"Anger is always an attack on a brother's life, for it refuses to let him live and aims at his destruction. Jesus will not accept the common distinction between righteous indignation and unjustifiable anger. The disciple must be entirely innocent of anger, because anger is an offence against both God and his neighbour, and shows that we place ourselves on a pinnacle above him and value our own lives higher than his. The angry word is a blow struck at our brother, a stab at his heard: it seeks to hit, to hurt and to destroy. A deliberate insult is even worse, for we are then openly disgracing our brother in the eyes of the world, and causing others to despise him. With our hearts burning with hatred, we seek to annihilate his moral and material existence. We are passing judgement on him, and that is murder. And the murderer will himself be judged."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer in
The Cost of Discipleship p.127
"When you have made your eye the instrument of impurity, you cannot see God with it"
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer in
The Cost of Discipleship p.132
More and more, I'm coming to understand that the Christian life is one of continual and complete self-denial. And the more I contemplate and try this, the more I realize how hard it actually is and will be.
No comments:
Post a Comment