Doug Hudson: A couple of things while you come on back in. Pastor of preaching, Jason Meyer, right here to my left, your left too, I think. The preaching pastor here at Bethlehem is in a series called “Life Together.” So if you don’t have a church home and you came here via radio or friend or telegram, then you need to visit this church this weekend for Pastor Meyer’s series on Life Together. Obviously when we finish tonight, Eric is going to be back out in the main hall as long as he needs to be to meet you and sign your books.

Also, this is very uncomfortable. What’s happening? Are you making fun? Yes, you are. This is Pastor Jason. This is a class clown from Yale, and you know Pastor Piper. The bookstore here at Bethlehem is also available and open throughout the rest of the night. So again, be sure and follow us. We’ll direct message you on those seven men books. You see the service times both at Downtown Campus, North Campus, and the South Campus.

So this is going to be a lot of fun. There’s already eighty to a hundred questions, and we only have about three hours. It’s Friday night, right? So I think that is it. Without further ado, Jason, take it away.

Jason Meyer: First question: What surprised you most about Bonhoeffer?

Eric Metaxes: Well, I alluded to this in the talk. I was under the impression, as I think many people were, that Bonhoeffer was theologically liberal, or even more importantly, at the end of his life, somehow when he was in prison, he kind of slid off into some kind of agnostic secular humanism. And I thought, “Well, if that’s what happened, I’ll do the research and I’ll just have to tell the story. I’m a Christian. I have to tell the truth. I don’t have to like it.” But I was utterly shocked to discover that that was absolutely untrue, and that really for fifty years he has been, to some extent, greatly misrepresented by the Bonhoeffer scholars, most of whom have, in some ways, either created a Bonhoeffer in their own image or have participated in presenting that kind of an image of him.

It’s very strange, but it was shocking to me to discover somebody who was so profoundly serious in his faith, who had a high regard for Scripture. I just to see that all the way to the end of his life, I was surely expecting to find something different. And at first, I didn’t quite believe it and I kept looking, looking and then you realize there’s plenty of evidence for that. It’s not even that there’s not that much evidence for the other point of view. There’s plenty of evidence for this point of view, but because I think certain scholars just sort of kept that, whether intentionally or just because it didn’t turn them on, they just avoided it. And so they gave this false impression. So I was really shocked and at the same time really blessed to see what kind of faith he had.

Jason Meyer: Next question. Bonhoeffer was deeply moved by the racial divide in the church. Have things changed, and how do we best address this in our local parish? I think you both can speak to this.

John Piper: Well, things have changed. That was 1930, and at least I’m old enough to remember the ‘60s and the early ‘50s and the civil rights movement. So, to say that they haven’t changed would be really an insult to the leaders of that movement. I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and remember white and colored drinking fountains, white and colored restrooms, and white and colored seating places in doctor’s offices. Right down the line, it was as humiliating and debasing and defiling to the conscience as you can imagine.

And all of that is gone. All of that law is gone. Racism isn’t gone. So, the human heart is the same as it was then. But remarkably, things have changed. What I was going to say in response to that question related to that issue, namely, isn’t it incredible that the Lord would take an oppressed people who celebrated at the Abyssinian Church in New York and make them the instrument of an awakening of a German counter-Nazi? I mean, that’s an interesting set of providences, and God just does that sort of thing over and over again. He makes the weak things of the world put to not things that are.

Eric Metaxes: That’s exactly what I was going to say, almost word for word. It’s amazing when the Holy Spirit is operating, what can happen. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you. I knew you were going to say that.

Jason Meyer: Do you want to say more than that?

Eric Metaxes: Well, I always want to say more. I’ll say this: I really believe things have changed. I believe that within thirty years, we will see an African-American president in the United States of America. I just believe that’s going to happen. I’m sorry, I meant a Republican African-American president. I apologize. Things have changed.

Jason Meyer: How can someone like Bonhoeffer take matters into his own hands and try to kill Hitler when God clearly appoints the leaders, Romans 13, even when they’re evil?

Eric Metaxes: We can have some fun with this one. Alright, I want to ask, I want to throw out some questions. When we talk about Bonhoeffer killing Hitler, first of all, Bonhoeffer was not actually going to kill Hitler, but the larger question is there’s killing and then there’s murder, right? When David kills Goliath, do we cheer, or do we say, “Well, that’s before David was a Christian, obviously.” What do we say to that? I mean, we just happen to have a theological expert sitting next to us here.

But I get this kind of question all the time, and it’s fascinating to me because people make no distinction, but the sloppiness of people’s thinking kind of depresses me because we have cops who have guns, we have a military that has weapons. Do we arm them to murder? Clearly, we don’t. If they murder, we prosecute them, but they may kill.

Clearly, there’s a place for killing and violence. It’s not a good thing. It’s not something we celebrate, but there’s a place for it, to protect the innocent. I mean, cops have guns to protect the innocent, and sometimes that involves killing somebody, and in war, we kill. So it’s much more complicated than this idea that, “Oh, this man of God just decided to pull a trigger,” or something like that.

But just theologically, there’s so many cases in Scripture where, well, there are two pieces here. There’s one that’s the idea of killing versus murder, and then there’s the idea of opposing the state. I mean, when the children of Israel are told to bow down to the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, they don’t say, “Oh, Romans 13. I guess I better do that.” Although I know Romans 13 was not in existence at the time, but God doesn’t change his mind.

So it’s almost... I guess I’m fascinated because I have Dr. John Piper here, the idea of these proof texts that we say, “Well, Romans 13,” as if the rest of Scripture doesn’t exist. I mean, there’s a whole narrative. So to pull out these little texts and say, “This is the law, this is the rule.” It’s not. You’ve got to look at the whole of Scripture; otherwise, you’re misrepresenting Scripture. And Romans 13 I think was overemphasized in Germany because the church and the state were too cozy, and Hitler used it really to threaten people and say, “Well, you’re good Lutherans. You better obey me personally.” Anyway, I don’t want to say too much on that. I’m really curious about what Dr. Piper would say.

John Piper: Well, I think you’ve cleared a lot of haze away and just now created the real problem.

Eric Metaxes: That’s good. Okay.

John Piper: So, there is a lot of nonsense out there that doesn’t prove anything, but we really better read the text or some of it because it’s really not easy. It’s not easy to figure out Romans 13:1–7.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. (Romans 13:1–3)

Now that’s just wild. I mean that’s a wild statement that Paul makes there. Rulers are not a terror to good conduct. Excuse me. Jesus said, “You’ll be taken before kings and they will kill you.” They are a terror to good conduct. Now, if you don’t believe the Bible, you’ll just throw it away right now instead of letting it have an effect on your brain and say, “Well, what did he mean? What did Paul mean when he said something so outlandish? He was being mistreated every other week by the ruling authorities. They weren’t blessing good and opposing evil. They were opposing good and blessing evil, and he knew it when he wrote this; he knew it.”

So my take on what Paul was doing here is that when he said, for example, “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad,” he was writing, pushing the submissive motif to the max, knowing this is going to land in Rome and be read by the Caesar. Hitler’s going to read this. And the message he’s going to deliver is number one, there is a good over you and you don’t define good. And number two, Christians are not out to overthrow empires. They are some of your best citizens. Don’t kill them. And if you said, “But he, did he lie to say that?” I asked my wife if there was a name for this, and maybe you know a name for it. You’re a lit major, right? So was I. And I thought it was a great major. You didn’t like it?

Eric Metaxes: Well, it didn’t work out so well for my first twenty-five years.

John Piper: You needed a job. Yeah, well, you should have gone to seminary after college. I said to Noël tonight, if Talitha, she never does, this is imaginary sasses you, that’s my daughter. If she sasses her mom and I say to Talitha, “We don’t do that in this house.” She just did it. What did I mean? What did I mean? I think Paul is looking at Caesar and saying, “Rulers are a terror to good.” Right, Caesar? “Talitha, we don’t do that in this house.”

I think Paul was using is statements to communicate ought statements, and he was doing it in a particular context to make sure that he delivered the most effective message to the Caesar as well as encouraging Christians to be generally submissive. And then you bring in all those stories. I mean, you’ve got at least six civil disobedience events, two in Daniel, one with Esther, one with the people in Exodus, one who are not killing the babies, one in Acts, which is New Testament about we must obey God rather than men. And then you have to ask for criteria when you go after a Hitler or not. Which is maybe another question, but one last comment.

I think the reason Paul was willing to risk being abused in Germany by the Reich in the misuse of this text to compel an inappropriate subordination under sin. I think the reason he was willing to risk that is that no one goes to hell for being abused by a civil government. Many people go to hell for getting their back up and being proud and feisty and arrogant and insubordinate and rebellious, which means this text is coming down harder on breaking the speed limit and not paying taxes and letting your grass grow high behind the garage than it is on the government for having laws that they shouldn’t have because Paul cared about your soul. That’s my take.

Eric Metaxes: Would you join me for the rest of the tour? I think I could just turn to you and say you’re very good at this. I think you’re ready to go professional. I think you’re ready to think you’re ready to make the leap. I think it’s going to work out. My goodness.

Well, that’s terrific to hear that actually it’s good for me. I don’t get this kind of teaching back in New York. I’m sorry. Tim Keller preaches a soft gospel. He won’t go there. How awful. Bonhoeffer calls us to think more deeply about these things and that even his participation in the plot to kill Hitler was difficult for him. He didn’t say, “It’s obvious that some people need killing, let’s go.” But he wrestled, and he even thought, “I may be doing wrong, and if so, I cast myself on the mercy of God.” But he didn’t do it flippantly, joyfully. People need to know that. And if anybody has an itchy trigger finger right then and there, God is not calling you to use a weapon. And I think that people are just very cavalier about it. And Bonhoeffer was the antithesis of cavalier. So I’ll stop there.

John Piper: When you said he even thought he might be wrong, you quoted, I’d never seen before I read yours, a letter he wrote to a bishop or somebody in England where he was accusing him of waffling, prevaricating, and postponing decisiveness. And he said, “I’m persuaded that to be decisive at this moment and be wrong is more loving than to be indecisive and be right.”

And that really landed on me because I think many pastors are paralyzed by indecisiveness, not paralyzed by fear, maybe, it may be underneath, but paralyzed by, I just don’t know. I still know the way forward here. And Bonhoeffer, you would say, he probably would say, “I’m not sure either. I have to act. You got to act. To not act is to . . .” That’s your line.

Eric Metaxes: Well, it’s his line, his famous line. He says, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak, not to act is to act.” And the point is, I always think, because I’m always speaking at churches like this, and there’s a lobby or a foyer, and I say, if somebody out there now were killing people, and somebody here had a gun and you said, “Well, I think Scripture says I’m not supposed to kill. And so I don’t know, I’m just going to pray.” And somebody continues and is killing more and more and more people, and you don’t use the gun, at some point, you are complicit in those murders. And so you can’t say that there’s a safe place where I’m just going to do nothing; doing nothing is doing something. And unless we get that, we think we can safely hide behind this doing nothing thing, but doing nothing is to do something.

And Bonhoeffer knew this, and I think this gets to the heart of what I get out of Bonhoeffer, this idea between dead religion versus real faith in Jesus. Dead religion is fear-based. And it looks at God as somebody who just wants to whack me for making a mistake. He just hates sinners and he’s just looking for an opportunity to smack me if I make a mistake. So I’m going to do nothing because I don’t ever want to make a mistake. Well, that’s fear-based, and that’s not the God of Scripture. The God of Scripture loves us, and even if we make a mistake, he’s looking at our heart and he wants to forgive us. And so this idea that I’m paralyzed, that I don’t want to make a mistake and so I better do nothing and let all his people be killed than perhaps do something wrong. God would rather that we know who he is and respond in gratitude to say, “Well, I’ve got to do what I think the Lord would want me to do, knowing that even if I get it wrong, he sees my heart. He sees that I was trying to please him, I was trying to do the right thing.”

Completely different Gods. One is Satan, and one is actually God. And Bonhoeffer, I think, was faced, there were a lot of German pietists at the time who literally were saying, “Scripture says, thou shall not lie. So if the Gestapo comes to my door and says, ‘Are you hiding a Jew?’ As a Christian, I’m going to say, ‘Well, yes, I’m hiding a Jew, please come and kill the Jew.’” As if that would please God. But they’re not thinking really about pleasing God. They’re thinking about not making a mistake, not doing something wrong. And they would define telling a lie religiously in the same way that when you were reading Pastor Piper, what Paul said, he said, well, did Paul lie? We’re thinking so simplistically and legalistically about what is a lie and what is truth that it paralyzes us.

And I think that, anyway, Bonhoeffer’s kind of helped me to see the difference between the two and that he said a few times this idea that real faith has to involve action, that we pray and ask God what to do and then we must act. And that’s kind of the key. That’s kind of the key.

Jason Meyer: So let me test the logic.

Eric Metaxes: Please don’t do that.

Jason Meyer: The difference between Hitler and the abortion issue. Hitler was the architect. With abortion, are you saying if we found the architect, then it would be okay to kill them? How are they different?

Eric Metaxes: I would say that, again, you have to look at the whole picture. The Third Reich, I mean, how can you compare where we are today? We have a country where we could, like that, just like that, elect all pro-life people and we don’t. So if that were taken away from us, if that option weren’t around, but we could do that anytime because this is a republic where we get to vote. We need to, I would say first, persuade people and try to, I mean, we’ve been doing that, but that kind of thing didn’t exist.

They were in a war. They really had no recourse, and they knew that millions of Jews in particular were being murdered. And that if they didn’t do this, and by the way, at first, they wanted to have Hitler arrested and then use, there was this thing called the Zossen file that Dohnányi, Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law who hired him, had been collecting from the beginning of the Third Reich, evidence of the atrocities to use in a court of law to prove to the people, “Look, this is what the Nazis have been doing. You knew you didn’t know. We have film, we have this.” Because they weren’t going to assassinate him. They wanted to effectively say that he’s insane or whatever.

But they tried everything. And it wasn’t until the ‘40s that they finally said, “There is no other way. We’ve got to do this.” And then there were other people. Most of these folks were Christians. And at the end of my book, I quote them that they are held before Freisler’s court, and they’re all going to be tortured or executed. And a number of them made very bold statements because of the Christian faith, that they felt that they must do something to stand against this evil. A number of them thought he was the antichrist, certainly an antichrist, and they must do something. But the desperation of those circumstances, it’s just infinitely distant from where we are today. I mean, it would take hours to say how, but I would simply assert that it is dramatically different in many ways.

John Piper: It is dramatically different, and it’s way worse in America than it was there in many ways. Forty million innocent, slaughtered, cut-to-pieces babies. And we, in this church, tried for about three years the direct action approach: sit in front, get thrown in patty wagons, and so on. And it did zero good. It backed up the cause, probably. And that is, I think, one of the parallels between our situation; say in the Civil War, it took six hundred thousand dead Americans to end slavery. What will it take to end abortion, which is, as far as the cost of lives, worse? And it would just depend on whether a historical flashpoint happened — a historical flashpoint because nobody could have imagined that Americans would slaughter each other over states’ rights. Just couldn’t imagine we would slaughter each other for years, blow each other’s heads off with cannons—southerners and cousins. And it was just unimaginable, just like it’s unimaginable today that there could be a war over abortion. And I think the major difference is the flashpoint isn’t there.

Jason Meyer: How should the church respond to the current political trend to legalize gay marriage?

Eric Metaxes: Well, that one’s easy for me. The church has been asleep on this issue, and for me, this is more than anything an issue of religious liberty. I would say it almost has nothing to do with what you think about sexuality. You don’t have to be a conservative evangelical Christian like I am to see that if you legally redefine marriage, it will have a tremendous chilling effect in this nation when it comes to religious liberty. In other words, I would say to my gay friends, “Look, if it really wouldn’t affect me or religious liberty, I could see how it’s possible to say, you do what you’d like.” But the point is that nobody’s talking about this issue that if this is legally redefined, it will become very difficult for Christians in America, anyone of faith and any Muslim, any orthodox Jew, to express their views on what is right and what is wrong in terms of sexuality because it will now be a legal issue.

This is actually already happening. I read in the Wall Street Journal three days ago that the state of California is going to try to make a law to remove the tax-exempt benefits from the Boy Scouts because they don’t like their view on gays. So the force of the state is being brought to bear. There’s a secular orthodoxy, and they’re saying, “Unless you will tow the line here, we’re going to punish you.” It happened to the man who in New Jersey who founded eHarmony; the state of New Jersey said, “You’ve got to provide matchups for same-sex couples as well, and if you don’t do that, basically, we’ll run you out of business.” So he was forced to create another company to do that, and he didn’t want to. He’s a Christian. It’s very strange, but he would’ve been run out of business if he didn’t do that.

So for me, that’s kind of the issue. It’s the issue of religious liberty because in this country, we will count and it’s all kinds of things that we don’t approve of, but this is something that changes everything. And I really believe the church is asleep on this issue of religious liberty. And if we don’t wake up to this very soon, it will be difficult for us to speak, to preach the gospel, to teach out of Scripture. It’s going to become more difficult than it already is. I think we’ve had so much religious liberty in America that we don’t even know what it is and we don’t appreciate it, and we don’t even imagine that we could lose it.

But I think we’re on the verge; we’re losing it. I have mentioned the HHS mandate. This is another example. I think this is chilling for me. This is a line that has not been crossed before unless I’m missing something. The idea that the government would say to people, “We do not care what you think about abortifacient drugs. We don’t care. You will pay for them, and if you don’t, we will fine you.” That’s it. That, to me, is profoundly un-American. It has nothing to do with our religious views. I mean many.

But once again, I’m curious what Dr. Piper has to say about this. I’m sure he can add a few things.

John Piper: Every pastor should preach on sexuality issues, and every pastor, I think, should say there is no such thing as so-called “same-sex marriage,” period. It doesn’t exist. It never will exist. It can’t exist. It doesn’t exist. And they should say that and show from the Bible that it cannot exist. We should not only preach, we should try to encourage each other to preach and mobilize our people to tell their neighbors that and give them good arguments for why that would be destructive. You just gave some, there are dozens of arguments why the enshrining of this will be very, very damaging.

When the amendment was proposed here in Minnesota, I preached on it before, to say that without saying, “Go vote for the amendment.” Then I sent letters to three thousand pastors with my response to the Tribune article, which got it all wrong, and my blog and a letter and sermon to try to persuade those pastors to stand up and alert their people to the seriousness of the issue.

It is massive. It’s massive for kids. It’s massive for adoption, it’s massive for schools and education. It’s massive for pastors. Probably it’ll only be just a few years before there can be no evangelicals in the military chaplaincy because they will be required to solemnize such non-existent, so-called “marriages,” and so they’ll just wipe them out. So I think we are at that stage of the recrimination against Christians already.

Eric Metaxes: Well, this is the thing, and I’ll just put a button on this to say that I am upset to see how basically gutless so many Christians in America are. We’ve had everything so easy that we don’t even — I mean, people are rotting in prisons and lucky to eat a rat if one scuttles by around the world for their faith in Jesus. And we seem unwilling to deal with the ugly look of a neighbor or somebody. And unless we take seriously the idea that we’re going to have to pay a price. Now, it doesn’t mean that if you’re a jerk and people call you a jerk, that you’re suffering for Jesus because there are many Christians who are simply unpleasant. And I’m not talking about throwing caution to the winds and being a hothead, but I mean to winsomely, lovingly, humbly, but boldly and courageously speak out on these kinds of things.

The issue is this. I mean, Chuck Colson talked about it in this idea of the spiral of silence that this happened in Germany in the ‘30s, and it’s happening now on this issue. The less people who speak up, the more it’s difficult to speak up. Think how difficult it is to speak up on this issue. Now, you could have talked about this endlessly twenty years ago, ten years ago, suddenly now something has happened. We’ve allowed it to happen. And conversely, anyone who speaks up makes it very easy for others to speak up.

So if somebody speaks up, what happens is the people around him say, “Yes, I agree with that.” Or at least a number of people say, “Yes, I agree with him, but I didn’t know you could say it, but he just said it. So I guess maybe I can say it.” We encourage each other. So what we say affects other people. So if you speak up, it will affect other people. If you don’t speak up, it will affect other people. And God’s depending on us, every one of us, because we affect those around us, especially, of course, pastors especially, but everyone else in any kind of leadership, people are affected by what they hear. And if you hear no one saying anything, most people will just say, “Well, I guess I’ll keep my mouth shut.” And we’ve been keeping our mouth shut, and that’s how we got in this situation that we need to speak.

John Piper: That’s right. Behind it for years has been a view of love and a view of relationships that simply cannot harmonize being hated while I’m doing the right thing. I heard Topi, who was it, who said it at the pastor’s conference? Around the world, Christians fear the raised fist. In America, Christians fear the raised eyebrow.

Jason Meyer: Mack Stiles.

John Piper: Mack. What that means is we’ve raised several generations of young people for whom conflict feels right wing. It feels like Jerry Falwell all over again. Whereas soft-spoken, non-offensive words feel leftish and cool, and you just don’t want to sound like those feisty fighters for the right. And that’s Republican. That’s right wing; that’s weird. And we want to be with the cool. We want to be cool. And so you don’t get... A raised eyebrow is just, “I’ve just got a raised eyebrow. I want to be cool. I don’t want to sound like anybody who’s right wing.” And so there’s a new kind of fear that’s there.

And it’s not so much about the so-called “gay marriage.” It’s just about homosexuality in general or about abortion in general or about debt in general or about the HHH thing in general. You don’t want it at the office where everybody’s cool, say anything that’s going to make you look like a fool, an absolute fool. And so I think we’ve just blown it when it comes to portraying biblical courage and biblical love. And Jesus said, I read it day before yesterday, so unbelievably relevant for this and for the message that I’m going to do this weekend where he said a little different than Matthew Luke 6, I forget the verse where he said, “Blessed that are you when men hate you and revile you and cast out your name as evil.” I thought, wow, could it be said any more relevantly? And then he added, “For great is your reward in heaven. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.”

Where is anybody who leaps for joy? I’m hated. My name was just cast out as evil, which is what happens if you name sin sin today. You’re not called like you used to be, the raised eyebrow and “Oh, poor you, benighted, evangelical.” Rather, “You are wicked. You are wicked to say that what this loving couple is doing is sin. That is wicked of you.” And I’ll tell you, we just don’t have the inner strength to say, “I’m not wicked, and you can call me that. I’m going to keep coming back. It’s a new day of need for inner power and strength that can receive that without becoming ugly and embittered.”

Jason Meyer: And doesn’t that come from the gospel where you don’t have to have an identity from what people think of you, but you can have an identity that really only matters what God says? And isn’t that where the inner strength comes from to not be gutless?

John Piper: Yes, yes, it does. And everything around the core gospel is that you are forgiven and justified by grace alone, through faith alone, for the glory of God alone, on the basis of Christ alone. And then all around that is a lifestyle in story after story in the Bible where love looks different than most people think about it today.

Eric Metaxes: The only thing I would add to that is that humans, being as we are, need models because it’s one thing to know that, but you need to see it modeled and be around people who are modeling it and living it. Because, I would say, most people, except for rare leaders, respond to that. They look and say, “Well, my father said that,” or “My hero, my sports hero said that,” or “My pastor said that.” And it sort of gives you strength to say, “Yes, I think I can do that.” But when you don’t have models of this, and the culture is devoid of models of this, this is my passion — this idea that our culture is sort of secular humanist liberal. If you turn on the TV, you will see no examples. Now think in a country like America, where quite a few people, millions of people, think this way, you’ll never see it portrayed in the mainstream media.

Why is that? It ought to be a mirror. It is not a mirror. It’s not a cultural democracy. The invisible hand of the market is not providing images or stories of people like this. It ought to, but it doesn’t because it’s more complicated than that. And so we need, as Christians, to be aware of this issue that especially leaders, people are looking at you. And if they see you behaving in this way, looking at God and obeying God and behaving in this way, then they say, “Okay, I’ve seen that. I can do it.” It’s rarely seen in this culture.

Jason Meyer: John, you talked about the Sermon on the Mount a bit. The next question’s a good segue. I’ve read the Sermon on the Mount had a huge impact on Bonhoeffer and The Cost of Discipleship. How could you speak to that?

Eric Metaxes: Well, Bonhoeffer was very affected by a Frenchman, John le Carré, who was one of his students at Union. And John le Carré, I think, helped Bonhoeffer see, to some extent, the radicalness of Scripture — that we are really supposed to live this way. As I was saying before, it’s not extra credit; this is real. And so Bonhoeffer was trying to figure out that. In a way, this seminary in 1935 and onward that he was leading, it was a community like that. He said, “We’re going to take living in Christian community seriously.”

The most radical thing, mentioned in Life Together, is where he says, “While you’re here at Finkenwalde, you can never talk about one of the brothers when he’s not present.” And I thought, wow, to live like that, to not talk about my friend with my other friend if the friend is not there, talk about a spiritual discipline to say, “I will not do that because I will speak differently if the person is there.” Bonhoeffer really wanted to live this out. It really was central to him. There’s a lot to be said on that, but that’s all I’ll say for now.

Jason Meyer: This is for John. Ask Eric a question, and then Eric, ask John a question.

Eric Metaxes: You get to go first. I was going to ask you, what’s the capital of South Dakota?

John Piper: Don’t do that.

Jason Meyer: It’s Pierre, by the way.

John Piper: He’s from South Dakota.

Eric Metaxes: Pierre, okay.

John Piper: I would not have known that.

Eric Metaxes: This is just the kind of thinking we’re looking for in this establishment. We should get ahold of this guy. You should get ahold of this guy. It’s kind of bright young thinkers like this.

John Piper: To make room. You referred to the Nazis co-opting the church and shaping it into their image. And you just dropped the line: “Which of course is happening today in America.” And I wrote down on my notes: “Please illustrate.”

Eric Metaxes: Did I really say that?

John Piper: You did.

Eric Metaxes: I have no recollection of that.

John Piper: I can read the quote.

Eric Metaxes: No, you don’t have to read it. I actually do remember it. He was going to read that. Think about that. Well, my wife and I attend an Episcopal church in Manhattan. It’s an evangelical Episcopal church, but technically it’s still an Episcopal church. We can argue about that another time. But the idea that that denomination and a number of other denominations would continue, that the leaders would continue to call themselves Christian, but they want to change things on the inside. I mean, the gay issues, the classic illustration, and you wonder what is it that makes them want to stay within this institution and change it?

It’s very interesting to me, this idea that they want to fight from the inside, but completely change it. This has been happening all through the mainline Protestant denominations. I mean, it’s a joke to me. I mean, I cannot take seriously any of the mainline Protestant denominations. I mean, to me, all I care about is it an evangelical church? Whether, and I would go so far as to say that to Catholics, to Eastern Orthodox. I mean, the denomination becomes meaningless because I can hear preaching and I can know what’s going on in that church. But the denominations themselves, they’re off the rails. They’re just crazy. And it is horrifying. But I mean it’s been happening for years, but I think it’s most dramatic more recently because of the sexuality issue. I mean, to take that final step, you simply wonder what they’re thinking.

John Piper: So that’s very helpful. So what you meant was that instead of Christians departing from faith and leaving Christianity, you depart from faith. Say you’re Nazi, you don’t want to lose the church. It’s a good front and you just rework things. Jews have to go and certain kinds of statements have to go, but the church is still there. The name’s still there. And you’re saying that the same mentality is to keep the institution, it’s useful, we’ve got our jobs here, and yet you gut it from all that it was.

Eric Metaxes: You just remake it in your own image. And I think it sort of proves that those folks don’t have real faith because if they really understood it, they wouldn’t do that. But they really think it’s something malleable. They can mess with it. They can do what they like, and they’re doing the best they can, and they don’t see what they’re doing. And they don’t, yeah, they would never say, “Well, I just don’t believe in any of this stuff, so I’m going to form another denomination.”

They somehow want to take over the denomination. If you don’t believe in the fundamentals, if you don’t believe in the Nicene Creed, if you don’t believe in the bodily resurrection, if you don’t believe in those things, I simply wonder why you are bothering with any of it. I don’t get it. It’s too much trouble. Stay home on Sunday. But they seem to bother about it. I guess I’m fascinated why anyone would do that. But they do it.

Is that a book? Is there a book in that idea? I don’t think so. But anyway. Oh, I have to ask you a question. What’s the capital of North Dakota? The reason I actually say, “What’s the capital of North Dakota?” is because Groucho was once invited to a seance, and they said, “Now Groucho, this is real. These people are doing this. They’re very serious about this, so you can’t be joking around.” He goes, “No, no, I get it. I get it, I get it.” So he goes to the seance, and the woman running the seance says to the spirits, “The spirits are here, the spirits are here.” And then she says, “Does anyone have anything they want to ask the spirits? Does anyone have anything they want to ask the spirits? Does anybody have a question for the spirits?” And Groucho says, “I got a question. What’s the capital of North Dakota?” And it just has stuck with me as a good question to ask, but I won’t ask it. I won’t ask it tonight. I wasn’t prepared for this, so I don’t have any serious questions.

Jason Meyer: On that note, we’re ready to wrap up. Going to call Doug Hudson up.

Doug Hudson: Let’s do this. Guys, thank you very, very much. Thank you. Stay here, stay here, stay here. You know what? I’m going to ask a favor. I’m going to go speaking of off the rails here for just a second. I’m going to ask Jason to, I hope, one of the things I want you to hear very quickly is all three of these men, certainly Eric and John, a lot of people know who they are, understand them. I hope you know that the Holy Spirit in them is in all of us. And I want to ask Jason to pray for these two men for their courage and also for all of us in the room, that somehow, as Eric has brought to life this Bonhoeffer, how it impacts us. And so Jason, if you would pray with them, and then I’ll grab Eric very quickly and Eric and I will walk straight back so he will be there ready to see. But Jason, will you close and pray for these men and for all of us to be examples?