Bonhoeffer, McKnight and How Can it Happen?

A good friend recently sent me via e-mail a copy of a blog post by theologian / scholar Scot McKnight. I didn’t get to read it straight away, but found myself reading and reflecting on it last night. It’s a post about ideology, the power of ideology to negatively influence and shape us. 

He makes his points with the use of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his essay After Ten Years. 

McKnight begins, “One of the most pressing question for humans in the depth of their existence is this one: How can humans go silent or compliant or, unfathomably, become even more committed to the leader and the cause and the ideology when their leader becomes a tyrant?”

He continues, “…First, moral blindness is more dangerous than malice. Reason is not an option.

Second, moral blindness cannot be reduced to “an intellectual defect but to a human [character] one” (43). It is not so much “psychological” as it is a “sociological problem” (43). This is why I don’t think the word “stupid” is a good enough translation. People, he says, are made morally blind in consort with others — this rarely happens to the person living in solitude.

This is where Bonhoeffer gets to the core of his insight in seeking to comprehend the German problem: Third, “every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with” moral blindness (43). That is, as power increases moral blindness increases. Without it the power could not increase; without it the moral blindness would not increase. Instead of acting, the morally blind person is filled with stupor and quiescence…”

You can read the complete post here. Thanks Gabe. 

Comments

[len hjalmarson]

Timely. Part of my sermon this morning after eight days in Capetown. And I guess nearly every western country has to own this in its relations with indigenous peoples.