God, Silence and Noise
In scripture it seems that God was always conversing with his people and making himself known them constantly. The Old Testament in particular is a treasure trove of such instances starting with the events in the garden and persisting all the way up to the Babylonian exile. While these encounters with God did not always lead to positive developments for Ancient Israel and its surrounding neighbors, they do support the theme of God as an interactive force in the daily conscious of his people that was prevalent throughout the scriptures.
One of the most striking things I noticed even in the earliest days of me reading scripture was that the God present in the bible in terms of his interactions with humans did not appear to be the God present in our modern world today. The casual observer of the God in scripture and the God today might suggest that since end of Jesus’s time on earth, God has adopted a fairly hands off approach to humanity. Even John 14:30 (CSB) seems to corroborate this:
“I will not talk with you much longer, because the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me.”
It is true that Satan is the ruler of this world if only for the moment but does that necessarily mean that as a result God has somehow grown quieter and more remote? I would say no. God cannot result in anything less than himself. Being outside the system we call time I do not believe he could even end himself because in order to end you have to arrive, and as far as we know God has alway been everywhere which makes him incapable of arriving anywhere. In the same way, God has not grown quieter simply because Satan arrived. As John 14:30 says “He has no power over me”.
If God appears to have grown quieter in our present day it is because we have gotten too loud, which has been Satan’s goal from the beginning. Even if you are like some who believe the book of Genesis to be strictly metaphor the intent of the enemy does not change even if we believe the events in the garden were simply lessons rather than historical events. From the beginning he has wanted us to believe that we are not enough and most of you might agree it is when we feel that we aren’t enough that we are at our loudest and often times, our worst. How many wars has humanity marched to because someone believed they didn’t have enough resources and others believed they didn’t have enough to share.
The difference between the biblical world and our modern moment isn’t a matter of God stepping away; we should not mistake his gift of free will to us as that. The difference is our progress in technological advancement relative to that time which is mostly due in part to us falling for the lie that we have always lacked what we needed despite God being right there. The truth of the matter is that most of our inventions are loud. It is probable to conclude that the earth today is much louder than the earth during biblical times due to the spreading out of people across the earth and the technological advancements that have taken place since that time. As long as we feel the need to constantly produce and obtain, the world will only grow louder. This isn’t simply a case of the effect of noise pollution on the environment but the more serious matter of noise pollution in the heart.
I do not say all of this to be outspoken against the technology and progress from which I have benefitted. The proliferation of it in civilization can speak to the great modes of creativity that God has instilled in us. If there is anything about technology that I am against it is in its excess and of that, like most, I am notoriously guilty. Our need for technology has lessened our need for God and that is why he appears to be silent in our present day. Thankfully he is not silent; even if you cannot hear him he is talking still. If one knows the right signs to look for they can read his lips. All has never been lost.
2/8/2024
