Part 4: Why God Often Withholds Explanation Series

The Question We're All Asking

We've learned that God is hidden, but not absent. We've learned that silence is refinement, not punishment. We've learned that God knows us intimately, even in the darkness.

But now we come to the hardest question of all.

If God is really present. If God is really refining us. If God really knows every step we take. Then why won't God tell us what's happening? Why the mystery? Why the silence? Why does God insist on keeping us in the dark?

This question has driven believers crazy for thousands of years. And honestly? It still drives me crazy sometimes.

We live in an age where we have answers to almost everything. Google anything. Get an answer in seconds. Ask your smart speaker. Ask your therapist. Ask your friends. The world is flooded with information.

And then God refuses to explain.

When life falls apart, we demand clarification. When prayers go unanswered, we demand justification. When circumstances don't make sense, we demand an explanation. When God stays silent, we feel cheated. We feel abandoned. We feel like God is playing games with us.

But what if I told you something radical? God's refusal to explain isn't cruelty. It's love. And understanding why will change everything.

THE PATTERN OF SCRIPTURE

What Job and Isaiah Teach Us Together

To understand why God withholds explanation, we need to look at two very different people wrestling with very different problems.

Job is in personal agony. Job has lost everything. Job's body is covered with sores. Job's children are dead. Job's wealth is gone. And Job is angry. Job is demanding. Job is saying to God, "Explain yourself. Tell me why. Justify your actions."

But then we have Isaiah. Isaiah is speaking to an entire community exiles waiting for deliverance. They've been in captivity for so long. The promises God made seem to be failing. The timeline God promised seems to be broken. And they're beginning to wonder if maybe God isn't who they thought. Maybe God's power has diminished. Maybe God has forgotten them.

These are different problems. One is personal suffering. One is corporate waiting. But God's answer to both is the same.

And this is crucial. God doesn't give Job an explanation. God doesn't give the exiles a timeline. Instead, God reorients their entire understanding of who God is.

God says, in effect: "You think you need information. What you actually need is transformation. You think you need clarity. What you actually need is to see Me differently. Your problem isn't that you don't understand what I'm doing. Your problem is that you don't understand who I am."

And that changes everything.

THE VASTNESS AND "OTHERNESS" OF GOD

Why Your Brain Can't Contain the Answer

Listen to what Isaiah says:

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts."

Here's the key. God is not saying, "I have better thoughts than you." God is saying, "I think differently than you. Fundamentally. Categorically. Radically."

Let me translate the Hebrew for you. The word "thoughts" is machashavot. These are the deep, hidden, comprehensive plans God is executing. The word "ways" is derakhim the paths, the modes of operation. And what God is saying is this: My thoughts operate on a completely different level than yours. My ways follow a different logic entirely.

In other words, there's not a small gap between God's thinking and your thinking. There's not a gap you could eventually bridge if you just asked the right questions or studied the right theology. The gap is cosmic.

Here's a picture that helps me. Imagine an ant. That ant is incredibly intelligent. For an ant. That ant can solve any problems. That ant can navigate ant obstacles. But there's no amount of explanation that will help that ant understand why I'm walking across the sidewalk. The ant can't comprehend my size, my timeline, my purposes. The gap isn't a matter of the ant needing more information. The gap is structural. The ant and I operate in different dimensions.

We're not quite ants compared to God. But we're closer to ants than we are to God.

So when we scream at God, "Explain yourself!" we're essentially asking God to compress eternity into a moment, to make infinity fit into our finite minds, to take thoughts that operate at a divine level and translate them into thoughts that operate at a human level.

God could try. God could explain everything. But you wouldn't understand. Not because you're stupid. But because your mind is built to process human-scale problems in human-scale time. And God's purposes stretch across eternity.

Think about it this way. If I tried to explain calculus to my five-year-old, I could use the fanciest language. I could show her the most beautiful diagrams. I could spend hours trying. But at the end of the day, she doesn't have the mental architecture yet to understand. She's not broken. She's just five.