Why doesn’t God just show Himself?

Question 60103.

Divine hiddenness is the polite name philosophers give to a complaint most of us have made at some point, usually at two in the morning. If God is real and wants to be known, why does He not simply appear? One unmistakable public demonstration and the argument would be over.

I do not think this question is impertinent. It is asked in the Psalms repeatedly, and it is asked by people in real distress rather than by clever sceptics looking for a fight. So let me try to answer it seriously rather than defensively.

What Divine Hiddenness Actually Means

The objection has a technical form, associated with the philosopher John Schellenberg, and it is worth stating properly. If a perfectly loving God exists, He would ensure that every person capable of a relationship with Him, and open to one, would believe He exists. There are such people who do not believe. Therefore no such God exists.

That is a serious argument and it deserves a serious answer rather than a slogan. Notice, though, how much it assumes. It assumes that God’s chief aim is belief rather than relationship. It assumes that the evidence available is insufficient. And it assumes that a person who says they are open to God really is.

Divine hiddenness is also a matter of experience long before it is a matter of philosophy. Believers feel it too. The psalmist asks how long the LORD will hide His face, and Jesus on the cross quotes the psalm that begins with the question of why God has forsaken Him. Scripture does not treat the complaint as illegitimate.

God Has Not Been Entirely Hidden

The first thing to say is that the premise is overstated. On the biblical account God has spoken repeatedly and publicly, and He has done so in ways that left records. He called a family, made a nation, gave a law, sent prophets across a thousand years, and finally, as Hebrews puts it, spoke to us by His Son.

Then there is the creation itself. Romans 1:19-20 says that what can be known about God is plain, because His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. Paul’s diagnosis is not that the evidence is missing but that it is suppressed.

So the biblical position is not that God is hidden but that He is not obvious in the way we would prefer. Those are different complaints. Divine hiddenness, on this reading, is less about the absence of light and more about the way we handle the light there is.

Why Overwhelming Proof Would Not Help

Consider what a public, undeniable demonstration would actually achieve. It would produce belief in the sense that demons have belief, and James notes tartly that they believe and shudder. What it would not produce is trust, love or repentance, because none of those can be compelled by evidence.

There is a striking piece of narrative on this in the Gospels. Jesus raises Lazarus in front of witnesses, and the response of the authorities is not conversion but a plan to kill Lazarus as well. In Luke 16 Abraham tells the rich man that if his brothers do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

Israel at Sinai is the case study. They saw the mountain smoking, heard the voice, ate manna daily for forty years, and made a golden calf within six weeks. Overwhelming demonstration did not secure their loyalty, which tells us something uncomfortable about the human heart and something important about divine hiddenness.

What God Appears to Be After

If God wanted a universe of people who assented to a proposition, the current arrangement makes no sense. If He wants people who love and trust Him freely, it begins to make a great deal of sense. Overwhelming evidence coerces; sufficient evidence invites.

Pascal put it as well as anyone. There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition. The evidence is calibrated so that a person’s response reveals what they actually want, which is a more searching test than a demonstration would be.

That also explains why Jesus so often refused to perform on demand. When the Pharisees asked for a sign from heaven He sighed deeply and said no sign would be given, and He was not being obstructive. He knew that a sign would not touch what was actually wrong.

The Moral Dimension Nobody Likes

Here is the part of the answer that gives offence, and I would rather say it plainly than dress it up. Scripture consistently presents unbelief as having a moral component. Jesus told Nicodemus that people love the darkness rather than the light because their works are evil.

That is not a claim that every doubter is wicked, and I would not say it to a person in distress. It is a claim that we are not neutral observers weighing evidence in a vacuum. We have wants, and our wants shape what we find persuasive, and a God with claims on my life is not a conclusion I am indifferent to.

Divine hiddenness therefore functions as a kind of mercy. A God who forced Himself on us would leave us no room to come freely, and Scripture indicates that He would rather be sought than simply acknowledged. See Jeremiah 29:13, where the promise is to those who seek with the whole heart.

He Did Show Himself

The Christian answer to this question is not primarily philosophical, and I have taken too long to get to it. The answer is a person. The claim at the centre of our faith is that God did exactly what the objection demands: He appeared, publicly, in a particular place, at a datable moment, and lived among people who wrote it down.

John opens his Gospel with it. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory. Jesus tells Philip that whoever has seen Him has seen the Father. Colossians calls Him the image of the invisible God. This is not a God who declined to show Himself.

And notice how it went. He was largely rejected by the people best placed to recognise Him, and executed by the religious and political authorities of the day. The one time God did put Himself on public display without ambiguity, the response was a cross. That is worth weighing before we assume another appearance would settle everything.

Living With Divine Hiddenness

For the believer the pastoral question is different from the philosophical one. What do you do when God seems absent, when prayer feels like talking to the ceiling, and when the sense of His presence you once had has gone quiet?

Do what the psalmists did, which is to say so. Psalm 13 begins with how long will you hide your face from me and ends with I will sing to the LORD, and both halves are in the Bible. Complaint addressed to God is a form of faith; it is the person who has stopped speaking to Him who has actually left.

And keep doing the ordinary things. Read, pray, gather, serve, take the Lord’s Supper. Feelings of divine hiddenness are not a reliable measure of God’s presence, and many of the believers I most admire have walked long stretches without them. See the Spirit and spiritual dryness.

Where Divine Hiddenness Is Overstated

It is worth pressing the objection at one more point. The argument assumes a category of people who are sincerely open to God and yet find nothing, and it treats that category as obvious. I would want to ask how anyone establishes membership of it.

Openness is not a simple state. A person may be open to a God who makes no demands and closed to a God with authority over their life, and they will experience the second as divine hiddenness while sincerely believing themselves to be searching. I am not accusing anyone of dishonesty; I am observing that self-knowledge is difficult and that we are all skilled at wanting things on our own terms.

There is also the matter of where people have looked. A great many who say they have found nothing have looked at the church, at their own upbringing, or at a caricature of Christianity picked up from the culture, and have never examined the historical claims about Jesus at all. That is not evidence of divine hiddenness. It is evidence of not having looked in the place where Christians say He appeared. See Hebrews 1:1-2.

So, now what?

If this is an intellectual question for you, look at the evidence that exists rather than waiting for the evidence you have specified. Read a Gospel. Examine the case for the resurrection. Divine hiddenness is a real puzzle, but it is not a reason to leave the actual evidence unexamined while waiting for a sky-writing display. See the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection and are faith and reason opposed.

And if it is a personal question, an ache rather than an argument, then I would say something different. God has come near in Jesus, and the invitation stands even when the feelings have gone. Would you actually want Him if He appeared, or would you want Him to keep His distance and simply reassure you? That is a harder question than it looks, and it is worth sitting with.

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV)