The Bible’s Viewpoint

The Death of a Child​—Why Does God Allow It?

MANY bereaved parents are relieved to learn that God did not take their child in death, as some religions teach.a However, this sobering fact remains: God does have the power to prevent death. Yet, he allows it to continue.

So when a child dies, parents may cry out in anguish, “Why did God let it happen?” Death, whether by accident, by disease, or by violence, almost always seems cruelly unfair. A child’s death seems even more so. In one cemetery a child’s grave marker is inscribed with this forlorn protest: “So small, so sweet, so soon.”

The Creator Feels for You

How could God allow such pain? If you have recently lost a child in death, no explanation, however reasonable, will make the pain of that loss simply vanish. In Bible times, even men of great faith agonized over life’s unfair tragedies and asked God why he allowed such things. (Compare Habakkuk 1:1-3.) But there are answers in the Bible that with time can comfort us.

Know first that God did not want your child to die. God does not take delight even in the destruction of the wicked, let alone the death of a child. (Compare 2 Peter 3:9.) Surely, he is deeply pained when a child dies. After all, we feel the tragedy of death only because we are able to love, to feel for its victims. And we are able to love only because we are made in God’s image. We reflect God’s perfect ability to love, even though weakly at best. (Genesis 1:26; 1 John 4:8) The Bible assures us that God reads the deepest feelings of our hearts, has numbered the very hairs on our heads, knows it even when a sparrow falls from a tree. Thus, he is called “the Father of tender mercies.”​—2 Corinthians 1:3; Matthew 10:29-31.

Clearly, then, God does not want any of his intelligent creatures to die. He purposes to end death, swallowing it up forever. (Isaiah 25:8) But if that is how he feels, why does he allow death in the meantime, particularly for children?

When Death Began

God allows children to die for the same reason that he allows adults to die. Death was Adam’s choice, not God’s. Even before Adam and Eve rebelled against their Creator in Eden, they both knew full well that God had set the death penalty for sin. If they had not chosen to be disloyal to God, they could still be alive today. But foolishly they threw away the most precious inheritance they could have passed on to their offspring​—the right to perfect, eternal life on earth. Once they sinned, they were no longer perfect. All they could pass on to their offspring was sin and death.​—Genesis 3:1-7; Romans 5:12.

But you may wonder: ‘Since the price was so high, why did God let Adam and Eve sin? Or why did he not crush their rebellion before they could pass death and misery on to their children​—and our children?’

A Universal Issue Involved

God allowed our first parents to disobey because he never intended to create a world of automatons, beings who serve God only because they are programmed to do so. Like any parent, God wanted his human children to obey him out of feelings of trust and love, not compulsion. He gave Adam and Eve ample reason to trust and love him, but they disobeyed and rejected his rulership anyway.​—Genesis 1:28, 29; 2:15-17.

Why did God not execute the rebels right then and there? God had already stated his purpose that the earth should one day be fully inhabited by the offspring of Adam and Eve. He never fails to fulfill his purposes. (Isaiah 55:10, 11) But more important, a crucial question was raised in Eden. Does God have the right to rule over man, and is His way the best, or can man rule himself better?

The only just way to answer the question once and for all was to allow man to rule himself. History has answered the question grimly. The wretched results of human rule are all around us​—a world in which the death of innocent children is commonplace, almost lost in a sea of other evils. If nothing else, six thousand years of human rule have proved this: The idea that man can rule himself without God is worse than a sad delusion; it is a gross lie. As long as man rules without God, man will live and die in pain.

Jehovah, the loving, righteous God, has a wiser choice. Much the way a parent will allow a beloved child to undergo a painful operation for the sake of the child’s happy and healthy future, God has allowed man to undergo the agony of self-rule for the sake of man’s eternal future. And just as the pain of an operation does not last forever, man-rule and its injustices are soon to end.

When God’s Kingdom rules without opposition over this earth, millions of children will be resurrected and welcomed back from the dead. Like the parents whose children Jesus resurrected back to life in the first century C.E., many then will be “beside themselves with great ecstasy.” (Mark 5:42; Luke 8:56; John 5:28, 29) And when all mankind is at last restored to the perfect state that Adam and Eve lost, then never again will anyone die​—children included!​—Revelation 21:3, 4.

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 27]

Millions of children will be resurrected and welcomed back from the dead