Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Having just finished Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, I was struck by one great point he drove home. This point was the one about which he was most adamant. He repeated it throughout the book. It was even more intriguing as it was a saying of Jesus' that is perhaps obscure and not often repeated, at least that is how I felt. Bonhoeffer over and over reiterated Jesus' admonition to:

"Let not the right hand know what the left hand is doing."

I never quite fully grasped what Jesus meant when he said this. I mean, how can your right hand not know what the left is doing? I know Jesus is speaking in metaphor, but I only thought he meant that our deeds should be done in great secret and he used hyperbole. But, Bonhoeffer elucidated the Scripture far more deeply for me. Furthermore, what Bonhoeffer said hit home for it revealed a source of frustration in my life.

The verse means more than saying, "let your deeds be done in secret" and doing so with hyperbole. Jesus is actually saying, "Not even you should know what good deeds you are doing." The deeds should even be in secret to us! What a mystery? A thought so quizzical and seemingly illogical, it is no wonder I never interpreted that verse that way before. This struck me so profoundly since I had been struggling with this very issue. I was always being cognizant of my actions, good or bad, and trying to analyze them. Whenever I did good, it just brought on feelings of pride and unhealthy comparisons to others. It also prevented me from being myself; always trying to make sure I was doing good, instead of just being myself and letting the Spirit work the good through me naturally.

The instruction of Jesus frees me up to not have to think about the good I'm doing, how it fares, how people respond to it, how it compares to the actions of others. It allows me to just do the good and not fret it. Bonhoeffer is a masterful student of the Word worthy of emulation.