This week the blog is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective. This is an excerpt from Thaddeus Williams’ latest book on living out a radically God-centered systematic theology entitled Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker (Zondervan Reflective, 2024), featuring stories of Christian thinkers like Michael Horton, Fred Sanders, Joni Eareckson-Tada, John Perkins, Vishal Mangalwadi, and others on how God’s attributes have impacted their personal lives.
There are many so-called “evidential” arguments for God’s existence. The universe’s beginning points to its Beginner. Design in the universe points to its Designer. Moral laws point to the Moral Law-giver, and so on. Such arguments compute well with how certain minds are wired, particularly the more philosophic brainiac types. But there is another style of case for Christianity, one that I believe touches those without patches on their blazer elbows, pipes in their teeth, or five-syllable words on their tongues. There are arguments, if they can even be called that, which address themselves to all of us, every human and every dimension of our humanness. They address us not as cerebrums on sticks but as the artists, lovers, dreamers, hypocrites, heroes, loners, romantics, dullards, worshipers, adventurers, failures, jokesters, and weirdos that we are.
Every day you are bombarded with more arguments for God’s existence than your five senses can possibly intake or appreciate.Thaddeus WilliamsShare
They are something less like arguments and more like invitations, signposts, pointers, clues, keys that open doors to wider vistas of human experience, lighthouse beacons that guide us out of churning black ocean chaos to safer shores. They are what a pastor hailed as “America’s most important and original philosophical theologian” understood so well. Describing the searching soul, Jonathan Edwards says,
[I]t sees that till now it has been pursuing shadows, but that it now has found the substance; that before it had been seeking happiness in the stream, but that now it has found the ocean…. The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.
Dusk, magnolia flowers, ground-rule doubles, dandelion fluff, thunder, baptisms, laughter-induced side cramps, the sudden volume spike of rain from a pitter patter to a torrent, the conversation with a homeless man, the wrestling match with a toddler, the cool pillowcase, the Lord’s table, and on we could go. Try to wipe God from the horizon and, in the final analysis, this stream of wonders runs dry. They are reduced to nothing but “illusions fobbed on us by our genes,” in the words of atheist Michael Ruse.
I have some books on my shelf that list five arguments for God. Others document a dozen. Peter Kreeft lists twenty. One youtuber boasts 150 arguments for God in a four-hour video. What is the true number? Something more like how many drops are in the Pacific, or how many subatomic particles exist. Every day you are bombarded with more arguments for God’s existence than your five senses can possibly intake or appreciate. Lord, give us eyes to see, noses to smell, buds to taste, fingertips to touch, ears to hear, and souls to sense the moment by moment grand case for You. Help us follow shadows to the Substance, streams to the sea, sunbeams to the Sun. Amen.

There are many different ways to chart the journey through life. We can do it in life stages, like childhood to adulthood to middle age to old age. We can do it in decades, like teens to twenties to thirties and so on. But lately I’ve been pondering the passing of the generations, how when we are young we lose our grandparents, and then when we are a bit older we lose our parents, until finally we come to the stage when our own generation begins to fade—when we have to bid farewell to the people we counted as friends and peers.
In the past few years, I have watched a number of dear friends grapple with terrible and ultimately terminal illnesses. I have watched people I only ever knew to be whole and strong fade until they were broken and weak. I have watched them accept the reality that their time was short and the Lord was calling them home. And through it all, I’m convinced that I’ve seen their faith shine all the brighter. I’ve seen an inner beauty and an inner glory that has become all the more evident as everything outside has been slowly pulled off and peeled away.

I want you to imagine that you are walking toward the Old Testament tabernacle, that you are seeing and experiencing it for the very first time. The twelve tribes of Israel are camped in a great rectangle all around it—millions of people, hundreds of thousands of tents, countless cattle. In the center of it all is a clearing and within that clearing is the tabernacle.
As you approach it, you can see the outer wall which is made up of plainly-colored curtains supported by bronze stands. The people and the priests are coming and going through an entrance that faces east. The outside of the tabernacle is noble and dignified, but hardly impressive.
As you pass through the entrance, you now find yourself in the outer courtyard. Here you see the great bronze altar billowing with smoke. Nearby is a bronze laver where the priests carry out their ceremonial washings. You stand for a few moments and observe the structure of the tabernacle tent, and while you know it is made up of four layers, you can mostly see only the practical outer layer. This courtyard is a place of bronze and silver. It is impressive, but not stunning.
And now you know it is time to pass into the Holy Place. (For the sake of the illustration, we’ll have to suppose you are somehow permitted to do so.) You walk past the great columns of gold that support the veil and inside you see the lampstand, the altar of incense, and the table for the showbread, all of it covered in gold. The walls are made up of vertical wooden frames and horizontal wooden bars, all overlaid with gold. Ahead of you is the veil guarding the entrance to the Most Holy Place. This veil is blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen, and woven into it with the most precious thread is the image of the cherubim, the angelic guardians. Looking above, you admire the precious inner covering that contrasts sharply with the practical outer covering you saw from the courtyard. If the courtyard is a place of bronze and silver, this is a place of gold. It evokes awe within.
The best of the beauty is in the hidden places.Share
There is just one more step to take. Parting that great curtain you walk into the Holy of Holies and gasp at the beauty of the Ark of the Covenant with the ornately carved cherubim stretching out their wings over the mercy seat. This room is beautifully ornate, every surface made of either precious gold or exquisite cloth. Best of all, the glory of God is tangible here, visible and undeniable, for this is the place where God lives, where God has chosen to dwell among his people. This is a place of gold and of glory. You can only fall on your face in wonder and worship.
And later, as you ponder what you have seen, you consider this: The best of the beauty is in the hidden places. In fact, the deeper you go into the tabernacle, the more precious the contents. The more you peel away layer after layer of the tabernacle, the greater the beauty and the greater the glory.

And this is exactly what I have observed as my friends have grown ill, as their strength has faded, as their bodies have failed. As more and more layers of strength and health have been peeled away, the beauty and the glory within have shone all the brighter—the glory of God displayed in the beauty of a sanctified life, the beauty of a submitted heart, the beauty of a satisfied soul. I have seen the glory of the Lord as he shines in the place he now chooses to dwell—not in a tabernacle made of gold and cloth, but a tabernacle made of body and soul. And as the body and soul have prepared to part for a time, it has shone all the more, all the brighter. I have seen and I have known: the glory of God is in this place.

Do you ever find yourself wondering just how much the Lord loves us? Do you ever find yourself wondering just how good his purposes can be and just how glorious his plans? Do you ever find yourself wondering if God really cares?

I found myself pondering these matters the other day after a friend sent me an article about the precipitous rise of euthanasia in Canada. What politicians insisted would be nothing more than a means to hasten death for those who are terminally ill has actually become a means to prey upon the vulnerable.
While many request euthanasia to avoid pain in their final days, some are now using it simply because they are downcast or impoverished. Veterans who seek help for emotional turmoil are being offered the option of suicide. Those who can’t afford to live are being allowed to die. As the article says, “Since Canada legalized euthanasia in 2016, there has been a strange balancing act at the heart of its medical system. There is a national suicide prevention hotline you can call 24/7, where sympathetic operators will try to talk you out of killing yourself. But today there are also euthanasia hotlines, where operators will give you the resources you need to carry out your wish. Doctors and nurse practitioners are now in the business of saving the lives of some patients while providing death to others.” And all this is taking place before the rules grow even more permissive in the months ahead.
This is just one of many moral abominations that has taken root in the modern Western imagination—a context in which aborting babies is understood to be as inalienable a right as voting, in which even questioning the goodness of assisting children in transitioning from one gender to another (as if such a thing were even possible) is considered contemptible, in which the basic family structure that holds society together is being disparaged and undermined. “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
If we were to list all of society’s ills we would be here all day and all night. And it brings to mind one of the Bible’s most sobering woes—one of its most terrifying warnings to those who turn from God’s ways. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” We see all of this before us each and every day.
Yet my purpose here is not to recount the ways in which society curses God, but to consider God’s love for his people. There is a connection between the two. For as I have pondered society’s full-out rebellion against God, I also found myself marveling that he does not just strike this whole world and everyone in it with his hand of judgment. Why does he allow all this evil to continue? Why does he permit people to carry on and even deepen their rebellion against him?
Surely the answer is not apathy. Surely it is not inability or disinterest. There must be some other very good reasons. And the best I can figure is that those reasons must relate to God’s love and purposes.
God loves his people—the people he chose to be his own even before he created this world. Yet clearly not all of his people have yet been saved—nor probably even been born. God’s love for his people is so great that he will continue to tolerate all of this sin and rebellion, all of this hatred toward him, until the last of his chosen and beloved children has been born, has heard the gospel, and has been saved.
And then God has purposes he means to accomplish in this world, the foremost among them being glorifying himself. His purposes in this world must be so good and must bring such glory to his name that he permits evil to continue. For God freely makes use of the evil actions of men to bring about the best of his plans and accomplish the best of his purposes—purposes like the preservation of his people through famine and the salvation of his people through Christ’s crucifixion. Even the greatest evil is God’s servant to accomplish great good.
So the next time you are faced with the sheer depravity of this world, allow it to point you beyond the evil of man to consider the purposes of God. The next time you are forced to consider the rebellion that exists in the hearts of men, consider also the love that flows from the heart of God. You will see that his purposes are so good and his heart so tender that he will continue to allow mankind to rage against him and commit abhorrent acts so that he might welcome in all of his people and further the glory of his great name.