And more importantly how many people view hell as an unfair punishment, and if it even exists.
I assume that we all believe God and hell exist.
And how we are all God's children, and we are playing hide and seek with him. Now if you have a young child and you love them just like any parent would, you love to play games with them and see the joy in their faces.
Hide and seek is one of many young children's favorite games. If you have a young child and you two are playing hide and seek, you are not going to go hide in the attic behind a bunch of boxes so that it is nearly impossible for your three year old to find you.
You are going to hide behind the curtains with your feet sticking out, you are going to hide behind the couch but with the top of your head sticking out,
You are going to hide behind a tree that is much thinner than you are. This makes the game possible for the child and brings joy to both them and you.
This is the same way that God 'plays' hide and seek with us. He has not hidden himself so hard that we will never find him.
He has hidden himself in our world but with parts of him sticking out all over the place.
He has made it quite obvious to us all over the universe that he is there just waiting for us to actually seek after him and we are just too bull headed to notice.
Maybe the hardest thing about finding God is trying to figure out what to do once you find him.
Interesting analogy. It shows that you've given this some thought.
How about this...what if God is not playing "Hide and Seek". What if God does everything but get down on His knees and beg us to do His Will?
You cannot go a whole day without God entering your mind. He speaks to us through Nature and He speaks to us through His Written Revelation (Scripture).
He Touches us through His Evangelists and through His Sacraments.
I wouldn't say either God was playing hide and seek with us. Though the image of God on His knees to beg me do His will seems a bit strange to me, too.
I rather like to think of it as God taking the lead, we not being able to see Him at al.
If He was playing hide and seek with us and He was hiding behind the curtain, I believe we would see His feet and claim them to be part of the curtain, for the sin we are uner without Him.
As for my part what I did experience is that once He gets you, you have no choice, have have not to seek anymore, all is obvious.:yay:
If He was begging, it was for us to decide, but from all that I have experienced it is not this way, but it is His superior decision that we cannot withstand (btw, think of St. Paul: I also have problems to imagine him having a chance to ignore the LORD before Damascus).
So that at least for the part of being lost or not (i.e. being a believer or not). Doing His will would be another thing, so I might take back what I have said above. Here the begging part could make more sense, though I am not quite sure of it.
But I had the impression, as you were speaking of hell, it was about the being saved part.
Wow, dude. That's a really interesting way to look at it. I've never seen it explained like that before. It sounds good to me. That sounds kinda like how it is. I also have to agree with Arch, though. God is talking to us... ALWAYS... sometimes He's even screaming our names. We either choose not to listen or choose not to obey. If you've ever heard of Matt Maher, he has a song called Alive Again. Here is the chorus and 2nd verse:
"You called and You shouted/Broke through my deafness/Now I'm breathing in and breathing out/I'm alive again/You shattered my darkness/Washed away my blindness/Now I'm breathing in and breathing out/I'm alive again
Late have I loved You/You waited for me, I searched for You/What took me so long?/I was looking outside/As if Love would ever want to hide/I'm finding I was wrong"
The way he puts it is that God isn't necessarily "hiding" as much as He's standing there in plain sight, yet we still can't seem to find Him. Then, once Matt found God, he was "alive again". So, what do we do once we find God? We enjoy each other's company and walk along side one another. Think about it this way. After you get to a certain age, you no longer play hide and seek. You start maturing. Instead of always playing games, you just enjoy spending time with people. You might take a walk every now and then to talk. You care for each other. It's a relationship. Great stuff man! Look forward to hearing more from you.
This is a very interesting perspective. I have never experienced a hiding God. I can understand what you are saying though. I can look out my window and see Pike's Peak. Over 14,000 feet of mountain that is a very big part of God sticking out! When I think of God showing Himself to me I just look at the mountains and am overwhelmed by the power it took to make them rise up out of the earth. Is God hiding from me? I don't think so. What's more, because of the way my relationship with Him began He has always been very close to me. I see Him everywhere and hear Him many times a day. He took hold of me and I am all about getting hold of the reason He took hold of me. I am always in His grip and never far from His side.
We live in a physical world, rember god gave us all free will, so in the begining god created Adam and Eve and they made a choice against god of there own free will. God was walking among Adam and eve and speaking directly to them before the curse but when they made there choice to disobey god he left them. Now sin has come into the world but we still have free will to obey god or not, god did not create computers.
Now in this world we all now that there is a god it is instintive from birth to know this with you spirit, you can even see all the evidence in the entire universe that god created, you know man didn't do that hes still trying to understand it. The more you grow and learn from mans understanding which trys to explain everthing rationally, the idea of god gets more foggy, and your faith decreases. Now once again god has given us free will to serve him or not, so if he interveined and came down to prove once and for all that he is the only god then in people would quickly bow down and serve him there would be no need for free will, because everbody would have to acknowledge that he is god above all gods.
So its not so much hide and seek its God obeying the rules that he put into place he is a rightous god, an awsome god, a perfect god, and yes he even follows all his own rules that he made. So he will never interfere on a persons free will directly until the end of time.
Also hell is not as much punishment from god as it is free will. God respects all of his creations and there choices (even Satans) he trys everything he can to get you to serve him freelyand if he cant he gives you what you want seperation from him, thats what hell is its simply total seperation from god, which is the most terrible place in existance because gods very presence sustains the universe/multiverse.
I have experienced a Revealing and Concealing Lord.
Let me tell you. Afterwards you can say if this is like hide&seek.
Through church I workshopped one year with a group of absolute non-believers. That is, people who state and reconfirm that there is NO God.
In the beginning of our conversations, I honestly thought that God would reveal Himself in their hearts. But much to my surprise (and despair) He did not. Actually, I got to the point to believe that He was closing their heart and concealing Himself.
Now here is where it becomes a little fuzzy to me as I cannot explain why it happened.
During our conversations along the year, a major swift appeared. Some started to question their own doubts about God. And those who opened their heart, actually became more and more convinced within themselves that there was a God. The more they inclined their ear, the more they seem to be experiencing some kind of acknowledgement, while the others, based on the same conversation, were even more convinced that indeed is no God.
This has been the most striking experience to me so far. Appearantly, hearing the same bible verses, one can change his mind while others see in that same words a confirmation of the opposite.
I really feel that God is revealing and concealing Himself to people. The sad and bitter thing is, that those who really believe that there is no God, are constantly (by God Himself I believe) kept in that conviction, unless they decide to open their hearts, whereas God does reveal Himself.
The above experience also lead me to the belief that God sometimes wants us to step out of our box. By concealing Himself we are obliged to search Him in another place. Once we have found him there, we see to our surpise how healing and rewarding this "search" has been.
