I often ask myself why some sort of "Christian instinct" often draws me more to non-religious people than to religious ones, not with a missionary intent, but I would say almost "brotherly". While I often hesitate to pronounce the name of God before religious people, as it seems to me to sound somehow false, and I feel a bit dishonest myself, I can occasionally quite calmly and seemingly naturally say God before non-religious people. Religious people speak of God when human knowledge is at an end or where human powers have failed – it is actually always a deus ex machina that is sent on stage, either to seemingly solve insoluble problems or as a force intervening in human failure, thus always exploiting human weakness or the limits of humanity. (…)
I would like to speak of God not at the borders, but in the very center, not in the weak, but in the strong aspects of man, and thus not at death and sin, but in life and in what is good in man. At the borders, it seems better to remain silent and leave the insoluble unsolved. (…) God is transcendent in the very center of our lives. The church does not stand where human possibilities end, at the borders, but in the middle of the village.
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer /1906–1945/, letter from Nazi prison to a friend, April 30, 1944;
quoted from the book Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Resistance and Submission, Letters from Prison. Kalich 2023)
