To see children suffer and die will tatter your faith. Rightly so. Because in a good universe there would be no such things. So, in some ways, at some moments, our universe is not good. Not God’s idea of a universe.
There’s nothing puzzling about this if you believe the Genesis picture. Natural forces act randomly because God obviously stopped controlling the natural world sometime before Eve ate the pomegranate, to make room for her free choice. She could not have disobeyed Him unless He first withdrew His sovereignty.
So, it’s not hard to imagine a universe that is both a special creation and at times not good.
What follows is an exercise in cold logic, and so is no comfort in the moment when the death of a child is sheer pain. But, later, in a quiet time, this cold logic should be pondered. Here it is: If you believe that God exists, and that He resembles the God of the Bible, you must believe some sort of afterlife exists. If some sort of afterlife exists, you must promptly factor in the condition of the “dead” soul in the afterlife, as a part of deciding whether or not an untimely death was a bad thing, or the degree of the atrocity.
So, if it is true that to be in the presence of God is unthinkable bliss (as most religions assert) then, in order to be logical about it, you need to know the viewpoint of the newly dead baby. If we let the word “bliss” mean the fullness of experience it must mean, and so carry the emotional weight it must carry, then the dead who live in God’s gaze would not have avoided their death one moment longer, if they could. Accordingly, those who suffer damnation would want to delay their death one more minute.
I realize this logic is no comfort to one who grieves; my only point is that you cannot simultaneously believe in “God” AND think it necessarily bad that somebody died early. But this mental exercise is studiously ignored by those who are mad at God or who use atrocities to argue He does not exist.
Either be an atheist or have faith in His justice. The middle ground is not legitimate.
The alternative to bullying is waiting, which looks alot like absence. The whole point to history is that He possesses the ability to bully, but does not. He waits for your love.
God is absent, so people complain that He doesn’t stop disasters. But then they also complain that He is a bully. I imagine HE talks to Himself: “So do they want me around, or not?”
I think He is the most vulnerable of all, and most days can’t win.