Why Can I Not See God If He Exists?

God loves everyone!  God wants a relationship with everyone!  So, why doesn’t he just make it clear, and show himself to us?  How many Christians have seen God, physically?  How many people have asked God to show himself if he’s real and then he doesn’t reveal himself?

I think we all know the answers to these questions.  God doesn’t just show up visibly to people.  When he does reveal himself to a person, it’s usually in a dream or vision with no objective evidence, which doesn’t give much proof to anyone else.  It would make sense that if God really loves everyone and wants to have a relationship with people, that he’d make himself clearly known.  The fact that he doesn’t simply show himself, makes a lot of people question if God exists at all. 

Hopefully, the following questions and answers can help explain how God’s physical invisibility doesn’t mandate his inexistence.

Does Sight Make Right?

Does an act, idea, or reality have to be visibly observed or physically tangible to exist? The answer would have to be no, because too many important aspects of life cannot be seen.  For example, magnetic waves cannot be seen, just the effects of them.  Gravity cannot actually be seen, just the effects of gravity.  Wind can’t be seen either, but the golfer has to take it into account before swinging.  The laws of logic cannot be seen, but they still exist, and it can even be said that these laws existed even before mankind recognized them.  Clearly, there are important aspects of life which cannot be visibly seen and exist before humanity discovered their existence. 

Do All Senses Apply to All Realities?

Musical notes can be heard, but they certainly cannot be seen, tasted, touched, or smelled.  Colors can be seen, but not touched, seen, tasted, or smelled.  It’s obvious that every reality of life cannot be expected to be experienced by all five senses.  Certain senses apply to some realities but not all realities.  According to their categorization, physical objects and beings can be seen.  God however does not fit this categorization.  The Bible teaches that God is not an object, but spirit.  We are committing a category error to assert that God must be visible to exist.  Spiritual beings may be invisible.  They do not have to be visible, although from time to time God has manifested himself in visible ways to people.  Angels which are also spiritual beings have also manifested themselves in visible forms. 

So if God does exist, why doesn’t he show himself to me?

The problem with God revealing himself directly in his unadulterated glory is that we are sinful human beings.  Sin is derived from a Greek archery word which meant to miss the mark.  To say that mankind is sinful is to say that mankind has missed God’s bull’s eye of perfection.  The result of missing God’s mark of perfection is separation from God.  One consequences of sin is death, first spiritual death, then physical death, and after physical death, eternal death, also known as hell.  In addition to death, sin brings separation from God.  Isaiah 59:2 says, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”  Sinners cannot stand in the full glory of the Lord without dying.  God told Moses in Exodus 33:20, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." Because of this separation and resultant death if we see God, God is unable to reveal himself in his full glory. 

This however, does not mean that God has not revealed himself to humanity.  After all, he does want a relationship with us, and it is his desire that no one perish.  God has been revealed through what he has created.  The complexity and design of the universe screams that there is a designer.  God has directly revealed himself through the Bible and in particular the person of Jesus Christ in the flesh upon this earth, as Colossians 1:15 says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”  God may have not revealed the answers to all of our questions, but he has revealed everything that we need to know to have salvation from eternal death. 

By: Andy Wrasman