In my last post I asked the question of whether God's two main forms of revelation -- general and special -- make God sufficiently obvious, to the point where you couldn't miss him.General revelation, as you'll recall, is God's self-disclosure in nature and conscience.
Special revelation is his disclosure through Christ and the Scriptures.
The skeptic, however, can explain away these supposed revelations as being subject to other interpretations, and therefore do not qualify as making God obvious at all.
In nature the skeptic sees only the impersonal laws of physics, in conscience, social and cultural conditioning. The Bible is mythology, Christ the central myth.
Such naturalistic explanations, often put forth by the well-educated, show that God's existence is not conclusive, his self-disclosure not obvious.
One could easily miss him.
The Miss-able God
It seems to me we have plenty of Scriptural evidence to suggest that God is not necessarily trying to make himself "plain" to everyone -- at least as humanly defined. Three examples among dozens that could be cited:
- My God, why have you forsaken me? . . . You do not answer me (Psalm 22:1-2).
- You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children (Luke 10:21).
- Jesus warned [the blind men who received their sight] sternly, "See to it that no one knows about this." (Matt 9:30-31)
So the first thing to be said to the skeptic who objects that God -- if he exists -- is not showcasing himself blatantly to every person on the planet is this:
That's correct. He's not.
Surely though, this is not the end of the story?
To be continued . . .
credit for image: http://blog.ted.com/2013/04/22/12-talks-to-watch-this-earth-day/
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