The Good News |

What is goodness? What is truth? What is beauty?

When I ask people questions like those, they have difficulty defining those ideas. But they have no difficulty in giving examples. They can’t point to goodness or truth so that my eyes can see it, but they believe in them because they have experienced them.

I can’t pretend that goodness and truth don’t really exist. But why do they exist?

Suppose that a Creator was the source of all goodness, the reality on which all truth is based. Suppose that this Creator’s creation was a vivid display of how great and beautiful the Artist is.

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.

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

The Bible claims to be the Creator’s words. Through it God says he is making himself known to the people he has created. The Bible begins with a brief description of the wonders of this universe in which we live, and it declares the goodness of it.

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

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

So he calls for people to listen to what he says and let it sink in. He calls us to say, “You are Lord, and I trust you. You’re not a dead concept; you’re a living Savior. I want your goodness and your truth.” He says those who do will be changed by it. 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. He is the source of the goodness and truth that make life valuable and meaningful.

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

As I understand it, that is what the Bible is saying. That is what this website is about. For more about what the Bible’s good news is, go to “Books” and click on “Know God’s Good News Personally.”