I copied this from another page (http://www.rasmusen.org/_religion/Conceal.htm). How do you think it holds up as an analogy?
*****************
Daddy thought he'd see if his three-year-old twins, Billy and Joey, would behave if left to themselves, so he decided to hide and watch them. First, he told Billy, "Billy, I'm going to pretend I'm leaving the house and you won't see me, but I'll be there hiding and watching you, so be good." Then he went out the front door, snuck around the house, and came in the back door. Billy went upstairs and found Joey and said, "Joey, Daddy said he's here watching us but we can't see him."
"Don't tell lies, Billy. He's not here," said Joey.
"Yes he is. I find him."
"No he's not. I'll go everywhere there is, and you'll see."
And with that, the twins set out to search the house, one to find Daddy and one to show he wasn't home. As they searched, though, Daddy easily evaded them, moving out of one room as they searched it and into the next. Joey started crowing in triumph over his proof that Daddy wasn't there, and Daddy felt sorry for Billy, so he clapped his hands together to make a loud noise.
"I hear Daddy--- he *is* so here," said Billy.
"That's just some bird noise, that's not Daddy," said Joey.
And so they started hitting each other until Daddy came in and broke up the fight.
***************
It seems that if God wanted everyone to know of him, then they would. And if God wanted no one to know of him, then no one would. Or, if God wants some to know and others to not know, then some would know and others wouldn't know. Right?

I agree completely with Les. I only like to point out that the concept of self-deception simply blows my mind. The concept of self-deception is simple. For example, according to the Bible, we know that God exists (through nature, law written on our hearts, etc.); however, because of sin, we deceive ourselves into believing God does not exist. So, in effect, I believe (deep down?) God exits, yet I also believe God doesn't exists. Think about it – deception usually involves two people: Person A knows a certain truth about a subject and then lies to Person B; Person B then believes the lie of Person A. However, with self-deception, there is only one person; we do the work of both Person A and B. Mind blowing, I tell you, simply mind blowing…!

thanks for reading jonathan! this is exactly what i was getting at...but then, you've heard this before...:)

I generally agree, although I suggest it might be wiser to acknowledge the underlying claim about the obscurity of God by affirming that the difference between God being hidden and us being in hiding is razor-thin when we aren't consciously aware of how we suppress the truth.
And faith does have an active element of trust, and not only a passive element of acknowledging dependence.
It would be better to turn the original hiding example around, and say that faith is that trust, that mental leap, involved in believing God that you are deceiving yourself and denying his presence, power, and authority, and taking his story as true instead.
In other words, I have to disbelieve my own eyes, and believe him that I am blind. I have to believe that someone I can't see can guide me and can see better than I can.

I am the person who Jared mentioned.
Does God hide or not? An objective look at mankind could only produce the obvious answer: Yes, he does hide. Otherwise he would make himself known. To Everyone. Apparently he’s more interested in “the story” than in redeeming everyone he has created.
Millions of non-Christians throughout history, the world over, have searched and not found him (according to biblical standards). If that weren’t true, there wouldn’t be so many “false” religions.
If the Bible’s claim that the display of creation itself is enough to inspire the search, so that “man is without excuse,” then why are there so many “false” religions? Are the members of these “false” religions finding God? They’re searching, aren’t they? And I would assert that they are searching sincerely!
I was a true Christian. I know you’re going to have to take that by “faith.” From my perspective, I was as sincere as I could be. As I said before, I repented and sought God continually.
I know that from a biblical perspective, the reason that I didn’t find him was because of a deficit on my part. Of course you’re going to assert that– your whole theology contends that God is holy, perfect, just, all-loving, merciful, etc. If there’s a problem with communication, it could only be my fault. I guess that’s why I reject the whole thing now. Sure, you could assume that I am deceiving myself. But if I am, I am unaware of it. And God is going to hold me accountable for something that I am truly not aware of?
I don’t know how many times I prayed “God, there just must be something that I’m not doing right here. Please show me what it is. I confess all of my sin; my idolatry, my envy, my sexual perversion, my lustful thoughts. Please show me what I’m doing wrong.” And I not only confessed, I repented– turning 180 degrees away from my sin and following him. If I wasn’t sincere, then God is not just.
He does hide. No one knows exactly why (or else we wouldn’t be having this discussion). If I am saved because of eternal security, then when I get to Heaven, the first thing I’m going to ask him is “Where WERE you?” If, instead, I am going to hell, then at least I will know that God is not as benevolent as all of you make him out to be. If he were, he would have saved me when I asked him to.

What's a cachina?

Matthew,
Based on my experience, I suspect that God respects your stance. I think God respects those who deal in honesty, as you are doing. I think this because I was where you were (that was 1988) and then God reached out and did some things in my life which I thought came unquestionably from God. Maybe the same thing will happen to you.
My perspective on God's time and the time he takes to do things changed when I had this experience and then reread C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Several more recent Christian authors restate that thinking in more recent contexts. Basically, my understanding is that the world, and we in it, are in an organic motion through time that cannot be micromanaged without throwing the whole thing off. You might read this and say, "yeah right" and I wouldn't blame you, having said the same thing once. Only experience and the internal chemistry of your own soul will convince you, if you are ever going to be convinced, that God exists. So, now, I am having some issues (as I mentioned above) and what stops me from turning away from God is the memory of how my impatience in 1988 failed to see the huge and slow turning of the gears that is human life. Now, while unhappy about certain things, I still can recall the nature of my own impatience, my neediness, as every minute drips by and I don't get what I need.
That gives me some perspective.
thanks for joining the discussion--
Vicky

cachina is misspelled. sorry. i meant "cocina," spanish for "kitchen."

Les, I enjoyed this post—I always look forward to your perspective. And I was with you up to the point when you said the key question is, “If you were being deceived, would you know it?” I'm a pastor at a PCA church plant in Marin County, CA, which is definitely up there on the unchurched-region scale. As I read, I was imagining my own responses to someone locally who asked me to lunch to discuss the same issue. And it seems to me that that question would only come after, perhaps, multiple conversations within a growing, trusting relationship. It’s not a drive-by question. I think to ask that question during an initial lunch date would presume a lot about the other person's perspective. I could definitely be misunderstanding you, but as I try to enter the mind of the average Marin-ite, being asked that question in those terms would appear arrogant and intrusive, and likely confirm what I already suspected about Christians. It assumes a lot about both positions (mine and the other person's). So help me understand what you mean, or whether that question could be messaged any, based on 'context'. It's a question that needs to be asked, both in Oxford, MS and San Francisco, but it assumes that a person is willing to suspend all their past and current thinking just for the asking--willing to trust what a book they don't read says about a God they can't see in a part of the world (Marin) where, from the typical vantage point, there is next to no visible presence of 'the Body'. I worry one wouldn't get much mileage out of this question in a place where no one goes to church (3% attend, ever) and no one's heard a gospel that's not a 'how to.'

It seems to me that God is indeed able to reveal himself to people in a way that they can experience with certainty. Ask Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Paul, etc. And my main point is that we are TOLD in the Bible that if we sincerely ask, seek and knock, we will be answered, will find and the door will be opened to us. I did that to no avail. Sure, you could simply tell me to ask, seek and knock more; but I need more to go on if I am to do that. God’s track record is anemic at best.
Yeah, maybe I’m impatient. But God knows my limits. In fact, he himself has supposedly promised me that I will not be tempted beyond what I can bear, and that with the temptation he will provide a way out. It’s a way that I haven’t found. On what basis should I continue seeking him? Just because he tells me to? I’m going to need a little bit more than that, especially when my experience of God’s “promises” in scripture just don’t ring true. Should I trust your experience (or Vicky’s) over my own? On what basis? Should I trust a book (the Bible) over my own experiences? On what basis?
If “humility and dependence of God” are the essential Christian attributes (ostensibly a prerequisite to knowing God and meeting him), then why was Paul offered his one-on-one experience on the road to Damascus? Seems to me that God had no problem revealing himself then! He can indeed communicate with whomever he wants, whenever he wants. He’s God, remember. Also remember, I’m not asking him to do this to everyone everywhere always. I was simply seeking, asking and knocking.
You assume that if God is real and good he'll reveal himself to you in the way you want at that time you want. My response to that is “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11) Answer me this: If you had a child who desperately wanted and needed to know you, would you be satisfied with handing him a book and saying “Here, read this, and when you die, you will meet me.”? I don’t think it’s too much to expect that if God really is benevolent he would answer those who call to him.
I disagree with your assertion that our knowledge of God must necessarily have the ability (or tendency?) to err. That conflicts with the ask, seek, knock paradigm. ?
No, I’m done seeking God. Nothing I hear from Christians makes me change that position. Everything in knowing God is so subjective. I looked for him and couldn’t positively identify whether or not I found him. I have no basis, no real reason to continue the search.
If he wants to reveal himself to me, he knows my address. But I’m not holding out much hope that I will hear my doorbell ringing anytime soon.

I don't really think blog comments are the best way to handle these sorts of conversations. But for the benefit of those trying to work through the issues here, perhaps the following will be helpful.
First, it might be worth nothing that Paul, Moses, and even Abraham didn't encounter God apart from having learned a pre-existing story about God's dealings with humanity and something of an interpretive community, however rudimentary.
Morever, their encounters came at decisive junctures in redemptive history as God was unfolding his plan. But they came in between long periods of relative silence. Thus the events, while embedded within a larger story, community, and tradition, nonetheless did contrast with prior experience.
Still, I'm not sure we can reasonably expect that to happen for everyone, or whether such an expectation would even make sense. If such experiences were to happen for everyone, even if only on occasion, then where would be the contrast? They would simply meld into the ordinary course of events, even if spectacular in some way. How would we distinguish the sudden inbreaking of God from the other various discontinuities and spectacles of human experience? Would such experiences begin to simply seem "natural," part of the ordinary and expected course of events in the world? But that would simply put us back into the position in which we already find ourselves.
Perhaps part of the reason God reveals himself as he does - through the events of history and in a Spirit-endowed community with its stories and traditions of interpretation - is because that is precisely the sort of enfolding into human experience that God wants us to seek, with all of the trust and hard thinking that involves, and in which God is to be found.
The alternative of some kind of universal set of revelatory events seems impossible. Even if some sort of signal were to ring in our ears whenever we encountered a genuine "God experience," we would have to learn and interpret what that ringing meant. Given its universality, it would seem purely natural, and differing communities of interpreters with their own traditions would grow up.

Mark,
I haven't read that CS Lewis work. Might need to pick it up.
Garver,
Two points: Then do you count yourself among those who profess to have a "relationship" with Jesus? Just how would you characterize that relationship? How do you actually INTERACT with him? I've never had a relationship with someone with whom I never actually interacted. I don't interact with God; or if I have done so in the past, I've never been aware of it.
Second point: Given your position on why God relates to us in the way he does, how is it that someday, as the Bible teaches, we will see him "face to face?" If it's not possible, or at least advisable, that we interact with him face-to-face, then how and why would it be possible in Heaven? Yeah, then we'll supposedly have "glorified" bodies (whatever that means), but given the fact that that's the only difference between then and now (as I understand it) why is it that this face-to-face interaction is the main carrot that God holds out to us here on Earth? From what you say, Heaven will be something less than the mysterious non-interaction that we have now.

Matthew, I like your honesty and I wish there were a way that all of us who have weighed in on this discussion could have an actual conversation, in real time, about these issues. Evidence shows that God likes honesty also, and I suspect that you'll have future encounters!
Vicky

Thinkin’ and linkin’

(I need a good series name for posts featuring links. Any suggestions?) Sarah Flashing has new blog called Flash Point. flash point – a critical point or stage at which something or someone suddenly causes or creates some significant action....

God, unlike romance, is a person, isn't he? Sure, one can have many perspectives on romance-- perspectives that are totally subjective. But why is it that this same subjectiveness colors our "experience" of God? The fact that my brother is alive really isn't up to debate; all I would have to do to end the discussion would be to present him for pubic view. But God doesn't do that, does he.
I still puzzles me that God subjects his actual existence to the subjective assessments of us humans-- even those who actively seek him!

Matthew,
I was responding to Dustin. There can be a distinction between what one perceives and what IS. If your contention is that you don't perceive God, fine. If your contention is that there IS no God because *you* can't perceive Him, I reject the contention. Your lack of perception has no bearing on the reality of His existence.
I am uncomfortable with this venue of communication with you; these are very important, highly personal matters and yet I am neither your pastor nor do I know you at all. As Les Newsom and others have suggested, a blog is not a good medium to have the sort of highly personal, in-depth dialogue that your questions should receive.
I ask that if you want to keep this issue alive, please take it to a real, flesh & blood friend who can be present with you over time. This matter is something best engaged with friends.

GL,
I am not saying that since I don't perceive God he doesn't exist. I'm not an athiest; I'm an agnostic. I just don't know if he exists or not. I lean toward the belief that *someone* had to make all this, but there's not a whole lot of conclusive evidence to help me out here. There's much less evidence that God is actively involved in any one person's life. He certainly isn't in mine-- or if he is, it's doing me no earthly good because I'm certainly not aware of it.
I agree that this venue isn't the best for having this kind of discussion. But to be honest, I HAVE talked with many Christians, Christian counselors, pastors etc. My ex-wife and I were married by Stu Weber (author) and Randy Alcorn is also a personal friend of mine. None of the people I've talked to has really come up with anything that even comes close to anwering my questions. (I'm not trying to impune any of these people, I'm just trying to point out that I HAVE talked to many people.)
And so, in the end, my questions go unanswered. I guess that's to be expected. I mean, all of history man has been asking these questions and it's pretty obvious that there are as many answers as there are people.