Last week a judge in Britain sentenced 27-year-old Magdelena Luczak and 34-year-old Mariusz Krezolek to life imprisonment for the murder of Magdelena’s son Daniel, with a stipulation that they serve a minimum of 30 years before they could be considered for parole.
Daniel had suffered months of cruelty and starvation before his death. He weighed barely 20lbs when he died, and had been reduced to scavenging in bins because he wasn’t give enough to eat. His mother and stepfather did, though, force feed him salt as part of the regime of brutality they inflicted on him. When Daniel died his body was covered in more than 80 bruises. One of his arms had been snapped clean in half by his stepfather. He died slowly from the effects of a blow to the head. His mother and stepfather left him in a coma and went to sleep.
Daniel Pelka was four years old.
The god John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards believed in, and John Piper and Tim Keller continue to believe in, willed Daniel’s suffering and death. He decreed that it would happen before the world began. It was part of his holy and righteous plan for the universe:
“God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.” (Westminster Confession of Faith)
One might ask why such a thing had to be the case – why an innocent four-year-old had to suffer torture and murder. Jonathan Edwards has the answer:
“… it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.”
So there you have it. Daniel Pelka had to be tortured and killed so that “God’s glory” could “shine out”.
I daresay many Calvinists would have a problem with this. Not John Piper. He accepts Daniel’s torture and death without question, because it is the will of the sovereign god he believes in. Says John, “It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases.”
Still, it is possible, according to Piper’s worldview, that Daniel is one of “the elect”, in which case we can hope he has gone to a better place.
But then again, perhaps he is one of those souls who the god of Calvin and Keller and Edwards and Piper has “foreordained to everlasting death”, in which case his four short years on this earth will have been a mere bagatelle compared to the eternity of torment that awaits him, “for the manifestation of [God’s] glory”.