\u201cDay of Doom<\/a>\u201d by Michael Wigglesworth, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson<\/a> by Mary Rowlandson, and Edward Taylor\u2019s \u201cUpon Wedlock and Death of Children<\/a>\u201d all have a common link:\u00a0 they cause the reader to question the goodness of God, and wonder how such evil can prevail if God is good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Wigglesworth writes extensively about the judgement God will pronounce on everyone: from stillborn babies, to those that do good but are not followers of God, to those that confess to be Christian.\u00a0 There is room for theological dialogue and disagreement, but the question remains.\u00a0 How can God be good and also allow eternal punishment for some?\u00a0 Is God merely the judge ready to send humanity on the descent to Hell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mary Rowlandson is captured by savages, her town is obliterated, her child dies after prolonged suffering, and she does not know the fate of her family members.\u00a0 Yet she thanks God and clings to faith.\u00a0 Is she thankful that her children are suffering?\u00a0 Can she really believe God is worthy of praise after what she has seen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Edward Taylor pens the loss of a child[ren?] and follows that line with thankfulness to God because God takes away.\u00a0 If God were good, would he have allowed the child to die?\u00a0 Why is Taylor thanking God when it was God who snatched the child back?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are these people just na\u00efve? Are they unaware of the present conditions, and are their reactions not transcultural?\u00a0 Is there something missing in our perception of God that would permit us to view the world differently if we understood it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are several layers to the answering of the question of God\u2019s goodness, and each layer has a ripple effect.\u00a0 At the center of the answer is that God is love (1 John 4:16).\u00a0 This is foundational to a correct concept of God.\u00a0 The same chapter in 1 John articulates that humans are not capable of love on their own.\u00a0 They are able to love because God loved first.\u00a0 <\/em>Hold onto that idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The love of God (which is not the same as the current, watered down version of love) led to the creation of the universe and everything in it.\u00a0 God created it all and when he \u201csaw all that he had made,\u201d he said it \u201cwas very good\u201d (Genesis 1:31).\u00a0 Even the people that God created were good, but remember God is love and God wants a true loving relationship with his creation.\u00a0 Love is not possible without the possibility of choice.\u00a0 A forced relationship is not love.\u00a0 So there was one thing that the first people were not supposed to do.\u00a0 Just one.\u00a0 When they decided to choose their own pursuit of power and knowledge over God, everything changed.\u00a0 The original design for good was decomposed into original sin.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Original sin is a theological term that, simply put, means all of humanity is born messed up.\u00a0 No one is untouched by the darkness of sin.\u00a0 \u201cAll fall short of the glory of God\u201d (Romans 3:23).\u00a0 This darkness is not just in people; the natural order was also affected.\u00a0 In Revelation 21 at the end of Scripture, John transcribes that \u201cthere will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.\u201d\u00a0 The current reality of awful, unspeakable events happening was not the original creation, and it will not be in the restored order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This sinful nature that we have inherited is what will bring about judgement.\u00a0 \u201cDay of Doom\u201d focuses on this judgement of God.\u00a0 God\u2019s judgement is outlined in Scripture.\u00a0 Every person is going to have to account for his or her sin, but God does not just leave people to fend for themselves.\u00a0 Going back to the idea that God first loved humanity, and makes it possible for his creation to have a relationship with him, God provides a way to live with him and be in his presence for eternity.\u00a0 There is another theological term called prevenient grace; it is the idea that God is seeking his creation out, and working for their good before they even choose him.\u00a0 God is not the judge looking down waiting to throw lightning bolts at those who sin.\u00a0 He does not delight in being separated for eternity from the very people Jesus gave his life to save.\u00a0 He gives us opportunities to bridge the divide that The Fall created.\u00a0 That first sin divided humanity from God in a way that was not intended, but Jesus and his sacrifice make it possible to be in a relationship again.\u00a0 If God was not good, would he have made a way for humanity to escape the very judgement Wigglesworth details?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mary Rowlandson is uprooted from her home and comes face to face with the evil of humanity.\u00a0 This kind of evil did not just happen hundreds of years ago.\u00a0 It happens now.\u00a0 There are murders, genocides, and every conceivable type of evil acted out today.\u00a0 I have stood on fields where thousands of innocent people were brutally murdered.\u00a0 Where children were murdered. The skulls and bones that were preserved were not centuries old, merely decades.\u00a0 This evil has penetrated every time period.\u00a0 Does the sin of humanity, the sin and acts that people choose equate to God not being good?\u00a0 God could intervene, but as humans we cannot see the whole picture.\u00a0 We are given free will because that is what makes it possible to choose God, and in so doing, have a relationship with him that is based on real love.\u00a0 The difficulty in asking why does God not intervene to stop all evil is where does one draw the line?\u00a0 Up to what point is a person able to have free will?\u00a0 Or is it only certain people, \u201cgood people,\u201d that are allowed to make their own decisions?\u00a0 Sometimes God does act, but it may not look like what is expected.\u00a0 He empowers people, and works through them to bring justice.\u00a0 The acts of broken people to cause harm and tragedy do not mean that God is no longer good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question was posed of why Rowlandson and Taylor seemed to be thankful after losing a child.\u00a0 How does a good God let that happen?\u00a0 It goes back to the disrupted order.\u00a0 This is not how life was supposed to look.\u00a0 There will come a time when there will not be pain and death again, but the sin of humanity led to a broken state.\u00a0 Everything was touched and affected.\u00a0 Taylor writes, \u201cI say, take, Lord, they’re thine.\u201d\u00a0 He understands that nothing is really humanity\u2019s to claim.\u00a0 It is all created by God, and even Taylor\u2019s children are gifted by God.\u00a0 They are taken, but the possibility of them even existing in the first place was a gift from God.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n These three works stir a question in the reader that has been asked before and will be asked again.\u00a0 It is hard to believe that God can be good when we read of judgement, destruction, and pain.\u00a0 It is harder still when it is faced not on a page but in reality.\u00a0 Can the evil we see be reconciled with a good God?\u00a0 This post only scratches the surface of an answer.\u00a0 There are so many more aspects to this perceived dichotomy, and so many books have been written about it.\u00a0 The goodness of God or lack thereof is what each person must wrestle with.\u00a0 However, a final thought\u00a0 is that a God that would willingly enter into the darkness of humanity and take on their form, and then lay down his life to give the opportunity of redemption is not evil, but love and goodness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Julia Joyce \u201cDay of Doom\u201d by Michael Wigglesworth, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mary Rowlandson, and Edward Taylor\u2019s \u201cUpon Wedlock and Death of Children\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":3378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,343],"tags":[346],"class_list":["post-3355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-studies","category-religious-studies","tag-american-literature","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3355"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3448,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3355\/revisions\/3448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"