BRIAN ROSNER examines how Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced the knowledge he would be executed by the Nazis, in this extract from an upcoming lecture at Moore College's School of Theology (20-21 September).

Golf was once described as a long walk punctuated by disappointments and a football fan as someone who, no matter what the score, is in a constant state of disappointment. Disappointment is such a universal human experience that one American wit, Ambrose Bierce, defined a "year' as "a period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments'. No one, it seems, is immune from the displeasure caused from unfulfilled hopes.

Of course some disappointments are worse than others. It is one thing to be sad about a tied scoreline, or a low mark in a half-yearly, or a wet picnic on a public holiday, but quite another to bear the distress of long-term unemployment, unrequited or unfulfilled love, relationship breakdown, or the setback of a serious illness with all the attendant frustrations. Bonhoeffer's life was distinguished by prodigious prospects and yet devastating failures.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on 4 February 1906. His family had been prominent in German society for centuries, with many doctors, lawyers, judges, artists and professors among his ancestors. The family home in Breslau was a huge mansion in a beautiful forest, complete with a tennis court, orchard, impressive garden and a menagerie of animals. From any angle, Bonhoeffer was marked for greatness.

Two aspirations dominated Bonhoeffer's life. The first was national: Dietrich worked for the renewal of the German church and people. A second was personal: he planned to marry his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer. Both desires were cruelly thwarted in 1943 when he was arrested by the Gestapo, incarcerated for two years and finally executed at the order of Adolf Hitler in the final months of WW2.

Dietrich's opposition to the Nazis commenced from the day after Hitler first took power in 1933 when he gave a radio broadcast on the dangers of charismatic leadership " a broadcast that was abruptly ended. For the next ten years he worked for the good of his nation, eventually operating as a double agent and even taking part in a plot to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer felt his imprisonment was a setback to this larger cause: "I feel that my own personal future is of quite secondary importance compared with the general situation, though, of course, the two things are very closely related'.

In June 1942 Dietrich met Maria von Wedemeyer and fell in love. Maria was "beautiful, " poised, fresh, cultured, filled with vitality', but only 18 years of age, fully 17 years younger than Dietrich! Maria's father had been killed on the Russian Front and her mother insisted on a year's separation to test the couple's feelings. Maria convinced her mother otherwise and in January 1943, with some restrictions in place, they were engaged.

Needless to say, Bonhoeffer's arrest and imprisonment on 5 April 1943 was a bitter blow to both his aspirations. There is much to learn from the letters Dietrich wrote from prison for our own attempts to cope with disappointment. A full account will have to wait for the Moore School of Theology in September.  The following gives some idea of the difference being a Christian made to Dietrich. 

The most common response to a serious setback is to feel regret over past mistakes and choices. Bonhoeffer had every reason to be remorseful at decisions he had made that led to his wretched imprisonment. The most obvious one was his resolve in 1939 not to stay in the safe environment of America but to return to Germany, to use his words, in order to "be involved in Germany's fate'. However, in prison he wrote: "I'm often surprised how little (in contrast to nearly all the others here) I grub among my past mistakes and think how different one thing or another would be today if I had acted differently in the past. It doesn't worry me at all'.

This may seem arrogant. But Bonhoeffer does not consider himself infallible. On the contrary, he cherishes the forgiveness of his sins. In a wedding sermon he wrote from prison, he gave the advice: "live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship can survive'. Rather, it is his confidence in the sovereign goodness of God that frees him from dwelling morbidly on past mistakes: "everything seems to be determined necessarily and straightforwardly by a higher providence'.

People also try to stop wishing for what is missing in order to inoculate themselves from the pain of disappointment. However, Bonhoeffer refused this strategy: "To renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain [or we might say disappointment] is neither Christian nor human'. In fact, he advocated feeling losses acutely: "natural composure is probably in most cases nothing but a euphemism for indifference and indolence, and to that extent it's not very estimable…I think we honour God more if we gratefully accept the life that he gives us with all its blessings, loving it and drinking it to the full, and also grieving deeply and sincerely when we have impaired or wasted any of the good things of life'.

Most Christians look to the hope of heaven to compensate for life's frustrations and limitations. But, in Bonhoeffer's view, problems arise when we flee too quickly to such comfort: "it is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything seems to be over that one may believe in the resurrection and a new world'.

Sometimes we are disappointed because we long for the wrong things. According to Bonhoeffer, "for many today man is just part of the world of things'. He asks poignantly, "but what is the finest book, or picture, or house, or estate, to me, compared to my wife, my parents, or my friend? Dietrich was convinced that "in the long run, human relationships are the most important thing in life…God uses us in his dealings with others. Everything else is very close to hubris… people are more important than anything else in life'.

Brian Rosner teaches New Testament and Ethics at Moore College and is the author of a number of books including Beyond Greed (Matthias Media).