Recently, a friend sent me a "call for papers". This is what people do to generate speakers for a professional conference. Those interested in sharing their work, discussing some subject, or otherwise presenting then submit one of two things: (a) a proposal outline with brief descriptions of what they intend to do, or (b) an actual article, or paper, that they have written and that they will then read or speak about during the conference. So, my friend was suggesting that I submit a paper and participate in this conference.

This conference will be for psychotherapists and by psychotherapists. Donna Orange, world-renowned psychoanalyst, will present the keynote address in a conference created to encourage psychotherapists to utilise their skills for social good:

Since 9/11, the mute cries of those who have been rendered helpless and hopeless by political and social forces over which they have no control echo ever more loudly through our consulting rooms. This conference is dedicated to the belief that we cannot and must not turn a deaf ear to their suffering and to the idea that safe, open dialogues promote healing. Help us to bring what we have learned about empathy, trust, forgiveness, and the intergenerational effects of trauma to the struggles that abound in our world.

I looked at the call for papers, and I thought about that conference, and it hit me with a force I don't think it would have had I not been reading the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Eric Metaxas, bestselling author of 'Amazing Grace' (the story of William Wilberforce) has done an excellent job with the life of one of the latter 20th century's most important theologians. However, if the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer had not been played out against the ruthlessness of Nazi Germany, it probably would not have had the influence that it has. Dietrich Bonhoeffer did more than stand in a pulpit and preach against an idea or a philosophy. He put his life on the line and participated in two significant acts of defiance.

First, along with Karl Barth, he helped craft the Barmen Confession and organise the Confessing Church in Germany. These people stood up in defiance of Hitler's control over the German church.

At a time when many of the opinion leaders, philosophers (such as Martin Heidegger), and moral and spiritual leaders were succumbing to the Nazi seduction, Karl Barth, with Bonhoeffer playing a minor role, weighed in heavily with a resisting perspective. In a book titled 'God Here and Now' (1964), Barth wrote: "The heart of this whole matter is that the task of the Church, according to the Barmen Declaration, is to deliver this message – the message of God's free grace. And along with this goes the fact that the freedom of the Church is grounded in just this task." That is, they declared that they took their marching orders from the risen Christ, through the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and that flew in the face of the totalitarian authority claimed by Hitler.

As Metaxas put it "For refusing to swear his allegiance to Hitler, Barth would be kicked out of Germany in 1934, and he would become the principal author of the Barmen Declaration, in which the Confessing Church trumpeted its rejection of the Nazi's attempts to bring their philosophy into the German church".

While Barth escaped Germany during this period of time, Bonfoeffer, having travelled to the United States, felt lead of God, called of God to a purpose, to return to Germany. That purpose would lead to the second major act of defiance.

After returning to Germany, Bonhoeffer became convinced that he needed to do more than make a theological declaration; he decided to give pragmatic steps to his beliefs – what people I know call "action steps".

In the Bible a work of faith, the actions that put legs on your mental affirmations, and that complete your faith (for without such works faith is dead), are such action steps. If you believe X, Y, or Z, then what will you do about those matters in life in which X, Y, or Z are relevant?

Francis Schaeffer, a theologian of a different day, wrote a book titled 'How Then Shall We Live?' It was based on the foundation of Christian precepts viewed against the backdrop of the cultural, and societal developments of Schaeffer's day. For those living today, we might put it this way: "If that is the way things are, what am I going to do about it?" These are all the kinds of things Bonhoeffer contemplated, for he reviled what he wrote about as "cheap grace". Ultimately, all this kind of thinking brought him to the decision to participate in a plan to assassinate Hitler. That plan was dramatically depicted in a Tom Cruise movie of relatively recent vintage titled 'Valkyrie'. It also resulted in Bonhoeffer being executed.

For a psychotherapist to compare to this kind of faith, this kind of integrity in heeding a call to social justice, he or she would have to risk professional execution. I'm not sure holding a conference and reading a paper goes far enough. I could certainly stand with my colleagues from various clinical perspectives and offer up my own declaration. I doubt it would get me kicked out of anything. After all, people have become jaded with passionate protest. There is really no totalitarian "Germany" to return to in order to sacrifice my life. Yet, perhaps it is Bonhoeffer's construct of a cheap kind of grace that might enervate a fresh consideration of the way a person live his or her life.

If it doesn't really cost you much, how valuable is it? Now, that's something a lot of people in Bermuda and America can relate to.

What, for instance, would it cost a person to address the multitude of inequalities and injustices that take place all around us every day, too notice them, to allow a shallow awareness of them to grow by really making a careful observation of them? We are numb to them, and allowing ourselves to become feeling again, so that they affected us … well, that might cost something indeed.

Hmm. Maybe there's a paper in that somewhere.