Reflections for a Sunday: The Christian Anarchists, Jacques Ellul & Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“I'm still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jacques Ellul

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In America, we are careening towards what could well be one of the most consequential presidential elections in the history of our nation—if not the most consequential. We will find out shortly. But it’s not just America that is having elections.

Globally, more voters than ever in history will head to the polls as at least 64 countries (plus the European Union)—representing a combined population of about 49% of the people in the world—are meant to hold national elections, the results of which, for many, will prove consequential for years to come. (1)

But if I say “the most meaningful” in what context? It can only be of great importance to those who somehow think a change of government, “new blood”, will make a difference. It never has, down through history—okay, yes, as I have said more than once, we are freer in the United States than anywhere else, and for that I am thankful.

But freedom for some has always come at the price of slavery for others. The United States has the biggest war machine, our government is despicably corrupt, and anyone who aspires to reach the highest echelons of power cannot do so by being a good person They must be willing to make a deal with the Devil. No matter how smart or creative a person may be, greed, selfishness and an imperviousness to guilt must be one’s driving force.

So, for those of us who refuse to play that game, we are free of these worldly constraints. We don’t expect some miracle. The course this world is taking is towards total destruction. I know that sounds depressing, but it really isn’t, not if you believe that there is more to life than this earthly plane.

So, I thought I would share some thoughts from Jacques Ellul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two “Christian Anarchists”.

In Ellul’s book Anarchy and Christianity, he takes us straight to the crux of the matter, the Devil’s temptation of Christ:

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Matthew 4:8-9 KJV

Here’s what Ellul says about it:

“And the extraordinary thing is that according to these texts all powers, all the power and glory of the kingdoms, all that has to do with politics and political authority, belongs to the devil. It has all been given to him and he gives it to whom he wills. Those who hold political power receive it from him and depend upon him. (It is astonishing that in the innumerable theological discussions of the legitimacy of political power, no one has ever adduced these texts! [Matthew 4:8-9; Luke 4:6-7])

“This fact is no less important than the fact that Jesus rejects the devil's offer. Jesus does not say to the devil: It is not true. You do not have power over kingdoms and states. He does not dispute this claim. He refuses the offer of power because the devil demands that he should fall down before him. This is the sole point when he says: 'You shall worship the Lord your God and you shall serve him, only him' (Matthew 4:10).

“We may thus say that among Jesus' immediate followers and in the first Christian generation political authorities - what we call the state - belonged to the devil and those who held power received it from him.” ― Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity

It is no different today. It has never been any different. The world is in the hands of the Devil. And more than ever, the masses are under the Devil’s control. This is thanks in large part to the internet and that terrible curse, social media.

Social media’s purpose is to herd us into boxes with like-minded people where we can say anything we want, giving us a false sense of freedom and, along with it, a false sense that we are on the right team and everyone else is on the wrong team. We are pitted against one another, thinking we are fighting for something when all we are doing is regurgitating the propaganda that has been fed (by algorithms) to our group.

On Elon Musk’s “X” people thank him continually for allowing them to be free. First of all, how is that freedom when an elite “allows” it? Second, it is that illusion of freedom that keeps people locked up in their boxes, quite content to never question again.

“To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; he is carried along in the current and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness -- of himself, of his condition, of his society -- for the man who lives by current events. Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more than he will tie together a series of news events.

“One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man's capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.

“The best defense here is to forget the preceding event. In so doing, man denies his own continuity; to the same extent that he lives on the surface of events and makes today's events his life by obliterating yesterday's news, he refuses to see the contradictions in his own life and condemns himself to a life of successive moments, discontinuous and fragmented. Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist. No confrontation ever occurs between the event and the truth; no relationship ever exists between the event and the person. Real information never concerns such a person.

“But here we must make an important qualification. The news event may be a real fact, existing objectively, or it may be only an item of information, the dissemination of a supposed fact. What makes it news is its dissemination, not its objective reality.” ― Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Ellul talks about everything that I have been writing about for the past two years. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought.”

There is no more thought within the boxes. Just conformity.

We are constantly chasing the next bit of information, thinking it is telling us something that we really need to know. But it is telling us nothing except the same information wrapped up in a new package, in a bigger quantity. SHOCKING! THE LATEST! These are the headlines and then a line or two before we must move on to the next big story.

Gluttony keeps us continually craving more. We are never satisfied so we turn on those who do not conform to our group, taking our frustration out on them. Just look at the rise in hatred, the way people talk to one another online, as if nobody is real, there are no consequences, and nothing matters except satisfying one’s own emotional needs.

“Those who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. They learn more and more that their group is right, that its actions are justified; thus their beliefs are strengthened. At the same time, such propaganda contains elements of criticism and refutation of other groups, which will never be read or heard by a member of another group...Thus we see before our eyes how a world of closed minds establishes itself, a world in which everybody talks to himself, everybody constantly views his own certainty about himself and the wrongs done him by the Others - a world in which nobody listens to anybody else.” ― Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

All that we are listening to, really, is the Vast Machine feeding back to us that which it has determined we want to hear. When it comes to decisions like what car to buy, what pill to take, it knows what to tell us and we obey it. Why, we do not really know. We just do it.

Why would we think it is any different with elections? Who will win the presidency in November. Does anyone really believe any longer that their vote matters? Each side is convinced the other side will cheat. Whoever wins, the loser will never believe it wasn’t rigged against them.

“[Politics] is always a means of conquering others and exercising power over them.”
― Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity

ALWAYS.

Of course, our first reaction is to say, but I am too clever to be manipulated.

“Naturally, the educated man does not believe in propa­ganda; he shrugs and is convinced that propaganda has no effect on him. This is, in fact, one of his great weaknesses, and propa­gandists are well aware that in order to reach someone, one must first convince him that propaganda is ineffectual and not very clever. ― Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

It’s important to acknowledge how susceptible we are to indoctrination. Taking ourselves outside of all the boxes—becoming anarchists—and seeing the entire picture as a vast manipulation, is the only way to battle it.

The machine is very seductive. It offers us so many pleasures, distractions, it sucks us into the void and takes over our minds and our souls.

Again, we must come back to the Devil’s temptation of Jesus. Jesus left all the pleasures and securities of the world behind. He went into the desert, as far away from those seductive influences as he could go.

The Devil then laid out all the riches and the glory before Jesus. Who among us would not give in to such temptations.

The temptation of Christ is profoundly important for us to focus on right now—and you don’t have to be a Christian to understand what I’m saying. Get out of the box and look at things from a slightly different angle.

Jesus will always remind us that this world is not the be all and end all of everything. There is no material answer to our spiritual woes. No new and improved government will fix it.

Another great man of action was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He stood up against one of the evilest propaganda machines ever created by the Devil, the Third Reich. Bonhoeffer observed how disciplined and determined the Nazis were and he concluded that the only way to fight them was to be tougher and more disciplined than they were. Both physically and spiritually. If you are lazy and undisciplined with your body, what makes you think your mind will be any better off?

We really must get out into the world and fight this battle for all we are worth. This is not a battle that will be won in a traditional sense, on a traditional battlefield. In fact, we cannot expect to be treated like winners, more likely we will be discounted as losers.

One of the greatest evils of social media is that it makes us addicted to “likes”. We must constantly be the winners, but of what? It makes us want to be “famous”, even if it’s just among our circle of friends. If we do not make some kind of an impression in the ether on a daily basis, we begin to feel as if we do not exist. The more we need to validate ourselves in the world of illusion, the more we lose our substance in the real world.

The real world is messy, dangerous, and we can get hurt—badly. But that’s where we need to be. That’s where Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived his life and where he encouraged us to live ours.

“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Bonheoffer’s life was changed when he visited Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. There he saw the church’s emphasis on preaching the gospel, the spirited worship, and its focus on helping the poor. The racism Black American Christians faced disgusted him. When he returned to Germany, he recognized that same evil in Nazism.

In April 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested for helping smuggle 14 Jews out of Germany. A guard tried to help him escape, but he refused, knowing the Nazis might well punish his family members as a result.

Due to a vague association with an attempt to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer was sentenced to death. He was stripped naked and hung.

Hermann Fischer-Hüllstrung, a Flossenbürg prison doctor, described Bonhoeffer’s last moments:

“Through the half-open door, I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer still in his prison clothes, kneeling in fervent prayer to the Lord his God. The devotion and evident conviction of being heard that I saw in the prayer of this intensely captivating man moved me to the depths.”

Bonhoeffer’s last words were, “this is… for me, the beginning of life.”

We are so caught up in comforting ourselves about every little thing. We are so sensitive to our feelings. In how stressed we are, and we do not think there is even an answer, except maybe a pill, because that is all we hear, every day, that we are stressed, we are stressed, and we repeat it ad nauseum. All we talk about is how busy we are. In how we must comply with our schedules, the hours of the day are filled with busy-ness and the nights haunt us with sleeplessness. The manufactured light of the machines keeps us comforted and unable to just let go and stop our minds from the constant flow.

When was the last time we made a sacrifice. I mean really, a sacrifice. Can we even do it? What will happen if it is soon required of us. What if we must make decisions that could cost us our lives.

I’m not talking about the evil way a suicide bomber sacrifices his life. A suicide bomber kills himself in the hope of killing as many others as possible. Islam demands death.

Jesus’s death on the cross brought life. He made the ultimate sacrifice out of love, not hate. He took the sins of the world upon his shoulders, as the only one who could. He tore the veil to the inner sanctuary and made the way open for us all to come before God, our sins forgiven, washed clean by the blood of the Lamb.

When we sacrifice ourselves, we do so to save others, not to kill them. We are inspired and given strength by the example of Jesus’ love and forgiveness.

To be a Christian anarchist is the only way to fight this battle, which is not physical but is spiritual and yet, that we still must fight in this physical world.

If we really commit ourselves to this battle, if we train for it by getting stronger physically, mentally and spiritually, not just saying “oh, I’ll do that tomorrow,” and getting back online to see what everyone is arguing about, then, all the elections, all the wars, all the attempts to control us through technology, will be of little significance.

Jacques Ellul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer inspire us to live the messy life of the anarchist.

In Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer asks us the most uncomfortable questions and it is these questions that I end with:

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

Thank you for reading and for listening. God Bless!