“Love letters” that God sends us.

…Indeed, the vast beauty and richness we experience in nature, human relationships, art, music, culture, etc. can be compared to “love letters” that God sends us.

        Why doesn’t God just show Himself? 
     by Scott Youngren.
        ( Click the above link for the original article)

Despite the scientific and philosophical arguments for the existence of God presented on this website and elsewhere, some readers may still be haunted by a persistent question: If he is more than just an imaginary big-daddy-in-the-sky, why does it seem that God is hiding from us?

It stands to reason that the inability of anyone to produce a unicorn is a pretty good reason not to believe in unicorns. Why shouldn’t the same standard be applied to God? And if he doesn’t have a physical body, why won’t he at least produce an obvious sign that he is there…like the words “I am God, I am here” written in big flaming letters in the sky?

But with a little insight, it quickly becomes apparent why God keeps a low profile and doesn’t make himself available for appearances on the TV talk show circuit. In his book Disappointment With God, Philip Yancey reminds us that God has a problem: All of the impressive displays of power in the world will not force us to love him. And if God could force us to love him, it would not really be love. Love is not love unless it is freely chosen:

“Power can do everything but the most important thing:  it cannot control love…In a concentration camp, the guards posses almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your God, curse your family, work without pay…kill and then bury your closest friend or even your own mother. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle—the kind we may secretly long for—do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John Hall has put it, ‘God’s problem is not that God is not able to do certain things. God’s problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life.’”

In short, it all boils down to free will. If God made us unable to deny his existence, we would be unable to choose to love Him. Frequent, “impressive displays of miracle” would go further than merely doing “nothing to foster love.” Rather, they would render us much less able to choose to love God. It would take a fool indeed to reject a God whose existence is completely undeniable.

And if we could not deny God, we would be nothing more than puppets. Why would God want to seek to be in relationship with puppets?

...Yancey makes this point clear by quoting a parable written by the 19th century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard:

“Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden. How could he declare his love for her?  In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist—no one dared resist him.  But would she love him?”

“She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage…that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal…For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal.”

And to be in loving relationships with people, it turns out, is exactly what God seeks. If one takes the time to review the Bible, one will quickly see that many of the stories told share this underlying theme. From God’s pursuit of the Jewish people in the Old Testament to Jesus’ command to “seek first His kingdom” in the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament, the Bible conveys that God is seeking people who will seek him.

...But all of this is not to say that God remains completely hidden. Rather, it is to say that he communicates his presence using subtle intimations so as to not be forceful. One such intimation is that of beauty. Indeed, the vast beauty and richness we experience in nature, human relationships, art, music, culture, etc. can be compared to “love letters” that God sends us. Dean Overman notes in his book A Case for the Existence of God that beauty is one of God’s ways of pointing us toward truth:

“Physics Nobel laureates Paul Dirac and Richard Feynman were convinced that mathematical truth can be recognized by its beauty. Beauty points toward truth. Dirac was more concerned with beauty in an equation than whether the equation matched an empirical experiment because he had discovered that beauty was a more accurate indicator of truth. He credited his sense of beauty with allowing him to find the equation for the electron that, coupled with Maxwell’s equations, forms the basic foundation for the very successful quantum field theory of quantum electrodynamics. Almost every contemporary physicist knows that beauty is the fundamental indicator of truth in his or her analysis.”...