Quotes About Responsibility

Talk about one's own guilt can be just as far from the Word of God as talk about one's innocence.

I've just come across this in the Imitation of Christ: Custodi diligenter cellam tuam, et custodiet te ('Take good care of your cell, and it will take care of you'). – May God keep us in faith.

Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbour or not. We must get into action and obey – we must behave like a neighbour to him.

The most astonishing observation one makes today is that people surrender everything in the face of nothingness: their own judgment, their humanity, their neighbors. Where this fear is exploited without scruple, there are no limits to what can be achieved.[130]

Gehorsam folgt blind, Freiheit hat offene Augen. Gehorsam handelt ohne zu fragen, Freiheit fragt nach dem Sinn. Gehorsam hat gebundene Hände, Freiheit ist schöpferisch.

Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

The extemporaneous prayer at the close of daily worship normally will be said by the head of the house [Hausvater]. But in any case it is best that it always be said by the same person.

But to procrastinate and prevaricate simply because you're afraid of erring, when others — I mean our brethren in Germany — must make infinitely more difficult decisions every day, seems to me almost to run counter to love. To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love." (Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, 218)

What will really matter is whether those in power expect more from people's folly than from their wisdom and independence of mind.

It is precisely when a person, who is borne down by inner emptiness and weariness or a sense of personal unworthiness, feels that he would like to withdraw from his task, that he should learn what it means to have a duty to perform in the fellowship, and

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.

It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated

When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we too were made ready to forgive each other. What God did to us, we then owed to others. The more we received, the more we were able to give; and the more meager our love for one another, the less we were living by God's mercy and love.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This saying, which is found in a broad variety of lands, does not arise from the brash worldly wisdom of an incorrigible. It instead reveals deep Christian insight.

We can of course shake off the burden which is laid upon us, but only find that we have a still heavier burden to carry – a yoke of our own choosing, the yoke of our self.

He who holds his tongue in check controls both mind and body (James 3.2ff.). Thus it must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him.

Now he felt that it would be for him an illegitimate escape from responsibility if he were to avoid the growing contacts with the political and military resistance movement. Not that everyone ought to act as he did, but in his position he saw no possibility of escape any longer into sinlessness and innocence. The sins of the bourgeoisie became clear in the flight from responsibility.

to finally take up his bourgeois responsibility as a German, he went to the spot where God had placed him through birth and talents. He never considered rejecting his position in life.

When a man gets angry with his brother and swears at him, when he publicly insults or slanders him, he is guilty of murder and forfeits his relation to God. He erects a barrier not only between himself and his brother, but also between himself and God.

Bethge's addendum: "Because I must practice so that I can stand alone before God, for I alone will stand in judgment before God, I alone will be accountable, and I alone will say: I trust in Christ.

Authority rests upon his shoulders" (Isa. 9:6).

Since I as a Christian cannot live without the church, since I owe my life to the church and now belong to it, so my merits are now no longer my own, but belong to the church.

It does not matter what others do, but what we do. Do that which is good, without fear, and without limit or reserve. What right have we to blame the government when we do not that which is good ourselves? How can we pass judgment on others when we invite the same condemnation on ourselves? If you want to be fearless, do good.

To talk of going down fighting like heroes in the face of certain defeat is not really heroic at all, but merely a refusal to face the future. The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live. It is only from this question, with its responsibility towards history, that fruitful solutions can come, even if for the time being they are very humiliating.