In the movie The Man with Two Brains, Steve Martin plays a widower who is considering getting remarried. His beautiful but greedy girlfriend Dolores artfully conceals her cruelty. One day, Martin stands before a portrait of his dead wife, Rebecca, and begs, “Rebecca, if there is anything wrong with my feelings for Dolores, just give me a sign.” Immediately, lights blink, winds whip, and an earthquake erupts. The portrait spins in circles on the wall, and Rebecca’s voice from beyond the grave cries out louder and louder, “No! Noo! Nooo!” And then, after fifteen seconds or so, it all stops. Martin, disheveled by the winds, looks at the off-kilter portrait and says, “Just any kind of sign. I’ll keep on the lookout for it.”
In Existentialism Is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre noted, “It is I myself, in every case, who have to interpret the signs.” This insight holds true also when looking for signs from God.
If spectacular golden letters appeared in the sky spelling out “I AM the God of Abraham; believe in ME,” would this sign bring people to a relationship with God? Golden letters in the sky wouldn’t exactly prove that God exists because presumably a powerful alien or even a swarm of drones could make those letters appear in the sky. The atheist philosopher A.J. Ayer had a near-death experience and wrote, “I was confronted by a red light, exceedingly bright, and also very painful even when I turned away from it. I was aware that this light was responsible for the government of the universe.” But this sign did not dislodge his atheism. Why not?
As Brian Harrison pointed out in his book Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age, “What we ‘see’ is thus at least partly determined by what we already believe. This is not completely removed from Anselm’s ‘faith seeking understanding’ and goes some way towards recounting how the same event might be interpreted in ways that are consistent with both naturalism and non-naturalism.” So, maybe it is not the case that, “the supernatural is no longer directly experienced, but rather that what we experience is no longer labelled ‘supernatural.’”
God chooses to woo, not compel—to be delicate rather than overwhelming.
Scientists call this predictive processing. What we believe, what we think, what we seek, shapes what we see. In the Monkey Business Illusion, people are asked to count how many times players wearing white shirts pass a basketball as they move interspersed with players wearing black shirts passing another basketball. In the midst of all this action, a person wearing a gorilla costume walks right through the players. About half the people watching the video don’t see the gorilla. You can test it yourself here. We can have eyes but not see.
Moreover, if Jews, Christians, and Muslims are right, God is a spiritual being, not a material object like a gorilla. We cannot see God as we see molecules under a microscope or stars in the sky.
Indeed, the hiddenness of God is itself a biblical teaching. Isaiah says, “Truly you are a God who hides himself” (Isaiah 45:15). God hides his face, telling Moses, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).
But although hidden from direct sight, Christians believe God does disclose himself. As Fr. Kevin Grove puts it, “God’s revelation is often enough discoverable under the meekest sign of its opposite.” The helpless baby born in a stable to a mother without means is really a king. The convicted criminal dying on the cross is actually the ultimate judge and Lord of life. God is hidden in the sacraments; hidden in the Scriptures; and hidden in the discouraged, the bedraggled, and the addicted. As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” St. Ignatius of Loyola found God in all things.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the hiddenness of God does not last forever. Those in heaven do see God face to face. Seeing God is enjoying eternal happiness. Why is this vision of God reserved for the life to come?
In chapter eight of his Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis points out that if God were to make himself irresistible and indisputable, this would override the human ability to choose whether to love God. But if we are to be free to choose to love or not to love God, then God cannot appear to us face to face in overwhelming power and majesty. For this reason, God chooses to woo, not compel—to be delicate rather than overwhelming.
Jesus suggested that miraculous signs have limited value in bringing people to God: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Maybe we find God—if we find God at all—in everyday life. Maybe, if you have been looking for a sign to seek God, this is it.