Part One     Part Two     Part Three     Part Four

Ghosting is an extreme, unscriptural form of separation, which has been defined as “the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.”  It has become an increasingly more common occurrence among professing Christians in various institutions.  I know that the most regular usage of the term relates to the realm of dating in the world, but in its technical meaning it applies to any personal relationship.  It’s happening in Christian homes today all over the country with their adult children.  Statistics and my own observation show me that.  An article entitled, “Ghosting Needs to Die,” reads:

[W]ith increasing frequency, adult children are ghosting their parents. Dr. Joshua Coleman, author of When Parents Hurt, calls it “a silent epidemic.” Sixty percent of parents surveyed on the Estranged Stories site said their children had never “concretely shared” their reason for severing contact. In “Hidden Voices: Family Estrangement in Adulthood,” researchers at the University of Cambridge reported that more than 70 percent of adult children held out no hope for a relationship in the future. They also noted that the adult children were ten times more likely than their parents to initiate the break.

What are the situations for or in which someone could ghost?  I’ve read a lot about ghosting and the situations for and in which the world says it occurs.  When people ghost, they might either have a good reason or not.  As I’ve written in other posts, ghosting is an extreme form of separation.  Separation itself isn’t bad in the Bible.  It very often is good to separate.  It is not always good to separate and sometimes, even when it is good to separate, it can be done in a wrong way.

Is there ever a situation where someone should separate “suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication”?  Scripture doesn’t give one example of this.  The Bible teaches against the components of the behavior in no uncertain terms.  Ghosting doesn’t originate from scripture, so where does it come from?  From all that I’ve read, even secular psychologists call it a form of cruel narcissism.  I couldn’t find anyone who said it was good.  I read one place that said that it would be permissible in instances where the ghosted person is a “toxic” or “narcissistic” person.

Even ghosting implies an already established relationship.  I’m not going to address whether it’s okay for a girl to ghost a boyfriend that she finds out is a mafia member.  I’m assuming this is a person who will disobey scripture and will not be guided by the Word of God anyway.  The right approach would start with preaching the gospel to this person.

Would an actual Christian ghost?  Only a disobedient one, and I’m saying a very disobedient one.  I wouldn’t keep calling this a Christian, a true believer, without some soon coming repentance of this hideous practice.  It really is a person who is rebellious against God’s design.  It’s treating the world like it isn’t God’s.  This is someone making up his own rules about relationship against God.

In a comment to an earlier post, someone mounted a sort of argument for ghosting of some kind.  I could even sympathize with the situations he brought up.  There are still no grounds for a Christian to ghost anyone.  The Bible contains a wealth of material to deal with perceived situations to ghost.

From my reading on the toxic parent, a concept arising from secular psychology, in most cases a normal Christian parent would fall under toxic parent.  He’s just got to want his way of life to be kept by his children, and that’s toxic, even and perhaps especially if it is scriptural.  The word toxic turns the behavior of the parent into something criminal, so a child would be justified in protecting himself from criminal behavior.   Ghosting is the way out. This is the underlying idea today against most counseling against sinful behavior — that counsel is abusive.

The biblical alternative to ghosting are the scriptural steps to reconciliation.  This assumes two parties that want to obey scripture.  A biblical alternative doesn’t mean anything to someone who doesn’t recognize the Bible as the final authority for faith and practice.  If two parties are at loggerheads in reconciliation, they are submitted to mediation, ultimately the church.  All of these steps are in the Bible multiple times.

Not following biblical instruction on relationship, according to the Bible is hateful or unloving.  In Matthew 5:21-26, Jesus compares it to committing murder.  Murder connotes a strike at the image of God.  God created relationship, wants the love of neighbor as one’s self, and so here is a person that is murdering the relationship.

Part of an agreement or will to reconcile would be a will to change based upon scriptural terms.  Someone must know what or how to change.  Ghosting doesn’t afford that.  The one ghosted doesn’t even know what the problem is, so he can’t change until he finds out what could reconcile.

In my observation, ghosting applies to someone who does not care or want to be ruled by what the Bible teaches on relationship.  He wants to do what he wants to do almost without judgment.  He doesn’t want to face scrutiny on his decision making.  He won’t risk the rejection of his lust with even one attempt at justifying it.  Ghosting is the invention of a self-willed, lust dominated person.  A continuation of ghosting is the practice of a non-Christian.  He may say he knows God, but living in this chosen state of perpetual disobedience, he is a liar.

Jesus said, he who has the ears to hear, let him hear.  The rejection of ghosting has to start with consideration of how despicable the practice.  Someone who is saved will understand this sin sent Jesus to the cross, if he believes Jesus died for his sins.  Understanding that salvation is being presented before God as pure and spotless, he will want to obey in practice what he has already obeyed in position, or what the Apostle Paul described in Philippians 3:12, “apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.”

The Old Testament book of Zechariah calls for the repentance and faithfulness of the remnant of God’s people based on the promises of God and prophecies of the future.  One part of the communication to and through the prophet Zechariah is a series of eight visions.  Zechariah motivates his Jewish audience with the record of a series of visions which portray God’s plans for Israel’s future.  I’m focusing on of them, what has been called “The Woman in the Basket” (Zechariah 5:5-11):

5 Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth. 6 And I said, What is it? And he said, This is an ephah that goeth forth. He said moreover, This is their resemblance through all the earth. 7 And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead: and this is a woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah. 8 And he said, This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof. 9 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven. 10 Then said I to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these bear the ephah? 11 And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base.

This is a very, very simple story.  It’s not even much of a story.  An “ephah” (v. 6) is a basket, technically the size of a basket, which is today 6.1 American gallons.  You can’t make everything in this story mean something, but to stick with the basic, so let’s follow along.

The woman in the basket is the wickedness of the nation, which is obvious for all to see.  A lid is put on the basket made of a talent of lead.  That’s 75 to 100 pounds of lead sealing the top of that basket.  This lead lid means something, and it is an obvious expression of God’s separation of the wickedness, actual wicked people, from the nation.  A very heavy lead lid covering a woman in a basket is a serious separation.

Two women take this woman in this basket with a lead lid and with wind in their stork-like wings, they fly all to Shinar and set her on a base or pedestal in a house or temple.  The simplicity of it is that God separates the wickedness, the actual wicked people, from the nation of God’s people unto where it belongs, Shinar.  Shinar is Babylon, where the wickedness of this present world originated and will also end.  It is being disposed of, like taking out the trash.

God wants sin separated.  This is discipline.  This is personal separation.  This is ecclesiastical separation.  The sin and sinners are removed.  The bad influences are eradicated.  When all that offends God is sin, this takes preeminence for a people who want to please God.

The separation will occur.  Just like Noah and his family were separated from the world by the waters of the flood, while they were saved in the ark, the nation of Israel is saved by its separation.  At the very end of the Bible, the wicked are separated even from the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem.  God wants separation.  Paul wrote, come out from among them and be ye separate.

What belongs to Shinar must stay in Shinar or be removed to Shinar.  Keeping it where we are — the world, the world system, wordliness, the spirit of this age — is not the will of God.  The people who do it, John says, the love of God does not abide in them.  They will be the woman in the basket.  The ultimate removal is being left behind to be judged by God and then cast into the lake fire forever.  These do not belong with God’s people, because God’s people are holy.

The motivation of the story is to repent.  The separation is not salvation for those in the basket.  These are not repentant people.  It is judgment.  However, the declaration of this message by God to Zechariah and from Zechariah to the people would give them their means of deliverance.  Separation would occur one way or another, in the basket or outside of it.

Not only is the vision of separation a call for separation.  If they repented of their sin, they would separate.  If they wanted deliverance, they would separate.  It is also a prophecy of separation.  Two-thirds of the nation is separated from the nation and destroyed in the ultimate separation.  Israel is saved, which amounts to the one-third of the nation that is saved.  Those people are saved, because they turn to Jesus as the Messiah.

If Jesus is the Messiah to you, the Christ to you, you believe in the Christ, the Son of God, and have life through His name, you are separating yourself by following Him.  Jesus leads a person to a new life.  Israel looks upon Him, whom they have pierced.  They repent, the repentance recorded in the confession that is Isaiah 52 and 53.  He was wounded for their iniquities.  They esteemed Him stricken for His own sins, but He was bruised for theirs.  They understand that they were sheep that had gone astray.  They were wicked in their nature and they were in need of conversion.

Salvation is separation.  It separates in the end the sheep from the goats and the tares from the wheat.  It separates the proud Israelite, who will not acquiesce to His Messiah, from the one who is poor in spirit, mourns over his sin, and in meekness hungers and thirsts after imputed righteousness.  Instead of building his house on the sand, he builds his house on the rock, Who Is Jesus Christ.  In the end, you’ll either be in the basket with the lead lid on it, or you’ll be free through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Part One     Part Two     Part Three

One of the primary sources for the ideas of Karl Marx was the writings of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau of France.  The latter inspired the French Revolution and thereby then the bloody devastation of two World Wars in the twentieth century and a consequential Cold War.  The essence of Rousseau imagined the elimination of social relationships, traditions, customs, morals, and laws with the goal of a remaining lone existence of autonomous individuals.  Rousseau called it amour de soi, which means “self love” or what he labeled, “state of nature.”

Rousseau argued true nature was autonomous individuals, predating society, so that institutions of marriage, family, and church were contrary to nature.  I’m focusing on those three, ordained by God and in God’s Word.  Edward W. Younkins writes:

Rousseau’s view is that society corrupts the pure individual. Arguing that men are not inherently constrained by human nature, Rousseau claims that men are limited and corrupted by social arrangements. Conceiving of freedom as an absolute, independent of any natural limitations, Rousseau disavows the world of nature and its inherent laws, constraints, and regulations.

This is the meaning of the famous line that Rousseau began his book, The Social Contract:  “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”  He meant the oppression of personal relationships like marriage, family, and church.

Rousseau has influenced the United States much, much more than people even know.  Many understand that liberalism says that the core of personhood is one’s ability to choose his own identity.  Essential identity is free from family and even responsibility.  To find true self, the individual finds the need to break free from divine institution with self-autonomy.  In the application of law, the rights bearer is the self-determining individual, who connects to others only by his own choice.  State universities push this idea on students to great acceptance.

The idea of “social contract” with Rousseau is individual choice.  Each individual authors his own obligation.  To accomplish this, concepts of the family are broken down.  Parents have been removed from marriage as a part of radical individualism, resulting in less and later marriage, because the youth see it as a social contract wrought with potential personal harm.

Rousseau clashes with scripture.  God’s Word describes the original state of man as male and female (Genesis 1:26-27) and family (Genesis 1:28), and God Himself instituted the church (Matthew 16:18-19).  In scripture, freedom is not interrupted by God’s institutions, but provided by them (John 8:32-36).  The moral requirements of the divine institutions do not impose on freedom, but express the nature God designed.

Although contradictory, Rousseau declared the state to release the individual:  “Each citizen would then be completely independent of all his fellow men, and absolutely dependent on the state.”  Rousseau was joined by others such as philosopher John Locke, his views arising from 17th century mechanistic physics.  “State of nature” replaced creation as the underlying premise.  Rousseau took the concept to the extent that freedom meant human opportunity to create one’s self without interference.

According to Rousseau, the ability for the individual to create himself necessitates the elimination of the aforementioned institutions, so that the individual can choose for himself what he wants to be and do.  In Rousseau’s view, the state is the liberator, which seems like a contradiction, because in the real world, the state controls and coerces individuals.  Radical individualism led to radical statism or totalitarianism.  Many political scientists and sociologists show how that isolated individuals are most vulnerable to totalitarian control.

I have seen firsthand in many different ways the state interfering with God ordained institutions with a grounds of individual freedom.  You the reader probably have plenty of your own examples.  When my first child entered California State University East Bay, and we went to the financial desk to make a payment, the school would not allow it.  Only the student could do business, even if the student wasn’t making the payment.  The student received the report card and not the parent.  Everyone knows that a teenage girl doesn’t require permission from parents to get an abortion.

The clearest practical notion of the attack on divine institutions is the arbitrary adult age of 18 that the state continues to attempt to lower to 16.  Eighteen-year-olds think they are separate from their parents, free agents to make a decision with the authority of the state. They see their parents as an intrusion on their freedom, on their ability to choose their own identity.  They see the parents even as an imposition on their ability to develop their own beliefs.  None of this is true and is in direct violation of the teaching of the Word of God.  It is pure Rousseau and a lie of Satan.

Patriarchy, the authority of a dad, even a godly one with best interests for his family, has been effectively eliminated by radical statism due to radical individualism.  Church authority from the pastor to congregational to elder has been nullified.  People are doing what they want to do and feel entitled in doing so.  Anything or anyone who steps in the way of that might be “ghosted.”  This is the climate of ghosting today, ghosting being “the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.”

According to Rousseau, the terms of relationship are set by the individual like a social contract, disconnected from the God ordained terms of God, church, and even the Bible.  If a young person doesn’t like what the church teaches, he can easily find a church “woke” to his desires and with all the necessary minimization of authority.  Real authenticity is someone who is being true to his self without the compunctions of preset family responsibility.  He can’t really know unless it is his choice, completely separated from divine institutions.

What is ironic to the thoughts or position of the ghoster is that while he pursues individual autonomy, he is bound to the disposition of the flesh.  Everyone is a slave to something or someone.  True freedom isn’t the absence of subjugation, according to God.  The truth sets someone free, but true freedom is from the bondage to sin.  The ghoster sees true freedom as freedom from the bondage of divinely instituted spheres of authority.  In fact, those are ordained by God to provide freedom.  This is a person, who is truly a slave now to his own desires, yet fooled into thinking he is free.  The original nature of the republic was the freedom to live within the confines of moral responsibility, which is tied to divinely instituted spheres of sovereignty.

One of the next door neighbors to our church property has a huge yard and in it, he raises chickens, who got loose yesterday.  Chickens were running across our church grounds here in this urban area.  It was funny to watch, but I had a dim expectancy for the future of those chickens.  They were free all right, just like the ghoster is free, when he separates himself from the sovereignty of the sphere of family, marriage, or a father.  Freedom is not the freedom of self-destruction, which God says occurs when a child doesn’t obey or honor his father and his mother.  It will not be well with him on the earth — will not be.

Individual freedom is the climate of ghosting.  It is a lie about freedom.  It rests on an “atomistic viewpoint,” a naturalistic assumption that human atoms function prior to social arrangements.  This is a mere material world functioning according to mechanistic physics.  It is the position of uniformitarianism that speaks evil of divine intervention.  Someone is free from divine intervention in his own mind, which is represented by God ordained authority.  He doesn’t have to fit in with divine purpose.

A “woke” church today from often to always portrays God in varied degrees of coherence with individual autonomy.  A ghoster might not enjoy the relationship within a divine sphere authority, so he chooses instead a relationship with his own self-perception of God.  His God now has his back, and he’s comfortable with that.  He is bathing in the love of an ethereal father without the intrusion of the regulations of which he disapproves, his chosen divine father approving of all his social and moral predilections.  However, that’s not how God works.

God doesn’t work through mankind like he is a free agent.  God Himself works through these spheres of divine sovereignty.  Someone is not free to fit into them or not fit into them as he would, even if a “woke” church gives its ironic imprimatur on the “ghoster.”  God orders the world for His creation and the freedom still operates within that creation order.  A husband is the head of the wife, for instance.  Is the Christian wife not free just because she doesn’t like how her husband heads?

The protection of true freedom is the protection of the spheres created and ordered by God.  The state itself ordained by God protects freedom by protecting those spheres.  When a father can’t lead his family because of individual autonomy, freedom is lost.  Individuals don’t have the right to choose their own identity.  Identity proceeds from created order.  A society isn’t free when a boy uses the girl’s bathroom.  That violates the actual freedom of the girls.

Ghosters aren’t free.  What they perceive as individual autonomy is bondage.  They think they are forming their own identities, but it’s actually their slavery to their own lust.  Neither is what they think is freedom, the grace of God.  It isn’t grace, and it isn’t God.

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

Part One      Part Two

The Irish Independent is the most prominent newspaper in Ireland, and yesterday, November 29, 2019, in that paper, Larissa Nolan writes about ghosting in an article entitled, “Into thin air: How ‘ghosting’ became the new normal”:

We’ve all heard about ghosting: the spineless trend of severing a relationship by disappearing from contact. No calls, no texts, no emails – and no warning, explanation or chance to discuss. It’s a particular kind of narcissism, a form of emotional cruelty, according to psychology. It’s a mixture of cowardice, immaturity and modern technology.

I think anyone with an ounce of common sense would recognize this as the truth about this odious, heinous practice, primarily by young people, who very often justify it as a means to “wellness.”  Dropping out, they justify, preserves themselves, keeps them well or improves them.  In my last post, I spoke about how that psychiatry is notoriously untrustworthy and a pseudo-science.  Nevertheless, a major mark psychiatrists give the narcissist is “the silent treatment”:

The silent treatment is probably one of the most common forms of emotional abuse used by narcissists . . . .   Narcissists use the silent treatment as a form of punishment for not acquiescing to their point of view or as the way to gain the upper hand and control in their relationships. It’s also a way to avoid discussing important issues in the relationship and avoid taking accountability for their wrong-doings. When a narcissist uses the silent treatment, they will do it in a way that is so out of proportion to the situation. Narcissists will also tend to demand a perfectly delivered apology. If the apology is not said correctly or in the right way, the narcissists will extend the length of the silent treatment. By demanding a perfectly delivered apology, narcissists confirm their dominance and support their exaggerated importance.

If someone reads the entire above article from which this paragraph comes, to possess narcissistic personality disorder, one must check off several markers.  Even if ghosting or the silent treatment are narcissistic, this isn’t a biblical means of analysis of human problems.  It’s way too subjective and seems as though it is invented to weaponize against a chosen target. The truth about someone is not a matter of an arbitrary culling from studies or articles to conform to an already settled conclusion.  This isn’t how the Lord Jesus Christ or any of God’s men in scripture function in service to God and men.

The Bible is sufficient as it speaks to behavior, and ghosting is in no way scriptural.  It is a form of extreme separation, but not biblical separation.  Separation in and of itself is fine, required even by God in His Word.  However, certain forms of separation are evil.

Evangelicals do not practice biblical separation, but I have observed they still practice separation, and an unbiblical version more like ghosting.  They are not attempting reconciliation, which is a requirement in biblical separation.  Real reconciliation centers on the truth, the basis of reconciliation, bringing two entities back together.  The point on which they come together is the truth, aligning with the historic, biblical teaching of the church.

Ghosting is not about reconciliation.  It’s many different variations of selfishness.  At it’s best, if even possible, someone who desires to avoid the pollution of sin separates in an extreme manner to preserve personal purity.  Out of sheer desperation about sinning, a person turns monastic without any warning to those around him.  I’ve never seen it.  People truly concerned for sin want to help sinners.  They know the truth and want others to know it too, because they care.

Someone really can judge belief and behavior based upon scripture.  The goal is to get to the right position and practice for God.  A person can know that.  Some people don’t want that.  They want what they want and they don’t want to be challenged — at all.  This is the new generation Z and millennials. They have picked upon this new standard of human relations, even with the encouragement of evangelical leaders.

A kind of ghosting behavior actually is not new.  It is an extreme form of self-centeredness.  I understand it, because I’ve done it.  I can’t imagine that any human being hasn’t at least given the “silent treatment” to someone at some point.  I remember two instances.  It’s a form of throwing a fit, a childish type of tantrum behavior.  Instead of reconciling along the lines of Matthew 5:21-26, someone sulks, ignores those around him, and goes silent.

An antidote for ghosting or the silent treatment for a true believer is Ephesians 4:26, let not the sun go down upon thy wrath.  It’s a command.  It’s not, let not a week, a month, or a year go down upon thy wrath, but the sun.  A dispute or division has got to be settled between believers out of love.  It’s not right to hold a grudge, hold onto resentment, none of that.  It’s self-destructive and dishonoring to God.  Much of this goes on between children and their parents today, but also between siblings, and childhood friends. It’s not acceptable, but it is still happening and at an alarmingly increasing rate.

Again, scripture requires initiation of reconciliation, including possible mediation.  At the foundation is the love of the neighbor, the love of the brethren, according to the Word and will of God and as fruit of the Spirit.  It is also endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit.  Ghosting and the silent treatment don’t please God and sin against God in their hateful treatment of others.

Deuteronomy 5:7 begins the ten commandments in Deuteronomy:  “Thou shalt have none other gods before me.”  There are at least two and maybe three stages before one arrives at that first command from God.  One, God does a lot of good stuff for people.  That first one could be divided into more than that one stage.  He gave them mercy, He delivered them, and He blessed them physically in numerous ways.  These are seen in the first four chapters of Deuteronomy, and in several other places in the Bible.  A representation of these are seen, in essence a summation, in chapter 5 and verses 2 to 6:

2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. 3 The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. 4 The LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire, 5 (I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to shew you the word of the LORD: for ye were afraid by reason of the fire, and went not up into the mount;) saying, 6 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

Reading those there, one can see at least:

1. Our God — He possesses them and they Him.
2. God made a covenant — He made promises to them that He always kept and would keep.
3. With us, even us — He chose them out among many other people, and it could have been other people but it wasn’t.
4. Alive this day — The very fact that they were alive was a testimony of multiple deliverances by God.
5. The LORD talked with you face to face — God kept it personal with the people.
6. I am the LORD thy God — He is the LORD their God; enough said.
7. Brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage — He saved them from a very difficult situation, Egypt and bondage.

10 To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever: 11 And brought out Israel from among them: for his mercy endureth for ever: 12 With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: for his mercy endureth for ever. 13 To him which divided the Red sea into parts: for his mercy endureth for ever: 14 And made Israel to pass through the midst of it: for his mercy endureth for ever: 15 But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red sea: for his mercy endureth for ever. 16 To him which led his people through the wilderness: for his mercy endureth for ever.

1 O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. 2 O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever. 3 O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever.

And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day.

Part One

A material universe exists.  Modern science shows that it is not eternal.  It had a beginning a finite time ago out of nothing.   It is absurd to to say that the universe just popped into existence out of nothing.  The existence of the universe requires a transcendent cause that must be spiritual, because it can’t already be a part of the material universe.  That cause also must be a lot of other qualities that fit a description of God.  Based on the complexity of the universe, the cause must have been the personal choice of an intelligent designer.   Vast evidence shows the existence of the universe requires elaborate initial conditions to sustain intelligent life.  This has been called the fine-tuning of the universe.

In this complex, personal, and intelligent universe, there are also values.  Like the natural laws bind the universe, so do the values, indicating that they too proceed from God.  Everyone for instance knows that certain objective, moral laws exist that are wrong to break.  The same cause of the universe is the cause of the moral values — God.

The process I’m traversing here fits what Psalm 19 says in the Old Testament and Romans 1 in the New.  Psalm 19:1 says:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Romans 1:19-20 say:

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

Nature reveals not only the existence of God but also various attributes of God.  Sir Isaac Newton at the end of his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy wrote:

[T]hough these bodies may, indeed, continue in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws. . . .  This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

The founders of science called science “the wisdom of God.”  The Royal Society began in 1660 and in 1667 John Ray became a fellow of the society, writing The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation.  David said “their words,” the words of the handiwork of God through His creation, go out “to the end of the world” (Psalm 19:2-3).

The words of creation, providence, and conscience match the Words of God in scripture.  Values are transcendent and the scripture, which reflects natural law, manifests those in categories of truth, goodness, and beauty.  Since God originated everything, so truth, goodness, and beauty spring from and, therefore, mirror Him.  Believing in the existence of God is believing in objective beauty.  Rather than state that argument myself, I use the statement of Augustine in his City of God:

Beauty. . . can be appreciated only by the mind. This would be impossible, if this `idea’ of beauty were not found in the mind in a more perfect form. . . But even here, if this `idea’ of beauty were not subject to change, one person would not be a better judge of sensible beauty than another. . . nor the experienced and skilled than the novice and the untrained; and the same person could not make progress towards better judgement than before. And it is obvious that anything which admits of increase or decrease is changeable. 

This consideration has readily persuaded men of ability and learning. . . that the original `idea’ is not to be found in this sphere, where it is shown to be subject to change. . . And so they saw that there must be some being in which the original form resides, unchangeable, and therefore incomparable. And they rightly believed that it is there that the origin of things is to be found, in the uncreated, which is the source of all creation.

Furthermore, Augustine writes in his Confessions:

[M]y sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.

If something can be beautiful, then something can be ugly.  Scripture backs up the logic, the natural law of which I and many others through history speak.  I provide three verses, two from the Old and one from the New, first 1 Chronicles 16:29 and Psalm 27:4:

Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come before him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. 

One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.