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In his post, “Contradicting the World” (Brian Hamilton – Raids on the Unspeakable) Brian quotes Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship (p.244):

Christians are to remain in the world, not because of the God-given goodness of the world, nor even because of their responsibility for the course the world takes. They are to remain in the world solely for the sake of the body of the Christ who became incarnate—for the sake of the church-community. They are to remain in the world in order to engage the world in a frontal assault. Let them “live out their vocation in this world” in order that their “unworldliness” might become fully visible. But this can take place only through visible membership in the church-community. The world must be contradicted within the world. That is why Christ became a human being and died in the midst of his enemies. It is for this reason—and this reason alone!—that slaves are to remain slaves, and Christians are to remain subject to authority.

J.D. Blanchard responds, in part: “I find the general thrust of the quote compelling. It questions who we are living for – ourselves, or God and others? We often think about subjection to authority and related concepts in terms of our own rights. We rarely ask questions about the good we might be able to do in imperfect circumstances that we wouldn’t be able to do outside of them” (emphasis added).

I find Blanchard’s last line to be the question that troubles me when within the church-community we are so obsessessed with prayers for relief: relief from illness, financial reversals, difficult employment situations, troublesome people, and all manner of slings and arrows of outradeous fortune, rather than being assured that through our “Give us this day our daily bread” and “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” both the relief we must have and greater opportunity for God’s grace to be displayed will result.