The question was: if God wants a relationship with us, then why does He hide Himself? This was my response:
This is a fundamental question, perhaps THE great question we have to answer. This question especially comes to the forefront when we experience a period of pain and suffering. I don’t think I have a good answer, but I have a few thoughts.
1. It is true that it is often we that hide ourselves from God, not God that hides Himself from us. In C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces the main character, Orual, comes to this very conclusion. ‘How can we see you face to face,’ she asks, ‘till we have faces?’ In her pride, anger, and self-justification she veils herself from God. It is ultimately only God’s grace that can reveal the falsehood under which she has been living and free her from it.
2. Yet there is a part of this question that is unanswerable. In that same book Orual also remarks, ‘what answer could you give, you yourself are the answer.’ That seems to me to be the lesson of the Book of Job. God had made a ‘bet’ with Satan that we as the reader are aware of, but Job is not. Job complains for chapters that he is in the right and God is in the wrong and he wishes there was a judge between them. When God shows up, He doesn’t explain to Job why all his misfortunes befell him. Instead God simply just shows Job who he is. Job’s response is ‘I am undone.’ Job, for whatever reason, could not or did not get the explanation that we got, the explanation we would expect him to get. Instead God’s nature was the only answer he got. The reason being, I think, is that God’s ways are to a large degree incomprehensible. And we should expect this! If we understood God completely, if He was always there at our beck and call, that would be a pretty good indication that He was a function of our psyche. Or to put it another way: for God to be completely knowable by us He would have to be on our level, but God being on our level would be solid evidence that He was our creation rather than we His.
3. I think that the hiddenness of God is always a problem, but it is particularly a problem for us as Evangelicals because of the way we ‘package’ God. God is both transcendent and imminent—He is both present and hidden. Many past ages and traditions within the Christian faith have emphasized His transcendence. My impression, when I read these writers, is that because they begin with the presumption of God’s power, majesty, incompressibility, etc. His hiddenness is less of an issue. For when you assume God’s hiddenness as a default position and moments of intimacy or revelation as unmerited (and uncommon) gifts of God’s grace, you are less likely to expect Him to be with you in tangible ways during times of crisis and you are therefore not as likely to get frustrated, feel abandoned, etc. when He is not. This understanding on God’s transcendence, to some degree, negates the problem. However, in our tradition we tend to emphasize the immanence of God. We tell new or potential converts that God is ‘closer than a brother,’ ‘loves us like a Father,’ etc., which is all true. However, without an understanding and expectation of His hiddenness, these analogies can cause confusion and magnify the problem of God’s hiddenness. For example, one could think: when I text my friends, they get back to me within the hour. Yet I pray to God and He doesn’t respond even after years of prayer. How can God be closer than a friend when He is more distant (or rude) than my friends? Or: I am a good and loving Dad, so if my daughter needed me I would be with her in a time of difficulty and I would let her know that I was with her. Yet I have had times of difficulty in which I’ve asked God for help and He hasn’t been there (at least not in tangible ways). If God says He is a loving father, why doesn’t He act like it? He must either (A) not exist, (B) not care and therefore not be loving, or (C) lack power to act and therefore not be ‘God.’ These conclusions are false, but given the premises with which we often promote our faith, they are logical. And I think that is one of the main reasons people turn away from Christianity in times of trial—they have nothing in their theology for the hiddenness of God because we’ve overemphasized His immanence. Yes we should talk about how God is like a friend, husband, father, etc.—but we also need to show how God is not like any of these relationships because He is so far above and beyond us. A good understanding of God’s transcendence will not answer the problem this question presents, for again, it is to some degree unanswerable, but it will minimize it.
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