BAD NEWS or GOOD NEWS?

[Astronaut]

Another thought experiment...

Anything that is told that is less beautiful than what might be imagined is bad news and not really good news. I can imagine that God's justice is remediation; that's why to be told by Western theology that God's justice is retribution is bad news.

The only Good News that can be shared with a person is that God is absolutely, grandly beautiful, even as the highest soul of man counts beauty, but infinitely beyond that soul’s highest idea—with the beauty that creates beauty, not merely shows it, or itself exists beautiful. Bad news is anything less than the news that God has always done, is always doing his best for every man.

If you tell me that he is anything different from God beyond all that heart hungriest for love and righteousness could to eternity desire, then you've shared bad news with me.

That's why revelation, "Word of God" that can be written in a book and told to others as truth that pins something down and limits my imagination of God, is bad news, not good news. Perhaps Jesus himself, as incarnation of God is bad news if he is not quite as perfect as we could have hoped or imagined -- or simply because Jesus is something cognizable to a finite mind.

Please give me your thoughts.

[Marjorie]

Neither Jesus nor the revelation of God in the Scriptures *are* cognizable to a finite mind... we only touch the tip of the iceberg... we can never understand Him, but He has made us able to experience Him. These are two completely different things. We can never understand God, but through Christ, we can experience His unapproachable goodness.

The good news that God is inconceivably beautiful requires the Incarnation, because the ultimate expression of absolute goodness is that that which is unapproachably good and holy first of all creating out of nothingness and then embracing even that which is not good and unholy. It is a paradox and a mystery and we cannot understand it but God has proven to us how good He is by assuming even our own disordered nothingness. He has swallowed up Death in Life; He has swallowed up Nothingness in His depths; He has swallowed up evil in His beauty and goodness.

Glory to Your condescension, O Lover of Man!

In IC XC,
Marjorie

[moses916]

the Early Church and the Eastern faith only knows God as love, nowhere in the bible is He indicated that He is just in condeming ppl, if He was just we'd all be in torment in the next life, ppl condemn themselves, but yes God is good, and only good, other than that, Marjorie did a great job explaining good news!

[grov]

What Marjorie said. Plus, from the Divine Liturgy:
"It is proper and right to sing to You, bless You, praise You, thank You and worship You in all places of Your dominion; for You are God ineffable, beyond comprehension, invisible, beyond understanding, existing forever and always the same; You and Your only begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit." ...and many other such phrases, like
"Lord, our God, whose ... glory is beyond understanding; whose mercy is boundless, and love for us is ineffable..."

So, while we affirm quite often that God is infinitely beyond comprehension in His majesty, we yet need markers of revelation since, without guidance, any two people's grandest imaginations may lead them to different conclusions. While His image is stamped on us, we all have varying ways to go to see a clear vision of that Image and not fabricate one of our own.

As if in response to your "God has always done, is always doing his best for every man", the Liturgy continues...
"and when we fell, You raised us up again. You did not cease doing everything until You led us to heaven and granted us Your kingdom to come. For all these things we thank You and Your only begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit; for all things that we know and do not know, for blessings seen and unseen that have been bestowed upon us... even though You are surrounded by thousands of Archangels and tens of thousands of Angels, by the Cherubim and Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed, soaring with their wings...Singing the victory hymn, proclaiming, crying out, and saying:Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth, heaven and earth are filled with Your glory."