A Closer Look at the Will of God

I stood silently by the bedside of a four-year-old girl as she slipped from this world into the next. Her father and mother were on the other side of the bed holding her hand. They wept softly, clinging to each other, whispering words which I could not hear, private words of unfathomable pain.

After a few moments the father turned to me and said, “Michael, it was just her time to go. It was God’s will.”

Was it really God’s will for the child to die? I questioned whether God willed the death of a four-year-old, but now was not the time to discuss theology. Now was the time to comfort, to put my arms around these two grieving parents, to help them feel God’s love in some tangible way. But my mind could not easily forget that the brokenhearted father had attributed his daughter’s death to God’s will. His words, “It was God’s will,” sent goose bumps up and down my spine like someone scratching their nails across a chalkboard. “Really?” I said to myself, “God wills the death of little children?”

I have often heard people use the phrase “It was God’s will” whenever tragedy struck, as if the dark side of life has been ordained by God. Are we just supposed to accept life’s adversities as God’s will?  I understand why the father assumed it was God’s will for his daughter to die. The father was grasping for some theological meaning behind his child’s death. If God were somehow behind the death of his child, then maybe he and his wife would be able find some peace, some comfort in their loss. By believing it was God’s will for their daughter to die, they would be reassured that her death was inevitable and nothing could have been done to save her. Her passing, while tragic, was all part of a divine plan that was hidden from them but would be revealed in the by and by.

For the parents to think otherwise would mean that their daughter’s death was a random event, perhaps without purpose, and that would have been too unbearable. Surely, God had a reason in taking their child.

I understood where the family was coming from. They were trying to make sense out of the incomprehensible tragedy—children are not supposed to get sick, suffer, and die. If these untimely events occur, there must be some explanation.  If God were somehow behind their child’s death, then, while still painful, the parents could more readily accept it.

When faced with inexplicable tragedy, many people of faith interpret the event as God’s will in order to salvage their faith. But perhaps their understanding of God lacks consistency, and what’s even more troubling, by attributing tragedy to God, they greatly diminish God’s love. Let me explain.

For weeks, months, and even years, the doctors and medical staff had attempted one treatment after another to try and save the little girl’s life. The best medical intervention available was tried. The parents even agreed to an experimental drug, in hope that the cutting-edge medicine would work and restore or prolong their daughter’s health. 

Were the parents, who believed it was God’s will for their daughter to die, working against the will of God? If it were God’s will, then why try so desperately to save her life? I have a friend who speaks of how God willed the death of people a lot more frequently before the advent of modern science and medicine. In other words, maybe God’s will is more flexible than we have been led to believe by selectively picking out a few verses of Scripture here and there.

Then, too, perhaps we short-change the immense love God has for us. A passage from Scripture comes to mind: “In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost” (Matt. 18:14). As he often does, Jesus uses “little ones” as a metaphor for human beings. The background of the text calls attention to God’s love for the marginalized and weak of this world, the so-called losers or misfits in life, the poor souls who stumble through life and get lost.  

The shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep on a hill (“wilderness” in Lk. 15) to look for the one lost sheep, the one vulnerable soul. If the stray sheep could not be found, death would result. In other words, God does not will that any sheep should be lost or die. While in context, the passage expresses God’s love and deliverance for those who are deemed unworthy, it also suggests that death itself is an enemy of God, an enemy that one day will be destroyed (see 1 Cor. 15:24-26).

Death, all death, is God’s enemy and, therefore, the death of any child cannot be God’s will. God wills for a child’s life to be full of joy, health, and happiness. God desires the very best for all his children, both young and old. Still, children die and so do we all. What gives? How can we maintain our faith and confidence in God if life is capricious, often with no rhyme or reason for what happens?

Scripture does not provide us with all the information we would like but part of the answer may lie in how God has structured the world. Our world is not a perfect place. We can speak of the idyllic Garden of Eden, where all was perfect, but in the world we inhabit, natural disasters, suffering, disease, and death are daily occurrences.  For better and worse, it is the world we live in.

Lahaina, Hawaii Destruction, 2023

While life in the world contains dangers and risks (meaning that God’s will is not always done on earth as it is in heaven), God did not leave us defenseless. He created us with minds to think and reason, explore and experiment, with abilities to fashion tools and work together for the common good to make our world a better place.

I took a young banker with me once to visit a teenaged boy in a cancer ward of a large hospital in Dallas. Room after room was filled with cancer patients, young children and even infants, who were gravely ill with this horrible disease. Medical staff worked round the clock to care for these innocent children. Not many years earlier most, if not all, of these children would have died, but today close to 80 per cent would survive.   

My friend’s eyes were opened to the horrors that so many of us never see, but countless moms and dads live through with their sick children every agonizing moment of every single day. To think that it is God’s will for these children to suffer with cancer and sometimes die before reaching adulthood would make God an incomprehensible monster. Jesus said that the sun rises on the just and the unjust and so it does. Likewise, cancer attacks without regard to how innocent a person is or how guilty, whether a child or an adult. What God wills is that human beings, beings created in God’s image, find cures and treatments that can save lives.  

So, while God does not will the tragedies that befall us, God can use tragedy to bring about something good. I don’t want to minimize the pain that people experience in loss, especially the loss of a child, but if we open our heart to God, God can take all the hurt and suffering, grief and tears, doubt and death and help us rebuild our lives. Yes, we will always carry the wounds within us—some grief never goes away—but we can find purpose and meaning, even in our sorrow. 

C.S. Lewis understood that suffering and death, although not directly caused by God, can be used by God as a megaphone to awaken us from our spiritual deafness. Tragedy can lead us to reconsider what we hold most dear. The loss of a loved one can move us to be more sensitive toward others who grieve and more conscious of our responsibilities to care for the sick and hurting who are all around us. Tragedy can bind our world community more closely together.  

Our primary purpose on earth, according to Scripture, is to grow as human beings in our relationship with God and others, for the two are uniquely joined. We aren’t here to see how much stuff we can acquire or how much power we can attain or how we can satisfy our sensual appetites. We are given life to reflect the image and likeness of God. Certainly, God doesn’t will the evil that comes our way, but God can transform that evil, if we allow, and use it to create within us a more polished likeness of our heavenly Father.

Finally, nothing that is lost on earth will be forever lost. The Apostle Paul acknowledges that we will grieve at the cruel injustices in our world, but while we weep, and we will, we do not weep as those without hope (1 Thess. 4:13). Our hope is in the God whose love transcends all understanding, a love that will not allow even one lamb to be lost. For all that is lost will one day be found.