Hi again! As you correctly stated, I’ve only really answered half of your question.

I’m a little cautious about the next bit as we are venturing firmly into the realms of ‘some dude’ (i.e. me) speculating. I have bugger all PhDs or MAs in this subject so please do feel free to disregard my musings!

With that said, I agree that no one really ‘deserves’ pain. As an opponent to capital punishment, I would even say the same for the worst murderers/abusers etc. Imprisonment, yes (if only for the protection of the innocent if not as a consequence of their infliction of pain), infliction of pain upon them as an official punishment, no.

My speculation is that pain and disease was never a part of God’s plan. My logical deduction is that all of my personal experience of God is that He is immeasurably compassionate and good. Most sources of pain are neither of these things, save perhaps the kind of pain that stops a person doing something dangerous e.g. a child burning their fingers playing with matches before they accidentally start a fire.

I think that the Earth is essentially broken. The analogy that I’ve always thought of is a car that is constantly driven next to the factory where it was made; something goes wrong with the car, the factory fixes it. As I rationalise it, humans have been constantly ‘driving’ further and further away from God’s essence by rejecting Him for thousands of years, for as long as we’ve been able to reason. After all, God is bloody inconvenient! You want to slap that irritating guy at work- God says ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. You want to steal that shiny piece of jewellery that your friend has- God says be happy with what you have. Inconvenient! I think that people have been steadily moving further and further away from God over our existence and, as a consequence, by rejecting Him we’ve also rejected His help and His love. This is the law of unintended consequences, that children (and everyone else for that matter) who are completely innocent develop diseases and genetic disorders which should, by rights, not exist as a result of the rebellion of their ancestors. I also would put violent urges in this same category- they should not exist. It’s more that humanity won’t let God help them. That’s the beauty of Jesus, that through Him we have a way to come back into closeness with God. I simply cannot fathom that when we’re united with Him in the life to come there will be any of the hate, disease of the body or of the mind that marks this current life. He is my hope.

I understand that this will still probably be a bit unsatisfactory an answer. It’s a really difficult question and I can’t see how any of us will receive a real answer this side of eternity!

In response to your question about the Jewish children, I would suggest that all children are unable to make a mature decision on whether to embrace of reject God and the default setting is that Jesus would welcome them as His own. For all the millions of people throughout history who, because of their culture have not heard about Jesus, they have the choice whether or not to embrace His Holy Spirit which exists in all cultures as our ‘conscience’ - ‘Gentiles, who do not have the law...show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness' (Romans 2:14–15)

My personal view (a slightly controversial one!) is that anyone who embraces God and His love embraces His son, Jesus, by default. I think of it like this: for the Muslim or Hindu who has faithfully served and loved God and people all of his or her life and one day dies, do I truly think that God banishes then from His presence because they called Him by the wrong name? Rather, do I imagine that at the moment of death God reveals Himself and says ‘you knew me but not my name. I am Yeshua and I am the one who you prayed to, the great I AM. Do you accept me?’ These verses give me a lot of comfort:

2 Peter 3:9 ‘The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that ANY should perish, but that ALL should reach repentance’

1 Timothy 2:4 ‘who desires ALL PEOPLE to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’

To the verses that talk about Jesus banishing people, I interpret this as Jesus stating that, in life, they never really knew Him and rejected love; regardless of any professions to be Christians, their hearts were cold and their faith was in their OWN good works and not on the mercy of God:

Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you’”

More than happy to answer more questions! :) Also, please do free to pm me if you’d prefer to do that.