I’ve always loved the story about the three little boys who persistently misbehaved in Sunday School. Finally, the teacher had enough and took them to the Pastor. The Pastor, a large and intimidating man, sat them in his office, walked out, leaving the boys to squirm until he reentered. Looking at the first boy, the Pastor growled, “Where is God?” The boy hadn’t a clue. The Pastor repeated the question to the other two boys, who also sat speechless. The Pastor then stormed out of the office again, leaving the boys in deafening silence, on the verge of tears. Finally, one boy whimpered: “We’re in big trouble now. God is missing, and they’re blaming us!”
It’s a question I ask my theology students at Campbellsville University. “Where is God? How do we know God?”
The word theology is a combination of two words: “Theos,” translated as “God,” and “logos,” meaning word or reason; when attached to theos, it could translate as the “study of.” So it’s the study of God, just as biology is the study of life, or zoology is the study of animals. The foundation of our study is the Word of God, but given the number of churches and different belief systems in any community, we aren’t in agreement on all the teachings of the Bible. So the course begins by focusing on doctrinal truths as they developed through the centuries.
And speaking of doctrine, what is that? It simply means “teaching.” The preeminent American scholar of Christian history and historical theology, Jaroslav Pelikan, began his multivolume work on the history of theology with this statement: “What the church of Jesus Christ believes, teaches, and confesses on the basis of the word of God: this is Christian doctrine.”
Doctrine can tell us what the church has taught for two thousand years, but it didn’t invent the answer; it reflects what certain people have pondered and thought about God, putting into words something God had already been showing us far longer than any creed or classroom. The answer, of course, begins the moment we step outside and look up.
The psalmist gives us the first answer: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Day after day, night after night, without a single word spoken, creation has been preaching a wordless sermon since the moment God said, “Let there be light.” Anyone who has watched a Kentucky sunset burn orange over a tobacco field, or stood under a sky so thick with stars it looks spilled rather than scattered, has felt the tug of that sermon. Theologians call it “general revelation”—God making Himself known through what He’s made. It’s real. It’s enough to leave us without excuse, as Paul says in Romans. But it’s not enough to save us. The stars can tell you God is; they can’t tell you God is for you.
For that, God didn’t send a sunset. He sent a Son. Psalm 19 moves in its second half from the silent glory of the skies to the sure word of the Lord—and the New Testament shows us where those two halves meet: “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).
The same God who wrote His glory across the heavens wrote His love upon a cross. That’s not general revelation anymore. That’s special. That’s specific. That’s God not just showing up in creation, but showing up in a manger, a carpenter’s shop, a garden tomb.
So where is God? Augustine answered it centuries ago, in a prayer that still fits: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Not lost. Not missing. Not something three squirming boys in a pastor’s office need to go and find.
Because He came looking for us first.