
Modern artist, Kevin Rolly’s rendition of Jephthah’s daughter. His gallery here: http://kevissimo.deviantart.com/art/
{This is a theological reflection I wrote for a grad school class, but I found it so healing to put into words that I wanted to share it outside of that class.}
“Lament is one of the ways you refuse to give up on justice… Lament is a form of radical honesty that entrusts our woundedness and the world’s brokenness to a God we expect to listen and to care.” – Kyndall Rae Rothaus[1]Introduction
Caregivers and practitioners involved with exploited children face the daily reality that we cannot help everyone. Some children will live and die in the most horrific and unjust ways, and we are simply not powerful enough to intervene. We are left with questions of the spiritual significance of their lives. Understanding God’s Heart for Children is a text based on a set of seven affirmations endorsed by Christian leaders in the field of children at risk (McConnell, Orona, and Stockley 2007, ix). The last affirmation insists that “Children are essential to the mission of God. Christ made it clear that children are able to receive the kingdom of God (Mark 10: 14) and are therefore able to be an active part of the kingdom community” (ibid, 6). Does this affirmation extend even to the child in an on-going exploitative situation or is it limited to those children who have been rescued and who have experienced some level of healing? This paper seeks to acknowledge the upside-down power of un-recovered children to advance the kingdom of God and to provide a biblical justification for this recognition.
Into the Narratives
Any reflection on children in Scripture will include Christ’s words of welcome and inclusion to children. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14NIV). However, this is only the introduction to the biblical perspective of children. From the narratives of the Old and New Testaments, we find children like Samuel, David, Miriam, Josiah, and Mary being used mightily by God to advance his kingdom. These are the stories that are easy to embrace. They are encouraging and heart-warming. The children grow into honored adults, and the kingdom work begun in their childhoods only continues to gain momentum as they grow older.
Setting the Stage
As believers, we must contend with the evil perpetrated against children in reality and also in the history chronicled in Scripture. An honest reflection on some of these uncomfortable stories can shed desperately needed light on the kingdom role of the most hopeless cases that we might encounter.
Frymer-Kensky writes that the point of Judges was that Israel “needed a king,” but the rest of the Old Testament was proof that a human king was not the answer (Frymer-Kensky 2002, Loc 3488). A Jewish scholar, she does not study the New Testament or the affirm Jesus as the Messiah, but the kingship of Christ fits perfectly with her research. It was not King Saul or human governments that was needed to prevent such tragedies, it was (and remains) God himself in the person of Jesus. The rest of the Old Testament moves on to prove this and set the stage for the inauguration of the kingdom of God that comes with his birth.
Redemption in Unexpected Places
Jephthah’s daughter’s story provides a powerful testimony of God’s ability to redeem even when he does not rescue. There is a shocking hope where there should be none. Through her story we learn that in honoring the memories of the ones never rescued by naming the truth of their tragedies, the kingdom of God moves forward.
The friends of Jephthah’s daughter were certainly admirable and heroic, but it is important to remember that they were heroic and admirable precisely because of their relationship with Jephath’s daughter. It was she who alerted them to injustice. It was she who invited them to lament. It was she who taught them the truth about her situation, and it was she who sobered an entire nation and became an eternal symbol of the depths of the human capacity for selfishness, stupidity, and injustice. It was she whose life and death pointed so clearly to humanity’s need for a savior. So it is with the un-rescued children of our lifetime.
Conclusion
Jepthah’s daughter advanced God’s kingdom because in her youth and innocence, she showed us how much we need King Jesus. In the same way, child victims of exploitation are never “just” victims. Their lives and deaths are never in vain so long as there are friends who will acknowledge them, be changed by their memories, and use their lives to point to our desperate need for hope in Christ. Our role as “friends” of exploited children is to be truth-tellers and commemorators of their lives, even when their stories do not have happy endings. This is the truth of the Kingdom expressed in flesh and blood, that God has chosen the weakest, the lowest, and the most despised to reveal himself, to show his power, and to pave the way for salvation (1 Corinthians 1:25-28, 1 Corinthians 12:9).
Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories. New York: Schocken Books, 2002. Kindle edition
Kyndall Rae Rothaus Chapel. Performed by Kyndall Rae Rothaus. September 28, 2016. Accessed January 28, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
McConnell, Douglas, Jennifer Orona, and Paul Stockley. Understanding God’s heart for children: toward a biblical framework. Colorado Springs: Authentic, 2007.
The Holy Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005.