For the record I have no beef with divine hidden-ness and that plays no role in my nonbelief. Neither do I fault you for holding the belief I do not since I hold unsupportable beliefs of my own - just not the one you hold.
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Actually, mine is/are nicely supported by the reality of my Father in heaven acting into my life in time and space, in timing and placing. (They are a long way from being unsupportable.)
It may have been Einstein who said, “Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.” Rightly put it is, “Coincidence is one of God’s ways of saying, ‘Here I AM!’” “Co-instants” and “co-instance(s)” are my substitute terms denoting “not a chance!”
I have been keeping a Co-instants Log for over three decades, with retrospective entries for two decades before that (I’m in my early geezerhood), and it has a small multitude of entries. Some are fun, funny, startling, poignant or life-path changing, and there are a lot of them! Not all are easy but all are good.
A fairly recent one (actually several) of some import:
From an mail to Matt, my pastor, 7/15/17 (a Saturday):
News
Just news, not good or bad particularly, but I am going to lose a kidney. My urologist called me after 5 yesterday and said that I had a mass on my right kidney.
I had blood late [Saturday night] last week, and, in God’s providence, when I called Monday a.m., the doctor had had an appointment cancelation for that afternoon. My Co-instants Log entry:
7/10/27 [Monday] Having developed a significant bleed, I had just tried to call the urology clinic. The line was busy [What?! No voice and answering system menu?!] so I picked up the nearby Joy & Strength* for today and read, "MOST GLADLY, THEREFORE, WILL I RATHER GLORY [BOAST!
] IN MY INFIRMITIES, THAT THE POWER OF CHRIST MAY REST UPON ME. 2 Corinthians xii.9 Wow. [The words jumped off the pages at me. “LORD, I HAVE AN INFIRMITY!!”, I immediately said.]
Then I called back and… the doctor had had an appointment cancellation this afternoon at 3:15. [Talk about co-instants! Otherwise it would have been three weeks or more!] My reply when she told me: “Perfect.”
So he scoped me Monday in the office and didn’t find the source of the bleed, and I had a CT on Tuesday. The former didn’t reveal anything about kidneys, but the latter is pretty definitive for kidney cancer. That is something particular to this affliction – a biopsy is not really needed, I guess. I don’t know anything about size/stage or grade yet, but I expect to be asking next week.
The very first thing I read [after clicking on the first online search result] when looking for info online was, “Your doctor has just told you that you have kidney cancer. Your mind whirls with emotion. Your spouse begins to cry.” Jeanne and I have both failed.
Our times are in his hands [Psalm 31:15], and that’s a good thing.
Bro’ Dale
*Joy & Strength is a classic daily devotional that my mom, my sister and I used to read regularly. I don’t read it regularly so much any more, but it was within arm’s reach after the busy signal on the phone.
8/1/17. Right radical nephrectomy – only 22 days from phone call to surgery, sooner than I otherwise might have been able to get even a first appointment!
Of course, I have reflected on that verse and its meaning, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
One of the things that power means is the ability not to be afraid. Ever. In ALL circumstances, including sickness and death. “You can’t kill a Christian, all that you can do is change his address.” The most frequent mandate in the Bible is “Don’t be afraid” or one of its several variations – “Be anxious for nothing”, “Fret not”, and others. So it is the power to obey that mandate, and the power to obey it gladly. It means to be glad and cheerful no matter what the circumstances, even cancer. Father is in control and whatever he does is good for both of us. The doctor and his office and nursing staff and the hospital have never had a more cheerful nephrectomy patient.
Studying a little further, I discovered that the “rest” is to rest as in a dwelling. So that means that the power is the strength of God over me as a strong shelter.
As I quipped on Facebook, “My only complaint about my recent surgery to remove a kidney was that, while he was in there moving furniture around to gain access, he failed to leave me with six-pack abs. THAT was a total failure! ”
A kind of funny and a co-instance footnote to the kidney account, showing that I was being taken care of in another way, too:
My recovery at home was so free of pain that I did not take ANY of the prescribed analgesic, Norco 10mg, an opioid. I was distinctly uncomfortable more than once, but never in severe pain at all, so that extra-strength Tylenol was all that I ever took. (I did look up the street value of the Norco, though, both here and in Omaha. 
)
But three months later, the week of Thanksgiving, I caught a relatively bad cold. I have had worse coughs, in that they were deeper and harder coughs, but I had never before had a cough like the one with this cold – I just could not stop coughing. I was coughing continuously and cough drops were not helping at all. I knew I needed a heavy duty cough suppressant if I going to get any sleep, and we did not have any codeine cough syrup. It was Wednesday night before Thanksgiving about 10:30, and there would have been easy way to get any.
I knew I had the Norco, so I looked on online for what the codeine content of a prescription cough syrup was, and it was the same as the Norco, 10mg! So I was able to sleep, and was thankful!
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Hello Dale,
May I first say that the first bit of proof that God is is the fact that we are here and have worth? Much of why we are here is explained in the first book of documentation called the Bible. Aren’t we all aware of the danger of good things being so familiar to us that it may end up totally unnoticed?
Earl
I have no argument with that. Did you overlook my reference to The Book?
Maybe I do take mild exception to that. What you are referring to is actually good evidence, but it is not scientific proof in empirical terms like some unbelievers demand.
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Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,
God is a god of faith. That makes him unprovable. If God is visible than their is no faith.
If God was sat in the sky like the moon He would have two choices
- enslave all to His will at point of death (eternal damnation etc)
2} Do nothing, and be seen (actual) as being benign, and therefore ignored.
As long as God is a god of faith people can choose to ignore Him or follow Him. In theory we should not be looking for a reward or a punishment, We follow God because we believe that is the right thing to do, and that His ways are correct.
Otherwise we are left with the idea that you have nothing to lose if Hell does not exist and everything to lose if it does. So that belief is self centred and nothing to do with God at all.
Heaven and Hell are not good criteria for believing in God. Religion is about aligning ourselves with God rather than some sort of fear of retribution or the converse hope of eternal happiness, neither of which can be proven until it is too late.
Forgiveness is not about retribution but peace of mind and loss of guilt. We can forget and move on instead of dwelling on an action with consequences, good, or bad, to us and / or others. With the caviat, of course, that we are both sorry, and determined to do better! (otherwise it becomes an excuse not to care at all and to live without morality or consequence.)
Richard
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In actuality, he is my adoptive Father and I am no longer a rebel on the streets or in prison, and I am glad to be looking for the reward of his smile rather than to have it withheld. If I still were a rebel, then all I should expect is punishment.
Jesus’ motivation was not selfish, but it was ‘enlightened self-interest’:
For the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame…
That joy is us(!), if you nave been adopted into his family.
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There are those who cannot think past punishment and reward. That neither validates, nor invalidates the existence of them. But true faith has nothing to do with them (IMHO)
“We are humble servants who have just done our duty”
Richard
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Why doesn’t that disregard the familial aspect? It is more than just a metaphor.
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Recognizing that you are a child of God is not failing to think past punishment and reward. Those who cannot or do not are failing.
Why is being a member of a family either a reward or a punishment? Or anything to do with either? It might be termed an honour, or it might just be an acknowledgement that you are in alignment with (part of the family of) God.
Unless you are thinking in terms of nepotism? Except that God does not show favouritism in this life. My father was a Methodist Minister who was struck down with strokes and a failing body for over 20 years. Where is the reward in that? Was he less of a family member?
The problem is that, if we start looking in terms of reward, or punishment, or advantage etc we can loose faith if God does not come up to our expectations or life does not reflect what we think our beliefs justify. I guess Heaven and Hell would not qualify here as by the time we have found out the reality it will be too late. But the “hope” of Heaven can be a great comfort to those who have lost loved ones.
Richard
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Perhaps this is a place for Pascal’s wager? (Wiki definition)
Pascal’s wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662).[1] It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.
Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell)
It is the epitome of the self centred faith. (or pseudo-faith).
Richard
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Good points. Roger Olson asked in one of his blogs if we as evangelical Christians would live life any differently if universalism I were true. (The answer is “no” by the way). But I like to pose the question as, would you still be a Christian if there were no heaven? I would like to believe I would still live life as a Christian if there were no promise of eternal blessing, but who knows. The Old Testament Jews had no well developed theology of heaven, but many followed God with no eternal promise but Sheol.
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Did I say necessarily in this life? Have you read C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce?
You don’t see any value in being part of Father’s family, and having a friend and co-heir in Jesus.
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Thoughts from the atheist while reading this. No debate, just questions.
How does this fit with the Holy of Holies?
Exodus 25: 8 And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. 9 Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it.
There was also the Exodus itself. For example, there was a pillar of fire or smoke that guided the people through the desert.
Wasn’t Jesus “God on Earth”, God in physical form? Thomas was allowed to touch the wounds on Jesus’ hands and side after the Resurrection. How does this fit into the ideas in the opening post?
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Pascal’s wager is the opposite of faith. It shows the same attitude as the rich man in Matthew 19 who looks for the minimum requirements for salvation. So if that is your reason for religion then you have wasted your time and missed the boat completely. Thus Pascal’s wager is a lost bet and all you have really gained for your trouble is payment to racketeers using religion as a tool of power and manipulation, those Jesus named children of the devil.
The idea is that there is a choice of action set X or not X and that you can calculate an expectation for these two action sets given the two possibilities that God exists or not. The premises being
A. If God exists doing X means you get eternal life.
B. If God exists doing not X means you get eternal damnation.
C. If God does not exist then it doesn’t matter what you do.
Pascal’s conclusion is that the positive and negative consequences in A and B outweigh any price you can put on doing X during a finite life.
But then which of the thousands of religious sects do you go by for the specification of X?
If it is Christianity then premise A is already denied by Jesus in Matthew 19, “with men this is impossible.” There is no X which can get you eternal life. And in Romans 10, Paul explains that faith means you don’t even ask any the question of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. That will only lead to entitlement which has always turned religion into a thing of evil. Christianity calls upon people to live by faith, which is believing and doing without entitlement – and that means believing and doing for its own sake just because it is right.
Aren’t those exceptions rather than generalities? Do they apply today?