The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

by Timothy J. Keller

The Endless, Pointless Litigation of Existence

there was a presumption. That one moved…on an upward path toward some elevation, where…God knows what…I would be justified, or even condemned. A verdict anyway. I think now that my disaster really began when I looked up one day…and the bench was empty. No judge in sight.

We all live as if it is better to seek peace instead of war, to tell the truth instead of lying, to care and nurture rather than to destroy.

Whether we are loving or cruel in the end would make no difference at all.

you get the benefit of having a God without the cost of following him.

But there is no integrity in that.

It is dishonest to live as if he is there and yet fail to acknowledge the one who has given you all these gifts.

What does the term “glorify” mean? To glorify something or someone is to praise, enjoy, and delight in them. When something is useful you are attracted to it for what it can bring you or do for you. But if it is beautiful, then you enjoy it simply for what it is. Just being in its presence is its own reward. To glorify someone is also to serve or defer to him or her. Instead of sacrificing their interests to make yourself happy, you sacrifice your interests to make them happy. Why? Your ultimate joy is to see them in joy.

Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him.

If you favor money, power, and accomplishment over human relationships, you will dash yourself on the rocks of reality.

You were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love.

Yes he does ask us to obey him unconditionally, to glorify, praise, and center our lives around him. But now, I hope, you finally see why he does that. He wants our joy!

The ultimate reason that God creates, said Edwards, is not to remedy some lack in God, but to extend that perfect internal communication of the triune God’s goodness and love…. God’s joy and happiness and delight in divine perfections is expressed externally by communicating that happiness and delight to created beings…. The universe is an explosion of God’s glory. Perfect goodness, beauty, and love radiate from God and draw creatures to ever increasingly share in the Godhead’s joy and delight….

The ultimate end of creation, then, is union in love between God and loving creatures.

“like atoms in a molecule, like the tones in a chord, like the living organisms on this earth, like the mother with the baby stirring in her body.”9 The love of the inner life of the Trinity is written all through

Creation is a dance!

However, if we comply with God’s directions only when it fits in with our goals and interests, then we are trying to get God to orbit around us.

The dance of joyful, mutually self-giving relationships is impossible in a world in which everyone is stationary, trying to get everything else to orbit around them.

sin is centering your identity on anything but God.

we must come to grips with the fact that we owe him our entire lives just because of what he has done for us already. He is our Creator, and for that fact alone we owe him everything.

Living unto God produces, as a secondary result, subjective riches of every conceivable and inconceivable kinds. In fact, he re-orients what a person considers to be desirous, most notably who.