Because the Good is There

aaaejBecause the Good is There

The substance of any possible understanding of religion is within us as a birthright; that is the logical counterpart of our being born subject to the constraints of religion.  That is why the particulars, even the constituent themes, of religion are ancillary to religion's demand that we embrace the good and shun the evil.  Indeed, it is to be expected that earnest strivings for true religion will conclude that religion, as such, does not exist at all.

The above is simply the arc of the Gospel narrative.  Themes are repeated, or are spread over the gospels, but the emerging logic is simple.  John the Baptist tells us (in a quaint reshuffling of prophets' quotes) to prepare for the lord of all.  If an imposter presents himself as the lord, or as a representative of the lord, he will be betrayed by the fruit he produces.  What matters is that we prepare for the advent of the true righteous king.

The end, the exhaustion, the unfolding of our lives is the giving of ourselves as subject to the true righteous king.  Our ability or inability to identify any particular manifestation of the true God is as immaterial as is the question of whether our worship is "good enough."  A person who might identify the true God in a poached egg, and who determines that said poached egg is a manifestation of unlimited sovereignty and righteousness, is a truer (though wildly clumsy) worshipper of the true God than a person who exhausts himself or herself in pursuing the Lord Almighty of the Scriptures, and upon locating that God, endorses some supposedly salvific sacrament, theorem, or substitutionary sacrifice on the hideous basis that God "cannot" extend salvation except by such means.

Jesus said in the Garden, "Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me; nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark 14:36, KJV).  The Good Thief of Luke ascribes to the innocent, suffering Jesus all possibility and all capacity for righteous judgment.  In substance, the thief's estimation of Jesus differs little from Jesus' description of his father.  Luke tells us that the thief reckoned on Jesus' innocence; we do not know, and Luke does not tell us, whether The Good Thief resembled more the sincerest of learned theologians, or our hypothetical egg-worshipper.  In the sight of the true God, presumably, the respective measures of theological acumen of the two human beings would be all but indistinguishable.

That, then, is the Gospel: the grasping for the Good--not because the Good is graspable, but because the Good is there.