Veterans & Faith-Based Communities

Those among our readers who are familiar with the various challenges returning

military men and women face when coming home from their service to our nation, are

aware that many of these warriors are often uncomfortable in churches in their transition

on returning home.

Some of these warriors face challenges, such as PTS (Post Traumatic Stress), TBI

(Trauma Brain Injury), depression, anxiety, war wounds, and other physical

challenges, often linked to combat exposure and stress. There may also be employment

issues and family issues, as well as grief associated with the loss of camaraderie and the sense of community, so strongly present among our military personnel. These thoughts and challenges bring up a common question: “Why do so many of our veterans return home with a love for Christ, but not to the religious communities of faith all across our nation?”

A part of the reason could be tied to a term popularized by the well-known German

religious leader, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “cheap grace.”

Many veterans come home from deployment(s) following a journey of commitment,

focus, mission, etc. These men and women return home and walk into a community

that is often so casual, a body of spectators, seemingly with no real sense of direction,

commitment, or personal sacrifice. I fear that many of our communities are offering a

discipleship without cost and direction – a cheap grace.

What does Bonhoeffer mean by the term “cheap grace”? This question is defined so

well in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, a must-read for any believer who desires to

understand what is involved in following our Lord’s commission to us as his disciples (cf.

Matthew 28:18-20).

Let me share with you some of Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on this subject. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. It is not the kind of forgiveness of sin that frees us from the toil of sin, but is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Such grace amounts to a denial of the living Word of God.

Cheap grace is a doctrine, a principle, that means forgiveness can be had without

cost. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism, and

discipline. It is a lifestyle like that of the erring Romans (cf. Romans 6:1-4).

So, with this brief and condensed word on “cheap grace,” we must ask other

questions: “Have we, as communities of faith, given the Word away at wholesale

prices? Have we led individuals into an easy discipleship, a discipleship without cost –

the broad way where many enter toward destruction?”

Maybe we should discuss the possibility that cheap grace may have hardened us

into disobedience, which moves us into disobedience when we hear a gospel that

demands discipline, costly self-sacrifice, and obedience. As leaders and members in

our local communities of faith, can we not commit to doing this? What I have written

above applies to me as much, if not more, than to you. We must address the first

question, “Why do so many of our veterans return home with a love for Christ but not

the religious communities of faith all across our nation?” Am I wrong in this challenge to

us?

I close with the words of another well-known believer: “Christ says, ‘Give me all. I

don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work:

I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures

are any good…Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think

innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole self. I will give you a new self

instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours’ (C.S. Lewis,

Mere Christianity).”