Continuing on questions that Christians might consider asking themselves; what about babies that die in the womb, are born dead or die shortly after birth?
It seems likely that most of the humans who have ever existed fall into this category - but whatever the exact proportions, this group accounts for a huge number of people (billions), especially before the modern era.
So these are people who have incarnated, but never had a chance to lead an independent existence from the mother - with hardly a chance to have experience, and no possibility of making any choices.
Were all these lives then futile? If so, it seems strange that matters should be arranged thus.
Given that God is our loving Father; I think the true explanation would need to be one in which there was a purpose to all these intra-uterine deaths, a reason for such people to have lived - some benefit these billions of souls had from their short experiences.
I found an explanation that 'works for me' in Mormon theology - which has it that these people have benefited from incarnation, from 'getting a body' - and it is this mortal body, no matter how short it lives for - which enables us then to be able to become resurrected.
In other words, we need to live and die as mortal incarnates, in order that we may become immortal incarnates - it is a necessary step on the way. So, even the briefest of lives spent entirely in the womb is of tremendous potential benefit to that person.
That is my explanation based on my assumptions - the question is whether other Christian traditions have similarly coherent accounts for this phenomenon? Or is the question simply regarded as trivial?
