The purpose of this post is to describe how a reasonable person can reconcile these two:

- a good, compassionate, merciful, omnipotent, and omniscient God

- the reality that innocent babies suffer and die

The purpose is not to convince anyone to become a believer.

I maintain that anyone who remains an objector to the actual thesis (that these two realities can be reconciled) is really merely refusing to suppose for the sake of conversation and to hold the all thoughts described below _simultaneously_ and with enough weight for each

If you find any tenet irrelevant or begs for your immediate objection, you are misreading this post, and on the verge of discounting a piece, and objecting to some other worldview, not the one I'm espousing

I didn't spend any time making this palatable so don't foist this on a grieving parent as-is

Also one might read this post and feel that God is severe or unappealing. But there are plenty of positives to delight about God, and some of them are described in the links below

The Excellency of Christ https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons.excellency.html

The Peace Which Christ Gives His True Followers https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.iv.xiii.html

Safety, Fulness, and Sweet Refreshment in Christ https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons/files/safety.html

God has always existed, eternally in three persons

Nothing and no one existed before God nor is above God. He is the sole true sovereign

The rest of existence came into being from nothing because he created it and holds it in existence. He "upholds all things by the word of His power." Heb. 1:3 as if the strong and weak nuclear forces came from him continually and intentionally

Let the rest of existence be howsoever vast, it is as the light dust of the balance and as perfectly nothing in comparison to the Creator

It is correct to value God over all else. The godly person prefers God over everything he has had, over everything he currently has, over anything he has the prospect of having in this world and in the next, real or imagined https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2/works2.v.html

God was free to create whatever kind of universe he wanted, and also was completely free to have decided instead not to create at all, ever

He knows all things, including all things to come. It's like how you can know everything that happens in a novel that you've _already_ finished

Not only is he complete in knowledge, he is also perfect and unsurpassed in wisdom, moral beauty, love, and every virtue

Some virtues like love only make sense in the context of a relationship. God has existed from all eternity past in relationship within the trinity

Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever

But he decided to create the kind of universe where sentient beings such as angels and humans can decide to prefer God's wisdom or their own. Humans can, ... in our limited knowledge, .... moving only forward in time from one line of the novel to the next, ... only seeing what's next to us in the tall grass like a mouse, ... without knowing all that has taken place or all that will take place, ... with our few meager mortal brain cells that need regular sleep, ... continuing in our existence only by his say-so, yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God. It is the height of hubris, yet we all without exception do so naturally. We prefer the light dust of the balance, pegged at the top of the scale's range of motion, over the stupendous gold brick that is God Only Wise, Ancient of Days.

We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.

A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.

The exact same insult levied against two different individuals can carry different weight, if there is an aggravating factor such as the identity, worth, majesty of one of the offended

God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite

But this means our sin ("we know better than God") is infinite (however finite in number and duration yet having an infinite aggravation) and therefore justly deserves an infinite penalty. Since we have nothing to pay with that doesn't already belong to God such a penalty would never be paid in full by us https://ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/justice.html

God was completely free to set the rules of his creation however he wanted.

Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals.

With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety. Either to represent all of us negatively as Adam did, or represent some of us (door open to all) positively as Jesus did.

Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter. Such penalty already explained as consistent with justice, so also the fallen world being a lesser consequence is thus also consistent with justice.

Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court

If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering. This might have been a way for us to end up in a universe where babies never suffered nor died. But Adam and Eve succumbed to FOMO vs trust in the love and wisdom of God.

But if God had picked any other mere human to be the surety, that person would fail as well. We each prove this is true when we prefer our own wisdom or anything over God

We each earn an infinite penalty without help from Adam. And Adam's consequences are also present everywhere and unavoidable

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8) as our second surety. Fully human, and simultaneously fully and eternally the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jesus lived the righteous life for us and paid the infinite penalty in finite time

You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.

The alternative is to acknowledge this guilt and accept Jesus to pay for us

One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand

How was Jesus able to pay for more than one person in finite time? Because he has the full infinite worth of God the Son.

Jesus' death does more to repair God's honor than if all humanity were to burn in hell for eternity.

God did not have to provide this surety. He was completely free and justified to judge Adam and Eve immediately in hell. That would have been another way to have a universe void of suffering and dying infants.

So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died. And to imagine how much harder it would be to continue worshiping some other god who never tasted death personally.

And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter 2 Samuel 12:23

Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry. We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.

And if he shows the mercy of healing an infant and protecting his life to adulthood, that healed person still eventually and surely earns an infinite penalty like everyone else and still needs God's mercy.

Can the wrath of God be reconciled with the mercy of God? See https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.iv.xii.html

The existence of the dying baby, the continued existence of the questioner, and the existence of the question itself contain within them the very answer to the charge. If God were malevolent, none of them would exist here in this world. This alone is sufficient to defeat the charge. But God goes beyond that by experiencing the death penalty we deserved. He didn't have to, but he did, and is thus the only deity you could come to who would understand your pain from firsthand experience. And not only that, he did this to make a way (to pay) for a reunion between a grieving parent and a lost infant. Adam was involved but we can't blame him because we too would have (and already have) failed, because men naturally are God's enemies: https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2/works2.vi.i.html

In this worldview, any continued objection really boils down to the same original error (Adam's) of thinking one knows better than God, and so one does not want to answer to a sovereign God, and so one suppresses the truth with objections and excuses even though it is plainly evident from what has been made that God is to be thanked and honored. Romans 1:18-23