American Predilection: it’s like “life in a hostel”

“To understand the American student, it is important to have experienced life in a hostel.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer’s impression of American life:

Living together day by day produces a strong spirit of comradeship, of a mutual readiness to help. The thousandfold “hullo” which sounds through the corridors of the hostel in the course of the day and which is not omitted even when someone is rushing past is not as meaningless as one might suppose. . . . No one remains alone in the dormitory. The unreservedness of life together makes one person open to another; in the conflict between determination for truth with all of its consequences and the will for community, the latter prevails. This is characteristic of all American thought, particularly as I have observed it in theology and the church; they do not see the radical claim of truth on the shaping of their lives. Community is therefore founded less on truth than on the spirit of “fairness.” One says nothing against another member of the dormitory as long as he is a “good fellow.”

Must absolute truth be pitted against true community? It would seem so for most Americans, but Bonhoeffer lived, exemplified, and died revealing quite the opposite.

[Source: quotations taken from Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy; pp. 103-104.]