A Heavenly Nursery

Do children go to Heaven?

This is a very controversial issue. It is so very controversial because there is no clear outline answer to give. Much of the controversy stems from our weak understanding of God's loving justice and the consciousness of a child. I do not pretend to have greater understanding, and I dare not claim to have the answers. But, like everyone else, I do have opinions.

Some teach that children are eligible for Heaven without faith's intervention, at least until a certain age. Thus if a child dies in miscarriage or before that age the child is safe from condemnation. They pretend that children have an innate innocence until that particular age.

If such were the case than it would seem much more efficient to kill them all off immediately. So if this is true then technically both Pharaoh and Herod have proven to be the greatest mass evangelists of all time. Their slaughter of all children under the age of 2 provided not a massacre but a revival with free passes to Heaven.

Divine justice is not automatically imputed unto man. Sin is. David mourned being conceived in sin from his mother's womb. Even from that point on he was a sin-carrier. As are we all. Sin nature is inherent from birth on.

It is not justice to redeem man without fulfilling the prerequisites demanded of him (faith). By not requiring the exercise of faith it would seem a contradiction to every text that makes redemption available to man. Even for children. There is no justice in that. Justice must be built on a system of equality. An equality that is certainly founded on His love, yet still an equality that forces everyone to exercise faith unto redemption.

Now the question is how can a child exercise faith? We know full well that children are sinners from the start. They say NO before saying YES, they say GIMME instead of PLEASE, and MINE before YOURS. Sharing is not high on their priority list, rather they prefer to take. Children are naturally selfish.

Children are, according to some, an echo of Eden. Just as Adam and Eve were innocent before the Fall so are children, they say. Of course, they were not holy, just as children are not holy, but they were innocent and so children too can be, perhaps, innocent.

I think that perhaps our problem lies in the fact that we do try to paint pictures of God. Very skewed pictures. We want to define God, to tailor Him, as it were, to suit our conveniences. Let's remember that God is a God of infinite justice and that He will never compromise that justice to appease human sentiment.