George MacDonald's single greatest outcry against false teaching is easily identified:
It is that so many of those who call themselves Christians are content to believe of God that which, if they were said of any human being, would be uniformly set down as atrocities and cruelties unimaginable.
MacDonald saw in such reasoning not mere falsehood and shallow thinking by Christians, but self-righteousness and most foul, a contentment for God to act the part of an ogre who will condemn and torment souls of his own creation...if only they themselves are standing well away from the fiery pit.
From belief in such a God, MacDonald recoiled in horror. Turning from these images, he succinctly affirms what true gospel is:
Jesus' "good news" about his Father is simply that he is no tyrant of men's fancies, but a loving, tender and forgiving Father...that he is entirely light, with no darkness in him at all.
...what in it makes it good news...
It is the news Jesus brought concerning the Father...that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Ah, my heart, this is indeed the good news! This is a gospel!
If God be light, what more, what else can I seek than God, than God himself! Away with your doctrines! Away with your salvation from the "justice" of a God whom it is a horror to imagine! Away with your iron cages of false metaphysics! I am saved—for God is light!
- From George MacDonald’s Transformational Theology of the Christian Faith by Michael Phillips
