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Can You See God?

by Shirley Paulson, PhD

I asked the teenagers in a recent Sunday School class if they had checked in with God lately. I meant something like, “Have you had an honest conversation with God?” or “Have you taken a moment to really listen to God?” “Have you seen God in a meaningful way?”

Those questions raised more good questions: Can you really talk to God? Or, can you really see God? What does that feel like?

These are important questions, but they also cut to the heart of an important issue that has occupied theologians for millennia–faith versus understanding.  Irenaeus, one of the early shapers of the trajectory of Christian theology (and perhaps the most aggressive in branding those who disagreed as heretics), took the side of faith. Specifically, he claimed that it is best to know nothing at all about why things are as they are and to simply “believe God and continue in his love” (Against Heresies, Vol 2, ch 26).

Such a directive has always been difficult for me, personally. Exhorting me to ‘believe!’ without knowing anything about the God I am supposed to believe in makes me feel manipulated rather than loved. Conversely, talking with God or seeing God in a meaningful way inspires to me to understand God, just as I understand relationships with people.

I lean toward the attitude Paul expressed when he showed up in Athens.

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. (Acts 17:22, 23)

To paraphrase Paul, we might hear him say, “Hey, as I’ve walked around your city, I have noticed that you are very devoted to your god. But you’re worshiping a god you don’t even know! Let me tell you about the God you can have a real relationship with.”

Can you hear God? Can you see God?

Just how do you get to know God?

Thousands of years ago, Moses is said to have talked with God face to face! At first, when he heard the voice of God, “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Ex 3:6). Finally, the Bible story goes on to tell us that after multiple honest conversations, God spoke “to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (33:11). After one of these powerful conversations, Moses came down the mountain “with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, [and] Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” (Ex 34:29)

Moses’s experience confirms Jesus’s teaching to the crowd, when he promised that the pure in heart will ‘see’ God.

The Tripartite Tractate—one of the texts from the Nag Hammadi collection—offers a delightful guide for seeing God and how it happens.  First, we need to know we’re not going to find God through the ordinary senses. God is too big for that.

Being inconceivable for any thought, invisible or any thing, unutterable for any word, and untouchable for any hand only he himself knows himself the way he is, with his form and his greatness and his magnitude, and only he is able to conceive himself, name himself, and grasp himself.

Then we need to realize we’re never going to discern God even through our own minds.

For he, the inconceivable, ineffable, incomprehensible, and unchangeable one, is mind for himself, eye for himself, mouth for himself, and form for himself, and it is also himself that he conceives, sees, speaks, and grasps. (54, 55)

God must be known!

This is kind of intriguing:  God knows Itself (himself) and at the same time must be known. He—this ineffable, infinite Mind—provides the mind for himself, and he sees, speaks, touches, and conceives of himself.

This is not simple to interpret, but it seems to convey the idea that we are that mind who can see, speak, touch, and conceive of him, and it is only because this God/Mind empowers us to do so.

Seeing God doesn’t happen to a frightened mind, as Moses discovered. Nor is God seen through ignorance or blind belief, as most of us can attest. The Tripartite Tractate explains further how we gain this spiritual insight:

That which he (God) conceives, sees, and speaks is nourishment and delight, truth, joy, and rest, and that which he thinks surpasses every wisdom, excels every mind, excels every glory excels every beauty and every sweetness, every greatness, every depth, and every exaltedness.

The very act of God conceiving and seeing gives us the “nourishment and delight, truth, joy, and rest” that we need in order to be pure in heart. We can’t find the infinite idea beginning with a small, selfish mind.

Furthermore, the Tripartite Tractate offers this assurance:

Now, although he is unknowable in his nature and possesses all those supreme qualities I [the author of the Tripartite Tractate] have described, he is nevertheless able, if he so desires, to grant knowledge in order that he may be known, out of his abundant sweetness.

Knowing God through abundant sweetness

It’s God’s love for us that gives us the understanding of God, so that we, too, can see and talk with God. This kind of seeing is no more complicated than claiming “I see what you mean!,” or, “I see the love in your eyes.” The object of our seeing and loving gives us our capacity to see and love!

God is no theory or untouchable power. Rather, understanding God opens our eyes (or hearts) to recognize “every beauty, every sweetness, every greatness, every depth, and every exaltedness” because God is sweet to us.

This is why I want my Sunday School kids to check in with God. When they discover the sweetness of God’s love for them, I know they will love this incomparable relationship: seeing and talking with God!