One of my favorite things in life is the revisiting of a book. I remember reading Life Together in college, quickly, in order to fulfill a requirement for my summer travel band. I remember loving it, and I remember feeling like there was no better book for a group of college students attempting to meld our personalities (and egos) into a mini-bus for the summer. Bonhoeffer's ideas prove just as profound a challenge to my life today: in teaching, family life, and all relationships.
It is, first of all, the freedom of the other person, of which we spoke earlier, that is a burden to the Christian. The other's freedom collides with his own autonomy, yet he must recognize it. He could get rid of this burden by refusing the other person his freedom, by constraining him and thus doing violence to his personality, by stamping his own image upon him. But if he lets God create His image in him, he by this token gives him his freedom and himself bears the burden of this freedom of another creature of God.This freedom of the other includes all that we mean by a person's nature, individuality, endowment. It also includes his weaknesses and oddities, which are such a trial to our patience, everything that produces frictions, conflicts, and collisions among us. To bear the burden of the other person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and, in bearing with it, to break through to the point where we take joy in it.
