Epistemic Distance

In my own humble opinion, the part of the worldview of a Christian could be summarized in these three statements that follow, that then result in the problem that is listed below:
1) God wants to be in a good, direct, loving relationship with humans.
2) Humans have hurt this possibility by sinning against God and going their own, selfish way.
3) God is now reaching out to humans to restore the relationship.
Problem: Humans still, in spite of God’s efforts to reach out and make the effort of reconciliation, have a difficult time hearing from God, believing in God, understanding God, following God, and so on.
Explanation: Epistemic Distance. One might think that an all-loving and all-powerful God would be able to make it perfectly clear to humans what that God is like, what that God wants us to do, how we can reconcile the relationship, and so on, and that upon making these things very clear humans would therefore choose to follow God, love each other, and the world would be a beautiful place. However, several factors make this not the case.
1) God is non-created; but Humans are created by God. This means there’s a huge difference (distance) between what we can know (epistemology) and what God can know. There’s an epistemic distance between us and God, and our understanding will always be incomplete.
2) God is perfectly loving; but we have to overcome sinful tendencies to perfectly love. There’s an epistemic distance here as well, that we cause to be greater and greater the more we choose to give in to sin. We can know God’s love less and less the more we move away from God by giving in to sin.
3) God is providing evidence of God’s love, will, existence, etc.; but humans determine their receptivity of these things by their own desire and decisions. A biblical example is found in Exodus, when the Israelites witnessed many miracles first-hand and received direct communication from God in the form of specific laws, then chose to reject God and build a golden calf to worship!

So, God does make tremendous efforts to reduce the epistemic distance and offers us the power to reduce the distance on our end, but our ability to grow close to God is also dependent upon us having the desire to do our part to reduce that distance on our end—by accepting God’s graceful offer of reconciliation through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, by accepting our state as humbly dependent on God, by avoiding sin, and by reaching out in love through prayer and worship. Then we may know more fully God’s love and grace!