{"id":27103,"date":"2021-01-18T17:21:34","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T01:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=27103"},"modified":"2021-01-18T17:21:34","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T01:21:34","slug":"the-wanderers-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-wanderers-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wanderer’s Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May 2018, my roommate and I decided that for our weekly \u201cMansion Night\u201d<\/a>[1] we would break from our normal sharing and prayer and go to Shake Shack, which had just opened in Hong Kong.\u00a0 To say I was relieved would be an understatement.\u00a0 I was sick and tired of talking about Jesus and having any kind of spiritual\/religious talks.\u00a0 <\/strong>You see, several months prior I had been burned by the church in a way that stripped me of my identity and forced me to reconsider my faith in a way I hadn\u2019t been forced to up until that point.\u00a0 I was hurt by people I loved and who I considered family and, with the metaphorical middle finger thrown in my face, had felt that they turned their backs on me and said, \u201cDon\u2019t let the door hit you on the way out.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was November.\u00a0 It had been almost six months since the events of that split happened and there was still only rage, hatred, bitterness, and a desire to fall into the deepest pits of self-destruction.\u00a0 In those six months, I lost myself.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know who I was anymore.\u00a0 And I liked it.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 For the first time, I didn\u2019t have to pretend to be the \u201cGolden Church Kid\u201d or the \u201cbudding theologian\u201d or whatever BS title I or others would give me.<\/p>\n

But I was still hollow.\u00a0 And God did I fight trying to restore that sense of Self I had lost.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That night around the outdoor tables at Shake Shack, somehow or another topic of political assassination was brought up and whether it was ethical.\u00a0 One of my housemates and I had talked about this before, so I was more or less tuning him out (we had a LOT of ethical\/theological conversations in our house).\u00a0 But then he turned to me and said, \u201cDylan, what did Bonhoeffer say about that again?\u00a0 I remember you brought him up once.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was referring to an article I had found where Bonhoeffer claimed he did not try to justify his claims in assassinating Hitler, but rather he would throw himself on God\u2019s mercy.<\/a>[2]\u00a0 I affirmed what he said, but it also got me thinking that I didn\u2019t know his full story.\u00a0 I knew from my undergraduate program that Bonhoeffer\u2019s involvement in the plot to kill Hitler was both misconstrued and over exaggerated in some ways, so I wanted to delve into the truth and know the full story of the man behind the legend.<\/p>\n

That night I downloaded Eric Metaxas\u2019s biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.<\/em><\/p>\n

To say I was enraptured by it is an understatement.\u00a0 As I flipped through the pages, I felt a heaviness weigh on my heart as page after page detailed the life story of the man who would become my \u201cHero of Faith.\u201d\u00a0 I was blown away by his upbringing as a man of the highest privilege who looked beyond his station in life to step into the world of others.\u00a0 But it was his central question that made my eyes widen:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the church?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a question I had been wrestling with subconsciously since before I moved to Hong Kong and had been exacerbated by my recent fallout with the church.\u00a0 As I read that question over and over again, for the first time in six months I felt like I wasn\u2019t alone.\u00a0 The discombobulating journey I had been on wasn\u2019t something I had to walk alone anymore.\u00a0 My first reaction was, \u201cIf a man of Bonhoeffer\u2019s caliber and intelligence struggled and wrestled with this question for his entire life, then it\u2019s okay if I wrestle with it too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The journey I had put on hold for six months was starting again.\u00a0 Just as the Expert prepared to leave his Tower at the beck and call of the Pilgrim, so I had found my guide.<\/p>\n

For me, the Journey of not just reestablishing my lost sense of Self had begun, but the Journey of discovering who I truly am was in full motion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>[1] We call our flat \u201cThe MANsion\u201d because we live in an old building called Wah Kiu Mansion and it\u2019s four guys living together.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

[2] Here\u2019s a link to the article: https:\/\/news.psu.edu\/story\/140578\/2000\/05\/01\/research\/bonhoeffer\u2019s-dilemma<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May 2018, my roommate and I decided that for our weekly \u201cMansion Night\u201d[1] we would break from our normal sharing and prayer and go to Shake Shack, which had just opened in Hong Kong.\u00a0 To say I was relieved would be an understatement.\u00a0 I was sick and tired of talking about Jesus and having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[1943,1945,1947,1946],"class_list":["post-27103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography-drama-history","tag-bonhoeffer","tag-lost","tag-self","tag-wandering","cohort-lgp10"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27104,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27103\/revisions\/27104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}