“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
Hardly the uplifting or encouraging words you might expect from a book that influenced my life. But Dietrich Boenhoeffer didn’t pull any punches when he wrote The Cost of Discipleship
The first time I heard about Bonhoeffer was in college. My narrow lens of inexperience showed as I questioned whether I could learn anything from a German Lutheran theologian. His name sounded vaguely like a Nazi, his denomination was entirely too mainstream for my tastes, and his theological writings were sure to be boring.
Boy, was I wrong. I remember one afternoon picking up a copy of The Cost of Discipleship and being completely hooked. I didn’t put it down until I finished, which by that time was early the next morning. Each sentence seemed powerful, each paragraph a new perspective, each page a revelation.
The message of the book is a simple profound idea: grace is free in the sense that we cannot earn it, but it is costly if we want to pursue it. Our lives are not our own when we choose to follow Christ. Cheap grace is simple conformity — today we would give examples like attending church, praying at a funeral, or some other practice that allows us to stay within a Christian cultural identity.
But costly grace asks much, much more. It asks us for everything, and it can cost us everything. That insight profoundly impacted my understanding of what it means to follow Christ.
For that alone it makes my list of influential books. But it goes further when I reflect on how Bonhoeffer lived and died. He was a true hero, a voice against the evil of Hitler, a person who would not compromise his values. Here was a Christian who would not conform to a political, cultural, or social norm if it meant any form of accommodation to injustice. And he died for this.
It makes those words “…he bids him come and die” that much more profound.
There are few theological books that I read over and over. This is one of them. Each reading gives me new insights, scolds me for old habits, and offers me a new way of thinking about my faith walk. It inspires courage and boldness. It challenges me to break out of my comfort zone and take a step (leap?) of faith.
And for this, along with the incredible model Bonhoeffer’s life is for all of us, The Cost of Discipleship makes my list of the most influential books in my life.
Want to read more of my top 25? Here is the list thus far:
Celebration of Discipline – #1
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – #2
The Cost of Discipleship – #3
The Screwtape Letters – #4
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – #5
Only the Paranoid Survive – #6
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold – #7
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – #8
Truman – #9
Shantaram – #10
The Maltese Falcon – #11
The Shadow of the Wind – #12
Survey of the New Testament – #13
Calvin & Hobbes – #14
Celtic Daily Prayer – #15
Managing the Nonprofit Organization – #16
A Wrinkle in Time – #17
The Practice of the Presence of God – #18
Catch 22 – #19
The Tortilla Curtain – #20
The Kingdom of God is a Party – #21
Earthkeeping – #22
Reviving Ophelia – #23
The Grapes of Wrath – #24
Peanuts – #25
