{"id":7,"date":"2014-04-08T02:13:01","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T02:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jackofalltribes.com\/?page_id=7"},"modified":"2014-12-24T21:23:07","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T21:23:07","slug":"the-good-news","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/the-good-news\/","title":{"rendered":"The Good News"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is goodness<\/strong>?\u00a0 What is truth<\/strong>?\u00a0 What is beauty<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

When I ask people questions like those, they have difficulty defining those ideas.\u00a0 But they have no difficulty in giving examples.\u00a0 They can\u2019t point to goodness or truth so that my eyes can see it, but they believe in them because they have experienced them.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t pretend that goodness and truth don\u2019t really exist.\u00a0 But why do they exist?<\/p>\n

Suppose that a Creator was the source of all goodness, the reality on which all truth is based<\/strong>.\u00a0 Suppose that this Creator\u2019s creation was a vivid display of how great and beautiful the Artist is.<\/p>\n

And suppose that this Creator created a world full of wonders, and that one of the wonders was a kind of creature able to enjoy the goodness, a creature intelligent enough to study creation endlessly and appreciate how detailed and wonderful it is.<\/p>\n

That would mean that creation is not merely a random accident, but that it displays meaning.\u00a0 If it was meaningless, the creatures would never have identified realities such as goodness and truth.\u00a0 Yet I have never met someone who denies that some things are better and other things worse.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know anyone who denies that some things are true and other things aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The Bible claims to be the Creator\u2019s words.\u00a0 Through it God says he is making himself known to the people he has created.\u00a0 The Bible begins with a brief description of the wonders of this universe in which we live, and it declares the goodness of it.<\/p>\n

But the Bible quickly admits that something is wrong<\/strong>.\u00a0 The people which God made to enjoy his creation with him have a destructive habit.\u00a0 They reject the Creator who is giving them life at every moment.\u00a0 They try to do life without him.\u00a0 But creation without the Creator is disaster.\u00a0 The rebellious creatures end up dead.\u00a0 The people that I meet in the Bible sound a lot like me.\u00a0 Without God, the end of their story looks bad.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s only the beginning of the story.\u00a0 The creatures are desperate to know if anything can save them from the mess that they have made of creation.\u00a0 Eventually God answers that question by coming to them in a form they can know.\u00a0 He becomes a man and lives as normal people do except for one big difference:\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t reject the original goodness and truth.\u00a0 In fact, he embodies it.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t devalue other people.\u00a0 In fact, he lifts them up.\u00a0 He takes the name \u201cJesus,\u201d which means \u201cGod saves\u201d his people.\u00a0 He even dies in our place<\/strong>.\u00a0 He takes the kind of punishment that we deserve.\u00a0 And that would be the sad end of the story if he did not also rise from death.\u00a0 But he did rise\u2014proving that he can do what he said.\u00a0 And when he rose<\/strong>, he didn\u2019t want revenge against those who had abandoned him or rejected him.\u00a0 Instead he spoke peace and good news<\/strong>.\u00a0 He said those who trust him can count on being raised with him for a restored creation, free from evil and deception.<\/p>\n

So he calls for people to listen to what he says and let it sink in<\/strong>.\u00a0 He calls us to say, \u201cYou are Lord, and I trust you.\u00a0 You\u2019re not a dead concept; you\u2019re a living Savior.\u00a0 I want your goodness and your truth.\u201d\u00a0 He says those who do will be changed by it.\u00a0 Their identity will no longer be in their failure and death; it will be in the eternal goodness and truth that they live for, because they will identify with him.\u00a0 He is the source of the goodness and truth that make life valuable and meaningful.<\/p>\n

I am forever thankful that I have known people who reflect the goodness and truth of such a Creator.\u00a0 My desire is to be like that.\u00a0 My desire is to know goodness and truth in Person, and for you to know Him too.<\/p>\n

As I understand it, that is what the Bible is saying.\u00a0 That is what this website is about.\u00a0 For more about what the Bible\u2019s good news is, go to \u201cBooks\u201d and click on \u201cKnow God\u2019s Good News Personally.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a9Copyright 2014 David K Shelley, jackofalltribes.com, and International Students, Inc.\u00a0 All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is goodness?\u00a0 What is truth?\u00a0 What is beauty? When I ask people questions like those, they have difficulty defining those ideas.\u00a0 But they have no difficulty in giving examples.\u00a0 They can\u2019t point to goodness or truth so that my eyes can see it, but they believe in them because they have experienced them. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-fullwidth.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofalltribes.com\/jackofalltribes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}