Despite much advertising promoted on his behalf. “Even bad publicity is good publicity” isn’t always true. Sometimes bad publicity borders on libel and slander. The image of God as an angry, harsh, impossible-to-please, and punishing Father continues to be a hard one for him to shake off.
No. God is, in fact, in the Life business. The Father raised the Son to life; the Son’s great pleasure is in passing that Life on to others.
God is also, it’s worth noting, in the Judgment business, which is a related industry to Life. Because at some point a judgment has to be made regarding Life—someone has to make a decision regarding the sharing (or not) of the Divine Breath.
Perhaps the cleverest counter-move the Father has made against all the negative publicity was to hand all judgment over to his Son. He handed off the family store to the next generation, so to speak. Even amongst non-believers, Jesus still gets generally better press. His liberal spreading of kindness and mercy are hard to deny.
The public impression, at least, is that Jesus the Son takes more pleasure in doling out life than does God the Father. Yet it’s still arguably true that Jesus learned from the best. Life and Judgment are the family business of heaven, and the final verdict is a lot more generous than we’re led to believe.
Much of history continues to be the story of God’s inexhaustible patience in waiting for our advertising to catch up with his industry of mercy.
