#STRask - Would You Say God’s Primary Object Is to Not Be Found?

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

Questions about whether God’s primary object is to not be found, how one can say God doesn’t make mistakes if the percentage of Christians in the world is so low, and whether the fact that not everyone will be in Heaven is proof that God doesn’t win every battle.   Would you say God’s primary object is to not be found? If God doesn’t make mistakes, how do you explain the fact that Christians have reached an all-time low percentage of the world’s population? If the common belief that God wins every battle were true, then no one would be in Hell.

Thank you for joining me, Amy Hall and Greg Kokel on hashtag STR Ask. And we're going to start with the question today from Tammy. Okay. From the perspective of an apologist, even in light of believing, would you say God's primary object is to not be found? Wait a minute. Did you say that do I think that God's objective is to not be found? found? Yes, that's the question. Well, I'm a little bit surprised because it seems to me just the opposite. And I don't, I mean, there is a question about the so-called hiddenness of God. I think

that's way overplayed personally when people raise the issue. Where is God? I don't see any reason to believe in God. Where's the evidence? Why is he hiding? Well, he's not hiding. as I've said, frequently making the case for God, his fingerprints are everywhere. And, of course, he's an invisible being to us. So it isn't like he's going to show himself, but that doesn't mean he's hiding. Show himself physically is what I mean, or visibly. Though there are occasions, obviously, in the Old Testament, we have examples of theophanies where God manifests himself in a physical form of burning bush or something, angels,

of the Lord, something like that. But it isn't as if we're bereft of any good reason to believe in God. And this is why it troubles me, and this isn't the point that Tammy's making, but when atheists bring up things like the flying spaghetti monster as a parallel, oh, you want me to believe in the flying spaghetti monster, or there's an illustration they use about the gardener that you never see, you never see any evidence of whatever you believe there's a gardener. gardener in a field or something to that effect. It's silly because it's not parallel.

Neither of those are parallel. God clearly wants to be found. In fact, I would argue the claim of Scripture is that he can't be missed. And this is primarily in Romans 1. I mean, this is the most famous passage. That which is clear about God is known to them because of what's been made, and then there's a reference to he's made it known inside of them. So there's an external element and there's an internal witness, I think that we all have. Calvin called it the census divinitatus,

the sense of the divine that we all have. Atheism is very, very rare in the world. And because it just seems intuitively we are aware of someone who is the best explanation for the way things are. Now, what that one is like, there are various views about, but that there is something beyond us or someone beyond us, especially, that is responsible for the world the way it is. It just seems to be so obvious. That's why I'm mystified by the claim of the hiddenness of God and the complaint of the hiddenness God. And now the apparent suggestion that God is so hidden, God, God is. is hidden because he wants to be hidden, he doesn't want to be found. That doesn't make any sense to me. Am I missing something? No, no. You already hit most of the points that I was going to bring up,

but I will say, rather than the problem being that God doesn't want to be found, the problem is that men don't want to find God. That's a great way of putting it. That's the real problem. And this goes to Romans 1, which you were describing, because it says that we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And it says, as you said, from the creation of the world, we can see that God exists. But we exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And we turned towards things in the world and decided we wanted to worship those things instead and to stay away from God. And it's obvious why. Nobody, as you said, you know, God has revealed through, he's revealed his existence through nature and through our conscience. Men don't want to be held accountable. I mean, this is just the truth about fallen human beings. And so we suppress the truth about God.

So his existence is revealed to everyone through these general revelations. And his grace is revealed by special revelations. and his grace is revealed by special revelation so that he can be glorified and known and enjoyed. So the first come with his general revelation that takes away all excuse from human beings because we're all aware. As you noted, Greg, look back over time and you see that all these cultures all over the world have had an awareness of supernatural. and they've created different religions. So there is an awareness of his existence, but yes, he revealed his grace and his plans by special revelation because he has a purpose in revealing to some.

And he wants it. And I will say also that we know what God's purpose is because he tells us, in particular, we find a couple of places in Ephesians where he tells us, us flat out. And he says this is all to the praise of the glory of his grace. So everything he's doing the way that he's revealed himself to some, and not especially, not in every detail to everyone, but all of this is to highlight his grace. And Ephesians 311 says that this was in accordance with the eternal purpose, which he carried out in Christ,

Jesus, our Lord. So his eternal purpose was to reveal himself through the cross, in particular his grace, through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. So that is his eternal purpose. So Jesus also said something that underscores your first point, and that is that in John In Chapter 3, the light has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. Now, there were actually two prongs of our response here. I just want to point out, I don't want people to miss it. I don't – we're not just saying, well, the Bible says, for Christians, that should

be adequate, but it won't be adequate for non-Christians. We're not just saying that the Bible says God is evident to everybody. I also made an observation about the rarity of naturalistic, atheistic thinking in the history of the world. Of course, there are been people who didn't believe in anything transcendent, but in only the material world, it goes all the way back prior to the time of Christ. But nevertheless, that isn't the standard view. Most people are aware of that. So even our common understanding, apart from special revelation of the world, is that that someone's behind this, which is why, by the way, we use phrases like Mother Nature, for good to sake, because it appears that there is a person involved in what's been going on. And so we anthropomorphize what we claim to be time and chance and matter and just call it Mother Nature.

but I think there's a reason that we do that because our natural instincts is to see inside on the touch of the personal on all these things. So we're making both a biblical case and a non-biblical case that the presence of God is obvious. And I agree with you. The reason that it isn't, by the way, that God is trying to hide from some people and show himself to others. I think there is a sense in which that's the case in the maximal degree regarding grace. But in terms of his existence, he's not hiding. He's there.

He's evident. And people don't see him not because he's hidden, hiding himself, obscuring what is obvious to most people, but because people, as you pointed out, don't want to acknowledge that God is there and they owe their allegiance to him. They're hiding from him. Yeah. And actually, one of the objections in, see, I think it's Romans, Romans 10, when Paul goes through the objections and he's talking about why do some of the Jews believe and some don't, did God's word fail? And he comes to these objections and one of them is, well, they never heard. And he says, no, and he talks about how Isaiah says, who has believed our report?

And so the problem is that we have turned against God, not that he hasn't revealed himself. Yeah. He actually, in that passage, cites, well, they have. The word has gone out to all the earth, and he cites what Psalm. I can't remember which one it is. It's one of the earliest ones, I want to say Psalm 11, but that's probably not right. Psalm 19 maybe. You know, the heavens are declaring the glory of God.

Oh, is that eight? Maybe, I don't know. Whatever. We can just speculate. Somewhere it says. I'm sure this is fascinating podcast material. Okay, let's go on to a question from David. Oh, sorry, sorry, from Raymond.

God does not and cannot make mistakes, wouldn't we say? Christians have reached an all-time low percentage of the world's population, now less than three and ten. Is this what chosen ones meant? Is this what chosen once meant? Chosen ones meant. I guess I'm not sure I understand the question. I'm not surprised about the numbers because there are false religions. They're competing concepts.

They can't all be true. Many are appealing because they are high in individual freedom and low on human responsibility. Others are appealing because they're higher on human responsibility and people take pride in trying to work their way to heaven, whatever. So the idea of grace and trusting God to save us rather than us saving ourselves in some way, well, we understand the appeal of that because it's so freeing, but I think that's hard for fallen man to grasp. So I'm not surprised that the numbers are the way they are. I never trusted the, Christianity is the largest religion in the world. When you look at the numbers, that may be true.

but that doesn't mean much. It just shows that the influence of Christianity and abroad Christendom has expanded. It doesn't mean that these are people, though they self-identify as Christians, that know Christ. And everybody who's just marginally reflective on the nature of this question can see that. People say there's so many hypocrites in the church, oh, yeah. There's so many people who say they're Christian, they don't act like, yeah. Well, there's so much wheat and chaff in the church. Yeah, plenty of chaff.

I mean, this is a no-brainer, obviously. Scripture makes this clear, and it's obvious to other people. I don't know, I guess I'm not sure I understand where the question is. My guess is this is a question about, you know. God, I'm trying to, the next question is a similar question, so maybe we can go. on to that, but I just want to say here, because the question is, God does not, cannot make mistakes. It's almost as if they're saying, if God were really true, then there would be way more Christians. Yeah, I don't know why that follows at all. I agree. All you have to do is

look through the entire Bible, and you can see that this hasn't been the way he's worked. In fact, we talked about in a previous episode not too long ago. Why did God choose the Jews? And it wasn't because they were the greatest, either morally or in might and numbers. And the answer is, if you look through the Bible, you see that God often uses a small number of people because he wants to reveal his own power and glory, working through people that shouldn't be able to accomplish what they're accomplishing so that God's strength and glory and might show through, and people don't say, oh, it's because they were great. God doesn't want to give us the credit for what he's doing because then we wouldn't see him

for who he is, and that would be our loss, ultimately. So he's always worked that way, and it's no surprise that he's still working that way. And there might be a sense that if Christianity is true and God is powerful and he chooses, why are there so few that are believers? Why doesn't he choose more? I don't know. This is one of those why questions that you can't answer. But there is sometimes a mistake in thinking because it's not adequate to make this assessment

by looking at any particular slice of history. What you have to do, and we can't do this now because we don't have the capability of doing that, but you have to be able to raise that issue. You have to know when all the dust settles, what are the numbers? look like. And it could very well be, and certainly on some takes of eschatology, that there is going to be an enormous turning to Christ towards the end. And since the, if there's an enormous turning to Christ towards the end, and this is when the population of the world is the largest, there's a huge harvest that's going to come in. Now, I'm not predicting any

of that. I'm just saying that's an implication or an implication maybe of some scriptural teaching regarding the end times. But what I am saying is we can't assess the success of the message by looking at numbers at any slice of history because the real picture is the total picture, and that's going to be the numbers at the end of history. Does that make sense? Yes. And I also will say that if you want to look at evidence of God working, forget the numbers. Look at what God has done through those numbers. Again, this is what he does in the Old Testament over and over. Look at what he did through Israel. He created this whole system of laws that revolutionized all of society and added all of these just laws. And without getting into

the objections, people have the particular ones, you just have to look at the difference between that nation and how they viewed God and justice and other nations. And you, you just have to look at the difference. And you see that the respect for human dignity is completely different in the laws of the Israelites. So you see that that very small group of people, all of the areas of the world that had been affected by the Old Testament law and the New Testament gospel in particular, you can see what's happened. People have studied this. They've looked at how nations that had missionaries who cared about the Bible, what has happened to them? And their increase in literacy and hospitals and schools and all of these different things grew out of this whole worldview and

God working through his people. So when you look at what God has done through that and how he has shaped the world, I think that's a better measure of God working than mere numbers. Yes, I agree with him entirely. Okay, here's a question. This is very related. this one comes from David. It is a common belief that God wins every battle. But how can this be so? If every battle was won by God, no one would be in hell. God loves everyone and wants everyone in heaven.

So everyone in hell is a lost battle by God. Since more in hell than heaven, God lost more than he won. Well, I don't know about that last statement. We don't know how many. And that was a point we were just making. But this is a challenging issue, I think, because it goes back to this foundational conundrum if God, in a certain sense, and I think we need to qualify it that way, because the scripture does, wants people to be saved, okay? And I think the best evidence for that is the First Timothy passage, chapter two, not the Second Peter passage. That's, I think that's talking about something else who desires all to be saved.

I don't know. Now I'm trying to remember how it says a nun to perish, but God is not blah on. Anyway, but, okay, I'll acknowledge that. There is at least at some level God desiring for people to be saved. All right. Now, whether he is going to secure that desire in every case is another question. And, I mean, our conviction is that in some cases he does, he secures that. However, why not everyone?

And then this raises questions about God's eternal purpose and what it means for God to be glorified. and that sum our punish, however many we don't know in terms of a proportion of the whole. This seems to be clear in the scriptural statements that this is the backdrop of the grace of God and the mercy of God. It's the justice of God, which is the bad news, that helps us to understand the magnificence of the good news of the grace and mercy of God. There's a backdrop there. And that's not the way I would put it together, but that's the way the scripture talks about it. So we have to factor in in an answer to this question, why some and not all, that there is a sense in which God is glorified even in the punishment of evildures, even in the justice that is displayed because his goodness is on display. even in those circumstances.

Now, these are hard sayings, I think, and it's hard to parse this all out. And this is why I don't know how to parse it out in a way that's going to be satisfactory to everybody. But these are points that the text does bring up. And there is a whole, this element of the mystery of God's intentions that he hasn't made abundantly clear to us. Maybe abundantly isn't the right word. He hasn't made clear to us in a granular detailed way.

Oh, here it is, Greg. Here's the deal. Let me explain every single piece of the enterprise. No, we don't have that, but we have some. And it's a fair question to raise, but not being able to answer that question, I don't see how that brings into question any other teaching of Scripture, the reality. of God or his goodness or his justice just because we cannot resolve that issue in our own mind. You can't know if God has failed unless you first know what his goal is. Exactly.

And so there are some assumptions here that God's highest goal is that every single person be in heaven. I have no doubt that if that were God's highest goal, that would happen. Yeah. I don't think that's God's highest goal. And you've mentioned a lot of this already, and we've talked. talked about this on the show before. And I can give you a couple examples in the Bible that give examples of other goals that God has. This one's from Romans 9. What if God willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for

destruction, and he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which prepared beforehand for glory. So there's a sense in which his wrath is revealing his glory to those he wants to reveal his glory to. By contrast to his mercy, it's the comparison or the contrast that is in view here, right? Right. And this whole section right here is talking, this goes back to the question, why are some Jews believing and not all Jews are believing, did God's word fail? And then Paul goes to this whole explanation of what? why not all Jews are believing and God's word still isn't failing. So this is actually addressing this same kind of question, 9 through 11.

And at the very end of this section, what he says is that God has shut them up under disobedience, the Jews, so that he could show mercy to the Gentiles, so that now, because of this mercy, God will eventually show mercy to the Jews. So he shut up all under disobedience so that he can show mercy to the Jews. to all. So all of this is carefully orchestrated to reveal, again, to reveal God's grace. And this is, God has created this entire story of history to reveal the glory of his grace. And this involves sometimes people believing and sometimes people not believing. That is his greatest goal. And that shows up here in Romans also. So again, you can't, if you think God's

goal is one thing that it isn't, and you're judging everything he's doing by that goal, it's going to look like he failed. That's right. Because he can only have one greatest goal. Yeah. This reminds me of, like, in the Jesus movement, there was, you know, the question was maybe what does Jesus work? Does he really work?

I've tried him. It didn't work. Well, it all depends on what you expect Jesus to do and your expectations about what you think Jesus is meant to do, has to match up what he intended to accomplish, and that's where you need to start. That's your point. And I don't blame David and Raymond for not knowing what God's goal is. I don't think, I mean, it's not even clear to me that they're Christians, but even Christians, I think, have not read their Bibles enough to know what the bigger goal is. And this is why I encourage people to read the whole Bible and to get a better sense of what God is

doing overall, because the more you see of that, the more you'll be forced to think through these questions and find answers that fit with all of the parts of the Bible, not just your idea of the Bible or maybe a few verses here and there. That's called balance when you have a view that fits with all of the revelation, right? So thank you so much for your questions. We really appreciate hearing from you, Tammy and Raymond and David, and we'd love to hear from you. So please send us your question on X for the hashtag STR Ask.

This is Amy Hall and Greg Cookel for Stand to Reason.