Why Would God Hide?

[Tonus]

Clearly God could make His presence clear beyond doubt. And have a legion of angels briefed to zap our backsides if we so much as think of taking a pencil home from work. But I'm not sure that's the best thing.

Why not? According to the Bible, god made his presence clear numerous times in the past, everything from speaking directly to people to bringing plagues and destruction against those who challenged him. Later on he takes a human form and walks on water, heals blind and paralyzed people, exorcises demons who seem terrified of him, raises the dead, feeds thousands with a bag's worth of food (and then collects twelve baskets full afterwards!) and so on. He's quite hands-on and unafraid of being seen and heard.

Then... poof! Nothing. Humanity grows in knowledge and understanding and we learn more about our world and our universe and we develop methods of recording things that happen and god isn't anywhere to be found. Now he inhabits our hearts and minds and some metaphysical realm from which he can observe us, stopping occasionally to giggle at those silly humans and their detection devices that he dodges so skillfully. Hey, he gave us a book that is easily misconstrued as the ancient scribbling of ignorant people and which is so open to interpretation that there don't seem to be any two Christians who can agree on what it all means... isn't that enough???