Why isn’t God more obvious?  This question is often asked in many ways and in many contexts.  When prayers go unanswered, why is God silent?  When suffering or tragedy strikes, why would God allow this to happen?  When struggling over the immense task of evangelism and the countless millions who do not know about God revealed in Jesus Christ, why wouldn’t God want more people to know God’s good news?  When all the “evidence” seems to counter the Biblical narrative, why doesn’t God just give us a sign?  When God was revealed through many wondrous signs and miracles throughout the Bible, why doesn’t God act that way today?  All of these examples get at the same issue – the seeming “hiddenness” of God. 

Atheist Bertrand Russell was once asked what he would say if after death he met God, to which Russell replied: “God, you gave us insufficient evidence.”[1]  While many who have found God quite evident would balk at Russell’s impudence, a similar struggle ensued between the psalmist and his hidden God.  “Why do you stand afar off, O Lord?  Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalms 10:1)  Indeed, the psalmist accuses God of being “asleep” in these plaintive cries: “Arouse, yourself, why do you sleep, O Lord?  Awake, and do not reject us forever.  Why do you hide your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?” (Psalm 44:23-24)

Indeed, the belief in a God who can be easily found, and who has acted in time and space makes the hiddenness of God all the more poignant and perplexing.  Theologians have offered many explanations for God’s hiddenness; to grow our faith, our sins and disobedience hides us from God, or at least keeps us from seeing God properly, or because God loves us and knows how much and how often we need to “find” God.  All of these explanations point us to the truth. Oftentimes, we are just as likely to hide ourselves from God because of our guilt and shame, just as our first parents’ did in the Garden when God sought after them. 

But, once our hearts’ are examined and our lives are “blameless” with regards to any willful hiding from God, we cry out, just like Job did and wonder why God stays hidden away in unanswered prayers and difficult circumstances.  “Why do you hide your face, and consider me the enemy?” (Job 13:24)

The hiddenness of God is problematic for theists and atheists alike.  Christians often take for granted that we have the Scriptures which give us a record of God’s revelation.  We have the benefit of a book full of God’s speech.  God speaks in the wonder and mystery of creation; God speaks through the history of the nation of Israel; God speaks through the very Word of God incarnate, Jesus Christ.  His life reveals the exact nature of God, and places God’s glory on full display. 

But, still we may wonder if we must always and only look to the past to hear God’s voice, while we wonder why God isn’t more “talkative” today?  Has God not given us a witness for God’s presence and activity in the world today? 

God is often found in one of the last places we think of – the Church.  For at its best, the church re-tells the story of God speaking across the ages and definitively in Jesus Christ through the preaching of the gospel.  But the church can also create community where God may be encountered in the faces of others, as a result of the empowering Holy Spirit.  Such a community is to be the symbol of God’s presence among us, and with us as “God found,” not “God-hidden.”  It is to be the arms of God around us, when we are hurting, or the voice of God speaking when we feel we haven’t heard from God in years.   Such a community is to be God’s voice, God’s hands and feet as it goes out into the broken places of the world to bring healing, help and comfort.  Through worship, and liturgy, prayer and communion, service and sacrifice the church is to reveal the God who spoke, and is still speaking. 

God is not often revealed in the roar of the hurricane, or the loud-clap of thunder, but in a “still, small voice” – a voice that is barely audible except to the most patient and still.  Sometimes God is found in the ordinary and the everyday miracles of creation, beauty, and relationship.  Indeed, in that most ordinary of places, the Church, broken and human as it is, seeks through the power of the Spirit to accomplish “greater things than these” we see God, and hear God, and find God beautifully obvious. 

For those who long to see God, long to find God in the darkest hour, we may not find God in the dramatic, or the victorious, the miraculous or the stupendous.  Instead, we may yet hope to find him in the pew, at the table of the Lord’s Supper, or in a simple hymn sung by fellow seekers longing to find God too.

If you want to do further study on this issue, many have found our Critical Concerns booklet Why Isn’t God More Obvious? (Norcross, GA: RZIM, 2000) a very helpful study on this topic.