"Every Christian community must know that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the community."--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Such a stance taken in the face of Nazi Germany revealed that Bonhoeffer's insights were inherently political, even though the polity they embody does not seem obviously so at first glance. He understood that a true community could not be founded on the destruction of lives considered useless nor could it exist in the delusion of strength. The Christian opposition to gossip and slander contain in them a profound spiritual discipline that opposses this kind of practice:
God did not make others as I would have made them. God did not give them to me so that I could dominate and control them, but so that I might find the Creator by means of them. . . . God does not want me to mold others into the image that seems good to me, that is, into my own image. Instead, in their freedom from me God made other people in God's own image. I can never know in advance how God's image should appear in others. That image always takes on a completely new and unique form whose origin is found solely in God's free and sovereign act of creation. . . . [T]he complete diversity of individuals in the community is no longer a reason to talk and judge and condemn, and therefore no longer a pretext for self-justification. Rather this diversity is a reason for rejoicing in one another and serving one another. (95)
The bearing of the burden of another's freedom strengthens in us the respect for another's dignity and the building of the bonds of trust that are essential for true shalom to flower. For Bonhoeffer, this reality is found in the Table of the Lord, which essence is gift: Christ, the giver of gifts; our gifts given for the sake of Christ; and Christ as the gift given to us in the sacrament of bread and wine. The community of forgiveness reaches its purpose and foretastes its end in that of joyful communion.
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