 When 3-year old Carson lost his hair due to chemo, his brothers shaved their heads… to be like him. |
I just read through the John Shore post and comments entitled, Why Doesn’t God Just Prove He Exists?. Fascinating {imagine one eyebrow raising periodically}. Please go and read at least the post. (comments optional but interesting)
I would like to add to John Shore’s notion:
And then — and in fairly short order, too – you’d become a zombie. Because there’d be no mystery left in your life.
First of all, I think John describes it perfectly. And that description made me laugh too. I think Michael (one of the responses) is onboard with it too when he wrote:
The reason God doesn’t prove to all of us mere humans that He exists is He can’t.
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 suffering 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.
Filed under: Eternity
