We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Grieving and Comfort
Henning Mühlinghaus via Compfight
Ben Witherington posted this heartfelt reflection on the sudden death of his young daughter. Theology can sometimes be a relatively benign part of your life until something like this strikes without warning. That’s where things really begin to matter. This reminded us of Jessica Kelley’s reflections on the death of her son Henry. These are the voices that ring with authority on the topic of theodicy and suffering and the picture of God that you hold.
From Ben’s blog:
One of the primary reasons I am not a Calvinist and do not believe in such predestinings from the hand of God is (1) because I find it impossible to believe that I am more merciful or compassionate than God. Also, (2) the Biblical portrait of God is that God is pure light and holy love; in him there is no darkness, nothing other than light and love. (3) The words “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away,” from the lips of Job, are not good theology. They’re bad theology. According to Job 1, it was not God, but the Devil who took away Job’s children, health and wealth. God allowed it to happen, but when Job said these words, as the rest of the story shows, he was not yet enlightened about the true nature of where his calamity came from and what God’s will actually was for his life — which was for good, and not for harm.
Category: General
Tags: Ben Witherington, Death, Grief, Hope, Jessica Kelley, Picture of God, Theodicy
Related Reading

The Image of God
Distorted from digma.com Is the image of God you hold in your heart one that attracts or repels you?

Jessica Kelley: Triumph by Testimony
Jessica Kelley is a good friend of ReKnew, and she preached this last weekend at Woodland Hills Church. Normally we only post clips of sermons, but we wanted to post the full sermon on this occasion. We feel like Jessica’s testimony about how her picture of God helped her through the death of her son…

Featured Sermon Series: Scandalous Love
The Scandalous Love series is often considered one of Greg’s and Woodland Hill’s most foundational series. In fact, it was so important that it subsequently led to the Can’t Stop the Love series. Defining the true character of God is at the heart of what ReKnew is all about, so we wanted to host…

When Our Images of God are Faulty
I’m fleshing out the third proclamation of the ReKnew Manifesto, which challenges us to rethink our conception of God. In the previous post I noted that, since our relationship with God is mediated through our mental picture of him, our image completely determines how we feel about God and what our relationship with him will…

Love is a Beautiful Way to Live…and Die
Hartwig HKD via Compfight Richard Beck posted a reflection this last week called Love is the Allocation of Our Living and Dying. Greg has a regular practice of imagining his own death in order to live rightly while he’s alive. In this reflection, Richard discusses the idea of “giving our lives away” and what that really…

Lord Willing? Part 2
In Part 2 of Greg’s interview of Jessica Kelley about her book Lord Willing?, they discuss the theology that helped Jessica through her son Henry’s illness and death. You can find Part 1 of the interview here, and part 3 here.