Robert Mckim's The Hiddenness Of God

In his text “The Hiddenness of God”, Robert McKim begins with an allegory about an isolated community who had little remaining memory of interaction with other people groups. Only a few of the oldest members could faintly recollect the stories of once belonging to a great empire and being ruled by a great emperor, but the young and most of the old dismissed these ancient stories. An emissary arrives one day declaring that the old stories are true and that this “Hidden Emperor” requests “loyalty, trust, and obedience” (282) in exchange for protection and assistance. McKim the uses three characters to personify the possible responses to this “Hidden Emperor”. The old woman believes that the uncertainty regarding the emperor’s existence provides freedom to choose whether there is an emperor, and that this otherwise unavailable choice is preferable to (factually proven) information that is “forced on us”(282). …show more content…
Immediately following the public proclamation, the bearded man, acts as the skeptic, questioning the value of the emperor’s hidden nature and the value of the uncertainty. He regards the old woman and emissary’s conclusions as absurd, and McKim’s story is sympathetic to this character's frustrations. His last words in the story are “The only sensible conclusion is that there is no emperor” (283). The third voice then enters, who McKim later characterizes as a part of the tentative believers, and this man acknowledges that empire may be possible, but if he exists, he is unlikely to care about human’s beliefs or disbelief in him. This third perspective represents McKim’s conclusion in the second component to his