Day 5 of 7
Bonhoeffer's Agonizing Choice
When a pacifist decided to kill
Scripture Readings
Today's Reading
Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die... a time to kill, and a time to heal... a time for war, and a time for peace."
Then read Proverbs 24:11-12: "Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, 'Behold, we did not know this,' does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?"
Reflection
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pacifist. He had studied the Sermon on the Mount for years, written a book called The Cost of Discipleship that called the church to radical obedience to Jesus's commands, and visited Gandhi's ashram to study nonviolent resistance. He was one of the most committed Christian pacifists of his generation.
And then he joined a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
This is not a contradiction to be explained away. It is a wound in the moral life of one of the twentieth century's greatest Christians, and Bonhoeffer treated it as exactly that. He did not pretend that plotting to kill Hitler was a righteous act. He did not invoke just war theory to make himself feel clean. He called it sin — necessary sin, responsible sin, but sin nonetheless — for which he could only throw himself on the mercy of God.
His reasoning was rooted in the passages we read today. Proverbs 24 commands: "Rescue those who are being taken away to death." As the Holocaust unfolded, Bonhoeffer could not stand by. He knew that inaction was its own form of guilt. He wrote with devastating clarity: "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
But he also knew that violence — even violence against a monster — stains the one who commits it. In Ethics, his unfinished masterwork, Bonhoeffer developed a concept that has no comfortable parallel in most Christian ethics: responsible guilt-bearing. He wrote: "When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it... Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace."
This is extraordinary. Bonhoeffer did not say he was justified before God. He said he hoped for grace. He bore the guilt of his choice, refused to transfer it, and threw himself on divine mercy. He would not claim righteousness for what he knew was a violation of the commandment he loved.
Ecclesiastes provides the haunting framework: there is a time to kill and a time to heal, a time for war and a time for peace. The teacher does not celebrate this. He presents it as the tragic reality of a fallen world — a world where sometimes every option is stained with sin, and the most faithful thing you can do is choose the least evil path and bring it to God in repentance.
Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis on April 9, 1945 — three weeks before the war ended. He went to his death with the words, "This is the end — for me, the beginning of life."
Going Deeper
Bonhoeffer's example is not a template for everyday ethics. Most of us will never face a choice between complicity in genocide and assassination. But his honesty is a template for moral seriousness. He refused the comforting lie that violence can be righteous. He refused the comforting lie that nonviolence is always possible. He inhabited the tension and trusted God's grace to hold him in it. Can we do the same with the smaller moral ambiguities we face?
Key Quotes
“When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it... Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.”
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Prayer Focus
Pray for the grace to recognize that some moral dilemmas have no clean answers — and that dependence on God's mercy is not weakness but the deepest form of faith.
Meditation
Have you ever faced a situation where every option seemed morally compromised? How did you decide — and how did you process the weight of that choice?
Question for Discussion
Bonhoeffer joined the plot to assassinate Hitler, but he did not call it a righteous act — he called it a sin for which he needed God's forgiveness. What does it mean for Christians to take necessary action that they nonetheless regard as sinful? Does this category — responsible guilt-bearing — make sense to you, or does it collapse into moral relativism?