It takes a lot for us to be Switched ON. We need an alert and active mind so that we understand the world we’re living in and can make judgements about people and events.

Then we need a strong moral compass so that we can centre our instincts and intelligence on what we know to be true, to be honest, to be worthy.

Another common characteristic of Switched ON people is that they know stuff. It’s hard to imagine any Switched ON person being ignorant or a dummy.

As Switched ON people, we find joy in learning about remarkable individuals whose lives and ideas prove an inspiration and a revelation. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Some of us will know his story, but his courage and reflections deserve a much wider audience.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor. Two days after Adolf Hitler came to power, Dietrich made a public radio broadcast denouncing his ascent to the chancellorship.

That’s gutsy!

As the Nazi regime became progressively more savage, Bonhoeffer met the German resistance. He was eventually arrested and two weeks before the war ended, was hanged at the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Christian faith was everything to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But it’s not just his fidelity that speaks to us today. Dietrich was a great intellect and his book The Cost of Discipleship is considered a Christian classic that explores dictatorship and the conditions in which it flourishes.

In 1943, Dietrich was arrested after years of harassment by the Nazis. While in prison, Dietrich continued to write letters to his family and supporters. The letters were smuggled out of Tegel Prison by a sympathetic guard and posthumously published as Letters and Papers from Prison.

Apart from his theological writings, Dietrich also asked how the Germany of Bach, Beethoven, Schiller and Goethe could end up being ruled by such a heinous bunch as the Nazis.

His conclusion was collective stupidity. And worse, collective stupidity was more dangerous than malice. Dietrich argued that stupidity was a moral failing, not an intellectual one, and came to the grim conclusion it was literally impossible to change the mind of a stupid person and pointless to try.

As this short animation from the excellent Sprouts School series says, facts that contradict a stupid person’s prejudgement are simply dismissed as irrelevant or incidental.

Or as someone highly odious but tragically influential once said …Fake News!

Watching this video and thinking about our own times, we can wonder at the clarity of Dietrich’s thought and the prescience of his message.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a very brave and righteous man who can teach us a lot today and deserves to be much better known.