On today’s episode of The 700 Club, a woman wrote in to ask Pat Robertson why God allowed her 15-year-old son to die.

Robertson, for some reason, decided to give her a very specific answer: God may have let your son die to prevent him from becoming an alcoholic or atheist later in life.

… These things happen. We live in a world of wickedness. And God does not necessarily spare us from these things. He will teach us once we’re in the difficult situation, He will help us to overcome it. But not necessarily will He spare everybody from — you’ll say, “Why does my Father allow this to happen?” The loss of a child is a terrible grief. But, you know, the thing about that child at 15, maybe he was, you know, living for the Lord at 15. I don’t know anything about him; I’m presuming he was. So what would’ve happened maybe 10 years from now? Would he have started drinking? Would he have gone away from the Lord? What would’ve happened? So God, who sees the end from the beginning, knows what would happen to that child, and because He loves the child and loves him, He wants to bring him to Heaven forever, and He wants to spare him some of the bad things that would happen down the road. I’m just speculating, but I mean, God’s in charge of everything. And believe me, He is not some big super daddy who will spare all of us from pain. We are all going to have pain…

So if I have this right… God loves us so much that he would kill us, putting our loved ones through never-ending emotional pain, just to prevent us from questioning His existence.

Those don’t sound like the actions of a loving Lord.

Those sound like the threats of a brutal dictator.

I thought Donald Trump was alone in taking a grieving family member and making her pain even worse through his irresponsible words. But Pat Robertson was apparently eager to join his side.

I don’t know how Robertson’s words could bring comfort to anyone, but I hope this mother finds peace. A more compassionate Christian would have said we don’t know why God did this… followed by nothing else at all.

Robertson never got that memo.

(Thanks to Kyle for the link)

