A young man wrote me the other day to ask why God doesn’t once and for all prove his existence. Here’s my answer to that earnest seeker. (Yo! Danny! Do good in school! And don’t take drugs! And … well, actually, that pretty much covers it.)
First of all, God did prove his existence; that’s pretty much the whole point of the Bible specifically and Christianity generally.
So. Massively gargantuan point.
But I know that what you mean is why doesn’t God prove his existence again — and this time, to you personally.
If you think about that question, though, you’ll see pretty soon that what anyone asking it really wants is for God to not only prove to them personally that he exists, but to simultaneously prove his existence to a whole bunch of other people, too. Because if God proved his existence to just you, then that’s going to leave you with one whopper of a challenge on your hands, insofar as right away your choices will boil down to exactly two: Either tell people how you personally encountered God, and risk them thinking you’re absolutely badoinkers — or don’t tell anyone how God proved to you he was real, and risk having a stress-induced heart attack from having to keep such an extraordinary experience locked up inside of you.
See? Neither’s what you’d call an Optimum Situation.
And that is why anyone who claims to want irrefutable, objectively verifiable proof of God’s existence must also want God to prove he exits to everyone else in the world — or to half of them, anyway, so that he or she will at least be in the majority of people.
And God proving the reality of his existence to everyone all at once pretty much boils down to him suddenly, all around the world, appearing in the sky, and in a booming voice announcing (something like), “Hello, world! Surprise! It’s me! Try not to faint!” And of course he would have to say whatever he said in the language that any given person listening to him could understand. Including, come to think of it, baby talk.
Point is: It would be quite the Logistical Challenge.
But hey! It’s God! If anyone could pull it off, he’d be the … divine entity to do it!
And do you know what would happen if God did, all at once, to everyone in the world, finally prove his existence? People all over the world would scream, and faint, and exclaim, and tear their hair and rend their clothes — and then they’d realize that they just got so bored they’d all slump over and pass out.
Bottom line? God doesn’t prove to you in an objectively verifiable way that he exists because he knows doing so would flat-out ruin you.
The truth is, we don’t want God to prove he’s real to us in the same way everything else in our lives that’s “real” to us is real to us. Because it would destroy that within us which keeps us ever moving forward toward resolution, knowledge, clarity, context, wholeness. It would strip from us the very thing that makes us human.
Just imagine it. Imagine God really appeared before you, in physical form — that he spoke and talk and … hung out at your place for awhile.
First, you’d be awed and amazed!
And then — and in fairly short order, too – you’d become a zombie. Because there’d be no mystery left in your life.
Who remains deeply fascinated by a novel when they already know how it ends?
We need God to be mysterious. In order for us to have the richest, most human experience possible for us in this life and on this earth, we need God, and all Essential, Divine Matters, to be just beyond our rational comprehension, just outside of our grasp.
Our relationship with God needs to be, to us, a two-way, interactive, give-and-take, constantly exchanging sort of relationship — of essentially the same sort as we have with everyone else in our lives. If God just appeared to all of us, all at once, the fundamentals of our personal relationship to him would instantly be so radically altered — we’d be so thoroughly pushed out of the subjective give-and-take role that’s actually necessary to keep us engaged with God — that … that we’d no longer be who we are.
We’d be … Us, Severely Unplugged.
Our spiritual initiative would be gone.
We move forward because we want to know.
If we did know, we’d stop.
Not so good.
You don’t, actually, want God to “prove” his existence, any more than you want to lose, for instance, your imagination.
Here’s another reason it actually doesn’t make any sense to desire that God suddenly prove to everyone that he exists: It’s not God’s primary purpose to work with people as a whole, from the outside. God develops his relationship with us individually, from inside of us: God speaks to our heart, to our soul, to our experience, in the ways we most need to hear and understand him. God loves each one of us personally –a nd he wants to communicate that personally, intimately, carefully, delicately; he wants to communicate everything about himself — and us — to us in the ways and at the times that are best for us.
God had no natural interest in just … overpowering everyone at once.
Please.
This is God we’re talking about, not … P.T. Barnum.
God is pleased to be “real” where he can be the most real — where you can comprehend the most of him — which is inside of you. God is a spiritual power. The fullest communion with God must happen spiritually; it must happen inside of you, not outside of you.
The bottom line is that while you might think you want God to objectively “prove” his existence, you don’t, in fact, want that at all.
You don’t want that because you’re more complex than that. You don’t want that because your needs are more real than that.
You don’t want that because you were designed to be better than that.
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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My Dear Fellows,
You breath, therefore god exits. You wake up alive every morning and there is your proof. He is a thought for me, very much visable, and I can see him and feel anytime lonely, deprate, or happy. He walks beside me. I don't need labels to know him. Jehwa, Jesus, Krisha, Allah! It's One in same, the same into many. I don't see picture them fighting for supermacy for the thron of GOD, somehow, in the havens above. And a man, to my opinion ofcourse, would have to be the most UNINTELLIGENT speices of ALL, put on this earth by him.
If God showed himself to me I’d ask him something:
“God, creator of the universe, are you able to create a rock so heavy that even you, omnipotent being, could not lift it?”
Then I’d wait to see which would cease existing first, God or the Universe. I love paradoxes.
I just read through this post and comments. Fascinating {imagine one eyebrow raising periodically}. I would like to add to your (John Shore’s) notion:
First of all, I think you describe it perfectly. And that description made me laugh too. I think Michael is onboard with it too when he wrote:
The two perspectives above are eluding to two distinct possibilities for proof of God’s existence. I think there are three options on the table to consider.
Option 1 is along the lines John Shore’s description. God reveals himself to all in an undeniable fashion. I think of this as getting the complete tour of The Model Home. After all, in heaven we’ll be living in perfect community in him. Think on it. That would be an incredibly cruel thing for a loving God to do. Imagine deciding to show the Good Life to a poor, destitute, disease-ridden, beggar. And then, of course, dropping that beggar back off in the rat-infested shack where you found him while saying, “Have a nice day.” Leaving us to suffer illness, loss, pain, and blogs. Cruel. I would cease to participate in life on planet earth.
Option 2 is along the lines of what is implied by Michael Island’s description. Rather than a tour of all things wonderful, God decides to make us infinite like him. Option 2 is what we most desire and it is this desire that has in this mess to begin with. In Option 2, we don’t tour heaven/God as a human as in option 1. Instead we become infinite like God. A peer. From our new infinite perspective we would no longer be suffing any shortcomings of a finite human… we would be able to peer into and know, even grok the infinite God from without. Which is nonsense.
So, after some thought, Michael is right when he says God can’t do it. At first I thought, “Hey, hold on! God can do anything! He’s God for God’s sake!” But then I remembered that making me a god would be a terribly evil thing to do to the rest of you.
Oh right, right… of course – and an evil thing to do to me too.
That leaves Option 3. In option 3, we don’t go there nor do we become like him. In Option 3, he would come here wrapped in human shortcomings… flesh and bone… only 6 senses… only 20/20 vision… just human. No matter how he might appear in this world (this physical universe) he would necessarily need to self-limit/contain himself. Once he does this however, we can argue that there would be a perfectly reasonable, rational, medical, and/or scientific explanation for whatever might happen during such a visit.
But I believe Option 3, even with its shortcomings, would be the only way.
Its hard to express your feelings and let it show through typing on this computer. I like your post, John. Most human being hunger for meaning in life. That includes all those in prison, mental hospitals, and other places we tend to avoid. The cry is “I’m hungry” the actions are, “attention getters” of some sort. Its inherent in each of us to want to know God. And God hasn’t been asleep by looking at his creation and those who are literally, “born again” by the Spirit of God. We do want meaning and mystery in our lives, indeed! We must go forward to find more answers to what God is wanting us to know and worship Him in understanding. Yippeee
OK, we have a playing field. If you will concede this, then you may perhaps agree that, if there is a god, then the physical laws of the universe may not apply to this entity.( Perhaps it even ‘wrote’ these laws?)
Oh, I think that the creation story in Genesis is really a metaphor. It is ‘true’ in that it very poetically explains that there is a purpose to this universe. It was not accidental.
I pretty much accept most of evolutionary theory although there are tremendous holes in it. Some of the theory’s greatest proponents, such as Stephen Jay Gould,even thought so. Wasn’t it Sir Francis Crick who postulated a seeding of this earth with DNA by an ancient intergalactic race? To help plug one of the biggest holes? (But we have a First Cause problem with that as well,don’t we?)
First off, the biblical accounting is much older than that. Remember, it is one of the oldest complete historical records known to us. That being said, I think the age of the document as it pertains to its veracity is irrelevant. Although it addresses nature and history, it is not intended as a scientific or historical treatise. It is a philosophy. We (atheists and Christians) miss the point when we try to make the Bible into something it is not; a natural history of the universe. Besides, we don’t discount the writings of Plato, Aristotle or Pythagoras because of their age
I felt the first tugging towards God about 10 years ago when, as an atheist, I began reading one of those excellent books for laymen, “The Dancing Wu Li Masters”. I became fascinated with quantum mechanics and the more I read the more I began to realize that mathematics was asking me to accept as truth something that was no more absurd or irrational than the existence of God. So I thought I might check it out. First with Zen and the Tao te Ching (very relevant to physics and with some parallels to Christianity). Over time God changed my life. Too personal to go into right now, but my story is not unique.
Sure is. But that’s not what we’re doing here, is it? One step at a time right. There are billions of people who believe in some sort of deity that are not Christians. First things first.
I think Mother Theresa is a good example. Like many (most) of us she had doubts, apparently very serious ones. As far as we can tell, based upon the evidence, she died a Christian.
What’s that prayer? Lord, give me a stronger faith?
Christian, just saw your, post nice questions so i ll stay wake for some more minutes
First i am not 100% sure of anything. Of course there could be god but then he does a very good job hiding evidence of his (her) existence. The universe does'nt work acoording to the bible or the quran but it follows mathematicals laws. Life wasn't "created" it evolved through a very interesting and long natural process. So my question to you now …
Why do you believe in someting written 2000 years ago which actually explains nothing about the world we live in and don't try to ask yourself what really drives nature ? You don't have to study physics, there are plenty of books for laymen which explain that what we know rather well.
As to your second question. It's not my task to make you stop believing. But it' s my right to have objections about some dogmas and speak them out. Anything wrong with that ? Is it legitimate to try and convert someone to Christianity but illegitimate to discuss the logical fallacies of this (or any other) belief system ?
Sorry but the length of the reply that's it for tonight…
Maybe this will become an interesting online conversation …
No, I don't think everyone who has a different opinion than I do is necessarily a hostile troublemaker. But I am CERTAINLY more likely to think someone is a hostile troublemaker who shows up here with the screen name Lucifer asserting that all Christians are cowards.
You can't insult someone and expect them to take you seriously. That's not how "serious debates" work.
I dunno, my kids went to junior high and it didn't help them at all.
So anyway, bloggerformerlyknownaslucipher, how can you be so sure there is no god? And why is it so important to you to attempt to refute someone else's faith. (And let's leave all that atheistic retribution out of it. You've read these posts. No one here sits on the board of the Spanish Inquisition)
Why would you want to "debate this question seriously"? Surely you have no hope that, by dint of your rigorous logical propositions, you'll convince any believer to abandon his or her faith. So do you mean, then, to be convinced that there is a God? Do you come here for this "debate" because, inside, you WANT to be convinced there's a God? I won't inuslt you by suggesting you do.
But if you KNOW, as you must, that you're not going to turn any Christian into an atheist, and if you yourself are convinced beyond a doubt that atheism is the highest truth, then I ask again: What, exactly, are you doing here?
There is a kind of atheist who enjoys nothing more substantial than making of themselves bait for Christians. In effect, they simply want the attention that comes from wading into a colllective of believers, declaring there is no God, and then watching as all the pretty fireworks begin going off around them.
You're not one of THOSE rudderless time-wasters, are you? If you are, please allow me to ask you to take it somewhere else; surely, there are on-line atheists with whom you can exchange insights. If you're not, and you actually ARE open to the idea that there's a God, then let me know, and at the very least I can point you to some reading that I know would help inform your thinking about that.
ok "Brother" John first of all i can't possibly be a devil worshiper since i am an atheist and this includes demons. My nick name is just a word play which came spontaneously. Of course it would be convenient for you if i went to junior high but this is not the case. Now i 'm not here to exchange personal insults. I d rather have a civilized debate about the question which you posed on he title of your post. My opinion is clear let me state it again : god gives no answer because god (In the christian- judaic-islamic sense of a personal god who is omnipotent etc. etc. ) doesnt exist. So let's see if John or any of you are willing to debate this question seriously or if you will delete my posts and send me to hell
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Brother, trust this: It's at least as frightening to believe in a God you do NOT want to dissapoint than it is to believe in a devil you can't. (And dude: grow up. Get yourself a fake name that doesn't make it hard to believe you're not in junior high.)
17 comments to this rather speculative -or is this some kind of humor ?- post and no single one mentions the most probable answer to the question. Deep down you all know it. And fear it.
Good stuff. Actually helps me with my own (more than occasional) doubts.
this is good…the only problem is, i don’t think we would EVER get bored of God. You basically said that after God came and hung out with us for we would become zombies. I don’t even get bored of my friends, how could I get bored of God? And thats basically what we will do in heaven….”hang out” with God. Do you think we will get bored in heaven? I dont think so. Well this was a very fast typed email, but I think I got my little point across. I do follow your article, though.
like i said in my e to you john OGod has proven himself to us billions of times over but the ultimate proof will be after we die. then we will be immediately in his realm. we will come face to face. now wont that be a shocker? no words will suffice that experience. cant wait myself. -harv
Good post. Btw, thanks for commenting on my blog, John.
I kind of agree with both John and JP. I don’t think it’s possible for any human to ever fully comprehend God at all. In this life or in the next.
But in this life, fully seeing or comprehending God would destroy our bodies and minds, b/c it would just be too big of an experience, and because His holiness would destroy us (study the Old Testament and how God had to interact with Moses, the priests, and the prophets). That is why God doesn’t manifest Himself to us in that way.
As to why God doesn’t assure us all internally that He is real, well, I really don’t know. But one thing that is very beautiful about God’s love and faith in US, his people, is that He chooses most often to use US to reveal Himself to others. He chooses regular, unholy, flawed people to do His holy work of loving others and reconciling them back to Him. Don’t ever be surprised if an answer to your prayer comes in the form of a person instead of a ‘real’ miracle.
I was considering:
ever-generative gestalt of divine consciousness
Okay, so I am DEFINITELY voting "cosseted" for this year's Best Word We Don't Hear Often Enough Anymore award.
To David,
Having read excerpts from the new book on Mother Teressa I too was astounded when I read where she said, "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see,–Listen and do not hear–the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me–that I let Him have [a] free hand."
Then I read her prayer and desire:
She wrote in 1951 that the Passion was the only aspect of Jesus' life that she was interested in sharing: "I want to … drink ONLY [her emphasis] from His chalice of pain."
Christ's greatest pain was separation from God. That was her desire and God answered her prayers. Be careful what you pray for.
billy
Golly, gee! If God were to show up as a physical person in my house I would hope he would give me warning so I could have it scrubbed and squeaky clean!
I like what you said, John . . ."God is pleased to be “real” where he can be the most real — where you can comprehend the most of him — which is inside of you. God is a spiritual power. The fullest communion with God must happen spiritually; it must happen inside of you, not outside of you."
Based on that truth I said to myself: "Self…. if He lives inside my heart and reads my thoughts before I ever think them…..why oh why do I worry about Him seeing my cluttered house; He sees it 24/7!!!"
I liked Rachel's response…."like one who still seeks… I like the idea of always thinking differently…not always on the same track of my own definitions of God"
As for me, acknowledging God outside my theological box is spiritually exciting and mentally exhilirating. The scholars speak scholarly, but the God I know bends down to the faintest whisper and frightened heartbeat of the insignificant and uneducated. Plain people! Like me!
Thanks John, for uniquely rattling my cage once again, directing me back to simple faith in a God I have never seen, but by Whose love I am cosseted!
JP: Nah: We’d become zombies post-God-proof HERE because here, in this life, we’re in exactly the kind of strictly linear, start-here-finish-there system which NEEDS open-endedness in order for it not to seem like a soul-eradicating BOX. But after this life–once we’re in the presence of God–that kind of paradigm will be just a … memory. THERE it’ll be just an … ever-generative gestalt of divine consciousness.
Honestly, I don’t think you WOULD want God to show up at your house for a few hours. I think you THINK you would–but then, after he left, you’d realize how infinitely better off you were before God became to you, and to your mind, WAY too much like something infinitely divine, and way too much like something you might expect to see on a really, really good TV show.
Hmm… This is an interesting post.
I have to wonder though, if God really wants to talk to each of us and assure us that he exists and that we should be good people, why doesn’t he just assure all of us (internally). Why do so many people (including Mother Theresa) feel uncertain of God’s existence if he really wants to assure us. Surely he could (no to say to say would) communicate to all of us his existence in a way that we would be absolutely certain of it without creating some large external spectacle.
Bit of a problem with your thesis. If true then when we die and get to heaven and see God then we will all become zombies with nothing to work towards. Doesn't sound like somewhere I want to go.
I tend to believe that if God chose to totally reveal himself then we would no longer really have choice or our choices would not be based on love and relationship. Kinda like the quandary of a millionaire looking for a spouse. Do they love me for me or for my position, money…etc…
But still I really would like for him to show up in my house for a few hours…
this post is awesome john.
and here's why:
because it answers the question perfectly, and at the same time answers the sole question about the purpose of life…why do we continue striving, reaching, learning? because life means "moving forward toward resolution, knowledge, clarity, context, wholeness" – with this phrase you describe the pursuit of anything one is passionate about, be it religion and faith, or simply life itself.
thank you.
Faith is the substance of things unseen. Lord I believe. Help my unbelief. I can intellectualize God or emotionalize God but ultimately the choice is mine how I respond to Him. Absolutely blows my mind. How can I respond to Someone so far outside my realm of understanding? How can I not respond?
I like Carey's response. This whole topic makes me feel small and like one who still seeks…and I like the idea of always thinking differently…not always on the same track of my own definitions of God.
I like the post – helps to think a little differently…
The answer to this question is famous.
The reason God doesn't prove to all of us mere humans that He exists is He can't. And it's not due to any of His shortcomings, but to ours. We just can't fathom His eternal, omnipotent, omniscient being. God is beyond nature (and therefore scientific understanding). After all He made it.
But isn't that the challenge? Can you accept God on faith, live your life accordingly, and earn the right to get to Heaven? Or do you need silly earthly things like proof and certainty?
Very interesting. Where did this answer originate?
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