I’m currently reading a book where the author said that God remains hidden from us today so that we may freely choose to love him or not. You can’t generate love through compulsion, he argued. And he’s right about that. As an illustration, he gave Kierkegaard’s story about a king in disguise:
Once upon a time, there was a king who longed to marry. One day, as he was riding through his kingdom, he happened to see a very beautiful young lady in a poorer section of the kingdom. He was struck by her beauty, so he found reasons to travel through there more often, even getting the chance to speak to her on occasion. As time went by, he realized he wanted to pursue a relationship with the woman, but how should he go about it?
As king, he could have her brought to the palace so that he could court her, or even propose marriage immediately. It would be very hard for her to refuse the king, but he wanted to marry for love. So he also considered dressing as a peasant in order to get to know her, and only revealing his true identity if she genuinely fell in love with him. But the dishonesty inherent in that approach was unappealing.
He finally thought of a real solution. He would give up his station as king and move into her neighborhood as a regular citizen, perhaps taking up a profession like carpentry [wink, wink]. Then, if she came to love him, they could marry, and he would know that her love was truly for him and not his position.
It’s a nice story, and its application is clear. God loves us and wants us to love him. Because of his position, he could command our love, but then it would not be genuine. His solution was to come in the flesh as Jesus, giving up his position in Heaven so that we could come to know him and love him legitimately.
But when you think about it, this isn’t an accurate illustration at all. In the story, the young woman only stands to gain. If she never meets the king, or if she never falls in love with him, then her life is no worse than it was before. But this is not what Christianity teaches. It claims that all humans are sinful, and we need saving. A better illustration would be a story where people on a cruise have fallen overboard. Someone still on the ship offers to throw the people a life preserver. Will those people first try to get to know him before they accept his offer? Of course not! They’ll happily take any help they can get. All that they really needed was to understand how serious their situation was.
To show the effectiveness of this, consider so many of the conversion accounts in the Book of Acts, especially chapter 2. Peter preaches to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost, and (supposedly) about 3000 of them were converted to Christ that day because of Peter’s message. Did they really know who Jesus was? Did they really have a deep relationship with him at that point? No. The implication is that they simply became convinced that they needed what only he could offer. They were drowning, and they needed rescue. According to that passage, that’s all that was required.
But since God is so well hidden that we can question his very existence, many of us don’t even know we need saving. Oh sure, there are people from a thousand different faiths telling us we need salvation, but the evidence they give to support this claim is woefully inadequate. Why doesn’t God give us a bigger sign, if we’re really in trouble? Why doesn’t he just tell us directly? Why aren’t all these people who are so ready to believe in God united by a single religion? It’s hard to believe there’s a fire when there’s no trace of smoke.
The most glaring problem with this story is Hell. Not all Christians believe in a literal, torturous Hell, but many do, including the author of this book I’ve been reading. How is Hell not compulsion? To fit it into the illustration, we’d need to change a few details. Instead of the king passively waiting to see if the maiden will accept him, he promises his love, but also promises to roast her alive if she refuses his advances. It’s not quite so nice a story when we add in that detail.
When you get right down to it, Christianity is all about compulsion. God loves you, and he doesn’t want to force you to love him or serve him. Of course if you don’t, you’ll be tortured forever.
This only shows that the problem of God’s hiddenness hasn’t been solved at all. The author of this book, as well as many other Christians, say that God is hidden so we can have the “freedom” to either believe in him or not. But their reasoning is faulty, since Christianity gives us no such freedom. It’s like saying you’re free to commit murder in the US, even though it could earn you the death penalty in most states. The fact that there are laws prohibiting it means you aren’t free to do it. When you consider that the Christian God has every reason to let us all know he exists and that he expects certain things from us, the fact that he doesn’t do this is really all the evidence you need to see that he’s either not real, or he’s not all-loving and all-good.
Finding Truth 
Then that brings us back around to the original post. If there are two groups, and reward and punishment hang in the balance in some way, why is God (and Jesus) so hidden?
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I can’t say I really have a good answer to that, Nate. There was something earlier in the response thread about how God reveals himself in scripture and Jesus. I think there’s something to that. God and Jesus seem to behave in ways that subvert our rational expectations. Maybe those to whom God seems hidden are looking in the wrong places? So, I’d recommend you start looking in places that are the opposite of what you’d expect. Instead of strength, look in weakness. Instead of the healthy, look in the hurting. There are some good books out there by people who have come to know God through incredibly painful experiences of loss and violence. It’s easy for all of us to look at something like that and wonder where God is in that kind of experience. But, maybe we should look at people who found Jesus there and really consider what they have to say.
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Oh, and Nate. Now you can’t say “No one told me to look there!” Cuz I just suggested it! Anyway, I know it likely will not convince you. But, it’s another perspective.
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And why should we give this kind of effort to Christianity, when adherents of other faiths would say the same thing? If we first look at Islam and find it to be false, should we double down our efforts and begin looking in the less rational iterations of Islam for the answers? Should we embrace whatever religion seems most absurd and unlikely, since God may be the “opposite of what we expect”?
And if he’s that hard to find, doesn’t it make the problem I listed at the beginning even more severe? What kind of rational and just being would punish the people who can’t find him when he makes himself supremely difficult to find?
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“And why should we give this kind of effort to Christianity, when adherents of other faiths would say the same thing?”
I think we should give that kind of effort to as many possibilities as we can in our lifetime. All of us here are discussing truth and where to find it. Why would you not want to look in every nook and cranny, and examine every claim about every “god” that you possibly can? You offer a place for people to come and witness your search for truth. What if there’s a place to “Find Truth” you haven’t looked?
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The question that keeps coming to my mind as I read posts by Christians related to God is this: Take away the bible. Who does God then become? Scripture is used (and abused) again and again to “prove” the concept of God. But when we take away the written records, what do we have? Who/what IS this invisible entity?
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Then certainly, I want to find it. But I’m not someone who has shied away from the search for truth. And I’m not someone who has tossed out Christianity without first getting to know it very well. Maybe I was wrong to throw it out — that’s always a possibility. But it can’t be said that I didn’t search enough. Even now, that search continues. In part, through discussions like this.
But the simple fact is this: no one lives long enough to exhaust every possible view of every conceivable religion. How much to you know about Jainism, for instance? Or Cherokee mythology? I would imagine that, like me, you know very little of either.
Considering all the religions in the world, how could God ever have expected all people to come to Jesus, especially if rejecting a religion after some in-depth study isn’t good enough? If we’re supposed to continue trying Christianity even when it seems false, then that must be how all religious people are supposed to treat their own religions. God could simplify this process by letting us know which one is the right one, but he doesn’t seem to do this.
I mean, this just further illustrates my original point. Why has God hidden himself with so much at stake?
And I think Nan makes a good point as well. The Bible is a really difficult thing for Christians. Its inaccuracies make it difficult to accept it in its entirety, but without it, where do you get information about Yahweh and Jesus?
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Hi Josh,
I think this is a fair point. I personally still search for possible answers to deep questions. I don’t have to prove that to anyone, but I know for myself that I do that. But Josh, I want you to know that I am beyond the point now where I focus on worrying that there is something that I have to be afraid of if I get my decision wrong about the truths of these very deep, abstract and extremely difficult questions of life. It is clear to me that worry and stress does the body bad so I don’t see the need. I don’t believe for a minute that these questions have obvious answers to them no matter who is saying that. I have been through the gamut of “high pressure sales jobs” from smart people of several different faiths, enough to know that it doesn’t help to be moved by those sales tactics. The truth about reality is what I want to find and only I know whether I’m properly applying my search.
Another thing though is that I try and take a non-judgmental approach when it comes to this. My wife and several other of my friends have come to the conclusion that since these questions are so incredibly elusive, it doesn’t do them good to be obsessed in any way with the search. One of my friends uses the word “irrelevant” in regards to this. In fact I respect their viewpoint because my own opinion is that it is healthier and if there is a being that exists that judges them in the end for deciding that the search is futile then that being is simply not kind. And again, worrying about unkind beings that might be out there doesn’t do us any good when the questions are so difficult, and the beings are undetectable.
I believe this is a fair approach, because certainly you have given Islam a fair shake and have decided that it is no longer worth pursuing the most intelligent advocates of that religion to see whether or not it is true. You have made your decision that it is wrong for whatever reasons you see fit. Why not respect others for deciding that the current religions of the world don’t make sense enough to them to pursue further?
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I can respect that, Howie.
Nate, I wasn’t trying to say that you haven’t searched thoroughly or that you’ve given up. Just adding another voice. As always, you guys all make thought-provoking points, and I appreciate the chance to bounce ideas off you. All I’m saying is maybe “in-depth study” isn’t necessarily ‘the’ way. I see many of the same things you do, Nate. What drew me deeper into my faith was not the studying. It was observing many of the things I’ve mentioned combined with my own experience.
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Yes, God leaves us alone and stays hidden because he wants us to choose to love him. You know, if I did that to my little boys I would be considered a manipulative, abusive and neglectful mother.
“That’s right boys, Ma-ma isn’t going to tell you or show you she loves you, you’re going to have to come find me when you’re ready to love me. You’re just going to have to figure it out for yourselves, but I”m still here for you, wherever ‘here’ happens to be when you’re ready.”
Sounds like conditional love to me.
Funny how mere human beings have to be more responsible than an all powerful, all loving God. I guess unlike us, he’s not accountable for what he knows.
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Your comment didn’t offend me, Josh — I’m sorry if my response seemed touchy.
I think the major difference between us is that you allow for much more mystery in your view of religion. For me, I think if there’s any kind of judgment involved, then it needs to be objectively true; therefore, not much room for mysticism. As I’ve said before, I can easily conceive of a God that rewards the faithful with a higher degree of enlightenment, or happiness, etc. But that’s not the impression I get from the Bible. I see a God who is swift to anger at those who don’t find him, and considering how well he’s hidden, I have real problems with a God that operates that way.
UnkleE sidesteps this problem by cutting out Hell, which is similar to the scenario I laid out above. Rodalena, another blogger I really admire, doesn’t believe in an “all-good” God, but one who can be just as capricious as humans. That also takes care of the problem, because you can never really tell what a god like that might do.
I haven’t quite decided what your solution to the problem is. I guess it’s sort of a “do your best and let God sort it out” kind of thing. I think that’s fine, if that’s what you believe — it’s what I really wanted Christianity to be as I was working my way out of it (though at the time, I didn’t realize I was on my way out). I would think this position can be tricky to convince others of, because when people push back with difficult questions, you’re simply left with saying the mind of God is inscrutable. That won’t cut it for some.
Out of curiosity, what does it mean for those who need more? In the New Testament, Thomas supposedly needed more evidence of Jesus’ resurrection than the other disciples did. I’ve heard people kind of criticize him for that, but when I read the account, I don’t get the impression that Jesus was being critical of him. So what about those who aren’t able to believe based on the amount of evidence we’re given today? Thomas got to see and touch the wounds to help him believe, but none of us gets that level of evidence. Does that seem unfair to you at all?
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@CHope
Thanks for commenting! And I couldn’t agree with you more.
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Nate,
Great post. I haven’t had time to read through the comments (which are always so thoughtful here), but I wanted to say that the false freedom touted in the “choice” between “giving your your heart to Jesus, and making Him the Lord of your life” or “an eternity in a literal lake of fire”, while once so fair and rational-sounding to me now only seems cruel. Who could worship such a tyrant?
Sigh…
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Thanks for chiming in, rodalena! And I agree. It’s strange how much a person’s outlook can change… it’s hard to remember the way I used to view all of this.
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“If, let’s say, we did not have any ideas for how a universe could form in a multiverse scenario should we just jump to the conclusion that there are fairies who mix up the quantum particles and wave their wands to start a universe?”
Hi Dave. No we should not just jump to that conclusion, or any conclusion. But that is not what I am suggesting.
There are many arguments for the existence of God, and several, perhaps many, against. All can be written in formal logical form, and then argued over. The ones related to the start of the universe have a long history. They don’t start from the gaps in scientific knowledge, but from the conclusions of science, and then ask, how could this state of affairs (revealed by science) have occurred? The actions of a creative non-physical being are one of the options, not in some arbitrary way, but because of the simple logic that a physical universe can only come into existence in one of three ways:
1. It had no cause.
2. It’s cause is physical, i.e. within itself.
3. It’s cause is external to itself, i.e. non-physical.
These options are (as far as I can see) logically exhaustive. So if you think something causing itself is a contradiction, and something having no cause is likewise illogical, then an external cause becomes a logical possibility, even probability.
If you want to see these arguments about the universe examined in more detail and rigour, may I recommend The cosmological argument and The teleological argument? Thanks.
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“The gist of my original post is that belief in the Judeo-Christian god has too many problems, so people shouldn’t believe in it. Your response is that naturalism has too many problems, so people shouldn’t believe in it either. On the surface, these seem very consistent with one another. However, there’s a big difference between God and natural laws. We already know that one of them exists, while the other is very much up for grabs. That’s why my argument and your argument are very different.”
Hi Nate. I agree with Josh that you have confused naturalism with natural laws, and I think your explanation to him misses the point.
In response to your “argument” that the hiddenness of God leads to the conclusion that he’s not there, I mentioned several arguments that lead to the conclusion that he is there, thus refuting naturalism. Those arguments don’t refute the natural laws, in fact they are based on them. Neither of us question the natural laws. So it is theism vs naturalism that we are clearly talking about, and naturalism is as much an intangible as theism is.
I think there would be a simple way to clarify some of this, and I wonder whether you’d be willing to try it (perhaps in a new post)? I think it would be interesting for you to express your argument in this post in a formal way – numbered premises and conclusions which logically follow. Then we could argue about the premises and see more clearly the justification, or otherwise, for them.
I’m sure it could be done, I’m just interested in what form you would express it.
I think you’d have to include a premise something like this (I’m sure it could be improved, but this is a start): “If something can’t be explained, that lessens the probability of it being true.” If you do, then my question becomes, regardless of any dissimilarities in the arguments I propose, if I include that premise in my argument, wouldn’t it be equally effective?
So I end up again saying, if this premise works in your hiddenness argument, why doesn’t it work in (say) the cosmological argument?
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Hmm, I am not so sure that Nate is the one who is confused here, and your tacit condescension toward one who probably understands all the ins and outs of your faith based arguments even better than you is almost laughable.
Nate, as is every deconvertee, is able to look at this argument from both sides of the fence.
Perhaps you, or Josh, would you like to demonstrate how anything but naturalism has any place in the natural order of things, Unklee?
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@UnkleE
It seems you are trying to sneak in theism as the only alternative to naturalism, but the opposite of naturalism would be supernaturalism which includes fairies, demons, leprechauns, angels, ghosts, super heroes, gods and everything else that people can make up.
You said Nate should start his argument with: “If something can’t be explained, that lessens the probability of it being true.”
You are trying to bait Nate with a bad premise and I doubt he would take it. The premise should be more like “If a hypothesis leads to a contradiction then the hypothesis is most likely not true and the hypothesis needs to be revised or discarded.”
According to Nate you have already revised your beliefs to exclude Hell so it seems you are in agreement with Nate on this topic.
“Any deity that tortures human beings for all eternity for not believing in them and then hides on purpose should be considered evil. Calling this deity ‘loving’ would be a contradiction.”
Would you both agree to this statement?
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Hi unkleE,
Dave has replied far better than I could. I simply see no reason to assume the supernatural when every thing else we understand is natural.
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Very good points Dave !
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Although I once was a very devoted Christian, being on this side of things now I often wonder how I ever believed it, and how others believe it still – especially considering the points that have been shared with all of those who frequent this blog and other like it.
Like nate, I can still see where someone can take nature and the complexity of the mind and believe that there must have been a design and purpose; a creator. But I cannot understand why people still maintain that that supposed creator is the god of the bible.
Like others have pointed out on this post, the bible is a demonstrably failed hypothesis. Ignoring the problems doesn’t make them go away. Pretending to use sound reason isn’t the same actually using it.
How is it, that the bible with its contradictions, errors and problems can still be a perfect god’s word, when all other religions (and nonreligions) can be easily dismissed over their contradictions, errors and problems? And if it boils down to a blind faith – then why can’t the other religions boil down to the same?
It is my position that any contradiction, error and problem could be dismissed in similar ways that they are dismissed for the bible. If I am wrong, please provide an example of such.
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“So what about those who aren’t able to believe based on the amount of evidence we’re given today? Thomas got to see and touch the wounds to help him believe, but none of us gets that level of evidence. Does that seem unfair to you at all?”
Yeah, this is really the major crux of the issue – very much like the question, “What about people of other religions, or who have never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus?” These are really tough questions, Nate. And, I’m not going to pretend I have the answers to them. A couple things I’ll just suggest, that I try to keep in mind when talking with people. Your post, and comments throughout, talk about the difficulty of reconciling the idea of eternity apart from God with God’s supposed love. Both of these ideas come from scripture, so I’m going to assume you’re with me when I say that, in order to discuss them, we have to be able to bring other texts of scripture into the discussion. If not, I don’t think it’s fair to even start out with the questions you raise that come from scripture. Anyway, here are the thoughts.
1) God is more loving and merciful than we can imagine. Scripture teaches God wants all men to come to believe in him. And, that God is not slow in his promises, the way we understand slowness, but is patient. (1 Timothy 2:3-4; 2 Peter 3:9)
2) God has revealed himself to all men through nature and a moral law (Romans)
3) OT (Daniel) and NT (Revelation) claim that, at the consummation of all things, there will be representatives of ALL groups of people, all tongues, and all times.
4) Jesus teaches that when he is lifted up he will draw all men to himself (John 12:32)
I realize I’m drawing on texts you find suspect. But, again, you do the same when you bring up the questions you ask. If indeed we can *know* the things about God that you claim in your question, then we can *know* about God the things claimed in the scriptures I quoted by drawing on the same scriptures. I cannot necessarily explain how or why there is a “hell”. I also cannot explain how God could accomplish the things I referenced in the verse above. I’m okay with ambiguity and mystery in God’s operation. I think you’re right – that is a big difference in the ways we approach this issue. I am fully aware that this will not be convincing to you. I don’t really expect it to be. This is my understanding of God from scripture – that all the problems you raise are REAL issues that I don’t necessarily have answers to, but I know, from the same scriptures you reference, that God is vastly loving and merciful, and that his incarnation and death for all people and all the earth show that, whatever the reasons are for the confusion, they can’t be because he does not love us or would not suffer with/for us.
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Unklee, I think you are still missing some important points in method. Was the fact that we had no idea how the earth was created hundreds of years ago evidence that no natural explanation existed? No, it simply meant that we did not have an explanation back then. Natural laws could have been the answer, and some kind of non-natural or super-natural things (I’ve seen distinctions between those 2 things) could have been the cause. It looks like now there is pretty good agreement that natural laws have been explained as the cause of the creation of the earth, so if we had concluded that God was the answer based on the fact that we did not have a natural law explanation would have been false. Dave drew this out very clearly in a comment yesterday where he showed that not having an explanation for a piece of empirical evidence (e.g. the universe exists) doesn’t prove that there is no natural explanation, it simply means that we need to list a whole bunch of possible explanations and then examine each one further. What Nate is doing is examining one of those explanations.
Also, people are saying you have abandoned a literal Hell. I had thought you had previously expressed belief in an eternal place of consciousness apart from God which would be a sad place rather than literal fire – can you please confirm your stance on this? Either way Nate’s argument for the problem of Hell still stands.
if you have abandoned your belief in Hell then you have done exactly what Nate is trying to do here – you examined an explanation proposed to see if it ran into contradictions. When you saw it did then you modified the explanation to try and make it better. That doesn’t prove your modified explanation is correct it just makes it less doubtable than the other explanation that includes Hell.
Either way, I think your 4-1 comparison in your original post is false. That’s not how things are done. If the 4 problems you listed as proving God (and it doesn’t even do that) are all problems that are not considered to be very powerful and if the 1 problem on the other side is considered powerful than your 4-1 should be modified. E.g. maybe it is 4*0.1-1*0.8 which would be 0.4-0.8. Obviously I’m not saying these are the factors, just that you can’t just list 4 problems and then say Nate listed 1 and say ok it’s 4-1 against Nate’s case. And again, Nate has other issues with the Christian message so the “1” itself is very wrong.
Lastly, I would like to make a distinction here for everyone. Nate’s purpose in this post is really the problem of Hell which uses as a premise the fact that the God proposed as a solution seems hidden. The Hiddenness (or undetectability) argument itself (which doesn’t include Hell) as Dave and I mentioned before still has issues that are not easy to resolve when trying to prove existence of the most common definition of the traditional monotheistic God, but it is not as damaging as the problem of Hell.
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Good clarification, Howie. I know the discussion gets away from me sometimes.
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Me too! 🙂 And to your earlier comment, Josh, I see what you’re saying. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your candor in these matters. I also agree that pulling in other scriptures is totally fair. For me, the truth of those scriptures is what’s up for grabs, so when I consider everything they teach and then consider the world around me, I don’t find Christianity to be consistent. I think that’s why you’re able to say “I may not know why God does X, but I trust he has good reasons,” while I say “I don’t see a god with these qualities behaving in this way, nor do I see evidence of him in the world around me.” When I was a believer, my viewpoint was closer to yours.
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