Dietrich Bonhoeffer was Professor of theology at the University of Berlin in Germany in 1930’s. Bonhoeffer was among those who could not go along with Hitler’s anti-Jewish, radically German vision. With others he set up an underground church which explicitly refused to ally itself to Hitler’s Third Reich vision. It was dangerous. In 1937 Bonhoeffer was sacked. He flees to London. Two years later Bonhoeffer’s faced with a choice. He’s been offered one of the most prestigious theology appointments in the world - lecturing at Union Seminary in New York or returning to Germany to head up an illegal, underground seminary for the churches who refuse to go along with Hitler. He decides his faith is meaningless if he takes the easy option. He heads back to Germany and finds Hitler so evil that he abandons his commitment to non violence and gets involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. The plot fails and in 1943 Bonhoeffer’s arrested. In prison he leads worship services for his fellow prisoners, until the fateful day April 9, 1945 when he’s executed by the Nazis.
In the final days of his life, languishing in a Nazi concentration camp waiting for execution, we might forgive Bonhoeffer for being desperately unhappy. Yet this is what he wrote in his last letter: "What is happiness and unhappiness? It depends so little on circumstances; it really depends on what happens inside a person."
Source: Quotation taken from Birch, Regaining Compassion (NSW Uni Press, 1993), citing Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller, "The Other Letters from Prison" Union Seminary Quarterly Review 23 (1967) 23-29.
Applications: Happiness, contentment, attitude, circumstances