Things that go bump in the night

Things go bump in the night

As a child you may have woken up in the middle of the night with darkness all around you and as the shadows creep into your imagination you cry out in fear. . . . Soon you held by loving arms that comfort you with their voice. But what if those comforting arms and voice never came. . . .

How can this be?

Many have wrestled with the idea of the “hiddenness” of God. This struggle is more than just an intellectual proposition. It bores its way deeply into our hearts and our understanding of love. If God is perfectly loving, why does he not make himself clearly known. Has he left us in the dark? No, loving parent would leave their child in the dark. If God is loving, why does he not make his presence clearly and definitively known? If you love someone and want them to come to you, you don’t hide yourself. How crazy is that? More importantly, if we must know God in order to be saved, and not knowing him means experiencing his wrath, why does God hide himself? And if God is all powerful, why does he not just make it happen? If he wanted to make himself all he would have to do is just show up and say, “Hi” or make himself known clearly some other way. He could just make himself known to everyone on earth. We would all believe. And everything would be great. Problem solved.

But more importantly many struggle with the fact that they feel like God if he exists has not revealed himself personally to them. The evidence against God’s existence is so overwhelming, they do not know how to tenably hold on to the idea of a God. Many also feel that despite seeking answers from God they haven’t received any. They feel like if God does exist than it is his fault that they don’t believe in him. After all, if God is loving and all powerful, he ought to be able to make himself known with clarity to me. And what about the rest of humanity? We cannot know God unless he reveals himself, so he is the one responsible to make himself known, not us. Many who have asked this question, find it difficult to see how God if he exists is loving, just, fair, or good. For if knowing him is so vital and necessary for our salvation, then why would he hide himself? And we ought to wrestle with questions like these and not run away or hide from them. I have had sleepless nights struggling with questions like this. And it is in this wrestling between my own questions and the two-edged sword of the word, that has grown and refined my faith as I come to see the beauty and wonder of the face of God more clearly. We will find that there is more to the story, and that God indeed does come wrapping his arms around us, but there are those who reject his love because they have come to love the shadows. They are the things that go bump in the night.

Before we discuss the hiddenness of God, I first want you to put a picture in your mind of Jesus weeping. Why is he weeping?

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling! (Luke 13:34)

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41-44)