The Search for God Page 5.5.2
God’s Non-Verbal Communication
In a previous section, we discussed God’s challenge of non-verbal communication. Many religious people call this concept the general revelation. That is, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1a, KJV).
While I agree that through science and philosophy, and the things we know, we can get a sense that God should exist and of the attributes God should have, we have not gotten to God as a personal being.
The general revelation
We want to obtain answers to questions of death, evil, and injustice. General revelation does not provide enough information about God’s moral law to logically deduce the answers to these questions.
But if God exists and he has made mankind like science suggests and has instilled in man moral law, a conscience, a sense of right and wrong, then God is non-verbally speaking. He wants us to know and understand. So to me, that suggests God wants humankind to know him and understand who he is, what he wants from us, and answer our questions.
Through all this research and reason, I see a being that wants to communicate and who desires some type of relationship. Therefore, God should provide a special revelation, provide specific information to fill in our gaps of knowledge and understanding.
God understands that humans only live a short life span and then die. This means that God, if and when he communicates, must somehow sustain the knowledge he provides. The natural and moral laws are hardwired into the cosmos and human beings, yet the solution and knowledge we seek have escaped our ability to know definitively.
I like to relate information back to our understanding of communication or communication as a parent, a perfect parent, and how we should communicate, not how we do communicate.
How should parents communicate with their children? As a child, did you like it when your parent yelled and screamed at you, or did you prefer the patient, kind parent who explained information? The honest ones among us prefer the patient, kind parent.
What child liked when their parent was absent or disappeared or was silent on topics? Such as a young woman having her menstrual period without ever being told this event was going to happen. We begin to formulate an idea of a perfect parent.
Most of us grew up in households where we were not completely happy, sometimes we don’t even know why. Afraid of our parents, where silence was expected and enforced. Even in fairly happy households, children say I loved 95% of what my parents did but I want to improve by doing ______.
For those like me, who grew up without a father, we vowed to be there for our children. I didn’t have a role model, I didn’t understand what to do or how to treat a woman. My stepfather was distant and aloof. So when I became a father, I vowed to be engaged, I would talk to my children.
I would try to instruct them on what I think are important issues in life. If God created us, which science suggests he did, then why? What was his purpose? You see, the reason and the purpose of communication arise from our nature.
God’s nature is all-knowing, timeless, and all-good. For this type of being, the purpose of God is for good things and knowing the impact of his and our decisions. We struggle because we are not those things and we see so much evil in the world that we get angry at our parents for allowing such a world to exist.
And again, we have to resist the temptation to deny God’s existence based upon the question we want answered. It is like saying, “I won’t believe in God because humans die.” We are working out God’s nature and attributes based on the non-verbal communication of the cosmos and then attempting to find out if this being spoke to provide us an answer.
Multiple Communication
Therefore, based on the idea of a parent who created life and has provided non-verbal communication through what has been made, any communication would seem to be repeated in attempts.
For if you look at how we developed this idea of who God should be, it is based upon multiple factors of logic, experience, human nature, and the physical universe itself. Communication, as mentioned previously, could be done in numerous ways, many that we might not even expect.
But the one thing such a being should most reliably demonstrate during communication is to speak multiple times. What do we mean by multiple times? We expect multiple communications with a single person, but I mean multiple people.
I would expect God to communicate to numerous generations, attempting to reach all humans. We don’t know God’s purpose, will, or desire with the specifics, or how he might communicate or with who, but we should expect him to communicate with multiple people.
Multiple communications with people show God’s ability, power, and care, and dare I say, even love. Does the very desire and purpose to communicate demonstrate love? Look at the questions we are trying to answer.
- Why do we die?
- Why is there evil?
- Why is there injustice?
The second two questions deal with morality, right and wrong. These issues deal with judgment, but with judgment, we also expect compassion and understanding of our situation. Again, we are placing burdens upon who we expect God to be based on what we know about humanity and the fact that he made us and knows us.
A being who made humans and desires and purposes, communicating with all knowledge should have some degree of love, care, and compassion—qualities that we associate with a perfect parent. Multiple communications demonstrate these qualities.
A single communication seems deficient. Multiple communications demonstrate what we would expect. We have not delved into the content of communication, just the fact about how God should communicate. If we find God, we will begin to deal with the content of communication in the next few books.
Right now, we are trying to filter out the noise of competing truth claims about who God spoke to. Maybe God spoke in multiple religions. If that is the case, we will examine all the religions that meet these criteria.
What Next?
- What is the crucial concept?
- The attributes we ascribe to God are akin to the perfect parent.
- Why is that significant?
- A good parent would ensure that multiple communications would be provided.
- If you agree, the next steps.
- If you disagree, please consider reading.
References and Links
- Christianity – The attributes God
- Christian Biblical Church of God – God as a personal being
- Bible Info – If God exists