changes...

My medication is being changed to see if it will help with the nausea and dizziness.  It is very hard to think of all the money I spent just a week ago and what I will be spending tomorrow when the new prescription comes into the pharmacy.  Medical care should not depend on money.  And I do not want to be ill if I do not have to be, but I would prefer sticking with the first prescription until it is done on the chances that I will be better, since I already am better.  However, if I do not change the medication, the cardiologist cannot separate out dizziness from the medication and dizziness from dysautonomia.  I can see the logic in that even if my pocketbook is hard pressed.  I have three more appointments pending over the new few weeks, all with co-pays larger than I could wish.  I can at least hope that all my other medication will be just fine as is.  SIGH.

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Today, I learned something that helps makes sense of some of my confusion of the past few weeks.  But I do not see what I can do with the information.  I am always wont to speak.  But I am thinking this might be a time to remain silent.  I had someone offer to speak for me, which is so tempting I cannot begin to describe how much, but that would be the same as my speaking, would it not?  I do not know which way to go.  As often of late, I wish for someone to tell me what to do.  This time, even asking for direction would be speaking and therefore making the advice moot.  And so I pray. And I wait.  I bet you haven't noticed that I am less patient about waiting than I am with nausea.  DOUBLE SIGH.

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So, the hiddeness of God:

A while ago, someone gave me a paper he wrote on Luther's Theology of the Cross.  He told me I was free to quote it, so I thought I would go back to it.  Particularly because I am having a wee bit of trouble understand Forde since he tackles theses on works next.

Good works is on my list of things I wish to understand better, especially because of my ex-Protestant background.  Pastor F once talked to me about good works...or emailed, I cannot remember which.  I actually cannot remember exactly what he said, but I am thinking it was something along the lines that good works are not really about us but others.  That we do not serve God by our works, but others. for He needs them not.  I think that's from Luther.  I wish I remembered better.  But in any case, I found the next bit of Forde foggy.

Hence, I thought I would try to look at the theology of the cross from a different direction.

The first bit is from a section labeled "The Heidelberg Disputation":

The Theology of the Cross is a theology of revelation. Man should have a natural knowledge of God, through which the "invisible things" of God are visible in the works of creation. But due to sin, man fails to recognize God in His works. For man, creation does not reveal but conceals God's essence and will. Because God wants to be known, He reveals Himself in a new way, namely, through the cross. In the cross, God conceals Himself in the weakness and misery of human suffering — where no one would expect God to be — and thereby reveals Himself as the hidden God. He becomes visible as He conceals Himself. He is recognized and known nowhere else than in the shame of the cross. As God Himself is hidden in sufferings, so also are His works and power revealed in weakness and His wisdom in foolishness. (emphasis mine)

The last bit I am not sure about, not sure that I follow the "so also" part but I do understand that God's power is in revealed weakness and wisdom in foolishness.  Perhaps this means "likewise"?  I think that would make sense.  So, I guess I could easily say that I do understand God being hidden.  But the whole my life is hidden in Christ and sometimes hidden from me is what I struggle to grasp.  Why would God hide my life in Christ from me?  And what does that exactly mean?

The next is from the "Hiddeness of the Christian Life" section of his paper:

Just as God is a hidden God, and as faith is the evidence of things that do not appear, so also is the life of the Christian hidden. These three statements belong together in the most intimate way. One follows from the other. The Christian life is hidden because it is a life of faith. The Christian life can never be fully identified with the empirical life; it is always an object of faith and, as such, it is hidden. This hiddenness is so deep that even the saints themselves are unaware of their own most personal life. They have no idea about the adornment in which they stand before God. 

[Empirical:  depending upon experience or observation.  I looked that up because although it is a work I used in grad school, I really couldn't define it right now or place it in context.]

What does it mean that I saints are unaware of their own most personal life and have no idea about the adornment in which they stand before God?  Since becoming a Lutheran, I hear a lot about being clothed in Christ's righteousness.  I may not see that, but he does.  So does he not know his adornment or is adornment something else?  Is it the depth of such knowledge rather than the knowledge itself, like when Luther says that there's enough in baptism to study for the rest of your life?

The hidden life of the Christian is a reality, but it is not perceived. The new life is not the object of empirical experience, but often enough is in opposition to it. Sin and righteousness in the Christian are in the same relationship as reality and hope. His righteousness consists in God's imputation. But God's judgment on man, which alone has ultimate reality, is manifest only to faith, not to direct perception.

What does it mean that sin and righteousness have the same relationship as reality and hope?  Sin is our reality and righteousness is our hope?  But I thought hope was for things to come and is not righteousness now, even in this world, because in Christ we already have all that is Christ's

Luther's view of justification is to be understood in this perspective. In Christ the sinner is righteous. The reality of Christ is stronger than the reality of sin, but it is a reality of faith and therefore a hidden reality. In this point, Luther's doctrine of justification is a concrete application of his Theology of the Cross. 

Okay, so I am feeling quite the dunce.  Why is faith hidden?  Do I not see evidence of that faith in my own life and in those around me?  Do I not see it in the saints that have gone before us?  Hosea had a faith that was quite clear to do as he did.  Do I not see it every Lord's Day in the Divine Service at the institution of the Lord's Supper?  And does not such evidence make it empirical? 

The hidden life of the Christian is a spiritual life; that is to say, a life in the Holy Spirit. As such, it is truly real and yet hidden. The spiritual man is buried with Christ, he has died to the world and the world to him. He understands what the world can never comprehend. 
 
I know that the Augsburg Confession holds in the article on Original Sin that we cannot approach or understand God in our sin.  So, it is the Holy Spirit who gives us faith to believe, to see, to know.  I also know that we died with Christ in our baptism, but we are also risen with Him.  I get that our lives are spiritual and often make absolutely no sense to those who have not faith.  But would not that be hidden to the world and not ourselves?  How is that also hidden to ourselves?  Looking to the cross, even the trials make sense to the raised soul.  Is it that it is hidden because the sinner in us still cannot see what that saint believes?  [Crap.  I don't think that question even makes sense.]

Since the spiritual man remains an empirical, carnal man, the Christian life is a double life. The old man stands beside the new man. In this doubleness lies the hiddenness of the Christian life; for if man were unequivocally spiritual man, he would not be hidden. But for now, the new man is always hidden under the old. 

Now, given my own sin, I can get that last part.  How anyone could look at the things I have been accused of but not done though I guess the appearance is there and the things I know I have done, both deliberately and unintentionally, and the things I do not know that I have done but have still done nonetheless and think I am a Christian is beyond me.  Truly, there is a whole heap of sin obliterating all snatches of a new Adam in me.  Yet I have been told I give good Gospel (actually I just pass on that which has been given to me) and I have been told I encourage and inspire others to delve deeper into the joy that is the Book of Concord and the wonder that is the Living Word, most especially the Psalter.  Is that not seeing past the old and spotting the new?  Surely my hunger for instruction has absolutely NOTHING to do with the old man (woman) or any good work on my part.  So, the faith God has given me is not particularly completely hidden.

The double life of the Christian cannot be definitive. The tension between new and old demands a resolution. The hidden life must one day come out into the open. Here again the eschatological character of the Theology of the Cross is revealed. Just as the contrast between the hidden God and the revealed God will end when faith is allowed to attain to sight, so also the Christian life will one day shed its hiddenness.

SIGH.  What have I gained here?

I am wondering...is there another word that could be used that is not "hidden"? 

Or is hiddenness merely those times when our crosses make no sense to us or times when we, ourselves, cannot see the Cross?

Am I simply running around chasing my tail about something that is not complicated, complex, at all?


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!