I do not think I have ever encountered a writer who understood the perfect fatherhood of God better than George MacDonald. It was from his writings that I first began to understand and believe the depth of the love which God has for us--that burning, purifying love which will not abandon us to our sin. MacDonald's writings sparkle with insights into the heart of God, especially as revealed in his Son.
MacDonald was raised a century and a half ago in Scotland, where Calvinism had run amok, teaching implicitly (if not occasionally explicitly) of a powerful but unloving God. Perhaps because of his unusual relationship with his earthly father, MacDonald refused to believe that his heavenly father was the stern egotistical deity portrayed to him by the Scottish clergy. A central idea in his writing is that God is worth worshiping, not for his power, but for the goodness and excellence of his character. A powerful but unloving deity would be an unspeakable horror, worthy only of servile fear or else open rebellion; the true God is an unspeakable joy. God is not only better than we imagine, he is better than we can imagine. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
A second key idea in MacDonald's thinking is the immense value of sharing the divine nature. If God's character is such a precious jewel, then our greatest good is to have that character ourselves, and in fact that is why God made us. Hence God's love does not tolerantly let us have our own way; he will do anything necessary, however unpleasant to us, in order to form this priceless treasure in us. No amount of suffering is too great if it will achieve this end--though we may doubt during the process.
A third idea is the vital necessity of obedience. God made us free, and we must freely choose to be like him--it will not happen without our consent. Every step of obedience forms forms a bit of his character in us. Faith in God means obeying unquestioningly, because we know that his end is good, even when we do not understand the goal or the means. Obedience is necessary before we can begin to understand.
These ideas come together in the person of Jesus Christ--God who came to show us what God is really like, and the perfect Man, who came to do the will of his Father. If we conceive of God as somehow unlike the Jesus we see in the gospels, our conception of God is wrong; if our goal is not to be like the Jesus we see in the gospels, our goal is wrong. It is because we know something of the character of Christ that we know something of the glory of God.
MacDonald's unusually clear perception of what the greatest good is guides every aspect of his thinking. Most of us do not feel the true value of Christ-likeness because we know so little of what Christ is like; our thinking is clouded by ideas and values we learned unknowingly from the world or even the church. But an inability to perceive the center of our faith results in muddled thinking about many practical issues. As a result, sometimes reading MacDonald feels like seeing the world the right way up for the first time. He has a disarming way of penetrating to the heart of many issues, because he has a clear knowledge of what is good and valuable, and what only appears to be valuable.
MacDonald's theology is sometimes unorthodox. For example, he believed that God sent people to hell only long enough to force them to repent, and that the love of God was thereby powerful enough to save all. As much as I admire him, I do not think the scripture supports some of his positions; but even his writings on these topics are nonetheless thought-provoking.
Because of his unorthodoxy, MacDonald was removed from his pastorate by the deacons after only about a year. He spent the rest of his life in poverty and ill health, surviving by lecturing, tutoring, occasional preaching, and writing. He became a popular author (though still remaining poor) and wrote almost three dozen novels and a number of short stories. He won recognition from the Queen for his hilarious fairy tale, The Light Princess. C. S. Lewis comments, "What he does best is fantasy--fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this, in my opinion, he does better than any man." Aside from his remarkable fantasy, most of his writings do not have great literary merit, and they are now valuable chiefly for his preaching which is contained in them. Some of his finest insights into the character and purposes of God flash out of novels which are almost unreadably boring.
Since the writings of George MacDonald have been so vitally important for my conception of God, I have attempted to extract some of his sayings that have meant the most to me and make them available on the web. Some of these were originally in Scottish dialect, and I have rendered them as best I can in standard English. While they were charming and more direct in the dialect, I found them hard to understand, especially initially. Several excellent books of quotes and extracts are available in print; see the links and bibliography.
Many of MacDonald's best pieces are set in his novels in a specific situation. Extracts necessarily lose some of the vividness of the context. I have tried to quote extended sections rather than short passages, and as a result one quote may cover many topics. The resulting classification is only a rough guide.