We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.
The Warfare Worldview: What Would You Tell the Younger You?
Jessica Kelley has been fleshing out the Warfare Worldview on her blog in a series of posts using the lens of the death of her child, Henry. Jessica is a beautiful writer, and her reflections are powerful and tender. You’re going to want to be listening to her. Her voice is an important one as we reflect on the problem of evil and our picture of God.
From her blog reflection:
I picked up a stuffed seahorse from her nightstand and pressed its belly. The toy lit up with an amber glow and began to play soothing lullabies. That seahorse would lure Henry to sleep for years, and even accompany him into surgeries when she and her husband, Ian, were forced to stay behind. Henry would develop a deep sense of security and comfort from his seahorse… though it offered no real protection.
I realized that what I mostly wanted was to beg Young Jess to wrestle with her picture of God. It would be two years before she learned that God’s heart was fully represented in the person of Jesus Christ. Until then she’d believe in the blueprint worldview, the notion that everything occurs in accordance with God’s perfect plan, his “meticulous divine blueprint,”2 as though God would orchestrate or nod in approval at what was to come.
Category: General
Tags: Henry, Jessica Kelley, Picture of God, Problem of Evil, Warfare Worldview
Related Reading
Does God Intervene?
The Open View of the future recognizes the vast influence of all the angelic and human wills God created, which, in turn, influences the various outcomes and circumstances in life. Therefore life is arbitrary because of the way the decisions made by an unfathomably vast multitude of free agents intersect with each other. How life…
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…
Do the Principalities & Powers Exist Within Space & Time?
In this episode Greg Answers: How do you fight, with a body bound to space and time, against something that doesn’t exist in space in time? Links: God at War Episode 34 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0034.mp3
When Free Will Meets Unfathomable Evil
In the face of tragedy Christians unfortunately tend to recite clichés that attempt to reassure people that, however terrible things seem, everything is unfolding according to God’s mysterious plan. We hear that “God has his reasons”; “God’s ways are not our ways”; “God is still on his throne”; “God doesn’t make mistakes,” and things of…
Why Did God Allow Evil?
Is it possible to force people to love? Powerful people may be able to force others to do just about anything. Through psychological or physical torture, they may succeed in forcing them to curse their own children to deny their faith. They may even succeed in forcing others to act and say loving things to…
A Calvinist Take on the Problem of Evil
Carnie Lewis via Compfight Here’s a Calvinist view on the problem(s) of evil in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings. It’s the old God-as-author analogy. In essence, this is how Calvinism views God’s role in any instance of radical evil (quoted from the Desiring God article): But, of course, the Bible says more than…