God Plays "Hide and Seek" For Us

I love when there’s a synchronicity to what I read, such that disparate sources point to a single truth. 

Chemist Dave Collum said on a podcast that one time he was having a conversation with a high level government guy, former NSA, who mentioned a lot of “they did this” or “they wanted that”. And Collum said, “who is ‘they’?” He wanted names on things on some of the mysterious tyrannies of our time. And the NSA guy said, “as soon as I tell you a name, it’ll shut down thinking. You think, ‘oh Bill Gates did this’ and then thinking dies”. It’s no longer interesting or worthy of further exploration. Collum implied a lot of it is just groupthink that is un-orchestrated but runs in the elite circles. 

Collum said that has really stuck with him, that when you define something too well it shuts down thinking. What if the same is true with God? If he’s not mysterious, would we be as interested? 

I was reflecting also on an interesting piece by Steve Sailor in Taki magazine that talks about how the human mind craves 50/50 propositions. NFL betting is so popular, he says, because it’s such a razor close call with the point spreads, including all the micro bets that they’ve been able to determine are very close to 50/50. He quotes a physicist who wonders if God purposely made the universe so puzzling in order for us to be interested in it, to be fascinated by it, to wonder at it in all senses of the word.

I thought of that in connection with the Shroud of Turin and how it seems to show the moment of Resurrection. Is it a bit of a letdown to see this as proof? Does scientific proof take the trust and faith out and make things somehow less captivating? Does it make things too pat and shuts down thinking?

Faith in Jesus has seemed in some ways a 50/50 proposition (even if maybe only 20% of our population are strong believers). There is, on the one hand, plentiful evidence in favor of faith, beginning with the gospel testimony, the way the apostles willingly died to attest to its truth, and myriads of experiences nowadays, in terms of “Godincidents” to outright healing miracles. But there are also evidences against faith given how God cannot be touched and felt in a material way (except under the disguise of Communion), how much evil exists, and how death has not been overcome. 

A meditation I read today talks about how God plays “hide and seek”. There's the third chapter of Song of Songs. The parables in the gospels likewise illustrate this: some will get it, some will not, meaning it encouraging further thought. In John's gospel Jesus says, “you’ll see me awhile, then you won’t, and then you’ll see me again”. And there is Mary Magdalene and others who see the risen Christ but don’t recognize him until he prompts them to.  This strikes me as the best proof of all that “hiding and seeking” is advantageous to us.  Human psychology must have that need. 

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Another human need is the need for stories - which the gospels provide in spades.

There's a new book out that's "an invitation to allow the oldest stories—and the Greatest Story—to reshape our own.” From a review: 

"There’s an old Irish belief that if you aren’t wrapped in a cloak of story you will be unprepared for what the world will hurl at you. You remain adolescent at just the moment a culture worth its salt requires you to become a real, grown, human being.

In Liturgies of the Wild, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller and Christian thinker Martin Shaw argues that we live in a myth-impoverished age and that such poverty has left us vulnerable to stories that may not wish us well.”