. . . why doesn’t God just speak to everyone audibly? It wouldn’t take away free will because just knowing God exists doesn’t mean you will follow/love/obey him. . .
One problem is, that most of us - if we had made up our minds to commit a particular sin would eventually end up sooner or later telling the , um G
odd you’re suggesting in your question to “be quiet” or “stop talking” , so that we could go ahead and sin . . . or do you think maybe that G-
odd wouldn’t love us enough to try and stop us in the heat of the moment by saying to us repetitively, “Please, don’t sin - it harms you- it can even harm you forever !”
You see, if we’re honest enough to admit it, we who believe, play this little game with ourselves where we either momentarily pretend God doesn’t exist, or we have a bout of temporary amnesia while we are in the act of committing a sin : that doesn’t hold true for every single sin, but it covers the majority of them.
So we would essentially be telling God to only speak to us when we find it convenient. I believe you’ll discover that there isn’t any such thing as
conditional free will - it’s either free, or it isn’t.
God in fact
did come down from Heaven and
He spoke to us for 3 years straight during his public ministry . We have a record of the words He spoke to all of us. It’s called the Gospel.
In one Gospel account, God tells us, “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” [John 16:12]
I heard a priest years ago say something in a sermon which has stayed with me: “God created us in His own image and likeness, but we human beings have this tendency to try and recreate God in our own image.”
God is beyond what we can comprehend. Suggesting a better way for God to deal with human beings or to arrange our salvation, would appear to be doing what most of us do to one extent or another - that is, trying to recreate God in our own image.
Our Blessed Lord said to St. Faustina Kowalska ,
“Let no soul fear to draw near to me , even though its sins be as scarlet. My Mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity.”