“Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action.”

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The view from below, p. 17
Context: There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated — in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action.

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer 161
German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi 1906–1945

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