Why Doesn't God Prevent Children from Getting Cancer or Dying of Cancer?
Children suffer and die due to three main causes. First, children suffer and die due to pestilence and disease enabled when the Lord cursed the ground after Adam and Eve sinned. He banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, thus barring humans from the rejuvenating power of the Tree of Life. God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, “you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), and He didn’t add “at a ripe old age of natural causes.” He just said, “You will surely die,” and we’ve been attending funerals ever since. Second, children also suffer and die because of the mistakes and sins of others, such as leaving a pool gate unsecured, drunk driving, murder, and so on. Third, children suffer and die because natural laws work in regular ways: the gravity that keeps us on planet Earth also enables fatal falls; the fire that warms also burns; the water in which we swim can also drown. (Credit: clayjones.net)
Although the question is framed in terms of cancer, I believe we have to honestly admit we do not believe children should die of any disease. While we are at it, it is not just death from disease we find objectionable, but the suffering from having the disease that precedes death as well. And carrying out this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, I think most would agree that children should not suffer from the misdeeds of others or even from accidental circumstances. Therefore, properly framed, I believe the ultimate question is, “Why doesn’t God prevent children from suffering?” With this in mind now, I believe there are several reasons God does not prevent childhood suffering.
If children are to suffer no misfortune, then to what age should they be indestructible? The absurdity of the question gives us a different perspective. However, to tease out the implications, shall we say twelve? But then we are saying it is okay for a thirteen-year-old girl to be dragged from her bedroom in the middle of the night and brutally raped and beaten. Perhaps we should take it all the way to adulthood, to the commonly accepted age of twenty-one. We still have the same problem - is it then okay for the twenty-two-year-old nursing student to be drugged, raped and then strangled to death? If God is unfair for allowing children to suffer, is He not still unfair for drawing lines people would surely label as arbitrary? And speaking of fairness, how fair is it to the twenty-one year old that she enjoyed a consequence free childhood but is now suddenly vulnerable and accountable?
Indestructible children highlight the issue of God’s hiddenness. He remains hidden just enough that those who genuinely want to know Him can find Him. Thus, if God intervened millions of times a day around the globe to protect children, His existence would be a foregone conclusion. Billions of people would feign fealty, the choice removed. Like all of us, God wants to be pursued for who He is.
A world in which God regularly suspended the laws of nature for children’s sakes would be absurd, and children’s actions would lack moral meaning. Imagine children playing in busy streets bouncing hither and yon as vehicles strike them. Imagine Johnny’s bayonet blade turning to rubber as he stabs Jimmy while they are playing war. In this absurd existence, children would not learn morality because many of their choices would lack moral consequences.
If we attack the problem not by childhood indestructability, but by God’s providential intervention, we are no better off. God would constantly have to interfere with man’s free will if He was always orchestrating events to prevent children’s suffering. Many children suffer due to other’s actions, not their own, such as being the passenger in a vehicle driven by a drunken adult. God would have to act so many times and in so many ways that, as mentioned above, He could not remain hidden.