Truth and Legalism

    Reading Eric Metaxas' biography, Bonhoeffer, is making me late for a lot of meetings and appointments lately.  I can't walk past it without reading a few pages, because it contains so many nuggets from Bonhoeffer's diaries and notes that shed light on his theology, as well as  the development of his thoughts that led to his resistance during WWII.

     Have gotten to the "tipping point" section, where excerpts from his unfinished work, Ethics examine the relationship between Truth (a Big Topic in mainline denominations these days) and Legalism (Big Topic No.2 )

  In Tegel prison, Bonhoeffer wrote an essay titled, "What Does it Mean to Tell the Truth."  He wrote that God's standard of truth involves more than merely "not lying," and requires a deeper level of obedience.  

     Never telling a lie is "easy religious legalism."  The illustration he used is if a teacher asks a child in front of the class if her father is a drunkard, (and he is) and the child answers, "No," then our first impression is that the child has told a lie.

     Bonhoeffer believed that the "flip side of the easy religious legalism of never telling a lie" was the cynical notion that there is no such thing as truth, only "facts."  But if our relationship with God orders everything else around it, then we can't separate our actions from our relationship to God.  So:  If this child standing before her teacher is responding from the seat of her understanding of both her relationship to God and to her father, then for her to answer factually in public that he is a drunkard, is to dishonor her father in truth, damaging her relationship with God and with her father, which would be a greater sin before God..

     He wrote this about the "truth legalist":  "He dons the halo of fanatical devotee of truth who can make no allowance for human weaknesses, but in fact he is destroying the living truth between men.  He wounds shame, desecrates mystery, breaks confidence, betrays the community in which he lives and laughs arrogantly at the devastation he has wrought and at the human weakness which 'cannot bear the truth.'"
Nothing like a German theologian to turn my brain into a pretzel.  This is much deeper than simple situational ethics - this is Sermon on the Mount Stuff.  Better to think about such things now, before Jesus asks us what we think about it.