If God Is So Good Then Why Do Children Get Cancer?
Explain it like I’m six years old
Well, Honey, that’s a really good question. God IS good and wants good things for you.
He gave you your life, a nice place to live, and a teddy bear to keep you safe.
He’s like Daddy. Is Daddy good to you? Does he want good things for you? Of course, he does. But does Daddy make choices for you? No, he lets you make your own choices.
Remember when we made hot chocolate and we told you not to eat the cocoa all by itself but you ate it anyway? Yeah, it was terrible and yucky.
Who decided to eat the pure cocoa, you or daddy? You did, of course. What did you learn? Cocoa is yucky without sugar and milk, that’s right.
Daddy could have stopped you from eating the cocoa, he could have held your hand so you couldn’t taste it. But would you have learned about cocoa?
No, you wouldn’t. Only tasting it told you it was bitter and gross.
God is like Daddy in this way. He lets you make your own choices so you can learn and grow. And you want to grow up to be big and strong, right?
You can do that by learning to make better and better choices.
The argumentative defense of any proposition is inversely proportional to the truth contained. — The Urantia Book, 48:7.30 (557.14) 28.
On an adult level, this question — if God is good, why is there evil? — has plagued philosophers for centuries. And for those who like to disprove God, it’s a favorite line of attack. So many have struggled to find an answer, but the answer is quite simple.
However, like all simple things, the answer is easy to say but not easy to understand.
The reason why there is evil in the world is because of free will.
Let’s unpack that.
To begin, free will exists.
Many have argued that it does not, but so far, no one has been able to conclusively demonstrate its absence. The most recent effort is a valiant attempt by Sam Harris is his book, Free Will.
It appears that we have free will. We certainly act as if we do. We hold ourselves and each other accountable because at any moment we can freely choose from a huge range of options. Our entire system of morality and justice is founded on the reality of people as free will actors.
For all intents and purposes, free will is real and works the way we think it does.
So, we have the unlimited power of choice. However, possessing this power and making consistent good use of it are two completely different things.
When imperfect beings receive the power of choice — and we are most certainly imperfect — it’s inevitable we’ll choose badly, even catastrophically. The daily news and history chronically attest to this.
Evil choices, and the results that flow from them, comes from us, not God.
Sometimes we choose badly on purpose, knowing full well what we’re doing is wrong. Murder is a good example, gratuitous theft would be another.
In other cases though, we end up choosing badly due to ignorance or misunderstanding, not the intent.
Food allergies are a good example. You’re allergic to something, you don’t know it, and you end up eating bad foods for a long time (or feeding your children bad food) and it erodes your health. Gluten intolerance often works this way.
God doesn’t interfere with our free will.
Well, why not? If we’re down here bumbling around, jacking things up through all manner of terrible things, why doesn’t God step in already? What good can come from us harming ourselves and each other?
The short answer is this: if God made our choices for us, we’d never learn.
The less-short answer is this. What a child thinks is right and good is entirely different from what their parents think.
When I was a boy I insisted on eating peanut butter and cheddar cheese together. I loved them both singly, they must be twice as good together! My dad told me not to do it.
“The old man’s a fool!” I thought, and kept insisting. Finally, he relented. If his wisdom couldn’t teach me, then experience was going to teach me. (P.S. Turns out, I was demented.)
Immediately after tasting the hideous flavor, I was secretly mad at him for foisting such an experience on me. He knew! He knew and let me do it anyway!
What’s evil to children most often is character building to their parents. The same child/parent relationship exists between God and us. He gives us free rein to choose, learn and choose again.
You cannot perceive spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths are not really felt except in adversity. — The Urantia Book, 48:7.18 (557.2)
So why do children get cancer?
Of course, each child has their own unique story, but a major causative factor in the health (or illness) of children and adults is a dietary choice, pursued over many years.
My grandma is a great example. Born in 1927, she was the daughter of an alcoholic mother. Not only did her mother drink the entire pregnancy, but she smoked too: unfiltered Camel cigarettes. Today both are verboten, but back then the effects of smoking and drinking weren’t well known, or even known at all.
My grandmother didn’t have fetal alcohol syndrome (that we know of), but she did suffer with breathing issues in childhood and throughout her life (a known result of smoking during pregnancy).
Even without any genetic predisposition to disease, her overall health would have been much better if her mother chose differently in those pregnancy months.
Terrible health choices like this can and do impact the health of babies, even before they’re born, and set the stage for a host of childhood diseases, including cancer.
We make these choices because a) we have unlimited free will to do so, and b) for whatever reason, most often ignorance or misunderstanding, we end up choosing poorly.
Children get cancer for the same reason that wars begin: free will actors make choices that have consequences. God does not directly intervene one way or the other.
What it all means for you
Two things.
First, the presence of evil doesn’t invalidate God.
The two can and do exist simultaneously. They are compatible. This seeming “paradox” doesn’t stem from reality, but from our misunderstanding of reality.
Second, God bestowed you with free will and absolutely refuses to interfere with your right to choose.
You have the power of agency. While there may be practical limits on your ability to act, in the sovereign realm of your mind no one can directly interfere with your power of choice.
This is the basis of life as you know it, and no one, not even the infinite creator, can remove or alter this power.
No matter what happens in your life, you are always and forever free to choose again.
Few mortals ever dare to draw anything like the sum of personality credits established by the combined ministries of nature and grace. The majority of impoverished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to believe it. — The Urantia Book 48:7.6 (556.6)
