How then, Bonhoeffer asked, can Christians continue to live and to teach in the face of moral collapse? This can perhaps be possible, wrote Bonhoeffer, if we separate Christianity from its trappings of ritual, dogma and institutions. He wrote of a time when humanity “will once again be called so to utter the Word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious but liberating and redeeming . . . it will be the language of a new righteousness and truth."

Faith and religion are not the same, in my view. “Religion” refers to the forms such as ritual and dogma, and the institutional structures that perpetuate them. Faith is a relationship with the infinite that calls us out of finitude into the transcendent. Religion is the finite vessel in which the infinite divine may (or may not) be glimpsed. Religion, after all, has cooperated with evil many times, in justifying war, slavery and colonial conquest as well as genocide.

By this definition, then, “religion” is “man-made.” The term “man” itself is well chosen since it is truly mostly “men” who made the forms and practices of contemporary religions. This should never be confused with “the will of God.” But, of course, it is, all the time.

This is what Christopher Hitchens and others who write about religion being “man-made” never get. They attack the forms of religion as being fragile and finite and clearly generated by human beings. This is all too true. But you can’t explain a Dietrich Bonhoeffer from the forms of finite religion—and that they never address. Religion isn’t reducible to its forms. That’s like explaining a baby’s first smile as “gas”. Any mother knows when it’s a smile—it’s the relationship of love of parent and child that is mirrored in that infinite connection.

Yet, it is also true that “form” and “content” are not neatly compartmentalized. The forms of religion and the relationship of faith influence one another. And we human beings are finite. We can’t do without some form of religion to hold the content of faith.

The chief challenge of a Dietrich Bonhoeffer is not his concept of a faith that leaves its corrupt and finite religious trappings behind, but his life lived in obedience to the transcendent claims of true justice and peace. It is not his writings that have made him influential in social justice movements from the mid-twentieth century until today, but the fact that he was willing to actually confront the Nazi evil and the fact that he was killed for that.

What Bonhoeffer’s life teaches us is that the lure of the infinite claims of true justice and peace must always trump the finite forms of religion.

But the reverse is so often the case. Finite human beings are attracted to anything that makes religion seem easy and palatable. That’s often why humans invent the soft and pretty trappings of religion like banners and robes and buildings with colored glass. That’s why the outwardly religious go along with massive social evil—too must trouble to confront it. And besides, the Nazis might kill you.

Faith—that’s something else altogether. That’s the burning bush with Moses, that’s the mountain top with King, that’s the thing you really know you are called to do that scares you to death. No wonder we are tempted to pull the covers of dogma over our heads and mutter “nobody home” when God beckons. Finite religion makes nice; transcendent faith should scare you to death.