Todd Komarnicki: Bringing Bonhoeffer To The Big Screen (Pt 1)

Published Nov 12, 2024, 6:30 AM

Todd was the producer of Elf, writer of Sully, and is the producer, writer, and director of the upcoming film Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a normal pastor who had the courage to stand up to Hitler, rescued Jews, joined a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and was ultimately hanged for his defiance. 

And on this maybe third to last day, we're shooting the gallop scene and tears are just streaming down his face, and I'd never seen him cry. He's very, very close to the vest and he starts to talk and he says, if only, if only the Allies had come a week earlier to if only, And as he was grieving what we were about to film, it dawned on him and he stopped himself and he said, but wait. If Dietrich had gone on to live a full life, he probably would have wound up in the black forest somewhere with his wife and children and written six or seven books, and the impact of his courage would not be felt. But because of this thing we're about to film, his impact will never end.

Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in inter city Memphis. And the last part is somehow led to an oscar for the film about our team. That movie is called Undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people and nice suits talking big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks, US just you and me deciding Hey, maybe I can help. Today we bring you our second ever live interview, and it's with the incomparable Todd Komernikki. He's the producer of Elf, the writer of Sully, and the producer, writer and director of the upcoming film with Angel Studios that's titled bon Hoffer Pastor Spy Assassin, and it's about Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a normal person who stood up to Hitler, rescued Jews, joined a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, was in prison, and ultimately was hanged for his defiance. I cannot wait for you to meet Bonhoeffer through Todd's powerful storytelling. Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors, Todd Kermer Nicky, welcome to mephis Thank you so much.

So.

You're You're special in a number of ways, but your special in one real way. In the thirteen or fourteen months that an Army of normal folks has been out, we've only done two live events and the first one was the Dancing ups Man and now you So you're special, I mean, live event, and these folks are here for you.

When I heard about that, I was pretty troubled because highlighting a ups man in a FedEx town sounding kind of bold, kind of daring.

It's a really good point. We actually talked about that.

So I'm going to finish with some spectacular dancing. Don't leave early.

So for our listeners. You were a producer with On Elf, which I think is one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time. I watch it every year no matter what. My kids watch it with me. You wrote Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood and obviously Sharon Tom Hanks. That did beautiful as a story of the bird strike plane that landed in the Hudson and nobody died. Phenomenal story, great screenplay. And your latest project is, while you're here, a movie called bon Hoffer Pastor Spy Assassin, and well, I definitely want to get into for a few minutes, touch on the making of the movie and all of that, because I think that's interesting to most people. What's really poignant is Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a normal guy who served and saved lives and changed minds and led in an unbelievably difficult time and served to death. And the research you had to have done on him to make this movie, and the lessons we have to learn from this normal guy I named Dietrich Bonhoeffer that changed people's lives in this world. That's the story we want to hear, that you told, and that's what we want to talk about. And I can't wait to get into it. But before we do, for those of you hadn't seen it. For those listening now, here's just a quick clip the trailer to bon Hopfer and a great movie. And the trailer gets me jazzed up. So here we go.

Something's coming, something else talking? Look around and my friend, how much light do you see?

Hello?

Talk that smile? Come to talk with you because of vision? Something lifted scenes.

On it comes in africalor and this usuon.

Mm hmm.

We have devised a plot to assassinate the fure.

You will go to England as I spy.

Churchill seized Germany as a whole. He's afraid that upon trace to England would be invasion.

Of or invasion invasion.

My country was invaded.

Trunk with.

People Bob inside Funerner.

Science romance somewhere with her, I'm.

To meet my destiny.

That sound of silent iteration with that guttural music doesn't get you on the edge of the seat. You just need to go home. Now, that is phenomenal. When I first watched it and then your folks sent me the screener, there's so there's so much in this film that just I felt, which speaks to your writing, you're directing, you're casting, and the work that you did and the research and so briefly share with everybody because we don't get a glimpse into what it is to make a movie Cradle to grave and when you write it and you produce it and you direct it, it's your baby. So give us a glimpse into that world and how that works. And then let's get into Bonhaf for himself.

Well, there's three words that are the answer to all those questions, and that is Jesus is King. The only way I'm able to do anything in my start with a blank page life, which I've been doing since I'm twenty two, is to get out of the way, to pray and to work on my craft every waking moment. And I think that's an angel calling in the story of making a film is exactly the same every kind of film. You give all of your heart, whether anybody sees it or not, you have no control over results. When we made Elf, we had a great time, but we certainly didn't know that all these other folks we're going to have a great time sitting in the theater with it, and they're still twenty one years later going to sing alongs and it brings families together. But that wasn't the plan. And living a surrendered life is so fundamental to being a good artist that I actually think that for a Christian my life is so much easier than for a person who doesn't have faith, or a person whose life is filled with routine. Because we're asked by Christ to not worry about tomorrow, to not worry about what we're going to eat, and we're not to not store up in barns. We're asked to do all these things that our culture tells us we must do. We must say, we must prepare, we must count the cost. The only cost that Jesus asks us the cost is drop everything and go follow him. And so for an artist having to start with that blank page every day, that's a lot easier advice to follow, because I have nothing without him, and I know that. So it's actually taught me tremendous compassion for a person that is faced with the rigors of what the day to day asks. So what I try to speak into when I'm telling stories is to really examine each individual's rigor the things that Bonhoeffer had to do, not in a spectacular way, but how to talk to his family, how to play the piano, how to learn with his best friend Frank Fisher in Harlem, how to take in the details of a life that form a man. Because I think if you get those details right, that it's captivating to an audience and you understand him when he makes the bold chance, the bold choice to really put his life on the line to save and he did save thousands of Jewish lives.

So let's pick it up with Frank for those who are listening that may or may not know something about the Bonhoeffer story. As he became a young man and decided to study and seminary have become a theologian, he came to the United States to study, and he was really disturbed. He was unhappy with what he found in the traditional seminary in the United States at that time, and then he met a guy named Frank tell us about it.

Yeah, it's interesting. He was a star in Germany. He wrote his doctorate at sixteen. He was targeted for academic success, and he was from a very prominent family and the German Church, the Lutheran Church sent him to Union Seminary as their star pupil. And when he got there he felt like I studied all this when I was fifteen, Like he just he and he had a one particular professor you see in the movie that just bored him stiff, and he just thought, what am I doing here? And I'm going to be here for a couple of years. Fortunately, he had a roommate and a friend, Frank Fisher, a black American, who took him into the world of Harlem, not just as you see here.

With the jazz, but also what ye are we talking?

We're talking nineteen thirty, nineteen thirty, So not only consider nineteen thirty, just consider nineteen thirty Harlem and a German dude hanging around with Frank.

Yeah, I mean music was the bridge.

Because because Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an amazing pianist, he was.

A child prodigy pianist. He easily could have been a professional pianist, and so music was the bridge. But really what Frank did was he just had a friend who happened to be from Germany and he invited him into the world of jazz. He took him to Abyssinian Baptist Church, where Dietrich was the only white member. Dietrich taught Sunday school and what Dietrich found at that church was something shocking to him because German theologians at that time they didn't go to church. Karl Bart, one of the most famous theologies of all time, did not attend church. They wrote about they didn't live within. And what Dietrich saw at the Abyssinian Baptist Church was living, breathing faith and it woke him up. And it says that his two favorite things were Jesus and jazz, and his life was filled with joy. And that's what he took back with him to Germany in nineteen thirty three. One he took about the joy of his new found faith because he really met Jesus in Harlem. And two outside of Harlem, he had seen that his friendship with Frank Fisher was not convenient and in fact brought violence and fear because of the racial issues. So Dietrich went back to Germany with a completely different lens to see the world through. So early on, when Hitler started othering the Jewish population, it was so homogeneous in Germany that no one really took notice. It was very much. It wasn't in the newspaper, it wasn't disgusted at parties. It was just, oh, this Hitler, he's really raising up the nation, and oh he might be doing something. Oh but that's okay, that's he's doing great. But Dietrich noticed right away because of the language of othering. No matter where you go in the world, no matter who is othering somebody else, the language is always the same.

I found it as I was watching the movie. Now I'm gonna get all artsy here for a second, Okay. I found it when I was watching the movie interesting that in nineteen thirty this prodigy, the star of the Lutheran church in Germany, is sent to the United States, and he goes to the seminary Mecca right and is yawning through it. And then he goes to an African American church in Harlem, where he has awakened. And I just thought, what an interesting metaphor for Christ. That Christ didn't surround himself with the people in the Mecca. He surrounded himself with fishermen and prostitutes and the downtrodden and the social outcast. And that is where Christ's work was done. And ironically, in nineteen thirty, that's where Dietrich Bonhoffer got his social awakening that ended up having him go to Germany and serve yet another race of people who are being wronged.

Your friend that we met tonight at dinner said something really beautiful. She said, in serving people in great need, people kept asking her did you get a chance to teach them about Jesus? And she said, well, actually they taught me about Jesus.

Beautiful and it is beautiful.

And also, just this notion. The way I try to live my life, and I do this with all human effort that I have, is to remember that the only way to live is to give. So live to give and give to live. If we're doing that in all our relationships, if we're doing it, I mean, it's end of year tax season, right. We can write a check and we can give, and we can impact lives and that's awesome. But we can also give every day in front of us, to our children, to strangers. Sometimes it's as simple as opening a door. It's just looking out at the world. Not where is mine? But who needs something? Anyone in this room needs something? Because that's what Jesus would do when he sat with the woman at the well, or he called Sakias down from the tree. He was always looking there must be somebody that needs something. That's not because he wanted us to be laboring or disappointed or never have enough for ourselves. No, it was because we are built to give, and we are only truly happy when we give. Actually, having becomes an affliction and life is adhesive. Look around at your house. Unless you're a Marie Condo disciple, you have too much stuff. We live in seventeen hundred square feet in New York City in our apartment, my wife and two kids, and we don't have room for anything, and we have too much stuff. Life just like we're rolling slowly and it's just Adhering to us is like we're the refrigerator covered in so many magnets you can't even open the refrigerator. So we maybe don't need to be acquiring all the time, and if we really want to be fulfilled, which is why we bought that crock pot and that sweater, you know, we're trying to scratch an itch we can't reach. We really want to be fulfilled, kind to do less of that and a lot more of living to give.

And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first, I hope you'll consider signing up to join the army at Normalfolks dot us. By signing up, you'll receive weekly email with updates about the army and short episode summaries in case you happen to miss an episode, or if you just prefer reading about our incredible guest. We'll be right back. So Bonheffer comes back from Harlem with this renewed sense of faith and fullness, but also a mental acuity, a mental understanding of social justice because of what he witnessed his members of the church he joined deal with. And then he's faced with Hitler's Germany. I'm jumping ahead a little, and I would like you to fill in the blinks from your historical study perspective of his life. But he spoke out against what Hitler was trying to do with the church, which is basically make the church his church, abandoned the Old Testament. He spoke against making the fear basically Christ. He was eventually banned from writing, banned from speaking, banned from Berlin. Yet while all of the people that taught him, all of his all of his peers, all of his core, even even even the people that he looked to as mentors, we're changing everything the way the state wanted it. He had the temerity, in the face of all of that kind of take us through that part of the story and who bon Hoffer was and why in your estimation from writing script and making a movie about him, what was going on with him at that time.

Well, the first thing that happened is and why we don't know this is because in America we really don't study anything about World War Two until we got involved. And I'm not judging that, but that's really if you want to know the stories, everyone's like, oh d Day and Pearl Harbor, we all everybody knows those stories intimately. But the reason we were in that war is because what was happening from nineteen thirty three on. So Hitler comes to power, he only has thirty three percent of the Paula Buro, and he knows that he needs more power, and he goes right to the church. And now this was a real thing. Like currently people talk about the American Church, but I think there's American Christians, and there's many stripes of American Christians, but there's not really a monolithic American Church. Back then, in Germany, the Catholics had half the power, the Lutherans had the other half, and it was a real thing. So Hitler was savvy. He said, if I fill these churches, I'm going to have these clergy on my side. And that's what happened. And within the first year, crucifixes were coming out and swastikas were going.

In above the altars.

Above the altar, Bibles were coming out. Mind camp was going in, and by thirty five they had rewritten the Bible and announced it boldly, very famously. It's in the movie at the Sports Palace to this huge event where they have rewrote the Bible, taking all traces of Jewishness away from.

Jesus, including the Old Testament, the whole.

Old Testament, and then anything what they call Jewish weakness.

Didney add two commandments or three?

Two commandments got added honor your master and furor, and always make sure that you keep the blood pure and holy. And they weren't talking about Jesus.

Now, remember, listeners, this is the government doing it, but they can't do it without the church going along with it. That's the danger of the sound of silence.

Go ahead, amen to that, brother. Yeah, I mean, complicity is just part as part of it. If you look at anything in our own lives. And I always try when I feel strongly that something has been done wrong, I always look in my own heart, how am I doing that? How am I complicit? And so think you don't have to come up with it right now, but in the quiet of your life, think, okay, I feel very strongly about this issue. I hate that the ocean is being polluted. Let's just say, I mean, nobody wants the ocean to be pout. I think in general people say I hate that the ocean is being polluted. It's bad for the fish I'm eating. It's But the person who says that is usually on their seventeenth plastic water bottle of the day, right, So that's we wouldn't think that's complicit, that's it's convenient, like, oh, he just handed it to me. There's nothing I can do. I have to I'm really thirsty. I better drink. This will be my last plastic bottle ever. So we're doing that all the time, So we shouldn't be shocked when we see complicity when it's writ large lead to devastation. And that's and that's what happened and early on, and it's bon Huffer says in the movie that the German church has traded full pews for full hearts, and so they were just so excited to have people finally coming back to these cathedrals. They missed the fact that those cathedrals had actually been stolen from right under their feet by Adolf.

Hitler, and which part the clergy was the most complicit. So he sees it happening and he against everyone else Texas stand.

Yeah, it's it's beautiful. His heroism is so relatable because yes, he was a normal guy. He's a he's a normal guy. He's very cocky. I love that he was so cocky. He was always certain that he was right, and it led him to some dangerous situations. But he when he stood up against advice and threw the Nazis out of church and said, Hitler is not the head of the church. That was he painted a target on his chest that never went away. For the last twelve years of his life he was essentially on the run, but he didn't question for a minute that that's what he was supposed to do. Later, when things got very difficult and he was in prison for a long time, he lost everything. He had the humanity to say to God, did I get it wrong? Am I you know? Should I have done something different? Is this a punishment? Where's the victory? But always every time he despaired, he pushed through with faith, and he found even though the ending was not an ideal Hollywood ending, he was at the ending that he knew as a man of faith was the real beginning. So that I say that he had a garden of Gethsemite faith, and he loved the Sermon on the Mount, and he loved the story of the garden, and I love the story of the garden. For me, that was really the beginning of my faith when I was in my early twenties, that there would be a savior who had come to do one thing, and on the eve of getting to do that one thing, asks not to do it. This is singular in history. Who would invent a character a hero that tries to bail nobody. Now, this happened, this prayer, this three prayers that Jesus did in the garden happened thirty to fifty to sixty years before the gospel's written down. Even more of a reason even if that you know, well we know that he kind of tried to bail, Well, don't put that in because nobody will, nobody will follow him. He's gonna be He's gonna be resurrected in a couple of days. That's we got to, you know, make sure he doesn't look weak or something like if you're crafting something, if it's not the truth, you would go that way. But the truth was that Jesus was fully human and fully God, and so on our behalf. This prayer is prayed, and in his anguish as a human being, he feels it deeply not my will, your will. And I want to I want to connect this to another story that I feel is richly bonded to it in scripture, this notion of three. You know, Peter's denied him three times, he wants out three times, and then he meets Peter on the beach in the Gospel of John, and I love this so much. Peter jumps out of the boat. He swims to him. I've heard a ton of sermons about Peter abandoning the other fishermen, you know, in a Martha Merry moment, and just like doing the needful thing. But he gets to the beach with Jesus and Jesus says the following, Peter, do you love me? You know I love you? Feed my sheep? Says it three times in the Aramaic. Jesus says to Peter, Peter, do you love me unconditionally? And Peter says, Lord, you know I love you conditionally. Feed my sheep. Second time, Peter, do you love me unconditionally?

Lord?

You know I love you conditionally. I just trade you three times. Don't rub it in. Feed my sheep. Third time, Peter. And this is asked of all of us, Peter, do you love me conditionally?

Yes?

Yes, Lord, I love you conditionally. That is where Jesus meets us, and he builds his church on the cat who can't do it right. He builds the church on us. And we need to be okay with the fact that we can't get it right. That getting it wrong is fundamental to living under grace and being so obsessed not only with our own lives getting it right, but telling everybody else how to get it right. Like I've been paying attention to this at home. I've traveled so much this year, so I've seen my kids a lot less than usual, and really for the first time I've been away. And what I find when I get home is I tend to focus on put down the phone, go to bed, brush your teeth, do your homework. Did you get it right? Did you get it right? Did you get it right? And Jesus Christ has not done that to me one time this whole year or my whole life. He said to me, did you get it wrong? He just wants me to admit it, and then he says, it's okay, I got it right.

So you're thinking all of this when you're writing and making the scene for Bonhoeffer in prison, that's the soul of those saints.

Absolutely, his desperation, his ache, his garden moment is begging in prison to be taken home because he knows he's going to be killed, and he says, in prison, it's just like take me now. He doesn't want to face who would want to face exec And he feels like he's done the work, He's made the sacrifice. Lord, just take me, just me now. Yeah he learned it. Yeah, yeah, exactly, And we're and we're so transactional with with our relationships with people, and we're you know, very transactional our relationship with God.

So before he gets arrested, he's speaking out. He's he's been banished from Berlin. But even after that, tell us what you learned, and you're making the movie about. I mean, he basically was running an underground railroad of teaching theology to young people because he recognized I've lost all these old people and they're gonna kill me if I talk and write anymore. So now he literally is basically doing an underground railroad, which is interesting if you think about the Harlem connection. Sure, an underground railroad of teaching young impressible theologians biblically sound theology when the Bible had been replaced. Tell us about how all that went well.

Yeah, the Confessing Church was a splinter off the German Lutheran Church, and this group was the underground railroad. They were a lot of them were seminary students. It was a handful of pastors that were speaking out against Hitler. But if you spoke out against Hitler, you got the heave ho very quickly. So they had smuggled these students to a place called Fink and Valda.

And he which is which is where it's in?

Uh in Germany? Okay, it's in Bavaria.

Well no, I actually didn't know if it was an Austria or not.

No, no, I don't know. No, No, it's in, it's in, it's in Germany. I was like, I knew there were gonna be tough questions on this test.

I actually thought, all right, go ahead.

So and and he didn't want the job when it was first offered to him because he didn't feel equipped. He didn't feel like he studied enough or new enough, and he was not much older than these young men. But the guy, I won't give away the spoiler, but the one who gave him the job said like, Samuel, you were called for such a time as this. This is your baton to carry. And it was happened to be the Bible. And so that was a deep, beautiful time for him. He wrote a book called Life Together about his time at fingure involved, which I highly recommend. If that's in the story, that's a good one to get.

We'll be right back. It's important for us to understand we've seen and you're right, our perspective of World War Two really starts in nineteen forty one. The truth of the story of World War Two starts at nineteen thirty one and evolves to nineteen forty one.

But it really starts in nineteen eighteen with the treaty.

After World War One because Germany had no sport right. But as it pertains to Bonharfer's life, that's his perspective, with the exception of losing his brother in World War One. But the question I'm trying to get to is he he Jews were being rounded up and the common people, like the folks in this audience, would recognize that there were Jews being put on a bus, but they just gone to the bakery and ignore it because it was just kind of happening. But that was their problem, and nobody thought to ask, where are they going, what are they doing with all their stuff? What are they taking out of their house? People just they were complicit, maybe they weren't Nazis and involved in it. But they were just as complicit because they wouldn't stand up. Now he did. And then he started this thing where somehow he was taking Jews to Switzerland and buying off the Swiss like border guards to save Jewish people. What's tell us that part.

Well, you get to give away the whole movie, Manta go.

You gotta go see none of this chronological So you have to watch the movie.

To say watch the whole movie.

Yeah.

No. Ultimately, this Swiss transaction is what got him arrested. The money he was arrested for money laundering, and then later they tied him actually to another assassination plot, not the one that he was involved with. Hitler just did this broad stroke because he wanted Hitler wanted Bonhoffer dead from the time Bonhoeffer was twenty seven for twelve years, and he kept being told by his inner circle, you can't kill this guy. Everybody loves him, like everybody on both sides.

He'll be a martyr.

He'll be a martyr. And so he got close, he got almost to the end, he almost got out. I've had an amazing conversation with John matheson my DP. I'm sorry we had the lights up with a trailer ran, so it's really hard to see the beauty of the movie. The movie has been shot by John Matheson, who was nominated for an Oscar. I'm next to an Oscar winner over here, and John was nominated for an Oscar for Gladiator, and he's just shot Gladiator too, which is actually opening on the same day, November twenty second, So it's Matheson versus Matheson.

The Gladiator verse. Bonhoffer, Yeah, that's like a sequel to both of them.

Yeah, I Gladiators, Okay, opening weekend, pop into our movie theater. You can see Gladiator the next weekend Thanksgiving. But it's it's it's so divinely shot and so beautiful. So when you get to look at the movie. But we were standing by the gallows while the gallows were being built. That scene was shot in Ireland on top of a hill. And John is a spectacular human being and he's very British and he comes from groovy, groovy rock and roll the Clash David Bowie. He's you know, done five hundred music videos, he's done sixty films, and he's super cool, like without any effort, he's.

Just that guy. He's just that guy like not like fat redhead of guys like me.

It's yeah, but he's he's a beautiful human being. But he doesn't have a faith. And his father had a faith, and he kept talking about his dad throughout the making of the movie. And on this maybe third to last day, we're shooting the gallows scene and tears are just streaming down his face and I'd never seen him cry. He's very, very close to the vest and he starts to talk and he says, if only, if only the Allies had come a week earlier to if only, And as he was grieving what we were about to film, it dawned on him and he stopped himself and he said, but wait, if Dietrich had gone on to live a full life, he probably won't have wound up in the black forest somewhere with his wife and children and written six or seven books, and the impact of his courage would not be felt. But because of this thing we're about to film, his impact will never end. And so that's the power of the sacrifice. And it doesn't always require our actual life. Most of the time it doesn't, thank God. But the power of the sac is the way we raise our children and never telling them. Now your kids are here, so I'm telling you, Mama, and this sweet man what they did so that you're here, So that you have oxygen in your lungs, You're alive, you're fed. You know, Jesus, there's a sacrifice in what it is to be a human being. And the more we live close to the sacrificial Christ, the more joy and knowledge and wonder that is available to us. So this thing that feels like it's too expensive to do is actually the greatest gift.

Beautiful, A couple more questions, then we're going to open it to our participants out here staring at us. One thing. I don't want to spoil it too much, but go to commercial but where I started crying, literally tears coming down my face, and I had to watch the end of it in my computer in my office, so I had salespeople coming by. I'm wondering why I was sitting at my desk crying, And it was not because of the price they were getting for the lumber that I've needed.

So more for.

Was the relationship that manifested itself with a guard, which once again metaphorically is very interesting to me that Bonheffer created a relationship with a non believer, a guard, a Nazi German guard who right before Bonhoeffer met his death changed What does that tell you about the strength of faith and giving and the temerity and the courage to meet that faith.

It's the aroma of Christ. This is a real guy, not the aroma of Christ. That's interesting, well, it it's scriptural. It's just if you're living with the Holy Spirit and you're close to Jesus, you give off the aroma of Christ. That's what people see. When people see, like when you're really beaming with light and people say, oh my goodness, what what is it like? The only the only answer, because you know you can't see yourself, the only answer is it's Jesus Christ. It's just, you know, we're called to be a light on a hill, a lighthouse. This, this is who we're meant to be. So what was happening when he was in prison in Tagel in Berlin before he got moved closer to his death in Flausenburg, was that he was there for a year and a half and this relationship with this guard developed, and Nablock drew so close to Dietrich that he offered to help him escape and that's all true. Nablock survived the war and wrote all this down.

And when he offered Dietrich to escape.

You got to see the movie.

Got to see the movie. It's it's phenomenal.

I can tell you the ending of Gladiator two.

Very soon.

Somebody's going to have the courage to come up here and help me ask questions at one of these mics. But first, I am going to read something. I'm not going to tell you where this happens, but I'm going to read it. I got emotional writing it, and I'm going to try not to get emotional reading it. Bonhoeffer's life inspired these words. These are not his. But y'all, CNN and Fox are not going to fix what's going on in our communities. And I don't care which side of them you like to watch. We have to understand our world and the power that comes out of the media is incented by an enormous amount of power and wealth to divide us. And it doesn't matter which side of that spectrum you're on, you're victim to it. The narratives that come out of DC. There are good, well intentioned people in DC. See, I'm not painting with a broadbrush saying they're all bad and evil. But I am saying there is a system in place and scentered by an enormous amount of power and wealth to divide us so that we pledge ourselves to one or the other, so that they maintain power and control. That is a system. And the sooner we wake up to the fact that that system, in those laws, if they govern us, we are very equal. We're very very likely to end up at some point looking for a Bonheffer.

Look for him, now, be a Bonheffer. Come on, I know there's Bonheffers out there in the audience. I know it.

The lessons of the movie that this man has written and made about an extraordinary, average man's life. This phenomenal. It has so many parallels to the beginning of Christianity all the way till today's life. I just can't wait for you folks in three short weeks to be able to see it. These are the words I'm going to leave you with before I open it up to other questions. And again these words are not written by Bonheffer, but about Bonheiffer after his death. This was written six months after the war ended, which was only seven months after Bonheffer's death. It appears in the movie I Will not tell you where through us, meaning the vast majority of the German clergy, through us and the church, infinite wrong was done. We accuse ourselves of not standing to our beliefs more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously, and not for loving more completely. That was written in nineteen forty five about Bonhoeffer, and I just wonder are we guilty of that? Today? We have a lot to learn from your movie, my friend.

Oh thank you. It's listen, Jesus in Charge. And whatever is true and beautiful that exists in that movie, may it land in your heart. And anything that's not burn away like chaff and the thing. I want to finish our little section about because what you just read I really appreciate that, and about the church, and earlier I said, I don't really think there's an American church. I've been I've seen so much fighting over first politics, now in some ways Bonhoeffer just fighting from people that profess Jesus Christ. They share that and then share almost nothing else. It's like the church, what is the American church? This church that? No, no, no, what are we called to be? We're the body of Christ and beautifully Paul in the Epistles says, can the eye say to the ear, I don't need you? Can the arm say to the leg go away? We can't be a body of noses. We can't be a body of only ears or elbows or knees. We need each other and we don't have to agree on everything. But if we say we agree on Jesus being the savior, we have to stop gathering all the noses and saying we got to get rid of all the ears. We have to say, what do you smell? Why are you feeling this way?

Oh? Wow?

If I smell that? Are you picked up on that? Because you what do you hear?

Oh?

I never heard that. Oh that makes so much more sense. And then the last thing we should open is our mouth.

So with all of that said, that is this seeing and in fox aren't going to fix us. If social media is not going to fix us, if the political system isn't going to fix this thing that ails us. Maybe it's just a guy like Bonhoeffer, or hundreds of them, four thousands or a million. Maybe it is just an army of normal folks see an area need a wrong in their community, a spot where their passion and their discipline can engage in a moment of opportunity and change their peace of the world. And with millions of us doing that, we don't need to worry about what comes out of New York and DC anymore, because we are the masters of our own culture.

Whatever is beautiful, whatever is true, whatever is honest, whatever is of good, report think on these things. You're talking about the culture that it's just clicks, it's just money. Love of money is the root of all evil. We talked about at dinner right before tipping. And I'm joking, but this is the real thing. We are in this election cycle. And now some are celebrating and obsessed, some are lamenting and obsessed, but we're still obsessed. We're not looking at what is beautiful and true and honest and pure, and therefore we suffer. And guess what, when we're soaking in these screens, we got less time to love each other.

And that concludes part one of my conversation with Todd Komernikki, and you guys do not want to miss part two. It's now we're able to listen to guys, go to the audience with a Q and A from the live interview, and it's awesome. There were a ton of really great questions, including about Todd's personal redemption story. During that you could not hear a pin drop as he answered, together, guys, we can change this country starts with you. I'll see you in Part two.

An Army of Normal Folks

Our country’s problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big wor 
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