As of late I have been struggling with an uptick in fears and anxiety; one reason I haven’t been posting here as much this last week. Whether it be personal health concerns, or those related to a close family; whether it be issues with living conditions, or what have you; there has been an almost strange convergence of a variety of pressures that clearly represent a spiritual attack. These sorts of attacks almost always have correlation with a desire on my part to elevate my personal holiness, or to more intentionally engage in evangelistic activities. This is a pattern that has unfolded in my life for the last twenty-five years; to varying degrees of intensity. What I have come to realize over the years, by experience, is that ‘what the enemy meant for evil, God has used for good; or what Balak desired for Israel’s destruction, God brought to Life through Balaam’s blessing.

The blessing in the midst of any trial is that genuine theology has the opportunity to take place. Genuine theology is when the Christian grows in a greater knowledge of the living God in the risen Christ. Genuine theology inheres when the Christian is faced with their own mortality and weakness to the point that they must rely upon the power of God’s indestructible life for them in Christ. It is here when we look at the one lifted up, rather than ourselves drawn down, that we come into the center of God’s character; His humility comes to have place in our lives as we are reminded that our arrogance only leads to ruin and self-destruction. We have a choice in these moments of thlipsis, or tribulation; we can choose to push deep into the wells of God’s eternal Life-spring, or we can recluse into the abyss of our own self-possessed navels, sowing to the flesh and reap that ruinous existence.

Martin Luther, and Karl Barth following, understood the bases of a genuine Christian theology. They both understood that when the horizons of our own horizontal lives are faced with their ‘under the sun’ realities that this is where the Light of God’s life has capacity to shine most brightly into our sullen faces. Luther called this sort of theology theologia crucis or theology of the cross. He understood that the theologian, if they are to be one, must see the things that are invisible as those are made concretely clear in the cross and blood of Jesus Christ. He understood that in the foolishness of the cross, a foolishness that represents an other-worldly invasion of the unseen God into the garb of the fallen humanity, that herein the Christian could finally come to see the face of God. Luther understood that this is the wisdom of God; a wisdom that the world thinks is foolish and weak; a wisdom that the world equates with ‘not our best lives now.’ Here is how Barth explicates Luther’s theology of the cross:

In contrast Luther tries to draw attention to the vacuum, to the fact that passion (suffering) stands at the heart of life and speaks of sin and folly, death and hell. These fearful visible things of God, his strange work, the crucified Christ — these are the themes of true theology. A preaching of despair? No, of hope! For what does that break in the center mean? Who is the God hidden in the passion with his strange work, and what does he desire? Explaining Heidelberg Thesis 16, Luther pointed out that the strange work leads on to the proper work, that God makes us sinners in order to make us righteous. The gap in the horizontal line, the disaster of our own striving, is the point at which God’s vertical line intersects our lives, where God wills to be gracious. Here where our finitude is recognized is true contact with infinity. He who judges us is he who shows mercy to us, he who slays us is he who makes us live, he who leads us into hell is he who leads us into heaven. Only sinners are righteous, only the sad are blessed, only the dying live. But sinners are righteous, the sad are blessed, the dying do live. The God hidden in the passion is the living God who loves us, sinful, wicked, foolish, and weak as we are, in order to make us righteous, good, wise, and strong. It is because the strange work leads to the proper work that there can be no theology of glory, that we must halt at the sharply severed edges of the broken horizontal line where what we find is despair, humility, the fear of God. For despair is hope, humility is exaltation, fear of God is love of God, and nothing else. The center of this theology, then, is the demand for faith as naked trust that casts itself into the arms of God’s mercy; faith that is the last word that can be humanly said about the possibility of justification before God; a faith that is sure of its object — God — because here there is resolute renunciation of the given character of scholastic faith (infused, implicit, and formed) as an element of uncertainty; faith viewed not as itself a human work but as an integral part of God’s strange work, sharing in the whole paradox of it.[1]

I find solace in this reality. It isn’t that I look to be a theologian who is sadomasochist, far from it! Instead, in the midst of trial and tribulation I take hope in knowing that out of that which is intended to destroy God brings His eternal Life to bear. I take heart knowing that as I focus on the invisible made visible in the cross of Christ, that herein the character of God is revealed to the point that I am given invitation to participate in the ‘death of Christ that I might also experience His life in the mortal members of my body.’

Spiritual warfare is real. Most theologians don’t talk about it, but Luther did. This is why I am such a proponent of Luther’s and Barth’s theology; they understood the kerygmatic reality that God’s grace is made complete in weakness. They understood that the sufficiency of God’s Grace is the very character of God’s life for us. Trial and tribulation, the very tooth and claw of this life’s existence, is the very fabric wherein God’s wisdom is made known; through the sweat and blood drenched cross of Jesus Christ. It is in this reckoning of the ‘death of death’ that God’s glory is most manifest; right in the center of what the world appeals to as resource for killing God (think death of God theology). God takes our filthy menstrual rags, reconstitutes them with His glistening White Righteous robes of salvation. He doesn’t simply come to die, but to live; this is where genuine theology arises. The resurrection is the blessing that the cursing hoped to undo. But the power of God’s indestructible Life knows nothing of the curse but only the blessed Life of eternally being Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; it is in this Life for and in the Other that we are invited to participate as that is exemplified in the history of God’s salvation revealed in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. This is the wisdom of God.

[1] Karl Barth, The Theology of John Calvin, 46.