My son once asked me: “Dad, why doesn’t the teacher just give us all the answers to the test right away? It sure would make school a lot easier and we would all get A’s?”I replied, “Because the goal of the teacher is not to just help you find the right answer; they want you to learn how to think as you travel down the path on the journey to finding the answer. If they just gave you everything right away, you would never learn, and you would never own the knowledge that they want you to have.”
The best teacher knows how to hide information so students will experience the joy of discovering…that is why Socrates only asked questions. But the student who wants a “bird course” (A class where they can simply fly through), gets extremely frustrated with these kinds of teachers, “JUST GIVE ME THE ANSWERS, TEACH!”
In the same way, the main frustration of the pompous atheist & apathetic agnostic toward God & religion is God’s apparent absence, “If he was real, surely he would just show himself to me! But look around, he is nowhere to be found.” I have talked with many a religious mocker who told me they got this way because they prayed and nothing ever happened, “I cried out to God and told him that if he would just appear once, shake the sky, or give me my ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ I would believe.”In their mind, they really think they were doing God a favor by being willing to consider belief. But of course they demand that God must first perform; like a supermodel would only consider going out on one date with the drooling nerd if, and only if, he took her out somewhere expensive. As a result, the atheist, agnostic and mocker are hung up on the same learning principle my son was, “True knowing begins with a curious wanting, not a selfish demanding. And God, like the best teacher, wants you to own the knowledge of him, and this is only procured through discovery.” That is why he hides.
Listen to Jesus in Matthew 13:10 & 13:
“The disciples came and said to him, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’ And he answered them, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance…This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.'”
Jesus has hidden knowledge away for only those who want to search. For the rest, he has hidden it will they will never fine nor possess his priceless truth. It is the same reason a “woman of honor” won’t sleep with every man she dates; she is patiently waiting for the right man who values her dignity and will treat her with the love & respect she deserves. She keeps her nakedness hidden until she can give it as a gift to the man who she knows will cherish her gift, and as a result, will protect her vulnerability with a promise called marriage. God Almighty is not like Beyoncé who openly displays her wares for all lust-filled rogues to see. He is waiting for true seekers, those who value his Holiness and Majesty.
I have tried to write this blog for those who are willing to go deeper, asking the reader to dig and discover. (See the notes on my first month of blogging.)
To the mocker and the antagonist meaning is hidden; for those only wanting to argue or blindly follow in the same current of thought as the popular progressive culture, the truth is wearing camouflage and hiding in the brush so they will ignorantly float by: Content to live in the lies of their own arrogance.
“I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.”
