn’t see ministry to people as doing something for the ill, poor or broken. He saw it as ministry to the Lord directly, and he used this as his foundation for a theology of suffering. In such a society filled with pain, Luther saw Christ’s suffering as the necessary fellowship to which we are engaged in while on earth.  But Luther brought with his stark vision of pain a transcendent enraptured vision of Christ, when he said, “God is immeasurably better than all his gifts.”2 Such a picture of God is not only beautiful, but necessary, when “his gifts” seemed to come few and far between for the beleaguered parishioners Luther was guiding.

The letters of Luther are not just wise rebukes to a dismal world. His fiery spirit and even humor rise to the top occasionally, giving us a glimpse of wisdom that is embedded in reality. He says of a friend whom he was counselling against being drawn into the falseness of spiritual pride:

Whenever the devil pesters you with these thoughts, at once seek out the company of men, drink more, joke and jest, or engage in some other form of merriment. Sometimes it is necessary to drink a little more, play, jest, and even commit some sin in defiance and contempt of the devil in order not to give him an opportunity to make us scrupulous about trifles. We shall be overcome if we worry too much about falling into some sin.3

As you can see, Martin Luther had an unquenchable belief in the power of the community. This so guided him, it is doubtless that one of the driving currents of his reformation doctrine.

The papists and Anabaptists teach that if you wish to know Christ, you must seek solitude, avoid association with men...This is manifestly diabolical advice...[rather] God wishes that His name be proclaimed and praised before men and spoken of among men rather than that one should flee into a corner... [and] teaches us to do good to our neighbors, and hence we must not be segregated from them. This advice [papists and Anabaptists] is also destructive to the family, economic life, and the state, and it is at odds with the life of Christ, who did not like to be alone and whose career was one of constant turmoil because people were always crowding around him. He was never alone, except when he prayed. Have nothing to do, therefor, with those who say, “Seek solitude and your heart will become pure.”4

Martin Luther had such a strong value of community and companionship that he prescribed it for almost every condition of the body and soul. He was constantly reminding husbands and wives to encourage one another, for people to not be alone when struggling with temptation, depression or illness. Above, he even recognizes that not only is it a teaching against Christ and his body to avoid the community, but it actually destroys families, harms economic viability of individuals and communities and even threatens the state stability. What a brilliant understanding of the power of community.

Product Link on Amazon: Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel

Review by
Kim Gentes

[1]Martin Luther, “Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel”, translated Theodore G. Tappert (Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 1955), Pg 22

[2]Ibid., Pg 54

[3]Ibid., Pg 86

[4]Ibid., Pg 120