Question--

Why doesn't God give us Proof?

If I am right in thinking that the factual certainty of the TRUTH of Jesus's deity, and of the TRUTH of the existence of God, is something we do not have (since even the highest PROBABILITY of a claim/belief's truth does not necessitate the IMPOSSIBILITY of that claim/belief actually being false), then,

(1) why does God not provide us with PROOF?

There are a number of good issues here.

The first is the issue of CERTAINTY versus PROOF. If I understand your question (in the overall context of your email), you REALLY are looking more for 'certainty' (or more accurately 'confidence') than 'proof.'

Proof is generally considered to be

But neither of these are airtight, if you think about it.

Logical proofs depend on how accurate the use of the terms are. A famous case is Anselm's Ontological argument. It 'looks' perfect, but some people (including myself) don't trust it--we just seem to 'sense' that something is 'off base' about using 'existence' as a predicate, or that 'concept' is an adequately precise term to function in the proof. [My 'sensing' itself may be off-base, of course, since there are substantial professional philosophers who accept this argument--such as Alvin Platinga.]

In math, for example, there are MANY things of which we are CERTAIN but which cannot be PROVED. And, conversely, there are proofs that 'stand' for decades until later disproven. PROOF is not all it's cracked up to be--vis a vis CERTAINTY.

But what about (2)--its use as a means of demonstrating certainty to others. Well, obviously, the same issue is going to apply. If somehow there are individual differences as to how 'comfortable we feel' with the assumption of the logical system and how appropriate the terms are 'filled in', then others may have the same reservations about an argument WE feel very ' confident' of. If something seems 'off' about a proposed proof, we simply 'suspend judgment' on it!

I need to make one technical point here. WITHIN logical systems--specifically symbolic systems such as calculi--there is no real doubt about truth or falsity; it is literally defined in the system. The problem for me comes when we take the abstract symbols "P", "Q", etc. and fill those variables in with 'reality' words--Socrates, humanity, love, despair, person, sacrifice, justice, etc. The terms themselves may be sufficiently 'concrete' for us to live operationally and to discuss for greater working precision, but not (in my opinion) necessarily 'clear and distinct' enough to use within a calculus.

And, with premise-based proofs, we have the infinite-regress problem. If I accept proposition Q on the basis of premise P, why do I accept the proposition P? Won't I need ANOTHER premise R, that supports P (which in turn supports Q)? And so on...In epistemology this is known as the problem of the Infinite Regress. The justification (or evidence) chain either (1) regresses infinitely--never repeating itself; (2) loops back on itself--becoming circular; or (3) ends somewhere--at some foundational beliefs/evidences that do NOT 'need justification.' [For one of the better analyses of this problem that I have seen recently, see Tim McGrew's, The Foundations of Knowledge, Littlefield Adams Books: 1995]. Once you get to these 'basic beliefs' you have technical and epistemic 'certainty' (although your psychological certainty may be lower than that!).

However, they may be those among us that do not agree with where we 'stop the chain'. And hence, for these, our argument may be unconvincing. Would that in any way diminish OUR 'certainty'?--probably not. I have had people frustrated to death to me over my inability to see a 'perfectly clear and obvious' Magic Puzzle image in a picture of pure-blur to me! To them, it was as plain as the nose on their face--to me, it was the idle speculations of a fervent imagination.
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And let's not forget the difference between KNOWLEDGE and JUSTIFICATION (epistemic). I can know (with some serious psychological certainty) that I did NOT commit a crime that I am accused of, but be TOTALLY unable to prove that to others. I would KNOW for sure, but not be able to JUSTIFY that position to anyone (except those who trusted my witness--a testimony based argument).

Correspondingly, I can KNOW God without being able to JUSTIFY that claim of knowledge to others. And, curiously, to some others, my being able to describe the way He has worked in my life, my understanding of His character, what He values, what He loves, how He approaches problems, etc. would constitute PROOF to THEM that I truly KNEW the same Person they did! Accurate personal knowledge of someone's character generally constitutes evidence (but not proof--I could be an exceptional biographer, for example) that I KNOW a person.

But at the end of the day, God is much more interested in us KNOWING HIM, than in being able to provide argumentative-type evidence to others. Remember, the Christian is supposed to demonstrate the reality of God through our lives. The world is supposed to see 'Christ in us.' For many of us, that is EXACTLY how we came to see the character and confrontation of the Living and Loving Lord--through the lips and lives of those 'conformed to His image' (Col 3.10; 2 Cor 3.18).

Our Father DOES want us to live in 'quietness and confidence' but NOT to the point of constructing some Procrustean idol out of 'certainty' or 'proof'...

So, forget the technical ''proof" thing in this context--it is purely a means to an end, and only 'works' in certain situations.
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Now, on the other hand, let's talk about 'evidence for', 'confidence in', and probability/possibility of falsification.

Let's start with the case of an orphan. Let's take a common case of an orphan who has never seen (nor ever will see) his biological mother or father. Would we ever consider him sane if he took a position that "I have never seen my mother, therefore I cannot be sure I even had one?" Of course not. Irrespective of his personal lack of access to data, we expect him to know that his existence would not have even occurred without there being an actual mother! If I exist, then there ABSOLUTELY must be the 'ground' from which I came.

Now, some use this type of argument as evidence for God's existence. If WE (the universe) exist (or 'began to exist'--the Kalam argument), then ABSOLUTELY there must be an ultimate 'ground' from which we came. Although there may be some subtle differences between the two arguments, they are similar enough to gain ready assent from the vast majority of people. What this would amount to is an absolute epistemic certainty (almost self-refuting to deny: "the ground of my existence has never existed"!).

The Kalam argument goes like this:

A. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
B. The Universe began to exist.
C. Therefore, the Universe has a cause (outside of itself).

There is a REALLY strong probability that this argument is air-tight, but how much psychological certainty does it give you? For those that have studied this argument inside and out, it probably carries a higher PSYCHOLOGICAL certainty for them than it does for ME. But, regardless of that, it has the EXACT SAME level of epistemic certainty. [For discussion of this argument, see Reasonable Faith and Reason & Religious Belief]

The reason I mention this is that I get the impression you are looking for psycho-certainty PRIMARILY (and that you think epistemic certainty of a certain sort is the only way to attain that.). My point here is that this kind of psycho-certainty is a progressive thing anyway--it is false to conceive of it as an 'either you have it or you don't'. It is much more akin to a word like 'confidence.'
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Now, on to more of your (1)...

[An omnipotent and omniscient God IS able to find such means as to carry out such an endeavor without necessarily resorting to full, face to face, therefore physically destructive to human vessels, revelation]. This would not neutralize our free will, neither would it necessarily entail an accompanying responsibility for martyrdom (angels and select humans have been said to have been offered such revelatory proof; some angels proceeded to "disobey", and not all said humans martyred).

[First let me recommend the work by William Alston on Perceiving God and the critique of it in Reason & Religious Belief.]

Subject to the issues I raised above about narrow definitions of 'proof', He probably has. If 'proof' itself is simply a FORM OF EVIDENCE, then God has provided a number of such supports. The Kalam-type arguments are probably premise-based proofs, the 2nd version of Anselm's ontological proof (or Platinga's modification of it) are probably premise-based proofs, the "appeal to design" are ostensibly-based proofs, and the vast amount of high-psycho-certain data about the resurrection of Christ would have AT LEAST AS much persuasive power as the premise-based arguments. [Indeed, in the history of skeptics-turned-believers, the dominant persuader has been the historical arguments.]

And then when you couple these 'external' or 'public' types of arguments with the 'internal' or 'intersubjective' types of arguments, one might be amazed at the extent of 'argument' God has given us. The arguments from moral notions, from regularity in nature, from the dominance of natural good over natural evil (cf. Acts 14.17: Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy."), from some 'inner sense' of God that responds infallibly to the witness of a created universe (Rom 1.19f: since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.), etc.--these are 'proofs' that 'work' because there is an IMAGE of GOD still within humanity. One might train skeptical arguments on each of these, but between the inner-contradiction of skepticism (e.g. "how can you be SURE you have ever been mistaken?!") and the 'stubbornness' of our inner responses to external reality, these 'proofs' stay with us. This range of arguments, proofs, evidences are strangely comprehensive: there are arguments for the "rationalists" among us (e.g. Anselm, Kalam), for the empiricists (e.g. the resurrection of Christ, the fulfillment of prophecy), for the mystical (e.g. inner religious experience, when correlated to external factors), for the idealists (e.g. appeals to design, teleology, and patterns), for the existentialists (e.g. God as the ONLY meaning-authenticator, URP-type arguments), for the pragmatists (e.g. anthropological arguments, the importance of absolute moral structures)...God has reached down into EVERY apparent area of discourse and investigation--to meet with us...

Strangely enough, the one area that is MOST ambiguous--personal appearances of the numinous--He has used only sparingly! A divine appearance (even if corrected for its devastating effect on life-forms, as you note) would NOT do the trick--it is TOO susceptible to counterfeiting. The NT, for example, is very aware of this--cf. 2 Cor 11.14: And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.. If, as may well be the case, malignant, super-human intelligences exist in the universe (e.g. evil angels), which could appear in similar 'convincing' forms--these experiences (in many ways having the same ambiguity as that of numinous experience-events), would be of limited revelatory usefulness.

Indeed, even 'miracle' (approximating a divine manifestation in epistemic vividness!) is not 'compelling'. The parable told by Jesus in Luke 16.19ff makes the point that if the people in the story did not believe the writings of Moses, then they would not believe on the basis of a resurrection either! This can also be seen in the miracle of the raising of Laz from the dead in John 11&12--some of the bystanders believed in Jesus on the basis of the miracle, while OTHERs went and told the rulers, who plotted to kill Laz again!

And, as might be predicted from the above point, God's use of the miraculous was VERY rare and ALWAYS within a much broader context. For example, when John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to ask if He were the Messiah (Mt 11), Jesus did NOT refer to isolated miracles, but rather to His miracles IN THE CONTEXT of MESSIANIC PROPHECY (Is 29-35-41, cited in the Matthew passage). It was NOT isolated religious experiences/events (which can be notoriously difficult to interpret) but a VERY LARGE and UNMISTAKABLE pattern of such events.

It is probably not such a big issue to God that a 'miracle' overrides our will (although I obviously believe this can and does occur), but rather that it is ineffective at really producing COMMUNICATION and CONFIDENCE for cognitive creatures like us!

God seems to concentrate on:

• the cognitive (e.g. inspired scripture),
• pattern (e.g. cycles in nature, personal interaction in the life of the believer, changed lives of the apostles), and
• time-based (e.g. fulfilled prophesy) arguments

Unlike the personal, overpowering appearance method, these other means of God's confronting us REALLY treats us as responsible epistemic agents. (BTW, I am not at all convinced that a non-destructive visible appearance of God COULD still leave our will's 'free' to reject that reality!)

(2) If believing in God after seeing him narrows the issue down to acceptance of his SOVEREIGNTY whereas desiring, seeking, wishing for him and accepting his LOVE-concept glorifies him due to the magnificence of his loving essence, why, nevertheless, doesn't he confirm the truth of what we are hoping for (his existence) now that we HAVE accepted, and loved him?

He does. The nature of the Christian experience of God is that of a Father/child, Lord/follower, Counselor/seeker. The nature of daily interaction with this invisible Person generates an ever-increasing sense of His reality and presence. After twenty-five+ years of seeing the patterns of Scripture apply in my life, in seeing prayers answered and anti-answered, in seeing my plans thwarted for the best, etc.--His reality to me is AT LEAST AS certain to me as my own. One of the major functions of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the life of the New Testament believer is that of mediating confidence and increasing certainty of our relationship/experience with/of our Father (cf. I John 2.20-27; I Cor 2). This is NOT something important that God just seemed to 'forget about'! He has made explicit provision for it--both from an abundance of external data as well as from internal processing of our personal experiences. "That you may know the certainty of what you have been taught..." is the prologue of the Gospel of Luke--there's a message in there for us!

The promise of Jesus in John 14.21 is interesting in this connection: Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." 22 Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, "But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?" 23 Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. . Notice that Jesus does not actually give the reason to Judas, but simply restates that the display of the presence of God will be to those who love Him. In other words, 'certainty' of God's living presence IN ONE's LIFE is a function of the quality of the relationship. (This is in addition to the evidence/proof issues discussed above.)

This psycho-certainty IS available to the believer, and grows as the relationship with the Living Lord deepens.

(3) This question runs along the same lines with "(2)": Paul says "living is Christ and dying is profit". I can live according to the first part of the sentence because I do not need to KNOW that Jesus's story is true in order to love him and conform to the magnificence involved in the "story" concerning him. But I do need to know if he exists if I am to TRUST him (he cannot fulfill his promise of eternal life if he does not exist). So, how can I trust him? How can James call me "double minded" for doubting when there is legitimate room for doubt (even a 2% chance of nothingness after death is big enough source of worry to one who is dying? And we all are dying ever since we were born.)? How can I see death as "profit" when I have not a 100% certainty?

A couple of points here:

• I think I disagree with your statement that you can 'love him' WITHOUT knowing He exists. I would argue that you might love the 'image of Him' or something like it, but that you could not actually love Jesus the historical person WITHOUT being convinced of His existence.
• I tend to approach this kind of issue with the question of 'which data is the most stubborn?' I learned a long time ago in problem, puzzle, and mystery solving (not to mention, philosophy and method of science!) to START with the MOST 'firm' data and THEN move to the more 'fuzzy' data. The data elements that could not be 'explained away' or were the most resistant to re-interpretation were always the starting points of theory construction (and later, for theory validation in public arenas).

In this case, I find (as a Christian skeptic) it MUCH easier to determine whether Jesus could be trusted, THAN IT IS to determine if there is life after death (using pre-death methods, of course)! The second question reeks of slippery metaphysics, definitional problems, clashes of evidence and interpretation of NDE's, etc. The 1st question is much more a question of history and human sciences.

So, with the New Testament evidence being what it is, I consider it so INCREDIBLY MORE EASIER to decide whether Jesus WAS from 'the Other Side' and accordingly, had access to data about life-after-death which I could NEVER gain myself. To decide whether Jesus was indeed God-in-human-form and rose from the dead and told us the things He did--IS MUCH SIMPLER a task than the other question. I can sort through manuscript evidence for what He actually said, I can analyze the psychology and social aspects of the resurrection appearances to, and claims of, the apostles; I can notice the lack of appropriate rebuttal in history. In short, I have SO MUCH MORE DATA about the Person and claims of Christ than I have about any OTHER figure in ancient history--not to mention than the question of 'life after death'.

So, for my methodological orientation, I FIRST evaluate "Jesus". IF He ends up being God, then whatever HE SAYS about the life-after-death question, has VASTLY more bearing on that question than even my sharpest theoretical analysis. I may have trouble understanding the details or implications of His comments, but if He warns me about some horrific experience 'over there' and comforts me with an 'I go to prepare a place for you' (John 14), I get the basic message!

• Closely related to this issue of 'deciding' is the issue of 'legitimate room for doubt'. 'Doubt' is truly not a real issue here. [The James passage you refer to concerns prayer--not God's existence or Jesus' trustworthiness.] If the probability of Jesus' claims being true is 99.99%, then His statements about life-after-death carry the same weight. Now, I consider the probability of the alternate explanations for the Jesus-as-God scenario (e.g. alternate theories of the resurrection, alternate theories of the NT, alternate theories of the birth/message of the early church, alternate theories of fulfilled prophecy) to be SO VASTLY LOW as to be negligible. So, in the situation concerning Jesus, we are confronted with:
1. The positive evidences for the Jesus-as-God scenario are strong: no time for legendizing, no public rebuttals, changed lives of the apostles/disciples/family of Jesus, the empty tomb, earliest data portraying Jesus as deity (by harshly monotheistic Jewish Christians!), etc.
2. Alternate explanations of the above are negligible in probability.
3. The "Best" alternate explanations of each of the above 'cancels out' the 'best' explanations of OTHERS. E.g. a hysteria/hallucination theory of the post-resurrection appearances undermines a belief that the apostles would be shrewd/practical enough to engineer a theft of the body, out from under the noses of both the Roman and Jewish authorities...
4. The probabilities are not even close. It is not a matter of the pro-Jesus complex of arguments at 51% and the anti-Jesus complex of arguments at 49%; it is more like the pro-Jesus at 98%, and the anti-Jesus at 2%.
5. In the face of these numbers, one is ENTIRELY justified in selecting the pro-Jesus hypothesis. Indeed, to reject it is to saddle one with (1) explaining away ALL the powerful pro-data; and (2) constructing plausible and coherent supports for the anti-Jesus complex. I might point out that #2 has become increasingly difficult over the years, as archeology and mss. sciences have increasingly supported the historicity of the NT.
6. It is important to realize that one is NOT justified in a case like this (90 vs. 2%) to SUSPEND JUDGMENT. The numbers are simply NOT CLOSE ENOUGH to make this a responsible or ethical position!
7. Remember, problems exist in EVERY position, in EVERY field, in EVERY community. What is important to realize is that if one has 99 arguments supporting position A, and has ONE argument AGAINST position A, THEN it is more reasonable to 'suspend judgment' on the ONE argument (while holding on to the 99), THAN IT IS to accept the ONE (while denying the 99)! There is an order-of-magnitude difference in 'rationality' of those two conflicting positions.
• Where this leads us to is the distinction between 'legitimate' room for doubt and 'theoretical doubt'. If the numbers above are even remotely close, then there is no 'legitimate' room for doubt--only a sterile 'theoretical doubt' of the same gossamer substance and power of the self-refuting positions of "how do you know YOU exist?" or "How do you know we can think?"...purely a parasitic and pathological situation that should simply be ignored.
• Let me give you one other example. In a scientific assessment on the origin of life theories, [The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, Thaxton, Bradley, Olsen; Philosophical Library:1984] there are two probability calculations of note. On page 3, research by Murray Eden of MIT showed that the complexity of the biochemical world could not have originated by chance even in a span of 10 billion years (with generous assumptions!). And on page 146, the authors calculate that ONE of the tiny steps in that process--the production of just ONE protein of 101 amino acids--had a probability of only 10 to the minus 45 power--in 5 billion years. Now, would that be 'legitimate room to doubt' that life did NOT spring from random chance? Of course not! Would it be grounds for 'theoretical doubt'? Maybe. (but the MIT research may even remove THAT possibility.)

(4) Hebrews 11:1 says (if my Koine Greek is not too rusty) "Faith is the SUBSTANCE ("hupostasis") of what we hope for, the TESTABLE, INSPECTABLE, CONTROLLABLE, CRITIQUEABLE EVIDENCE ("eleghos"; also found in John 16:16; 2 Tim. 4:2) of what we do not SEE (hence the importance of reason, hence Thomas's lack of faith being not due to reason but rather due to empiricism - why touch the scars of someone who has already walked through a solid door and whose presence is seen by all those present, and who died three days before?). Isn't this why we read "HOPE..." [NOT "faith"] "...that is seen is no hope at all; for who hopes for what he already has?"? In other words, while eternal life has to commence after death if I am to HOPE for it, don't I need to KNOW the truth-value of the claims concerning it in order to not doubt for what I hope for (for what I hope for to have "SUBSTANCE"?)?

This is a considerably different issue, but a very important one. Let's look at it from a number of angles.

• The 'physical' analogy sorta falls short here. God is a spirit (John 4) and the Father of our spirits (Heb 12.9), and our relationship is said to be in 'spirit and truth' (John 4). As an omnipresent One, He IS with us everywhere (externally) and for believers (internally--through the agency of the Holy Spirit).


With our kids, we can only be external--so the possibility of intimacy is limited thereby. But with God, the possibilities of deep communion, mystical experience, and even intra-consciousness conceptual communication exists!

• Likewise, the omnipresence exceeds our physical abilities. I could not hug my kids every minute of the day even back then. But even when they were in the playpen, and I was studying at the table in the same room, I was there with them. I am bound to physical limitations, and so when I had to travel, I WAS absent. But God is NEVER so--He is always in the 'room' with us. This is a serious Father!

In considering this, it dawned on me that a hug is simply a means to an end--that of impartation of a sense of acceptance, of comfort, of affirmation, etc. But I have also observed that as we get older these things can be imparted WITHOUT physical hugs per se--sometimes with greater intensity and profundity. Acceptance can be communicated with a smile, or a letter, or a membership card, etc. Affirmation can be communicated by simple recognition, a public ceremony, or a look in the eye. Comfort can be communicated by simple sympathy, listening, or empathetic emotion. In other words, my Father imparts these to me on a regular basis WITHOUT any physical manifestation--although sometimes he sends someone my way to hug me.
• But, lest I mislead you (further, no doubt!), I DO BELIEVE that I receive 'spiritual hugs' at times. I have experiences about once a month or so in which I have a quasi-mystical experience--sometimes in worship at church, sometimes in prayer at home, sometimes in simply reflecting upon God's involvement in my life. There is no predictability to it, but there are simply those times when the presence of God is overwhelming. In my case, these experiences are only about 3-5 minutes long. (Which is a good thing--they are often so intense that I feel like I am going to burst or something like that--I know it sounds weird, but it is a very real aspect of my interaction with my living and active God.)
• But even when I WAS in the room with the kids, they might not have even been aware/conscious of my presence--EXCEPT WHEN NEEDED. They would play/babble contentedly, but if hunger or pain raised its ugly head, they knew exactly where I sat! Similarly, many of us don't 'look at God' all the time, but we know exactly where to find our Father when we need His intervention, His comfort, or His interaction with us.
• In any event, my kids--with all their experience of me--could not have been able to articulate the extent and robustness of a 'physical' presence. In the same way, I am not sure at all that we could delineate the nature of God's 'spiritual' presence, as real and robust as it is. The fact that I was not 'in their face' 100% of the time was not a deterrent to our growing relationship.
• What seemed to be the most important to my kid's development was the EXTENT and INTENSITY of my ENGAGEMENT in their lives and development--not such much how much 'visual experience' they had of me. (I don't see the visual aspect to be any more or less significant than any other communication channel. Children who are blind or deaf do not thereby lose access to an interacting parent.) Interaction can take so many forms, and vary over the range of life.
• The point I made above about how well the kidlets could have articulated my physical presence applies even tighter when we get to the 'literally talking' phrase. From BEFORE MY KIDS WERE BORN, I 'talked' to them in full-bore, adult, peer conversation. Even when they didn't have a clue what I was saying, I spoke and reasoned and argued and drew implications and told jokes...would the fact that they could NOT even RECOGNIZE that as 'literal talking' have disproven that I HAD BEEN TALKING to them? Of course not.

In the same way, I am convinced that God is pouring streams of communication upon us all the time, but that we have to 'grow' and 'learn' before we can organize the disparate pieces of the message into a communicating whole. Just as the infant must somehow learn to 'collect' the various sound waves and facial gestures and tonal nuances into the semantic unit "Sunshine, don't drink the bathwater--it's not healthy for you, and Daddy loves you", so too we need to learn God's ways (largely from the Family History known as the Bible, and from watching the interactions with the older siblings--other Christians) so that we can 'collect' the internal unplanned thought-streams and the sudden vividness of specific verses in scripture and the bits of unsolicited advice and the 'odd' little coincidences and the subtle shifts in our valuation of elements of our life, into the semantic unit "Sunshine, don't be arrogant anymore--it's not healthy for you, and Father loves you."

Our inability to 'see' a lot of God's 'literal talking' is NOT an indication of God's silence(!), but much more a reflection of our own development state.

• If one of my kids had, at the wise age of two years, somehow communicated to me that she or he would only consider one-syllable words, in flat-intonation, in face-to-face contexts, without background noise to be THE ONLY REAL COMMUNICATION, I would have had quite a chuckle. The reality of communication is that it is incredibly diverse and robust and fluid and self-correcting and versatile. For us to narrowly define 'visually-accompanied and audibly-sensible' communication as the ONLY (or even the most important) means of 'true' communication is not only Procrustean, but amusingly toddler-style! (Although I have no doubt done this--esp. in those times I asked God to 'show me' something I needed to know, but I restricted the MEDIA that He could use. He seemed to go 'out of His way' to teach me not to "box Him in" with such requests--often getting me in position providentially to 'see' the answer in a completely different medium that I 'allowed' as legitimate (or efficient or whatever I used as the criteria of the day!).)
• Curiously enough, with all of this said, of the three primary means of God's interactive communication to us (through other Christians, through providential correlation/alignment of patterns of our experience with biblical texts/patterns, and through internal/idiomatic acts of consciousness--attention, creation, discernment, evaluation, etc.) , TWO of these have external manifestations. "Other Christians" often have visible and audible characteristics, "Bible" has a visual component, and "Consciousness" has a vividly interior experience base. God DOES seem to be somewhat concerned about the 'tangibility' of His communication--which oddly enough, would NOT be served well by unique audible disclosures!
• It may also be instructive to scan the history of His communication to humanity and check for 'statistical patterns'.
1. Visible manifestation with glory and sound: very rare--Moses, Baptism of Jesus, Mount of Transfiguration, Jn 12.28, etc.
2. Visible manifestation through the Angel of YHWH or Spirit, with sound--Mostly in Patriarchs, Moses, once in Joshua, a little in David; not much else (cf. Pentecost and Baptism of Jesus for the Spirit).
3. Manifestations through dreams--much more often (OT: foreign kings, some prophets; NT: magi, birth narratives of Jesus)
4. "Word of the Lord" through prophets--VAST MAJORITY OF THE MESSAGE!
5. God's character shown through Jesus--the preeminent medium for personal knowledge! (Heb 1.1: In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being,). To see Jesus is to be spoken to directly by GOD!--the VAST MAJORITY of the content of God's work and plans for us.

The interesting thing about this discussion for me, is how 'strange' the question seems to me now. My waking life is spent in vivid awareness of God's consciousness in my life. I am never aware of being away from Him--even in those occasional moment when I wish to 'flee from Him'--Psalm 139! I live in an incessant stream of in-audible dialogue with Him, in which His responses are increasingly obvious over time, and in which my sensitivity to His patterns of disclosure grows. I am not at all sure how this transpires, but I know that my invisible "Room-mate" is constantly leaving messages coded ONLY for my eyes: Love notes, work assignments, instructions, moral comments, encouragement, rebukes, 'directed readings'.

The point of all this is simply this: God's means of communicating with us is substantially more robust and developed than our familial ones, but are nonetheless VERY cognizant of our needs as human beings.

(6) Isn't happiness different from pleasure? Isn't happiness dependent on the Giver and not on the gift? Am I happy because of the life-style and education my parents provided for me or because of the fact that they EXISTED and LOVED me? Would I be equally happy if I were an orphan and won all those provisions and education through the lottery? Why would my heavenly Father, then, leave me guessing, studying apologetics and crying bitter tears in my pleas for his appearance, instead of HIMSELF saying (not through some guy who said that what he had written was a prophesy from God) "Fear not for I am with thee; be not dismayed for I am thy God..."? Where is my Father (or, as the case may well be, where am I messing up?)?

While I can absolutely sympathize with this anguish (since I personally experienced the same crisis in my college days!), I must urge you to not set restrictions on HOW God delivers His information to you. Remember, one of the major lessons He is trying to teach us is that we are COMMUNITY and that we NEED ONE ANOTHER (I Cor 12-14; Eph). This means, that for people who perhaps tend to be individualistic (or in my case, reclusive!), He will AVOID answering directly, and DELIBERATELY put the message in the mouth of a fellow Christian--JUST TO TEACH us this lesson!

And, He HASN'T given you His gifts instead of Himself--indeed, the gifts don't come til later! He HAS given Himself to you--your attitude toward Him, in spite of the bondage imposed on you by these definitions of 'proof' and 'communication', shows His work in your heart. You are surrounded by His overtures of love and certainty, and indwelt by an element in your consciousness that is prepared to develop psycho-certainty (I Cor 2.10ff) as you 'look' for His messages in your experience. We are to 'grow' in knowledge, and with that comes the depth of knowing God interpersonally. The gift of the Holy Spirit was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to meet many of the needs you have articulated here. Cf. John 14.16f: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever -- 17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit (elsewhere called the 'Spirit of the Father' and 'the Spirit of Jesus'!) so we would not experience our spiritual lives--the deepest aspect of human existence!--without a family.

I also know that He really goes much slower than we typically like, in doing His work in our lives. Your tears of anguish and searching for answers may take some time to work through, but the process itself will grow your depth and sensitivity to His 'still, small voice'. He has indeed given us "everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him" (I Peter 1.3)--this is PERSONAL knowledge, but one that is enlightened, informed, and enlivened by His self-disclosure to us of His values, His loves, His way of viewing reality.

Hope this helps,
glenn miller (4/21/96) 
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