Often people wonder why we cannot directly perceive God in this life. Why must we have faith about God rather than direct knowledge of God? In the book, The Philosophical Approach to God: A New Thomistic Perspective, Norris Clarke writes, “I share with you an interesting experiment I have tried with marked success on many student groups and individual people. It is an attempt to answer the common complaint that one so often hears: Why is it that God remains so obscure and difficult to find? With His omnipotent power, you would think it would be the easiest thing in the world for Him to reveal Himself with perfect clarity to almost anybody, without having to pass through the obscurity of faith or the difficulty of philosophical argument.
My answer is this. All right, suppose you are God, omniscient and omnipresent. Now suppose you wanted to reveal your true nature to humans as Infinite Spirit. You could use any means – but not faith, or direct mystical experience, because most people are not prepared for that and could not receive it or interpret it properly; it takes a long process of purification to receive it without distortion. You think it would be an easy job –if you were God. Go ahead and try. What would you do?
Some come up with sensational physical cures. I laugh and point out that some higher spaceman could do that. Others would produce great natural cataclysms, whirling planets, and so forth. I point out that these things do presuppose a much higher power than ours, but not an infinite power, let alone a pure spirit. I keep on knocking down every physical or psychic feat they produce as nowhere near the mark. When they have finally given up, I suggest that maybe it’s not such an easy thing to do after all, even for God” (p. 31-32). God’s obscure ways of revelation and faith may be the best and only way possible for us to know God given our limitations and God’s situation.
My answer is this. All right, suppose you are God, omniscient and omnipresent. Now suppose you wanted to reveal your true nature to humans as Infinite Spirit. You could use any means – but not faith, or direct mystical experience, because most people are not prepared for that and could not receive it or interpret it properly; it takes a long process of purification to receive it without distortion. You think it would be an easy job –if you were God. Go ahead and try. What would you do?
Some come up with sensational physical cures. I laugh and point out that some higher spaceman could do that. Others would produce great natural cataclysms, whirling planets, and so forth. I point out that these things do presuppose a much higher power than ours, but not an infinite power, let alone a pure spirit. I keep on knocking down every physical or psychic feat they produce as nowhere near the mark. When they have finally given up, I suggest that maybe it’s not such an easy thing to do after all, even for God” (p. 31-32). God’s obscure ways of revelation and faith may be the best and only way possible for us to know God given our limitations and God’s situation.