It just feels wrong. Why would a loving God make Himself so hard to find?
If God were real, why wouldn’t He just be here with us, instead of this strange arrangement where we’re expected to “believe” He exists, while never really knowing for sure until we’re dead?
It’s really not surprising that life becomes about self-preservation, self-protection and self-reliance. Where else would anyone expect it to go?
The frustration is real. But it’s built on an assumption most of us never stop to question.
Seeing God would not solve what we think it would.
If God stood in front of us all the time, in undeniable physical form, we could still dislike Him. We could still argue with Him. We could still resent Him. But we couldn’t really choose Him in the same way – not freely, not without pressure, and not without consequence sitting right in front of us.
And that’s the part we usually miss.
It’s easy to assume seeing would settle everything – but the stories we carry show this doesn’t always work that way. Even the Bible itself doesn’t support this. People saw miracles. They saw provision. They saw authority up close. And it didn’t produce loyalty. It often produced confusion, resentment and attempts to manage what they were seeing.
Clarity removes uncertainty, but it doesn’t create trust.
Those two things aren’t the same. And that’s uncomfortable, because it means the problem isn’t simply a lack of visibility. It’s something deeper than that.
Jesus actually talked about this when he said;
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”
That isn’t praise for ignorance and it isn’t romanticising doubt. It’s pointing to the difference between what God wants – trust that is freely chosen – and what would actually result if we got what we think we want: belief produced by pressure.
But this only answers part of the problem.
The harder question is what a relationship with a being like God would even look like in the first place.
If God really is big enough to create everything, then a normal, equal kind of relationship isn’t possible. The power gap is simply too big. You’re never dealing with someone on the same level, and that changes the nature of the relationship straight away. The pressure is automatic. Even kindness feels different when the other person ultimately controls what happens to your life.
It’s a bit like trying to have a genuine friendship with someone who can fire you, blacklist you, or decide your future with a single decision. You might respect them. You might even admire them. But the relationship can never really be equal. There’s always something unspoken sitting in the room.
So the real problem isn’t that God hasn’t found a better way to prove He exists. It’s that there are very few ways a being like that could ever be freely chosen at all.
For choice to be real, there has to be space to refuse. For trust to be real, there has to be room to withhold it. And for loyalty to mean anything, it has to be possible to walk away. That space only exists if God does not overwhelm us with Himself.
And that’s the uncomfortable logic. He’s not hiding because He doesn’t care. He’s withholding because He does. That only makes sense if God is involved, not distant.
But there’s one more uncomfortable consequence of all this.
If God were physically present all the time, most people wouldn’t suddenly become more loving or more humble. They would try to manage Him. They would control access. They would build authority around proximity. They would turn presence into power.
That isn’t a hypothetical problem. It’s exactly what happened in Israel when God was visibly at the centre of national life. Religious systems formed around control rather than trust, and status formed around closeness rather than loyalty. It’s a historical pattern. A human condition.
Faith isn’t there to solve the question of whether God exists. Faith exists so we can trust Him and choose Him. His physical presence would only force behaviour, but it can’t form the heart.
In other words, faith is the only space where trust can exist without pressure. It’s the only place where surrender can actually be voluntary, and where loyalty isn’t coerced.
So is God hiding?
The clean answer isn’t that God hides because He’s distant. It’s that constant visibility would quietly destroy the very thing He’s trying to grow.
Not obedience. Not compliance. Not religious performance.
But trust. Loyalty. Love that isn’t forced.
So is God hiding? Not really. Not in the way we usually mean.
Maybe the harder question we carry isn’t about God hiding – but about how we learn to trust in the in-between.
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Author:
Rudy Labordus
Hi, I’m the writer behind Messy Clay — someone just like you, full of questions, awe, and wonder.
This isn’t a place for perfect answers. It’s a space for honest words from the middle of the mess we call life. If you’ve ever felt like you’re still being formed — cracks, rough edges and all — and left with more questions than answers, I hope you’ll feel right at home here.
I’d love for you to get involved — leave a comment, say hello, wrestle with these thoughts. As iron sharpens iron, maybe we can grow together.
