When you experienced your miscarriage or pregnancy loss, did anyone ever say to you, “Well, it’s all part of God’s plan”? Not at all comforting, is it? In fact, it feels wrong and perhaps the worst possible thing to hear when you’re grieving. Is it really a part of God’s plan for my baby to die? I’d argue that the idea that the loss of your child was part of God’s plan is deeply flawed. I’m not a theologian, but after a lot of thought, here’s why that statement has always felt so distressing to me.
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Let’s start with the phrase “God’s plan”.
A plan includes a desired or wished for outcome and the steps needed to achieve that outcome. According to the phrase “it’s all a part of God’s plan”, the loss of my children is made to seem like it is either a step in God’s plan or the desired outcome. I don’t think either of those things is actually in agreement with what the scriptures say about God.
God is love (1 John 4:8)
The Bible tells us multiple times that God is love. God even declares Himself to be abounding in love, in Exodus 34:5-6:
Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed His name, the Lord. And He passed in front of Moses proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”
So God is love, and he is abounding in love. What does real, perfect love look like? In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 we get a beautiful picture of what real love is:
“Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Other translations also interpret that last sentence as “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Since God is love, He perfectly embodies all these aspects of love. Love is not glad about injustice. Another word for injustice is unfairness. When a woman who is or would be a good mother loses a baby who was very much wanted, we would call that unfair. So God, who is love, is not glad about our loss. Another aspect of perfect love listed in the scriptures above is that love always protects. God’s plan is for good things for us. I do not believe that God, who is love and shows perfect love, planned for me to lose 5 babies. That doesn’t match with what I understand of love and the Lord my God.
The problem of evil and suffering
Now you may say, “Sarah, if your God is so perfect and loving, and if he is all-powerful, and it wasn’t part of his plan, then why did he allow these bad things to happen? Why did he allow your babies to die?”
I’m not a theologian, but I’ve also read enough to know that the scriptures show us a very realistic view of the world we are living in. There is death, suffering, and injustice all around us and in the pages of scripture. We aren’t promised a life without suffering or death. But the Bible hasn’t left us without an explanation. The world, as God created it, did not have death, suffering or injustice. But God did allow us free will. That free will allowed us to choose to sin, and creation was corrupted. Because of that, we know that in different ways, we will all experience dissatisfaction, loss, hurt, and injustice.
Why did my good and loving God allow that to happen? I can’t fully understand the problem of evil, as the theologians and apologists call it, but I understand enough to continue to trust in my Lord.
God as our Father
Now that I’m a parent, I feel the best way to understand and explain it is from the viewpoint of a parent. Christ describes God as our heavenly Father several times in the New Testament, and from Matthew 6:25–34 we know that He loves and cares for each of us, including our life and needs on this earth. So I think the comparison to parenting is pretty sound.
When I decided that I wanted to have children, I knew that one day they would say something hurtful to me or about me. I knew that they would disobey me. Even now, I know that no matter how hard I try to be a good parent, my child will do some bad things.
When my child grows up, I will give him independence (you could call that “free will”). I know that with that independence, he could do things that will make me proud or he could also do things that cause hurt and suffering to me or to others. My son could even commit a crime or cause an injury or death one day. It is my job as his parent and my prayer as a mother that those things do not happen. But as an independent adult with free will, what my son does will not be in my control.
Even though this could happen, I planned to have children. Why? Because, I decided that the possibility of that strong, familial love and relationship is worth the risks. I know that my son could become my biggest accomplishment and greatest source of joy. Raising and loving my son, although he is still quite young, has changed my entire perspective and filled my days with love and joy. To summarize: Bringing a son into the world is a choice I have made. I believe that the potential for good outweighs the bad. Bad things may happen as a result, because my son will make his own choices, but the bad things are not “my plan” in having and raising him.
As another example, let’s consider a simple scenario from parenting a toddler. You watch your child attempt to climb some new equipment at the playground that they’ve never tried before. It’s easy for you to see that they will fall and hurt themselves (a little bit). Do you stop them, knowing the outcome will be bad? And if you don’t stop them, was it your plan for them to get hurt? No! It wasn’t your plan for your toddler to get hurt, even if you did know that it was going to happen when you let them try to climb the new equipment.
I’m no expert, but I think it’s a bit like that with God as our Father. God has allowed us free will, and I have to believe that, as our Creator, He knows that the benefits of that free will are worth the costs. After all, could we experience true, deep love without the ability to freely choose to love? It seems to me that a love that was forced, a love without choice, would be no love at all.
And God knows that with our free will, we will also make some bad choices, and those choices will have repercussions. The whole of creation now is not what it was meant to be. Babies die, and God knew that would happen when He chose to allow free will. But it was not God’s plan for death to enter the world. It wasn’t God’s plan for babies to die.
That’s why I think it feels so wrong when you hear a well-meaning person say, “Well, it’s a part of God’s plan.” And in your heart, you are not comforted by that, and it actually feels so deeply wrong. That’s because, in my humble opinion, it is a deeply flawed statement. Can God work good out of the bad and distressing things that happen in this world? Absolutely! But that doesn’t mean that the loss and the pain was planned for us by God, simply that God knew it would happen and is able to bring about good from that experience.
But there is something else wonderful you need to know about God’s plan. It is not over yet. God, our Father, who loves and cares for us, plans to redeem all who would believe in him and to set the world right. The evil, suffering and death weren’t God’s plan, but He knew they would occur. And so God’s plan also includes the promise of redemption. We read in Revelation 21: 1-4:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist, and the sea existed no more. And I saw the holy city—the new Jerusalem—descending out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Look! The residence of God is among human beings. He will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more—or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.”
All that we need to do is to believe in the one true God, and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are all sinners, we all do bad things – I think that’s pretty self-evident if we examine ourselves and the world around us. On our own, we cannot be good enough for a God who is just and cannot tolerate evil. But through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who took all our sins and the punishment for those sins on Himself, we can be saved.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
If you have been going through a rough time, and someone has made a comment about God’s plan that was hurtful to you, I hope you found encouragement from this. God does have a plan, but it is a plan for good, and this painful experience you’ve been through was not planned for you by God. He loves you and he cares for you, and I also believe that God is grieving with you.
If you have ever made a comment about God’s plan to someone in the past, I hope this has given you a new viewpoint and that you will find better ways to comfort those who are grieving. If you need some ideas, here are the best ways that others supported me during our pregnancy losses.