One can view theological concepts as academic, arcane doctrine. Theology can seem so dry and lifeless at times. But theology breathes and becomes more than just information in a confession or textbook when it becomes the story of your life and when it constitutes bread in a desert.

Imagining the Worst
Like most people, my mind sometimes wanders to places of doom, to places where my imagination entertains (what I perceive to be) the Worst. In my adult life, I had made this mental journey enough times that my Worst had developed with vivid detail.
My Worst was likely the same as that of many parents: the persistent fear that my child would die. But my Worst had a second layer for me.
As a youth pastor, I worried that my faith did not possess enough fortitude. God had given me a relatively comfortable life. Any white American male like me, raised in an affluent, stable Christian family, for whom friendships, sports, school, and career had come easily, surely would believe that God is good. I feared that if my Worst occurred, I would lose my faith. I would turn my back on God and walk away from Christianity, and, consequently, my spiritual failure would shatter the faith of hundreds of students to whom I had proclaimed the promises of Christ for over a decade.
My Worst, indeed, entered my life as tragically as I ever imagined it could.
This book considers 12 life-giving truths that Christians can cling to in the midst of tragedy—truths that brought vital hope and comfort to the author when grieving the sudden loss of his 3-year-old son.
My Worst
On Sunday, November 10, 2013, finding my three-year-old son’s lost Lego ax prompted the most magical conversation of my life. After recovering his coveted toy, my three-year-old son, Cam, exclaimed, “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!”
Out of nowhere, my little boy started to ask serious spiritual questions. He asked if we could go see Jesus. When I explained that, while we couldn’t see him, Jesus is always with us, he asked if we could drive to see Jesus. After explaining to Cam that we would see Jesus when we got to heaven, my son turned his attention to heaven.
Cam asked if we would see Adam and Eve in heaven. He then declared, “I’m not gonna eat that apple.”
My wife and I reminded Cam that we all “eat the apple.” We reminded him that God sent Jesus because we all make the same mistake as Adam and Eve did: we all sin.
The conversation ended with my son saying, “Jesus died on cross. Jesus died my sins.” In the minutes following that sweet proclamation, my wife, Lauren, and I realized that we had witnessed the dearest dream of every Christian parent—our son had professed faith in Christ.
That night I went on a short, overnight campout with a leader and some students. I awoke on Monday, November 11, to three missed calls from my wife in the span of a minute. I then encountered a voice of terror.
My Worst had entered.
My wife pleaded for me to drive to the children’s hospital as soon as possible but offered no explanation. I pressed her for more information until she reluctantly delivered the worst news of my life: “Cam is dead.”
Lauren had found our perfectly healthy child lifeless in his bed. Paramedics were attempting to resuscitate him, but she assured me that it was futile. In what remains a medical mystery, our three-year-old child inexplicably died in his sleep, something that occurs to one in a hundred thousand children over the age of one. My child’s profession of faith was the last meaningful conversation I ever would have with him on earth. Our son’s life had ended in the blink of an eye.
The first half of my dreadful daydreams had become a reality. I had imagined this moment hundreds of times. Here was the point of departure between God and me. Here was that moment when my faith would crumble. In my imagination of doom, here was when I would curse God, resign from ministry, and pursue a life of self-interest as a bitter, faithless man.
But the Lord put a word in my mouth that surprised me. When Lauren delivered the tragic news, I said to her, “Lauren, Christ is risen from the dead. God is good. This doesn’t change that fact.” God gave me faith and hope while I stood squarely in the middle of my Worst.
The Narrative of Hope
That initial proclamation stood as the first of many moments of hopefulness as I discovered that God had been preparing me for such a tragedy during my entire life. Knowing that this day would come, God used lessons from Bible studies, conversations, theological reading, sermon podcasts, and previous trials to build a foundation that would stand when an overpowering wave of tragedy struck my life.
Throughout the journey of my worst nightmare—my descent into a dark, sad valley—the Holy Spirit would remind me of truths that comforted my soul and sustained my life. Very often in the month after Cam died, I would say to my wife or a friend that I could not conceive how anyone could survive such pain if they did not believe certain biblical principles.
How could a person survive if one did not know the gospel? How could one subsist if one did not accept the sovereignty of God? How would one function if one did not know the possibility of joy in suffering? How could one move forward without the hope of heaven?
There are some truths that mean nothing to a person who is gasping for existential air. When tears seem to flow continuously in your life, the nuances of the Trinity or the particulars of a certain end-times theory do nothing to comfort. However, other biblical concepts can walk a person back off the metaphorical or literal ledge when jumping seems so reasonable and appealing.
One night I sat down and wrote down all of these comforting theological principles as a personal creed. I began to realize that the Lord had embedded these individual truths in my heart that collectively constructed a narrative under which I could live during my Worst. This narrative gave me hope.
Gospel
The road ahead of me is long and painful, but Christ has defeated sin and death through the cross. I can face reality and make this journey, because on the other side of the cross is the resurrection. In the same way that Christ rose from the dead, so too can my life emerge from the darkness into light. The gospel tells me that I cannot redeem myself; only Christ can heal and free my heart. My only hope is to trust him to do so. My tragedy has not disrupted the narrative of my life. My story remains God’s story, and that is a story of redemption.
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God is not simply a big person, sharing our imperfections with us or exalting the supposed virtue of dependence, as if God is somehow glorified in His need. Rather, His divine life is marked by a completely different type of being—so much so, that it is more proper to call him the source, ground, or fount of being.

Readers of my column may remember that my eyes were first opened to the beauty of divine simplicity through the work of the Reformed Scholastic Francis Turretin. I had encountered the doctrine elsewhere, through both introductory and advanced systematic works, but Turretin explained the concept in a way that I could not only grasp but appreciate.[1] Turretin’s helpful explanation of divine simplicity, however, is far from elementary as there are numerous metaphysical terms employed throughout his exposition.
To master divine simplicity (if one could ever dream of doing so) would require mastering complex ideas such as pure act, Turretin’s understanding of formal conceptions, and the fine line between real, virtual, and eminent distinctions. Still, even though the Institutes of Elenctic Theology are full of these abstract and ethereal considerations, one repeating theme can help serve as the reader’s north star as they journey into this complex doctrine—the Creator/creature distinction.
The Dependent Creature
At its core, divine simplicity is a creature’s attempt at identifying what God is not—in this case, God is not made up of parts. Creatures, as opposed to their Creator, are made up of all sorts of physical and metaphysical parts. Creaturely composition necessitates that all creatures are marked with a deep seeded dependence, as everything composed must be assembled by another. Indeed, Kelly Kapic has noted that “using ‘dependent’ as an adjective for ‘creature’ is basically redundant—there are no creatures who are not, by their very nature, dependent beings.”[2]
Our physical limbs are knit together in our mothers’ wombs, our existence came about because of the choices of other people, and our souls (like everything we possess) are a gift from God. I did not assemble myself, nor could I sustain myself without the aid of other dependent creatures. In classical thought, then, the rejection of divine simplicity would necessitate a greater being than God capable of connecting the divine pieces together. In the same way that non-existent entities cannot create themselves, composite beings cannot eliminate their dependence on their parts.
The Independent Creator
God, however, is entirely independent. If God is in need of something for His existence or perfection, then His divinity must be called into question. Indeed, for Turretin, “Composition implies imperfection inasmuch as it supposes passive power, dependency and mutability.”[3] This brings us to an important aspect of divine simplicity, especially as the doctrine is articulated by the Reformed. Divine simplicity does not simply mean (pardon the pun) that God is free from all composition and division, but also is “incapable of composition and divisibility.”[4]
It is not enough to say that God *is not* made up of parts but that God *cannot* be made up of parts. The mere introduction of passivity, in which God would receive perfection from another, would place creaturely imperfection within divinity. “God is a most pure act,” writes Turretin, “having no passive admixture and therefore rejecting all composition (because in God there is nothing which needs to be made perfect or can receive perfection from any other…).”[5] At this point, the gulf between Creator and creature could not be wider.
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The Bible clearly shows that God favors some and not all. But God’s “favor” is not sin, where “favoritism” is indeed sin, as James rightly points out. Favoritism is when someone chooses a person or thing because of some perceived merit, worth, or bias; but, as Paul declares in Romans 3:23, all people have sinned and fallen short of God’s righteous requirements. There is no human being who justly deserves God’s favor. Instead, all people deserve the wrath of God. Yet, God, by his grace, chooses to give some people faith in Christ and the resulting righteousness that comes through this faith. This reality was as much in play in Israel’s history as it is today.

Have you ever seen someone play favorites based on a person’s appearance, bank account, employment, or some other factor—and you weren’t the chosen one? It’s not a good feeling.
Favoritism is nothing new under the sun, and it most certainly was an issue in the early church (James 2:1-4). If favoritism is bad, why do we find numerous passages in the Bible where God clearly favors some people over others, even in the matter of salvation? In his greeting to the Ephesian church, the apostle Paul states:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. (Eph. 1:3-5)

Is God showing a form of favoritism in his election of only some of humanity for salvation? Let’s look closely at this issue and see why God’s electing grace is not favoritism.
What does the apostle James say about favoritism?
One of the earliest writings in the New Testament is the letter by James to “the twelve tribes in the Dispersion,” a way of referring to the Christian church that was scattered throughout Asia Minor due to the persecution of Christians circa AD 40 in Jerusalem. James’s letter was most likely intended to be read among many congregations to address issues that were becoming problematic in all the churches, one being favoritism—the giving of special attention to people because of their position, influence, or wealth.
In the first verse of chapter two, James warns believers against showing favoritism. He writes, “My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory” (James 2:1). James is concerned about us, and he denounces this practice as one that should never be characteristic of God’s children. He goes on to write:

For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:1-4)

God’s favor versus favoritism—what’s the difference?
The favoritism James warns against in James 2:1-4 is different in every way from the favor God shows in choosing to save some but not all humans. The salvation God graciously provides by the gift of faith (Eph. 2:8-9) begins in Genesis 3:15 with the promise to Adam and Eve of a Savior. His favor begins to take further shape in Genesis 4:25 with the birth of Seth to Adam and Eve. Even though sin seems to have won when Adam and Eve’s firstborn, Cain, murders his brother Abel, hope returns in Seth through whom the God-fearing ancestral line would run to the promised Messiah.
In the days of Noah, the increasing corruption on the earth results in God bringing judgment on all mankind. Yet, God, being rich in mercy, shows favor toward Noah (Gen. 6:9-22). God preserves Noah and his family through the water judgment so that the plan of God—announced in Genesis 3:15—would continue.
Of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, God chooses Shem, who alone is favored by being given faith to continue the ancestral line that would eventually lead to Jesus (Gen. 4:26). In Genesis 11:10-26, we read the list of Shem’s descendants.
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