How do we know what’s right?

Reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s ‘Life Together’ this morning I was struck by the realization that the underlying errors facing the church in 1930s Germany were the very same as those facing us today. How are we to determine what we believe? How are we ever to be confident in the truth? In the present debate in the Church of England opinion has been swayed by appeal to personal experience and emotional desires. While such arguments are powerful because they appeal to the human ego, they are not God’s way. Truth is external to us, it is found in God alone through His word. Bonhoeffer puts it like this:

“… how are we ever to gain certainty and confidence in our personal deeds and church activity if we do not stand on solid biblical ground? It is not our heart that determines our course, but God’s Word. But who in this day has any proper awareness of the need for evidence from Scripture? How often do we hear innumerable arguments “from life” and “from experience” to justify the most crucial decisions? Yet the evidence of Scripture is excluded even though it would perhaps point in exactly the opposite direction. It is not surprising, of course, that those who attempt to discredit the evidence of Scripture are the people who themselves do not seriously read, know, or make a thorough study of the Scriptures.”

For Bonhoeffer this was not just words. He lived it, and he died for it!