My new love: Theologians who broke with tradition

Ahh, is there anything I love more than breaking with tradition!  To hell with it!  Yes, it can serve a purpose and I love it when it comes to holidays, but in the Church, it more often hinders and handcuffs than leads us to God's calling.  I watched Valkyrie two nights ago and became very interested in the idea of plots to kill Hitler.  Then I remembered that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been involved in one.  So, now I've been doing some research into his life and theology and am so blown away by the things he wrote and decisions he made in light of the Nazi regime and his faith.  Here are two quotes of his that I found very powerful:

"The Church has three possible ways it can act against the state.  First, it can ask the state if its actions are legitimate.  Second, it can aid the victims of the state actions.  The Church has the unconditional obligation to the victims of any order in society even if they do not belong to the Christian society.  The third possibility is not just bandage the victims' under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself."

"The will of God is not a system of rules established from the outset.  It is something new and different in each different situation in life.  And for this reason a man must forever reexamine what the will of God may be.  The will of God may lie deeply concealed beneath a great number of possibilities."

When Bonhoeffer faced the decision to join the resistance and, ultimately, the plot to kill Hitler, he faced a tremendous conflict, a crisis of theology.  He knew by joining the resistance he would have to lie and commit serious deceptions, commit treason against the authority of his own government, and participate in the murder of another human being. (Not to mention that Bonhoeffer was a pacifist who did not believe in violence to begin with!)  He knew all this, yet he also knew, even in his deeply spiritual heart and mind, that it was unconditionally the right thing to do.  How, then could he reconcile this theologically, morally?  Bonhoeffer had to come to a new understanding of God's will, God's commands, of right and wrong and all the gray areas in between.  The American Church today, incorrectly, refuses to admit any gray areas, and so, continues to hideously miss the Holy will and call of God.