Salvation for Little Children

One of the doctrines of latter-day scriptures that rightfully gets a lot of attention is the teaching about salvation for children who die before the age of accountability.  Abraham was told, “Thou mayest know for ever that children are not accountable before me until they are eight years old” (JST Gen. 17:11).  Abinadi declared to the priests of Noah, “Little children also have eternal life” (Mosiah 15:25).  Mormon emphatically taught, “Little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin…. But little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the world; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a respecter to persons; for how many little children have died without baptism!” (Moroni 8:8, 12).  The Lord declared in our dispensation, “But behold, I say unto you, that little children are redeemed from the foundation of the world through mine Only Begotten; Wherefore, they cannot sin, for power is not given unto Satan to tempt little children, until they begin to become accountable before me” (D&C 29:46-47).  Joseph Smith told us, “And I also beheld that all children who die before they arrive at the year of accountability are saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven” (D&C 137:10).  All of these revelations are messages of hope and promise to those who lose little children, and what a glorious doctrine it is to know that the Lord will have mercy upon all of them! 

                And yet, that said, the doctrine as I understand it is not completely intuitive to me.  What makes perfect sense is that God will not condemn little children to hell simply because their parents didn’t baptize them.  That they are not punished for sin before they can fully make choices between right and wrong shows the kind of justice that we would expect.  And yet what has sometimes bothered me is that, on the other hand, they seem to get a free ticket into the celestial kingdom.  It’s not that I think they should be condemned, but given what I think I understand about our own need to be tested and proved before the Lord to see if we “will do all things whatsoever the Lord [our] God shall command [us],” I would think that they also need to have that kind of experience and growth and opportunity to choose (Abraham 3:25).  In other words, my sense of fairness would think that what we understand about salvation for the dead in general would be the way that children who die would also be treated.  We are taught that “All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God” (D&C 137:7).  But that same revelation teaches us that children who die are unconditionally saved, whereas the dead in general are conditionally saved upon receiving the gospel.  Why is that?

                I don’t know that I have the answer, but this article by Elder McConkie did help bring me understanding.  He said this, “We may rest assured that all things are controlled and governed by Him whose spirit children we are. He knows all things from the beginning to the end and he provides for each of us the testings and trials which he knows we need. President Joseph Fielding Smith once told me that we must assume that the Lord knows and arranges beforehand who shall die in infancy and who shall remain on earth to undergo whatever tests are needed in their cases. This accords with Joseph Smith’s statement: ‘The Lord takes many away, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth’ (Teachings, pp. 196–97).  It is implicit in the whole plan of things that those of us who have arrived at the years of accountability need the tests and trials to which we are subject.”  In other words, it may be that those who die in their infancy don’t need the trials of this life; they just needed their bodies.  They had already advanced far enough and proven their faithfulness to the degree that was necessary and so the Lord could grant them entrance into His kingdom without the experiences of life that we need.  I trust that “all things were done in the wisdom of him who created all things,” and someday we will understand the workings of the Lord.