Why Doesn’t God Just Talk to Me?

I am sure you, oh devout reader, have never asked this question. However, I often find myself wondering about this and until this morning, I unsatisfactorily ascribed to the following possible answer.

If we could talk to God like we talk to any other corporeal, sentient being, then there would be no need for faith in the Christian life. In fact if we could all just talk to God, then everyone would believe in God, and then Christians wouldn’t “have the corner” on God anymore. Can you image the ramifications: no more spiritual self help books, no more condemnation for not praying right, cats and dogs living together, pretty much mass hysteria!

Sarcasm aside (a tall order for me, in and of itself) although I have accepted the above answer until recently, it has never sat very well with me. Especially when you bring up the argument that if we could talk with God like we talk with any human, then everyone would believe in God, as if everyone believing in God were a bad thing. Last I heard, the whole reason Revelation hadn’t completed its, well…revealing, was to allow as many people as possible to enter into the Kingdom before the end of times. It is obvious that God is not trying to keep people out, as if Heaven was going to run out of room. I actually believe that in a perfect, imperfect world, God would bring all His children to Him. And if God audibly telling everyone that “True life and freedom is found in obedience to Me,” would do the job, God would have been doing that all along, but this hasn’t worked in the past and probably would not work now.

Look at Adam and Eve for example, God came to them in a dream and barely whispered that something bad might happen if they ate some fruit. Oh wait a second, it didn’t happen like that at all! It wasn’t some ambiguous leading that could be explained away as just bad tacos the night before; it was a direct command, as direct as your parents telling you not to cross the street alone when you were a child: Do not eat the fruit of this tree or you will die. Doesn’t get much more direct than that, but with only a little nudging, A&E decided doing there own thing would be better than doing things God’s way, thereby disobeying and eventually dieing. But you might say, “It was different back then, they were stupid, it would be completely different if God physically talked to us today.” I don’t think that is true though. For example, if I were to come over to your house and tell you I was your master, and from now on you are supposed to obey me, would you really be like, “Sweet! Sign me up!”. I know I wouldn’t if that situation happened to me, I would certainly question who was this who came into my house, and why should I listen to them. For me to really listen to what they were saying, I would need…oh what is that…oh yeah, Faith. And though this isn’t a perfect example, wouldn’t God speaking to us today, essentially be similar to this example? If we are to accept as truth, what the person in our home is saying to us, we have to have faith in them. I and many among me, wish that God would just talk to us, but I doubt we would listen with complete faith, and those that would listen, are probably the people that already have a rare clarity about the direction God has for their life, day to day.

So back to the original question. If it’s not a matter of making faith obsolete, then why does God not just talk to those of us who are willing to listen, and again I mean a direct and clear voice, not a tug or a whisper when you are being still. It was in my Secret Place time this morning (ironically being still and not contemplating this question) that God pretty much just flicked on the light switch for me, for why he doesn’t speak to people “mano a mano”. But first one more chunk of back story.

A couple years ago, Pastor Tim Lucas at Liquid Church taught a sermon on prayer, at least I think that’s what it was about. Anyway, in that sermon he mentioned a quote from one of C.S. Lewis’ works, regarding free will:

Most of the events that go on in the universe are indeed out of our control, but not all. It is like a play in which the scene and general outline of the story [our history] is fixed by the author [God], but certain minor details are left for the actors [us] to improvise.

I was able to track down this quote from Lewis as coming from God in the Dock for those that are interested (and want to get me a nice book for Christmas ). This analogy—that of us all being actors in a play where the overarching story is fixed, but we get to improvise on all kinds of things, like work, friends, hobbies—has really shaped my perception of free will. This morning however, God took that bit of wisdom and made me think about it in a completely new way. To this analogy, God connected for me that He is the director of the play, and then it hit me that that is why he doesn’t speak with us, as our fellow humans do. Imagine, what a play would be like (or a live TV show even), if on opening night the actors were constantly asking the director what to do, where to go, or what to say and for him to then be constantly responding back to them. The story would progress at a creep, and it would just be horribly awkward or frustrating to see.

Of course for us there is no audience watching “our play” (unless that’s what angels do when they are bored on a Friday night). But for me at least, this new perspective on Lewis’ analogy truly clarifies why God doesn’t “shoot the breeze” with us, in a physically satisfying way. But I would still love to be able to ask God what His favorite video/computer game is, and to hear Him say, as though he was in the same room, “Mechwarrior 2, of course”.

Please let me know if this post helped you at all or share with us what you do to hear God more clearly.