Many are the people, both believers and undecided, who ask the seemingly obvious question: why doesn’t God just make us believe? Why doesn’t he just open up the skies and talk to us directly in some big and distinct voice?  Why doesn’t he just make himself visible to all people in the world?

These are interesting questions and one cannot be criticized for asking them.  In order to answer them however, we need to look at these questions from different perspectives and see why it is that God does not choose to do this.

Firstly, we need to ask the question; why is it that God wants us to believe in him in the first place?  If God is truly God, then he does not need anything.  This is true.  So we can safely say that God does not NEED us to believe in him, but he seems to want us to.  Why?  Well, I think he wants us to believe in Him for our own benefit.  God knows that true happiness and peace can only come from him because it is something beyond our comprehension, and power to achieve.  Amongst all human endeavors, peace seems to be the hardest thing to achieve.  This is perhaps most evident in our own lives and the struggle with our own self’s, not to mention the never ending arguments that seems to make their way into all human relationships, even within our families.  Many are the families that are divided amongst each other, and divorce is not an uncommon thing in our society.  Peace in our community on the other hand seems only possible by force and with the presence of a powerful legal system and law enforcement officers who enforce it.  This peace is an enforced peace!  Not a peace that comes from the heart and is the natural consequence of our communities, and our world.  So first of all, God wants us to believe in him because he wants us to be at peace.
 

Peace is also the result of harmony which in turn is the source of happiness and rest.  There is no such thing as true happiness without harmony and peace.  So happiness is also something God wants us to have.  

 Perhaps most importantly however is love.  Love is perhaps the most crucial ingredient for life.  The world was created because of love, and it is only when love becomes supreme that the world will finally reach its purpose and fulfillment.  True love shares and being perfect love, God chose to share his own nature with us and gave us the gift which is life.  This gift however has become a burden for many, and speaks nothing but pain and misery.  Love is the cure, and God desires that we believe in him because he is the source of this love, and only through him do we have a chance of realising it in our world.  All other forms of love are inferior, when compared to His love.  God wants us to believe in him therefore, because he knows that only through him can we achieve true love, happiness and peace in our world. 

So after saying all this, are we any closer to answering our original question as to why God does not open the sky and show us his mighty power.  Well, we can subsequently ask the question, would this achieve the goal?  Would this fulfill the reasons why God wants us to believe in him?  Well, if God opened the sky and spoke with an earth shattering noise demanding that we believe in him, then I think it would not.  Our belief in him would be nothing but an act of fear, and the wrong type of fear. 

God revealing himself in this fashion would not lead to the kind of belief that we need to transform our lives.  If God opened the sky and pointed his mighty hand in our direction, we would be brought to our knees out of fright, not reverence.  We would not worship him because we are convinced of his loving power, but rather acknowledge him simply out of fear and trembling.  This is not the type of reverence that changes the world.  We ask God to continuously reveal himself to us through these material means, but little do we know that such revelation is contrary to the actual purpose for our belief in God.  Such revelations would not reveal the intangible love which is God, but only the tangible power which we foolishly demand of him.

God reveals himself to us through human encounters and through the interactions of our daily lives.  He tries to nurture love in our hearts through the people around us and the magnificent nature of his creation.  Love is not something which can be instantaneously forced into a human heart.  It is not something that will come with an earth shattering vision of God.  Love is something that takes nurturing and time.  To learn the ways of love, we must be constantly searching for it in our world and doing everything in power to make it present.  We make it tangible.  It is contrary to the very nature of love to force it on someone.  

So it is not just a question of simply believing in an all powerful God.  If it were this simple, I am sure God would open the sky and simply tell us he is there.  This is not what is important about our belief in God.  What is important is the reasons we give to it.  If we simply give the same reason as believing in something visible, then God becomes nothing but another object.  God is not an object in this sense.  God is a dynamic reality that shapes the way we feel and act.  A belief in God is a belief in the redeeming power of love in our world.  Love must lead us to God, and there can be no love without humility and forgiveness. 

The best way for God to communicate himself to us is through the human language of love.  Not as an object or simply an idea.  The best way to do this would be to use human language in all its different facets.  In other words, the best way to reveal love to a human is to become human and speak a language which is intricately part of our very constitution.  This is why God chose to become human, so that we could identify with everything that is us, through him.  He revealed himself using the best language we have, our very own humanity.  In Jesus we have a perfect manifestation of what human love should look like and what we need to be in order to achieve peace in our world and in our lives.  And this is ultimately the reason why God wants us to believe in him.  

         

See also Part I