Sermon Tone Analysis

When Does a Child Go to Hell?

Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Let me not look on the death of the child.”

And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.

Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Let me not look on the death of the child.”

And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.

Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Let me not look on the death of the child.”

And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept.

Genesis 21:16

When a child dies unexpectedly, it is such a tragedy for everyone involved.

It is a profound event in the life of a parent.

Many people will question God and blame God for the child’s death.

Many wonder, is the child in Heaven or did the child end up in Hell because of Adam’s original sin?

How do you respond to the parents who ask that question?

Many Biblical scholars have struggled with this question over the years.

What does Scripture tell us about this question?

How Are We to Understand Death In A Child?

Clark, Robert.

“The Death of a Child.”

Journal of Religion and Health 1994, Vol.

33 (4), pp: 321–324.

ISSN: 0022–4197

The death of a child is a profound event in the life of a parent.

If parents are ever to recover some portion of their normalness, helper professions must be willing and able to help in the recovery process.

How Are We to Understand Death In A Child?

Everyone is upset at the death of a child.

Everyone feels the death of a child to be especially tragic.

We feel that the child has been cheated.

Biblical scholars have struggled with this question.

Prior to Saint Augustine, most scholars appear to have ignored this question.

But Saint Augustine gave us a definitive answer in the City of God, "even the infants, not personally in their own life, but according to the common origin of the human race, have all broken God's covenant in that one in whom all have sinned." 1 Theologian Stanley Grenz summarizes Augustine's very influential position in his book Theology for the Community of God:

through the service, albeit shakily, and then I stagger home and fall on my wife.

What is worse than the death of a child?

For years I said that the greatest burden I’ve seen in

people is the burden of childlessness.

People will do anything to have a child.

Yet if they can’t have a child, can’t adopt a child, I’ve noticed that husband and wife don’t thereafter divorce.

But when a child dies the parents divorce 90% of the time.

In other words, the death of a child strains marriages beyond the breaking point more often than not.

Then perhaps there is something worse than childlessness; namely, the death of a child.

When David’s child died (the child he had had with Bathsheba), his servants were afraid to tell him lest the heartbroken king kill himself.

Lingering illness in a child; untimely death in a child; these are manifestations of evil.

Evil is evil, and must never thought to be anything else.

[2] Everyone is upset at the death of a child.

Everyone feels the death of a child to be especially tragic.

We feel that the child has been cheated.

We don’t feel this way about the elderly.

When Maureen and I lived in rural New Brunswick we called one evening on Mr. and Mrs. Henry Palmer.

Henry Palmer was dying.

He was 98 years old.

As he lay dying in the bedroom Mrs. Palmer sat in her rocking chair, that winter evening, close to the fire in the wood stove, rocking pensively, saying little.

Maureen, assuming Mrs. Palmer to be upset, began to commiserate with her.

Mrs. Palmer listened to Maureen for a while and then interjected, without interrupting her rocking, “Henry’s had a good life.”

By our standards he’d had a difficult life: he’d had to spend a month at backbreaking labour every year just to cut enough firewood for the winter, among other things.

Still, by Mrs. Palmer’s standards, Henry had had a good life.

Where children are concerned, however, our standards or anybody else’s standards mean nothing: we feel the child has scarcely had any life.

[3] Lingering illness in a child; untimely death in a child; these are manifestations of evil.

Evil is evil, and must never thought to be anything else.

We must never pretend that evil is “good in disguise.”

“Good in disguise” is still good; evil can never be good.

We must never say that evil is

good on the way, or at least the potential for good.

Of itself evil is never the potential for anything except more evil.

My aunt’s grandson (my cousin’s son) died at age seven.

The little boy was born a normal child and developed normally until age two when he was diagnosed with a neurological disease.

His condition deteriorated thereafter.

His facial appearance changed -- became grotesque, in fact; his mobility decreased; and his intellectual capacity decreased.

When I spoke with my aunt at the funeral parlour I said to her, “There’s no explanation for this.”

(I didn’t mean there was no neurological explanation; of course there was a neurological explanation.)

I meant, rather, “Given what you and I know of God, there’s no explanation for this.”

My aunt told me later it was the most comforting thing anyone had said to her at the funeral parlour, for virtually everyone who spoke with her put forth an “explanation”; such as, “Maybe God wanted to teach the parents something.”

What were the parents supposed to be taught by watching their son suffer and stiffen and stupefy for five years?

“Maybe God was sparing the little boy something worse later in his life.”

It would be difficult to imagine anything worse.

These aren’t explanations; these are insults.

As long as God is love, unimpeded love, there isn’t going to be an explanation for this.

We must always be careful and think 25 times before we conclude we’ve found the meaning (or even a meaning) to such a development.

Think of the one million children who perished during the holocaust.

Their parents (five million of them) were first gassed to death, whereupon their remains were burnt.

The children, on the other hand, were never gassed; they were thrown live into the incinerators.

If anyone claims to be aware of the meaning of this event I shall say, among other things, “Meaning for whom? for the barbequed children? for their parents?

for their survivors?

for their executioners?

for the shallow pseudo-philosophers who think their question is worth the breath they spend to utter it?”

What meaning could there ever be to such an event?

We can bring the same question to bear on any one child who is dying at this moment in the Hospital for Sick Children.

What did Jesus do when he learned of John’s death and the circumstances of John’s death?

Did Jesus say, “We need a theodicy.

We need a justification of the ways of God.

We need an explanation of how John’s terrible death could occur in a world ruled by a God whose love is mighty.

And if no explanation is forthcoming, then perhaps we can’t believe in God.” -- did Jesus say this?

Jesus said no such thing.

When John’s head was severed Jesus didn’t cry to heaven, “You expect me to trust you as my Father; but how can I believe you’re my Father, for what Father allows his child to be beheaded?

In view of what happened to cousin John, I can’t be expected to think that I’m dear to you.”

Jesus said no such thing.

When he was informed of the grisly death of John, Jesus said, “It’s time I got to work.”

Whereupon he began his public ministry, and began it knowing that what had befallen John would befall him too, and did it all with his trust

[4] In light of what I’ve just said I have to tell you how unhappy I’ve been with Harold Kushner’s older but still-bestselling book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People.

I’m disappointed in the book for several reasons.

In the first place there’s virtually no discussion of God’s love in Kushner’s discussion of God.

In view of the fact that God is love, that God’s nature is to love, the book is woefully deficient right here.