Q.23 Isn’t God so distant and different he’s unknowable to humans?

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Duane Caldwell — Leave a reply

Adam and Eve in the Garden with the LORD God

On the one hand, this question—”Isn’t God so distant and different he’s unknowable to humans?”—is a reasonable question because, to many people, perhaps to most, God seems distant. On the other hand, it shows how far those same people, for whom God seems distant, have drifted from God’s heart and his original and ongoing intention, which is intimacy with each and every one of us.

When God promised a New Covenant to the House of Israel via the prophet Jeremiah which was meant to apply to all, he said the time is coming when everyone would know him:

“No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.””
(Jer 31:34)

Before the fall, in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve walked with God. I pointed out in Question 33 Why does God hide? that in the first wedding, where God joined Adam and Eve in marriage, God presented Eve to Adam. That is where we get the tradition of the father walking the bride down the aisle. Here is the biblical text:

“Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”
(Gen 2:22 )

How did God “bring her to the man”? Was God in his appearance as he is today, invisible (1 Tim 1.17) and silent (Isaiah 57.11)? It is my position that it is more in keeping with the nature of a wedding, where there is a witness, that God, before sin entered the world (Rom 5.12), was there at the wedding both visibly and audibly, joining the two and witnessing the ceremony. My point is that God has not always seemed far and distant. He was very near to the man and the woman.

What has changed? Isaiah makes it very clear:

But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
(Isa 59:2)

Our sins have separated us from God. That is why God seems hidden and distant. It doesn’t help when we hear songs like “From A Distance” by Bette Midler, who sings about how “God us is watching us from a distance.” (Archive) It’s a very pretty song about hope and peace and, while the “God is watching us” part is true and reassuring, the “from a distance” part is not accurate and not biblical.

When the apostle Paul was in Greece, he went to the Areopagus, a meeting place. Being distressed by all the idols he saw there, he reasoned with the philosophers of the day in order to explain God, saying:

26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
Acts 17.26-27

The apostle Paul points out that God had scattered people all over the earth. He commanded humanity not once, but twice, to fill the earth (Gen 1.28, Gen 9.1). Even though people are all over the globe, God “is not far from each one of us.” This speaks to God’s omnipresence: that God exists everywhere simultaneously. More importantly, it speaks to God’s desire for us to reach out to him. Both Old and New Covenants promise that, if we seek God, we will find him:

Moses before the nation of Israel went into the promised land:
“But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.”
(Deu 4:29)

Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount:
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
(Matt 7.7-8)

So God is not far from any of us. For those who want more of him, they need merely seek him, and God, once found, will take up residence in your heart.

Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
(John 14:23)

God is not too far away to be reached out to and to be found. Regarding the idea that God is too different from us—this is once again a paradox. Yes, God is quite different from us, being the omnipotent creator of both the universe and all creatures on earth. Yet, at the same time, God made us in his image, so we can know and relate to him:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
(Gen 1:26)

Furthermore, to fully reveal Himself so we could know and understand Him, God became man (John 1.14). He became a human like us, so we could understand what God is like. Jesus so clearly revealed the father that he said that if you’ve seen him, you’ve seen the father:

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
(John 14:9)

Jesus so clearly reveals the Father that the writer of the book to the Hebrews writes “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, …” (Heb 1.3)

Jesus is the exact representation of the nature of God. So, while sin has separated us from God which makes him seem distant, all we need to do to find God is to seek Him, reach out to him. James Ingraham sings “Yah Mo B There” (translation : Yah, a shortened version of God’s Name Yahweh, will be there whenever you call).