The Fourteen-Year-Old Who Chose the Church
In 1920, the Bonhoeffer household in Berlin buzzed with academic ambition. Karl Bonhoeffer was Germany's leading psychiatrist. His older sons pursued careers in law and physics. The family assumed young Dietrich would follow a similarly prestigious path.
Then the fourteen-year-old made his announcement: he intended to study theology.
His brothers were incredulous. Karl-Friedrich and Klaus dismissed the church as a feeble, irrelevant institution, hardly worthy of their brilliant younger brother's mind. Why waste such intellect on something so ordinary?
Dietrich's response was quiet but immovable: "If what you say is true, then I shall reform it."
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