Forward by Chris Self:
I have to wonder if hashing out the Spiritual Disciplines in our everyday lives might impact the problem of the "Hidden God". I love where this article takes us. We must read with wisdom and self evaluation. These truths need to connect with the sinew of our souls....our very physical beings.
Many of us simply do not experience God. We do not know if God is real, and we find it deeply troubling that some of the friends we respect and the thinkers we admire so easily place God in the sphere of fairy tale creatures. It’s clear that such friends and notables are not uninformed, lazy or wicked, and when they speak of disbelieving in God, they sound quite reasonable.
This problem goes further, for many of us find it difficult to see Jesus when He is wed to messy political agendas or cultures and thinking we despise. We find it difficult to understand the Holy Spirit when the only ones talking about the Holy Spirit are clearly nuts. We find it difficult to encounter the divine on Sundays in converted Wal-Marts or during painfully ill-conceived church gatherings—and so we clinch inside and want to just acknowledge boldly, “This faith is not for me.”
Maybe we contribute to the problem, too
And of course, many of us fail to see God because we fail to pause, to unplug, to make space, to engage God with zeal, to give up our cherished addictions, to seek out real friendships, to remind ourselves of the identity the New Testament communicates over us—that we are children of God, co-heirs with Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, being transformed with others into a holy temple—and persistently live in that reality.
Hours of playing on a smartphone can be just as effective at hiding God as bad Christian filmmaking, and it’s time to rebel against all of it. Many of us need to rip aside the curtains that both we and our culture put forth that shield us from seeing the God that is real, all-pervasive and exceedingly interested in making us more alive.
Jeff Cook teaches philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado. He is the author of Everything New: One Philosopher’s Search for a God Worth Believing In. Connect with him at Everything New.
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