Gelassenheit: Humble Yieldedness — Chester Weaver — Ep. 102

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with Chester Weaver, and we're in Ephraim Mennonite High School, or is it Ephraim Mennonite? Yeah, I think you were speaking here earlier today. You've been a school teacher for many years and done a lot of historical study. The last episode we were doing covered fundamentalism, and there was a word you used there that I think we need to unpack a little more, and that was Gelassenheit. First of all, what is it, and also what language is it? Because that's a word I'm assuming a lot of our Mennonite audience will be familiar with, but most of the other Christian groups may not know. The word is German, and I've found out through the years that many of our people are not familiar with Gelassenheit.

Okay. Robert Friedman said we had lost that concept by 1930, but let me explain what it is. Wow. It developed out of the Middle Ages, and it became central in the way Anabaptists understood their relationship to God and other people. There is no simple English equivalent to this word, so you can't translate it word for word. So there's really about 17 or 18 words that you have to use to put together as a composite to understand what Gelassenheit is. We'll try.

So it's a combination of yieldedness plus humility plus calmness plus composure plus meekness plus aplomb plus tranquility and imperturbability and serenity and poise and sedateness and letting go and relaxation. It's the opposite of self-assertion. It's a gentle spirit.

It's submitting to God's will in brokenness. It's esteeming other people above self. It's the union and agreement of the inner experience with outward response. And on top of it all, it's caught, not taught. I could explain all this, but a person doesn't understand it totally until you see it.

It's a discipleship, basically. This is taught in her. That's right, and it is so powerful. It's probably the most compelling part to faith because it takes supernatural experience controlled by Christ to be yielded to God in the things that happen to me in life, things that happen to you in life. But it also takes the power of God for you and I to work together because it has to do with yieldedness and letting go and relaxation. Some time ago, there was a German newspaper or magazine advertisement for a car on top. The advertisement said Gelassenheit. The car was to offer Gelassenheit. The Germans understand something about serenity. The car will give you serenity. Just get in this car and you'll be relaxed.

It's a common word understood in Germany, but not in the United States, not in the English-speaking world. But it is powerful. This is the kind of thing that brought many, many people to the faith years ago. People died outside the castle walls, and they saw what power in dying. Where did these people get power to die like this? This is glorious dying.

And people came to the faith. And I was in Ghent, Belgium, where this actually happened. And they decided that since this is bringing people to the faith, they're going to have to start killing people inside the castle where you can't see Gelassenheit exemplified. So if it was that powerful 500 years ago, it is still powerful today.

I have a student in my mind who demonstrated back in my school days Gelassenheit. She learned it from her father, and I still think of her as a model of Gelassenheit. Powerful, powerful because it's supernatural. I'd like to emphasize there's two parts to this. This diagram will help you understand this.

There's Gelassenheit between the believer and God and the believer and believer. If we have a Gelassenheit relationship with God, it provides security, protection, strength, resources, and continuity. But if there's no Gelassenheit, if I'm alone in the world, the result is exposure, aloneness, weakness, vulnerability, and fragmentation. Theron Slabach taught me—he is a professor at Goshen years ago—he taught me that this concept is very easily abused.

And so that's one of the reasons it disappeared, because people were saying, "You need to exercise Gelassenheit to me." Oh, oh, yeah. It's a kind of spiritual abuse. You can use this as a lever, as something to strike people. It's opposite the way it's principle, but it can be used on people for spiritual abuse. And so Gelassenheit is to the world who looks on, it's weakness.

But for Christians, it's strength. And Gelassenheit is just one of the upside-down values inherited in the kingdom of Christ. Just one. It joins situations like humility versus pride or loving enemies versus hating enemies, separation from the world versus conformity to the world, others versus self, integrity versus image. Gelassenheit versus self-assertion.

It's just one of the many. Now let me share with you Philip Schpaner, who was one of the fathers of the Pietist movement, says this: "The nemesis of argumentation is Gelassenheit." Now, he did not formulate that, but this is quoting from him: "Not all disputation is useful and good. How often the disputants themselves are persons without the spirit and faith, filled with carnal wisdom drawn from the scriptures, but not instructed by God.

What's to be expected from such disputants? How often is unholy fire brought into the sanctuary of the Lord? That is, an unholy intent directed not to God's glory, but to man's. They call forth his curse, and nothing is achieved by such disputing. An opponent is so annoyed by this that, although he may not be able to answer, the manner of proceeding against him, the carnal emotions, the insults, and the like hinder the hoped-for conversion." And this is another illustration of the power of Gelassenheit. If you are arguing with me, the worst thing I can do is argue with you. The most powerful thing is to allow you to win. It's called the power of powerlessness.

You know, but Paul talks about that, you know, like when I'm weak, then I'm strong. You know, God's grace is sufficient even through our weaknesses. Wow, that's interesting. But you're basically taking some of those teachings and actually saying, day to day, we're going to actually do this. This is not pie in the sky. This is real life. Now think about that in the American context. This comes from this book, Joint Submission.

American individualism clashes with the Anabaptist theme of Gelassenheit or yieldedness to God and the church. Yeah. And the United States is built on the rugged individual. Protestantism is about individualism, God and I. The scriptures teach God and we.

Without a good understanding of Gelassenheit, voluntary church order is impossible. Therefore, when the Mennonites embraced individualism in the early 1900s, church order lost its voluntary principles and became rule-based. When you lose Gelassenheit, you have to have something. So you plug in fundamentalism. Which is what we were hitting in the last episode, which that would have happened around, what, 100 years ago or something. Yes. Correct? That switch. Yes. So one of the questions I would have then is, when did the Anabaptists actually start using this term, Gelassenheit? It was a medieval term, and I don't know when they started to actually use it. The concept was there way at the very beginning. And then somewhere along the way, they actually started calling it that then.

Yeah. And it became a central thought, a central idea in the way Anabaptism was lived in the world. May I share a picture with you? Yes. To me, that's a visual picture of Gelassenheit. See the man standing in the doorway with the storm and the waves crashing around him at the lighthouse? He's safe. He's relaxed.

He's letting go. He's surrendered because he's secure. Say when I'm insecure in Christ, you don't threaten me. When you're secure in Christ, I don't threaten you. People get defensive because they're threatened. And maybe because they're insecure, because their security is in themselves. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So maybe we as humans are too easily satisfied. We're too easily satisfied with our security being in things instead of being in God. Exactly. Yeah. That's what we have lost. We have transferred our security to material things too often. Wow, what a terrible trade that was.

So can you tie this into the larger biblical narrative and also our view of church and God? Kind of wrap all that in together. Okay. So I asked an Amish person one time about this because I noticed that there are some kinds of Gelassenheit among the Amish people. And this Amish person says, "I really can't explain it. I heard about it." He said, "I think it has to do with Christ on the cross."

And he got on something there. When you think about Christ surrendering to wicked men, willing to let them abuse him, he says, Jesus says, "When I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me." And you think about the whole story of Christianity is all involved in Christ's willingness to sacrifice himself and yield himself up in Gelassenheit to that cross. So Jesus himself demonstrated this early on. And if we are his disciples, he expects us to pick this up too.

It's a supernatural thing. Wow. So this sounds like it ties perfectly in with our teachings on non-resistance and enemy love. Exactly. Because those things don't really work unless you would have Gelassenheit. Exactly. I mean, I guess you could force yourself to do it. I cannot kill you if I have Gelassenheit in my heart. I would rather lose. I would allow somebody else to kill me before I would abuse them, destroy them. I'd rather be destroyed myself.

Wow. And throughout the years, that is so powerful because it's so unnatural. And yet so biblical too. And so biblical. That's exactly what Jesus teaches. That's amazing. And he not only teaches it, he lived it. Like he walked it the whole way through. That's right. And that's why the Anabaptist movement spread like it did, because that power was evident. We have that same opportunity today. If we have Gelassenheit in our relationship to God and other people, we are a powerhouse for God to do good things. Because you and I cannot change the world, but God can. But he wants to work through people who are yielded to him. So there you go. So who let go of themselves?

So we've already kind of went into the beliefs that we need to have to make Gelassenheit work. Let's get down to earth. Practically speaking, how does this look on a day-to-day basis? All of us have accidents. Okay. Our first thought is, if we have Gelassenheit, is God is at work. What is God wanting me to learn from this? The natural thing is to blame circumstances, to blame other people, blame whatever for our problems. Even blaming God for weather problems. Okay. So Gelassenheit, an Amishman taught me one time, he says, "You pray for people, you don't pray for rain. You're in Gelassenheit." Wow. Yeah. You let God decide when it's going to rain, but you pray for people.

That's fascinating. I know. Yeah, that makes so much sense. I've just never thought of it like that. Okay. So another practical way of dealing, the way this works out in life, Anabaptist people understand that part of Christianity is the body of Christ.

No man is in Christ apart from his brother. So you and I have to work together. But the only way we can work together is if I yield to you and you yield to me. And we're not selfish. That's the second one. Okay. That's church. Now when it comes to marriage, it's the same thing with a husband and wife. You got to yield to each other. One is not the boss, and the other is just not a yes sir.

It's like we find our way together. And when children, older children, watch their parents work in Gelassenheit, they learn how to work in Gelassenheit to authority. And so if you have parents, church leaders, school officials all working in Gelassenheit, we are teaching children powerful ways to live in the world. We have good attitudes toward government, toward police officers. Police officer stops us.

First thing we say is, "Yes sir, I'm not going to argue with you. What did I do?" And then at the end, thank him for doing his job. He's not an enemy. He's a helper. So it has to do with our attitudes toward all of life. It's a fundamental worldview. It's a fundamental worldview. Yeah. I'm really curious how many people in our audience have ever heard of this concept before. It might be a lot less than we think. I could read some things here. Frank Reed wrote some things here. So what are some elements of Gelassenheit as evidenced in the Christian life?

Gelassenheit is characterized by total peace with relationship with God, total submission to God and his Holy Spirit, a heart that's content with life, an unoffendable spirit, following the example of Christ, peace and resignation in suffering, total reliance on the Holy Spirit, total trust in the scripture, absolute confidence in God's control of all things, absolute confidence in trial and in death, fearless when confronted and falsely accused because I don't have to win the argument, unmovable when standing for the truth of God because I'm agreeing with God. And if somebody disagrees with God, I don't have to worry about that because I'm agreeing with God.

Not distracted by temptation and sin, believing that truth is immortal while earthly life is mortal, having godly discernment of spirits. That's an important one today. If we are in Gelassenheit to Christ, his spirit keeps us calm and quiet in our spirit, and we're able to discern issues.

It's a real practical one. Having a heart for God, believing and living and knowing that all is well with your soul, trusting in the sufficiency of God. And that even helps us understand how to deal with things like needing insurance and all kinds of other protections. Not seeking things that are not godly. We only want what God wants. Think like Christ thinks and do things the way he does. Those are some powerful things that it is. He also says on this, "I had a recent discussion about Gelassenheit with some German friends. The German grandmother was holding her new baby granddaughter while listening to the conversation. She said, 'This is Gelassenheit.'

There was nothing in the whole world that she would rather be doing than sitting peacefully holding her new beautiful sleeping little granddaughter. The grandmother was experiencing Gelassenheit and the baby was experiencing Gelassenheit." That's such a good picture. Yeah.

I like that a lot. Well, thank you so much, Chester, for taking the time to share. My pleasure.