City Life Starter

Written by Scott Fiddler

The Word

“Then Moss said, ‘I pray You, show me Your glory!’”

“And He said, ‘I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.’”

“But He said, ‘You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!’”

Exodus 33:18-20

“If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe—no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase in that house.” 

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Exegesis

In the quote above, C.S. Lewis explains why God cannot be seen in nature although He is the creator of it. That and the verse out of Exodus got me thinking about a related question I have heard from skeptics, “If God exists why doesn’t he just appear to the human race and eliminate any doubt?”  I think it is a fair question. The answer may be that, in our fallen, corrupt state He can’t. 

What if the stuff out of which man is made, once corrupted, is not capable of seeing God?  The Lord suggests this when He says the Israelites would die if they saw Him. See Exodus 33:20.  The human eye cannot look directly at the sun without suffering damage. In the case of God, perhaps we cannot see Him without dying, so He doesn’t show Himself to us.

I suspect the objection to this line of reasoning is that it’s inconsistent with the omnipotence of God. But is it? God cannot lie because it is against His character to do so, but that doesn’t mean He is not omnipotent. If God creates a mountain and one person is walking down the mountain, by necessity a person walking in the opposite direction has to walk uphill. We wouldn’t say God is not omnipotent because He can’t create a mountain in which two people walking in the opposite direction are both walking downhill. We would say the material with which God chooses to work prohibits it.

If I’m on the right path here, then the best way for God to prove His existence to fallen man would be to become a man people could see, claim to be God, and give evidence of it through miracles, which is exactly what Jesus did. In other words, in the one way that God could appear to fallen man we see evidence He has done so. As Lewis said in his argument about what lies behind the Law, “Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?”

Application

If God has gone to the trouble to appear to us in the only way He can do so, then how much more without excuse are we if we do not respond?

Prayer

Thank God today for going to the trouble to appear to man in the person of Jesus, so we could see Him.