Imagine for a moment that you are an artist–a very talented artist capable of extraordinary work. One day, you decide to sit down and draw a detailed self portrait. Something like this:

By artist Paul Cadden, featured at gencept.com.

Yes, this was done with pencils.

Now imagine that you had a way of bringing this portrait to life. Not just in an animated sense, but in the conscious, independent thought and free will sort. Wouldn’t that be incredible?

Certainly it would. However, you’d soon discover slight obstacles to your creation’s understanding of you, the creator. You exist in three dimensions: length, width, and depth. Because your body was made in 3D, it is capable of processing information in 3D as well. But the living image you created is in 2D. As such, she can only process information in two dimensions. So some things you can see and hear, she can’t. Some places you go, she is unable to follow. In fact, there’s a whole dimension of you, the creator, that she is unable to grasp–it is hidden from her. In fact, there are only one or two angles from which she is able to see you at all. Even if you occupied the same room 24/7, you’d remain invisible to her most of the time.

So how would your creation seek to understand you?

Well, I imagine that she might start writing down some of the things that she observes about you, such as your manner of speaking and tone of voice. As she collects information, she might begin to theorize about your nature and character. After a while, she might begin compiling these observations and theories in a manual so that her offspring might have a better understanding of who you are and how to communicate with you in an effective manner. No doubt, some of the information would be complicated, unsettling and, at times, somewhat contradictory. The offspring would have heated debates. Some would come to some very wrong conclusions. Some might decide, because they can’t see you, that you don’t exist at all.

Sound familiar?

God is a fourth dimensional being. He exists outside of space and time. In fact, He created space and time. Because He is the creator of these things, He is not bound by their rules (just as you aren’t bound by the rules of a 2D portrait). He’s just as present with us now as He is with our descendants 1,000 years in the future.

That’s exactly why He’s invisible. He’s moving on a plane that our physical eyes are incapable of seeing. But that’s also how He is omnipresent and omniscient. If you could move outside of time and space, you could be everywhere, too. Even inside your creation, if you wanted.

Once in a while, God comes within the line of human sight. He walked with Adam and Eve in Eden. He allowed Moses to see Him pass by on a mountaintop. He has a way of making Himself known. He whispers across the room to those who are listening for His voice.

But because He’s invisible–or because we, as 3D creatures, are incapable of understanding His complete form and nature–some doubt His existence. Yet even these offspring continue to operate according to the rules He has set up: those that fall under the label of physics. Scientists continue to do amazing things and make amazing discoveries. But in all of that, they have yet to answer one prickly, overarching question: Why are the laws of physics what they are? In other words, how did we end up with gravity and centrifugal force and a speed of light of 299,792,458 meters per second and not something else? Where did these laws come from, and why are they seemingly universal and absolute?

I keep telling them that we’re all part of a canvas. And, one day, the Guy who painted that canvas is going to transform us and bring us into His dimension, where we will finally see Him in His entirety–and, like Him, understand all of the intricate mysteries of the canvas He painted. They scoff and go back to searching for the “God particle,” the one that supposedly gives mass to all other things. Some say that when they find it, it will prove there is no Painter. I just shake my head and think, “Silly boys. Don’t you know that’s Him?”