Something about the suffering of children strikes at the core of faith in a benevolent deity. Dostoevsky saw this in his infamous chapter in Brothers Karamazov in which Jesus is put on trial by the Grand Inquisitor; more recently, the moral conscience of the world has been aroused by the sight of a dead Syrian child washed up ashore after seeking refuge. There are few tragedies that demand a reverent silence more than the death of a child. But the question still lingers heavy. Christians rightly celebrate Jesus’ command in Matthew 19:14 to “let the little children come to me,” but how do we explain Christ’s mercy if we are faced with burying one of those beloved children?
When the famed preacher William Sloane Coffin eulogized his son, something no parent should ever face, he went head-on against assertions from well-meaning friends that God had a hand in Alex’s death:
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