Is God Hiding?

19 July 2026  Wisdom 12:13,16-19

“…and You gave Your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.” (Wisdom 12:19)  

There is an argument against God often made by atheists and other non-believers based on God’s alleged “hiddenness.” Of all the arguments against God, this is probably the weakest. When asked what kind of revelation would be sufficient for them, internet atheists often say silly things like, “If God would write in the sky, in hundred-story letters, ‘I Am Here!’, accompanied by a booming voice saying that out loud, I would believe God is real.” More sophisticated atheists, like J.L. Schellenberg, say that the lack of clear communication from God, about God, makes divine absence a coherent objection to faith.

The problem is not, and has never been, that God is somehow concealing Himself and His intentions for humanity. The problem is that some people simply don’t like the nature of the evidence that God has provided.

It is a weak argument because not only is the central fact of the New Testament the definitive and concrete revelation of God, but it is a revelation of God in exactly the form we are most likely to understand.

The New Testament says over and over again that God Himself took on human flesh, and entered human history the same way that everyone else does, viz., through a woman’s womb. He showed us His divine bona fides by casting out demons out in the open where everyone could see. He healed countless people, also out in the open, to the point where people who weren’t necessarily on His side would ask, “If he is not from God, how could he do stuff like this?” (cf. John 9:33). Even many atheists concede that His moral teaching, especially as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), which was delivered in public to hundreds of people, is indispensable to any modern theories of democracy, human dignity, and human rights. When people asked Him who He was, he spoke in the idiom they were most likjely to understand, viz., the language of the Hebrew Scriptures. When people asked Him what He wanted, He said He wanted to give them His own life (cf. John 6:51, 14.6), and He gave that to them under a form which, again, they were most likely to understand, viz. bread and wine. The people He gave it to first formed  a Church, and following His directions, they have been giving His life to others ever since. Access to it is as straightforward as it can be: repent and believe (cf. Wisdom 12:19). That very message is announced about half a million times all over the world, at every Mass, every day. The ancient world documented all of this more voluminously than any other event of antiquity. There are over 24,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts, some dating back to the late-first/early second century, making Jesus the most amply documented person in all of classical antiquity.

At no point was Jesus ever hiding the ball. He still isn’t. The Church either.

Hidden? Please.

The problem is not, and has never been, that God is somehow concealing Himself and His intentions for humanity. The problem is that some people simply don’t like the nature of the evidence that God has provided, and they have decided not to be satisfied until somebody discovers the videotape shot outside the tomb in the small hours of Easter morning, a ridiculous standard, the kind they expect of no other historical claim. We are living at a time when serious people, including serious scientists, are having serious conversations about a divine Mind, and its role in the emergence of sentient life. This is a time when fair-minded and compassionate people are examining the resources of religion, and their potential to deal with the crisis of meaning being experienced by the young all over the world. This is no time to be distracted by people who close their eyes and claim that relevant evidence isn’t really there.