GTAngler posted:Here is my take on all this. I am muslim. When my father passed away after 4 months in the hospital I had a lot of questions and a lot more anger. A very good family friend and distant relative sat down with me and told me that muslims believe that when someone suffers on Earth, they are basically paying for their sins here and not later in the afterlife. I don't know if the same applies here and if so what sins those children could have committed to have paid the ultimate price.
GTAngler, First my condolences to you and your family on the lost your dad. I pray that God will continue to comfort your family and draw everyone much more closer in love and unity.
A bit about myself, I'm a Christian, I'm NOT a religious leader nor am I a bible scholar. I attend church listening to the sermon(s) being preach, I study God's word and apply it (I try to) in my life. Therefore I am just a church goer per say. I study God word for my own benefit so that likes of our friend ksazma or Christian preacher themselves would not bring forth any foreign doctrine to me; I also do this for correctness. I do have a career 9-5 job M-F.
I have took the liberty of highlighting a few lines from your statement above because I want to address those. Your family friend is right, "when someone suffers on Earth, they are basically paying for their sins" or sin from pass generations. There is a saying that goes, "We reap what we sow, more than we sow, and later than we sow". The effects of sin are naturally passed down from one generation to the next. When a father has a sinful lifestyle, his children are likely to practice the same sinful lifestyle. The children will choose to repeat the sins of their fathers and that develops into a generational curse.
The cure for a generational curse has always been repentance. When Israel turned from idols to serve the living God, the "curse" was broken and God saved them according to Judges 3:9, 15; 1 Samuel 12:10-11. Yes, God promised to visit Israel’s sin upon the third and fourth generations, but in the very next verse He promised that He would show "love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments", Exodus 20:6. In other words, God’s grace lasts a thousand times longer than His wrath.
After you have departed this earth will come your judgement to determine where you would spend your afterlife, in heaven or hell. We all have to face the judgement and give an account of the life we live here on this earth.
Being born sinners results in the fact that we all sin. Notice the progression in Romans 5:12, sin entered the world through Adam, death follows sin, death comes to all people, all people sin because they inherit sin from Adam. Because "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God", Romans 3:23, we need a perfect, sinless sacrifice to wash away our sin, something we are powerless to do on our own.
Now if we both were born sinless then there is no need for us to die because as stated in the above paragraph, because of SIN comes DEATH. So I've to ask, why is there death if there is no sin? Please don't answer it's a rhetorical question.
"For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous." God is just in applying Adam’s sin to the entire human race, and He is just in applying Jesus Christ’s death to all who will receive Him by faith.
So in a nutshell we the children could be suffering due to the life our grandparents and their parents and even the parents before lived. How do we break this cycle? By repentance and training up a child to admonition God so that the generations to come will seek God and walk according to His will.