And I also beheld
that all children who die before they arrive at the years of accountability are
saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven. (D&C 137:10)
Sometimes, a question (usually asked for
shock value, though sometimes asked sincerely) is why one should not commit
suicide before age 8 (the age of accountability) or kill one’s kids before they
reach such an age if they are guaranteed celestial glory. In his recent book on
the topic of theodicy, Blake Ostler does a good job at addressing the problematic
nature of such a query. With respect to the theological background to those who
die in youth, Blake wrote:
God obtained the prior
consent of those personal intelligences or spirits who were willing to confront
the dangers of mortal life and devised a plan to ensure that each does not
suffer without some potential redeeming purpose as follows . . .
e. Those who had already progressed to celestial glory before this life are
fully served by moral life even if they die in infancy.
f. Once a person has had sufficient opportunity to learn that each came to this
mortal life to accomplish or learn, death can occur at any time as a matter of
chance—where “chance” means that their deaths are not planned, the timing and
means of death are without particular significance, it serves no one’s end, and
it might very well have been otherwise; thus if someone asks, “Why did that
happen?” the appropriate answer is “There is no particular reason, it just
happened.” (Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought, Volume 4: God’s Plan
to Heal Evil [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2020], 137, 138)
With this as background, note his response
to the question posed above:
It has sometimes been
argued that if little children who die before the age of eight are guaranteed
celestial glory, then we should kill all children before eight years of age to
guarantee their celestial glory. This type of argument fails because it commits
the fallacy of misplaced cause. Children who have achieved celestial glory have
done so whether they die before age eight or not. What guarantees their
celestial glory is the progress that they made before this life and not the
fact that they died before age eight. Thus, they will achieve the celestial
glory even if they die after age eight. Because dying before age eight is not
the cause of achieving celestial glory, the proposal to kill children before
age eight misplaces the causes of achieving celestial, and instead of
guaranteeing celestial glory to at least one person (who achieves it regardless
of when he or she dies), the only thing guaranteed is the consignment to hell
(the telestial kingdom, according to D&C 76) of the person who killed the
child. (Ibid., 153 n. 8)