Christians fear the day when God goes dark. It's a fear that God will drop communication when we need it most. It's the lonely lament answered by silence. It’s a fear of being abandoned with only the words of Psalm 88, "Darkness is my only friend." If God is hidden, how can I know God loves me? When God feels distant, how can I endure?

One obvious source of God going dark, otherwise known as God’s hiddenness, is human sin. Another, perhaps surprising, reason is God’s nature. Understanding these relations helps us walk by faith when God feels distant.

Sin

Why can't believers feel God's presence all the time? The primary answer is that our sin separates us from God. Scripture tells us sinners will suppress what is plainly revealed by God and that God’s silence is also a punishment for sin (Rom. 1:18-32; Amos 8:11).

But if Jesus cleanses us from all our sin, why does God still seem hidden? Because we still regularly wrestle with sin. The Apostle Paul explains this apparent paradox to the Christians in Colossae. They have been seated with Christ in the heavenly places, and yet they must "put to death what is earthly in you" (Col. 3:1-5). Sin's penalty is abolished, but sin's presence is slowly and steadily uprooted.

This battle with sin means believers will go through times where God seems, as the Psalmist says, to "hide his face." I've had moments of lashing out at God, because even though I was doing all the right things to grow, I couldn't make any progress. I wasn't just stuck in the same place; I seemed to be moving backwards away from Christ. But God wasn't pulling away, I had unrepentant sin in my life. In those moments I experienced what many good friends told me before. Our union with Christ is sure, but our communion with God can be disrupted by unrepentant sin.

Likely, God feels distant because we've left certain sins off our prayers of repentance. The deeper we hide in darkness the harder it gets to see light.

God's Nature

Sin is not always the cause of God’s darkness though. God’s hiddenness teaches us something about his nature. He is transcendent, infinite, and incomprehensible. The English reformer, Richard Hooker, says that God's glory is, "inexplicable and his greatness above our capacity and reach" (Haines 2024, 23). We will not find God the same way we find other things in the world. I can distinguish a pencil from a pen by picking it up and examining the differences, but there is nothing I can pick up and say, "Ah, I see now that this is God."

A sense of hiddenness is appropriate to God's nature. As Gregory of Nyssa says, "For how shall he be found whom none of the things we know declares—not look, nor color, nor outline, nor size, nor location, nor shape, nor conjecture, nor likelihood, nor analogy? No, the place where he is found is outside of every move to apprehend him, and hence he wholly escapes the grasp of those who seek him" (Gregory 2012, 377).

God fills all things (Eph. 1:23) but cannot be contained by anything. As Solomon prays at the Temple dedication, "But will God indeed live on earth? Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you, much less this temple I have built" (1 Kings 8:27). It is not as though we can go outside and grab a hold of God. Augustine prayerfully wrestled with this early in the Confessions. How can you find God who is everywhere and yet is not "contained" anywhere?

In one sense God is inescapable. This is why Luke writes, "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). But at the same time, his nature is such that he cannot be contained by anything under or above the sun. Gregory of Nyssa asks, "How shall he be grasped by the sense of some label when he stands apart from any characteristic that can identify him?" (Gregory 2012, 379).The infinite creator is mysteriously incomprehensible to finite creatures. Therefore, a measure of hiddenness is appropriate to God by his nature.

The Cross and Comfort When God Goes Dark

Would an overwhelming and unmistakable sign from God be the best way to reveal himself? Would we sleep better at night if God wrote his name in the sky every day at sunset? Maybe, maybe not.

If hiddenness is not strictly a sign of God's judgement, but is appropriate to God's nature, the comfort God gives us will correspond with his nature. We could easily attribute signs in the sky to bad weather or caused by eating bad pork. In other words, overwhelming, miraculous evidence is not necessarily the best assurance of God's love for us. 

The Biblical explanation of how God reveals himself can give us a grip on his love when his presence feels far. First, we know God exists and something about his divine attributes through creation (Rom. 1:20). Second, through conscience, we have a sense of God's law and our sin. We know something of God's moral perfections and commands, recognizing that we fall short (Rom. 2:15).  Third, through Scripture, God reveals the evidence of his love and mercy shown through Jesus's death in our place and for our sin. As John says, "No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him" (John 1:18). Creation, conscience and Scripture lead us to Christ. Every piece of God's self-revelation guides a believer to the cross. That moment when darkness covered the whole land and Jesus cried out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" (Matt. 27:46)  God meets us in such a way that we are not simply flattened by his majesty but drawn to him by his mercy. How can I know God loves me? Jesus endured the darkness of my sin and removed it with the light of his glory.

Walking by Faith in the Hidden God

How does all this help us walk by faith when God feels distant?

First, it pushes us to self-examination to see if unrepentant sin has taken root in our lives. If we find it, we confess it and God roots it out.

Second, it reminds us of God's grace. Just as in the Old Testament story of Job, God's hiddenness does not always correspond to punishing us for sin. If it is appropriate to God's nature, then we should expect seasons of hiddenness will come. And these will come by divine design. The Psalms of lament, much of the Bible's wisdom literature, and a book like Esther remind us that feeling God's hiddenness is not divine neglect. Rather God lovingly leads us through darkness, in ways that will surprise us, for our good.

Finally, it reminds us that Christ crucified for us is the assurance of God's love in the shadows of God's hiddenness. "But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). Signs in the sky could never prove God's love for us. The blood of Christ speaks a better and more certain word of divine love sustaining through divine hiddenness.