In a private letter sent to friends and family, Donald Trump’s would-be assassin, Cole Thomas Allen, suggested that the violence he was about to undertake was an act of faith intended to defend the oppressed.

It’s a deed that bring to mind the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He too, sought the death of a national leader – Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer felt it was his ‘duty as a pastor not just to comfort the victims of a man who drove down a busy street like a maniac, but to try to stop him.’ Unsurprisingly, his position drew Hitler’s particular ire, and he was arrested in 1943, and executed on the Führer’s orders just a month before Germany finally surrendered.

In a 2017 article written for the Human Trafficking Institute, Holly Thompson writes of how Bonhoeffer, having been profoundly moved by the racism and segregation he witnessed at work in the US, delivered his famous call-to-action, ‘The Church and the Jewish Question‘ to a large group of German Christian leaders in April 1933. Hitler was newly elected, but the direction of the Nazi party was clear to Bonhoeffer. He pleaded with the German people to consider how to respond to Nazi injustice, and he was deeply grieved to see large parts of the Church acquiescing in the Party’s oppressive practices.

He thought it not enough to ‘bandage the wounds of victims;’ he wanted instead to ‘drive a spoke into the wheel [of injustice] itself.’

To that end, he left a secure academic career, joined the confessing Church, and used his position within the Abwehr (German military intelligence) to do all he could to help Jews to escape out of Germany to Switzerland. And, as we have seen, he later became an active co-conspirator in a plan to assassinate Hitler.

His example raises profound questions concerning how far it is right to take matters into one’s own hands. Do pray for all who set out to take a stand against oppression and injustice. Pray that human anger and rhetoric won’t rule their hearts but, rather, wisdom and compassion. May their actions be informed by the Holy Spirit, rather as David was in dealing with his own persecutor, King Saul. (See David Spares the Lord’s Anointed (1 Samuel 24-28) in the Jesus Walk Bible Studies.)

Lord, have mercy.

Listen to his own account of his internal dialogue as he lay in prison awaiting his fate.

Photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash