John Schroeder, a PCUSA elder who runs the blog called Blogotional, has responded to comments left at CGO by Rev. Richard Hong (and I will be responding soon myself).  John has a balanced, helpful take on Rev. Hong's remarks. 

Read it all (here).

I am sitting in a tiny Mexican cachina in midtown with a student. It’s a different meeting than the sort I a m used to because he is a vocal and self-conscious skeptic of all things Christian. For some reason, he has been attending our Bible studies regularly and wants to meet for lunch. He has been sucking down margaritas for about a half hour now, and he announces that he has a question.

“Why is God hiding?”

“Okay, I’ll bite…why is God hiding?” I say confused.

“I mean, if God wants people to believe in him so badly, why doesn’t he make himself more obvious? Why all the cloak and dagger? Why not just come out of hiding and let everyone know that he is absolutely here?”

I love/hate to tell this story to my incoming freshmen. I love/hate it because of the inevitable answer I get from them when I ask them what they would say to my half-lit friend.

“Well, if God made himself obvious, then we wouldn’t have to have faith,” they, without fail in my 12 years of student ministry, say.Read more