Relationships and Bonhoeffer

This semester in my mentoring group with Dr. Neller, we have been reading The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It has been really good, and it is nice to read the book that has been quoted by so many other books that I have read. It's tough on the church and really blasts those who offer "cheap grace," so it offers a very strong view of what discipleship really looks like.

Today I was reading this and I came across something really cool. Bonhoeffer was talking about relationships and how we have to be able to leave any relationships that claims immediacy over Christ. This sounds tough, but he explains that it is only through Christ that we can have true relationships, and any relationship without him is in the end quite superficial. He says:

"We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempt to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbors through him [...]

But the same Mediator who makes us individuals is also the founder of a new fellowship. He stands in the center between my neighbor and myself. He divides, but he also unites. Thus although the direct way to our neighbor is barred, we now find the new and only real way to him-the way which passes through the Mediator.

This really struck me. I can really see how relationships with my friends are affected by this. Those with whom I have a spiritual connection are always deeper and more real. I hope that as I leave college next May and move to the next chapter in my life, that I can always seek to build my relationships on Christ.