This is a tricky question. I will answer based on a traditional understanding of the Bible. God does not cause "bad" things to happen. "Bad" obviously depends on your perspective. If an early death would save a lifetime of pointless suffering, is it "bad" or "good?" Only God is in a position to answer a question like this with authority. It surely looks "bad" to parents and others who loved the child at the time. The possibility exists that God removed the child's spirit or consciousness before a painful or tragic death and left only the body to suffer. There are too many possibilities to hope to cover most of them in one answer. It is pretty clear that God allows people to make decisions and allows the good and bad consequence to follow naturally. For example, if a person chooses to drive like a maniac at high speeds through areas with pedestrians, injuries and deaths are likely, but I would not connect that person's behavior or the consequent suffering with intent on God's part. God may or may not intervene based on His own reasons, but I am in no position to judge God's judgements on such things: I have neither the perspective nor the wisdom. The Bible does say that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him, and He often brings good things out of bad situations. Until we have the eternal perspective of God, there is no sense in trying to deduce His motivations for preventing some things while allowing others. The Bible asserts that God's ways and thoughts are as high above ours as the heavens are above the Earth. I accept this, and choose not to try to out-guess, out-smart or judge God.

It must be, because for the honest monotheist (one who believes all creation comes from a single godhead), God even created those things that are 'bad.' In Christianity, the creative force called "God/Lord" and the creative force called "Satan" are opposite poles of the same, single godhead. And for the person who fails to concede that Satan is a creative force, then he (Satan) must essetially not exist, because he would have no power (In which case, from where does evil come?). Edit: What I mean to say is that the Christian God is part of the same, objective godhead as it's opposite pole (Not that this fact is actually a part of Christian doctrine). However, my assessment of monotheism is correct. It is an error of Christianity to call itself monotheistic and yet not include the devil in the godhead. Such would actually be a duelistic theism, rather than a monotheism. Satan must be a god, for if he wasn't divine, than he would have no dominion over events. In truth, there is no adequate answer to this question from a Christian perspective, unless you do like most Christians, and choose to ignore the fact that the serpent was part of Eden: part of the wholeness that originally was. In other words, the evils in the world are part of his creation--it WAS God's will that the child died. By 'creative force' I mean something that has power, something that does exist and is capable of acting. Many Evangelical Christians do accept the existence and power of a devil. In contemporary Christianity Yahweh and Satan are seperated. What I am proposing is that these two poles exist in the same god: that the two are opposing parts contained within the same objective godhead. While archaically the two were more ambiguous than being a clear and absolute opposition, I am further proposing that the contemporary view that they are absolute opposites necessitates that they are both gods, for what is a devil which is equal in power to a god if he is not a god himself. My conclusion however assumes that God and devil are equally powerful; an assumption that is arguable. But if their opposition is absolute, and one assumes that both poles in the dichotomy of good and evil are equal, then it shouldn't be a stretch to say that the gods that represent good and evil are equal also.

The short answer, and the only sensible one is Yes. It would be helpful to read my answer to question 5: "If God is all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent, why is there evil?" before you read this answer as I will be referring at times to an argument put forth there concerning the true nature of evil. The Godhead does not have to include evil for bad things to happen, nor does it require God to have some Yen Yang/Feng Shui/Zen balance to explain the presence of "bad things". This question seems to imply that "a child dies" is by definition a bad thing. The badness or goodness of any death is subjective to the point of view. The parent of the child might view the death of their child as a bad thing - where God might not. Perspective is the important thing. I have a story that illustrates this. Some friends of mine, before I knew them, lost an infant to crib death. They were relating the pain of the loss and how most people and oddly most Christians were terrible at consoling them. I thought for a minute and asked her "Did you pray for God to protect your child?" I already knew the answer. She replied, somewhat indignatly "Of course I did!" I found out later that some had tried to blame the death on her lack of prayer! Proof that their are well meaning idiots everywhere. I said, "Then God answered your prayer." Before she could pick up a chair and brain me with it I explained, "Is there a safer better place in the universe for your child to be than in the arms of Jesus Christ? Your child is where we are going, heaven. He could not be safer or happier and you will see him again. Eternally speaking it will not be very long either." The point is she was angry with God for killing her child, when in reality He had done nothing of the sort. From her point of view the death of her infant son was very bad, from God's point of view it was very good. There is no way to know what God may have been protecting that child from or why He chose to protect that child and not so many others. God plans everything. God decides who He will show mercy to and who He will not. God works everything for the good of those on whom he has decided to show his mercy. Jeremiah 29:11; Romans 8:29-30, 9:18, 8:28; Eph 1:5; Eph 1:11 So, it is not possible for any event to occur that is outside of God's control. Therefore it is also not possible for any "unwilled" event to occur. In the sense of God's will being defined as His soveriegn control. I believe that His desire is a different matter. It is not His desire that any should perish, but it is His will that some do. God would desire one thing - like I would desire for my childern not to fight. But I must act (enforce my will) to disipline them when they do fight. The events of my discipline then are an enforcement of my will. The phyical events of this earth are similar in that they are part of a great design whose end is the salvation of the elect. In much the same way that I attempt to plan and orchestrate the events of children's lives to shape them in a Godly manner, God does the same with us. He even uses Satan to this end. No event, no matter how nasty it seems happens without God's leave. Evil is not a thing or a force. It is a word we use to describe an absence of something. In same way we use darkness or cold. The something that is missing is God. He takes his hands off of someone or something in order that the events which come out of that may achieve His divine purpose. You could think of it as watching a baskeball game from courtside seats throught a very powerful telescope. You would only see flashes of movement and every now and again a part of the ball. You would not be able to tell what was going on, except by what was revealed by the commentators. God's commentators are His prophets and Christ Jesus as revealed in the Bible. Our perception of bad and good are subject to our point of view. God is the gardener and we are the plants. Do the daffodills argue with the gardener if the panzies are replaced by daisies? Is it bad for the gardener to cut down the junipers in favor of boxwoods? It would seem so if you were another plant watching it happen, but it would not be so for the gardener. He is the owner of the garden and all of the plants, including the weeds are subject to Him and his plan. (Rom 9:21) This is a personal view and should be taken as such: I believe that God from the begining imbued us with a free will. He knew that in order for us to be free, we must be allowed to go our own way. He also knew that this way would lead us away from Him. So, all of this history, from the begining of time, has one purpose. To reunite some of us to Him. The angels who, also having a free will, rebelled against Him and were cast down. They have no means of redemption. There is no angelic Jesus who paid for their sin. No means of salvation so they are utterly without hope. God has not gone to such great lengths to reunite any of them to himself. He does however have a plan to unify us to Him again and this plan uses humans, Satan, and every created thing in this world to do that. Who are we to argue with Him about it? If it is a part of that plan that a child die, then that child will die and that is not bad, for the child was created for that purpose.

No, this is not the result of God’s will. It is a result of humans as agents of free will choosing their own, independent course from God. “Know first that God did not want any 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). 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. God allowed our first parents to disobey because he never intended to create a world of robots, 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. 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” see —Revelation 21:3, 4. This wonderful future is what God’s will is for mankind. Sources: The scriptures cited, please look them up in your own Bible, and some comments from the March 8th 1991 issue of “Awake! Magazine”. Page 26.

I believe that God has nothing to do with it.Man is a creature like any other creature on earth and dies.It is only in the mind of mankind that we think it as a judgement or something that one dies appearently before thier time. How do we ,with such limited consciousness know when ithe time is right.

A very short answer here...."No"..the death of a child is not Gods will.

WOW this is in fact a loaded question and one that can have many answers depending on the preception and understanding of God as one sees him. And that can be in many different ways to many. My thoughts are that God allows things to happen so that we can learn in some way. No ones life is less than and all that happens is a learning experience for us all. God gave us free will and with that the consequence of out free will. How a cild dies I think can be what message we get out of his sensless death. In my line of work I have seen my share of children that have been victimized by others and resulted in their death. I have seen children die from a disease and others murdered. Some peopled cared about and others never claimed. So when I ask myself why, it has nothing to do with God really it has to do with mankind. When God gave us that ability to do what we wanted with out lives I do believe he knew that there would be innocent people affected by those that do not care. But he also knew that there would be those that would stand up for those that could not. So he knew that no life would go in vain, somewhere it caused for someone to change their life for the better.

I dont know Sometimes it is sometimes its not

No, it is a simple tragedy.

God's permissive will. God allows things to happen without it being His perfect or acceptable will. His perfect will is the Covenant He made with us to be our God if we would be His people and do His will. His desire is to live with us forever in fellowship. His acceptable will is us choosing Him and endeavoring to do His will here on earth. Part of His permissive will is what is allowed to happen because of the original fall of Adam and Eve. Through them death and sin entered into the world. So while it is not His perfect or acceptable will He dose allow it to happen. He will also give you the grace to live through it and even bless you if you allow Him too.

Yes. God the creator is all powerful and knows all. If he knows all, then he would know the child in question. If he knows the child and kills the child then obviously it is his will. If, however, he knows the child will die and does nothing, it is still his will to allow the child to die. . Then again, I think a child dying is due to the ignorance of humanity that religion helps to perpetuate.