Theological Understanding of a Miscarriage

            Theology matters.  So often as Christians we hear that word and think it is only for pastors, seminary students, and Sunday school classes.  But theology matters in every day life.  Our understanding of God, His creation, and His plan matters in our day-to-day lives.

            This has never been clearer to me than in the past few months.  As many of you may know from Ashlee’s blog post (Here, you should really read this) we had a miscarriage during our fourth pregnancy about a month ago.  This is one of the hardest things Ashlee and I have had to go through.  As we worked through our miscarriage, our understanding and theology of children, life, sin, death, and God were invaluable.  Our theology helped direct our grieving process, as well as celebrate life. 

            As a pastor and preacher, one of the best ways for me to use this for God’s glory is to show how having a correct theology and a biblical understanding of a miscarriage helped shepherd our hearts through this.  Here are four truths that helped us form a theology of our miscarriage and that comforted us through this process.

This was a baby, not just tissue

In our world today, with the ridiculous amounts of abortions happening, we cheapen the life in a woman's belly.  We call it tissue.  When someone informs us that they have had a miscarriage we feel bad for them, but that’s about it.  It was just tissue, right?  No big deal.  Wrong. 

Psalms 139:13-16 tells us in a beautiful fashion that God created King David in “his mother’s womb.”  The life of a baby begins at conception.  The passage tells us that God sees us as a person even in our mother’s womb.  Because of this, when we found out we were pregnant we celebrated the life of a baby. 

On the other spectrum, when we found out that we miscarried we mourned the loss of a baby.  We cried, we were sad, and we did not try and hide it.  We did not hide it from our kids either.  We let them mourn and talk about how they were sad. 

We got things to help remember the baby we lost (My daughter Jayden is outside right now picking flowers to remember our baby).  We also celebrated the 10 weeks God gave us with this baby.  We rejoiced over the joy we had because of the baby being in Ashlee's belly.  Our baby (which we think was a boy and named Simeon) was a real baby and was made in the image of God just like the rest of us.  We will always remember, celebrate, and mourn our baby.  He was a person, not just tissue.     

This baby is with God

            This is one of the biggest comforts through the loss of an unborn baby.  In 2 Samuel 12:23 David is discussing the loss of his baby, which God took from him because of his sin with Bathsheba.  In this verse David says “Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”  As we know David was a believer and he is referring to heaven here.  David believed (and was not corrected for it) that he would see his baby again in heaven.  This is a huge comfort to parents who have lost babies. A fuller understating of this can be found Here in an article by John MacArthur.  In short this verse along with a fuller understanding of God, and His love and compassion on children, leads us to believe that God has provided a way for babies who die to be with their Maker in Heaven. I believe that my baby is with God, never having to know the pains of this sinful world.  He is living in perfection for all eternity.  I never once have to be worried about him because he is in God’s care now, which is infinitely better than the care Ashlee and I could have ever given him.  And someday “I will go to him.”  

                                                God did not desire for this baby to die

This is similar to the understanding of God’s desire for all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). However, in His will only the elect are saved - just read all of Romans 11.  For a fuller understanding of this Here is a great article by John Piper.  But again, although God’s desire is for all to be saved, for the sake of His glory, not all are.   

           

            In the same way, we know that it was not God’s desire for this baby to die, but it was His will.  I’ll talk more on God’s will below.  When you look at Ezekiel 18:23, we see that God does not even want the wicked to die. “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? (ESV)”   This death is both a physical death from this world and a spiritual death, eternal separation from God.  Continuing on in the same chapter, verse 32 says “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone.”   Death was brought on by sin, and God hates death.  God mourns those who die. 

God created Adam and Eve to live with Him for all eternity, but because of their sin they brought on death.  That is why Jesus had to come, die, and resurrect from the dead; so that He could defeat death, giving us a hope for life after physical death.  When we understand this in a miscarriage, we know that God mourns with us.  He feels our pain.  I know that during this time God is not pleased by the death of my child.  This understanding kept us close to God; we knew God was sympathizing with us. 

It was God’s will for this baby to die 

            Lastly we know that even though it was not God’s desire for our baby to die, it was His will, and ultimately for His glory.  Ephesians 1:11 tells us that “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,” and Isaiah 43:7 reminds us that “everyone who is called by my name… I created for my glory.”   My baby’s death was part of God’s will and in some way brought God glory.  

            These last two points always need to be understood together.  It was not God’s desire for someone to die, but it was His will.  If we just say it was not His desire, then we take power from God.  If it was just for His will, we take compassion from God.  When you put them together you get a compassionate God who is acting for what is best - His glory.  I know that God is in control and the death of my baby was not pointless.  God has already been using it on me in order to teach me how to love my wife even more through all of this.  He has also shown me a greater picture of how precious my other three children are.  Both of these bring God glory and that is a good thing.  It was part of God’s will.

            In the past week or two, Ashlee and I have reflected on the past month and wondered how anyone could go through this without God and a correct understanding of God.  I have been so thankful for my studies in God’s Word during this time.  It has been the greatest comfort I could ask for.  It has driven our response to our miscarriage, shown us how to mourn the loss of our baby, given us hope for our baby, allowed us to feel God’s compassion through this loss, and has given meaning to the death of our baby.

Theology Matters.