Every atheist I've debated eventually lands here: if God is real, why can't we see him? I used to fumble this. Then I read 1 Timothy 1:17.
Paul is mid-argument about grace and his own conversion when he breaks suddenly into praise:
"Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever."
"Eternal," "immortal," and "the only God" make sense as praise. But invisible? We don't praise men for being unseen. Why does Paul list it as something as glorious as the majesty and immortality of God?
Unless invisibility is not a limitation. Unless it is out of gracious design.
Paul met the unmediated light of Christ on the road to Damascus, he was knocked into the dirt, and blind for three days. He knows what the alternative to invisible feels like. It produced collapse, not worship. His praise is a survivor's testimony.
When people ask for God to be visible, they don't understand what full divine visibility would actually require.
God is omnipresent in essence. Therefore, total divine visibility fundamentally requires omnipresent visibility.
If God reveals Himself to the fullest extent of His capacity, He must be visible everywhere, at all times.
In the room you closed the door to. In the moment you spent your life believing nobody was watching. A visible, omnipresent God is not majestic; He is psychologically catastrophic. Nobody wants this, not even the devout.
Look at Isaiah 6. The prophet sees merely the hem of God's garment filling the temple, not the full glory of God, just the overflow. His response? "Woe to me, I am undone." A partial glimpse unmade him completely.
God isn't after bland empirical agreement. James already ended that: the demons believe, and tremble.
Intellectual assent is a bar the devil clears daily.
God isn't running a census of the convinced; He is seeking genuine love. And genuine love requires genuine choice, which requires that the object of love not be overwhelming.
This is why women despise love bombing. A man who floods your psychological space until refusal becomes impossible isn't loving you, he is eliminating the conditions for love. The "yes" he extracts is engineered by exhaustion.
God does the exact opposite. He veils His glory precisely so that you retain the dignity of saying no. The love bomber makes himself so large that you have no choice. God makes Himself small enough that you do.
Which brings us directly to the Incarnation.
The Incarnation is God making Himself visible enough to be known, but small enough to be rejected without fuss.
It is the most precise solution to the most precise problem: God doesn't arrive as a sky-filling terror, but as a baby in a manger in a backwater town. You can walk past a carpenter from Nazareth. You cannot walk past the throne of Isaiah 6.
The Bible is already clear that every knee will bow, a day of compelled reality as certain as the sun. But God is not eager for a forced crowd. Right now, He is seeking the single, freely given return of a heart in love.
When an atheist asks why he cannot see God, he is asking a better question than he knows. The answer is not absence. The answer is restraint.
Now one can finally understand why Paul says INVISIBLE, and means it as highest acclaim. It is not a limitation, it is a mercy.
@DavidHundeyin How about the videos of harassment we see? What about the countries repatriating their citizens? What about the killing of foreigners/immigrants? Bots carried those as well?
How many bots have you examined to reach this sweeping conclusion?Not everything is a conspiracy my guy.
@Letter_to_Jack Wait until it takes her 5 adjournments to move a motion in Nigeria. Nigerian political cases no be for who good o, na for who know who ๐
@OgbeniDipo The reason why we will most likely not succeed as a nation is this issue of bigotry. Instead of attacking and countering facts, we're stuck in "why are you attacking my tribe and region" as though it were a country of its own.
Very sad indeed.
In our marriage ... we our marriage comes before our children. Because if our marriage falls apart, so does our children's world.
We aren't saying children arenโt important or that we neglect our children, but we are saying we prioritize our marriage over our children.
Children donโt just need a home, food, or love. They need to witness and experience love between a mother and father. They need to see and learn what a healthy marriage looks like.
@frankedoho Chelsea were deceived by pundits that they could win the league if they defeated Arsenal โthey used all their strength to play the match, now they are as tired as hell ๐. Pele title pretenders.
@yabaleftonline Her position is misconceived. The Constitution donates citizenship by birth to anybody either of whose parents is a Nigerian. That means mother or father.
Perhaps what she meant is that a Nigerian woman can't donate citizenship by naturalization to an Alien. Only men can.
@Wizarab10 They should go to court if they can, we got 38 million naira in damages against Fafem Haulage for an accident they caused. Our client survived the accident.