If God made His existence undeniable, would faith still mean anything at all?
I found my old post on Threads from October 2024, and I decided to develop it into a longer article with my better understanding, a clearer view, and additional questions. This is also my way of coping with my recent existential crisis while writing another essay on mutual aid. Enjoy!
Why doesn’t God reveal Himself?
Think of it this way: If God showed up in a tangible form, it would override human choice and free will entirely. When someone presents undeniable evidence in front of us, we have no choice but to accept it, regardless of our inner beliefs. If God wanted us to simply obey without any personal journey, sure, God could appear right before our eyes. But wouldn’t that make faith in God an obligation rather than a choice?
If God were as undeniable as gravity, belief would not be trust but reflex. Faith would no longer be a moral act, but a reaction to overwhelming evidence. The possibility of doubt is what makes belief meaningful rather than automatic.
By not revealing Himself directly, God allows us to seek, question, and explore freely, letting faith be something we truly choose, rather than something forced.
If there’s truly one God, why are there many types of God across various religions? Religion is likely a human creation. How can we know which God and religion are true?
Consider it like this: People have tried to understand the same ultimate reality or truth through their unique lenses. Cultures, languages, and even individual experiences shape how we comprehend existence and meaning. Different religions and perspectives emerged as people tried to make sense of the vastness of life. But if we look deeply, we often find that many religions share common core values, like kindness, justice, and seeking inner peace. So rather than viewing religion as a single way to access God, think of it as different paths aiming for the same essence.
Resonance alone does not prove truth, but it can open a person to seeking it seriously. The existence of multiple religious expressions does not automatically mean all are equally true. It may mean that human understanding is partial, while ultimate reality is singular.
The “true” path for a person might then be the one that genuinely resonates with them, that uplifts them, and that encourages a profound connection to something higher.
The existence of multiple interpretations of God doesn’t negate God’s oneness; it reflects the diversity of human experience.
In Abrahamic theology, many people grasp fragments, while revelation clarifies. But still, does it negate God’s oneness?
If God truly exists, why is chaos or suffering allowed on Earth? (like robbery, genocides, oppression, colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, bigotry, etc.)
This is a classic question. Imagine a world where no one had the capacity to harm others, no choice, no free will, just controlled harmony. That wouldn’t be a world of individuals making meaningful choices, but more like robots following a preset script.
Real freedom includes the ability to choose wrong or harmful actions, as well as believing in God’s existence or not.
It’s not that God wishes for suffering or chaos, but that free will inevitably opens the door to both good and evil. Through facing these challenges, humanity develops resilience, learns, adapts, makes better choices, and the like. The existence of hardship encourages us to build compassion, empathy, and seek solutions, transforming potential chaos into opportunities for human connection and strength.
Explaining why suffering is possible is not the same as excusing injustice. Free will may explain how evil enters the world, but it does not absolve those who choose it.
But this doesn’t justify the reason for hardship existing in the first place; it emphasises why the hardship exists and demands accountability for the harmful choices taken.
Free will permits both oppression and resistance to be chosen and enacted. The same freedom that allows injustice allows humanity to challenge it, dismantle it, and reshape the conditions that produced it. The cost of free will is real, but so is its power.
If God is all-knowing, do humans really have free will?
Knowing something will happen is not the same as causing it to happen.
If I know the sun will rise tomorrow, my knowledge doesn’t make it rise. Knowledge describes reality; it doesn’t force it.
The theological version is that divine knowledge exists outside time. From that vantage point, all moments are equally present. God knowing your choice does not coerce your will. It simply means your choice is fully known.
If God’s knowledge depended on your action, then your action would be primary and God would be reactive. Classical theology flips that. God’s knowledge is eternal, but your will is still operative within creation.
Thus, foreknowledge is not compulsion.
You act because you choose. God knows because He is not limited by time.
Where people get stuck is imagining God “watching the future happen.” That still assumes time binds Him. In classical theism, it doesn’t.
The key difference is between necessity of knowledge and necessity of action. Just because something is certainly known does not mean it is necessarily forced.
So yes, free will and divine omniscience can coexist, but only if you stop imagining God as a temporal being.
Why does God demand worship?
Does He?
If God is self-sufficient, He doesn’t need worship. Need implies deficiency. Classical monotheism says God is independent of creation.
Worship is alignment. It is recognition of ultimate reality. It is reordering the ego.
Humans worship something regardless of whether or not they explicitly believe in God: power, nation, self, ideology, wealth. The question isn’t whether we worship, but what we centre.
God does not need us to worship Him.
In Abrahamic theology, scripture uses command language for humans to worship God. God commands worship for human formation, not divine need. The command is pedagogical, not compensatory.
The idea that God demands it comes from ego based interpretation and projection, which, in itself, are uniquely human. That idea implies that God requires validation; He does not, but human does, both externally and internally.
But the world is too big and humankind with each of their uniqueness makes the world complicated. This is a fact not everyone can fully accept internally, because it requires acknowledging that there are things we can’t control.
It is natural to crave, resist, and relinquish control, as well as the need to centre our actions towards something infinite or finite; this is where free will comes in. When we centre our actions towards something infinite, we acknowledge and accept that there are things we can’t control. This is where our ego calibrates itself.
Centring the finite as ultimate distorts the human being. When wealth becomes the highest good, everything else — dignity, community, justice — becomes negotiable. Take billionaires, for example. The endless pursuit of accumulation reshapes moral priorities and turns human worth into numbers.
So worship is a discipline of humility. It breaks the illusion that we are absolute, and shapes moral hierarchy. Moral hierarchy shapes social order.
If something truly is ultimate, refusing to acknowledge it is never neutral, but is an active denial.
So the “demand” of worship is less about divine insecurity and more about ontological truth.
If gravity exists, acknowledging it is not flattering gravity. It is living in accordance with reality.
Worship is for human calibration, not divine ego.
•••
Faith, then, is not the absence of questions but the willingness to live meaningfully within them. If free will is real, and if moral responsibility matters, then divine hiddenness may not be a flaw in the structure of belief, but part of what makes moral agency possible.
Thank you for reading. This piece was written somewhere between sleep deprivation and an existential spiral, which apparently is where my brain does its most committed work.
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