The Psychology of Hiding From God
Why humans cling to tribes, leaders, and systems instead of reading the Book for themselves
There’s a quiet irony at the center of religion.
People say they want God—yet organize their entire spiritual lives to avoid dealing with Him directly.
Not consciously. Not maliciously. But predictably.
Human beings don’t just believe ideas. We attach to them. We wrap identity, safety, belonging, and emotional regulation around belief systems. Once that happens, truth becomes secondary to stability. And Scripture—raw, confrontational, unfiltered—becomes dangerous.
This isn’t a theological problem first.
It’s a psychological one.
And Scripture itself exposes it.
When God looks at a religious people who are active, sincere, moral-seeming, and completely misaligned, He doesn’t accuse them of ignorance. He accuses them of being unreasonable.
“Come now, let us reason together…”
That invitation isn’t gentle. It’s corrective. God is calling people back to sanity—back to clear thinking, moral honesty, and direct engagement with reality.
So why is that so hard?
Humans don’t just seek truth—they seek safety
Most people don’t gather around denominations or movements because they’ve tested everything and found them textually airtight.
They gather because they found belonging.
From a psychological standpoint, this is attachment behavior. Once a group becomes “home,” the nervous system treats disagreement as threat. Questioning the system doesn’t feel like learning—it feels like abandonment.
That’s when thinking shuts down.
Evidence stops being weighed and starts being filtered.
Scripture stops being read and starts being managed.
Questions stop sounding curious and start sounding dangerous.
At that point, the Bible is no longer approached as God’s voice—it’s approached as supporting material for a pre-selected identity.
Stylized certainty feels like peace (but it’s not)
Charismatic, emphatic leaders have always drawn crowds—for one simple reason: they reduce anxiety.
Strong delivery, confident tone, clean answers—these things soothe uncertainty. Psychiatry has a name for this preference: humans are deeply uncertainty-averse. We will often choose clarity over accuracy if clarity feels safer.
So people bond to voices that sound sure.
But here’s the cost:
Once peace is tied to a personality, Scripture becomes a liability—because Scripture might disrupt the system that’s keeping the anxiety at bay.
That’s when people stop asking, “What does the text say?”
and start asking, “What does my teacher say this means?”
At that moment, authority quietly shifts.
Identity is the real thing being protected
Denominational identity often functions like a psychological immune system.
When a label becomes part of who you are—this is my camp, my tradition, my people—then being wrong isn’t informational. It’s existential.
Admitting error now requires grief:
grief over wasted years,
grief over misplaced trust,
grief over pride,
grief over social cost.
And most people would rather defend a system than grieve its collapse.
So they argue.
They rationalize.
They quote selectively.
They spiritualize avoidance.
Not because they hate truth—but because truth threatens identity.
Institutions quietly train dependency
Let’s be honest.
Many religious systems survive by convincing people—explicitly or implicitly—that Scripture is too dangerous, too complex, or too holy to approach without professional supervision.
But the Bible itself does not assume that.
The God of Scripture speaks to shepherds, farmers, fishermen, women at wells, children, exiles, slaves, and foreigners. He commands His words to be taught at home, discussed in daily life, remembered in ordinary rhythms.
If your spiritual life collapses without a preferred interpreter, that’s not depth.
That’s dependency.
Fear hijacks reason
Fear of being wrong.
Fear of deception.
Fear of judgment.
Fear of losing community.
Fear narrows perception. Under threat, the brain shifts into survival mode. Reasoning gives way to defense. That’s not a moral failure—it’s a nervous system response.
But it creates a tragic result: people become least reasonable precisely where God asks them to reason most.
The real issue: people don’t want a Book—they want a buffer
A Book from God removes hiding places.
If God is speaking directly, then you are responsible.
No tradition to hide behind.
No leader to blame.
No institution to absorb accountability.
Scripture demands response.
And here’s the part no one wants to admit:
Many people don’t fear misunderstanding the Bible nearly as much as they fear what obedience would cost once they understand it.
It’s safer to debate frameworks than to repent.
Safer to rally around labels than to be confronted.
Safer to follow voices than to stand alone before God.
That’s why Isaiah still cuts.
The part Scripture makes unmistakably clear
Here’s the line institutions struggle to say plainly because it removes their leverage:
Scripture does not present God as distant from His people, requiring permanent human mediators.
From the beginning, the pattern is direct relationship.
God walks with Adam.
God speaks with Abraham as a friend.
God addresses Israel openly.
The prophets rebuke the people not for bypassing systems—but for refusing to listen to God Himself.
And the New Testament doesn’t soften this. It sharpens it.
Scripture says:
“They shall all know Me, from the least to the greatest.”
“You have no need that anyone should teach you”—meaning no one replaces God’s voice.
“There is one mediator between God and men”—and that mediator is not a clergy class, denomination, rabbinic authority, pastor, bishop, or spiritual influencer.
That verse doesn’t authorize new mediators.
It eliminates them.
Yeshua doesn’t become a new filter between God and humanity.
He removes the barriers so access is restored.
The tearing of the veil wasn’t symbolic poetry.
It was theological demolition.
Teachers still teach. Elders still guide. Community still matters.
But no one replaces personal responsibility before God.
So when someone says, “You can’t just read the Bible for yourself,” what they’re really saying—whether they realize it or not—is that God failed to communicate clearly to His own people.
Scripture does not support that insult.
A war warning for “Bible men”
Now here’s the warning—sharp, necessary, and biblical.
There is a specific kind of man Scripture repeatedly exposes: the man who talks Bible, handles Bible, teaches Bible, argues Bible… yet uses the Bible to keep people from God instead of bringing people to God.
He knows the language.
He knows the slogans.
He knows how to win debates.
He knows how to sound “doctrinal.”
But he doesn’t understand the most dangerous reality in the whole Book:
God is not recruiting customers. He is calling sons.
And sons don’t need a gatekeeper.
So hear this clean:
If a man makes you feel that access to God is dependent on him, on his covering, on his institution, on his exclusive framework, on his credentials, on his “special understanding”—you are not watching spiritual leadership.
You are watching spiritual control.
And it is not a small sin. It’s the kind of sin that turns religion into a weapon.
Scripture’s own pattern is this: false or corrupted leadership always does the same thing—it adds distance between God and the people while claiming to be the solution.
It never says, “Go read. Go reason. Go obey.”
It says, “Stay close to me or you’ll be unsafe.”
And here’s the part that should make every “Bible man” tremble:
It is possible to have a Bible in your hands and still stand in the way of the Kingdom.
It is possible to be “right” on paper and be wrong in spirit.
It is possible to teach truth and still be building a throne.
So I’ll say it the way it needs to be said:
If you claim to know the Bible, but you don’t understand direct covenant relationship with God—and you subtly train people to rely on you—then you’re not a guide. You’re a hazard.
Because you’re not merely making a mistake.
You’re positioning yourself where only Yeshua belongs.
And Scripture does not treat that lightly.
The final confrontation
If the Bible is truly God speaking to humanity, then the greatest barrier is not education.
It’s courage.
Courage to read without a handler.
Courage to admit misplaced trust.
Courage to lose approval for integrity.
Courage to let God dismantle what comfort built.
A direct relationship with God removes buffers.
It exposes motives.
It demands honesty.
Which is exactly why humans keep rebuilding mediators God already tore down.
Different names. Same function.
But the invitation still stands—for Jews, for Christians, for anyone willing to stop hiding:
Open the Book.
Read it plainly.
Reason honestly.
Respond personally.
Because if God is speaking, you don’t need a system to stand between you and Him.
You need courage.
And the Voice still says:
Come now. Let us reason together.
May the shalom of our Abba guard you —
shalom v’shalvah.
Your brother in the Way,
Sergio.
"Denominational identity often functions like a psychological immune system."
There's a gem....
I was reading an article this morning on how Dispensationalism found a home and became increasingly popular. This article goes much deeper, but the parallels are unmistakable.
May he write His Instruction on our hearts and be seated on the throne of our heart & soul!
Father we invite You to uproot & replant, search our hearts to bring wholeness & healing.