Fault of God or man? (salvation, incarnation, Revelation, experience)

[Jaymes]

For the sake of this debate, I'm going to run with the assumption that there is some kind of higher power. Also for the sake of this debate, I'm gonna call it God.

If someone lives their life and never feels to presence of God, even if they have genuinely searched and listened, whose fault is it? That person's or God's?

[gmelrod]

Have they tried to pray and felt no responce (btw I am at this point in my life such a person who has yet to feel the presence others describe as essential to their faith despite an ernest desire.)

[sojourner]

I don't think it's a matter of placing blame. God reveals God's self in God's own time -- which is usually not the same as our timetable.

I think that we can either choose to be open or obstructive to that revelation, however. But, it's probably misleading to label that obstructiveness as "fault." Probably better just to label it "human frailty."

[gmelrod]

But if that experience is essential to faith and therefore salvation doesn't God have an obligation to reveal himself to us before our death?

[sojourner]

Originally Posted by gmelrod

But if that experience is essential to faith and therefore salvation doesn't God have an obligation to reveal himself to us before our death?

God has already saved us, through the Incarnation. What we do with that in this life is up to us. The experience is not, necessarily essential.

[Jaymes]

Originally Posted by gmelrod

Have they tried to pray and felt no responce (btw I am at this point in my life such a person who has yet to feel the presence others describe as essential to their faith despite an ernest desire.)

Now you've met one.

[gmelrod]

So even if we do not believe in God because we never had an experience of God,we can still go to heaven?

[fullyveiled muslimah]

I firmly believe that any person searching for truth finds it. I don't think Allah would evey deny guidance to a person truly seeking it. My question would be is the person searching for the truth, or searching for what fits them? This is more often than not two different things.

[gmelrod]

I don't think we are talking even about a search for truth but for that trancendant moment in which you are able to know without the need for proof or explanation that God exists because you had an experience that could only come from God.

[Jaymes]

Bonus question: Why must the person seeking God believe in or be open to him, first? We don't have to be open to or believe in other things for them to exist. Why is it such with God?