Can you please help me answer my 12yr old son’s question? He doesn’t understand why God would create people like Hitler, knowing full well what they will do here on earth. And in his opinion, he feels like God must not really want everyone to go to heaven since God knows what their choices will be & he still allows people to be born that are “destined for hell”. I’ve read some online explanations, but I need something that a 12 yr old can understand.
Maybe it would help if your son understood that in all of humanity, Adam and Eve were the only two who were direct creations of God. After that, He delegated the birthing process to mankind (Genesis 1:27-28). It’s called procreation by some and it means that humans determine who will be born. God knows each one of us from the moment of conception, but our parents make all the decisions about our birth. If God decided these things there would be no children born out of wedlock, no abortions, no infant deaths from diseases due to poverty or neglect, etc.
Parents raise their children according to their own beliefs and preferences and some are much better at it than others. But eventually, a child becomes mature enough to make independent choices and is free to act on them as he or she sees fit.
One of those choices is to decide whether to let the Lord’s death pay for their sins because no one is “destined for hell.” The people who go there are those who don’t choose to let Jesus pay for their sins so they can go to heaven. The Bible says God does not want for any of us to perish, but for all to come to repentance (1 Tim. 2:3-4, 2 Peter 3:9), and if it was up to him we would all be saved, because He sent His Son to die for us so everyone could. But it’s not His decision to make, it’s ours.
Therefore each adult human is responsible for his or her own life, whether here on Earth or in eternity.