On Bonhoeffer, Abortion and Cheap Grace

On the banks of Pollywog Creek, Patricia Hunter is interacting with a section of Unpacking Forgiveness that deals with cheap grace.  She considers how that area relates to abortion.

It’s worth clicking over to just to see the Bonhoeffer quotes.

The tragedies of “cheap grace” are multiple. First, there is a large group of people who think they are Christians when they are not. A second negative consequence of “cheap grace” is that the believers fail to think discerningly about what is right and wrong. When evil is not identified and named, it soon flourishes. (emphasis mine) ~ Chris Brauns, Unpacking Forgiveness, p.69

In a brief discussion on the reluctance to identify and name evil in Unpacking Forgiveness, Pastor Brauns mentions the apathy of the Christians in Germany to stand up to Nazism with Bonhoeffer’s explanation for the church’s ineffectiveness.

But do we realize this cheap grace has turned back on us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and the unbelieving. We poured forth unending streams of grace. But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was rarely ever heard.” ~ Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom

Pastor Brauns concludes with these thoughts…

We must see this warning as relevant for today. Just as it was to Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s, evil is on the rise in the twenty-first century. The church ought to identify and name evil, not declare that all must be unconditionally forgiven.~ Christ Brauns, Unpacking Forgiveness, p. 70

Abortion is an evil.

Read the whole thing here.