The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 63 - Why Is God Hidden？

00:00:00.000 Why is God hidden? Why does it appear that God is invisible? Why is he hidden from us?

00:00:07.680 That's a question that believers have been grappling with for millennia. It's also a question

00:00:12.020 that among atheists, I think, is probably considered the number one, for many atheists,

00:00:18.180 it would seem, it is considered the number one argument against the existence of God.

00:00:23.920 And because they say that, look, an all-powerful being, a being who is responsible for creating all

00:00:31.000 things, who rules over all things, he would not remain invisible to us. He would reveal himself

00:00:38.560 unmistakably, especially if he looks upon it and you think, well, if I were God, you know, and I

00:00:46.480 created this world of people, and I looked and I saw this world, and I saw especially the people

00:00:52.580 were falling away and falling away from belief, and there was so much suffering and misery and

00:00:57.320 pain and so forth, well, then I would appear. I would make myself clear. I would say, hey,

00:01:02.960 everybody, listen up. Look, here I am. Here's God. Here's what I want you to do. Here's how I want

00:01:08.820 you to live. I wouldn't pass down these truths in a book, in an ancient book. I wouldn't trust

00:01:17.180 other humans to impart the knowledge. I would just appear, and I would make it clear. I think

00:01:27.180 that's kind of the atheist argument. And I think even non-atheists, even believers, have had moments

00:01:35.620 of wondering this. I think we all probably have. We've all grappled with this question. I know I've

00:01:41.740 had, I'll admit that I've had moments in prayer sometimes where I say to God, I say, God, if you

00:01:48.780 would just reveal yourself to me. I mean, can you just reveal yourself? Can you come out of the shadows

00:01:55.480 just for one second and just show me your glory in all of its fullness, just for one second? That's

00:02:02.880 all I'm asking for, just one second. Just one second. If I had just one second, just a blink of an eye,

00:02:10.120 if I had a one second vision of heaven, of the supernatural realm, of the world that lies

00:02:17.260 beyond this one, if I had just that one second, that would be enough to sustain me for the rest

00:02:21.960 of my life. I could live for a hundred years, for a thousand years on just that one second.

00:02:28.540 But the vision never comes. It's never come to me. It's never come to most of us. And I think for

00:02:35.160 most of us, it never will come, at least not in this life. Why? Well, I think that I'm going to

00:02:44.020 offer three answers to that question. And I'm not claiming that these are the three answers. I'm just

00:02:50.840 saying that these are three answers. They may not even be the best answers. But as I've thought about

00:02:57.180 this problem, this is what I've concluded. Why is God hidden? First answer, and the most obvious

00:03:05.840 answer, is that he isn't hidden. At least not in the way and not to the extent that atheists would

00:03:13.220 claim. God has revealed himself to mankind countless times through the ages. And as a Christian, I would

00:03:20.200 say, of course, that the greatest and most definitive revelation came in the person of Jesus Christ.

00:03:26.240 Jesus was born. He ministered on earth. He performed miracles. He was crucified. He was

00:03:31.680 resurrected. And then he ascended. And he was not hidden during that time. And these events themselves

00:03:37.660 were not hidden. And since then, and before that, God has revealed himself in other ways to other

00:03:43.540 people. And there, again, have been countless stories of visions and supernatural events and

00:03:48.620 miraculous, unexplainable healings and so forth. So all of these things. And you can choose to

00:03:54.260 disbelieve these signs. And you can choose to disbelieve in God. And you can choose to disbelieve

00:03:59.480 in Jesus Christ and all of that. But if you do, you must admit that you are not disbelieving

00:04:07.560 a hidden God. Because that is not the God that we believe in. We believe in a God who has revealed

00:04:15.480 himself repeatedly to the human race. So we do not believe in an entirely hidden God. Second

00:04:23.780 answer. The hiddenness of God, the so-called invisibility of God, is somewhat of a relative

00:04:31.760 thing. It's a matter of perception, you might say. Because in the Middle Ages, for instance, God

00:04:39.740 was seen as this utterly self-evident truth. Because a man of that time would look around

00:04:45.680 himself and see God revealed in pretty much everything. He would see the beauty of nature.

00:04:52.460 He would see, you know, he would look up at the sky and see the vastness of space. He would

00:04:56.760 see the mountains and trees and oceans. He would look at his fellow man. He would look within

00:05:02.520 himself and see his own self and his own mind and his moral awareness. And he could look at

00:05:08.800 poetry and art and listen to music and on and on and on. And all of this to him was a clear

00:05:15.820 indication of God's presence. So if you had said to him, where is God? He would have looked back at

00:05:24.280 you and he would have said, what do you mean? Where is he? He's all around you. Look around. He's

00:05:27.700 everywhere. And I think that that was the correct perspective. And when I have demanded in prayer at

00:05:34.020 times and moments of weakness, when I have demanded that God reveal himself to me, I can imagine God

00:05:38.540 making the same response to me and saying, look around you. I have revealed myself. I'm everywhere.

00:05:45.540 Third answer. The last two answers were not entirely sufficient. I think they're necessary,

00:05:50.900 but not sufficient. Because the atheist will respond and say, okay, so you say that God was incarnate

00:05:58.620 on earth 2,000 years ago. He revealed himself to a very small smattering of people who existed back

00:06:06.040 then. And okay, so God has allegedly performed miracles and all these wondrous signs for, again,

00:06:13.740 a small fraction of people through the ages. And okay, so you say that the beauty of nature and all

00:06:19.720 that stuff is supposed to indicate God's presence. Fine. But all of that gives rise to another question.

00:06:25.640 If God exists, and if he is willing to reveal himself through miracles and through curing the blind and 0.98

00:06:33.180 through raising the dead and through even, even through coming here and being raised himself from 0.99

00:06:37.980 the dead, then why doesn't he cut out the guesswork entirely? Why doesn't he just like appear to us

00:06:47.300 in the sky as this immense, beautiful, heavenly figure and speak to us, to all of us and say,

00:06:56.460 hi, hi, I'm God. Here's what I need you to do. Here's the meaning of life. Here are the things

00:07:05.560 that you need to, here's how you need to live. Let me lay it out for you. He could make himself

00:07:10.240 unmistakably, unavoidably, absolutely evident to everyone on earth. But the fact is that he hasn't.

00:07:18.460 Why? Now, I think that's a reasonable objection. Because it's true that even though he's revealed

00:07:24.320 himself to us, as a Christian, we must admit that he has chosen to reveal himself in a way

00:07:32.880 that still allows us to deny his existence. He seems to throw out these breadcrumbs, but he leaves

00:07:40.600 room and probably a lot of room to ignore those crumbs and even to ignore him and his very existence.

00:07:47.700 He could appear to us in the sky. He could do that. He could appear to each of us individually at the

00:07:52.880 same time. He could appear, he could appear right before you in your home. He could force you to

00:07:58.520 believe. He absolutely could. I know there are people who would argue about, well, yeah, but even

00:08:03.300 if God appeared in the sky, I mean, atheists would still find some other explanation for it. And maybe 0.99

00:08:08.560 a few of them would. I mean, the most deluded, the most, but I think almost everybody would come to

00:08:15.400 believe in God if he were to appear in the sky and speak to us, right? And he could reveal himself in a way

00:08:23.960 individually to all of us where everybody in the world would believe. He could force that upon us. So if the

00:08:30.360 whole point is to believe in nothing more, then he could force that. And in fact, one day he will force the

00:08:37.100 issue one way or another. One day we are, we are all going to believe in God. One day, nobody in the

00:08:47.900 afterlife, no matter where they are, heaven or hell, none of them are atheists. Because when you, when you

00:08:53.860 stand before God in judgment, there's not going to be any disbelieving. There's not going to be any way

00:09:00.060 around it. So why don't we get that sign now? I think it's because believing in God's existence

00:09:10.320 is not the point in and of itself. The point is to love God. Love is the point. To love God and to

00:09:22.360 desire him alone. That's the point of existence. If the only point were simply just to believe in

00:09:30.040 God's existence, well, then this existence where we, that we have now separated from God and where

00:09:36.940 God is invisible seems like a cruel joke. It seems like this weird game of like hide and seek that

00:09:42.560 God is playing with us, where he sends us off to some abandoned corner of the universe and then hides

00:09:47.880 off somewhere, somewhere on some other corner and says, come and find me. And the whole point of life

00:09:53.840 is just to, you know, believe and nothing more. But that's not the point of life.

00:10:00.040 The point is to love, is to love God and to desire him. And I would submit that for most of us right now

00:10:09.060 on earth, a miraculous revelation would hinder us. It would prevent us from loving him. It may force us

00:10:22.040 to believe, but it would prevent us from loving him. If he were to appear in the clouds before all of us

00:10:27.680 right now, we would all believe, but we would not all love. And there are even some of us who

00:10:35.120 maybe could have come to love him, but now would not because he has appeared. Let me explain what I

00:10:44.040 mean by that. And I will use again, as I've used many times, the analogy of marriage. And I do think this is

00:10:49.960 the best analogy that we have available to us to explain our relationship with God. And it is the

00:10:55.080 analogy that God the Father and God the Son both make repeatedly in scripture. So I'm pretty confident

00:11:00.760 in the analogy because it's the one that God himself relies upon. So think about it. If you're a man,

00:11:09.180 think about when you first met the woman who would be your wife. Think about that moment when you first

00:11:17.980 met your wife and you saw her and she was beautiful and she was full of life and energy and you were

00:11:24.520 captivated, you were enchanted, you were infatuated, right? Now, oftentimes we'll call this falling in

00:11:32.300 love. And there are people who will say, I fell in love with my wife. It was love at first sight. I fell

00:11:37.540 in love instantly. But really, and after, and when you get married and you've been married a while

00:11:43.300 and you have a little bit of maturity and you start to understand, you realize that that wasn't love at

00:11:52.200 all. You didn't love your wife the moment that you saw her. It was not love at first sight. You didn't

00:11:59.180 fall in love with her a second after laying your eyes on her. You couldn't. You didn't know her.

00:12:04.760 You had almost nothing to go on besides her, her, her looks, which was really, if we're being honest, 0.54

00:12:12.280 the main thing. I mean, in the first few seconds of meeting her in the first few moments, in the

00:12:17.020 first few days, probably in the first few months, one of the primary things attracting you to her

00:12:23.460 was that she was beautiful. And you had a pretty surface level understanding of her personality as

00:12:31.180 well. But that's it. That's all you had. You had her looks and you had what you knew of her

00:12:35.320 personality, which was not much because you didn't know her that well. So no, this wasn't love.

00:12:42.600 This couldn't be love. It was captivation. It was infatuation. It was preoccupation. Maybe it was

00:12:49.600 even obsession. But it was an entirely emotional experience. In order for true love to develop and for

00:12:57.820 lasting marriage to be formed, these initial fireworks, this emotional experience, these

00:13:03.160 emotional hysterics have to cool down. And we, you know, we'll often call this the, we'll say, well,

00:13:10.160 the, the in love phase is ending. But actually, the opposite is true. That's such an, it's such a

00:13:16.360 stupid way of looking at it. When that infatuation starts to cool in a marriage, we say, oh, well, 1.00

00:13:21.900 the in love phases. The exact opposite is true. This is the, now here's the part where the, where,

00:13:28.860 where it is actually possible to be in love. The state of being really in love begins when that

00:13:39.280 initial phase ends. So it's precisely when infatuation, emotion, and sexual attraction are

00:13:47.560 no longer the number one driving forces in your relationship. Not to say that they're gone. But when

00:13:54.900 they are the driving forces, well, then you cannot really be in love. Because that's not love. It's when

00:14:02.300 those things kind of take a backseat to something else, when something deeper, something calmer, something

00:14:08.800 more real becomes the bond that ties you together at that moment, that's when you can really love. In other

00:14:16.580 words, there is really love. There is really a marriage. When you get to the point where you're

00:14:23.600 choosing the other, you're choosing your wife willfully, and not because you're almost forced

00:14:29.860 to choose her, because your emotional attraction to her is so strong. Think about the ridiculously

00:14:35.320 intense, quote, relationships between like 15 year olds in high school. Think about a 15 year old boy and

00:14:42.400 girl. They're dating and they're absolutely obsessed with each other for five months. And then in the

00:14:47.020 sixth month, they hate each other. But during that five month stretch, they had almost no choice but to

00:14:53.700 be with each other because their attraction was so intense, and so primal, and so physical, that they

00:15:00.240 had almost no choice. They were obsessed with each other. There was no love there whatsoever, no matter

00:15:04.700 how much they said, Oh, I love you and love each other and even know each other. This was just nothing but

00:15:09.480 pure attraction. And then when it started to wane just a little bit, everything fell apart because

00:15:15.780 there was no love there whatsoever. How does this relate to God? I'd say it relates in this way.

00:15:23.500 If God were to reveal himself to all of us right now, in his glory, if you were to appear in the sky

00:15:30.620 before all of us, if you were to appear right now before you, in your home, if you were to do that for

00:15:38.100 all of us, we would all certainly fall at his feet and we would worship. I think there's no question

00:15:43.520 about that. But at that point, we would have no choice. Our emotions responding to this inconceivable

00:15:53.860 event would force us to fall and cower before this immense, all-powerful being. It would be

00:16:02.420 something like laying eyes on your spouse for the first time, except magnified by a billion,

00:16:09.000 by a trillion, magnified infinitely. And just as that emotional infatuation actually prevented

00:16:17.880 for a time true love from forming, so too would love be prevented from forming as you look upon

00:16:25.060 this beautiful, terrifying, awesome being. Now, you would believe in this being, certainly,

00:16:32.740 and I think you would fear him, and you would, in a sense, worship him. But if you didn't go into

00:16:40.980 that meeting already loving him, then how could you possibly love him now? How could you think

00:16:49.780 clearly enough to love him? If you were too overwhelmed by the sight of your spouse

00:16:55.800 to truly love them on sight, would you not be a billion times, a trillion times more overwhelmed

00:17:04.440 by meeting God? And thus, would it not be a billion times, a trillion times harder to begin loving him

00:17:13.680 then? And if the point of life is to love God, and not merely to believe that he exists,

00:17:21.760 but if the point is to love him, then would that purpose not be hindered, even prevented,

00:17:30.560 by this spectacle that we're all asking for? I would say that God's nature is such that we

00:17:37.420 fallen human beings need a certain distance from him in order to love him. Because love is a noble

00:17:46.000 thing. It is a higher thing, and it is a willful thing. And if God were, so to speak, right on top of

00:17:53.900 us, revealing himself in his glory, then the baser elements of human nature would inevitably take over

00:18:01.520 fear, fear, self-preservation, and so forth. Even wonder and awe, not that those things are base,

00:18:09.200 but they're not as high as love. So all of that, wonder, awe, fear, all of that would take over,

00:18:17.260 take over our mind. And the nobler, calmer, willful love would have no chance to develop within us.

00:18:24.620 So it makes sense then, I think, why God reveals himself in the way that he does, with these kind

00:18:32.680 of crumbs, with these hints, with little glimpses into a beauty and a reality beyond our own, but still

00:18:43.860 with that separation and with that distance. Even Jesus, when he was on earth, before the resurrection,

00:18:51.120 he only revealed himself, and just for a moment, in his full divine glory, one time, to three of his

00:18:58.460 disciples, and only after they'd been following him for a time, and only after Peter had already

00:19:05.300 made his confession. It's important to note in the Bible that Peter makes his confession and says,

00:19:14.120 you are the Son of God. And then it's a few verses after that, that the transfiguration happens.

00:19:19.960 And I think it had to be that way, that the apostles had to come and follow him and love him and recognize

00:19:28.620 him before he could reveal himself in his glory. And we will all see, I think, reality transfigured

00:19:39.500 one day. We're all going to see the truth, inescapable. But we have to go into that moment, already loving God,

00:19:51.920 already desiring him. Or at least, at least we have to go into it with a seed, with a kind of sapling of love

00:20:01.600 and desire. We've got to have something. There's got to be something there. Something that we have

00:20:07.500 really chosen. And something that we could have not chosen. Something that we had the option to deny.

00:20:16.020 If God appears before us, well then belief really means nothing at all, because we had no choice but

00:20:22.020 to believe. But there's got to be love. And if we meet God, having never loved him,

00:20:29.820 then in that moment, I think logically, if you understand human nature, it's clear that in that

00:20:34.700 moment, it will be too late. If you don't go into the meeting already loving him, at least to some

00:20:40.760 extent, at least even to the smallest extent, then it will be too late. So God keeps us here. He keeps us

00:20:49.880 in this reality. And he calls us home when he knows that we're ready. When he knows that our love has

00:21:00.820 grown as much as it's going to grow. And we're ready for the next stage, final stage. Or, alternatively,

00:21:13.880 our life can be over when he knows that we will never be ready. When he knows that the

00:21:19.860 love is never going to develop. And the sapling is never going to grow. And our cause is hopeless.

00:21:28.260 In which case, we're finished. But either way, we have the chance now, because of that distance,

00:21:37.700 and because of that separation, we have the chance to love him. And we have to make that choice.

00:21:42.920 And it seems to me that he reveals himself as much as he possibly can, while still giving us the

00:21:57.380 opportunity to really love. So that's just, as I said, one possible answer.

00:22:08.920 Probably not the best one, but it's a possible one. Something at least to think about.

00:22:17.440 Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening, everybody. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - July 17, 2018

Ep. 63 - Why Is God Hidden？

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