If God Exists, Why Doesn't He Prove It?

by Terry Scerine
(Escanaba, Michigan)

We've probably all heard this question: If God exists, why doesn't He prove Himself to us?

Every belief that each and every person has is based on only one of two things: It's either based on proof, or in the absence of proof it's based on a chosen belief. Any chosen belief without proof is a type of faith. Therefore, I conclude that every belief each of us holds is based either on hard proof or on faith.

Proof is irrefutable evidence of fact, and our belief about it is determined for us by the proof; where proof exists, a choice of belief about it is not required or even possible.

Simply put, if you can see and feel a brick wall, and it hurts when you bang your head on it, you have irrefutable proof that it exists; therefore, you can't choose to believe it doesn't exist, right? Well, you could if you really want to, I guess, but if you run full-speed toward it hoping you'll run right through it, you will likely be convinced otherwise.

Faith, on the other hand, is a choice of belief in the absence of hard, irrefutable proof. Where proof doesn't exist, we must choose what to believe by a decision of faith. And without having hard evidence of proof either way, it is nothing more than an educated guess at best.

For example, when I was taught as a child that the earth revolves around the sun (rather than the opposite), I chose to believe it by faith alone. I had to. Only observing it for myself from a fixed position in space would have been proof for me. Without the irrefutable proof of seeing it for myself, my belief about it is still based purely on my choice of faith in the information I've been given.

Now consider this: God is the genius of all genius. He created us for a reason, and I'm convinced at least one aspect of that reason is that He wants to be loved by us, His creation.

Love cannot be instilled, commanded or forced, otherwise it wouldn't be love. For example, if you could make a robot to act lovingly toward you, could it make you truly feel loved? Of course not. Even with this robot walking around telling you, ?I love you?, you would still not feel loved. Love must be the choice of a living entity who has the free will to choose whether to love you or not.

It's the same with God. God wants us to believe in him and love him by free-will choice. If God were to prove his existence to us so that we all had no choice but to believe in him, then it wouldn't be by our own free-will choice. We would be left with no reasonable choice but to believe in him. Then we would all be like robots, and robots are incapable of love. He wants us to believe in him and love him by our own decision or choice of faith alone.

And this is not news; it's no mystery. God's Word, the Bible, expressly states, "Without faith, it is impossible to please God." and "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Once we've been presented with the truth of God's existence and who He is, we are then free to choose whether to believe in Him and love Him or not.

We live in an age where the paranormal has become almost normal to us. Psychics, witchcraft, magic, astrology, ghosts, spirit guides, angel sightings, extraterrestrials, seances, premonitions, intuition, Ouija boards, tarot card readings, hauntings, visitations, vampires, werewolves, extra-sensory perception, intuition, astral projection, astrology, numerology, the Harry Potter phenomenon, and Satanism itself; any or all of these carry a certain weight of credibility as supernatural and spiritual phenomena among nearly everyone in our world today.

In such an age when it seems we are not only so willing, but actually so thirsty, to believe in the supernatural and spirit world, why is the concept of a one, true, most high God and Creator so hard to accept for so many?

But the beauty of it is that once you've make a decision of faith to believe in God and have made the choice to surrender to Him as your Lord, then He is free to go ahead and prove himself to you.

It was my experience many years ago that once I took a sincere leap of faith to believe IN God, surrendering myself to Him and trusting Him whole-heartedly with my life, then and only then did He begin to prove Himself to me, immediately and supernaturally!